VAN lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, as wide awake as he’d been two hours before.
Thoughts fizzed inside of him like soda pop. His brain whirred. His toes twitched. His hearing aids lay in their nighttime spot on the table, and still his head was full of an impatient buzz.
He rolled onto his side. In the gap beneath his bedroom door, he could see a yellow band of light, which meant that his mother hadn’t yet gone to bed.
Van counted the breaths that whooshed in and out of his body. He felt the rumble of his pounding heart. He pressed a hand against Lemmy’s box, tucked under the covers beside him.
At last the yellow light winked out. The hall went dark.
Van slid out of bed. He wedged Lemmy’s box under one arm and shoved his feet into a pair of loafers. He dropped a penny into his pajama pocket. He left his hearing aids on the table. He didn’t want the distracting blur of sounds in his head tonight. He needed his eyes to be sharp and his mind to be clear.
Slowly he inched the bedroom door open. His mother’s door was shut. Van tiptoed out of his bedroom and slunk along the hallway, through the kitchen. He’d had practice at this now. He felt like an actual spy: stealthy, confident, senses honed for a secret mission. He slipped through the apartment door.
“Giovanni?” his mother’s drowsy voice called.
Van didn’t hear it.
He pattered down the stairs, across the lobby, through the big brass-handled doors, and out into the night.
The air was cool and dewy. It slid under his cuffs and into his sleeves like the water in a shallow stream. Holding Lemmy’s box tight, Van broke into a run.
In daylight, the streets around the park bustled with shops and sidewalk cafes. At night, the same streets looked abandoned. The shops were dark, with cages pulled across their windows and doors. The café chairs had been piled up and put away. There were no noisy, strolling, jostling crowds—just one boy in plaid pajamas, racing down the sidewalk.
Van slipped through the gates. It was damper and darker here inside the park. The scents of earth and water and blooming flowers wound around him with the breeze. The fear thumping in his chest began to fade.
Of course he couldn’t hear the footsteps padding through the darkness behind him.
Van hurried across the cool grass. Thorns snagged on his pajamas as he cut through a rose bed. A stem scratched his ankle, but Van didn’t look down. Collectors could be watching him at this very instant. If he was about to be grabbed by Jack and his men, at least he would make his wish first.
In the blackness over Van’s shoulder, a twig snapped.
Van didn’t hear it.
He pressed close to the basin of the fountain. Falling droplets spattered his hands. He set Lemmy’s box on the basin and lifted the lid. In the dimness, he could just make out the misty little creature craning up, sniffing at the breeze.
Van fished the penny out of his pajama pocket.
He needed this wish to come true and stay true. He needed his mother to remain in the city, and the longer the better—but not because of snooty Mr. Grey. And he needed her not to change her plans if a better job came along. Could he squeeze everything he wanted into one little wish?
Van closed his eyes. He clasped the penny so hard that its edges left dents in his palm.
I wish that my mother and I would stay here for a long time.
Van opened his eyes and threw. The penny hit the water. Now, glowing around the coin, Van could see the green-gold light of the waiting wish.
Lemmy pawed after it like a bear cub catching salmon. Its nubby fingers grabbed the glowing disk. The coin, stripped of its light, sank to the bottom of the pool, and the Wish Eater sat down in its box again, its hands wrapped around the luminous disk. It opened its mouth.
The air stilled. Everything shimmered. The wish disappeared into Lemmy’s mouth.
At the same instant, out of the corner of his eye, Van saw the bushes shiver.
A tall, dark shape—a shape dressed in a long dark coat—lurched toward him.
Van’s heart shot upward.
He crammed the lid onto Lemmy’s box. A tiny part of his brain, somewhere far in the back where panic hadn’t quite swamped everything, realized that the lid could barely close. Clutching the box, he darted away from the fountain, away from the shape in the long dark coat that was already running after him.
Van raced across the grass. He steered for the shadows, even though they could hide roots to trip on and trees to crash into and things with staring, sharp black eyes. He knew he couldn’t outrun a Collector—not a grown-up one, anyway. But maybe he could outmaneuver one.
Van lunged through a row of shrubs. A twig flicked his left eye. His vision bleared. Wincing and blinking, he stumbled onward—straight into a wrought-iron fence.
He’d reached the edge of the park. There was no time to find a gate. Pinning Lemmy’s box under one arm, Van climbed up onto the crossbars. His feet were narrow enough, and his body was light enough, that he could use the iron whorls near the top for another foothold. From there, he jumped down to the pavement on the other side.
His feet hit the sidewalk with a painful thwack. Van almost lost his grip on the box. He straightened up, his eye burning, his legs throbbing. Bushes and shadows rippled behind him. The Collector was only a few steps away.
Van lunged across the street. Maybe he could hide in an alley. Maybe he could make it around the corner and disappear before the Collector saw where he’d gone.
He pounded up onto the opposite curb. The sidewalk was deserted. No one was there to notice one small boy tearing down the street. No one was there to save him.
Behind him, he thought he heard someone shout.
But his blood was thundering in his ears, and he knew his imagination was running away with him.
His burning eye refused to stay open. Shutting it made Van lose his balance. And his good eye was behaving strangely too. He could see his reflection in the dark windows beside him, looking small and terrified—but he could have sworn his reflection was dressed in a superhero’s bodysuit, with a long black cape flying out behind. Van ventured one quick glance down at Lemmy’s box. The Wish Eater’s head was thrust out below the lid, its eyes wide, a tiny smile on its face.
Van skidded to an intersection. The cross street was a busy one. Cars zoomed past, their headlights leaving streaks on his watery vision. Without waiting for the light to change, Van plunged out into the street. He felt the whoosh of a car just behind him, and saw the glint of another car just in front of him, and then he was staggering safely onto the sidewalk.
He’d just had time to let out a breath when, through the blur and the pounding and the darkness, there came one clear, powerful scream.
Van knew that scream.
He spun around.
His mother lay beside the curb. She’d thrown a long dark coat over her silk pajamas. Coils of coppery hair spilled around her face. Her leg was bent at an impossible angle. A taxi rolled to a stop beside her, its driver’s door already swinging open. More cars slowed. People began to appear, popping out of doorways, collecting like ants around a spilled ice-cream cone.
Van inched nearer.
His mother was still screaming.
“Giovanni!”
Her voice seemed to come from very far away, even while Van tiptoed closer and closer, until finally she could reach out and grab the hem of his pajama pants. He didn’t hear the sound of the sirens until he and his mother and the box in his arms were all washed with the pulses of blue and red light.