was gone. He hadn’t taken his gym bag today, and she stared at it hard before crawling over. She checked the zippers first, then the inside. There was a five stuck in the inside pocket; she smoothed it out on her knee and kept looking. She pushed past a change of clothes and a small bottle of cologne. At the bottom of the bag was an Altoids tin that didn’t rattle with mints when she nudged past it. Juno brought it out and flipped open the lid. She didn’t have time for this; Sam would be waking up any moment.
Her mouth went dry as she stared down at a credit card, a wad of twenties that looked like it amounted to about five hundred dollars, and a single, foil-wrapped condom. She unwrapped a twenty from the wad and shoved it into her pocket with the five. What she did next didn’t surprise her as much as it amused her. Juno crawled back to the hot dog costume, the one she liked to hold against her face. She’d had a big surprise one day when the tip of a safety pin had jabbed her in the cheek. She’d reattached it to the hot dog, the sharp pin tucked away. Now she retrieved the pin with only minutes to spare; Sam was in the bathroom. With the aspirin coating her pain, Juno was actually pretty fast. She liked the way it felt to stick the sharp end of the safety pin past the foil and into the rubbery onionskin beneath it. She pushed the pin all the way through. Then she put everything back the way she found it; that was the trick. Juno was out the front door before Sam had even flushed the toilet. She had an eight-hour window.
* * *
At three-thirty, she carried a bag of cereal she bought at the Dollar Tree to a bench by the water. Pulling open the plastic, she sprinkled a handful across the dirt and in two seconds she was surrounded by the blue-barred chests of a dozen pigeons. They pecked away, stoic, their amber eyes casting Juno sidelong glances. She didn’t prefer these little rats with wings, but they were always the first to come.
“There are usually three turtles over here.”
Juno jumped, almost dropping the bag. The sun was out—a rare moment—and it was shining directly into her eyes, temporarily blinding her. But she knew that voice, she knew it well.
Samuel was standing close to the water, right where the dirt dipped into the lake at a sharp angle. He was wearing a green hoodie and a ratty pair of jeans, and a backpack much like Nigel’s was slung over his shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her; his eyes were focused on the lily pads a few feet beyond the mud. Juno knew that’s where the turtles usually rested, craving sun like the rest of the folks in Washington.
“Yes. They were out earlier.”
“I’m offended that they didn’t wait for me.”
She glanced over at him and saw that he was joking, so she offered a smile back. Juno sprinkled the last of the Fiber One on the ground for the birds and dusted her hands.
“What are you giving them?”
“Old cereal gone stale.”
He took a step forward, examining the ground as the birds jackrabbited around his shoes; Vans, Juno knew. Her sons used to wear them. Sam toed one of the little pieces until a crow stole it away, hopping out of reach.
“It looks like hamster pellets. No wonder you didn’t eat it.”
Juno laughed. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. Fiber stuff.”
“Breakfast should be fun. If you have a bad breakfast, you have a bad day.”
“You sound like a commercial!” Juno exclaimed. “What cereal are you trying to sell me?”
“Froot Loops, definitely.” He grinned, enjoying the joke. And then, “Hey, you’re wearing a Landman shirt! I used to have one just like that.”
“I got it at Goodwill.” She shrugged. “I thought it was a green bean.”
Sam found this hilarious. He laughed hard enough to make Juno smile, too.
“It was probably mine,” he joked. “My mom gives all my stuff away.”
“Well, if it was,” Juno said, “it would be tiny on you now.” She thought wanly of the giveaway bags.
Sam shrugged, his smile lingering.
“He’s from a video game. Landman can morph from a man into anything that grows out of the earth. So basically, he has to defeat his enemies, the Gorgs and Spawns, by trapping them in, like, volcanos and rivers.”