I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200

Kay Washington is eight, bright and anxious, and cannot stand being alone with the quiet. Eddie Video fixes that. He is loud, he is funny, he is always there, and he is not real, which has never mattered until his pranks start hurting people.

Ivan is in his mid-forties and has been going nowhere since he lost his own imaginary friend. What he got instead was the ability to see everybody else's, so he makes a living killing them, hired by grown adults who could not put childhood down. It is unglamorous work involving steak knives and a lot of running.

Kay is the first child he has agreed to help, and Eddie Video is not a talking ostrich or a star bear. He does not want to be put down, and he is much better at this than Ivan is.

Robert Brockway alternates the two viewpoints in a comic horror novel about growing up, about what a childhood leaves behind, and about how hard it is to kill something you invented.