“Why not?”

“I’m … uh … I’m painting,” he stammered. “For an exhibit.”

“Your masterpieces?” asked Jonah with a smirk, nodding at Will’s color-smeared canvases.

Will’s heart nearly drowned. “They’re only paintings,” he mumbled. “My stupid paintings.”

Jonah shrugged. “They’re cool,” he said, almost smiling. “Must be fun to go big like that on real canvases—those things aren’t cheap. Anyway, that’s all right. I thought you were brave from the way you bowled over that wolf. But I guess not. Anyway, I’m meeting Marcus tonight. I heard from that weird girl Angela you were looking for him, and I need someone to watch my back, so …”

Will’s heart knocked. “Marcus? You know where he is? You found him?”

“More like he found me. Anyway, sorry to disturb your creativity. See ya around, Will.”

“Wait,” Will said, more childishly than he’d planned. “Stay right there.”

Will tiptoed from his studio and opened his mother’s door with a soft puff, the air inside San Francisco creamy with her scent. She was plunged in sleep, her Relaxation Headphones on, a rare placid expression spread over her face. Will lifted her headphones, uncovering the distant whoosh of water, like a toilet running somewhere, and set them on her nightstand. Sleeping with them was new, and he didn’t know if this was a good sign or not. He stood watching her, fingering his forehead and kneading the scars on his thigh, his souvenirs of the Outside and now the only evidence he’d ever left the house. And here tonight was the only chance he’d ever get to find his friend. He’d made a promise to stay Inside and be her guardian, but maybe finding Marcus would be the best way to protect her. To prove that the Outside wasn’t nearly as dangerous as she believed. That it couldn’t swallow a boy whole. Besides, he’d never promised to stay home, only that he’d be careful. He’d make tonight a low-impact Adventure. “A walk,” just as Jonah had suggested.

They could’ve snuck out the front door, but Jonah seemed intent on coaxing Will onto the roof. The boys managed to disconnect the screen, then detach the window from its track. Will trailed Jonah along the nut-tighteningly high roofline, to where they could jump to the metal shed where Will had met Marcus and shimmy down. Including ice sliding, it was easily the most dangerous stunt Will had ever performed in his entire life, and surviving it broiled him with joy.

Outside, a set of fast clouds raked the stars. Though nearly spring, cold was still stringent in the air, the dead grass hairbrush-stiff with frost, and dwindling continents of snow lingered on the boulevards that edged the bare street. Somehow the snow made the night not as dark, like a day that had misfired. As they walked recklessly in the center of the empty road, Jonah pressed his skateboard against his hip, making no attempt to ride it. The skull graphics on the underside of the board resembled Jonah’s drawings, and Will lost himself for a moment in the detail.

“I never got the chance to say thanks for saving me. Again,” Will said. “I can’t believe you killed it. A wolf.”

Jonah nodded. “Felt bad when I stomped him, but he was done the second he bit you. Were you scared?”

Will kept his eyes forward and weighed his answer. He was unsure if Jonah knew about the Black Lagoon, or if he’d ever faced anything like it himself. Will doubted it. Like Marcus, Jonah seemed perfectly tuned for fearlessness. “Yes,” Will said carefully.

Jonah spit plentifully on the ground. “That’s a good thing,” he said.

“Were you?” Will said, still unsure if he’d said the right thing.

“Sure, but I just hate wolves more than I like you,” Jonah said, a smile breaching on his lips. After some walking and mental arithmetic, Will concluded that this also added up to Jonah liking him in some measure. Who knew, thought Will, with the warmest gutsensation he’d had so far Outside, all he had to do was get mauled by a wolf to make another friend.

“Why don’t you like wolves?” Will asked after a while.

“They don’t think,” said Jonah. “Plus they steal from my brothers’ traps. Plus they run together and attack weak things. They’re as bad as men.”

“Your brothers trap? Like animals?”

“Muskrat, beaver, marten—little stuff like that.”

“Do you go with them?” Will asked, floored by the idea.

“No. I’m allergic to fur,” Jonah said. “And I like the city better. More concrete,” he said, patting his skateboard.

“All I have is my mom,” Will said with a sudden vision of her throwing back the covers of his cot to find the unwashed clothes he’d bundled there and dying of fright. “I used to have an uncle,” he added proudly. “But he’s dead.”

Jonah nodded again and tucked his chin to his chest. “Look, another reason I came to get you is because I need to say sorry. Remember how that wolf went after this backpack?” Jonah said, pulling at the straps with his thumbs. “Well, it was Marcus who gave it to me to watch over.”

“Angela said you guys used to be friends?”

“Yeah, he taught me to skateboard when he first came to Thunder Bay. He was the best skateboarder I’ve ever seen outside of Thrasher. Smooth as water flowing. But he quit because he broke his board and couldn’t afford another one. Then he got into what he called exploring. Which meant going into all the places he wasn’t supposed to. Abandoned buildings. Culverts. Old mines. He’d find all sorts of things.

“Then a while back he showed up at my house really late. He was shaking, and his face was white. First time that kid actually looked scared. Said he wanted me to hold on to his backpack. He had something important in there. A piece of paper. Figured it would be safe with me because of my brothers. I didn’t want to do it, but his being scared scared me. So I said okay.”

“Who was he hiding the paper from?” Will said, remembering again how Marcus hid that day in his yard, and maybe not just because he was stealing garden hoses.

Jonah stopped, squared off, and leaned into Will, his close breath dragging a carbonated tingle up Will’s spine. “I think it was Butler,” hushed Jonah, “the Butler. My brothers used to run booze from his stills up to the dry reserves up north. They quit because an old lady, an elder, got struck blind drinking it, and no money was worth poisoning our people like that. But even my brothers are scared of the Butler. After the elevators shut down, he hired every desperate dockworker and hard-ass former railway man down there. Plus he breeds wolves. Keeps them with him always. Kids around here say you should never forget anything in the woods. Once the Butler’s wolves get your scent, they’ll follow you all the way into your bedroom.” For a moment Will’s mind flashed to the Helmet he’d left behind beside the creek. “The thing is,” Jonah said, “I think he sent that wolf to get Marcus, and it picked up his scent on this backpack. Would’ve got me if you hadn’t body-checked it like a true Canadian hero.”

“Jonah,” Will said. “I saw someone when that wolf was on top of me. A bald guy. In the woods. Short and stocky.”

“Hmm,” Jonah said. “Not the Butler. He’s got a full head of hair, all electrocuted and snow white. Probably one of his men.”

Will inflated with pride at his genius contribution and fought to contain his beaming as they scuffed their feet into the hushed night. After the wolf attack, his mother had ordered him new boots with grips like dirt-bike treads, even more acutely embarrassing now with the snow essentially gone. Will was suddenly aware he had to pee. To his horror there were no bathrooms Outside at night. Anywhere. He hoped dearly there would be one wherever Marcus was.

Jonah clattered his skateboard to the ground and hopped upon it, all regal grace and fluidity, zipping ahead under the propulsion of his left leg. He rolled through a temple of yellow streetlight, his hands open and searching, as though feeling the pavement’s texture as it passed. Then he crouched, frozen like a cat stalking a robin, before cracking the rear of the board down, rocketing himself upward with the apparatus clinging impossibly to his feet like a burr. After this, the silence of flight but for the sibilance of wheels spinning, then a growling return to the asphalt and his lackadaisical ride-away.