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focused on something inside an oversized glass box on top of the cart—hot dogs, turning and sizzling on a roaster and sending up familiar feathery fumes, their color a stronger, tantalizing pink that drifted above the cart like a beacon for the hunger twisting painfully in her belly.
    Sil turned away. Too many people encircled the cart, and the meat itself wasn’t in the open where she could run by and snatch at it. Dressed in a white coat and a paper hat with points at each end, the man who seemed to own the cart and the hot dogs was stationed next to it; the backs of the people in line were blocking Sil’s view, and she had no idea what was required to persuade the man to give her one. She wandered closer, trying to see, but the cart and the line were too close to the wall. She turned away; better to try something more in the open.
    After a five-second scan of the interior of the train station Sil headed toward the snack shop at its other end, attracted by its brightly decorated window. She stopped outside the entrance and stared at the posters crowded on the surface of the glass, photographs of adults eating snacks and drinking sodas, all of which she assumed where available inside. Could she just walk in and take what she wanted? She looked back at the hot-dog cart and frowned; it seemed so, yet didn’t make sense, and she was already glaringly conspicuous. But she was so hungry. After a moment of hesitation, she decided to go in.
    The snack shop was small, shaped like a long rectangle rather than a square. Sil’s gaze automatically went to a narrow counter at its far end, where she saw a couple of patrons sitting on stools covered with red vinyl. Behind the counter a teenager with acne-spotted cheeks and hair hanging in his eyes moved back and forth, serving milkshakes and ice-cream dishes with a bored expression on his face. Again Sil saw the pink fumes, this time drifting from the thick glass dishes scattered along the countertop. She turned away; the length of the room, with its only door at the front, made the far end of the shop seem too much like a trap. Staying close to the front seemed her best bet.
    The first display she came across was immediately to the right inside the first of the three cramped aisles. The rows of beef jerky and chocolate-chip cookies looked edible, but they lacked the lovely pink fumes and smells that she associated with food. Perplexed, Sil gnawed on one fingernail, then touched one of the packets of jerky and made the connection—they were wrapped, that was all, covered by a false skin. If she broke through the covering, she would find the food. Satisfied, she tugged half a dozen packets of beef jerky free of their hook, then added as many of the wrapped cookies as she could hold in her other hand.
    Now what? Unsure, Sil turned back toward the front of the snack shop and began to move toward the exit. As she stepped into the main area she almost collided with another person and stopped herself just short of instinctively lashing out.
    “Sorry,” the other started to mumble. It was a boy her own age, trying to walk and tear open the waxy wrapping on a candy bar at the same time. He looked up from his task and his apology stuttered away as Sil gaped at him. She’d never seen anyone her own age before—he looked like a much younger version of Kyle, the sandy-haired lab assistant at the complex who had been her friend until his final treachery. Would this boy talk to her? Could she talk to him?
    The boy’s lips parted, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he lifted the candy bar, something called a Butterfinger, to his mouth. He bit into it, chewing methodically as he scrutinized Sil and her raggedy clothes. His gaze slid to her naked feet, and he looked like he was going to speak when an adult woman touched him on the shoulder. If the woman saw Sil and the condition of her garments, she never acknowledged it.
    “Don’t eat that until I pay for it,” she admonished gently.