I'd rather be in the forest park but Father says we can't go there anymore. He says we can blend in better in the city. We're meeting at two forty-five and until then he doesn't know where I am and I don't know where he is and I have to be very careful. You have to look like you're going somewhere and if you can you don't ever want to look like you're carrying everything you own. You want to travel light like you have a home and that's where you keep your things. Which we kind of have at the hotel even if I'm surprised at night if even the building is still there.
A girl stands up and trips over one of the bikes and then walks over close to the bench where I'm sitting.
"I thought that was you," she says.
"Thought I was who?" I say.
"Caroline," she says. "Isn't that your name?"
"No," I say.
"That is your name," she says, "or it was, anyway. You changed your hair but I can tell it's you."
This girl's dark hair is all different lengths and the black mascara on her eyelashes is also on her skin around her eyes. She wears a too big down jacket with filthy jeans and rubber sandals with tube socks. A white scar stretches like a tongue up out of her coat, up the side of her neck and around her ear like it must go far down under clothes and hair and be even thicker.
"I don't know who you are," I say.
"It's me," she says. "Taffy. Remember?"
"What happened?" I say. "Where's Valerie?"
I look past her but it's not any members of the Skeleton Family, just street kids I don't know with no adults.
"Your watch is still wrong," she says.
"No," I say. "My watch is right." I've pushed thumbholes in the seams of my black sweater so the arms stay down. Now I pull the cuffs over my watch so she can't see it.
"Something happened," she says. "You didn't hear?"
"No," I say, "but we went away for a while. We're just visiting the city, now."
"It was lightning," she says.
"Are you going to cry?" I say.
"We, the whole family was living under the overpass," she says, "way over there across the river. And we'd got electricity out of a box under there, where Johnny tapped it and got a wire in there so we had a radio and a toaster and an electric blanket. We all had our own orange extension cords."
I look across the river where she's pointing. A man jogs past with a hairy chest and his shirt off. Father is not anywhere close I can see. I'm not to talk to anyone for longer than two minutes.
"They called it a surge," she says. "During the lightning storm we were just sitting there listening to the radio and it came right through the wires and burned everyone."
"I can see," I say.
"Valerie died," she says. "Valerie's dead. We're not ever going to have everyone together again."
"I'm sorry that happened to you," I say.
"I'm staying," she says, "now I'm staying mostly in this guy Jeremy's car. You're still with your father, right?"
"Of course," I say.
"I was thinking," she says. "Could I come with you? I could help out. You'd be glad."
"When we were locked up in the building," I say, "you hardly talked to me."
"That was because of Valerie," she says. "Please."
"It's just the two of us," I say. "Father and me. It's always been like that. We wouldn't know what to do with a third person. I'm sorry about what happened to you. I don't need a little sister right now."
She's gone before she says anything more since Father is here, coming in quiet, sitting on the other end of the bench with a space between us. He talks softly without turning to me.
"Who was that girl?" he says.
"No one," I say.
"She seemed to know you. You seemed to know her. I saw you talking with her for quite some time."
"I met her in the building after we got caught," I say. "She's part of the Skeleton Family."
"Who?" he says.
"She won't talk to me again," I say. "Don't worry."
Father seems to be growing smaller these days even if that cannot be true. The sky looks like it might rain, and after talking to Taffy I am afraid that living in the city like this will make lightning strike us. The mirror taped to Father's cap has pulled the cap sideways so I can see the skin of the side of my face and the dark roots of my hair. He stands then and walks away. I count to thirty and then I follow him.
Five
The trains are a lot bigger up close and even when they move slowly it's not as slow as you think. That's because of their weight. It takes a long distance for them to be able to stop, and sometimes they don't stop but only slow down as they pass through.