I was a child of the baby boom but you couldn’t have proven it by my neighborhood. I reckoned that my parents had bought the only house in America that had no other kids within walking or biking distance. I once questioned my parents about it but they told me I was being silly. They pointed out that I had lots of friends at school and that there was no reason for me to be bored while at home—the older people in the neighborhood were kind to me, and I did get more than my share of cookies and other treats from them. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I longed for a friend to do things with, someone who would always be around so that we could do things spontaneously without having to make plans days in advance.

In January 1962 my wishes came true when the McMorgans sold their house and moved to Florida. Before they left they told me that the family that was moving in had two boys, the oldest was in the seventh grade and the youngest wasn’t in school yet. Two weeks after the McMorgans left I was still waiting for the new family to move in.

“Billy,” my mom warned me for about the millionth time, “settle down. The new people won’t move in any faster because you look out the window every two minutes.”

Finally, a moving van showed up early one Saturday morning. I was totally frustrated when my mom forbade me to go over there. “But what if he knows that there’s another kid his age in the neighborhood? I don’t want him to think that I’m ignoring him. Please, ple-e-e-e-e-ase let me go over.”

No amount of begging helped (in fact, it probably hurt) so I didn’t get to meet him until the next Monday when our teacher introduced him, Tim Perals, to our class. He seemed really nice, if a little on the shy side. At morning recess I introduced myself, Billy Murgon.

“My mom wouldn’t let me near your house on Saturday or Sunday when you were moving in,” I explained. “Do you like it here so far?”

“Yeah, it’s really nice. We used to live in an apartment. I hated it—there was no yard or anything. On top of that, there were a couple of kids in the building who were bullies and made everybody’s life miserable.”

Over the next few weeks Tim and I hung around together a lot. We got along really well and spent most of our free time doing things together. I told him about my family (my dad was a banker) and that I had an older sister who was just finishing up college. He told me that his dad was a civil engineer and that his mom stayed home to take care of his little brother.

As our friendship grew I began noticing odd things. For instance, he never invited me inside his house even though he had been inside mine (including my bedroom) several times. One day as I was walking down the street, I heard a little kid inside his house screeching at the top of his lungs. The next time I saw Tim I asked him if his little brother was sick.

“No,” he answered abruptly, “Carl is fine. He just gets like that sometimes.”

He immediately changed the subject and I let it drop. As time went by, I heard the same thing a couple more times. It also occurred to me that I had never seen Tim’s brother. At first, I thought that he was a little baby, but the way Tim talked about him made me guess that he must have been at least seven or eight years old. I wondered why he wasn’t going to school. It was a mystery that was beginning to bug me a little bit. I mentioned these things to my parents and they told me that it was none of my business and that I should stay out of it. I tried to, but I became more and more curious. ****