Ron felt his face squeezing into a frown, as if that would help his brain to understand what she was telling him. “You mean you really live here inside the Dome all year long . . . and the government doesn’t take care of you at all?”

“That’s right. Al, Dino, all th’ gangs. Lotsa people. Some grown-ups, too. We all live here all year long.”

“But that’s against the law! The Dome’s closed for most of the year. New York was evacuated years ago—”

“The law!” Sylvia laughed. “Th’ hardtops leave at midnight. From then on ’til next July, there ain’t no law inside th’ Dome. Al’s th’ boss in our turf. Every gang’s got its own leader and its own turf.”

It was finally starting to sink into Ron’s brain. “And you live here all the time. In that—that rat hole I was in?”

Nodding, Sylvia answered, “Right. That’s home fer Davey an’ me an’ all Al’s gang. That’s why I needed yer money. T’ get us through th’ winter. Gotta buy food and everything.”

Horrified, Ron said, “But you can’t live there all the time. Not in there! Not like that!”

“We all do,” she said simply.

Without even thinking about it, Ron said, “Well, you’re not going to anymore.” He started walking again. Faster than ever.

“Whaddaya mean?” Sylvia hurried alongside him.

“I’m getting you out of here. Tonight. You can’t live here. I won’t let you.”

“But I can’t get out, Ron. I can’t!”

“Why not?”

She looked scared. “Ya need an ID card. I never had one. I was born here. They’ll never let me through th’ gates. They’ll put me in th’ Tombs!”

“No they won’t,” Ron said firmly. “I’ll get my ID from Dino. I’ll tell the police that you’re with me and your ID was stolen. I’ll get you through.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Davey,” she said.

“The little kid?”

Nodding, Sylvia said, “I’m the only one he’s got t’ take care of him. I can’t leave him all by himself.”

Ron glanced at his wrist, forgetting that Dino had taken his watch. “Come on, time’s getting short. We’ll take Davey with us.”

“You’ll what?”

“We’ll take Davey too. Come on.”

She kept pace beside him. “You really wanna do this?”

“Yes.”

“And Davey too?”

“I’m not going to let you rot here.”

“But we was born here. We make out all right.”

Ron just shook his head. Sylvia looked at him in a funny way. But she stayed beside him.

The building she lived in was even filthier and more crumbled-down than Ron had remembered it. It had apparently been a factory building once, part of a long row of such buildings jammed side-by-side the length of the long city block. Most of the other buildings were ten stories high; hers was twelve stories. Across the narrow street, an empty garage yawned at them, the sidewalk in front of it stained and slick with ancient grease spills.

At the street level, the building had once had big store windows. Now they were boarded up with old, warped boards that were covered with the remains of a thousand posters and ragged, hand-scrawled graffiti that Ron couldn’t understand. A handful of dark-looking boys were sitting on the low step in front of the building’s main doorway as they came up. One of the boys said something to Sylvia in a foreign language. Ron had taken Spanish in school, and this sounded vaguely like it, but he couldn’t make it out. Sylvia clacked out a few fast words in the same dialect and the boys laughed.