OLD KIDS PRETENDING

There was no catching Peaches. On his best day Perry wasn’t the fastest runner, and nobody could keep up with Peaches at full speed. He watched her recede into the distance, keeping pace with the cars rushing along the avenue.

“We gotta find her,” Brendy said.

“What…? What just happened?” Perry’s voice sounded thin and childish in his own ears. An awful fluttering sensation had lodged in the center of his chest. He tried to rewind the scene and replay every word Peaches had said before fleeing.

They stole my daddy’s letter, Perry. They stole my daddy’s letter to me.

Peaches had never mentioned a mother or a father. She lived alone in her house save for whatever stray animals she’d taken in at the time. Six or seven dogs, five or six cats, countless geckos, chickens, and some time ago her great white horse, Alphonse, had come to stay.

But of course Peaches had parents. Everyone did. So where were they? Perry had heard of orphans who’d lost both parents in the Storm, but if her folks had been taken from her, how was Peaches still getting letters from her daddy? Or… or was that why they’d gone to the boneyard? Was Peaches’s daddy writing letters from… from the Other Side? The thought wrinkled Perry’s forehead.

Brendy was still yapping at him, pulling at his blue striped polo. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. This is what we gonna do…”

“What?” she said. “What?”

“She gotta come home sometime, right?” Perry said. “She gotta come back to her house. Them animals need feeding, and she… and she needs somewhere safe to rest. So… so we’ll go there and wait.”

Brendy let go of her brother’s shirt and just looked up at him. He couldn’t read her expression. “But… is she okay?”

“I don’t know,” Perry said. “If she ain’t, we’ll help her. That’s what we do.”

“She was crying,” Brendy said. “Peaches don’t cry.”

“Listen, Brendy,” Perry said. “Maybe… maybe you and me think some things about Peaches that ain’t necessarily so.”

Peaches was strong. There was no doubt about it. One time, Perry and Peaches were walking home from Hansen’s Sno-Bliz, just the two of them. Brendy had been sick with the flu that week, so she couldn’t come run the streets as they normally did on weekends and after school.

After missing the Tchoupitoulas sky trolley, Perry and Peaches had waited and waited for another. In the end, they’d decided to walk and set out, unhurried, sure they could catch the next car a stop or two up. Of course, things hadn’t worked out that way. Anytime they took a particular path somewhere, they never went the same way back.

Tchoupitoulas was quiet, especially for a Saturday, but there was no mystery as to why. Before they’d even left the house, Perry’s father warned them to watch out for graffiti. “WWL’s Paint Report says it’s pretty heavy up there,” he’d said. “I’m sure I don’t have to warn you to steer clear.”

“We will, Mr. Junior,” Peaches said, wide-eyed and sincere.

Perry’s father suppressed a scowl. Peaches insisted on calling him “Mr. Junior” instead of Mr. Graves.

“Well, ‘Mistuh Graves’ your grandaddy name,” Peaches had explained once, when Brendy asked her why.

“No, it ain’t,” Brendy said. “His name is Daddy Deke.”

“Yeah, but people who don’t know him call him Mr. Graves outta respect.”

“I guess…” Perry had conceded.

“So there you go. That’s his name. And your daddy’s name is Mr. Junior cuz he Deacon S. Graves Junior. Besides. He likes it.”

“He does not.”

“Yeah, he do,” Peaches said. “He just don’t know it. He likes having a name only I call him.”

“… And don’t dillydally,” Perry’s father had warned. “I don’t want you running into any P-bodies.”

Perry shivered. Paintbodies. They weren’t any more dangerous than zombies, but they were far more disruptive—snarling traffic and strewing trash with their unending parades.

Of course, graffiti tags were the scourge of Nolan drivers. Since the Storm, somebody had figured out a way to paint graffiti not just on surfaces but onto the very air, and their loudly colored signatures, figures, and stylized mottoes would drift on the breeze for days and days until they either were cleared away by the city or faded away on their own. Or that is, they would, if it weren’t for P-bodies.

