The boy leaned against the alley wall and rubbed his mittens and stamped his feet until an SUV pulled up and Danny got inside.

  “That’s that, then,” the boy said, and got out his own mobile phone. He speed-dialed a number. “I can’t follow him anymore,” the boy said. “He’s in a car. Going back to Cobalt, I suppose. But I wouldn’t worry about him. He doesn’t seem that interesting.”

  He hung up the phone, tightened the scarf about his neck, turned on his bike lights, and began the long ride home.

  Are they real? Sometimes he thinks they’re not, that he made them up to serve his ends; other times he talks to them.

  Like now.

  “Out here, in the woods, I can feel you.”

  “We can feel you, too.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “We’re old.”

  “How old?”

  “We’ve been here forever. We watched the human race grow up. We walk with you. We’re behind you, in your shadow, at your back where the sun is sprawled with the red gore of the horizon.”

  “It’s late. Let me do this quickly. I have to be getting back.”

  “No, tarry awhile; watch with us. Look west. Watch as the sun drowns in the penumbra of the earth’s curve … There. Do you hear the quiet? It’s nearly our time. It’s nearly our time and the creatures know and they are sure afraid.”

  He trembles and turns on his flashlight.

  The hikers are gone. The hunters are gone. The rangers are gone. Just a pair of flashlight beams and a scared reflection in the ice.

  His hands are shaking. On his sleeve there’s dried white spit.

  “Get on with it,” the Master says.

  A deep breath and then he’s squeezing and the cat is clawing, hissing, drowning in the air.

  The cat’s eyes becoming his eyes.

  And in a minute it’s finished. He starts to tremble all over. “And this is still only the beginning,” he hears himself say.

  Wind in the canyons. Wind in the sierra. Vultures rising on the thermals. Danny knew it was a dream. He’d had it before. The air was dry and carried a hint of salt. He wanted to wake up. But he couldn’t. The sky was incandescent blue.

  He was tired. Thirsty. He’d skated up Las Vegas Boulevard all the way to the 15.

  It was two years earlier. It wasn’t a dream then. It was real. It was June 20. A day before the wedding.

  Hot at six A.M. The Santa Ana blowing across the Mojave.

  His backpack on his shoulder. His thumb out.

  The heat haze making the road bend.

  A thousand vehicles passed by.

  A car slowed. An old car. A ’70s Chevy convertible. Red.

  “Where you going, son?” a man asked, winding down the passenger-side window.

  “Chicago.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Take you as far as Salt Lake.”

  “OK.”

  Danny got in. The man was in his forties, wearing a white shirt with short sleeves and a thin black tie. He had a graying flattop. He was smoking.

  Half an hour went by in highway and blue sky.

  “So what’s in Chicago?”

  “My father. My real father. I’ve never actually met him. My real dad, that is,” Danny confessed.

  The man nodded. Drove. Adjusted his aviator sunglasses, reached into the pocket next to his seat.

  This was the bad bit of the dream.

  “If you could ask your real dad a question, one question, what would it be?” the man wondered.

  “I don’t know. I’d ask him stupid stuff, not like heavy stuff, you know.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I don’t know, stupid things, like I’d ask him if he thought magic really existed. I mean, what if all the magical objects on the earth were just alien technology, from some vast civilization that died out eons ago. I mean, Earth’s been habitable for a couple of hundred million years, aliens are bound to have visited at some point, don’t you think?”

  The man smiled, drove for a while, took his sunglasses off, looked at Danny, pulled the car over to the side of the road.

  “I liked your question,” he said.

  His eyes had narrowed. Danny noticed he was holding a small semiautomatic pistol. It was silver and Danny watched it glint in the sunlight.

  “Do you believe in evil, son?” the man asked.

  “I don’t know,” Danny said. He felt cold. Not afraid, but cold.

  “I wish there were evil,” the man said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if there were evil, at least there would be something.”

  The man pointed at the desert.

  “You know what’s out there?”

  “What?”

