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Captain Lobo had seemed less happy when three of the Trustafarians had found him behind a porta-potty and demanded their money back, waving their fake tickets in his face. When he claimed not to know who they were, they tackled him all at once, punching him in the face while he screamed and cried for help. Jonas had run away as fast as he could, ignoring the panicked yelp of his name.

Now he was lost and frightened, a haze of smoke stinging his eyes. Where had they parked the RV? He ventured into the hot sun again, searching for the flutter of Griselda's hands. His stomach growled. He hadn't eaten anything all day, unless you counted the day-old maple bar he'd had for lunch. He dreamed about calling his family—as he had a hundred times before—but he could not bear to spoil their relief. Sometimes he'd trick himself into believing they missed him, that they maybe even wanted him back, but then he would remember Dustin's face and what he'd done and how his dad or mom or brother looked at him sometimes as if they wished it were him. The truck driver had said they were probably drinking champagne.

Jonas froze. Up ahead, near the wiggly heat from a grill, several people were squatting in a circle and tending to a man who was jerking comically on the ground, his bare feet pointed like a ballerina's. A guy ran up with an Evian bottle and poured some water on the man's face. Jonas backed into a van, which came alive and touched his shoulders. A beautiful woman with tufts of hair in her armpits. He had never seen anyone with this particular deformity. Her breasts, naked under her dress, were lower than they should have been.

“It's all right,” the woman said. “Got dosed, probably. Bad news.” She looked down at Jonas's pants—his filthy, flowered jeans—and her eyes sparked with interest. “All by your lonesome today?”

Jonas nodded, worried that she might know about Captain Lobo and have him arrested. The woman's face softened. She put an arm around his shoulders and led him over to a VW bus twinkling with music. A group of people—two shirtless men with ponytails and a girl not much older than Lyle—were sitting in foldout chairs behind it. The girl was holding a baby, her top pulled down on one side so that it could suck at her breast.

“Guess what I turned up,” the woman with hairy armpits said, showing Jonas off.

One of the shirtless men opened his eyes. He seemed disappointed. There was a jean jacket draped over his lap, a skeleton smoking a cigarette painted on the back. “It's boob o'clock,” he said. “Come and get it.”

The girl with the baby didn't laugh. The other man put down the Dr Pepper he was holding and leaned forward, as if he needed two hands to steady himself. He reached up to touch the gum still tangled in Jonas's hair. Painted on his stomach, which was large and flabby, were the words
THE FAT MAN ROCKS
.

“Whoa, dude. Kid's been roading it for months.”

“Would you like a sandwich?” the girl said.

Jonas was too hungry to say no. The woman with hairy armpits opened the cooler and handed him a sandwich on crumbling brown bread: peanut butter and jelly. It tasted better than french fries.

“Dr Pepper?” she asked.

“If there's any left,” the man with the jacket said irritably.

The fat man held up his can. “This is my fourth appointment with the doctor today,” he said proudly.

“What's your favorite song?” the girl with the baby asked, ignoring them.

Jonas could not think of one. In general, music did not interest him as much as its baffling significance to people. “Mr. Frog Went A-Courtin',” he said finally. It had been his favorite song when he was a little kid, mostly due to Miss Mousie's tragic death.

“No shit,” the guy with the jacket said. “They do that?”

“Cal Expo. Eighty-four, I think. Phil pulled it out of his ass.”

“You're high, dude.”

“I've got it all right here!” the fat one said, tapping his head.

“Try, like, your own ass.”

The fat man frowned. “At least I don't have a goofy jacket,” he said quietly.

“What are you talking about?”

“All the album covers out there, and you pick
Skeletons from the Closet
?”

“What's wrong with that?”

“It's a greatest hits album!”

The guy with the jacket blushed. “I like the visuals. They're really kinetic.”

“You guys are like a broken record,” the girl said. “Blah blah blah.”

She leaned down and kissed the baby, which was smooshed against her breast but no longer sucking. She stood up slow as a grandmother and leaned into the back of the VW, laying it gingerly on a sleeping bag surrounded by pillows.