Perry had learned both at home and in school that it was best to steer clear of graffiti. If a person were to walk through a tag, he’d find himself disoriented and dizzy, an unpleasant tingling sensation rolling through him in waves until the graffiti sickness passed. Perry himself had seen a man walk through a tag and begin vomiting flower petals. Folks in Nola referred to that nasty business as the Color Rushes.

But some people actually liked the feeling they got from walking through tags, the weird things that happened to them inside and out—so much so that they cared for nothing else. They forgot all about their wives, their children, their friends, their jobs, instead wandering into parades searching, night and day, for more tags. And after one walked through enough tags, certain permanent effects began to set in, and a person became a P-body.

By the time they reached Valence Street, passing at least five tags along the way, Perry and Peaches had lost interest in the trolley. One passed overhead, humming softly to itself, and they ignored it. Once they’d crossed the street, Peaches stopped, hands on her hips, and cocked her head. “I smell ’em,” she said. “Nasty.”

“Who?” Perry asked. “Uptownaz?”

Peaches shook her head. “Gangbangers smell like weed and too much cologne.”

But by now he smelled them, too. Their rich and complex stench—Perry detected notes of armpit, booze, tobacco, and urine—preceded them by several blocks, at least. It must have done, because Perry heard no music or shouting.

“I wanna watch,” Peaches said suddenly.

“What?” Perry asked.

“I wanna watch ’em pass.”

“Watch them—? Why would you do that?” Perry asked. “How would you do that? They’ll trample anything in their way. Even you.”

“You know the safaris in City Park? You know how they set up them things—them hidey places—so they can watch the ducks and the kites and the giraffes and shoot at ’em without the animals knowing?”

“… Yeah.”

“I can make one right here on the street, and they won’t be able to get at us.”

“You want to make a blind?” Perry said. “We don’t have time. Just gathering the sticks and grass would take—”

“Don’t need no sticks. Or grass,” Peaches said. “This ain’t the park. We gotta blend in.”

“How?”

“Wait here,” Peaches said. “I be back directly.”

Excited by her own genius, Peaches twirled away, half jogging, half dancing up Valence Street. She stopped at the first car she came to, a little red hatchback parked on the curb at Valence and Annunciation. She cupped her hands around her eyes and leaned in to stare through the tinted windows. Satisfied, she knelt down and rolled the car onto her back.

Perry’s mouth went dry. This was hardly the first time he’d seen Peaches do something a girl her size shouldn’t have been capable of, but this was by far the heaviest thing he’d seen her lift. She stooped slightly, but from the way she positioned herself, wobbling a little, taking one or two running steps in one direction, then another, he realized that it wasn’t the weight that bothered her, it was balancing the car on her back. She seemed to find a grip that worked for her and jogged toward Perry with her prize.

“Isn’t that somebody’s car?” he asked.

She let it fall right at the corner, bouncing a little on its tires. Its rusty red butt pointed toward the river. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This old thing ain’t been driven since the Storm. After the parade, I put it right back where I found it.”

“How does this help?” Perry asked. He could hear the parade now, the horns and drums, and the off-key singing of the marching P-bodies. They’d be in sight before long.

“This our— What you called it?”

“A blind?”

“Right. This our blind,” Peaches said. “I show you.”

She tried to open the front passenger-side door and failed. She sucked her teeth, then pulled the handle again. The door came open with a crunchy sound of protest. She reached in, grabbed the top of the backseat, and pulled it down. “Get in!”

Perry hesitated, then climbed into the car. Its interior smelled as moldy as the rotten old newspapers in Peaches’s house, but all in all, it wasn’t so bad. For one thing, he was pretty cozy in here, lying on his belly, getting dust all over his clothes. He heard a skittering sound and wondered if there were waterbugs or spiders in here.

That thought skated right out of Perry’s mind as Peaches climbed in next to him. Her smell filled the enclosure, earthy, a little dark, slightly stronger than she’d ever smelled before. “You smell…” Perry said.

“Shh!” Peaches said. Then, “You mean I stink?” she whispered.

