I passed the days at Peace Haven in what I could only term peace. Though I had to log the days I was there, I took what Andy said to heart and signed a different name every few days. Nobody pestered me about why or for how long or where I'd come from. The other young people there were all obviously down on their luck. They'd been pushed out of homes or run from foster care or had been forced into lifestyles that they'd had to escape. I was sure many of them had seen much harder days than I had. They had lived through personal horrors I could only imagine. And I was left imagining, because in my three or so weeks at the shelter, I had no more flashes from my past. All I could do was continuously obsess over the two memories I'd had--the wind and screaming, and the beach. I knew they were real. I recalled the flashes I had back in San Judo, how they'd intensified until they'd finally come together. Would this be like that? And why this memory? Was there any rhyme or reason to it? I definitely had the time to mull over everything, but that didn't help me understand it any better.

I moved through the shelter like a zombie, but I was a content zombie. For the first time in the life I could remember, I felt invisible. Nobody knew about my freakish lack of memory--even Andy had thought I was being metaphorical--and now that I knew my tracking device was out of me, I was fairly confident the Circuit couldn't find me. Even if they did, though, I was surrounded by people day and night; it wasn't as if they could just grab me without anyone noticing. It was much safer than being on the street.

Nobody spoke to me except to be cordial about something, like whether or not I was done with a food tray or how long I thought my shower might be. People came and went so much, too, that even if I'd gotten to know someone, they'd probably be gone within a few days. I think that they grew bored; that was the one downside of the shelter. It was so routine. Some people seemed to leave during the day and come back only in the evenings. Lots of people left and never returned. I saw new faces every night. In fact, one of the only faces I saw and recognized again and again was Andy's. Andy made a point to say hello and check on me from time to time. I guess I'd freaked her out that first night in the laundry room. She always had that concerned look on her when she approached me, and I wasn't sure whether I felt comforted or annoyed by it. After several days, I decided that Andy meant well, and I let go of any annoyance.

After some time, just when I'd begun to feel safe, I let down my guard, and I ruined any security I'd begun to build. It was Andy's fault. No, that's not entirely true--I was the one that gave in to her insistence that I come out of the shelter for a day with her. She often left during daylight hours and returned at night for food, laundry, and sleep. She, like many others, had a pattern, and it always ended up with her back at the shelter. She slept in the same bed every night, as did I; her space was across the gym-sized room from mine. Anyway, she came to me one morning as I was getting some breakfast and sat across a table from me.

"You never leave."

I looked up from my bowl of cereal and didn't answer.

"You want to come out for a day? It's a world out there, you know."

I looked back down. "No. I'm all right."

"Just to get some air. You don't go out at all."

"I don't want to."

Andy propped a hand under her chin. She wore the backpack she always had on, like me, and like most others at the shelter. None of us were willing to let go of the only things we owned.

Curiosity overcame my introversion. "What do you do all day, anyway?"

She wrinkled up her mouth. "Not a lot. Just wander, mostly. It's nice to sit in the park, as long as the weather is ok, and I like to talk to people sometimes. But mostly I just kind of see what's going on, you know?"

"No, I don't know. I don't want to talk to people."

Andy picked up on but didn't pay attention to my hint. "Yeah, I see what you're putting down, but I don't care. You can't run from it all forever. You have to get back out there."

I slowly shook my head. "There are things . . . things in my past."

"Everybody has things in their past. You think you're alone in that? You aren't. You also aren't alone in trying to heal from it, you know?" She emphatically hit her chest where her heart was. "It's what we're all trying to do around here."

I bit my lip. "I just . . . I don't feel safe, yet."

Andy gave me that mothering look again. "You'll be safe with me. I'll be your bodyguard. Nobody will mess with you if I'm there, I'll make sure of it."

A laugh formed in my throat, but I held it back. Andy had no idea what Henry or the Circuit were. I doubted she could be much of a bodyguard. In any case, I succeeded that time in fending her off, but after several more of her attempts to get me out, I ended up caving. I'd been hiding long enough that Henry would've moved on, right? And the Circuit couldn't trace me anymore, anyway. And I'd be careful . . . I wouldn't draw attention to myself. Besides, if anything did happen, I'd just return to the shelter, where nobody could get at me. There were always dozens of people there, people who would help without even really knowing me. I'd be safe--I'd be all right.

That was all the stuff I told myself, anyway.