“Put her on her stomach,” the guy with the jacket said. “She sleeps better.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? She'll die of SIDS!”

The guy flicked something off his shoulder. “You're so, like, negative. It's bringing me down.”

“What's SIDS?” Jonas asked politely. He was hoping they'd offer him another sandwich or at least remember about the Dr Pepper.

“Sudden infant death syndrome,” the girl said, glaring at the guy with the jacket. “Babies stop breathing for no reason.”

“See what I mean?” the guy said unhappily.

The music was loud enough, blaring out of the bus, that Jonas wondered how anyone could sleep. But the baby seemed to be used to it. Perhaps it was deaf already. The fat man saw someone he recognized and jumped out of his chair, his stomach bouncing as he ran off. He came back, panting for breath, and explained that someone in B6 had backstage passes. The catch was he was only giving them away to girls. Excitedly, the woman with hairy armpits squatted in front of the side mirror of the bus and began to fix her hair with two hands.

“I'll take Eva along,” the other girl said.

“Are you whacked?” the fat man said. “He won't give them to us if you've got a baby.”

The girl peered nervously into the bus, her top still hanging down on one side. The sight of her naked breast depressed Jonas, as if he'd seen through a magic trick. “Don't leave the car,” she said to the guy with the jacket. “Or I swear to God.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Keep our hungry bro company,” the fat one said. “He's in need of some calories.”

The guy with the jacket protested, complaining about being stuck with Jonas, but they were already gone. The guy sat down mopily in his chair. Jonas waited for another sandwich before finally getting one out of the cooler himself. He was hoping he
would see Griselda or Major Meltdown walk by. They'd spot him from far away and then run over to meet him, smothering him the way they had that night in the van. He tried not to give in to the other fantasy, the less reasonable one, but as usual it was too glamorous to resist: his mother, clean and beautiful and smelling of cigarettes, swooping out of the crowd of grubby people to take him home.

“Man, there are some biscuits here,” the guy said, watching a girl walk by in cutoff jeans and a bikini top. He shook his head. “I'm telling you, everything changes when you have a kid. It's like maximum security. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, bro. Before the warden gets you.” He looked at his lap. “What do you think of this jacket?”

Jonas could tell he wanted him to compliment it. “It's very attractive.”

“Fucking believe it. Cost me sixty dollars. You see tons of
Shakedown Street
s. Or
American Beauty,
how obvious can you get!” He got up and leaned his head into the back of the bus, a yellowed band of underwear peeking above his jeans. He told Jonas he had to take a leak. “Don't move. Baby's out like a light, but just in case. I'll be back in five.”

Jonas watched him vanish into the labyrinth of booths. The sun was very hot. Sweating, Jonas ate his third sandwich, chewing it extra slowly in order to make it last until the man came back from the bathroom. He did not return. Jonas wondered whether he'd said he would be back
at
five, not “in.” Eventually an ambulance wailed into view, blaring its siren and nosing through the crowd. Jonas plugged his ears. People gawked at the ambulance as it passed, shambling out of its path.

The baby started to cry. Jonas poked his head inside the bus: its little limbs flailed around, jerking like a puppet's. The crying got louder and more frantic. Jonas could see all the way down its throat, its tiny uvula switching up and down. He started to worry. The baby wouldn't make any noise at all for about five or six seconds, its face darkening to a grapey purple—a screamless scream, strange and terrible and frozen—before catching its breath finally and letting one fly. It was like playing with the mute button on a TV. The screamless screams began to get longer. The baby was dying. Clearly, it couldn't breathe. If it was SIDS, the girl had not mentioned any way to stop it.

Jonas lifted the screaming baby out of the van and held it to his chest. It seemed as fragile as a kitten. Its heartbeat raced under his thumb, a spastic flutter, like something in the throes of death.

He would go find the baby's mother. She'd know what to do. B6, they'd said. Jonas scanned the parking lot for a sign before spotting one right above his head. R11. How big could the parking lot be? Even if he couldn't find the baby's mother, he was bound to run across the ambulance. Jonas rushed into the throng of people crowding the booths, hoping he was heading in the right direction. Strangers stared at him as he passed. He imagined that someone might grab the baby from him, so obvious were the symptoms of SIDS, but instead they dodged out of his way without blinking.