“No. Not bad. Like… I smell you, though. You smell like outside and like… I don’t know.”

“It bother you?”

“No, it— Don’t worry about it.”

“I swum yesterday.”

“Yeah. You don’t smell bad. It’s just… you don’t smell like you used to.”

“Hush,” she said, then licked the pinky side of her fist. She reached up and rubbed the dusty back window of the car, letting the daylight shine through the clean space. “When they get real loud, we be able to look at ’em through there.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“What?”

“Pick up a car,” Perry said. “I didn’t know you could pick up a car.”

“It’s just a car. A itty-bitty one.”

“Yeah, but—how come you so strong, anyway?”

“Why you always gotta be axin’ questions all the time?” she said. “We supposed to be quiet.”

“Spider-Man got bit by a spider, and Superman crash-landed. How come you’re so much stronger than normal folks?”

Peaches made a rude noise. “There ain’t no such thing as normal people. Anybody pay attention to anything know that.”

“But you’re really strong.”

“Perry. You ever try to pick up a car?”

“… No.”

“Then how you know you can’t?”

He had no response to that.

“You know what your problem is? When a grown-up tell you something can’t be done, you just believe ’em. Don’t you know there ain’t even no such thing as grown-ups?”

“What?”

“There ain’t,” she said. “They’s all just old kids, pretending. Now, keep quiet.”

Perry did as she asked, but what Peaches had told him made his head hurt. He knew she was at least as smart as he was, but sometimes the things she said made no sense. No such thing as…? Old kids pretending…? That couldn’t be true. Grown-ups were grown up. They knew what they were doing. The city—the world—couldn’t just clatter along with nobody in charge. If Perry’s father was just an old kid, then how could he be so good at math? Perry had seen the man make instant calculations—adding up how much things cost, how much money to tip in a restaurant—that Perry felt he’d, at the very least, need pencil and paper for until the day he died.

They could hear the music now. It sounded like jazz if jazz could be played… sideways. All the notes seemed stretched into the wrong shapes. The horns, the piano, and even the beat of the drums. The sound made Perry’s skin cling tight to his bones, and little cat feet of terror walked across his back. They shouldn’t be here, and Perry had no idea how, when the time came, he would find the courage to look.

“It’s okay,” Peaches whispered.

Perry tried to believe her.

After a few beats, Peaches lifted herself on her elbows. “Aw. Aw, man,” she said.

Perry wavered a bit, then levered himself up to look.

He’d heard all about the P-bodies before, but never from anyone who’d actually seen them up close. Everyone in Nola knew it was best to make yourself scarce when the P-bodies were on the march. Well, they were always on the march, but there were only a few krewes, so it was easy enough to steer clear.

Perry had always imagined them as inhuman monsters, wizened and made ugly by the effects of the paint, but they looked healthier than he expected. Somehow he’d also imagined them as naked—and in the large mass of them, Perry thought he saw maybe one or two naked ones, sunburned and paint-streaked—but most of them wore costumes cobbled together from common household items, ordinary street clothes, and the kind of novelty masks you could find in any of the tourist shops on Decatur or Canal. All their costumes were spattered with layers upon layers of paint. Some of their coloring was so thick, so caked on, that it actually did make them look inhuman—but Perry could tell those were the very oldest P-bodies, who had been marching the longest. Many of them wore feather boas and beads, and they danced along without rhythm—their movements didn’t even match the bizarre sideways jazz that surrounded them. They herked and jerked like chickens, turning or swaying their heads without ever taking their eyes off the nearest graffiti tag. One of them reared back his head and belched a plume of purple fire into the air above him.

One tag had blown up onto the sidewalk and was so badly slanted that Perry was unable to read it from here. Its edges had frayed with age, but it must still be a pretty good one. The lettering was no one color. Instead, it was a confusion of blue, orange, green, and pink, constantly shifting between hues.

