A cry escaped my lips. I couldn’t dissolve myself. I was real. The skin of my neck prickled. My feet and hands and lips were numb. The guy was pressing the blade, harder and harder. It was going to slice through my skin. Into my artery. I was going to die. I prayed fast. Please, Gloria. Find me. Tell the man to let me go. I’ll be the best boy you can imagine. One look at her steel face and I knew he would listen. Telly. Come save me. Please, Telly. But Telly had a new life now, and he didn’t ever want to see me or Maisy or Chicken. Somehow, Telly had managed to do it. To dissolve himself.

I turned my neck a fraction of an inch. It burned, and I whispered, “Let me go. I won’t do anything. Honest.”

“Lionel!” the lady said. “He’s just a little kid. Stupid camping with his dad, or some shit.”

A strangled sob fell from my mouth. Camping with his dad. I had no dad.

Carl was shaking his head back and forth, yelling, “The Workers! How. How? The white room. My mother will come, Stan! I don’t, don’t, urh, I don’t trust myself!”

“Lionel!” She took a step closer. “Let the kid go.”

“Fuck it,” he said. Then he laughed that creepy laugh, relaxed his grip. “I was only fucking around with him. Joking. Right, my little friend? I was only just horsing around with you, sure.”

He shoved me. I fell forward onto the pebbles. My knees and palms smacked the ground. I touched my neck, the stinging spot. It was slippery. Scrambling up, I rushed toward Carl. Toward Girl. Carl pushed me behind him. “You did it,” he said. “You did it, Magic Boy.”

Still pointing the knife, the man wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I suggest you and that little runt mosey on out of here.”

“Maybe we should go?” the lady said.

I gripped the back of Carl’s coat.

“Yeah. And why would we do that?” the man said. “You are one dumb whore.”

She put the floppy hat back on. I couldn’t see her face anymore.

“You heard me,” the man growled. “Get!”

When Carl reached for his backpack the man sang out, “Ah, ah, ah. That’s ours now, old man. Thanks for being so hospitable.” His eyes squinted. “Now I’m going to count to ten. If you’re not gone from my sight I’m going to carve your face so deep your own mother wouldn’t know you.”

The lady’s hat shook back and forth. Maybe underneath there she found it funny. Or maybe she was scared, too.

“One. Two. Three—”

Carl edged away. Girl stayed by his side. “Keep close, Magic Boy. We need to lift off.”

“Four, five, six—”