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Dewey had ever seen, and not only that but all the stuff in the tank, like the coral and rocks and plants, was real, Avery’s dad had shown him. Dewey loved tropical fish, and the sight of this awe-inspiring tank, so ocean-like in every way, had sent him into a reverie that lasted the entire night he spent at Avery’s house, so that when Avery talked at school later about how they’d stayed up until 3 a.m. and played the new Grand Theft Auto and snuck into the TV room and watched movies with actual female nudity, these events were absolutely nowhere in Dewey’s memory. He believed Avery that they’d taken place, but he’d been thinking about the fish tank, and he could remember only the things he thought, not the things he did, unless the things he thought and the things he did were the same. It was kind of scary, really, and not something he liked to talk about, or think about for that matter.
    But the losing track of time thing, at least up to now, had always worked in the other direction, meaning that the actual amount of time elapsed was always greater than it had felt like to Dewey, so that it would be really strange now if the amount of time was   less, meaning that Dewey’s father hadn’t really been gone all that long and that he was still expected to be waiting in the lobby, plus the fact that Dewey hadn’t been particularly stimulated by anything that would make him lose time in the usual way.
    So after taking one last look around the lobby and one last look out the windows and not noticing anything other than the ladders and buckets of paint and toolboxes and stuff he’d seen already the night before, and of course the snow, which kept on falling just as hard, so that Dewey had to stop and think for just a second, just to make sure he remembered, what it was like when it didn’t snow, he decided to go upstairs to his mother. He gathered his jacks and put them in the little pouch and put the pouch in his pocket and headed up the stairs.
    The hotel seemed to be getting colder. He had on a long-sleeve shirt over a T-shirt, so his arms were pretty warm, and his legs were fine, but his hands were cold, and when he blew on them it seemed as though he could almost see his breath. Maybe that’s why his father had been gone so long, because he was still trying to find the hotel owner or any of the people who were supposed to be working at the hotel and was going to keep looking until they came, because Dewey was only ten but he knew some things, his test scores were off the charts, and one of the things he knew was that part of what you paid for when you rented a hotel room was heat, and another part of what you paid for was some people there to complain to if you weren’t getting any heat.
    His mother almost never complained. For instance, if they were at a restaurant and let’s say the waiter made a mistake, let’s say he brought out a baked potato with Dewey’s father’s prime rib instead of French fries or mashed potatoes or vegetables—his father hated baked potatoes and would order whatever else was available with his meal, no matter what—his father would stop the waiter in the middle of putting the plates and stuff on the table, and he would say in this complaining tone, “Hold on, I asked for fries and you brought me a baked potato. This is a baked potato.” Whereas his mother would sit there with no expression on her face at all and wait calmly until all the plates of food were out, and everybody’s water had been refilled, and then she’d say, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, this looks like an orange–poppy seed dressing and I think I ordered the vinaigrette.” He could remember that sentence so distinctly and his mother’s utterance of it so vividly that he said it now under his breath while he walked down the hall: “I ordered the vinaigrette. Excuse me, I ordered the vinaigrette.” And it wasn’t a complaint, and the waiter or the waitress always knew the difference, you could tell.