Nick watched the TV for a few days, amazed at the old commercials and the news more than anything. Watching it was like stepping into a time machine, but even time travel gets dull when you’re constantly traveling to April 8, 1978.

Allie chose not to watch the TV. She was already sensing something profoundly wrong with Mary’s little Queendom, although she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. It had to do with the way the little girls jumped rope, and the way the same kids would watch that awful TV every single day.

If Nick felt that anything was wrong, it was lost beneath everything that was right about Mary. The way she always thought of others before herself, the way she made the little kids all feel loved. The way she took an interest in him. Mary always made a point of coming over to Nick and asking what he was up to, how he was feeling, what new things he was thinking about. She spoke with him about a book she was working on, all about theories on why there were no seventeen-year-olds in Everlost, when everyone knew eighteen was the official age of adulthood.

“That’s not actually true,” Nick offered. “That’s voting age, but drinking age is twenty-one. In the Jewish religion, adulthood is thirteen, and I know for a fact there are fourteen-year-old Jewish kids here.”

“That still doesn’t explain why kids older than us aren’t admitted into Everlost.”

Admitted to Everlost, thought Nick. That sounded a lot better than Lost on the way to heaven. Her way of thinking was such a welcome relief from his own propensity toward gloom and doom. “Maybe,” suggested Nick, “it’s a very personal thing. Maybe it’s the moment you stop thinking of yourself as a kid.”

Vari, who was lingering at the door, snickered. He had snickered at every single comment Nick made.

“Vari, please,” Mary told him. “We value a free flow of ideas here.”

“Even the stupid ones?” Vari said.

Nick couldn’t really see why she kept Vari around. Sure, he had musical talent, but it didn’t make up for his attitude.

Mary took Nick to show him how her books were made. The sixty-seventh floor was the publishing room. There were thirty kids there, all sitting at school desks. It looked like a classroom with kids practicing their penmanship.

“We’ve yet to find a printing press that’s crossed over,” she told him. “But that’s all right. They enjoy copying by hand.”

And sure enough, the kids in the publishing room seemed thrilled to do their work, like ancient scribes copying scriptures on parchment.

“They find comfort in the routine,” Mary said, and Nick accepted it, without giving it much thought.

Allie, on the other hand, had begun to understand the nature of the “routines” these children found comfort in. She grabbed Nick one day, during one of the times when he wasn’t following Mary around.

“I want you to watch this kid,” she told Nick. “Follow him with me.”