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being seen or heard this time. Otherwise—Jessie didn't let herself finish the thought.
    It seemed an eternity before Jessie reached a huge room at the end of the hall. Her ankles ached from the effort of tiptoeing. The whole hall slanted up ever so slightly; Jessie thought she might be at ground level by the end. Ma had explained that was how the tourist part of Clifton was designed—though she'd never been there, she remembered the diagrams when Clifton was first built. Ma said the big room was where tourists gathered during the day. Jessie peeked around the corner, hoping no one was in the room at night. But the guards were. They were sitting at a table at the far side of the enormous room. Coffee, Jessie remembered. They were drinking coffee.
    Jessie ducked back around the corner. Panic welled up in her. There was nowhere to hide now. All they had to do was walk this way and they'd see her.
    "—heard they're hiring over at Ryan Industries," one guard was saying.
    "Yeah? How much?"
    "Nine dollars an hour."
    The other man whistled.
    "What shift?"
    "Second."
    "You applied?"
    "Wilma wants me to. I'm going to look into it. Especially now they're getting so picky here. . . . You'd think we were guarding a prison."
    "Wouldn't you want out, if you was those people? 'Sides, they never said we was supposed to look for escapees."
    "What else we looking for? Ever heard of so many guards at a place like this?"
    "I don't know. . . . Did I tell you? Jack said they're going to close this place soon, anyhow. No more tourists, no more freaky people living in the past, no more paychecks for us."
    "That rumor's been going around for years. . . ."
    Jessie didn't hear the other man's answer. What did he mean, close the place? Why wouldn't there be any more tourists? What would happen to everyone in Clifton? It was a puzzle Jessie didn't have time to worry about. She stored the idea with all the mysterious things Ma had told her, to think about later. She risked another look around the corner. And then she saw it, not far along the wall in the opposite direction from the two men: a sign that said rest rooms, with an arrow.
    Jessie thought it was dark enough on that side of the room that they wouldn't see her. And there were enough tables between her and them. . . . She decided to crawl.
    Strapping her package around her neck, Jessie crouched along the wall. Each motion took great nerve. She wished she'd stayed by the stagecoach. She wished Ma had picked
    someone else to leave Clifton. Andrew, maybe. She wished Katie and the others had never gotten sick. She wished she'd never heard of the world outside Clifton. She wished Ma and Pa had never moved to Clifton, but stuck with whatever happened in the twentieth century.
    Wishing all that, Jessie reached the sign with the arrow and followed the arrow down a short hall. There were two doors. Looking up, Jessie could see the word ladies on one, with a small silHSuette of a woman in a bonnet and long dress, like Ma or any of the other women in Clifton might wear. The sight comforted Jessie. The silhouette was etched in a strange hard substance, but Jessie didn't take the time to marvel at it.
    She pushed open the door and went to sit on an odd white chair that matched her mother's description of a "toilet." It would not be a comfortable place to sleep, but Ma had insisted.
    Jessie crossed her legs up on the toilet, as Ma had directed, and leaned her head against the smooth metal wall around the toilet. She had made it safely. The guards hadn't caught her. Her terror slipped away, and she fell asleep wondering how this indoor outhouse could be used more than once, since the toilet was so shallow.

SEVEN
    Wr hoosh!
    Jessie woke to an awful sound of rushing water. She remembered learning about the Niagara Falls in geography—was this what they sounded like?
    Confused by the noise, at first Jessie couldn't remember where she was and why she wasn't sleeping cozily in the bed she shared with Hannah. Her