  “Indifference. Nothingness. When you die, boy, the world won’t hesitate on its ellipse. On it will fall toward the sun. No one will care. Your killer will never be found. You’ll be a story for a day or two, not much more.”

  “Mister, I—”

  “Get out of the car. Go back to Vegas. It’s a dangerous world, son … a mighty dangerous world.”

  The man pointed the gun at Danny.

  Sometimes, in the dream, the man pulled the trigger.

  “Danny.”

  “Uhhh.”

  “Danny.”

  Danny.

  “Danny. Have you seen this?” Tony said.

  “Who? What?”

  “Have you seen this?” she repeated, handing him a blurry white object. Something big and noisy. Danny rubbed his eyes, sat up, checked to see that he wasn’t wearing his Lily Allen T-shirt.

  He wasn’t.

  What she was handing him turned out to be a newspaper.

  The Cobalt Daily News, a free paper that they threw on your front lawn. Juanita had quite a collection of them sitting there unwrapped in the recycle bin.

  “Do you ever knock?” Danny asked, surprised to see her in his bedroom.

  “No.”

  “Wasn’t the door locked?”

  “Nobody round here locks their door. My mom told your mom that, and she thought that was wonderful.”

  Danny didn’t think it was wonderful. He’d lived in East L.A. and several parts of Las Vegas where gunshots were much more common than backfires. He liked having bars on the window and a deadbolt on the door. It made him feel secure.

  “How did you find my bedroom?”

  “Sense of smell.”

  “Funny.”

  Tony pulled back the curtains and, as she did so, Jeffrey jumped into her arms.

  “Good girl, good girl … don’t you worry about a thing, you’re going to be OK, you’re going to be fine, we’re going to look after you.”

  “She’s a he. I mean, he’s a he. His name is Jeffrey. And what are you talking about?”

  “Read the paper, dude, read the paper.”

  “Antonia, do you want breakfast?” Danny’s mom yelled from the kitchen. Tony carried Jeff to the landing. “That would be lovely, Mrs. Brown,” she said.

  “What would you like?” Juanita asked.

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  “We’re having frittata, is that OK?”

  Tony’s ebullience was given a momentary check. “What’s a frittata?” she hissed to Danny.

  “It’s like an omelet. You’ll like it.”

  “Yes, please,” Tony said. And then, walking back to Danny, she said, “Well, what do you think?”

  “What do I think about what?” Danny asked.

  “The paper! Did you read it?”

  Danny looked at the front page of the Cobalt Daily News. The headline said PLAN FOR SEWAGE PLANT APPROVED. Danny nodded. She was serious about odor, then, this girl. Maybe she had found his room by sniffing him out.

  “Well, I guess it’s interesting. I don’t know if it’s worth bursting into someone’s house and waking them from a deep sleep just to tell them about it though.”

  Tony’s nose wrinkled up in a way he found very attractive. Unfortunately the wrinkle turned into a frown, which was less becoming. In fact, it was downright intimidating. “I thought you were a different type of person,” she said, and snatched the paper back.

  “Breakfast, everyone,” Juanita called. “Walt, we’ve got company, so, um, well, we’ve got company …”

  “I’ll see you downstairs,” Tony said and, kidnapping Jeff, marched out of the room.

  What’s she doing here anyway? Danny thought. Isn’t her own house interesting enough for her?

  He went to the upstairs bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and put on his school uniform. His hair was a big black clump that rested on his head like a hat, but it could either rest to the left or the right. Right today, he thought. He combed it to the right. Which because of the mirror meant, of course, left.

  When he finally made it to the breakfast table, he’d been given the smallest of four portions of the frittata.

  “What a gyp,” he muttered.

  His mom and Walt were both dressed and ready to go.

  “Is there any orange juice?” Danny asked.

  “We’re all out, darling,” his mom said, giving him a smile. Three glasses of orange juice were in front of Juanita, Walt, and Tony.

  Grumbling, Danny sat down and started hacking into the frittata with the edge of his fork.

