I took my time walking through the woods. I touched the moss hanging from the trees. A short distance ahead, I watched a rabbit hop into a clearing. It paused for a moment and wiggled its ears. Crouching down, I noticed a rust-colored centipede tucked inside a groove on a fallen log. So many feathery legs. I took care to step over it. The air was fresh and cool, and when I closed my eyes I could hear the rustling wind pulling at the leaves and the electric hum of insects hiding in the canopy.

After a while I reached the bridge. I pushed through the bushes that blocked the archway this side of the creek. A low fire burned. A man sat beside it, long gray beard, hood covering his face. He drove a stick into the flames.

I stepped toward him. “Carl?”

He glanced up at me. Not Carl. His face was skeletal and his mouth was a dark hole. “Leave off,” he yelled. “Leave off!”

I stepped back. My stomach seized. Not with fear, but with something else. Almost hunger. Or maybe emptiness, which wasn’t quite the same thing. What was I thinking? The whole idea was pointless. After everything that had happened to him, why would Carl ever come back? But still, I’d had to check. Just in case he was there. In case he was waiting.

A nip on my neck, and I slapped away a mosquito. I looked at my palm—a dot of wings and legs and blood marked the middle. I wiped it on my jeans. “Sorry,” I said to the man by the fire. “I’m not here to bother you. I was hoping to find my—to find my friend.” The man grumbled and stabbed the fire again.

I was about to turn when I saw someone else squat down near the cement wall. An enormous rounded back covered by a familiar heavy coat that was dragging on the ground.

“Carl?”

“Urh.” The hulking mass shifted, but he didn’t turn his head. When I went closer, I could see it was him. His hands were digging through a pile of garbage. Cans and plastic wrappers and chicken bones and greasy boxes and newspapers and curled-up magazines.

Above him, I noticed the graffiti was still there. Almost.

“It’s me, Carl,” I said.

“It’s me, Carl,” he repeated.

“Yes, me.” I wanted him to look over. I wanted him to recognize me. To hear him call me Magic Boy.

He mumbled something.

“Carl?” When he stood up, his shoulders were stooped. His head hung down toward his chest at an angle, as though it was too heavy for his neck. He wouldn’t meet my eye.

“No, no. You’ve got to. It’s not, urh, a big transitory period.” He scratched his beard. “When the birds come. Too many feathers and sometimes they get wet. Don’t have the exact documents, urh, for domestic flights.”