Slip Kid. Someone who could help kids get home, if they had a home to return to, and parents who remembered them and wanted them. A life to reclaim.

And, potentially, one of the last Orange kids out there.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my palms against them for good measure. I didn’t qualify for his help, not in the traditional way. Even if I could get in touch with my parents, it wasn’t like they would welcome a girl they considered a stranger back with open arms. There was Grams, but I had no way of knowing where she was now. After finding out what I had done, would she even want me?

“Why do you even need this guy’s help?” I interrupted, still feeling light-headed. “Can’t you just go home?”

“Use your brain, Green,” Chubs said. “We can’t go home, because PSFs are probably watching our parents.”

Liam shook his head, finally taking his sunglasses off. He looked exhausted, the skin under his eyes baggy and bruised. “You’ll have to be really careful, okay? Do you even want me to drop you off at a bus station? Because we’d be happy—”

“No!” Chubs said. “We most certainly would not. We’ve already wasted enough time on her, and she’s the reason we have the League after us, too.”

A sharp pain sprouted on the left side of my chest, just above my heart. He was right, of course. The best option for everyone would be to drop me off at the nearest bus station and be done with it.

But it didn’t mean I didn’t want to, or need to, find this Slip Kid as badly as they did. But I couldn’t ask to stay. I couldn’t impose on them anymore than I already had, or risk ruining them with the invisible fingers that seemed bent on tearing apart every single connection I managed to make. If the League caught up to us and took them in, I’d never forgive myself. Never.

If I was going to find the Slip Kid, I was going to have to do it by myself. You’d think I’d be used to the thought of taking on each day with no one beside me, that it’d be some kind of relief not to be in constant danger of sliding into someone else’s head. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to step out under the gray overcast sky alone and feel its chill work its way under my skin.

“So,” I said, squinting at the nearest trailer. “This isn’t East River.”

“It might have been, once,” Liam said. “They could move around from time to time. I hadn’t really considered it.”

“Or,” Chubs groused, “they could have already been taken back into PSF custody. Maybe this was East River, and now there is no more East River, and we’re going to have to find a way to deliver Jack’s letter and get home by ourselves, only we won’t ever, because of the skip tracers, and we’ll all be thrown back into camp, only this time they’ll—”