four corners of the playground, then stepped forward to the boy.
“How did you do that?”
He smiled. “I’ve been practising for years.”
“Thank you. I think you just saved my life.”
Curiously, the following day no one was talking about the Boy Who Flew from the Climbing Frame. Instead, the school buzzed with an incident that had occurred at the same time. While class 4B was doing laps of the school swimming pool, the water had begun to boil like a kettle. Mercifully, no one died, though most of the class was being treated for second-and third-degree burns at Saint Thomas’s Hospital. One girl was in intensive care, though it was thought that she’d live. And Liyana, as shocked as everyone else, had no idea that the incident had anything to do with her at all.
Bea
I sat astride an enormous rotting tree trunk with Bea. The bark was so soft it peeled off in great strips; chunks fell off inside the hollow when I kicked it, like kicking a horse to gallop. At least, that’s what Bea said since, naturally, she’d ridden a horse. She’d done everything.
A white leaf settled atop my head. I brushed it off. “She told you about this place? Really?”
Bea shrugged. “Mamá tells me everything.”
I stared at her, jealous but unwilling to admit it.
“No one else believes her. But I do.”
I was silent.
“Your mamá probably doesn’t know anything. If she’s not a Grimm too, then she won’t have a clue.” Bea sighed, as if her familial brilliance was a burden. “Most people have zero imagination and even less intelligence, that’s what Mamá says.”
“Oh.” I felt an urge to defend Ma but didn’t know how.
“It’s rare.” Bea kicked the trunk so clumps of bark broke free, echoing in the cavity of the tree. “Having a mamá and daughter who are both pure Grimm.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know?” But I suspected, from the flicker of frustration on her face, that she didn’t either. “Most mamás have some Grimm blood in them,” she said, as if that answered my question. “If they’ve only got a little they can come here, but they’ll think it was just a dream, like you did in the beginning. If they’ve got a lot, then they can walk through one of the gates, but that’s rare.” She gave a knowing nod. “Most of them don’t know about the gates.”
I teased off a soft strip of bark, bending it into an arc. I didn’t want to ask, especially since Bea was goading me with this information, bait to distract from her prior ignorance. But it didn’t take long for curiosity to trump pride.
“What gates?” I asked.
Bea raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. “Oh, you don’t know about the gates either?” She sighed, as if burdened by the weight of my ignorance and her knowledge. “Seems like you’re as clueless as your mamá.”
I snapped my bridge of bark.
“The gates are the only other way of coming here.” She folded her arms. “It’s how non-Grimms can enter Everwhere.”
I’d imagined having a sister would be a source of comfort, not competition. It made me worry about the baby in Ma’s belly, the sibling lying in wait.
Bea grinned again, ridiculously beautiful, even when she was being mean. “That’s how the soldiers get here,” she said. “But only on nights of the first-quarter moon.”
I dug a fingernail into the tree trunk, etching out a furrow. “Soldiers?” I said, without looking up.
Bea laughed. “You don’t know about them either? Shit, you don’t know anything, do you?”
I looked up, startled by her use of that word. I’d heard my parents use it, and worse, but never someone my own age. Bea looked at me, the edges of her beautiful mouth twitching with withheld information, waiting for me to admit to my ignorance, to publicly acknowledge her superiority.
“No,” I said, as carelessly as if I’d just brushed a fallen leaf from my knee. “I don’t.”
Bea sat up a little straighter. “Then aren’t you lucky that I do.”
Leo
Every month, when the moon reached its first quarter, Leo left his bed in the early morning hours to walk through the school gardens. He waited until everyone on the grounds had fallen asleep before he snuck out. Leo couldn’t remember when the urge for these walks had caught hold of him, nor did he know what he was looking for, but he was certainly looking for something.
He walked across forbidden lawns, pressing bare toes into wet grass; he sauntered along stone corridors, his soft steps carrying no echo. He sat under