off the grid, whatever grid there was in 1845.
Instead of the stink of the alley and the echo of sirens and honking taxicabs, while I’m reading the book it’s actually like there’s fresh air rustling leaves in a tree over my head. I hear the water and birds singing. Somehow, I know this place in Henry’s book. I can remember being outside like that, in the woods, near a lake. It’s familiar in a way I feel to my bones. It’s the closest feeling so far to home.
3
“Jack, you son of a bitch. Get out here!”
I lurch awake, and for a long blank moment I have no idea where I am or what woke me up. Walden lies next to me on the ground, where it fell when I went to sleep. There’s a good dream lingering behind my eyes and I grasp at it, but it vanishes before I can remember. My heart sinks when I realize where I am. The alley looks even dirtier and more depressing in the first white light of morning.
Then I realize what woke me up. Some guy is shouting in the alley.
“Jack!”
There’s a confused rustle inside Nessa’s shack, and then Jack emerges, squinting in the morning light, hair sticking up all over his head. He looks past me at someone on the other side of the Dumpster where I can’t see.
“What are you doing here?” Jack calls out.
“I want my money back.”
I untangle myself from my blanket and peer around the edge of the Dumpster, watching Jack approach some skinny, bent-over guy standing in the alley, hands fisted at his sides. He wears a filthy flannel shirt and his face is like an old man’s, all sunken in against his skull. The guy from the train station men’s room.
He reaches into the pocket of his shirt, pulls out a plastic baggie, and waves it in Jack’s face.
“I don’t know what you cut this with, Jack, but it’s not right. I want my cash back.”
“I don’t have the money, Simon. I already gave it to Magpie.”
“So get it back from Magpie.”
A pause. “I can’t do that.”
Simon shoves Jack against the Dumpster. Jack’s skull slams against the metal, clangs like a muffled bell.
“This is bullshit, Jack.”
Jack sits crumpled on the ground, holding the back of his head. I help him to his feet, then turn to face Simon. “Leave him alone,” I say. My voice is steady but my heart slams against my ribs like a manic bird in a cage.
Simon cuts bloodshot eyes at me. “Stay out of this.” He holds up the baggie and throws it onto Jack’s chest. “My money. Now.”
The baggie bounces off Jack’s chest and lands at my feet.
“I swear, Simon, Magpie said it was pure,” Jack says.
Leaning hard against the Dumpster, he pulls himself to his feet. “He never cuts, you know that. And I didn’t do anything to it.”
I pick up the baggie, open it, and peer at the white powder inside, not sure what I’m looking at.
“Do it,” Simon says to me.
“Do what?”
“Taste it.”
Taste it? The guy is staring at me with his crazy hollow eyes, and it’s freaking me out. So I wet my finger, dip it into the powder, and touch it to the end of my tongue.
“It’s sweet,” I say, surprised. “Like—” I search my memory banks for the thing that reminds me of this taste and consistency. “Powdered sugar or something.” And there’s another taste too, sharp and bitter.
“Exactly,” says Simon, all triumphant. “You cut it with powdered sugar. A lot of it.”
“But you tried it,” Jack says, desperate. Even his dirty blond hair is trembling. “You said it was fine.”
“I was wrong.”
“I think you did it,” somebody says to Simon. And I realize that someone was me. “You cut the stuff so you could sell it and make more profit. And you’re trying to blame it on Jack.”
Both Simon and Jack stare at me. Simon’s left eye twitches. “You’re fucking crazy,” he says.
“I don’t think so.”
Simon hesitates. Then he grins at me with those gray-black nubs that used to be teeth. He reaches under his shirt and pulls something out of the back of his belt. A knife. The blade is slender and long, with a black handle. The metal gleams in a shaft of morning light.
“You don’t want to do that,” I say.
“Actually,” says Simon, “I do.” He lunges at me, poking the knife at my gut. I dodge and try to kick the knife out of his hand, an unsuccessful