When she dared to look again, the building behind the mural came into view. Big cartoon decals grinned at each other from the windows. Something about them was familiar in a way that scraped at her insides.

Tanvi hadn’t meant to move, but suddenly her nose was at the nearest window. Beyond it, she glimpsed sunny yellow walls. And there, near the entrance, something purple and green—an open book large enough for a smaller girl to hide in.

The made-up museum from her dream. It couldn’t be.

According to the sign by the doors, the museum didn’t open for another three hours. Not that Tanvi had any intention of checking it out. Not ever.

She backed away and jogged off.

The shining mica chips under her feet switched to cracked concrete, and the concrete switched to cobblestones. The lumpiness of the cobblestones, the shock of almost tripping in a gap between them—it felt like someone pulling on her sleeve. Entreating her to stop and think. She ignored it. All she had to do was find that girl with the headband.

Mirror-shard mosaic walls reflected bits of her, broken up, as she ran past. That same awful itch of missing something obvious nagged at her, but she kept going. The crosswalk wasn’t far now.

As the sun climbed into the blue sky, the tiny alley of a street where she’d recently been appeared. Tanvi didn’t mean to, but she turned into it.

Her feet carried her to Sameer’s row house with the pineapple knocker.

Queen Village. She’d been heading here the entire time. Her feet had known, even if her brain hadn’t.

That thing in her chest, the thing Tanvi absolutely did not want, thrummed to life again.

“Stop!” she moaned, not sure who she was talking to. She parked herself on a stoop two doors down from Sameer’s house, not far from a shredded garbage bag dumped by the curb. Chances were good he’d see her, but what difference did it make? She’d already flouted every other dream runner rule.

Her head thumped with the mess of dreams and half-sprouted memories churning inside. If only she could stuff them into the vials she’d brought. Never mind trying to sell them. She’d throw them away, right in this garbage bag. Shriveled-up orange peel, yellowed chicken bones, and black gunk oozed from the slashes in the plastic onto the reddish brick sidewalk. The whole thing stank of sickly sweet rot, making her throat close.

Why couldn’t she shut all this out?

She’d lost count of how much time and how many pedestrians had gone by when a rat sprang from the garbage bag. Tanvi threw up her arms, but the rat wasn’t interested in her. It fled a garter snake undulating in pursuit, and the two disappeared into a crack in the house’s foundation.