“Hi, Danny, we’re all set. So ya gonna miss the old place?” Walt asked.

  “I guess,” he said, but he didn’t really know how he was feeling. Sad, maybe. Confused. Nervous.

  Danny said good-bye to Jeff as the Frontier Air check-in lady took him to the oversized baggage area. Danny didn’t like the way she was swinging the cat carrier left and right in her hand. He unplugged Winds of Plague and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, he’s very old; can you be super careful with him?”

  “Of course,” the lady said, and swung the carrier about a little bit less.

  “You wanna get a coffee?” Walt asked. He seemed tired. Danny knew he was only fifty, but he looked a lot older than that. He kept his hair long, almost to his shoulders, and it was so streaked with gray now that really it was better to say that it was gray hair streaked black. His face was wrinkled and that little pug boxer’s nose of his looked uncomfortable and awkward on that big, flat face. Sometimes Danny wondered what his mom saw in him. He was thin, wiry, almost frail, and by his own admission a screwup. He’d gone to Annapolis, and if he’d stayed in the Navy for six more years he’d be on half pay by now living on easy street, and if he’d stayed on at the Glynn Casino he could be earning big bucks too, but he had screwed up that job just like he had screwed up half a dozen others since.

  Walt was Danny’s stepdad, of course; his real father was a married guy living in Illinois with a whole other family and kids. Juanita—Danny’s mom—never talked about him, but that was the information he’d been able to get from his aunts over the years. Some guy who had lied to her and made her promises and got her pregnant and then skedaddled. Danny was an only child, but sometimes he thought about those half brothers and sisters out there. How many of them were there? Were there boys? Girls? Whereabouts in Illinois? Chicago?

  When he visited his cousins in L.A., he was jealous of their bunk beds and private games, secret handshakes and jokes. They always included him in the games (he was a year older than Jose, and Jose kind of looked up to him), but when the weekend was over it was back to Vegas and his big, spacious, comfortable, lonely bedroom.

  “You know, I’m not really supposed to drink coffee,” Danny said.

  Walt put his arm around Danny’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s just sit and talk. We never get a chance to talk. Let me get you a chocolate-chip muffin. What do you say?”

  Danny sighed and they sat at the Starbucks near the luggage carousel.

  Of course they didn’t talk. Walt was absorbed in his thoughts and Danny spent the time wondering if he should adjust the grip tape on Sunflower. His foot had almost slipped on that vert earlier.

  “Danny,” Walt said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  His eyes had narrowed and he had a reckless grin on his face that Danny had seen one or two times before.

  “Danny, do you see that fellow over there?”

  Walt had gone to some fancy New England boarding school and sometimes his voice adopted a slightly more patrician accent than normal, and he used phrases like “do you see that fellow …”

  “What fellow?” Danny sneered.

  “That fellow. He’s going to try something, watch, just watch.”

  “I’m not interested, Walt. Leave me alone.”

  “When are you going to start calling me Dad? Huh? Ever?” Walt said angrily.

  The Walt/Dad thing was just another one of his tactics, but one that tended to work. Danny was guilt-tripped into silence.

  “You see that character over there with the blond hair and the twitches? He’s been looking at that little black suitcase going round and round for the last fifteen minutes. Everyone else has got their bags and gone. That one’s unclaimed, and you know why it’s unclaimed?”

  “No se.”

  “Because whoever owned the suitcase didn’t travel with it. They didn’t make the flight, but the bag did. And that dude over there is going to steal it.”

  The word “steal” made Danny cringe.

  A month ago he’d been caught stealing a Snickers bar from the 7-Eleven. The cops had dragged him home and embarrassed him in front of Walt and his mother.

  His mom had made a big deal out of it.

  And when JJ’s basketball money had gone missing from the locker room and people had accused him, his mom had not believed that he was innocent.

  They were all so high-and-mighty about it.

  “What are you going to do about it if he does take it? Turn him in? It’s a victimless crime, isn’t it? It’s insured, right?” Danny said.

