"Oh, you're sane, Fry. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane."

Lev thinks for a while. He wants to give Cyrus a real answer, not just something that chases away the question. "I'm staying," Lev says slowly, "because someone has to witness what happens in Joplin. Someone's got to understand why you did it. Whatever it is."

"Yeah," says CyFi. "I need a witness. That's it."

“You're like a salmon swimming upstream," Lev offers. "It's inside you to do it. And it's inside me to help you get there."

"Salmon." Cy looks thoughtful. "I once saw this poster about a salmon. It was jumping up this waterfall, see? But there was a bear at the top, and the fish, it was jumping right into the bear's mouth. The caption beneath— it was supposed to be funny—said, The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly. "

"There's no bear in Joplin," Lev tells him. He doesn't try to cheer Cy up with any more analogies, because Cy's so smart, he can find a way to make anything sound bad. One hundred and  thirty IQ points all focused on cooking up doom. Lev can't hope to compete with that.

The days go by, mile by mile, town by town, until the afternoon they pass a sign that says, NOW ENTERING JOPLIN POPULATION 45,504.

_{30 Cy-Ty}

There is no peace in CyFi's his head. The Fry doesn't know-how bad it is. The Fry doesn't know how the feelings crash over him like storm-driven waves pounding a failing seawall. The wall is going to collapse soon, and when it does, Cy will lose it. He'll lose everything. His mind will spill out of his ears and down the drains of the streets of Joplin. He knows it.

Then he sees the sign. NOW ENTERING JOPLIN. His heart is his own, but it pounds in his chest, threatening to burst—and wouldn't that be a fine thing? They'd rush him to a hospital, give him someone else's ticker, and he'd have that kid to deal with too.

This boy in the corner of his head doesn't talk to him in words. He feels. He emotes. He doesn't understand that he's only a part of another kid. It's like how in a dream you know some things, and other things you should know, but you don't. This kid—he knows where he is, but he doesn't know he's not all here. He doesn't know he's part of someone else now. He keeps looking for things in Cyrus's head that just aren't there. Memories. Connections. He keeps looking for words, but Cyrus's brain codes words differently. And so the kid hurls out anger. Terror. Grief. Waves pounding the wall, and beneath it all, there's a current tugging Cy forward. Something must be done here.   Only the kid knows what it is.

"Would it help to have a map?" asks the Fry. The question gets Cy mad. "Map won't help me," he says. "I need to see stuff. I need to be places. A map is just a map. It ain't being there."

They stand at a corner on the outskirts of Joplin. It's like divining for water. Nothing looks familiar. "He doesn't know this place," Cy says. "Let's try another street."

Block after block, intersection after intersection, it's the same. Nothing. Joplin is a small town, but not so small that a person could know all of it. Then, at last they get to a main street. There are shops and restaurants up and down the road. It's just like any other town this size, but—

"Wait!"

"What is it?"

"He knows this street," says Cy. "There! That ice cream shop. I can taste pumpkin ice cream. I hate pumpkin ice cream."

"I'll bet he didn't."

Cyrus nods. "It was his favorite. The loser." He points a finger at the ice cream shop and slowly swings his arm to the left. "He comes walking from that direction. . . ." He swings his arm to the right. "And when he's done, he goes that way."

"So, do we track where he comes from, or where he goes?"

Cy chooses to go left but finds himself at Joplin High, home of the Eagles. He gets an image of a sword, and instantly knows. "Fencing. The kid was on the fencing team here."

"Swords are shiny," the Fry notes. Cy would throw him a dirty look if he weren't right on target. Swords are, indeed, shiny. He wonders if the kid ever stole swords, and realizes that, yes, he probably did. Stealing the swords of opposing teams is a time-honored tradition of fencing.

"This way," says the Fry, taking the lead. "He must have gone from school, to the ice cream shop, to home. Home is where we're going, right?"

The answer comes to Cy as an urge deep in his brain that shoots straight to his gut. Salmon? More like a swordfish Misting on a line, and that line is pulling him relentlessly toward . . . "Home," says Cy. "Right."

It's twilight now. Kids are out in the street; half the cars have headlights on. As far as anyone knows, they're just two neighborhood kids, headed wherever neighborhood kids go. No one seems to notice them. But there's a police car a block away. It was parked, but now it begins moving.

They pass the ice cream parlor, and as they do, Cyrus can feel the change inside him. It's in his walk, and in the way he holds himself. It's in all the tension points of his face: They're changing. His eyebrows lower, his jaw opens slightly. I'm not myself. That other kid is taking over. Should Cy let it happen, or should he fight it? But he knows it's already past the point of fighting. The only way to finish this is to let it happen.

"Cy," says the kid next to him.

Cy looks at him, and although part of him knows it's just Lev, another part of him panics. He instantly knows why. He closes his eyes for a moment and tries to convince the kid in his head that the Fry is a friend, not a threat. The kid seems to get it, and his panic drops a notch.

Cy reaches a corner and turns left like he's done it a hundred times. The rest of him shudders as he tries to keep up with his determined temporal lobe. Now a feeling comes on him. Nervous, annoyed. He knows he must find a way to translate it into words.

"I'm gonna be late. They're gonna be so mad. They're always so mad."

"Late for what?"

"Dinner. They gotta eat it right on time, or I get hell for it. They could eat it without me, but they won't. They don't. They just stew. And the food goes cold. And it's my fault, my fault, always my fault. So I gotta sit there and they ask me how was my day? Fine. What did I learn? Nothing. What did I do wrong this time? Everything." It's not his voice. It's his vocal chords, but it's not his voice coming out of them. Same tones, but different inflections. A different accent. Like the way he might have talked if he came from Joplin, home of the Eagles.

As they turn another corner, Cy catches sight of that cop car again. It's behind them, following slowly. No mistake about it: It's following. And that's not all. There's another police car up ahead, but that one's just waiting in front of a house. His house. My house. Cy is the salmon after all, and that police car is the bear. But even so, he can't stop. He's got to get to that house or die trying.

As he nears the front walk, two men get out of a familiar Toyota parked across the street. It's the dads. They look at him, relief in their faces, but also pain. So they knew where he was coming. They must have known all along.

"Cyrus," one of them calls. He wants to run to them. He wants them to just take him home, but he stops himself. He can't go home. Not yet. They both stride toward him, getting in his path, but smart enough not to get in his face.

"I gotta do this," he says in a voice he knows isn't his at all.