Rickie, who would be ten in two weeks, looked over the top of his cereal box. In his bowl, two Cheerios floated in a pool of milk. He could hear his father scaping marmalade over his dry toast, the gentle scritching. “Dad, I had a dream.”

The scritching stopped. “A bad dream? A nightmare?”

“I was at the bottom of a hill. There was a basketball at the top of the hill. It started rolling down. It started bouncing. It was coming right at me—really fast.”