Free Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult

flashlight leaping like a cricket.
    Caleb hesitates, unsure whether he should follow her. In the end, he chooses not to. Instead he squints beneath the pinpricks of stars and puts the gree n soldier into the hollow made by the two sides of the wall. He sets bricks on either side, following the course. When this wall is finished, no one wil l know that this army man sleeps inside. No one but Caleb, that is, who will look at it a thousand times a day and know that at least one flawless memor y of his son was saved.
    Nathaniel lies in bed thinking about the time he took a baby chick home from school. Well, it wasn't a chick exactly ... it was an egg that Miss Lydia had put in the trash, as if they were all too dumb to count that there were now three eggs instead of four in the incubator. The other eggs, though, had turn ed into little yellow cotton balls that cheeped. So that day before his fathe r picked him up, Nathaniel went into Miss Lydia's office and slipped the egg out of the garbage can, into the sleeve of his shirt.
    He'd slept with it under his pillow, sure if it had a little more time it wou ld turn into a chick like the others had. But all it had come to were nightma res-of his father making an omelet in the morning, cracking the shell, and a live baby chick falling into the sizzling pan. His father had found the egg b eside his bed three days later; it had tumbled to the floor. He hadn't cleane d the mess up in time: Nathaniel could still remember the silvered dead eye, the knotted gray body, the thing that might have been a wing. Nathaniel used to think the Creature he'd seen that morning-it wasn't a chic k, that was for sure-was the scariest something that could ever exist. Even now, from time to time when he blinks, it is there on the backs of his eyeli ds. He has stopped eating eggs, because he is afraid of what might be inside . An item that looks perfectly normal on the surface might only be disguised. Nathaniel stares up at his ceiling. There are even scarier things; he knows t hat now.
    The door to his bedroom opens wider, and someone steps in. Nathaniel is still thinking of the Creature, and the Other, and he can't see around the bright hall light. He feels something sink onto the bed, curl around him, as if Nath aniel is the dead thing now and needs to grow a shell to hide inside.
    “It's okay,” his father's voice says at his ear. “It's only me.” His arms come around tight, keep him from trembling. Nathaniel closes his eyes, and for the f irst time since he's gone to bed that night, he doesn't see the chick at all. The moment before we step into Dr. Robichaud's office the next day, I have a sudden surge of hope. What if she looks at Nathaniel and decides she ha s misinterpreted his behavior? What if she apologizes, stamps our son's re cord with red letters, MISTAKEN? But when we walk inside, there's a new pe rson joining us, and it is all I need to blow my fairy-tale ending sky hig h. In a place as small as York County, I couldn't prosecute child molestat ion cases and not know Monica LaFlamme. I don't have anything against her, specifically, just her agency. In our office we change the acronym of BCY F to suit us: TGDSW-Those God Damn Social Workers; or RTSM-Red Tape Societ y of Maine. The last case I'd worked with Monica had involved a boy diagno sed with oppositional defiance disorder-a condition, ultimately, that prev ented us from prosecuting his abuser.
    She gets up, her hands extended, as if she is my best friend. “Nina ... I am so , so sorry to hear about this.”
    My eyes are flint; my heart is hard as a diamond. I do not fall for this touch y-feely bullshit in my profession; I'm sure as hell not going to fall for it i n my personal life. “What can you do for me, Monica?” I ask bluntly. The psychiatrist, I can tell, is shocked. Probably she's never heard anyone talk back to the BCYF before. Probably she thinks she ought to put me on P rozac.
    “Oh, Nina. I wish I could do