At least Amara was still OK. She and Ilanne were gathering the other mages, which meant she was relatively safe, but being back in Bedam brought her far too close to Nadi and Jorn for Nolan to feel even the slightest bit comfortable about leaving her alone.
Forty minutes later he trailed after his parents into Pat’s middle school, wearing his prosthesis for the first time in days. It itched with sweat.
Out of habit, he smiled teacher-smiles at his old art and social studies teachers, who waited outside the gymnasium, fanning themselves in the evening sun. The heat inside wasn’t much better. Had the AC broken down? Was it just him? His heart was still going a hundred miles an hour. He needed his pills.
Without a word, he stripped off his pinstriped shirt, happy to go with only the undershirt. It didn’t help against the heat.
Bored-looking kids Pat’s age milled around, grumpy at spending their evening back at school, while parents sat in too-small folding chairs and fiddled with their phones and camcorders. Underneath it all was the stench of old sweat and gym clothes and that muffled, artificial gym smell. Rubber? Vinyl? He didn’t know, but the tarp did nothing to hide it—
—Amara was sitting on dewy grass, absorbing the cool morning sunlight and watching Ilanne hover over a glass pane, the same as when Jorn had talked to Ruudde. Nolan wished he could lend her some of the Arizona heat. She’d probably faint—
—he had to get out of here. He couldn’t be at a damn middle school while going through withdrawal and—and everything going on with Amara.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He wormed free from the crowd, shuffling toward the stage. The folding chairs gave way to low gym benches, probably reserved for the younger kids. He fished out his phone, which showed a new text from Pat.
Am backstage. I’m gonna screw this up!!!
At least that gave Nolan an excuse to move away from the crowd. He nodded at another teacher, though he didn’t recognize this one, then at someone else who waved at him. It took him a second to recognize her: Sarah Schneider. Her hair looked different than at school. When she noticed him looking, her waves grew more enthusiastic, and her eyebrows rose in a hopeful question. Was she waving him over to sit with her? She must have a younger sibling in the play, too. Nolan swallowed an expletive at her timing, sped up, and belatedly realized he should’ve waved back. He moved around the stage taking up a third of the gym and ducked behind a black sheet, then up a small, portable set of stairs.
“You shouldn’t be back here,” a friend of Pat’s—Claudia?—said, blocking his path.
Nolan just showed her his phone.
Claudia read the text and stepped aside with an exaggerated flourish. “Now Pat starts caring?”
The backstage area was cramped, but at least it had a massive fan providing relief. Nolan didn’t pause to bask in the breeze, searching for Pat and mumbling apologies to oddly dressed preteens in his path. The one teacher backstage didn’t care half as much about his presence as Claudia did. Finally, Nolan spotted Pat near the stage, wearing an ill-fitting white uniform, her hair in an uncharacteristic bun.
“Look,” he said. “You rocked those rehearsals. You’ll be fine.”
“Look,” Pat said back. “I found fabric scissors.” She held them up. They flashed in the bare bulbs of the lights backstage.
Pat no longer looked nervous.
A girl Nolan didn’t know maneuvered past them to get to a stack of hats, and he barely noticed, too rooted to the floor to do anything but stare at the gleaming metal in his sister’s gloved hands. She’d lost one of her spikes. But even right before going onstage, even in her white nurse’s outfit, Pat stuck with her gloves.
“Amara’s on her way back,” Nolan whispered.
He couldn’t make himself look at Nadi wearing his sister’s eyes. He needed to focus on Pat’s gloves, her hands, and what they held. The scissors might move if he looked away. Near the scissors, his sister’s chest moved with controlled breaths. Too near.
“Amara is back in Bedam,” he said. “I’m making her come back already. Please.”
The scissors moved a fraction of an inch away from Pat’s chest. He saw muscles loosen in her hands. He dared take a breath but couldn’t move yet.
“Amara contacted the mages? And you helped her?” Pat—Nadi—said. Only then did Nolan’s eyes flicker from her hands to her face.
Of course Nadi could dig through Pat’s memories when Nolan couldn’t even touch Amara’s. Nadi must know all about how they’d hunted through the notebooks for clues.
“She’s coming back. I promise. I just wanted to know about Cilla—but talking to the mages didn’t work and Amara was being stupid and she didn’t care about Pat, and—she’s coming back. I can still control her. I’m sorry. She’s in Bedam! She’ll be at the palace by noon. Sooner. Within the hour. I promise!”
Nadi tapped the flat points of the scissors against Pat’s shut eyelids. “I know you do.”
“Please,” Nolan rasped.
“You’re sweating a lot, Nolan. You’re shaking. Is your control wearing off yet? What do you think will happen if you miss your deadline? Do you think I’ll go, Oh, it’s not like Nolan can do anything about it anymore, so I might as well forget about that family of his? ’Cause you’re wrong.” It was as if Nadi was trying to sound like Pat instead of herself now, so much that it raised the hairs on the back of Nolan’s neck. “I have a question for you: If you’re making Amara turn back, how come you’re here with me?”
She ran the scissors lightly along Pat’s arm. She pricked, once, in the hollow of her elbow. The scissors were too blunt to poke through. She applied more pressure. The skin turned yellow.
“You might want to hurry back before Amara turns around, hey?”
“I … Please don’t …”
“Go while you can, and your sister will be fine,” Nadi said.
“Pat!” Claudia shouted from a couple of feet away, over the heads of a rehearsing set of identically dressed patients. “Mr. Lopez wants to see you! We’re starting in five minutes!”
“Be there in a sec!” Nadi shouted. She looked back at Nolan and smiled Pat’s toothy grin. “I’ll see you soon.”
Nolan fought his way through the crowd, his eyes trained on the exit.
“Nolan!” Sarah Schneider said brightly. “I didn’t know you—”
Not now, he wanted to say, but the exit called to him, and the words didn’t come. He shoved past her, his eyes on that door, his mind back with Pat, and Sarah’s voice barely registered.
He’d meant to sneak by his parents. Sarah’s interruption had caught their attention, though. “Who was that girl? How’s Pat doing?” Mom touched Nolan’s shoulder as he passed. “We have seats over there.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“You’re going in the wrong direction. Are you having a seizure?”
“No—could you just—give me a minute?”
“Now? Can’t you wait until the break?” Some of the lights had gone out. A voice announced that the play was about to begin, and requested that everyone take their seats. A screech of the speakers caused the crowd to collectively wince, then laugh, because they were in a middle-school gym getting ready to watch a middle-school play, and the sun was shining, and they were in such good moods it hurt.
Nolan gripped fistfuls of his hair. He had to bring Amara to the palace. Now. Any moment, Nadi might peek at the crowd and see him lingering next to Mom.
“Nolan, just sit down,” Mom said, sounding stern now. “Oh, what are you doing to your hair ? It’s all messed up now—never mind. Grandma Pérez wanted to talk to you. Did you bring your report card like she asked?”