I didn't say anything, just looked out the window. I could feel Teddy staring. Wanting me to agree.

"He was talking about break-ins and all," Teddy said, his voice loud now and awkward. "I don't know. It's like he's maybe pushing for something more. When we get back from Alaska."

I stared ahead, the intersection glowing pale yellow from a streetlight, the roads leading into it all lost in shadows. "Like what?" I asked.

"I don't know. He was just talking. All quiet like he gets. Taping M-8os to this toaster. He unscrewed the back of this TV. You should have seen that TV go."

"What was he saying, though?"

"Like, I don't know," Teddy said, turning the radio up slightly. "I love this song."

"Come on, Teddy," I said.

"Just more, you know? When we're in the house. Things he's thinking about for when we get back from Alaska. I don't know. He blew up an old wooden mailbox. It caught fire."

I sat in the car, staring at the shadows beyond the intersection. I knew Will Wilson was making decisions. Will Wilson was thinking, wishing.

Will Wilson was getting bored.

Teddy's face looked a little pained, talking now like he was answering a question. "More," he said, shrugging. "Just doing more. I'm not sure about it. Like, I don't know. He was saying stuff. While, like, he was blowing these things up. Six A.M."

I lowered my head. Saw my feet. "Come on, Teddy."

"Just saying," Teddy went on, but getting quiet now and his voice evening out, not struggling. "When we're in the house. Doing more. I'm not sure about it, Brian. Like, I don't know, Brian. Like waking people up."

The four of us leave the houses almost completely undisturbed. Even Coe is always careful to return furniture to its place. I think the owners woke up in the morning and never knew anything had happened, maybe wondered weeks or months later, How long has that lampshade been crooked? Is this where I left my shoes?

Teddy had been wrong. Will Wilson didn't want to wake people up when we got back from Alaska. Will Wilson didn't want to wait even that long.

One night later, we were in a house in Old Town, the four of us standing against a wall in the living room, after hours of near silence under that bridge near the park, under there quietly drinking, and I was blurry now, and slowed and focused from all the drinking, watching the lights on the ceiling now, light from the bay that flickered up through the windows, white, white flashes in a room that was dim violet from a streetlight outside, and I think I knew it was different when I saw Will Wilson pull a bottle of bourbon from a liquor cabinet, take a drink, and we'd never drunk in a house, never stolen anything. Coe was smiling, drinking, and I was watching Will Wilson, in his gloves like we always wore, with a ski mask in his pocket this time, and passing the bourbon to me before he put the mask over his head.

"Let's just see what happens," Will Wilson said.

And I knew what would happen. Knew we would do anything. Knew we would not stop. I knew we had so lost ourselves to whatever was possible. And so I was watching Coe and Will Wilson move and I was drinking from the bourbon, and I looked around for Teddy. He was staring out a window. And for a moment I thought I'd stay with him. For a moment I thought I'd grab his arm, pull him with me, and we would run from here.

Because I knew I would do what Will Wilson wanted.

And because I knew I wanted it too.

I found Will Wilson and Coe on the second floor, already turning down a hall, at a door in their masks, Will Wilson turning the knob, and there would be chaos soon, and violence, and power and fear and anger, and I drank from the bourbon, still in my hand, drank again from the bourbon and heard the screaming.

Screaming downstairs. People screaming downstairs.

Will Wilson and Coe had gone in the room. But downstairs there were people screaming and alarms going off, and I looked back down the stairs, saw Teddy standing there now, looking up at me, and I was glad he was there, glad and I smiled, at Teddy, my friend, and I saw that a flame had sprung out from his hand, Teddy looking up at me, Teddy flicking matches toward the stairs, the steps going blue, then red, then gold.

He'd poured something on the stairs. He was lighting them on fire.

I could smell the smoke already, the flames climbing toward me, heat all across my body, Teddy disappearing from the foot of the steps, the downstairs turning gold, the smoke alarms screaming up at us, and I ran into the room with Will Wilson and Coe, could see out the window, see people outside, one last person running out of the first floor, and then I remembered someone should have been in this room. But there wasn't anyone except Will Wilson and Coe, which seemed strange, I thought, and I was drunk and confused and scared, but I couldn't help but think it, couldn't believe that Will Wilson had been wrong. There was supposed to be someone in here.