  “I’m going to stop him before he gets into trouble,” Walt said.

  “No, you’re not. Just sit down.”

  Walt began walking toward the baggage carousel.

  “No. Walt, don’t do it!” Danny pleaded, swallowing the muffin, grabbing Sunflower, and trying to catch him before it was too late.

  Walt picked the suitcase off the carousel and began carrying it over to the United desk. Before he’d gotten ten yards, two men in dark suits with earpieces and sunglasses appeared from the crowd and walked briskly to either side of him.

  “Is this your suitcase, sir?” one of the men asked.

  “Nope,” Walt said with that smile of his that Danny hated so very much.

  The men drew semiautomatic pistols from shoulder holsters inside their jackets and pointed them at Walt.

  “We’re informing you, sir, that you are under arrest for possession of illegal narcotics with intent to deal,” the second of the two men said.

  “I was just trying to take it to the United desk,” Walt said.

  Danny had the satisfaction of seeing Walt cuffed and taken to airport security, but it ceased to be funny half an hour later when they missed their plane.

  Danny may have stolen a Snickers bar, but Walt was the real idiot. He pulled stunts like this all the time. He was the real screwup, not him.

  When the cops questioned Danny about it, he said nothing.

  “Tell them I was going to return the suitcase, Danny,” Walt begged, but Danny kept his mouth shut, refusing even to confirm that his name was Danny Lopez.

  They were taken to the security area.

  Time passed.

  Cops with mustaches.

  Lady cops with offers of soda.

  Phone calls: from Mom, from one of Walt’s Navy buddies who was now a lawyer someplace, finally from Mr. Glynn himself, of the famous Glynn Casino and Resort. Mr. Glynn explained to the cops that Walt’s wife, Juanita, was now a vice president in his organization and since Mr. Glynn was a hugely important man in Las Vegas, the police finally saw sense and chose to believe Walt’s story.

  Muttering “stupid hippie” to themselves, they let them go.

  Back in the terminal, Walt was seething. “Why didn’t you tell them I was trying to prevent a crime, Danny?”

  “Because I didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was exercising my constitutional right.”

  “You have a real attitude problem.”

  “Do I?”

  “You know, I was the one who didn’t want you to go to that school. I was the holdout. I wanted you to go to public school. I was on your side, but now I see that your mother was right. You need to learn obedience and respect …”

  On and on it went.

  Danny tuned it out.

  They boarded a midnight flight so empty that Jeff was allowed to fly in the cabin with them. Jeff was a brown and orange tabby with scar tissue over his left eye and a chunk of fur missing on his left rear leg. He’d probably lived for two or three years in and around the Tropicana Wash until Danny had adopted him. He was a survivor. Six or seven hours in a cat carrier wasn’t enough to disturb his equanimity, and seeing Jeffrey’s coolness made Danny chill too.

  He closed his eyes and every second brought them closer to a new world over the Rocky Mountains to a new town, with new kids, a new house, a whole new blacktop to explore and skate. Just a little while longer and he’d be reunited with his mom and maybe things would be better.

  Through the break in the clouds Venus rises pale and yellow in the evening sky. It means nothing to him. He knows the real color of things. He walks on the far side of the mirror. He walks in the captive land. This Earth is counterfeit. Filled with false fossils, bogus shale deposits, lies. That snow is a lie. These trees were electrons grown on the moon.

  His phone is ringing.

  The tone tells him it’s a text.

  He lets the text come.

  The path leads down into the forest.

  “Lead me, wind,” he says. “Lead me, polestar.”

  He follows the trail through virgin snow. He walks to the cliff edge. He stops at the famous cliff-side View Point. He can see a hundred miles from up here.

  But he doesn’t look.

  He closes his eyes.

  He imagines himself standing at the end of the universe.

  All the worlds have gone, counterfeit or not.

