Ryan Coolidge did not want to go to prison.

He'd been going to prison every Saturday for the past eleven months. Without fail, his mother would wake him, she'd put him in the car, and off they'd go. He didn't like the smell of prison, didn't like the feel of prison. He didn't like the drab beige walls, the cold concrete floors, the countless pairs of dark, soulless eyes that stared out from between iron prison bars. He didn't like anything about prison.

The thing he liked least of all was visiting his father there.

"Do we have to go, Mom?" Ryan was holding up his head with his hands, elbows on the kitchen table, a soggy raft of cornflakes floating in the bowl of milk before him.

"You should want to go."

"I don't." He dropped a piece of toast on the floor. His Golden Retriever pounced on it like a half-starved wolf. It was gone in one bite, and then Sam laid his huge head in Ryan's lap, begging for more. Sam was a smart and beautiful purebred, but his table manners had gone right out the door with Ryan's dad.

"A boy should want to see his father," said Dr. Coolidge.

"I don't."

"Your father loves you."

"Well, I don't love him."

"Never say that about your father. Never. Do you hear me?"

The dog sighed, as if wondering if that next piece of toast would ever drop. Ryan stroked the back of Sam's neck.

"Did you hear me?" Ryan's mother said.

Sam sighed even louder. My sentiment exactly, thought Ryan.

"Ryan Coolidge, answer me right now."

"Yes, I heard you," he muttered, but the cry of a baby in the next room had already stolen his mother's attention. It was his little sister, Ainsley. Dr. Coolidge popped from her seat as if she'd just sat on a tack, the way she always did when Ainsley made the slightest peep. Ryan loved Ainsley, too, but lately the world seemed to revolve around her. Poor Ainsley doesn't get to see her Daddy. Poor Mr. Coolidge doesn't get to see his new baby. If it weren't for the way Sam shadowed him everywhere, Ryan would have sworn he was the invisible boy.