The Jake ahead of them—New York Jake, spring-of-1977 Jake—walked slowly, looking everywhere, clearly digging the day. Mid-World Jake remembered exactly how that boy had felt: the sudden relief when the arguing voices in his mind

(I died!)

(I didn’t!)

had finally stopped their squabbling. Back by the board fence that had been, where the two businessmen had been playing tic-tac-toe with a Mark Cross pen. And, of course, there had been the relief of being away from the Piper School and the insanity of his Final Essay for Ms. Avery’s English class. The Final Essay counted a full twenty-five per cent toward each student’s final grade, Ms. Avery had made that perfectly clear, and Jake’s had been gibberish. The fact that his teacher had later given him an A+ on it didn’t change that, only made it clear that it wasn’t just him; the whole world was losing its shit, going nineteen.

Being out from under all that—even for a little while—had been great. Of course he was digging the day.

Only the day’s not quite right,Jake thought—the Jake walking along behind his old self. Something about it …

He looked around but couldn’t figure it out. Late May, bright summer sun, lots of strollers and window-shoppers on Second Avenue, plenty of taxis, the occasional long black limo; nothing wrong with any of this.

Except there was.

Everythingwas wrong with it.

Three

Eddie felt the kid twitch his sleeve. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Jake asked.

Eddie looked around. In spite of his own adjustment problems (his involved coming back to a New York that was clearly a few years behind his when), he knew what Jake meant. Something was wrong.

He looked down at the sidewalk, suddenly sure he wouldn’t have a shadow. They’d lost their shadows like the kids in one of the stories…one of the nineteen fairy tales…or was it maybe something newer, like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Peter Pan ? One of what might be called the Modern Nineteen?

Didn’t matter in any case, because their shadows were there.

Shouldn’t be, though,Eddie thought. Shouldn’t be able to see our shadows when it’s this dark.

Stupid thought. It wasn’t dark. It was morning, for Christ’s sake, a bright May morning, sunshine winking off the chrome of passing cars and the windows of the stores on the east side of Second Avenue brightly enough to make you squint your eyes. Yet still it seemed somehow dark to Eddie, as if all this were nothing but fragile surface, like the canvas backdrop of a stage set. “At rise we see the Forest of Arden.” Or a Castle in Denmark. Or the Kitchen of Willy Loman’s House. In this case we see Second Avenue, midtown New York.