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store.
    “What’s all that?” he says. He’s not sure if he’s interested or not. As a rule, Neel prefers the new and shiny to the old and dusty.
    “That,” I say, “is the real store.”
    Mat’s intervention has made me a bit bolder with the Waybacklist.
    “What if I told you,” I say, leading Neel back toward the shelves, “that this bookstore was frequented by a group of strange scholars?”
    “Awesome,” Neel says, nodding. He smells warlocks.
    “And what if I told you”—I pick a black-bound book from a low shelf—“that every one of these books is written in code?” I open it wide to show a field of jumbled letters.
    “That’s crazy,” Neel says. He traces a finger down the page, through the maze of serifs. “I’ve got a guy from Belarus who breaks codes. Copy protection, stuff like that.”
    Embedded in that sentence is the difference between Neel’s life, post–middle school, and mine: Neel has guys—guys who do things for him. I don’t have guys. I barely have a laptop.
    “I could have him take a look at this,” Neel continues.
    “Well, I don’t know for sure that they’re in code,” I admit. I close the book and slide it back onto the shelf. “And even if they are, I’m not sure it’s, like, worth cracking. The guys who borrow these books are pretty weird.”
    “That’s always how it starts!” Neel says, thumping my shoulder. “Think of The Dragon-Song Chronicles . Do you meet Telemach Half-Blood on the first page? No, dude. You meet Fernwen.”
    The main character of The Dragon-Song Chronicles is Fernwen the scholarly dwarf, who is small even by dwarven standards. He was cast out of his warrior clan at an early age and—anyway, yes, maybe Neel has a point.
    “We gotta figure this out,” he says. “How much?”
    I explain how it works, how the members all have cards—but now it’s not just idle talk. Whatever the cost to join Penumbra’s lending club, Neel can pay it.
    “Find out how much it costs,” Neel says. “You’re sitting on a Rockets & Warlocks scenario here, I swear.” He’s grinning. He switches to his low dungeon-master voice: “Do not wuss out now, Claymore Redhands.”
    Oof. He’s deployed my Rockets & Warlocks name against me. It is a spell with ancient power. I concede. I’ll ask Penumbra.
    We return to the short shelves and the airbrushed covers. Neel flips through another of our old favorites, a story about a huge cylindrical spaceship slowly approaching the earth. I tell him about Mat’s plan to woo Ashley. Then I ask him how his company is doing. He unzips his track jacket and points proudly to the gunmetal-gray T-shirt underneath.
    “We made these,” he says. “Rented a 3-D body scanner, custom-tailored each shirt. They fit perfectly. Like, perfectly .”
    Neel is in amazing shape. Every time I see him, I cannot help but superimpose my memory of the chubby sixth-grader, because he has now somehow attained the preposterous V-shape of a comic book superhero.
    “It’s good branding, you know?” he says.
    The snug T-shirt has the logo of Neel’s company printed across the chest. In tall electric-blue letters it says: ANATOMIX .
    *   *   *
    In the morning, when Penumbra arrives, I broach the subject of a friend buying entry into the Waybacklist. He shrugs out of his peacoat—it is an epic peacoat, finely made, with wool from the blackest of sheep—and sets himself up on the chair behind the front desk.
    “Oh, it is not a matter of purchase,” he says, steepling his fingers, “but rather of intention.”
    “Well, my friend is just curious,” I say. “He’s a total bibliophile.” This is not actually true. Neel prefers the movie adaptations of books. He is continuously indignant that no one has ever made movies out of The Dragon-Song Chronicles .
    “Well,” Penumbra says, considering, “he will find the contents of these books … challenging. And to gain access to them, he must agree to a contract.”
    “So, wait—it