Then she spoke, and all the variety and vastness resolved and reduced into two bullet points: “You’re not my best friend. And I do wish Nick was back.”

There was a flapping sound behind me, like a dozen birds had suddenly taken off from the museum’s roof. I didn’t have to turn around. They would be Harry’s canaries, round and fluffy and colored like Easter candy. When the beating of their wings died down, I did turn around. Gretchen was gone.

When I turned back, so was Polly.

I checked an ATM. The transaction was going to take “up to” two days, but that could mean today, so I checked. Everything was still the same. I was still in desperate need of money.

There are something like twenty banks in town and I passed, like, half of them. I checked my balance at each one. If I’d been on my bike I wouldn’t have done that, but with everything in slow motion what else was I supposed to do? I was on foot because someone had taken it.

Bikes get stolen all the time in Cambridge, and it’s not an idle thing. It’s not like they get stolen by people who’re going to use them. Then maybe someone who really needed a bike and had to get somewhere might be on mine. I could live with that. Maybe my bike would even be part of something important. But the bike stealing is more organized here. The person who took it is probably just selling it on, just doing business. Things like that make me sick.

I waited in a lot of lines. I pressed a lot of buttons.

Then, just like that: 10,003.45 pounds.

I looked over my shoulder. Did anyone see that?

I looked back. The number was still there. I jumped from foot to foot and shook my hands like they’d fallen asleep. Quick; end the transaction. No-celebrate! Withdraw cash. Buy something. Maybe one of those massively expensive coffees that’s really some kind of mutant sundae with caffeine.

I pressed all the right buttons. But it spat out my card without any money. I tried again; the balance was there, but it wouldn’t let me get at it. I grabbed the sides of the machine and tried to shake it, like when a bag of potato chips is hanging off the spiral in a vending machine. But this thing was, of course, embedded in the wall. There would be no shaking it.

The spiral with my money hanging off it wasn’t in this machine anyway. It would be in a computer somewhere at the bank. The account or transaction might have been flagged, and put on hold. Perhaps they’d been notified of the death by someone incredibly thorough. Maybe everything to do with them was frozen already. Or, no, really, it could just be that things hadn’t finished processing. Maybe there’s this stage where the amount is acknowledged but not releasable yet. Maybe that’s what they meant by two days and tomorrow everything would be fine. Right?

Just past Sainsbury’s there was one more bank.

I waited in line behind a guy with a guitar on his back. He stuck in a card and punched a lot of buttons but nothing much happened, so he opened up his bag and rooted around in it. He got another card and held it in his teeth while he rebuckled the two straps on the front of his bag without taking off his bulky gloves. One side he got but the other one squirmed away from him over and over. He stood there, between me and the machine, wrestling with this stupid bag buckle while I rocked from side to side. The card stuck out of his mouth like a tongue. A mom with a stroller passed between us and rolled a dirty wheel over my shoe.

Finally he stuck the new card in the machine. A ten slid out.

He got out of my way. I pushed my card in the slot and pressed the right buttons. The balance was there.

I tried withdrawal again. Ten had worked out pretty great for the guy in front of me, so I tried it too. Press, press, press, press, whirr… money. Money.

Ten pounds.

I pinched it between my fingers and tugged. It didn’t give right away so I pulled with both hands so hard that I rocked back into the person behind me. “Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t get out of the way. The machine asked if I wanted another transaction. Even with the money free I knew I couldn’t get at the whole of it until tomorrow. A machine wouldn’t be able to give that much; I’d have to wait in line and ask a teller nicely. It was already after five.

I just stared at the small piece of it that was in my hand. It was suddenly weird to me that it wasn’t green. I’d been using this colorful money for over a year now but it was suddenly weird. It didn’t look like money. It looked like a magazine ad. Like a travel agency poster. A poster for Tahiti, my own Tahiti, my own place to get away and grow into something that I knew I could be if people would just stop getting in the way.

I mashed the money into the front pocket of my jeans and whirled around. I thought I’d heard Gretchen’s cane, but it was the person waiting behind me, tapping a pen against their card.

I rubbed my forehead. It was just a pen tapping a card. And the birds at the Fitzwilliam could have been any birds. There are lots of birds in Cambridge. Harry never wore a hat like that at all. I was just getting all “Tell-Tale Heart” about things because of the waiting. Everything could be explained away, except Nick in that car. I’d seen Nick for sure.

Harry came out of the supermarket. I ducked into a doorway. He had those same two orange bags he’d left by the front door yesterday. He had that same hat on he’d had by the Fitzwilliam. No, Harry doesn’t wear hats. What was going on? I had to look at his face.

I chased him toward Magdalene but there were crowds at the bus stops. By the time I got through he was gone.

I leaned against the bridge to breathe. Of course it hadn’t been Harry. He wouldn’t carry groceries up Bridge Street; that’s the opposite of the way to their house. A punt emerged underneath me. In the spring the river will be full of them, rubbing up against each other. But in today’s cold and dark there was just this one. I squinted to see if it was Nick. But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. He was too short. Of course it wasn’t Nick. Why would Nick be punting?

I had to get it together.

If I’d seen a dead Nick, if I was seeing ghosts, then this money wouldn’t get me anywhere. They wouldn’t let me spend it on anything, not without sneaking up behind me or crossing in front of me or filling my ears with chirping and tapping and Gretchen’s horrible thud against the front of Harry’s car.

But if Nick had been real, if he was alive and back, then I’d know for sure that any tapping I heard was just someone busking on the drums, or bouncing a jackhammer into the street, anything, but not that cane.

If he was back, then I could get out of here tomorrow and get on with life. I could leave and not be followed.

He’d be with his family, wouldn’t he. I had to know.

Madingley Road is a busy street and the cars whooshing by made a buzz in my head that blocked out other things. I felt like I was going to float up, which I think was from breathing in so much exhaust instead of oxygen.

Nick’s family’s house is on a corner. To get to the front door, you have to go around most of the place. The back of it is kind of right there, facing the crazy neighbor’s fence.

This fluttering thing hit me in the face. Not a bird, not any kind of bird. It was a piece of… it was a picture. It was a dozen little boys in black top hats. It was the King’s College choristers. Nick was in the middle. That was him, when he was short and his voice was high. I recognized his face. I can always tell his face.

Another one landed on my foot. It was raining Nick. This one was of him as a blond teenager with a dark-haired little girl in front of some big European fountain.

I looked up. That dark-haired girl was grown up and throwing them out of the window. Wind blew them at me, instead of into the neighbor’s yard she was aiming for.