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much longer.
    “Can I ask you something?” I said.
    “You have permission to ask me something, Odd.”
    “What’s the name of this town?”
    Quinn stopped walking. It tripped me up for a moment, and I nearly dropped my end of the canoe. He ran his fingers through his hair and wiped the sweat on his butt. “Where are you from, Odd?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Quinn scratched his crotch. “Glenbrook. It’s called Glenbrook.”
    “You ever hear of a place called New Mexico?”
    “Shit. What’s that?”
    “New Mexico?”
    “Never.”
    “Billy the Kid came from New Mexico.”
    “You’re making that up, Odd.”
    Quinn started walking again, tugging me forward.
    “Fuck this place, Quinn.”
    Fuck you, Jack.
    Maybe I should just take the kid’s red speargun and end it right here. Maybe, afterwards, Jack will wake up and he’ll be in that piss-foul garage, sweating like a junkie, back in a different Glenbrook.
    The same Glenbrook.
    And Ben and Griffin, Conner, will still be here.
    You are a coward and a failure, and you deserve this for what you’ve done to them.
    I know this is not real. None of this has been real since the night of Conner’s party at the end of school. Jack is just fucked up, is all. It’s his brain. He has to wake up sooner or later.
    Nickie.
    God, Nickie.
    *   *   *
    “We can put the boat down right up there, see? See that old firehouse, Odd? That’s where we live.”
    I knew the place.
    “We?”
    “You and me, Odd. You and me.”
    “I told you my name.”
    “That you did. But I believe you didn’t want to do it, and you never did tell me where you come from.”
    “If you’ve been following me, then I shouldn’t need to.”
    “Ha-ha-ha! You’re a careful one, Odd. That’s okay. I figure you’ve got some good ones to tell. All I need to do is get them out of you.”
    “I’m sure you’ve got some, too, Quinn.”
    Quinn turned back and glanced at me.
    It looked like he was smiling.
    It always looked like that kid was smiling.

 
    four
    Quinn Cahill was a survivor; I had to hand him that.
    I imagined he pictured himself as some kind of king, ruling what he could from his palace in that dead old firehouse. And I was amazed at what that kid was capable of doing there, too.
    Somehow, he’d managed to save the solar panels on the firehouse and hook them into a wiring system that ran through the old cinderblock building. It was mostly dark in Marbury, he explained, so the panels didn’t do much more than power some flashlight-dim bulbs he’d installed. But Quinn had salvaged two science-lab steam engines from the schoolhouse, and these he’d hooked into a full-scale electric generator and an actual still he’d constructed from some old metal container drums that were left in the fire station. And Quinn used the still to make drinking water by recycling his own piss and the toxic rainwater he’d collect from the roof.
    He’d even strung up one of those campsite portable shower systems over the rusty tiled shower stall at the end of the firemen’s bathroom.
    Quinn Cahill’s annoyance factor was equally matched by his incredible talent for staying alive.
    And he had food. Lots of it.
    I must have drank a gallon of water, without stopping, from a yellowed plastic milk jug. I didn’t even think twice about how Quinn produced that water; I was too busy thinking that it was the best water I’d ever tasted in my life.
    “Don’t drink that whole thing, Odd. You’ll puke.” Quinn put his palm on the top of the milk jug to slow me down. “Come on, let me show you what I got here.”
    Quinn lived in the upstairs half of the firehouse. A slide pole descended through a hole in the floor, down to the garage. Quinn showed me how to use it if we ever had to get out that way.
    There was hardly enough space in the garage to walk between the mounds of piled-up junk, even though I got the feeling that Quinn had inventoried every last item that was down there, knew where everything