Papa had moved faster, exiting before I got to the main doors and Pinky caught up with me before I could decide whether or not to try running again so soon. Her grip on my arm said nope as she pulled me into the school office lobby and past it. Before I could ask where we were going, waving in passing at the office administrator behind the counter, she’d marched me into a small side room, windowless with just a conference table with three chairs on a side, and shut the door.

  Well okay.

  She spun me to face her. “What was that? You—you saw? Who’ve you told? You can’t—”

  “Pinky! Elizabeth!”

  She stopped, breathing hard.

  “Please let go.” Her grip was actually hurting me.

  “Oh.” Looking at my arm like she’d just discovered it, she dropped her hand. I put my schoolbag on the table. “Breathe, Pinky. Just breathe.” She really needed to. May was right, in a lot of ways I really had less social experience than my new peers, but here, here, I’d been in this spot so many times before. And survived, which most people did. “I’ve got water in my bag, if you want it.”

  “You haven’t told anyone!” She said it like she was making it true.

  “No. Never. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. Or however you want me to swear it.”

  “Nobody can know! You can’t—”

  “Pinky! I just said!” Grabbing her arm, I shook her lightly. Whatever horrific scenario was in her head just wasn’t letting go. Some psychologist I’d read somewhere had said it; our worst fears weren’t of injury or death, they were of social death. Being laughed at. Ridiculed. Probably because back in our racial history social death meant getting booted out of the tribe and eaten by lions.

  “Pinky, nobody’s going to know about you and Lizard from me. Papa knows, but I don’t think— I’m pretty sure he’s keeping it to himself, and Delia said Lizard was texting about it.”

  “Papa knows? How—”

  “He saw you guys go off together, Lizard’s in his cohort?” I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the whole cohort thing. Were they each other’s secret-keepers? How could this even be a secret? “But—I’m not judging, really, but really? If you’re this scared of it getting out, why did you do it? Are you— Do you like Lizard?”

  “Lizard? No!” Just the suggestion shocked her out of her panicky state. “You really saw?” When I nodded she fell into a chair, dropping her face in her hands. “Oh, God. That’s— Everything?”

  “No.” Sitting beside her, I thought for a moment and scooted closer to touch her stocking-covered knee. When she didn’t pull back, I let my hand settle. May had done it a couple of times when I was freaking and not making eye contact. Grounding human touch. It had helped. “Only a little of . . . the last part? You were . . .”

  “Oh, God, you really watched me sucking him off?”

  “Just the end?” I suppressed a giggle. “Unless he really is that quick?” Which I couldn’t mock—I seemed to come pretty fast with just me.

  She groaned, hiding her eyes again. “You saw me on my knees with his dick in my mouth, how can you look at me? How are you not scarred for life?”

  “I won’t say it wasn’t, um, shocking. But hey, this is high school, right? And it was so . . . shocking, I kind of separated it from everything else about you in my head? Anyway, Papa found me and talked me down. He didn’t see anything, just knew about it. But Pinky, why?”

  Dropping her hands to look at me, she deflated all at once. I almost sighed in relief. Honestly, I wasn’t that curious—Pinky was a teenager, I was a teenager, and I was relearning how a hormone-addled teen brain could take you to pretty strange places—but getting her to focus on my question had pulled her away from her panic.

  “It’s stupid.”

  “That’s us. We’re not really sane until somewhere in our twenties, right?” I hoped I’d have some kind of equilibrium back by then. She laughed, not a happy laugh, but I took it as progress.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll allow it.” She sighed. “So. There’s a boy.”

  “Of course there is.”

  “Shut up. There’s a boy. I really like him, but he’s . . . with someone right now. I don’t think they’re going to stick.”

  “. . . And?”

  “And I heard her boasting to a girlfriend about how she could suck a marble through a straw and he was a slave to her mouth and I thought I needed to get in some practice for when I have a chance and oh my God I sound so slutty now—”

  “Stop, stop!”

  “If he ever hears I sucked Lizard off—”

  “Enough! Pinky, oh my God!” She was almost hyperventilating as I gently squeezed her knee. “Okay, got it. So, you weren’t even in it for Lizard’s famous tongue, you wanted a boy to practice on and . . .”

  “Part of Lizard’s rep is he never tells. Even if everyone’s pretty sure ‘He did the fancy with Nancy,’ he never names Nancy. So I thought he was ‘safe.’”

