“I hear that a lot. Everyone here has a storied past. Running from something. From someone. Leaving something behind. But here you’ll find no judgment. We’re all about family. Freedom. We’re a mix of hippies and what folks call millennials. We are the revolution. We follow the DIY way of life.”

“DIY?”

“Do it yourself.”

He reaches up, fingers the strap of Anne’s backpack. “You can take your pack off. Get comfortable. Make yourself at home.”

Sliding her arms through the straps, she lays the pack on the ground between her feet. “How long’s this place been here?” she asks.

“Quite a while. We catch out not far from here. Get a lot of traffic coming and going, see new faces and old.”

“Yeah, we came from the yard. Fell asleep. Had a wild encounter.”

“I bet. Those yard guys are overfed and underexercised. Cinnamon’s smart. She can maneuver. She’s killed, you know.”

“That she can. Took good care of us.” Anne hesitates. “Killed?”

“Yeah, ask her about it sometime. I’m rambling—not my place to tell you.” Dredd pauses, reaches over, rubs Anne’s cheek. “You got black eyes. Your folks get cross with you?”

Feeling uncomfortable at his touch, she senses something forced and slimy about Dredd. She had forgotten about her eyes. “My brother. We had a fight before I left.”

“Siblings. Older?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s no attitudes around here.”

Is this guy for real? Anne muses. He is kind. Warm. But fidgety. Too touchy. Too hands-on for her. Her upbringing has made her cautious of people. She keeps a barrier up. A shield.

“Cool,” Anne tells him.

“Do you like to read?”

“Depends. Wasn’t much time for books in my house.” Escape was the mall—that and booze at the shack where she met Trot.

“We gotta fix that. Get you caught up on Kerouac. Tully. Bukowski. They’re the greats. They have a way with words. Back then it was so free. Unique and new. Real freedom in their day. All they had was time. How about comics?”

“What about comics?”

“You ever read them?”

“No.”

Anne’s emotions, overwhelmed at first by the newness, are slowly shifting from feeling welcomed and warm to a sense of pause and caution. Feeling like an object, a rare piece of meat. And not knowing what is in store for her.

Dredd points to the youngsters on the couch. “They all read. No television to poison their thoughts, guiding them to an agenda of fear. No ‘buy this,’ ‘gotta have that,’ slaving for the man at a job you don’t want.” Pausing, he points to the stacks on the ground, next to a softly billowing partition that looks like parachute material. “Those are just a few of the books we have. All bought from libraries. Brought here by folks who travel all across the country.”