Clappers. They're all screaming about clappers, just because he pulled the stupid alarm.

He has to catch up with Risa and Connor. He has to explain, to tell them that he's sorry—that he was wrong to turn them in and that he pulled the alarm to help them escape. He has to make them understand. They are his only friends now. They were. But not anymore. He's ruined everything.

Finally, the stampede thins out enough for Lev to pick himself up. A knee of his jeans is torn. He tastes blood—he must have bitten his tongue. He tries to assess the situation. Most of the mob is off campus, in the street and beyond, disappearing down side streets. Only stragglers are left.

"Don't just stand there," says a kid hurrying past. "There are clappers on the roof!"

"No," says another kid, "I heard they're in the cafeteria."

All around Lev, the bewildered cops pace with a false determination in their stride, as if they know exactly where to go, only to turn around and pace with the same determination in another direction.

Connor and Risa have left him.

He realizes that if he doesn't leave now with the last of the stragglers, he'll draw the attention of the police.

He runs away, feeling more helpless than a storked baby. He doesn't know who to blame for this: Pastor Dan for cutting him loose? Himself for betraying the only two kids willing to help him? Or should he blame God for allowing his life to reach this bitter moment? You can be anyone you want to be now, Pastor Dan had said. But right now, Lev feels like no one.

This is the true meaning of alone: Levi Jedediah Calder suddenly realizing he no longer exists.

_{19 Connor}

The antique shop is in an older part of town. Trees arch over the street, their branches cut into unnatural angular patterns by the profiles of passing trucks. The street is full of yellow and brown leaves, but enough diehards still cling to the branches to make a shady canopy.

The baby is inconsolable, and Connor wants to complain to Risa about it, but knows that he can't. If it hadn't been for him, the baby wouldn't even be part of the equation.

There aren't all that many people on the street, but there are enough. Mostly it's kids from the high school just knocking around, probably spreading more rumors about clappers trying to detonate themselves.

"Ihear they're anarchists."

"I hear it's some weird religion."

"I hear they just do it to do it."

The threat of clappers is so effective because no one knows what they really stand for.

"That was smart back there," Connor tells Risa, as they approach the antique shop. "Pretending to be clappers, I mean. I would never have thought of that."

"You thought quickly enough to take out that Juvey-cop the other day with his own tranq gun."

Connor grins. "I go by instinct, you go by brains. I guess we make a pretty decent team."

"Yeah. And we're a bit less dysfunctional without Lev."

At the mention of Lev, Connor feels a spike of anger. He rubs his sore arm where Lev bit him—but what Lev did today was much more painful than that. "Forget about him. He's history. We got away, so his squealing on us doesn't matter. Now he'll get unwound, just like he wants, and we won't have to deal with him again." And yet the thought of it brings Connor a pang of regret. He had risked his life for Lev. He had tried to save him, but had failed. Maybe if Connor were better with words, he could have said something that would have truly won him over. But who is he kidding? Lev was a tithe from the moment he was born. You don't undo thirteen years of brainwashing in two days.

The antique shop is old. White paint peels from the front door. Connor pushes open the door, and bells hanging high on the door jingle. Low-tech intruder alert. There's one customer: a sour-faced man in a tweed coat. He looks up at them, disinterested and maybe disgusted by the baby, because he wanders deeper into the recesses of the cluttered store to get away.

The shop has things from perhaps even' point in American history. A display of iPods and other little gadgets from his grandfather's time cover an old chrome-rimmed dinner table. An old movie plays on an antique plasma-screen TV. The movie shows a crazy vision of a future that never came, with flying cars and a white-haired scientist.

"Can I help you?"

An old woman as hunched as a question mark comes out from behind the cash register. She walks with a cane, but she seems pretty surefooted in spite of it.

Risa bounces the baby to get its volume down. "We're looking for Sonia."

"You found her. What do you want?"

"We . . . uh . . . we need some help," Risa says.

"Yeah," Connor chimes in, "Someone told us to come here."

The old woman looks at them suspiciously. "Does this have something to do with that fiasco over at the high school? Are you clappers?"

"Do we look like clappers to you?" says Connor.

The woman narrows her eyes at him. "Nobody looks like a clapper."

Connor narrows his gaze to match hers, then goes over to the wall. He holds up his hand and jabs it forward with all his might, punching the wall hard enough to bruise his knuckles. A little painting of a fruit bowl falls off the wall. Connor catches it before it hits the ground and sets it on the counter.

"See?" he says. "My blood isn't explosive. If I were a clapper, this whole shop would be gone."

The old woman stares at him, and it's a hard gaze for Connor to hold—there's some sort of fire in those weary eyes. But Connor doesn't look away. "See this hunch?" she asks them. "I got it from sticking my neck out for people like you."

Connor still won't break his gaze. "Guess we came to the wrong place, then." Glancing at Risa, he says, "Let's get out of here."

He turns to leave, and the old woman swings her cane sharply and painfully across his shins. "Not so fast. It just so happens that Hannah called me, so I knew you were coming."

Risa, still bouncing the baby, lets out a frustrated breath. "You could have told us when we came in."

"What fun would that be?"

By now the sour-faced customer has made his way closer again, picking up item after item, his expression showing instant disapproval of everything in the shop.

"I have some lovely infant items in the back room," she tells them loud enough for the customer to hear. "Why don't you go back there, and wait for me?" Then she whispers, "And for God's sake, feed that baby!"

The back room is through a doorway covered by what looks like an old shower curtain. If the front room was cluttered, this place is a disaster area. Things like broken picture frames and rusty birdcages are piled all around—all the items that weren't good enough to be displayed out front. The junk of the junk.

"And you're telling me this old woman is going to help us?" says Connor. "It looks like she can't even help herself!"

"Hannah said she would. I believe her."

"How could you be raised in a state home and still trust people?"

Risa gives him a dirty look and says, "Hold this." She puts the baby in Connor's arms. It's the first time she's given it to him. It feels much lighter than he expected. Something so loud and demanding ought to be heavier. The baby's cries have weakened now—it's just about exhausted itself.

There's nothing keeping them tied to this baby anymore. They could stork it again first thing in the morning. . . . And yet the thought makes Connor uncomfortable. They don't owe this baby anything. It's theirs by stupidity, not biology. He doesn't want it, but he can't stand the thought of someone getting the baby who wants it even less than he does. His frustration begins to ferment into anger. It's the same kind of anger that always got him into trouble back home. It would cloud his judgment, making him lash out, getting into fights, cursing out teachers, or riding his skateboard wildly through busy intersections. "Why do you have to get wound so tight?" his father once asked, exasperated, and Connor had snapped back, "Maybe someone oughta unwind me." At the time, he thought he was just being funny.