  “Well, medically I’m not sure he’s anywhere close to ‘safe’ if his rep is real and not inflated a bunch.” How many girls had his tongue been in? Ew, ew, bad thought! I shook the images out of my head. “But okay, you mean he’s boastful but discrete.”

  She nodded. “But if he was talking about you . . .”

  “You were terrified that he’d name you, too. Or I would.”

  “No! I mean—not really? I, I’m sorry? I don’t know what— It’s stupid, now. That I could think that at all.”

  “It’s okay.” Squeezing her knee one more time, I let go. “Anybody can ‘think’ something for a moment, doesn’t matter how stupid. And then it was all up in your head and you weren’t thinking. It’s fine.”

  She sniffed. “That’s a mature way of looking at it.”

  “I do have experience thinking stupid things.” Decades of it, she had no idea. “But really, you have the perfect defense against Lizard now. If he dares to name you, you can always confirm my insinuation that he’s a quick shooter, all tongue, no dick action, and he knows it. You’ve got his ‘reputation’ in your hand.” I shuddered just saying it out loud with the mental images it conjured, but Pinky laughed.

  “And you were homeschooled!”

  “Hey, homeschooled by an ardent feminist, what can I say? Now can we change the subject? Please? I still need to eat!”

  **********************************

  Pinky had thrown her stuff in her own bag when she followed me (she’d opened her cob salad but had closed it enough to not make much mess), so we finished lunch in the little conference room. I hoped everyone at the table would just assume that I’d been a little overwrought despite my brave talk and Pinky had followed to comfort me.

  After the drama that was lunch, my afternoon block of classes was math and literature (on Tuesdays and Thursdays it would be Japanese and science). Since it was the first week there was no Club Period yet and school got out at two. The rail ride home was better than I’d hoped; after changing into my “street skirt” in the restroom (I couldn’t bring myself to do the quick hall-change I saw performed beside a few lockers around me) I found a whole platoon of girls waiting to catch the rail to the City Center. From there nine girls caught the West Line with me. We all made the ride in the same rail car, chatting each other up about our first day and watching for “creepers” (we didn’t spot any), and one of the girls, a tall ninth-year named Shania, got off at the Twain Street Station with me.

  At the station we exchanged cell numbers, making a pact to be rail buddies and time our mornings and evenings to ride together when we could. My circle of acquaintances was expanding fast; first Pinky and Delia, then Gemma and now Shania. I wasn’t sure I could count Brad and Papa as acquaintances, though I supposed I could since I had permission to use their nicknames.

  Evening was homework and dinner, with May more than a little distracted by something and Carl carrying the conversation (Sophie dining out with friends), asking all the questions about my first day of school.

  The story of the Gold Whistle had him laughing too hard to speak and got a smile from May.

  And over dessert I took a deep breath and dropped today’s real bomb on them. “I found another changeling.”

  May dropped her fork. Picked it up. Looked at it like she’d forgotten what it was for and put it down. “Honey, what— How?”

  Without giving up Papa—I just described him as someone who helped me at the party when I panicked—I explained how I’d realized I could feel someone else like I felt Grace. May looked at Carl. Carl looked at May.

  “May,” he sighed. “This is getting out of hand. We need to tell her.”

  “Aunt Sophie—”

  “We agreed Sophie and the Seniors have no say in this. Besides, she’s on our side.”

  I blinked. What? Really, what?

  Carl stood, plate in hand. “Dishes, then we talk.”

  The two of us finished them in record time, May taking care of Steph, and ten minutes later we sat down in the living room, Steph in her crib and the two of them facing me from the couch. I’d taken one of the matching chairs facing it across the coffee table and they sat hip to hip and holding hands, Carl stroking May’s knuckles with his thumb, as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. How the hell could it involve Aunt Sophie? Why the hell was May scared?

  “So, what?”

  Visibly gathered herself, she straightening up and took a deep breath. “Honey. When I showed you the DNA results, I explained what I guessed about why it happened.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “The timing and Steph’s DNA. And your guess about the aliens.”

  “Yes. I had to. You needed to understand what had happened even if I couldn’t tell you everything.”

  “. . . But you could have. Told me everything.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t— I lied. It wasn’t a guess. When I saw the test results . . . I know what happened to you, and it’s my fault.” She took another breath. “We’re not supposed to tell anyone—not without permission—but with everything that’s happened to you, that’s happening to you, we can’t . . . You need to know the truth. Carl and I, and Aunt Sophie, we’re aliens. So are you, now. All changelings are.”

  “. . . What.”