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that because you dropped it, because it was yours?” He smiled and held his hands out in front of him as if to say, Why are we still talking about this?
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I did, but I still haven’t worked out how.”
    â€œI don’t get why that’s hard. People drop things all the time.”
    I got the feeling he was beginning to wonder about me—about my sanity, I mean. I said, “It’s a picture of my brother, and my brother is dead.” I hoped really hard he wasn’t going to say something cushiony.
    â€œGod, I’m sorry,” he said, and then, “Can I get you a drink?”
    Part cushion, part nothing, which was fine.
    I propped my bike against a wall and sat down in the doorway of the ambulance. While Harper was lifting thelid off the little hidden stove and filling a kettle by pressing his foot down on the floor, I said, “Do you see why it’s weird? That I never saw it before and you found it and it’s of him?”
    He said he really hadn’t meant to freak me out. He said, “I guess you owned it without knowing.”
    â€œYeah, but even that’s doing my head in. I wouldn’t have it and then forget about it. It’s a really amazing photo.”
    â€œIt’s a mystery,” he said. “I get it. You want to solve it.”
    We sat on the floor of the van with the back doors open and our feet on the ground. The tea was some spicy, gingery thing that came out of a packet covered in proverbs, but it tasted quite good.
    He said, “Have you always lived around here?”
    â€œNorf London girl,” I said, and he laughed.
    â€œUpstate New York boy.”
    I didn’t know what to say about New York. I’d never been there. I didn’t know what upstate meant. I said, “Wow,” or something just as vacant, and then I asked him how old he was. Eighteen last August, three months older than Jack. I said, “How did you get it together to do all this, leave home and travel around and everything?”
    â€œI always wanted to do it,” he said. “The world’s so big, you got to start early. I wanted to get moving, get away.”
    â€œGet away from what?” I said, and he shrugged.
    â€œEverything and nothing. I just wanted to move.”
    I was rolling a bit of gravel around under my shoe. “Everything,” I said. “I’d like to get away from that too.”
    There was a football match going on in the sports fields opposite. We could just see the players’ heads bobbing around above the level of the wall.
    â€œJust so you know,” he said, “it turns out not to be possible.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. You’re always gonna be you—doesn’t matter where in the world you are.”
    I thought of Jack’s “ too deep warning light ,” this thing he used to say when anyone got a bit of self-help on him, a bit “road less traveled.” It made me smile. If I’d known Harper better, I’d have told him what was so funny. I asked him where he’d been so far.
    â€œI flew from New York to Paris. I wanted to go by boat, but it costs way too much. I wanted to be in the middle of an ocean. Nothing but water for weeks, see if I went crazy. Maybe another time. I stayed with a friend in Montparnasse for a while. Then I got the train here. I haven’t been doing this too long. I’m pretty new at it.”
    â€œWhere are you going next?”
    â€œI just got here, so nowhere for a month or so. Iwant to go to Scotland, Norway, and Spain, and, well, wherever. Plus I’ve got to work when I can, when the money’s low. We’ll see. What about you?”
    â€œOh, nothing, nowhere,” I said. “I haven’t done anything yet.” He seemed to find that funny so I didn’t tell him it wasn’t a joke.
    He asked me about