  “Your dad was telling me about Bob, that guy we met on the chain gang,” Tony said.

  “Oh yeah, great guy,” Walt said. “You’d like him, Juanita. He got his PhD while in prison. His degree and his PhD. Can you imagine? He’s really Dr. Randall now, if you want to know.”

  “I was worried when I first heard about this, this chain-gang thing, but they do sound like pretty decent guys on the whole,” Juanita said.

  “What did he do, anyway?” Tony asked. “I mean, why is he in jail?”

  “Probably killed his whole family,” Danny muttered.

  “No, no, we don’t employ anyone like that. It’s a minimum-security prison. It’s all white-collar stuff. Bob’s in for passing bad checks. He wouldn’t have gotten so long if it hadn’t been across state lines. But he’s had a year remitted for good behavior, and he’s out in a couple of months.”

  “Did you ask him about the holes in the fence? That’s some prison they’ve got up there,” Danny said.

  “As long as they don’t make a break for it on my watch … Well, Juanita, that was delicious. Let me clear the table,” Walt said.

  Danny rolled his eyes. The last time Walt had cleared the table was Thanksgiving.

  “I’ll load the dishwasher, and then we should go,” Juanita said.

  When they’d both gone to the kitchen, Tony whispered, “I think your dad’s nice.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Danny said.

  “I know more than you. You just arrived yesterday.”

  “Where from? Vegas, baby. And at least I got a skateboard.”

  “Rollerblades are cool, skateboards are passé,” Tony said.

  “Where’s my cat? Where’s Jeff?” he demanded.

  “He’s under my chair. Funny name for a cat.”

  “Not at all. I named him after Jeff Kent.”

  Tony’s face was blank. “Who?”

  “The second baseman. I played second base too. You know, Jeff Kent from the Giants? MVP? Kinda scrappy?”

  “I don’t follow baseball. There’s not even a team in Colorado.”

  “Sure there is, the Rockies.”

  “Oh,” Tony replied, utterly uninterested.

  Silence.

  Frittata.

  That wrinkled-up nose again.

  “OK, so what do you like if you don’t like baseball?” Danny said, changing tack and allowing her to get in any last jab of annoyance.

  Tony smiled, refused the opportunity, and said, “Ever been to a hockey game? The Avalanche are pretty cool.”

  “Hockey? No. It looks cool, though. I’d like to go sometime, I guess.”

  “Come with us next time. We get block tickets.”

  “What, your family?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t know. Uh, maybe.”

  Peace had broken out between them, and Tony was impressed that it had been Danny who had made the first move. Maybe she hadn’t been wrong about this kid.

  “Can you guys walk to school? Is it too far?” Juanita asked, looking in from the kitchen.

  Danny sighed. “It’s ten minutes to school, Mom … Two minutes if you’d let me skateboard there.”

  “I’m giving your father a ride. You two can come if you want.”

  “It’s OK, Mom.”

  “I could drive you past the casino. You haven’t seen the casino yet.”

  “I’ve seen a million casinos,” Danny said.

  “Yeah, but this is mine. I’m running it. I’m the manager,” Juanita said, sounding a little hurt.

  Danny knew he’d goofed. “Of course. I’d love to see it. Maybe on Saturday? You could give us the grand tour.”

  Juanita said OK and she and Walt waved good-bye.

  “It’s PE today, right?” Danny asked Tony.

  “Yeah, and I just know that because it’s sunny they’re going to make us do it outside,” Tony said ominously.

  “That’s a bad thing?”

  “A very bad thing.”

  She was right. The sun was shining, but a cold polar wind was blowing down the Front Range as if it, too, was on the migration route from Canada to Mexico, like the voleries of geese you could see in the crisp indigo sky above Memorial Park, where PE was, off school grounds.

  The girls were playing soccer under Miss Benson and another teacher Danny didn’t know. The boys were playing touch football under Mr. Bradley, the gym teacher. And of course, even if they had been playing together he couldn’t have talked to Tony anyway. The silence rule apparently still held sway even here, except that when you touch-tackled someone with the ball with two hands you were supposed to say “touch,” and the person would stop and the ball would change possession.

