it was finally them, after months having nightmares about the worst.
“No.” Mrs. Fletcher didn’t look up from the work sheet she was grading. Her red pen moved down the algebra problems, checking off the correct answers, crossing out the few that were incorrect. “Finish your equations.”
I set down my pencil, giving her my sweetest smile. The one Vida told me should be illegal.
“What if—?” I began.
“No.”
“It’s almost lunch anyway—”
“No.”
I clenched my jaw. My bare feet bounced against the tile until I could feel the static snapping against my toes with each small movement. What if they only had a second to send a message, and they needed a response right away? What if this was the only time I was going to get to talk to them before they disappeared again for months?
What if…this was Chubs calling to tell me that it was the worst?
I didn’t mean to let so much frustration into my voice, but it bled through anyway. “You do know this isn’t real school, right? I don’t need a hall pass.”
Mrs. Fletcher finally looked up, setting her own pen down. The phone let out another ding from the living room, somehow sounding more urgent the second time.
Sorry, Mrs. Fletcher, I just need to see if that’s one of my friends—yeah, the ones who went missing six months ago? You know, the wanted fugitives?
“Do you think I’m wasting your time?” she asked, finally.
That was an easy answer: No. But I couldn’t force the word out of me.
She looked across the room, her watery gaze moving from the pots hanging on the wall of Cate’s kitchen—still unused after months of takeout—to the living room, where Nico was ignoring us.
I couldn’t tell what she was staring at, exactly. Everything in the apartment had this strange quality to it; it was too new, too perfect. It reminded me of the dollhouse I had when I was younger, where all the decorations and furniture came prepackaged, perfectly toned and sized to fit the miniature rooms.
As it was, most of the furniture had come included with the apartment lease. The couch and chairs in the living room had a weirdly overstuffed design, like they’d sprouted from the carpeted floors like fungi.
Cate must have come home in the early hours of the morning, because there were new stacks of case folders balanced at the edge of the coffee table. She’d likely only stayed long enough to shower and change before heading back out to work on whatever project she and Vida were currently assigned to.
Out doing real work, not basic algebra.
Mrs. Fletcher was only in her early forties, but the last few years had carried twice the stress, twice the fear, twice the anger, and it showed on all of us in different ways. There were two deep frown lines on either side of her mouth. One, I decided, for her students, and one for her own son, who should have been sitting at the kitchen table with her, if life were even remotely fair.
“It must be hard to adapt to a routine after everything,” she said softly. “I’m sure this is unbearably boring after what you’ve seen.”
I whispered back the same words Chubs had told me after helping me set up my room at Cate’s new apartment. “Boring is good.”
After he’d left, I’d sat alone on my bed, listening to the last comings and goings of the movers bringing the new bed for Nico. Unlike the other rooms in the apartment, our two small bedrooms hadn’t come furnished. The movers kept referring to them as the guest rooms, and Cate corrected them each and every time. But there was truth in that. I was only staying until I got approved for my own apartment in the building where they’d set up Chubs, Vida, and the others working on the Psi Council.
I liked Cate—I liked her a lot. But it wasn’t like either of us had any real choice in this arrangement. The law said any Psi under eighteen years old had to live with a non-Psi guardian, and she was the only adult my friends fully trusted. And Cate was too damn nice to say no.
The bedroom, for now, was my space. Cate offered to let me paint and decorate it however I liked, but that didn’t feel right to me. All I had really wanted was the door. The one I could open and shut as I pleased. The one that locked from the inside, not the outside. The one that divided