  Even the machines are gone now. It’s late. The suns have died and the artificial suns have burned their fuel and guttered out. Darkness reigns and the best efforts of the finest minds are for naught. The last of the artificial life forms has given up the ghost as weakly as the last of the organics. The second law of thermodynamics has proved unstoppable.

  Everything decays. Given enough time, even atoms break down into random protons, neutrons, and electrons, separated from one another by unimaginable spaces.

  Matter itself falls apart at the very end.

  Nothing remains.

  He sees all this and he is awed.

  The universe is still.

  A trillion years pass.

  And then another trillion.

  And then another.

  And that’s how the story ends. There is no twist. There is no hope. There is only nothing. An eternity of nothing.

  Only he can see a way out …

  Only he …

  Only …

  Snow falls on his face. He opens his eyes. In one hand there is a hunting knife. In the other is a phone. He catches the moon in the blade. He reads the text: NW STDNT DNNY LPZ. GD 9.

  A new student?

  That will make exactly one hundred.

  He wonders if Danny owns a cat.

  Danny’s mother woke him with a kiss on the cheek. She hadn’t done that for years. He rubbed his eyes. She was wearing her work suit: an expensive-looking ensemble consisting of a black jacket, white blouse, black skirt, and low-heeled shoes. She looked pretty: In the week she’d been away she’d gotten her hair cut short—something he hadn’t noticed the night before at the airport.

  He knew he should tell her that she looked nice, that it would make her feel good, but he was still harboring a lingering resentment toward her. Why did they have to come here for her job, just when he was starting to make friends at Grover Cleveland? He took the middle path, neither praising her looks nor complaining.

  How long had he been asleep? “What day is it?” he asked.

  His mom laughed. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

  “What’s the good news?”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  She tugged back the curtains and he noticed that she was holding something in her hand.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I brought you breakfast in bed,” she said, placing a bowl of cereal carefully on the wobbly IKEA bedside table. Juanita was smart but no handyman.

  Still, Danny was proud of her.

  She’d started off as a cleaner in Mr. Glynn’s signature casino on the Strip. She’d gone to night school and learned how to be a blackjack dealer. She was a good dealer: sharp, observant, patient. After a couple of years she’d been promoted to senior dealer and then pit boss, and finally she had moved up the hierarchy to become one of the few female house managers. Juanita had excellent people skills; she was tactful, fair, firm, and though she was only five foot three she could be intimidating when she needed to be. She was good at her job and when they were looking for a manager for Mr. Glynn’s new Indian casino in Cobalt, Colorado, Juanita had seemed like an ideal fit. As well as being one of Mr. Glynn’s best employees, she was half Cherokee …

  “I’ve got to go, honey. Please remind your father that he’s seeing Mr. Randall this afternoon.”

  “Mr. who?”

  “Randall. Remind him. I’ve written the address on a Post-it on the fridge. Forty-four Correctional Institution Road. You’ll remind him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like your room, darling? You have a view.”

  Danny stared at the bare walls for a second and then leaned across and looked out the window. The house was on a rise with a few other homes on either side and beyond the houses a dense, seemingly endless forest that crawled up to a pair of snowcapped mountains.

  It gave him the creeps. Anything could be out there in those trees. Brown bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, escaped mental patients …

  “I was talking to Aunt Louisa,” his mother continued. “She said that the boys are so jealous that you’ll be snowboarding.”

  Danny shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ll be snowboarding,” he said grumpily. “Who said anything about snowboarding?”

  “Well, I just assumed because of your skateboard.”

  Danny shook his head. “Don’t assume.”

  “Danny,” she said in a disciplinary tone.

  “Sorry,” he muttered after the longest pause he thought he could get away with.

  “Look, hon, I should be heading off. Don’t forget to remind your father. We don’t want to let down Mr. Glynn.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll tell Walt.”

  His mother smiled.

  Her eyes were brown like her skin, and her lips today were a deep red. She had brown feline-shaped eyes and straight heavy eyebrows that didn’t arch at all. She was beautiful and smart and kind and she had a great job. Walt was lucky to have her. She was far too good for him.