Smoke alarms were going off upstairs too now, all screaming together.

I turned to Will Wilson and Coe, standing in the dark, watching out the hall, Coe bouncing, and Will Wilson looking around now, out the window, toward the hall, saying something I couldn't hear in the noise of the alarms and the fire now spreading up the stairs.

"How do we get out?" Coe was saying, loudly, and he was bouncing up and down even harder.

Will Wilson turned to me, his eyes staring out of the mask. "Where the fuck is Ted?"

"I don't know," I was saying. "We have to get out," I was saying.

Will Wilson hit me, in the face, so hard and so fast, and I was on the floor and couldn't hear and couldn't see and couldn't breathe.

I could see him before I could hear anything, blurry and above me and his mouth moving and I'd never been hit so hard.

"Where the fuck is Ted?" Will Wilson was screaming.

I was talking, I thought, saying, "I don't know," but I couldn't hear my voice. Couldn't feel my mouth or lips.

"How do we get out?" Coe was yelling.

Will Wilson hit me again and it was white and black and gone and there was a smell then, I remember now, a smell of air and water and rain against my face. But in a moment I could see again and the smoke was in the room. The fire in the hall.

Will Wilson was gone.

"He left," Coe was saying, quietly or maybe I still couldn't hear. "Oh my god, he left."

The smoke was getting heavier. The flames had reached the hall. Coe was bouncing against the walls. "How do we get out?" he was saying. "How do we get out?"

I stood and felt the blood across my nose and mouth and my head spun and I threw up, fell down again. I crawled to the window and looked out. There were about five people in the street.

Coe was hitting the wall. Coe was spinning in place. "How?" he was screaming, "how?"

"We have to climb down," I tried to say, but I still couldn't hear my voice. "Okay, Coe? We climb and then we run."

Coe kept hitting the wall. I tried to stand but threw up again, my head spinning and my neck all sickly numb.

And then Coe started running. Through the smoke. Into the hall. Into the flames.

Trying to make it downstairs.

Maybe he was thinking he could make it to the door. Maybe he was afraid to climb. But probably he just wanted to find Will Wilson. To see how Will Wilson would finally make this work.

Once, in a house, I leave Will Wilson in a kitchen as he slowly makes his way through every drawer and cabinet, pass Coe in the dining room climbing across a fireplace mantel. I'm looking for Teddy and find him in the living room, a wide, tall room with windows open onto the bay and the bright ships and the lights of the neighborhoods all around us, and he is climbing up the windows, in bare feet with his toes just balanced on the thin frames of the windows, fifteen feet in the air now, and he is looking out of a skylight, his hands touching the panes of the glass, his face close to the frame.

"What are you doing?" I whisper, as loud I can.

I can see he is talking, but I can't hear him.

"What are you looking for?" I ask again.

He is talking, his fingers running along the edges of the skylight, his head turned upward, and I think I hear more the echo of his voice, coming back to me off that window, and I've never known if he knew I was there.

"Something pretty," Teddy whispers, "something beautiful."

I knew Coe would die. Like all of them. All of them would die.

I climbed out a window, dropping to a covered porch, then jumping to the ground. I turned to the now ten people in the street and they stared at me and I fell on the ground, dizzy still, vomiting again, and they hadn't moved.

But when they did, I stood and I ran. Down an alley, through yards, across parking lots, finally into the park, across it, finding my car on the other side.

I was already packed for Alaska. My clothes and tent and sleeping bag.

I was in Bellingham by dawn. I crossed the border into Canada on foot. Stole a car. Stole a truck. I rode three freight trains, riding blind first north, then east, then west again. I did not hitch a ride. Did not eat in restaurants. Did not sleep in any motels. I broke into grocery stores at night. And I'm sure no one ever knew I'd been there.

I rode the ferries as much as I could. Sometimes north, sometimes south. But I was on the Aleutians within two weeks.

Alaska is a very big place.

Within two years I was living in Arizona. Within three years I was out in New Hampshire. And that's a long way from Tacoma.

These things are not so hard to do.

