Chapter 1

Scarecrow was the nickname they hung on him. The kids at Millhaven Group Home had landed on it for the new kid, 13-year-old Quinn Norman, with the honest cruelty that bored-gray kids have as a matter of course. Quinn was tall for thirteen, all sharp angles and jutting elbows, with a face that seemed to have been assembled in a hurry. His ears were a touch too large, a nose that had been broken more than once and blue-gray eyes set deep beneath a heavy brow.

He didn’t fight it. Not because he couldn’t; Quinn had learned early that he could absorb and dish out a remarkable amount of the world’s punishment without giving in, but fighting meant trouble, and trouble meant being moved again. Quinn was very tired of being moved. Millhaven was his third placement in fourteen months.

So, he let them call him Scarecrow. Sticks and stones. What mattered was the line in the ground he’d drawn on his first day. Say what you like, but do not lay hands on me. He’d communicated this without a single word, simply through the quality of his eager stillness that promised he was ready. The kids understood. Nobody touched him, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t hang a name on him.

The weird tests had started on Monday and ran the entire week.

They weren’t like regular school tests, which Quinn liked. Tests were a relief from classroom boredom.

These were different.

The man in a brown sweater who introduced himself as Dr. Reese had come to Millhaven with a briefcase full of booklets. One by one, the residents had been pulled from their regular schedule and sat down at the kitchen table across from him.

Quinn’s session had lasted three times longer than anyone else’s.

Dr. Reese had started with shapes and patterns, the kind of visual puzzles where you identify which piece completes the figure. Quinn moved through those quickly, almost impatiently. Then came written problems, then verbal ones, then something that wasn’t quite either: ethical dilemmas described in careful, neutral language, questions about how systems worked and why they failed. Dr. Reese had stopped writing at some point and simply watched Quinn think, chin resting on his folded hands, expression unreadable.