Three P-bodies walking in the front reached the tag. They started jostling each other, fighting for space. Each one wanted to be the only person to walk through the graffiti, but all three made it. The paint clung to their clothes, and they seemed to blur, melding with the floating colors, until they snapped back into focus, more vivid now, realer than real, as if, while the world around them was 3D, they had an extra dimension. They howled like apes. The one on the right shook his head, and multicolored confetti poured from his ears. The one on the left grinned an impossibly large grin, and his teeth had become piano keys. Glowing pinwheels appeared in the middle one’s eyes, and he staggered, drunk on magic, tripping up his companions, who elbowed him in their irritation.

Perry’s scalp tingled. He ducked down again, shaking.

“I can’t see any more,” he said. “It’s too—! It’s crazy.”

Once the parade had passed and the day had regained its eerie stillness, Perry and Peaches climbed out of the car. Perry’s muscles ached from clenching, and his sweat smelled worse than usual. He felt weak—like a shadow of himself.

“Why did we do that?”

He hadn’t asked Peaches, but she answered anyway. “We needed to see. We needed to know.”

“Why?” Perry asked.

“We gotta know everything we can find out about the city, Perry. It’s important.”

She watched him, but Perry found it impossible to return her gaze. Peaches reached out and touched his chin lightly, tipping Perry’s face to meet hers. “Your parents, Daddy Deke, your whole family… do they ever talk about why things in Nola is the way they is? The zombies, the haints, the trees growing Mardi Gras beads?”

“… No.”

“I really did sail the Seven Seas,” Peaches said. “And even if I hadn’t, I seen the TV. There ain’t no place like Nola. Not in all the world.”

Perry knew there was nowhere else like his city, but he’d never been anywhere to know for sure. Still, Peaches’s words struck a chord with him—and not just because she told the truth. He was only dimly aware of it, but her vehemence, her strength, helped him see clearer, stand taller. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you right.”

Peaches spoke slowly now, choosing her words with great care. “Perry, Nola is different because Nola is important. We have to know everything about it because we need to be able to protect the city when the time comes.”

“What time?”

“The time. The time that always comes.”

“What do we gotta protect it from?”

“Ioknow, Perry, but you know I’m right. Anyplace, anything this important, somebody always try to mess with it sooner or later. And I don’t love nothing or nobody like I love this city, ya heard me?”

It’s you I love, Perry wanted to say. But the words were too big. They couldn’t fit through his throat.

“Okay,” she said. “I put the car back now.”

Still unable to speak, Perry just nodded.

“You done good, baby,” she said. “Thank you for that.”

Perry and Brendy walked in silence. At first they’d planned to catch a skycar, head back uptown, but no trolley cast its shadow across their path.

It wasn’t that unusual. The cars ran on their own unpredictable schedule. Most times, you could catch one every ten minutes or so, but other times an hour, two hours might pass with none to be had. One day, thinking of Peaches’s warning that they needed to know everything they could about the city, Perry had called the phone number for the Ride Line posted at all the stops. The phone had clicked, someone picked up and yelled into the receiver, “Hey dere, baby! Didda wah didda, wahdidda, doo!”

“Hello?” Perry said. “This the Ride Line?”

“Hey dere, baby. Hey! Heyyyyy! Didda—!”

Perry had hung up and never called again.

Now Perry and Brendy had reached the 610 overpass. Perry intended to head over to North Broad and see if they could catch a car there. If not, he’d see what he could do about a taxi. He had only a few dollars on him, but he had a stash of dollar bills and quarters in his bedroom at home that would probably cover the expense.

Perry felt a tug on his arm and realized that Brendy had stopped walking. He turned. “Hey—” he began, but Brendy just pointed.

Perry turned back to see what had stopped his sister in her tracks. A familiar shadow lay on the street, darker than the shadow of the overpass rumbling above them. Even before he smelled the cigar smoke and alcohol, Perry knew what would happen next.

Doctor Professor’s piano resolved into view, and the spirit himself followed close behind.

Perry had already been sweating from the summer heat, but now he was aware of it. He stood rooted, staring, just watching as the Doctor turned to look at him through his big dark glasses. He was dressed differently from the way he had been last night. Today he wore a black fur hat like a Russian in a spy movie, and instead of the purple suit he wore a blue-gray shirt with Boy Scout patches sewn onto the shoulders and a pair of matching slacks. He seemed thinner than he’d been last night as well, and—Perry noticed it all at once—he wasn’t playing a note.

