I was nervous. Jane was on Asher’s back.

A hard-bodied Atlas threw his beach-ball-world at me. ‘Catch!’

I turned to the ringmaster. ‘Darya, I need a drink. Or something.’

Asher said, ‘We drink all the time. Let’s look for Molly.’ Jane asked, ‘How do we get it? We can’t just go up to people and ask for drugs.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if there’s a cop around, we get arrested, Tara.’

‘Oh.’

Darya knew. ‘What you do is go up to people who look like they might have something and ask if they’ve seen your friend Molly.’

‘Cool.’

I was glad I didn’t also have to ask how to spot someone who might have something. That part was easy. That part was the too-happy eyes, and skin that looked cold. That part was the girl licking glitter off a centaur’s body and the topless cowboy riding Shrek.

We separated. We went to look for Molly.

I walked past crumbling roller coasters draped with glowing ghouls, past empty ice-cream shops with grinning pumpkins in the windows. Past a funnel-cake stand that I wished was open for business.

There were groups of people, of Elvises and Gagas and slutty kitties and Harry Potters, who were going wild, who would definitely know where to find Molly. But I was afraid to go up to them, so I didn’t.

I saw a very tall boy standing alone next to the water slides.

He’s shaking, he’s loaded. ‘Nice costume.’

‘It’s not a costume.’

‘Were you—’

‘Yeah. For six months.’

‘Where?’

‘Stop it.’

‘What?’

‘Iraq.’

‘Really?’

‘What’re you looking for?’

Right. ‘Um, have you seen my friend Molly?’

‘I don’t have uncut. Just pills.’

‘What’s it cut with?’

‘Just caffeine.’

‘Okay, how much?’

‘Eighty bucks.’

‘For one?’

‘For one.’

‘That’s too much.’

‘Eighty bucks.’

‘Dude, they’re supposed to go for fifteen a pop, tops.’ Darya would never have sent us off without a comprehensive relay of information.

‘Look, I . . . I get it as part of a study, okay? Safety’s guaranteed.’

‘What do you mean? What kind of study?’

‘I dunno. They’re giving this stuff to some of us who came back different, as an experiment.’

I’d read about these experiments, I think. About the soldiers who came back and screamed their neighbours awake every night and needed to be medicated, sedated, put away, locked away. They were given little pills and pouches of powder to escape from the war that would not release them, little pills of Ex and pouches of pure-cut MDMA.

‘I need four—no, five.’

‘Four hundred.’

Four Benjamins. Five little white pills.

I called Asher. ‘Got it.’

‘Awesome. How—no, we’re good. Jane, c’mon, let’s go— how many?’

‘One for each of us.’

‘Great. Meet you at the haunted house in five.’

‘Wait, where is that?’

‘Where are you?’

‘By the water slides.’