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like I’m a babysitter. It’s also embarrassing to be around someone whose entire mouth has turned blue.
    As we walk, I collect business cards for escort services from sleazy guys handing them out to anyone who will take them. Not that I intend to call the numbers on the cards, but it’s something to collect. Like baseball cards. Except these have pictures of girls in underwear. Worth an entire major league team.
    I know that one of these buildings on the strip used to be the MGM Grand, which had a deadly fire a long time ago. It was such bad karma, the company sold it to some other hotel chain, and builta new hotel—a massive green Oz-like gambling cathedral. But the old hotel is now camouflaged by a different name. A lot of people died in that fire. One guy jumped out of a high window on a mattress to escape the flames. The mattress didn’t save him.
    Now I get to thinking about our hotel, and what would happen if it caught on fire. How would you get out of a flaming glass pyramid where the windows don’t open? My thoughts start spinning. What if one of these scummy guys on the street decides he’s tired of handing out dirty business cards, and decides that a little arson is in order. And when I look at one of them—really look at him, I see it in his face, and I know that he’s the one. I’ve gotten a powerful premonition, almost like a voice, telling me I can’t go back to our hotel. Because he’s watching me. Because maybe they all are. Maybe all those sleazy card-hander-outers are working together. And I can’t go back to our hotel, because if I do, it will be true. So I convince my sister, who’s whining that her feet hurt, to keep on walking, but I don’t tell her why. I suddenly feel like it’s all up to me to protect her from the creeps.
    “Let’s check out Caesars Palace,” I tell Mackenzie. “It’s supposed to be real cool.”
    As we walk in, I begin to feel a little safer. There are huge stone centurions with spears, wearing armor, guarding the entrance. I know they’re just for decoration, but they make me feel safe from all the scheming, scuzzy fire-starters.
    Inside, among the shops that push perfume, diamonds, leather, and mink, there’s an alcove where one more stone sculpture stands. It’s a perfect marble replica of Michelangelo’s David . Everythingin Las Vegas is a perfect replica. The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, half the city of Venice. The real world made fake for your amusement.
    “Ew, what’s with the naked guy?” Mackenzie asks.
    “Don’t be dumb, it’s David .”
    “Oh,” she says, and mercifully doesn’t ask “David who?” Instead, she asks, “What’s that in his hand?”
    “A slingshot.”
    “It doesn’t look like a slingshot.”
    “It’s a biblical slingshot,” I tell her. “The one he used to kill Goliath.”
    “Oh,” Mackenzie says. “Can we go now?”
    “In a second.” I can’t leave yet, because I’m struck by David’s stone eyes. His body seems relaxed, like the kingdom is already his, but the expression on his face . . . it’s full of worry, and concern he’s trying to hide. I begin to wonder if David was like me. Seeing monsters everywhere and realizing there aren’t enough slingshots in the world to get rid of them.

23. Eight-Point-Five Seconds
    My parents are a little drunk on that first evening of our Las Vegas extravaganza.
    Their fight over who was responsible for the day’s gambling losses is over. They decide to rise above it all. Literally.
    See, every hotel in Las Vegas has a gimmick, and the biggest gimmick of all is the Stratosphere Tower, which claims to have 113 floors, although I think they’re measuring floors in Las-Vegas-inches, which stretch and contract to fit whatever lie you’re trying to sell. Still, it’s pretty impressive, this circular glass crown atop a sleek concrete spire. The elevator attendant claims they have the fastest elevators in Western civilization. Las Vegans and their