Margot was moving toward the speaker. The sound seemed to draw her. She wanted more noise, so she stepped in front of it, turned, and the feedback shrieked, it screamed, it was wires and electronics and atmosphere and almost, almost human. She liked it, it seemed. She fell to her knees, and the feedback grew terrible, the noise almost seeming to startle her, although she continued to play.

Teddy could see her face now, bent down toward the speaker. Her expression was different. No smile. No frown. But there was determination, maybe. And her mouth was moving, forming words whose meaning only she could know, as if talking to herself, or the speaker, or the people who made the speaker, or something else. This was her sound, the sound she was making. For a moment, the howl was all Teddy could hear, probably all anyone could ear for 200 yards, and then she stood and turned to face the audience again and composed herself and her music and plucked out something tuneful and classical, and she finished and set down Zach’s guitar and stepped toward Teddy.

The audience had mostly stayed, and some seemed glad Margot was done, but there was a beatnik in a beret and a goatee clapping his hands over his head, and a priest in a collar who was smiling, and a woman with a baby on her hip looking up rapturously at Margot’s departing form, and Teddy’s friend Dorothy had stepped up toward the front, hands on her hips, eyebrows raised like she wanted more.

Everyone clapped for Margot, some politely, some sincerely, and Teddy walked the girl back to her Nifty Bear gorilla and she sat on it.

Her eyes were dry.“That was good,” Teddy said. “That was real music.”

He padlocked her collar to the stage and knelt to speak to her. “I think I’ve figured it out,” he said. “I think I know what happened. I don’t know what the clowns are gonna do. But I’m pretty sure I know why they’re here. And I think, if I can talk to them . . .” He shook his head. “Well, I don’t know.”