  Everyone had changed into shorts and sneakers, but apparently there were no facilities for showering, which discouraged you from generating a sweat and making a serious effort. And although you could take your gloves off for PE, it was so cold that no one did.

  Despite his height, Danny hadn’t been bad at basketball, and if they’d played a proper game of football he felt he could have shown these kids a trick or two.

  “Just another twenty minutes to go,” Mr. Bradley said in defiance of the general talking rule.

  Danny shivered. He had never experienced cold like this. He suspected that this was probably part of the master plan. Make gym so unpopular that eventually it gets removed from the curriculum. More time for the three Rs.

  A long lateral came drifting toward him out on the wing.

  He tucked the ball under his arm and ran for the improvised goal line, which was really just some orange cones halfway across the park.

  Todd, the red-shirt from the day before, was bearing down on him. Danny tried swerving wide, but Todd was coming like a freakin’ guided missile.

  “Touch,” Todd said as his big hands grazed Danny’s back.

  “No touch!” Danny yelled, and continued sprinting for the orange cones.

  “Touch!” Todd insisted, but Danny kept running for the goal. He really wanted this touchdown, and he was close. He could score easily, since all the other kids had stopped moving as soon as Todd had said “touch.”

  Twenty yards.

  Fifteen yards.

  Ten.

  Kids in his peripheral vision, coming sideways toward him. Todd and that other kid, Charlie.

  They weren’t going to catch him.

  Five yards.

  Three.

  Falling.

  Pain.

  Todd and Charlie on top of him.

  “Gotcha!” Charlie said.

  “This is supposed to be goddamned touch football,” Danny said.

  “He’s talking, sir. He’s swearing, sir!” Todd yelled.

  Charlie had lifted the ball and was about to run it the other way. Danny grabbed his ankle and pulled him down.

  Charlie rolled over and swiped at him. Danny rolled out of the way. Now Hector was there, too.

  Coach Bradley blew his whistle and pointed at Danny and Charlie. “You two get back in the school bus. Wait there. Don’t speak.”

  The bus driver opened the doors to let them in.

  “Too cold, huh?” the driver said.

  “Freezing,” Danny said. Charlie didn’t speak. He went and sat at the back. Danny sat right next to him. “How the pager work out for ya?” Danny said.

  “You think you’re so smart. You’re not smart,” Charlie hissed.

  “Your dad drive a bus like this on the Dr. Quinn tour?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Hey, can I get a discount if I bring my whole family?” Danny said.

  “Aren’t they all too drunk on your reservation, you Indian?!” Charlie said.

  Danny laughed. “‘Indian’ is not a bad word, you ignorant freako.”

  Charlie tried to think of something else. “Who are you trying to impress with your Justin Bieber haircut? It’s so gay, it’s, like, gayer than the Ice Capades.”

  “Saying something’s gay is so gay. Where are you from, the 1980s?”

  Charlie shook his head but said nothing.

  “Whatsamatter? Not so tough without your shadow, Big Todd, huh?” Danny said, and darted his hand toward Charlie. Charlie backed away, frightened.

  “That’s what I thought,” Danny said with contempt.

  They sat in silence while the gym class ended and the ninth grade filed back onto the bus. Charlie squeezed past Danny and went to sit next to Hector.

  To get the whole ninth grade onto one bus, some of them had to sit three to a seat. But unfortunately there weren’t any pleasant misunderstandings, because girls were on one side, boys on the other.

  Danny supposed it was a budgetary thing. Squeeze all the kids into one bus instead of hiring two—a typical stingy move. Three to a seat, but Danny was sitting by himself until Tom plonked himself down next to him. Danny was relieved. He didn’t want to become public enemy #1 in his first week. Tom didn’t text him on the way back to school, but he seemed to enjoy Danny’s company. Sometimes he pointed at things out the window and Danny nodded.