It was nice, though, to be out in the fresh air. The sun shone, though the day was cold and all I had was a jacket. I needed a coat. I mentioned it to Andy, being careful not to indicate just how much money I had. I still had enough for buses and cabs and even a motel room or two if I got in a pinch, but I didn't want her to know that. So I suggested we look for a Good Will or thrift shop of some kind, and she knew just where to go. Andy was all right. She didn't ask very many questions; she just talked about random stuff. The only annoying thing she did was hover over me as if she were afraid I'd run off or melt down or something. I didn't get the impression that she was conning me, though; she seemed genuine in her intentions. I'd been terribly wrong, though, so I really couldn't judge her character. Paolo took over my thoughts more than once when we were out and about, but I didn't talk about him or Henry or anything else in my past. I didn't talk about my flashbacks, either--in fact, I hadn't had any more since the night I'd first arrived at Peace Haven. As close as we got to discussing anything about me was when Andy asked casually whether I'd had any more nightmares, to which I'd responded that I hadn't, and that'd been all. Otherwise, she talked mostly about herself or other people in the shelter. She'd been in and out of Peace Haven for almost a year, and she had all kinds of stories.

We spent a lot of time in a couple of thrift stores, and frankly, I actually started to enjoy myself. We tried on a bunch of stuff, but the only thing I actually bought was a coat that was dated but in decent shape. Andy didn't buy anything; I figured she probably didn't have much money. After that, we found a diner and, by my prompting, Andy let me buy her lunch. Anything off the menu, I told her, for dragging me out of the shelter and actually getting me to enjoy myself for a few hours. So she got a burger and fries and a shake, and I got waffles and orange juice, and it all felt normal and good and fun.

"So what's your long term plan?" Andy asked me about halfway through her burger.

I was somewhat taken aback. "How long is long term? Like, a year? Five years?"

"I guess however long you think long is."

I shrugged. "I don't know." And it was true. As much as I'd sat around and thought over the last few weeks, I hadn't come up with a decisive plan for anything. "I think it's why I'm still at Peace Haven. I don't know what I want to do at all."

"You got family of any kind to go home to?"

"No. You?"

Her turn to shrug. "I mean, I've got family, but I don't want them, and they don't really want me, either. I'm not who they wanted me to be, you know?"

Was I who my family would have wanted me to be? If I even had a family . . . But I must have, somewhere, long ago, even if it was just a mother who birthed me and a father who contributed nine months before it. They had to exist.

"That's the story of ninety-five percent of everybody at Peace Haven, right? Families who didn't want them."

I thought about that for a moment. Whether her statistic was a little high was irrelevant: here I'd spent so much time wondering about whether or not I could find a family when they probably wouldn't want me if I did find them. I mean, wouldn't they have been trying to find me, if they'd cared at all? Wouldn't the police have been able, after everything that went down in San Judo, to locate them if they'd wanted to be located? Ninety-five percent of families didn't want those shelter kids . . . no doubt my family (whatever they were like) would be among that ninety-five percent. Wondering about them seemed stupid.

"You going to eat that whipped cream?"

Andy was aiming her fork at a melting pile of white foam on the side of my plate. I shook my head and allowed her to scoop it off. She slurped all of it off her fork in one bite, and I smiled in spite of myself.

"You're crazy," she said. "That's the best part of the waffle."

"Technically, it isn't part of the waffle at all."

"All right, all right. You know what I mean. So what else do you want to do today?"

I frowned, turned my head a little, thought. "Go somewhere outside. The park, like you said this morning. It sounds nice."

She shrugged and sat back. "It can be. Depends on who's there--kids or cookers."

I raised an eyebrow at her.

"Dealers. You know, drugs."

Sure. Ok. I nodded as if I'd known what she meant but momentarily forgotten.

"I got a lot of experience with them, though, so don't you worry."

I wasn't worried. Not about low-level drug dealers, anyway.

The park was nice enough, even in the cold. The sun had warmed up the afternoon to a tolerable temperature, and the square of land designated as a green space, though pretty small, was surprisingly still a little green. The grass was browning, but there were evergreen bushes and trees of various sorts, and there were even some bright red shrubs in one area. A playground sat right in the middle of the park, and although it looked like it could use some repairs and a solid coat of paint, there were a fair amount of kids on it. I supposed that in a neighborhood like this one, any swing or slide was exciting.

