I looked up at the sign as we crossed through more traffic. “Hey, Zoe, I thought we were on Seventh Avenue. This says Broadway.”

We both just stared at the sign for a minute. Zoe scratched her head. “I don’t understand. We didn’t change streets, did we?” She pulled up the GPS app and held her phone toward the sky. “I don’t get it! C’mon, phone, WORK!”

“Not gonna happen, sweetie,” a lady said as she brushed by Zoe. “Tall buildings block the signal.”

Zoe’s shoulders drooped. “I guess we’ll walk to the next corner and see where we are.”

We walked for a bit, passing theater after theater. “Where’s Manhattan Doors playing?” That’s my dad’s show.

Zoe shrugged. “I have no idea. Dad pointed it out to me once when we were riding in a taxi, but Broadway is a really long street. And it must be crooked or something too, because we can’t seem to find our way off it.”

We walked a few more blocks, searching for Central Park. I turned around and looked everywhere, trying to find a landmark. “It was a lot easier to see it from the top of the Empire State Building.”

After a few more minutes of weaving through the crowd, Zoe stopped and held her hands up in the air. “Finally!” She pointed toward Columbus Circle, one of the main entrances to Central Park. “Hey, I think I see Elijah! Let’s go say hi.”

Elijah is a young, college age guy from Senegal who works as a pedicab tour guide in Central Park. He’s always out there, rain or shine. “It’s my only source of income, so if I miss a day, I may have to miss a meal,” Elijah once told us.

“Well, hello, Miss Zoe and Mr. Arcade! How is the day treating you so far?”

Hmmmm. Where do I start?”

I didn’t have to, because Zoe went off. “We were doing just fine until Arcade got run over by a huge kid in the subway and got his backpack stolen—which happened to have his metro card in it—and of course I don’t have any extra money with me today, so we’re walking all the way to 88th.”

“Run over? Stolen? Oh, dear, that is quite unfortunate.” Elijah looked me up and down. “Were you hurt?”

My chin still throbbed. “A little, but I’m okay. Just mad right now. That was my favorite backpack of all time.”

Elijah chuckled with his low voice. “Oh, yes, black with flamingos. Am I right?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Elijah put a finger to his chin. “I remember thinking that a flamingo is an odd bird.”

“That’s what makes them so interesting,” I said. “Did you know that flamingos turn orange because of the pigment molecules in the food they eat?”

Elijah shook his head. “I did not know that.”