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with its long baboon face and arching wings and stick ribs, and I climbed up for a pic. Armin gave me a hand, and when I braced myself on his shoulders I felt the heat of his body through his thin shirt. My fingers curled in the linen.
    A breeze wafted off the lake, water-cool. “Where are we?”
    “Almost to the beach.”
    I hopped down and he caught me, even though I didn’t need it. Our hands joined for a second.
    The skyscrapers fell away, stone wings unfolding and exposing the dark blue heart of the lake. There were cars on Lake Shore Drive, but when we crossed it felt like the waking world behind us winked out. The sand had a lunar glow, like moondust. I kicked off my shoes and let my feet sink in. The top layer was still warm, but when I dug deeper I hit a colder reservoir. Where the lake lapped the shore the smell of wet sand and algae was dizzying.
    “Come on, Eileen,” Armin sang out.
    “Can we even be here?”
    “Nothing’s gonna stop us now.”
    “What about the cops?”
    “I’ll run. I’ll run so far away. With or without you.”
    “Stop making bad song jokes.”
    “Stop laughing at them.”
    His voice was doing something to me. A hot coal lay low in my belly, and every time he spoke it flared. “This will never work,” I said. “You and me.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you’re an East End boy, and I’m a West End girl.”
    I could see that big damn smile in the dimness. He kicked his shoes off, moving toward me. His shirt and eyes were ghostly blurs. I smelled wintergreen on his breath.
    “But I’m the king of wishful thinking.”
    “Armin, shut up and kiss me.”
    He leaned in and I reached for his face. Stubble tickled my skin. His breath warmed my palm and lit a nerve all the way up my inner arm to my spine. It shrieked through me like a firework, ending with a bright pop in my brain. My eyelids fluttered closed, my belly tightening and mouth opening, and the kiss felt so imminent I gave a start when it didn’t happen.
    “Don’t you want to?” I whispered.
    His hands settled against my face. “That’s not why we’re here.”
    The words were a denial, but his hands wouldn’t move and we shared the same hot breath. My heart flung itself fiercely at my ribs, as if it could close the space between us.
    “I don’t believe you.”
    He brushed my bare arm, teasing out a shiver.
    “Come on,” he said.
    I followed him to the shoreline. There was a rock-walled harbor to one side, the water slapping gently against fiberglass hulls, a sound like something breaking delicately, prettily. We sat in a hollowed-out dune and leaned on our elbows, hidden from the street. My bare toes spread against the horizon. The sky switched on, heating up to a vibrant indigo.
    “This is my ‘away from here,’ ” Armin said. His voice sounded like sand flowing through glass, at once grainy and smooth.
    I was going to tell him he was wrong. Away from here isn’t a place, it’s a state, inside you. It’s escape velocity. It’s losing yourself, anywhere. But then I thought, Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this isn’t a where at all.
    “What about the club?”
    “That’s Blythe’s. This is different. This is mine.”
    But you brought me here, I thought. “How’d you become a DJ?”
    “Questioning my skills?”
    “No, just curious.”
    “I know somebody.” His eyes danced away. “This world is run by people who know somebody. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”
    I sketched a pattern in the sand, a dark disc eating a light one, the Umbra logo, then smeared it out. “You take my eye, I take yours.”
    “Are you always this morbid?”
    “Is it at all endearing?”
    He laughed.
    “So why’d you guys adopt me?” I said.
    “I don’t pretend to understand Blythe’s motives. I’ve known her for three years and she’s still an enigma. Either she has some brilliant master plan I haven’t figured out yet, or she’s totally irrational. But I went along because I couldn’t take my eyes off