I didn't tell Henry I'd called Roxie, and I didn't try to call her back. Speaking briefly with her had revealed to me that I didn't even know why I'd wanted to call in the first place. I had no plan. And Henry wouldn't have remembered her, anyway. I'd thrown her contact info in the next trash can I'd seen. I also hadn't told him about the voice I'd heard, the one telling me to turn around, because I didn't know how to explain it. Months ago, after we'd escaped Oliphant, I'd heard myself, warned myself, in a similar way. It'd happened more than once, and I'd figured it must be my intuition; why it hadn't happened in so long was baffling, but I didn't mind it. My inner voice had only helped me.

We'd spent another few nights in the car, just moving from place to place, before any help in way of a place to stay arrived. Transient existence was difficult. It wasn't fun looking for bathrooms when we needed them, wishing we could take showers when there was nowhere to do so, feeling the need to look out for police or criminals when we tried to sleep at night. The worst was the boredom, though. I cared about Henry; I wanted to like being with him. But in his current state, I felt only frustrated. There was nothing fun about it. Neither of us knew what to do with ourselves, and he wasn't any sort of conversationalist. Plus, after I'd almost killed those guys that'd tried to steal our car, I felt as if he looked at me differently. That could've been my uneasy perception, for sure. I didn't know.

But I did have one goal in all of our meandering around. Any time I saw people, young people, who looked to be on the streets, I tried to follow them. I wanted to know where they were going, where they stayed. Where they were, I wanted to be, if only for the slim chance that they could lead me to the Circuit. All of my attempts to follow stray people were dead ends, until about seven or eight days after the diner incident.

I'd realized that the problem was the car. We couldn't follow people because they would disappear off the road, and then I would have trouble picking up their trail in the car. So we decided (or rather, I decided) to park the car in an empty lot, lock it, and leave it. Maybe it'd be there when we needed it again; maybe it wouldn't be. When I locked it and pocketed the keys, I felt as if Henry were thinking about the stupidity of almost killing some guys trying to steal it when I was ditching it anyway, but he said nothing, and I let my own potentially false impression fester into annoyance.

Then we walked. We just walked around. I had my bag with our money and my gadgets, but we'd left our changes of clothes in the car. We stopped at a convenience store for some snacks, and then we hung out in a corner park that was more like a patch of dead grass with a couple of benches. As night arrived and darkness fell, I was dismayed to think we'd be sleeping in the open air and was considering returning to the car when the miracle happened--someone approached us.

"You got a light?"

I looked up to see a guy dressed in probably everything he owned, ragged looking, holding out a cigarette. He could've been anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five--I couldn't tell.

"I think so," I replied, trying to hide my enthusiasm. I fished around in my bag and pulled out a firestarter, as I called it. It wasn't exactly a lighter; it was more than that. It never ran out of fuel. It was like a perpetual match. But I didn't bother explaining that. I held it out so the guy could light his cigarette.

"That's cool. Where'd you get it?"

"Something I found."

"He ok?" He pointed at Henry, who was slumped on the bench next to me, eyes closed in a doze.

"He's fine."

The guy inhaled on his cigarette; the end glowed orange. When he breathed out the smoke in my face, I steeled myself against coughing. I wasn't keen on cigarette smoke.

For a few moments, the guy just stood there, smoking. We didn't talk; it seemed more natural not to. If he wanted to say something, I figured he would. And at length, he did.

"You all got somewhere to go tonight?"

This was it--this was what I'd waited for! I looked at him, standing above me, and acted indifferent. "Don't know. Hadn't thought about it yet."

He stared back at me, and I took note of his dark hair, facial scruff, bigger nose. He wasn't particularly attractive, but he seemed all right. I shifted my gaze to nothing in particular.

"I know a place. Lots of people like us."

Like us. We were in.

"You want to come?"

First I lightly elbowed Henry. He opened his eyes, I asked if he wanted to go with this guy, and he nodded. That was it. I turned to the guy. "I guess. Nothing else happening."

"Jax. That's me--Jax. It ain't too far, just have to walk a bit."

Henry and I got to our feet. I zipped my coat up tight; it was getting colder. I'd also been walking around with my gun in an interior pocket of my coat lately, after what had happened with the attempted car-jacking. If anything with this guy started to look shady, I had easy access to it. I wasn't going to be caught off-guard again.

