“ X-Men,” she said. “You'll like these. Your father's still being examined. Give me the cotton.”
Stella pulled off the tape and handed it to Miss Kantor, who opened a plastic bag to store it.
“He'll be done soon,” Miss Kantor said with a practiced smile.
Stella ignored the comics and stood in the bare room with its flowered wallpaper and the single table and two plastic chairs. There was a water cooler in the corner and a couple of lounge chairs, patched and dirty. She filled a paper cup with water. A window opened from the main office, and another window looked out over the parking lot. No hot coffee or tea, no hot plate for warming food—no utensils. Family visits were not meant to last long or to be particularly comfortable.
She curled the paper cup in her hand and thought alternately about her father and about Will. Thinking about Will pushed her father into the background, if only for a moment, and Stella did not like that. She did not want to be chaotic. She did not want to be unpredictable; she wanted to be faithful to the goal of putting together a stable deme, away from the school, away from human interference, and that would require focus and an emotional constancy.
She knew nothing about Will. She did not even know his last name. He might not remember her. Perhaps he was passing through, getting a checkup or going through some sort of quarantine on his way to another school.
But if he was staying . . .
Joanie opened the door. “Your father's here,” she said. Joanie always tried to hide her smell behind baby powder. Her expression was friendly but empty. She did what Miss Kantor wanted and seldom expressed her own opinions.
“Okay,” Stella said, and took a seat in one plastic chair. The table would be between them, she hoped. She squirmed nervously. She had to get used to the thought of seeing Mitch again.
Joanie pointed the way through the door and Mitch came in. His left arm hung by his side. Stella looked at the arm, eyes wide, and then at Mitch's denim jacket and jeans, worn and a little dusty. And then she looked at his face.
Mitch was forcing a nervous smile. He did not know what to do, either.
“Hello, sweetie,” he said.
“You can sit in the chair,” Joanie said. “Take your time.”
“How long do we have?” Mitch asked Joanie. Stella hated that. She remembered him as being strong and in charge, and his having to ask about such a thing was wrong.
“We don't have many visits scheduled today. There are four rooms. So . . . take your time. A couple of hours. Let me know if you need anything. I'll be in the office right outside.”
Joanie shut the door and Mitch looked at the chair, the table. Then, at his daughter.
“Don't you want a hug?” he asked Stella.
Stella stood, her cheeks tawny with emotion. She kept her hands by her sides. Mitch walked across the room slowly, and she tracked him like a wild animal. Then the currents of air in the room brought his scent, and the cry came up out of her before she could stop it. Mitch took the last step and grabbed her and squeezed and Stella shook in his arms. Her eyes filled with tears that dripped on Mitch's jacket.
“You're so tall,” Mitch murmured, swinging her gently back and forth, brushing the tips of her shoes against the linoleum.
She planted her feet and pushed him back and tried to pack in her emotions, but they did not fit. They had exploded like popcorn.
“I've never given up,” Mitch said.
Stella's long fingers clutched at his jacket. The smell of him was overwhelming, comfortable and familiar; it made her feel like a little girl again. He was basic and simple, no elaborations, predictable and memorable; he was the smell of their home in Virginia, of everything she had tried to forget, everything she had thought was lost.
“I couldn't come to see you,” he said. “They wouldn't let me. Part of probation.”
She nodded, bumping her chin gently against his shoulder.
“I sent your mother messages.”
“She gave them to me.”
“There was no gun, Stella. They lied,” Mitch said, and for a moment he looked no older than her, just another disappointed child.
“I know. Kaye told me.”
Mitch held his daughter at arm's length. “You're gorgeous,” he said, his thick brows drawing together. His face was sunburned. Stella could smell the damage to his skin, the toughening. He smelled like leather and dust above the fundamental of just being Mitch. In his smell—and in Kaye's—she could detect a little of her own fundamental, like a shared license number in the genes, a common passkey to the emotions.
“They want us to sit . . . here?” Mitch asked, swinging one arm at the table.
Stella wrapped her arms around herself, still jammed up inside. She did not know what to do.
Mitch smiled. “Let's just stand for a while,” he said.
“All right,” Stella said.
“Try to get used to each other again.”
“All right.”
“Are they treating you well?” Mitch asked.
“They probably think so.”
“What do you think?”
Shrug, long fingers wrapping around her wrists, making a little cage of her hands and arms. “They're afraid of us.”
Mitch clenched his jaw and nodded. “Nothing new.”
Stella's eyes were hypnotic as she tried to express herself. Her pupils shifted size and gold flecks passed like fizz in champagne. “They don't want us to be who we are.”
“How do you mean?”
“They move us from one dorm to another. They use sniffers. If we scent, we're punished. If we cloud-scent or fever scent, they break us up and keep us in detention.”
“I've read about that,” Mitch said.
“They think we'll try to persuade them. Maybe they're afraid we'll try to escape. They wear nose plugs, and sometimes they fill the dorms with fake strawberry or peach smell when they do a health inspection. I used to like strawberry, but now it's awful. Worst of all is the Pine-Sol.” She shoved her palm against her nose and made a gagging sound.
“I hear the classes are boring, too.”
“They're afraid we'll learn something,” Stella said, and giggled. Mitch felt a tingle. That sound had changed, and the change was not subtle. She sounded wary, more mature . . . but something else was at work.
Laughter was a key gauge of psychology and culture. His daughter was very different from the little girl he had known.
“I've learned a lot from the others,” Stella said, straightening her face. Mitch traced the faint marks of lines under and beside her eyes, at the corners of her lips, fascinated by the dance of clues to her emotions. Finer muscle control than she had had as a youngster . . . capable of expressions he could not begin to interpret.
“Are you doing okay?” Mitch asked, very seriously.
“I'm doing better than they want,” she said. “It isn't so bad, because we manage.” She glanced up at the ceiling, touched her earlobe, winked. Of course, they were being monitored; she did not want to give away any secrets.
“Glad to hear it,” Mitch said.
“But of course there's stuff they already know,” she added in a low voice. “I'll tell you about that if you want.”
“Of course, sweetie,” Mitch said. “Anything.”
Stella kept her eyes on the top of the table as she told Mitch about the groups of twenty to thirty that called themselves demes. “It means ‘the people,’ ” she said. “We're like sisters in the demes. But they don't let the boys sleep in the same dorms, the same barracks. So we have to sing across the wire at night and try to recruit boys into our demes that way.”
“That's probably for the best,” Mitch said. He lifted one eyebrow and pinched his lips together.
Stella shook her head. “But they don't understand. The deme is like a big family. We help each other. We talk and solve problems and stop arguments. We're so smart when we're in a deme. We feel so right together. Maybe that's why . . .”