Hey, now, said the ghost. His mouth didn’t move, but Perry heard his hoarse half croak even more clearly than he would have if it had sounded on the air.

This is it, Perry thought. This is what Peaches was talking about. He looked all around, as if he’d find her hiding in plain sight.

It’s you I’m talking at, baby. You and the lil girl. What y’all names is?

Brendy let go Perry’s hand, and before he could hold her back, his baby sister stepped forward and curtsied. “My name Brendolyn Eunice Graves.”

Graves, Doctor Professor said. Uptown Graveses?

“Yessir.”

Thass a good family, baby. He laughed softly to himself, nodded. And you? What your name is, little man?

“Puh-Perry. Perry Graves.”

Think I knowed some of y’all’s kin when I come up dancin’ in the clubs. Where your friend at?

“You mean Peaches?” Brendy asked. “We don’t know. She runned off.”

“Brendy,” Perry said. He had begun to recover himself. “Sir, Peaches had to—she’s not with us right this minute, but if you need us to—if you need us to deliver a message, we’re her closest friends. We can—we can make sure she hears what you have to say.”

Word for word, baby. Every one.

“Verbatim, sir,” Perry said. “I’ve got an excellent memory.”

Come closer, Doctor Professor said. I got a lot to say, and ain’t no reason to sit here in the way of traffic while I says it.

Brendy crossed to him immediately. Perry wavered for a beat. It was as if his legs belonged to someone else. He wondered idly what Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth would think of all this. Milo wouldn’t question it. Milo would move right along, his boredom giving way to wonder. That thought comforted Perry enough to lift his paralysis, and he went to stand beside the piano.

Up close, he noticed a strange electrical hum—almost like the sound you hear when a guitar is plugged into an amplifier, before the player strikes the first chord.

Thass magic, baby, pure and simple.

“What magic?” Brendy asked.

Jazz, baby, said the ghost. Potentest sorcery in all of Nola. Y’all ready now?

“Nuh-no,” Perry said before he could stop himself. “But… but let’s go.”

Put your hands on Mess Around. Touch her anywhere you want.

Perry and Brendy did as they were told. The glittery gold wasn’t just paint—it was a crust, built up from countless celebrations.

Don’t let go, now. Not till we get where we goin’, ya heard me?

Perry just nodded, having lost his voice again.

“Right,” Doctor Professor said aloud, and began to play.

Perry watched the keys as the old man struck the chords. He played hard—Perry had always known it, but his own piano lessons told him something else. He’d heard others play the Doctor’s songs, but coming from their hands, the notes always seemed to be missing something. Now Perry understood, a little, what made Fess’s playing so powerful: He struck the major and the minor chords at the same time and played a heavy walk-up from one chord to the next, trotting his fingers along the keys. It was more than that, though. Somehow, at the same time, he was playing the bass, the horns, and the drums as well.

He seemed to start the song in the middle, but Perry couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t one he’d heard before.

So long!

So long!

So long…!

This time Perry’s legs didn’t feel compelled to dance, but his body moved anyway, swaying awkwardly, keeping time, as he kept his hand pressed against the Mess Around.

Seeeeee you later after while!

The song ended with a flourish, and Perry blinked, amazed. “Where we—? What?” he asked.

“We here, baby,” Doctor Professor said.

But Perry wasn’t sure where “here” was. They were on a stage in what looked like an enormous nightclub. There seemed to be no ceiling—or the ceiling was painted to look like a vast starscape, with nebulae, constellations, and even comets moving through the black. The stars seemed so near that Perry felt they could fall at any moment, descending to burn the dance floor.

“… It’s empty,” Perry said.

“Ain’t empty,” Doctor Professor corrected him. “All the greats is here. They playing right now. Buddy Bolden blowing a solo like you wouldn’t believe. But that music ain’t for living ears.”