We followed him across streets, behind buildings, through empty parking lots . . . it was about a twenty minute walk, but I never felt unease. Jax didn't do anything that seemed weird. He talked a little, but not much, and we stopped at one point so he could light another cigarette, but other than that, we kept our conversation to a minimum. Soon enough, we were near a river. I'd never even realized a river ran through San Judo, but there it was, dark and undulating gently. It was a good distance to the other side, as well. Henry and I kept up with Jax as he led us down a cobblestoned embankment, where grass was attempting to grow through the cracks and litter was in copious supply. He was taking us to the bottom of an overpass, right next to the river. The bridge rose towering above us, cars zooming by every so often, their lights slicing into the black sky. As we approached the massive concrete base of the overpass, I saw there were about twelve to fifteen people there, sitting or standing around in various positions. Four or five tents were set up, and a fire was going in a metal bin. A few people were around it.

I instinctively drew closer to Henry as we approached the others. There were a lot of them, but the nearer we got, the more apparent their status became. The faces I could see were all young, and all of them were bundled up in layers, probably everything they owned somewhere in those layers, just like me and Henry. A few had bags but not many, and none of them seemed to be wearing or holding onto anything of value.

Jax brought us up to the fire, where our faces were lit up. Two girls and another guy were there; they seemed mildly interested in us. "These two," Jax said to them, indicating us, "they're all right."

I glanced at the others. The orange glow of the flame cast eerie shadows beneath their noses, under their eyes, their necks. Their faces almost seemed to be half-formed in the strange light, like wax. But they didn't say anything to me or Henry; they just resumed conversation amongst themselves, which I assumed was a good thing.

"Over here," Jax said, motioning us toward one of the tents. "Since you're new, you get to get some real sleep tonight. Can't promise tomorrow."

I indicated acceptance with a nod, and Jax left us to go join someone else. I glanced at Henry, then went ahead into the tent. The interior was dark, but no one appeared to be inside. There were lumps of fabric that appeared to be some blankets or pillows--I wasn't entirely sure. And there was no way to tell how dirty they were. I wasn't going to use my light inside; I didn't want to draw attention to us. So I sat down in the darkness, and Henry sat across from me. We couldn't really make out one another's features, but I could see his form in front of the tent fabric, which was backlit with some glow from the fire outside.

"What do you think?" I asked.

He didn't answer at first. "Fine. Good."

Why would I have expected more than that? "He reminds me of Slim—Jax. Not that you remember Slim." I thought of my old partner, Henry's friend. He was long dead. He'd been a decent person, though.

"No," said Henry into the darkness.

"You should. You had him killed. It's what you told me, at least. But yeah, why would you remember that?" My annoyance had gotten the best of me. I felt bad for saying it. It wasn't his fault he couldn't remember, and besides, he'd made that decision to save me, so it was disingenuous to act as if I thought he'd done a bad thing. But he wouldn't know any of that. I slouched down and tried to get comfortable. I was actually tired; several nights of wary sleeping in a car had done that to me.

A few moments passed. I assumed Henry was attempting to sleep, as I was. But then his voice sounded, soft in the night. "I'm sorry, Nadia."

My eyes opened; I stared at the fabric of the tent. There'd been something in his tone—something that sounded a little different, somehow, more real. I wasn't sure how or if I should respond. Ultimately, by the time I considered saying something, too long had passed to make a reply anything but awkward. I closed my eyes again and let sleep take me.

I dreamt of being on the beach, under the sun, a mirror image of myself next to me. Her name was Amirah, but she wasn't me; she was someone else. She was smiling, laughing, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the bright beyond, and I was laughing with her, but I didn't know why. It was pure peace . . . warmth . . . so when I woke from it to the chilly, pale morning light of the tent, disappointment washed over me.

Around me were old blankets and raggedy portions of fabric that couldn't really be labeled anything. I'd burrowed under them but now felt the urge to sit up and get out from the pile. Shoving the stuff off of me, I noticed that Henry was still across from me, sitting up, exactly where I'd last seen him the night before. He was looking at me but turned away as I caught him.

"Did you even sleep?"

He breathed deeply. "No, I watched you. Over you--I watched over you."

His correction had been awkward. Different. I wasn't sure what to make of it so figured it was a slip of the tongue and ignored it. "Why?"

"It doesn't feel safe, here."

I laughed, sarcasm evident. "Ok, so you can sleep in a car while it's being carjacked, but you can't sleep in a tent surrounded by welcoming people?" Even saying it, I knew it was stupid. We couldn't rely on being safe anywhere; I knew that. But I was also frustrated that he'd stayed aware of that while I'd let my guard down.

He didn't respond, so I sat all the way up and moved my backpack from my stomach (I always slept with it against my chest, arms encircling it) onto my back and crawled over the piles of blankets. I couldn't hear any noise from outside, so I unzipped the tent as quietly as possible and peered out. Seeing no one, I entirely unzipped and stepped out into the morning light.