Andy and I headed toward a bench, but just as I sat down, she recognized someone hanging by the gate and went to talk to him. I stayed put. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to strangers. Instead I found that, as I sat there, the cold air cleared my mind better than anything else I'd tried over the past days. Watching the kids play and laugh and clamber up slides rather than down them also took me away from myself. What was it about kids that gave them so much joy? I mean, a kid could have the worst life but could still laugh on a playground (and a junk one at that). I unwittingly smiled at the little boys and girls, not without some envy. I must've been a child once; had I been so carefree? Who had raised me? I couldn't possibly have been on my own at their age.

My gaze shifted to Andy and whomever she was talking to. She was looking amused and shocked about something, and I envied that camaraderie, too. I considered standing, maybe even joining them in spite of my antisocial tendencies, but a familiar dizzying sensation overtook me, and before I could consider what was happening, the world changed around me.

I was no longer in a rundown playground on a chilly fall afternoon. The air was warm, and it seemed to sparkle with something a little different than sunshine. Laughter. There were people here—children—laughing somewhere out of my vision. And the scene was beginning to form. From shadow came the ocean, slowly rising and falling against an interminable stretch of sand. A beach. Hazy air and sky, nothing blue, no sun, but gray light. Again, the soft salty air against my face, a light wind moving through my loose clothing. And some joyful noise behind me. I wanted to turn. I stepped forward, my bare feet shifting the sand around them. Everything felt good—right—warm. as if the very memory were embracing me. I'd never felt so safe, so calm. Though I gazed out at shifting waters, I wanted to see who it was behind me. I wanted to catch a glimpse of those happy-playground children I was certain were there. I was sure I could turn, if I wished to, and though some tiny root of doubt uncurled in the soil of my psyche, I paused mid-step, slowly began to pivot. The winds intensified . . . but I kept turning. The brightness dimmed . . . but I kept turning. The laughter ceased . . . but I'd already done it, by that time, and it wasn't playing children or more sunlit beach or even the white haze or thin air or anything like that behind me--it was me. Just me. Another me, or a mirror, perhaps . . . but not, not a mirror. She wasn't quite me. Not quite. She felt different, somehow. I was staring into a mirror, but a mirror that was, in some inexplicable way, off. There I (or she) was: same smooth, dark skin glowing under the shimmer of this memory, same searching and distrustful eyes, same frowning mouth. Exactly the same features . . . and yet . . . I knew her less than I knew my own mysterious self.

As I was attempting to discern what was wrong with her, darkness began to envelope us. Faster, faster everything changed. The winds became torrential, unbearable in their drowning. Our eyes were locked--mine and hers. I couldn't break the connection. I dare not break it. Something terrible might happen if I did. And I felt others behind me--others who were watching and waiting though I wouldn't have been able to see them if I'd turned.

Her mouth opened suddenly—the other me--and a scream came out of it, the same scream I'd heard before, although a word came through it all . . .

A name . . . a name I knew from somewhere . . .

I was jolted back to the chilly fall day, to Andy calling my name right in front of my face, shaking my whole body as if I were a rag doll.

"You okay?" Then, seeing I was myself again, she added, "What the hell happened to you?!"

I blinked hard several times and felt my body sink back onto the bench, which I'd stood up from. Andy helped me sit without falling over. I was so dizzy. All of it had been so real. I'd really been there, this time, I was sure.

"You scared the crap out of me!" Andy was beginning to calm down, but she was clearly shaken. She at length removed her hands from my arms, but she took my hand in hers and asked, softly, "Was it a memory?"

I nodded, recalling the eerie image of myself. Had that been a memory? It had felt like one, but how could I have seen a double of myself? Me and yet not me? That couldn't have been a memory. It had to have been a dream or nightmare of some sort. And the name . . . it had been clear then, but I couldn't recall it now . . .

"You stood up like you wanted me, and then I saw you, but it was like you were frozen in time, eyes wide open and everything, like a zombie. That was some kind of freaky."

I found nothing to say. I wasn't going to explain anything to her. She wouldn't have understood.

"Oh, yeah. I have something for you."

Andy scrounged in her pocket, and I watched her with little interest but relief that she apparently wasn't going to dwell on what had just happened.

"Here." She handed me a folded piece of paper. "Drew gave it to me. Says some guy gave it to him to give to you."

My stomach lurched. Henry? If he'd found me, I didn't know what I'd do. I didn't want to open the note, but when I did, I saw that it was from a less expected writer. It read, "Nadia, none of this is what you think it is. I have to see you. Please let me explain. Tomorrow night, Midnyte, 11 PM," and it was signed only "Yours."