"Philadelphia!" shouted Doug. A dozen other attendees shouted their hometowns, too. The ring went to a man from Belgium wearing a Tintin shirt.

"We don’t live in Philadelphia," whispered Jay.

"We live in a suburb of Philadelphia. You think they know where Ardwynne is?"

"I know you thought that was it," the moderator continued, "but it just so happens…yes, I think I may have another ring…for whomever’s traveled the farthest from within the United States?"

"Philadelphia!" Doug shouted again.

"Bangor!" shouted some kid from Bangor.

"Bangor is farthest!" said the moderator.

"No, it isn’t!" Doug protested. He got to his feet. "No, it isn’t. Not if you take into account the curvature of the Earth, which—"

"Bangor’s farther, kid," said the moderator.

Doug sunk into his chair. "Let’s go," he said to Jay. "Panels suck."

"You don’t want to sit awhile? You look tired."

Doug answered by rising and walking out the side door while a fan asked the panel about an obscure Superman versus Muhammad Ali comic from the seventies.

"Sorry you didn’t win," said Jay when he’d caught up. "I think Bangor is farther, though."

"I don’t care, I just wanted the ring to sell it. I didn’t really expect to win. Nobody ever wins anything."

Twenty minutes later Jay won a new shirt for shouting, "Crisis on Infinite Earths!" a fraction of a second faster than seven other boys. It read, MY MOM AND DAD WENT TO THE NEGATIVE ZONE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. By twelve o’clock it was covered by thirty-one free buttons. "I’m having a really good time," he said. "Aren’t you?"

Doug didn’t answer. Jay looked him in the face for maybe the first time in an hour, and turned pale.

"We should…" he said, "we should find you somewhere to sit down. And get something to eat."