The baby stopped screaming, burrowing into Jonas's chest like a mole. The silence frightened him. He shook the baby, and it began to scream again. He'd read somewhere that you should keep people awake if you thought they might die. He passed a row of motorcycles; some men with long, Moses-y beards pointed at him and laughed. Jonas hurried on, the muscles in his arms beginning to burn. The baby sputtered and gasped, as if it were choking. Near the entrance to the arena, where people were waiting to get in, he saw a woman with a plastic chair strapped to her back, a baby in a floppy bonnet enthroned there like a queen. Jonas ran up to the woman, thrusting the baby in his hands at her and telling her it was sick.

The woman recoiled, reaching back to shield her daughter's face.

Jonas kept going, entering a more deserted stretch of parking lot. The baby had not stopped screaming since he'd shaken it. He was starting to wish it would hurry up and die. Breathless, he stopped at a lamppost and checked the bolted sign to see where he was: V10. He hadn't even reached the end of the alphabet. Fatigue swamped his legs, weighing them to the asphalt. He tried to recall where he'd started from. Was it R or T? He couldn't remember. The number, too, had vanished from his head. The lot stretched on forever, scattered with identical buses.

Jonas contemplated leaving the baby under someone's car. He was only a kid; who would suspect him?

He sat down next to a filthy-looking pickup truck, the heat of the asphalt oozing through his jeans. The baby's screams had gone strange and croaky. Jonas had a weird sensation. The sensa
tion was that the baby in his hands was himself. He—Jonas—had been sent from the future to dispose of it. That way he could undo his brother's accident. If the baby died, Jonas would vanish from the face of the earth. Different from dying: he would have never existed.

His family would want this to happen, if they only knew how.

Jonas settled back against the wheel of the truck, waiting for the baby to die. He closed his eyes. Beyond the dying gasps of the baby, he heard a distant sound like a roll of thunder. A roar of cheering voices. He imagined that the voices were greeting him. These were the unborn souls, the ones who'd somehow reversed themselves from existence. It wasn't until the voices swelled into music that he realized the baby had stopped screaming. It was still and damp and silent. He waited for something to happen, now that the baby was dead, but nothing presented itself.

He opened his eyes. The baby was sleeping, its tiny back moving up and down. Its fingers, balled into a fist, were clutching Jonas's shirt. The fist was no bigger than the head of a spoon. Jonas cupped a hand over the sleeping baby to shield it from the sun. It would grow up and have any life it wanted. He stood up gingerly. In the distance, gathered in front of a white tent, was a crowd of busy-looking people; Jonas headed in their direction, hoping to find the ambulance nearby.

As always, they were stuck in traffic. It was the one constant in their lives, Dustin thought—the only thing they could count on from week to week. He sat in the backseat of the Volvo with Lyle, listening to his father honk at the convertible in front of him. They were going to pick up Jonas from the police station. Some paramedics had found him at a Dead concert in Irvine, carrying a baby, and had handed him over to the cops. Dustin's relief at the news had quickly reverted into guilt. He kept thinking about the time when Jonas was four or five, suffering from night terrors, and he'd come into Dustin's room in the middle of the night, babbling about the Muzwald sitting at the foot of his bed. The Muzwald was a giant vulture with the head of an old lady and a long lizardlike tongue. It sat at the foot of Jonas's bed all night and cleaned its eyeballs with its tongue. Dustin had gone into his room to kill it with a Swiss Army knife. Entering Jonas's room, he could almost see it as well, licking its own eyes, a horrible hag that devoured children. For several weeks that winter it became a secret ritual: Dustin visiting Jonas's room with his knife, killing the monster on his bed until it returned the next evening, summoned fiendishly back to life. Night after night he sent the invisible creature to its grave. Only gradually did he realize what was really going on, that Jonas seemed disappointed when Dustin slit its throat and returned to his own room.