“Like in the boneyard?” Perry said. “The music for the dead?”

Fess shook his head. “That music for the earthbound. The dead who ain’t climbed up the Ladder. This here—it’s the Music of All. The Jazz Beyond Jazz. Thass why you cain’t hear it or see it played.”

“You talking like people now,” Brendy said.

“It’s the magic,” said the Doctor. “It gets good to me when I’m out and about, and if I open my mouth, I gotta sing. Songs is powerful and wild, so they gots to be used a certain way. So I speaks without speaking, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Perry said. He didn’t want to, either.

The Doctor eyed him. “You got talent in spades, baby, but I ain’t so sure music what you talented for.”

Perry opened his mouth, but words had left him again.

Doctor Professor rose from the piano and gestured. A drink appeared in his hand. He took a quiet sip and grunted his approval. “Now, listen,” he said. “We ain’t got a lot of time. I brung you here because I need y’all’s help. Y’all know what the Great Powers is?”

“That’s the City Musicians,” Brendy said.

“Magicians,” Perry corrected.

“You both right, baby. Magic and music the same thing. Music is what keep Nola hummin’. It’s what makes her the city she is. Now, them Great Powers, they all under me. I keep ’em in line, and I keep ’em from fighting amongst theyselves. It ain’t because I’m better than they is, or because I play better. It’s because I been tasked from On High to power the city. I composed thirty-two songs to keep everything running, and them songs is awake and aware. The most powerful ones got they own personalities. They likes and dislikes. ‘Tipsy Tina,’ ‘Walk Dem Blues,’ ‘First Chief,’ ‘Curly Girly,’ ‘Mean Ole World,’ ‘Ballhead Betty,’ ‘Jailbird Stomp,’ and ‘Cain’t Get Right Blues.’ Them eight is the most powerful, and I uses ’em to keep thangs in line. But they been stole, baby.”

“Stolen?” Brendy said. “How do you steal a song?”

“Can’t be done outright,” Doctor Professor said. “First, you gots to make it think it’s something else. Something finite. Then you gots to trick it, on account of you can’t tell a song what to do. A song do what it wanna. Somebody figured out how to do that and made off with nine of my babies.”

“Who?” Perry asked. “Who took them?”

“That’s the thing right there,” Fess said. “Even if I knew, there ain’t much I could do bout it. Not directly. I am alive, and I exist, but I don’t exist the same as you. Everyone and everything abide by certain laws, and the law says my interaction with the physical world got to be a certain way. That’s what I need y’all for.”

“You want us to find out who has them?” Brendy asked.

“Don’t nobody has ’em,” Fess said. “Them songs can’t be held. It don’t make no difference who took ’em, neither, because can’t nobody do with ’em what I can do. I need you and your friend to bring them songs back to me so I can keep the city hummin’.”

Doctor Professor fell silent, letting the information sink in.

Perry’s mind raced. He could feel his thoughts jostling to make room for the new information. He looked at his shoes, frowning. I’m here right now, he thought. Me. This is happening. He wondered how many kids—how many human beings—had stood where he stood at this moment. He spoke again, slowly, piecing the words together as they came to him. “I… I seen one. I saw one just today.”

“What?” Brendy asked. “Where?”

“You did, too,” he said. “On Elysian Fields. The crazy lady marching down the street? That was no lady. That was a song.”

Doctor Professor nodded. “You got it, baby. Susan Brown,” he said. “She the walkinest girl in town.”

“Yeah,” Perry said, warming to the idea. “That’s right. ‘Walk Dem Blues.’”

“Seems to me, I picked the right man for the job.”

“You picked Peaches,” Perry said without thinking. “All we can do is help. But I have a question.”

“What you wanna know?”

“You said nine of your songs were stolen, but you only listed eight names,” Perry said. “Who the other one is?”

A shadow passed across Doctor Professor’s expression, but it was gone so quickly that Perry thought he must have imagined it. “Thass a little test for you, baby. You said you got a memory for words. I threw that in to see if you notice.”

