Two days before Thanksgiving.  Simon had been hovering around all week, looking forlorn, asking questions.

"So where do you know these people from?"

"They're old college friends.  And I'm their charity case.  The boy without a bird."  I grabbed my day-pack off the floor.  Started stuffing in clothes at random.  "Look, you're more than welcome to come along."

"You know I can't do that."

Ah, yes.  The Rules.  Like bones, like promises, just begging to be broken.

"Well, what if we say you can?  I mean you're my illusion after all.  Why can't you do whatever I ... sorry, whatever we want you to do?"

He pretended to think about it.  Then, after what must have seemed an appropriate amount of time, gave his head a shake.

"Actually, I've got other plans."

All I could do was stare back.  Other plans?  It was like deciding to take a walk, and having your legs tell you - assuming, of course, that your legs could talk - having your legs say, no really, we'll just sit this one out. Or having your fingers pick up a pen, and write you a little note.  Sorry, we've been seeing another hand.  Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself onto the bed, no longer trusting those legs, these fingers, any part of the person to whom they may or may not have belonged, all the while asking myself, who is this figure, standing across from me?  To whom does he belong?

Seeing my expression, Simon decided he should sit down as well.  For a second, or more like several, we shared a tepid silence, me on the bed, him splayed out on the ottoman near the window.

"Haven't you ever wondered where I go?"  He started to pick away at a frayed seam in his jeans.  "You know, when I'm not here?"

"No," I admitted.  "Not really."

"I used to think it was nowhere at all.  That I just stopped existing for a while."  He tried finding a laugh.  "Still, who's to say I'm existing right now?"

The joke was thin.  The question purely rhetorical. "You said 'used to'.  Past tense.  What about now?"

"Lately it's been different.  There's this feeling I get when I first show up, that I've just come from ... somewhere else.  Like there's this echo, this remnant of where I've been, bleeding into here.  And then, after a few seconds, it just sort of fades."  He glanced up from his Levi's, gave me a feeble smile.  "Look, I know I'm not explaining this well."

"You're doing fine," I told him.  "This place where you've been.  What's it like?"

"That's just it.  It's not like there's any memories, any clues, left for me to pick over.  Just this feeling.  Like it could be the place I really belong.  A place where I'm real, not imagined."

I sat there a moment, mulling his words, thinking about wooden sheriffs, and magic dragons, and all the stories we tell ourselves about the child who must finally grow up, leaving his toys behind.  And the way such stories always assume that those toys have nothing better to do, no higher aspiration, than to serve as playthings, amusements, way stations along the way as that child charts his course towards adulthood.  But is it really that pat, that simple? Perhaps both parties are on their own journey, equal partners in the dance.  And maybe, on occasion, it's the toy that outgrows the child.

"So does this mean I won't be seeing you, imagining you, anymore?" I finally asked.  "You'll be off in this place of yours?"

We both must have heard it in my voice.  That sour note of dismay.

"No, of course not.  Of course I'll be back."  He smiled a bit too quickly, a bit too easily.  "Still, this is Thanksgiving we're talking about.  I think I'd like to spend it back there.  Back home."

"Home?"  The outcast stared at the figment, as if seeing him for the very first time.  "You really think there is such a place?"

"Don't you?"

Now it was my smile, equally false.  "Only in my imagination."