I shook my head.

He frowned. “But you did tell him what happened.”

Another head shake.

“You should. You need to talk to someone. You sure can’t talk to Tori. Liz is probably a good listener, but she’s not around.” He paused. “You could talk to me, but you’ve probably figured out I’m not good with stuff like that. I mean, if you wanted to…” He trailed off, then came back firmer, shoulders hunching against the morning chill. “It should be Simon. He’d want to know what happened, and he’d want you to be the one to tell him.”

I nodded, though I didn’t know whether I would. Simon had spent enough time lately on Chloe-comfort duty. I needed to start working stuff out by myself. But there was a related issue I did want help with.

“I’ve been thinking,” I began. “After what happened, I should learn how to defend myself. Some basic self-defense moves.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Great, so could you—?”

“I’ll ask Simon to teach you some,” he continued.

“Oh. I thought…I guess I thought that would be more your area.”

“Our dad taught us both. Simon’s good. Unless…” He glanced down at me. “I mean, if you want, sure, I can help out. But Simon would be a better teacher. He’s got the patience for it.”

“Right. I’ll talk to Simon then.”

He nodded and we lapsed into silence again.

We reached the bus station with twenty minutes to spare. Derek had me hang back, where the agent could see I was a teenager without getting too close a look, in case my photo was circulating. He went up to the counter alone. When he seemed to be having trouble, though, I joined him.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“She won’t give us the youth fare.”

“It’s not a youth fare,” the woman said. “It’s a student fare. If you can’t produce ID, you don’t get it.”

“But we got tickets in Buffalo without any ID.” I put my used ticket on the counter.

“That’s Buffalo,” she said with a sniff. “Here in the state’s capital we follow the rules. No ID, no student fare.”

“Okay, adult tickets, then.”

“We don’t have enough,” Derek murmured.

“What?”

“It’s thirty-eight each for adults. We’re six bucks short.”

I leaned into the wicket. “Please, it’s really important. You can see on our ticket there that we already bought fares to New York, but my friend got sick and we had to get off the bus—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“How about one adult and one youth? We have enough—”

“Next!” she called, and waved up the man behind us.

The bus station also serviced Greyhound, but their sign clearly stated that their student fares required a special card, which was why we hadn’t bought from them in Buffalo. I tried anyway. The woman there was more sympathetic, but she explained that she couldn’t issue the reduced fare tickets without entering a student discount card number into the computer. So we were out of luck.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said as we moved away from the Greyhound counter.

“You go. I’ll give you directions to Andrew’s house. He can pick me up here—”

“What if he’s not there? He could have moved or could be away. Then I’d have to find Simon, use a good chunk of money for us all to come back and get you….”

Derek nodded, conceding my point.

“You lived around here for a while.” I raised my hands. “I know, it’s not your favorite place to remember, but is there anyone you could borrow ten bucks from?”

“A friend?”

“Well, sure, maybe…”

A small laugh. “Yeah, you sound as doubtful about that as you should. You may have guessed I don’t go out of my way to make friends. I don’t see the point, especially when I’m never in one place long. I’ve got my dad and Simon. That’s enough.”

His pack…

He continued, “I suppose I could find someone. Simon’s bound to have a friend or teammate who owed him money. He’s bad for stuff like that—lends it and never asks for it back.”

“On second thought, considering you vanished under bad circumstances, reappearing now might not be the wisest idea. The last thing we need is someone calling the cops.”

I walked to the stand of brochures and took one listing fares and schedules. Then I went to the map of New York State and studied the two. Derek read over my shoulder.

“There,” he said, pointing to a town on the map. “We can afford the full fare to New York from there.”

“As for how we’ll get there…”

That was the question.

OUR BEST SHOT OF getting where we wanted to go was by hitchhiking. We weren’t stupid enough to thumb a ride, but we might be able to sneak one. So we decided to go back to the truck stop. I dozed for a few minutes while we rode the city bus, then we started the long walk.

We were about halfway there when Derek said, gruffly, “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“This. You helped me last night after all the crap I put you through. And this is your reward. Stranded in Albany.”

“It’s an adventure. I can’t remember the last time I took a city bus. I’m getting my exercise, too. After a week cooped up in Lyle House and that laboratory, I’ve never been more in the mood for a long walk.”

We walked a while longer.

“I know you’re tired,” he said. “And hungry. And pissed off.”

“Tired, yes. Hungry, a bit. Pissed off? No.” I looked up at him. “Seriously. I’m not.”

“You’ve been really quiet.”

I laughed. “I’m normally really quiet. But these last couple of weeks have not been normal.”

“I know you don’t always say a lot, you’ve just been…” He shrugged. “I thought you were mad.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “About that—being mad. You were right the other night, after what happened in that alley. I was mad at myself. It just took me a while to calm down enough to figure that out.”

I nodded.

“What I did, when we lived here, hurting that kid. I didn’t think it could ever happen again. I’ve been through it so many times, thinking of what went wrong and what I’d do if I ever got into that situation again, all the coping strategies Dr. Gill taught me.”

“Dr. Gill?”

“Yeah, I know. She creeped me out even before we knew about the Edison Group. But she was a real shrink, and she did try to help. It was in their best interests to teach me to control my temper. So I was sure, if anything like that ever happened again, there was no question that I’d handle it better. And what happened? Almost the exact same scenario…and I did the exact same thing.”

“You stopped yourself before you threw her into the wall.”

“No, you stopped me. If you hadn’t yelled, I would have done it. All those strategies. All that mental rehearsal. And when it happened, I never considered doing anything different. I couldn’t. My brain just shut down.”

“But it didn’t take much to turn it back on again.”

He shrugged.

“That’s got to be progress, right?”

“I suppose so,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

At the truck stop, our plan was to stow away in a transport. We sat in the restaurant, nursing sodas while Derek listened to the conversations around us, and picked out truckers heading our way.

The first truck was parked up front, making it impossible to sneak on without being seen. The second time, the trailer had a huge padlock on it, too big for Derek to break. The third time, as the saying goes, was the charm.

We’d followed the driver to his vehicle, which turned out to be a cube van. After he got into the cab, we snuck in the back.

The guy ran some kind of construction business. The van smelled of wood chips and oil and was full of tools, ropes, ladders, and tarps. When the truck reached the highway and the road noise was loud enough to drown us out, Derek took the tarps and made a bed on the floor.