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and
jollof
rice. Yum.”
    “It’s good,” said Law. He gloated because he was being authentic and I wasn’t.
    “So it’s not baa-a-a-a-a-a-d?” I bleated.
    “Don’t be a dork.”
    “Sorry to baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-other you.”
    He snickered, and gave me a little head butt to the shoulder. “You are what you eat,” he reminded me, and butted me again.
    “You guys are dumb,” Matt said. He went back togobbling up his chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, barely looking at us.
    “So, you’ve lived here seven years?” I asked him, remembering Darryl saying that on the drive from the airport.
    “Yep.”
    “Wow.” We only lived in Dayton for five years, and it felt like home to me. I wondered if Liberia would ever feel like home.
    “Do you like it here?” I asked.
    “Nope,” he answered, but didn’t bother to explain. Yep, this kid was a joy.
    Law barged into my room later, even though the lights were out and I was trying to sleep.
    “Mom wanted Darryl to shut up because she didn’t want to exacerbate your condition,” he said.
    “I know, but thanks for dropping by to tell me.”
    When my parents took me to see that shrink after my panic attack at school, he talked to me for a while by myself. Then he let Mom and Dad come back in, and he told them I was stressed about moving. He said it was pretty common for kids facing a big change, especially “sensitive kids like Linus,” which was his way of saying big ’fraidy-cats like Linus. He also told Mom and Dad to make sure I didn’t become preoccupied with things that exacerbated my condition. Those were his words.
Become preoccupied
meant “think too much,” and
exacerbate
meant “make something worse than it was already.”
    So I knew Mom was trying to stop me from hearing about things like poisonous snakes, and rogues, and the fact that there’d been a coup. She was going to be happy when she found out that the new Linus didn’t care about stuff like that.
    “I guess it messed up everything, seeing the snake right off the plane, then Darryl talking about all the coup stuff. I bet you’re pretty freaked out.”
    “Well, not really, but thanks for reminding me just before I go to sleep.”
    “Oh, sorry.”
    “Just kidding. I’m not going to have nightmares.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Come on. I’m not a little kid anymore.”
    “Well, I brought you this.” He tossed something on the bed and left, shutting the door behind him. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding anything. I felt around on the bed until I found a familiar shape.
    It was my stuffed monkey, Moogoo. I’d had him since I was three. I’d put him in the Goodwill box when were packing up to move, but my brother must have grabbed him back and hidden him in his own suitcase.
    Moogoo was kind of scratchy and woolly except for his face, which was a circle of soft felt sewn on the head. When I was a toddler, I would carry Moogoo everywhere and make him give people Moogoo kisses, mashing his felt face to their lips. Moogoo also had big googly eyes that used to spin when you pressed his belly. The eyes didn’t work anymore,but the pupils would kind of roll around when you shook him.
    I was too old to sleep with a stuffed toy, so I set Moogoo on the nightstand. I slept well, knowing he would meet any intruders head-on with his manic eyes and give them slobbery monkey kisses until they fled in terror.

CHAPTER 3
    We went to the embassy the next day to get processed. It was just up the road, not even a half mile, so we walked. Despite what Darryl said about it raining every day, that morning was sunny and warm. We passed shanties, shacks made of tacked-together sheets of corrugated metal, with raggedy clothes spread out on the roofs to dry. A really little girl appeared in the doorway of one of the shacks, looking like one of the kids in those commercials that ask you for money. She watched us with round eyes as we passed. Mom reached into her purse, but the girl disappeared.
    This was