The river was actually kind of pretty, I thought. It was deep blue, with sparkles of light playing off it. The concrete stones that led down toward it disappeared right into the water. There were still trash and weeds and an ambient look of neglect and decay about the place, but somehow, in spite of that, the sun made everything more palatable. I felt as if I hadn't seen sunshine in days. Weeks, maybe. Most nights and mornings were cold, but the afternoon hours were getting warmer. So seeing the sun gave me hope. How much easier it would be when Henry and I didn't have to worry about layers of clothes and how to be indoors at night. Of course, I hoped that by the time summer really got going, we were doing something more than wandering the streets.

"What's up, Punky?"

Jax had come up on my side, startling me. I surveyed him; his age was easier to guess in the daylight. He was probably early twenties. Definitely beyond high school. His eyes were smaller, darker, something ferrety about them, and his jaw was longer, more square than I'd noticed, still bristly with hair. I faced the water again, put hands in pockets. "Punky?"

"It's what we're calling you, all right? We all got nicknames here."

"Ok, but why Punky? I'm not sure I like it."

"Don't matter. You don't get to pick your name."

Henry approached me from the other side. I felt suddenly at odds with both of them. "Then what's his name?" I pointed to Henry.

Jax cocked his head, studied the other for a minute. "Nothing's coming . . . have to ask--"

"It's Henry."

I scowled. "You're not supposed to tell! He's trying to give you a nickname."

"I don't want one."

I shrugged helplessly at Jax. "All right," he replied. "Henry it is, then." But I could tell he was somewhat put out, as he walked away from us.

Waiting until Jax was out of earshot, Henry drew slightly closer to me. "I don't like him."

"Really? Why?" This was the most objection I'd heard from Henry since . . . well, since I'd found him again. I wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or excited at this development. "He seems harmless enough." More stupidity from me--how many people had seemed "harmless enough" and then tried to hurt me? I just needed to stop talking. I knew exactly how cautious we should be; I was just having a difficult time articulating it at the moment. Fortunately, Henry didn't respond to me, so I just dropped the conversation and suggested we talk to someone, try to feel these people out, see what was up.

A few people were about. The tents were still zipped besides the one we'd come out of, but they clearly hadn't fit everyone because right up under the bridge were some huddles that were people sleeping or talking. Maybe some had been up all night. Maybe some had come and gone. I couldn't tell.

As casually as possible, I approached a girl standing alone by a pillar. She was wearing a long coat with a shawl around her shoulders and a rainbow knit hat holding down her long, unkempt blonde hair. She appeared to be contemplating something, staring off into nowhere, but she smiled as I walked over. "New girl?"

I wanted to return her smile but found it impossible to fake. "Hey. What's your name?"

"Adrianne. Guess it's actually July, though. That's the nickname."

"Let me guess--you've been here since July?"

"No. December. But that's just what they called me. Peale said I looked like July."

That was strange, but I kind of saw it--she had round, pink cheeks, freckles, looked about fourteen but was probably several years older. There was actually something really summery about her. But her hair was matted, and her skin was raw in a few places on her neck and hands. She wasn't living a July sort of life. "Who's Peale?"

She indicated with a wave of her hand. "Over there."

Peale must be whoever was in charge, as much as that was possible with a group like this. I wandered toward the person July had pointed toward. He was average in height, maybe a little taller than normal but not as tall as Henry. I couldn't see much of him but his back, and he was in layers of clothing. He was surrounded by others, but this wasn't the time to show any sort of fear. I walked right up to him, squeezed into the ring of people, next to him, and interrupted: "You Peale?"

"Yeah . . . and?"

"And I want to talk to you for a minute."

He scrutinized me. His hair was in tight black curls, sticking out from under his snowflake-hat's earflaps. He had dark eyes, a dark grin--I wasn't exactly sure how to read him, but he was definitely their leader. He just exuded superiority. There was something attractive about that, even though he himself wasn't particularly so.

Our standoff ended when I won, and he stepped aside with me to listen to whatever I had to say. "Talk," he demanded.

"What's the deal, here? What is this?"

"Jax not talk to you?"

"Not really."

"Then here it is, Punky. You want to stay, you got a ticket in. You want somewhere to sleep, eat, piss, you got it--but you do favors when I ask. That's it. That's all."

"And if I don't want to do favors?"

"Then you better leave, now, or when time comes for the ask and you bail, I find you."

"And . . . I won't like that?"

He tapped his forehead with his index finger, like he was saluting me or something, implying that the answer to my question was a yes. Then he gave me a deviant grin, nodded, and went back to talking to his circle. Somehow, I felt his grin long after he turned away. It both unsettled and fascinated me.