In this chap­ter, Mani­ac Magee returns to the West End and is wel­comed warm­ly by the Pick­well fam­i­ly, who treat him like a mem­ber of their fam­i­ly. As he enjoys din­ner with them, he con­trasts their kind­ness with his expe­ri­ences with the Beales, feel­ing a sim­i­lar sense of uni­ty and accep­tance. After this joy­ful vis­it, he goes back to stay with the McN­abs, but the dynam­ics have shift­ed; Rus­sell and Piper, no longer requir­ing stunts for school atten­dance, begin to dream of adven­tures, includ­ing build­ing a raft to sail to the ocean.

Mani­ac finds him­self increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed as he tries to influ­ence the McNab boys toward bet­ter behav­iors. His attempts at encouragement—like orga­niz­ing games and reading—yield lit­tle suc­cess. With May’s warm weath­er, the boys’ mis­chie­vous ten­den­cies resur­face and esca­late, indi­cat­ed by their reck­less dri­ving attempts and pet­ty thefts. While Mani­ac main­tains some struc­ture with run­ning in the morn­ings and read­ing in the after­noons, the chaot­ic evenings with the McN­abs test his patience.

Even­tu­al­ly, Mani­ac reach­es a break­ing point when he finds Rus­sell and Piper play­ing with a cher­ished glove that had been a gift from Grayson, using it for a foot­ball. His erup­tion sig­nals a shift; for the first time, he asserts author­i­ty over them, lead­ing to a tem­po­rary com­pli­ance. How­ev­er, the boys soon revert to their old ways, dis­re­gard­ing his com­mands, choos­ing instead to pur­sue their recre­ation­al projects.

A con­fronta­tion ensues where Mani­ac destroys their toy weapons, lead­ing to the boys’ angry retorts and cul­mi­nat­ing in his depar­ture from their home. He spends the fol­low­ing nights in a park, reflect­ing on his rela­tion­ship with the McNab boys. The next day, they come search­ing for him, invit­ing him to Piper’s birth­day par­ty, seem­ing­ly for­get­ting the pre­vi­ous con­flict. This invi­ta­tion brings forth an idea from Mani­ac, who agrees to attend with a con­di­tion: he wants to bring some­one along, hint­ing at a desire for inclu­siv­i­ty and an escape from the pre­vi­ous chaos .