“Oh, come on. Not true.” Zeg rolled his eyes and crouched to pull a few trays from the case. A row of vintage buttons with rhinestone centers, still sewn into the card. A single shoe buckle. A glass marble. A thimble. I lifted each item, weighed it in my hand. I was stalling, because it had felt good to come see Zeg, like when things were simpler. When I was just busy plucking bracelets from drunk ladies’ wrists, stealing wallets from senior citizens.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Hey, show me those?” I tapped on the glass to indicate a tray of pocketknives. The one that caught my eye had a pearly handle decorated with silver swirls. It gleamed in the light.

“Out of your budget.”

“Can I at least see?”

Another grunt, and Zeg crouched again.

He pushed the knives toward me. “You are wasting my time.” Some of them had handles that looked like bone; others were carved with marks and symbols that I didn’t recognize. I touched my finger to the one with the silver swirls.

“Don’t even think about it.”

I touched another, a longer one that looked less ornate. “Uh-uh.”

I picked up a third, and when Zeg didn’t say anything, I flicked the blade open. It was freckled with a few rust spots but otherwise it seemed okay. It was simple, silver, and a little shiver of feeling moved through me when I looked at it, felt the cool metal against the skin of my palm.

“How about this one?”

“What do you even want that for?” I didn’t really know, other than it made me feel good to hold it. A little less small, a little less afraid.

“Forty-five dollars for that one.”

“Twenty dollars is all I’ve got.” I pushed the bill toward him and his eyes caught on my fingers, the matching Band-Aids, and something like surprise crossed his face. Just for a second, and then it was gone. Sometimes I thought Zeg might have a little bit of the gift, too.

“You’re robbing me blind, kid.”

I handed the ring back to Zeg, pushed my twenty in his direction, and slipped the knife into my bag. Down to $630, but the knife had called to me, and I knew better than to resist a feeling like that.

I was a block away from home when the tingle came back and a vision moved through me, like a kaleidoscope turned too fast. Highways, roads stretching endlessly. A woman baking bread in a sunlight-filled kitchen. A hotel room, the sense of being hit hard across the face. Something soft and pale, something bright—shining discs, hanging above a bed.