"No one, really. My parents, they're both dead. Well, my adopted parents. My real parents are strangers that I’ve never met. A couple of kids from school knew that I could pull off some cool stunts, but I ran away from the foster home that I ended up at after my mom died. That was ten years ago, when it was already getting hard to hide the fact that I was developing a lot faster than my peers. I’ve just kind of wandered around ever since. Last year,, I felt an urge to come up to New York, and since I had been running odd jobs over in Ohio for a while, I figured there'd be no shortage of lucrative opportunities doing even more odd jobs, and that no one would know any of the old stories that everyone back home liked to talk about... New York's a crazy place where crazy things happen every day. Something harmless and as uninteresting as your past  just gets washed away in the torrent of bad news and human interest stories and credit card bills, you know?"

I looked away from Janine, towards the floor. Believe me, I know, I thought.

"Maybe it's fate that you became friends with us," I said,  joking a little, hoping that she caught my sarcasm. Instead, she agreed.

"Maybe it is," she said, not joking around at all.  "Maybe I can really help you both."