“Now I go to the West Side location and do this all over again,” he said with a laugh. “But I can give you a ride over if you want—you said you had to be over on Tenth, right?” I nodded. “And we’re still good on time,” he said with a smile, like he’d just anticipated the question I’d been about to ask.

“Great,” I said, realizing how glad I was the timing was working out. I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to Cary, not yet.

“It shouldn’t take that long to get to the West Side,” Cary said as he unlocked the bike’s compartment and pulled out the helmets. “I think the fastest way will be to cut through the park.”

CHAPTER 15

Stevie

So I think we should cut through the park,” Mateo told me after we’d been riding on the subway for a few stops.

“Oh,” I said, glancing down at my feet and trying not to wince. “You… do?” The pain in my feet had only gotten worse on the walk from Columbia to the subway, my feet hurting with every step I took, like I was in the book version of The Little Mermaid. I had been praying that we’d just take the subway right to the Upper East Side and that there would be very little walking—or at least a cab—to get us there.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up from his phone. “Otherwise, we’re basically going to have to backtrack to get one of the shuttles to cross to the other side of town, then go back up again—much easier this way.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, trying to look excited by this possibility and not like I was in extreme amounts of pain.

“And plus,” he said, reaching out to ruffle Brad’s fur. The dog was sitting on his lap, as he had done for most of this subway ride, in which he’d basically become the mayor of the 1 train. He was perched there, looking around, and everyone who passed through stopped to give him some attention, including a very tough-looking guy in construction clothes. “Fluffy!” he’d yelped, pointing to Brad, who waved his front paws in response. “This way the Senator gets to go for a walk.”

“The Senator?” I asked, feeling like I’d missed something.

“Senator Bradford B. Higginbottom,” Mateo said, pulling Brad into the crook of his arm and scratching his belly.

“Is that… his real name?”