By the light of the moon

open on each of two stalls. The outer door
between the lav and the hallway could not be locked. Someone might
walk in on them at any moment.
    The only window appeared to be painted shut, and in any event,
it was too small to provide escape.
    Dylan said, 'Buddy, I need you to do something for me.'
    'Cake.'
    'Shep, I need you to fold us out of here and back to our room in
the motel.'
    'But they'll be going to our room,' Jilly objected.
    'They won't be there yet. We left the computer running, with the
Proctor interview. We don't want them to see that. I don't know
where we'll be going from here, but wherever it is, they'll have a
better chance of staying on our heels if they realize how much we
know and can try to anticipate our moves.'
    'Toasted-coconut cake.'
    'Besides,' Dylan added, 'there's an envelope of cash in my
shaving kit, almost five hundred bucks, and right now all we have
is what's in my wallet.' He put one hand under Shep's chin, raised
his head. 'Shep, you've got to do this for me.'
    Shep closed his eyes. 'Don't pee in public.'
    'I'm not asking you to pee, Shep. Just fold us back to our room.
Now. Right now, Shep.'
    'No Goldfish, no pee, no fold.'
    'This is different, Shep.'
    'No Goldfish, no pee, no fold.'
    'That rule doesn't apply, buddy. We're not in public now.'
    Shepherd wasn't buying that line of argument. After all, this
was called a public restroom, and he knew it. 'No Goldfish,
no pee, no fold.'
    'Listen, buddy, you've seen a lot of movies, you know what bad
guys are.'
    'Pee in public.'
    'Worse bad guys than that. Bad guys with guns. Killers like in
the movies. We've got some bad guys looking for us, Shep.'
    'Hannibal Lecter.'
    'I don't know. Maybe they're that bad. I don't know. But if you
don't help me here, if you don't fold us when I ask you to, then
for sure things are going to get gooey-bloody.'
    The kid's eyes were active behind his lids, an indication of the
degree of his agitation. 'Gooey-bloody is bad.'
    'Gooey-bloody is very bad. And it's going to get very gooey and
very bloody if we don't fold back to our room right
now .'
    'Shep is scared.'
    'Don't be scared.'
    'Shep is scared.'
    Dylan admonished himself not to lose his temper as he had lost
it on the hilltop in California. He must never speak to Shep that
way again, never, no matter how desperate the situation became. But
he was left with no tactic but to plead. 'Buddy, for God's sake, please .'
    'Sh-shep is s-s-scared.'
    When Dylan checked his Timex, the sweep-motion second hand
seemed to be spinning around the watch face.
    Moving to Shepherd's side, Jilly said, 'Sweetie, last night when
I was in my bed and you were in your bed, and Dylan was asleep and
snoring, do you remember the little conversation we had?'
    Dylan had no idea what she was talking about. She hadn't told
him about a conversation with Shep. And he was certain that he
didn't snore.
    'Sweetie, I woke up and heard you whispering, remember? You said
you were scared. And what did I say?'
    Shepherd's hyperactive eyes stopped moving behind his closed
lids, but he didn't respond to her.
    'Do you remember, honey?' When she put an arm around Shepherd's
shoulders, he didn't cringe from contact or even flinch. 'Sweetie,
remember, you said, "Shep is scared," and I said, "Shep is
brave."'
    Dylan heard noises in the hallway, glanced at the door. No one
came in, but the coffee shop had a big lunch crowd; this privacy
wouldn't last much longer.
    Jilly said, 'And you are brave, Shep. You're one of the bravest
people I've ever known. The world is a scary place. And I know it's
scarier for you than it is for us. So much noise, so much
brightness and color, so many people, strangers, always talking at
you, and then germs everywhere, nothing neat like it ought to be,
nothing simple like you want it so much to be, everything shapey,
and so much that's disgusting. You can put a puzzle together and
make it right, and you can read Great Expectations like
twenty times, a hundred times, and every time it'll be exactly like
you expect it to be, exactly right. But you can't make life come
together like a puzzle, and you can't make it be the same every day
– and yet you get up every morning, and you try .
That's very brave, sweetie. If I were you, if I were the way you
are, I don't think I could be as brave as you, Shepherd. I know I
couldn't. Every day, trying so hard – that is as brave
as anything any hero ever did in any movie.'
    Listening to Jilly, Dylan eventually stopped glancing