The fall of our senior year Mark didn’t show up for school. They found his body in his bedroom—hanging from a rope. I cried at his funeral when I looked into the casket and wondered if he had his answers now or if it was too late. Was death a comma or a period—a pause in our existence or the end? Was he grateful to be dead? Suddenly the pale plastic face I saw in that coffin wasn’t Mark’s—it was mine.

Mark wasn’t my best friend. But he’d haunted my dreams for ten years until I’d managed to shake him off. Now he was back. If only I’d known the answer to his questions … maybe things would have turned out different for both of us.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Joshua said to me.

I jerked my head toward him. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“I know. And I also know you can find what you seek on one of the roads traveled by the great minds. Choose any of them. I’ll take you there in an instant. And if you don’t like one of them, I’ll take you to the next and then the next. And perhaps I’ll get you back to your world as well.”

I thought about it again, intrigued by the possibility of getting home, but for some reason I shook my head, believing there was something more I wanted, something no great thinker could lead me to.

No sooner had I turned down this offer than we materialized back on the gray road. Before us stood more buildings, so many I could almost forget that beyond them was mesa, stone, and sagebrush. I felt eager to see where the gray road, now a city street, would lead us next. What would I find here? Joshua, usually buoyant and upbeat, seemed strangely sullen.

We entered a maze of mall interiors, where my eyes were drawn to displays of power tools, antique guns, shiny knives, snow skis, camping gear, sports clothing. We looked over a balcony to see spotlights zooming over showroom floors filled with the latest-model cars and pickup trucks, boats and RVs, snowmobiles and motorcycles.

I saw a man standing there, hypnotized, a self-made man in a stylish suit, a man with a swagger and graying temples. I watched him walk in a perfect circle around all the things, as if their mass held him in orbit around them. They drew him in tighter and tighter until he was inseparable from them. Finally I couldn’t tell where the things ended and the man began. Then he put his hand up to cover his facial tic, just as he disappeared into the things.

I turned away, shaking, feeling my own face twitch. I looked around, twisting in circles. Where was Shad? And why did I care?