I say again. Lame.
Finally, without another word to us, the cops finish surveying the restaurant, then seeming satisfied, they leave, radios crackling in their wake.
“I hate those guys,” Jack murmurs to me. “They seem to like you, though. Must be the preppy kid look you’ve got going on. And those running shoes. Bet they cost you like two hundred bucks.”
I examine my innocent gray sneakers as if they hold some story they can tell me about myself. Jack looks too.
“Is that why you talked to me?” I ask him. “You think I’m some rich kid?”
“Not at all,” Jack says, his blues eyes all wide. “I talked to you because I could see you were lost and needed a friend.” He stands up and tucks the second cheeseburger in the pocket of his green army jacket. “Let’s go. I got a place where we can crash for a couple hours.”
Jack starts walking toward an exit and I stay frozen in my seat, not knowing what to do. When he notices I’m not following, he turns and stares at me, annoyed.
“Look, it’s past midnight in New York City, Hank. You really want to be here at Penn Station all alone with the crazies?”
Somebody else might have said, you go ahead, I’ll stay here. Somebody else might have trusted his gut, which was telling me Jack could only lead me to trouble. But I’m not somebody else, and I don’t have a better plan. Jack has decided to be my friend, and that’s all I’ve got. So I go with him.
Out on the street, the sounds, smells, and lights of the city at night crash over me like a wave. Stale car exhaust. Glaring artificial light. Horns honk, people shout, and from far away a car alarm drones. The city itself is like some kind of huge, restless, living organism.
Jack leads me through the charged air, turning left down one street, then another. The place is alive with people and noise, even though it’s past midnight. Taxicabs clatter by and honk for no apparent reason. A guy in a dirty black jacket sits on a milk crate playing an acoustic guitar, and I stop to watch his fingers fly across the frets, his right hand picking and strumming. A woman drops a dollar bill into his open guitar case. Jack comes back and grabs my arm just as I empty out the coins in my pocket.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “He was really good.”
In spite of the bombardment of noises and smells, I memorize every turn, including two more lefts onto smaller streets, just in case I need to find my way back to the train station.
“Where you taking me?” I say at last.
“Relax, already. We’re almost there,” Jack says.
One more turn, and we walk down a narrow alley littered with scraps of wood and rusty pipes. A light shines down onto a big green Dumpster at its end.
“Home sweet home,” says Jack.
“What, you live in a Dumpster?”
“Behind it, prep boy. They’re doing renovations on the second floor, so it’s full of construction stuff. You wouldn’t believe what they throw away.”
Behind the Dumpster, I see a lean-to shack made of broken slabs of wood and sheets of plastic, propped up against the brick wall like a crooked little fairy tale house.
Jack goes over to the shack and pounds on a slab of cracked drywall that makes the roof. Colored beads hang from the front of the shack. Apparently somebody tried to decorate. “Hey, Nessa, you home?”
There’s a rustling inside the shack, and a girl emerges from behind a ragged patchwork quilt serving as a door. Her hair is long and black, and she has heavy makeup smeared around her pale eyes.
“Hey, Jack,” Nessa slurs, either sleepy or wasted.
“How’d it go tonight?”
Nessa shakes her head and tugs at her huge gray sweatshirt. “Not so good.” Her legs are skinny, bird legs in thick black tights. She’s probably fourteen or fifteen years old, but even with all that makeup, she looks like a little girl. She catches a glimpse of me, hovering there behind Jack.
“Who are you?” she asks, looking me over with huskydog blue eyes.
“I’m Hank.”
“Cool. You’re cute,” she says and gives me this sweet smile.
Jack ducks into the shack, leaving Nessa and me standing there. I wish I knew how to turn the volume down on the sadness in this girl’s eyes. I wish I could take her out of this dark, smelly alley and tuck her away