Once, in a house, Coe almost breaks a dining room table, falling off of it onto Teddy, and when we get outside, six blocks away, walking quietly like we usually did, Teddy then turns on Coe, in one motion hitting him in the face, falling on him, hitting him still, and Will Wilson steps back and smiles, and I step back and watch, and Teddy is saying something to Coe as he hits him again, something about trying to be more careful, about not fucking up all the time, about thinking about what he was doing.

It was years before I managed to find an article about the fire. I drove to Tacoma just to read the stories. The only risk I ever took. Reading old newspapers in some cubicle in the bright light of a silent library.

Will Wilson had managed to live.

There were only two bodies in the house. Ted Selva. Michael Coe. Another kid had been seen climbing out of the house. When they identified the bodies a few days later, the police soon learned that the four kids ran as a group. That William Wilson and Brian Porter were gone.

Two cars from Tacoma were soon found near the Canadian border. There were stolen cars found farther north into Canada.

Both kids, the police said, had probably gone into Alaska.

And sitting there in the library, I was leaning back now, looking around, expecting to see Will Wilson in a cubicle near mine. Reading about the four of us. Leaning back in his chair too, looking around for me.

Michael Coe had died in the smoke, was found lying at the foot of the stairs.

Ted Selva appeared to have been beaten badly before he died. Four fingers snapped. A few ribs fractured. His chin and eye socket broken.

There was no manhunt. No detectives who ventured north. "Pretty soon," a policeman said, "they'll show up back here in Tacoma. Bragging about what they've done. Looking for a warm bed. They're half scared out of their minds right now, alone up in the woods somewhere. They'll come back home."

Will Wilson is out there. Living some life.

And driving through Tacoma after I left the library that day, I thought about how, when I got in my car after the fire, my backpack next to me, my money in my pocket, how even then I knew I wasn't just running from the police. I was running from Will Wilson, Coe, and Teddy. They were dead, I thought. But it didn't matter. I knew I had to run. Running from my three friends and the life we'd had, a life I would not have been able to end.

And now I'd spent five years forgetting.

But Will Wilson is still out there.

He could find me, I suppose.

Or maybe I could try to go find him.

Clean Slate.

Lawrence Block.

FROM Warriors.

THERE WAS A STARBUCKS just across the street from the building where he had his office, and she settled in at a window table a little before five. She thought she might be in for a long wait. In New York, young associates at law firms typically worked until midnight and took lunch and dinner at their desks. Was it the same in Toledo?

Well, the cappuccino was the same. She sipped hers, making it last, and was about to go to the counter for another when she saw him.

But was it him? He was tall and slender, wearing a dark suit and a tie, clutching a briefcase, walking with purpose. His hair when she'd known him was long and shaggy, a match for the jeans and T-shirt that were his usual costume, and now it was cut to match the suit and the briefcase. And he wore glasses now, and they gave him a serious, studious look. He hadn't worn them then, and he'd certainly never looked studious.

But it was Douglas. No question, it was him.

She rose from her chair, hit the door, quickened her pace to catch up with him at the corner. She said, "Doug? Douglas Pratter?"

He turned, and she caught the puzzlement in his eyes. She helped him out. "It's Kit," she said. "Katherine Tolliver." She smiled softly. "A voice from the past. Well, a whole person from the past, actually."

"My God," he said. "It's really you."

"I was having a cup of coffee," she said, "and looking out the window and wishing I knew somebody in this town, and when I saw you I thought you were a mirage. Or that you were just somebody who looked the way Doug Pratter might look eight years later."

"Is that how long it's been?"

"Just about. I was fifteen and I'm twenty-three now. You were two years older."

"Still am. That much hasn't changed."

"And your family picked up and moved right in the middle of your junior year of high school."

"My dad got a job he couldn't say no to. He was going to send for us at the end of the term, but my mother wouldn't hear of it. We'd all be too lonely is what she said. It took me years before I realized she just didn't trust him on his own."

"Was he not to be trusted?"

"I don't know about that, but the marriage failed two years later anyway. He went a little nuts and wound up in California. He got it in his head that he wanted to be a surfer."

"Seriously? Well, good for him, I guess."