the tapered Oh of his body. His face, though doughy, had not gone to undefined softness. Rather, every feature had acquired its own rolls of fat, rolls that warred with one another to define his appearance—nose and cheekbones and brow and lips all grotesque and inflated and blubbery.

“Eugene,” Alan said. “It’s been a very long time.”

Edward cocked his head. “It has, indeed, big brother. I’ve got bad news.”

“What?”

Edward leaned to the left, the top half of his body tipping over completely, splitting at his narrow leather belt, so that his trunk, neck, and head hung upside down beside his short, cylindrical legs and tiny feet.

Inside of him was Frederick, the perennial middle child. Frederick planted his palms on the dry, smooth edges of his older brother’s waist and levered himself up, stepping out of Ed’s legs with the unconscious ease of a lifetime’s practice. “It’s good to see you, Andy,” he said. He was pale and wore his habitual owlish expression of surprise at seeing the world without looking through his older brother’s eyes.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Frederick,” Alan said. He’d always gotten along with Frederick, always liked his ability to play peacemaker and to lend a listening ear.

Frederick helped Edward upright, methodically circumnavigating his huge belly, retucking his grimy white shirt. Then he hitched up his sweatshirt over the hairy pale expanse of his own belly and tipped to one side.

Alan had been expecting to see Gregory, the core, but instead, there was nothing inside Frederick. The Gregory-shaped void was empty. Frederick righted himself and hitched up his belt.

“We think he’s dead,” Edward said, his rubbery features distorted into a Greek tragedy mask. “We think that Doug killed him.” He pinwheeled his round arms and then clapped his hands to his face, sobbing. Frederick put a hand on his arm. He, too, was crying.

Once upon a time, Alan’s mother gave birth to three sons in three months. Birthing sons was hardly extraordinary—before these three came along, she’d already had four others. But the interval, well, that was unusual.

As the eldest, Alan was the first to recognize the early signs of her pregnancy. The laundry loads of diapers and play clothes he fed into her belly unbalanced more often, and her spin 

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