  “You’ve got to work on a Sunday?” Danny asked.

  “I do. The grand opening is in three weeks; you wouldn’t believe the stuff that hasn’t been done yet … I have to go. By the way, Jeffrey’s under your bed.”

  Danny looked under the bed and, sure enough, there was Jeff. “He must be freaked,” Danny said.

  “He’ll get over it,” his mom said, and left.

  He heard her clunk down the stairs.

  He looked out the window to see what kind of car she was driving. It had been so late, he hadn’t even noticed it when she picked him up at the airport.

  A brand-new Volvo XC90. Just like the ones that cruised the Strip on a Friday night. Cool. They really were moving up in the world.

  Danny coaxed Jeff out from underneath the bed and set the cat next to him while he ate the cereal Juanita had brought.

  It was Cocoa Krispies rather than Cocoa Pebbles, but that was OK; she’d at least made the effort to get his favorite.

  Jeff meowed and Danny put a little chocolate milk on his spoon and let Jeff drink. He’d read somewhere that cats couldn’t digest chocolate, but old Jeff was so tough he could deal with anything.

  “You could deal with a bear, couldn’t you?” he said.

  While Jeff curled into a warm spot on the bed, Danny finished the cereal and went for a brief reconnaissance of the house.

  Upstairs there were three big bedrooms, two with en suite toilets, all of them with views. Just how much was Glynn paying her? Downstairs there was a gigantic living room with a panoramic view of the street and the mountain beyond, a dining room, a kitchen, and two more bathrooms. The house had been decorated in a kind of Western motif: paintings of cattle drives, lonely vistas, cowboys. There were mounted antlers above the stone fireplace and a couple of fake-looking Navajo sand pictures, which probably meant they were real.

  There was a big spot where something was missing on the dining room wall, and a little detective work revealed it to be a painting of a noble savage–style Indian standing over a dead buffalo. His mother had placed it down in the basement. Was it offensive? Obviously to her, but Danny couldn’t really see the problem. The Indian looked pretty bad-ass standing on top of the bison he’d just killed with a bow and arrow.

  There was a small study and a bookcase that contained only phone books, a front yard where you couldn’t do much, and a large back garden with a thin layer of snow on it.

  The forest began right at the backyard fence. Danny opened the back door and examined the snow with his bare foot. He’d only encountered snow a few times in his life. He didn’t like it before, and he doubted if he’d like it now.

  In Vegas when snow fell, it disappeared soon after it touched the ground; it didn’t generally lie around like this.

  “Hmm,” he said, touching the stuff skeptically with his big toe.

  He closed the back door.

  He was still hungry. He went to the kitchen and after opening a million cupboards he found the Cocoa Krispies box and got milk from the refrigerator.

  “Hello?” a voice said.

  He turned. Much to his surprise, there was a girl standing in the hall. A scrawny character, about thirteen with short blond, spiky hair, a red dress, redder cheeks, a thick unzipped black coat, red tights, boots. If she’d been wearing a white dress, Aunt Isabella would have been crossing herself and muttering things about the faerie folk or La Llorona.

  “Who are you?” Danny asked.

  “Who are you?” the girl said.

  “Danny.”

  “I thought so,” the girl said dispassionately, and walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were the same green as the trees, and he saw that her crazy hair was actually a kind of brownish blond. The way she’d gelled it and spiked it up looked a bit ridiculous.

  “So, who are you?” Danny asked, putting down the Cocoa Krispies box.

  “Tony. Antonia, actually, but I like Tony. Whatcha eating?”

  “Uh, I haven’t totally decided yet, uh, Antonia.”

  “Tony, please!”

  Tony widened the fridge door and they both looked in. It was packed full of stuff. Sodas, fruit, eggs, cheese, candy bars. Danny grabbed a can of Dr Pepper and Tony got a gigantic bar of hazelnut chocolate that must have come from Sam’s Club or Trader Joe’s.