“No, I don’t think so, Stan. Urh. I don’t think that’s it. He doesn’t have a two. They always have a number two. That’s the key. The piece of, urh, irrefutable evidence. The rules never change. They’re rules.”

I wiped my sweating hands on my T-shirt and took a deep step backward. “I just wanted to say—” I swallowed. “Um, thanks for, you know.”

“For what, Magic Boy?” He twisted and tugged. Twisted and tugged.

Magic Boy. He remembered me. “For helping me out the other night. Sharing your orange and all.”

He lifted both his hands and shook them. Like an angry preacher. “I don’t need reminding for every single, single, single, urh, thing. I don’t. You hear me?” He bellowed out that last part. It echoed off the underside of the bridge. Girl lowered her head, pawed at Carl’s pant leg.

My throat went dry and I glanced behind me. It was a mistake coming here. I could run. I took another step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Your mother taught you nice manners, Magic Boy, but rational truth professed, you helped me out. Guided me out of a perpetual conundrum, you see?”

His voice had flipped to soft and friendly.

“I didn’t. Um. Carl.”

“You did, then. I was stuck in a time spot, really tight, and the temporal shift wouldn’t budge. Dark for about three days before you showed up, urh, and fixed it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“The government,” he said. “Can give you the worst charley horses. They have your nerves all mapped out. Strategic defense and all. Control your mind.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.” Was that even possible?

“Every single one of us. Your mom might’ve called them growing pains, but that’s a falsehood, Magic Boy. A bold-faced lie. It’s neural stretching.” Twist and yank, twist and yank. Scattered hairs tumbled down from his fingers.

“That doesn’t sound so great. You a doctor?” Even though he looked about as much like a doctor as Girl did, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

“No,” he laughed. “Could’ve been but all those doctor types were a proliferation of arrogance, urh. I stayed on the legal side of things. Graduated top of my, urh, class.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll say. I’ll say it. Don’t worry, though, Magic Boy, about your nerves. Not much you can do about it. Dot says no point in getting stressed. Solid structures can conceal.” He smacked the concrete wall with his open hand. It was clean except someone had spray-painted the word Almost up near the top. Maybe Carl? Almost what, though?

He smacked the wall again, and I jumped.

“You understand?”

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t understand at all. I stepped back again. “Sure.” I was close to the rocky slope now.