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“Yeah, no, totally,” I say, doing a palms-up of surrender. “I’m not kicking you out. I mean…” I glance at the window. “We don’t even really, technically, in the strictest sense, have a legal right to be here. So…”

Wendy’s gaze follows mine to the front window. “So, what exactly happened?” she asks, looking back over her shoulder at me. “Like, someone did that?”

“Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t an act of God,” I deadpan. “Uh…” I don’t want to lie to her, and honestly, there’s no real reason to. In fact, fibbing and coming up with some bullshit reason that there was a brick-shaped hole smashed through our window feels like I’m disrespecting her intelligence or something, and she’s too smart for that, so…guess I have to tell her. “We have some enemies,” I say.

Wendy’s eyebrows go up, her eyes lit with a mixture of incredulity and delight. “Enemies?” she repeats.

“Yeah. Well,” I backpedal a little. “I mean, we’re not like hardened criminals, but like…” I glance around the shop. “You know, we get into stuff, and…” I scratch the back of my neck, the same way Fox does when he’s nervous. “Pan has that kind of way about him, so…He always has.” I snort, recollecting a little. “It’s kind of just part and parcel of being in the crew.”

Wendy frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, how do you think we all met?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. You went to school together or something?”

“Ha!” I say shortly. “School.” I can’t remember the last time I went to school with any kind of regularity. Ninth grade, maybe tenth. Eventually, the truancy officers just stopped bothering. Looped around the blocks a few times until they could say they tried and couldn’t find us, which was fine because it gave Fox more time to scout around for bikes and meant that I had to talk to fewer people, which was how I liked it.

“Nah,” I say. “Me and Fox met Blue and Pan when we were…” I stop myself. “You know Fox steals bikes, right?”

“What?” Wendy blinks, then shakes her head. “Well, yeah, of course.” But I can tell from her tone that she didn’t.

“Yeah, that’s how he makes money,” I say. No point in bullshitting anymore. “He’s been doing it for a while. Used to be just stealing, like, the parts that were worth money and cutting them out and selling them to shops.” I wave a hand because I never really understood how it worked. “But then the guys at the shops would start sending him looking for specific stuff, and he would know where to find it and pick it up. And I was a pretty good lookout, so we’d kind of tag team it. And then one day, we tried to steal this bike that wasn’t ours.”

“Well, duh,” Wendy interrupts.

“I mean, all stealing is something that isn’t yours, right?” I say. “Fair point. I just meant it was Pan’s, and he was not happy. But then we kind of explained what we did, and when he realized that Fox could help him upgrade what he had, the tune kind of changed. Then he said he had a place where we could crash while we were working on the bike. Well, while Fox was, and I was, I don’t know, drawing shit. And the rest is history, I guess.”

Wendy thinks a minute. “Where were you before that?”

“What do you mean?” I say. “We were here.” I gesture vaguely around at London Valley, surrounding us. “I don’t remember what exact neighborhood.”

“No, like, where did you live?” Wendy says. “Where did you sleep?”

“Oh, wherever,” I say. “Like, parks were good. Or an overpass sometimes if it rained, but it doesn’t rain much. You could hang out at a library during the day.”

“You were homeless,” Wendy says.

I suck in air. “Yeah,” I say, “we were homeless.” I shrug. “Shitty luck. But we didn’t stay that way. Now we’re…” I once again sweep an arm around the shop floor of Neverland. “Here.”

Wendy plops onto another one of the rolling stools—Blue’s, I notice, and hope that he won’t come down and see her there. She kicks her heels. “So that’s who did that to the window,” she says. “Someone whose bike you stole. I mean, Fox stole.”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, we don’t think so. Am I correct? Probably was…” I run a hand through my hair. “So you know when you and Fox and me were watching movies that one night? There were all these people here?”

“Yeah,” Wendy says, a little hesitant.

“That was a poker game,” I say, “down here, that Pan was running. And you’re not really supposed to do that because, I don’t know, there’s legal regulations for one thing.” I brush that off. “But then there’s also, you know, the guys who run the casinos.”

At that, Wendy stops her swiveling. “Uh-huh,” she says.

I pause for a moment. Oh, right. I almost forgot I was the one telling the story. “So, as far as I understand it, those guys in charge, well, they like making money, and that’s kind of what casinos are designed to do. So, they find out someone’s making money off of casino stuff who doesn’t work for them, and they’re like, jealous, basically.”

“So…so they try to stop you,” Wendy says.

“Basically,” I say. “I mean, not in so many words, as you can tell. But…”

“But how did they find out?” Wendy says. “How did they know to come here?”

Suddenly, something clicks in my mind. She’s not just asking normal, curious kid questions. She’s probing, testing, trying to see if she’s not just welcome here, but safe. And Jesus, I have really not been painting a good picture for her, have I?