Perry did his best to school his expression. “I’ll talk to Peaches directly, see if she’ll take your quest.”

“She’ll do it,” Brendy said brightly. “Us and Peaches, we like this!” She showed the Doctor two crossed fingers, then considered and added a third.

It was raining when they returned to the world, and Jackson Avenue was empty of traffic. Perry and Brendy stood with both hands against the Mess Around as Doctor Professor played and sang:

Mama was a seamstress

She sewed me my blue jeans

My daddy, he was a gamblin’ man

Down there in New Orleans—

Yes he was…!

Fess kept singing and spoke at the exact same time. “Now, let go, baby. Doctor Professor got places to be.”

Thunder cracked overhead, but it seemed to matter as little as the rain that soaked Perry’s body and clothes. It was a warm rain, the kind you could dance and play in without catching cold. Doctor Professor didn’t seem to notice the rain at all, and as Perry watched the elderly man, he realized that none of the drops touched him or his piano. Maybe for the Doctor the weather didn’t exist at all.

He’s just as real as we are, Perry thought, but he’s a different kind of real. It was like the old folks said at church. Doctor Professor was in the world, but he was not of the world.

The first time he tried, Perry couldn’t let go of the piano. His hips shook from side to side, and he knew he looked silly, but his body didn’t care. With an extreme effort of will, he commanded his hands to release, then pulled Brendy away.

“Sorry bout that, y’all,” Fess said. He’d already begun to fade away. “Ain’t used to no passengers.”

“That’s okay!” Perry shouted over the music.

“See y’all later, then,” said the Doctor as he segued right into another song.

Gee, but it’s hard to love someone

When she don’t love you-u-u-u-u…!

And then he disappeared.

Perry leaned on his knees, thunderstruck. The music still rang in his blood, and he didn’t think it would ever fully leave him. He wondered dimly what that meant. He cared a little more about the rain now, but only a little.

“Come on, baby,” Brendy said. “Walk it out, walk it out, walk it out!”

“What?” Perry straightened.

Brendy held her wet face up to him, beaming as if in sunlight. “I feel it, too,” she said. “But you and me, we got work.”

“Work,” Perry said. “Right. Okay. We’ll check in at home, then we’ll go find Peaches.” He held his sister’s hand as they crossed the front lawn.

Before Perry could reach out to touch it, the doorknob turned in its collar, and the front door flew open. Their mother stood there, her face a mask of worry. “You’re back?” she said. “Is Daddy Deke with you?”

“Daddy—?” Brendy started.

“What?” Perry asked. “No. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Yvette?” Perry’s father called from deeper in the house. “Is that them? Is he with them?”

His mother turned, swaying a little on her feet as if she couldn’t decide which way to face. “No, it’s—it’s just the kids.”

Their father stepped out of the kitchen. “Inside,” he barked. “Now.”

“They haven’t done anything wrong, Deacon.”

“Neither of you are going anywhere until further notice. You kids just go wherever whenever, and—and—!”

“What did we do?” Brendy asked. “Did we do—?”

Perry cut her off. “Please. What’s going on? Why is everybody so upset?”

Their father paused. Something about the way the light of the house shone behind him made him seem smaller than he should. He pressed his hands against his face, and fear soured Perry’s belly as he realized their father was fighting for calm.

“Police came by this afternoon,” their mother said, her voice flat. “They found Daddy Deke’s car, still running, sitting empty at the light at St. Charles and Washington. They think… they think because he’s old, he got confused and just… just wandered off.”

“Know-nothing sons of—!” Perry’s father began, then caught himself. “There’s nothing wrong with his mind.”

Perry felt the inverse of that same feeling he’d experienced when he realized he had seen Susan Brown marching down the street. It was as if he stood at one point in his life, looking across a gap in the minutes to see another point from a new perspective.

“No,” he said.

“Perry,” his mother said.

“No—listen to me!—somebody took him. Someone has taken Daddy Deke.”

Now the rolling thunder overhead and the noise of rain hitting the roof mattered much more than they had before. It seemed to Perry that they were the only things in the world.