“Here now,” Wayne said, wiping his nose. “What’s that?”

“Gum.”

“Gum?”

“Yeah, you chew it.” Dims offered him a piece of the stuff. It was rolled into a ball, soft to the touch and powdered on the outside.

Wayne eyed the lad, but decided to try it. He chewed for a moment.

“Good flavor,” he said, then swallowed.

Dims laughed. “You don’t swallow it, Wayne. You just chew!”

“What’s the funna that?”

“It just feels good.” He tossed Wayne another ball.

Wayne popped it into his mouth. “How are things,” Wayne said, “with you and the Cobblers?”

The Cobblers were the rival gang in the area. Dims and his fellows went about with their sleeves torn. The Cobblers wore no shoes. It apparently made perfect sense to youths of the street, many of whom were the children of the houseless. Wayne liked to keep an eye on them. They were good lads. He’d been like them once.

Then life had steered him wrong. Boys like this, they could use someone to point them in the right direction.

“Oh, you know,” Dims said. “Some back, some forth.”

“There won’t be trouble now, will there?” Wayne asked.

“I thought you said you wasn’t no conner today!”

“I ain’t,” Wayne said, slipping—by instinct—into a dialect more like that of Dims. “I’m askin’ as a friend, Dims.”

Dims scowled, looking away, but his muttered response was genuine. “We ain’t stupid, Wayne. We’ll keep our heads. You know we will.”

“Good.”

Dims glanced back at him as Wayne settled down. “You bring that money you owe me?”

“I owe you money?” Wayne asked.

“From cards?” Dims said. “Two weeks back? Rusts, Wayne, are you drunk? It ain’t even noon yet!”

“I ain’t drunk,” Wayne said, sniffling. “I’m investigatin’ alternative states of sobriety. How much do I owe you?”

Dims paused. “Twenty.”

“Now see,” Wayne said, digging in his pocket, “I distinctly remember borrowin’ five off you.” He held up a note. It was a fifty.

Dims raised an eyebrow. “You want something from me, I’m guessing?”

“I need into the university.”

“The gates are open,” Dims said.

“Can’t go through the front. They know me.”

Dims nodded. That sort of thing was a common complaint in his world. “What do you need from me?”

A short time later, a man wearing Wayne’s hat, coat, and dueling canes tried to pass through the front of the university. He saw the two men in black, then bolted as they chased after him.

Wayne adjusted his spectacles, watching them go. He shook his head. Ruffians, trying to get into the university! Scandalous. He walked in through the gates, wearing a bow tie and carrying a load of books. Another of those men—who stood in a more hidden spot, watching his companions chase Dims—barely gave Wayne a glance.

Spectacles. They were kind of like a hat for smart people. Wayne ditched the books inside the square, then walked past a fountain with a statue of a lady who wasn’t properly clothed—he idled only a short time—and made his way toward Pashadon Hall, the girls’ dormitory. The building looked an awful lot like a prison: three stories of small windows, stonework architecture, and iron grates that seemed to say “Stay away, boys, if you value your nether parts.”