“Oh, you do have a phone!” Iggy said when they met him at the subway platform shortly after eight. It had become a ritual at some point that Iggy walked with them to school from the subway station.
“Doh!” Jillian hit dial to try yet again. “Everyone has phones, even the Amish.”
“Isn’t that against their religion?” Iggy asked.
“I report it, not explain it,” Jillian stated.
Jillian’s phone suddenly connected, and a man spoke over her phone. “Hey, this is Oilcan. My life imploded, and I’m not going to be home until probably Wednesday. I ran over my headset. It’s in a zillion pieces that not even Tinker could fix. If you really, really need to talk to me, call Tinker. Be warned that she’s in full Godzilla mode. If you don’t have Tinker’s number, call Roach.”
They stared at Jillian’s phone for several heartbeats.
“Normally you leave a message after something like that.” Iggy pointed to the still connected phone.
“That’s not the right number.” Jillian disconnected the call.
“Ah, okay, I was wondering. Those sound like gang names. And headsets? Only bikers use those.”
Jillian glanced to Louise as she put her phone away. “I’ll have to look up the right number later.”
“So.” Iggy bounced in place. “Are you psyched?”
“Huh?” Louise said.
“Tomorrow you start flying!” Iggy meant for the play.
Jillian swore slightly as the twins traded glances. They had totally forgotten about the play again in the flood of other concerns. Because of the bombing, all the school activities had been pushed back a week, including the sixth-grade class play. They’d made up for lost time on stagecraft with after-school sessions. They hadn’t had access to the stage, however, until last week. It meant they spent the first few days moving pieces of the sets into place, assembling them, and testing their blocking.
Jillian and Iggy started to practice lines, which left Louise to consider Oilcan’s answering machine message. They still didn’t know if this man was their cousin, Orville. They’d scripted out a series of questions that they could have asked to establish his identity. If he wasn’t going to be home during the Shutdown window, then they could only leave a message. Should they without knowing if this was really Orville or not?
It was painful to feel exactly nine years old.
“We could just say ‘Alexander is in danger’ and not give any other information on her, not even her gender, and if it isn’t Orville, he’ll have no idea who we’re talking about.”
They’d hidden themselves in the girls’ restroom to discuss the problem before the homeroom bell rang.
“I don’t know. Two kids call and leave a message about elves kidnapping your cousin — who’s going to believe that? It’s going to sound like a joke.”
“We can have Tesla leave it.” Jillian dropped her pitch to the gravelly tone of Tesla’s original deep voice, before they changed it to sound like Christopher Robin. “Ohayougozaimasu, Orville-san.”
“That could work, but do we say who is going to kidnap Alexander? Sparrow is a double agent working inside the Wind Clan. We don’t know whom she’s working for or why. It isn’t Windwolf; he’s a target, too. And Sparrow probably isn’t going to carry out the kidnapping herself.”
“I know! I know!” Jillian cried. “Okay. We’ll call Lain.”
“What? Lain?”
“She’s Alexander’s aunt.”
“But she might not know that. Esme didn’t want April to tell her about Alexander.”
“While Esme was still on Earth.” Jillian wrapped her arms around Louise. “If I were leaving Earth like that, I would know that I was never coming back. And that I would never see you again. I would want the last time we’re together to be all good memories — and that certainly wouldn’t work if I dropped a shitload of crazy on you.”
Louise shuddered at the idea of losing Jillian. “So, you think that Esme would have left a note or something that Lain could read after they’d said good-bye?”
Jillian nodded. “I would. A big long sappy note of everything that hurt too much to say.”
“Like what?”
“You know. Like how I was going to miss waking up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and knowing that I wasn’t alone. And how scary everything was going to be without you with me. You’re the brave one. I couldn’t do half the things we do without you leading the way.”
“Me? Brave?”
“Yeah!” Jillian squeezed her hard and then let her go, embarrassed. “Anyhow, I’m betting Esme did tell Lain before she jumped.”
The homeroom bell rang, ending their moment of privacy.
“Okay,” Louise said. “We’ll call Lain.”
Mr. Howe was standing in the hallway with Miss Hamilton. They had Elle with them plus the two boys, Darius and Carlos, who were playing Wendy’s younger brothers. Darius had been picked for John because he was the best of all the fifth-grade boys at remembering lines after Iggy. Carlos was the smallest of the boys and thus had been picked to play Michael, the baby of the Darling family.
“Girls, there’s been a change in plan. The flying instructor is here. They’ve installed the wires for the play, and you’re going to be spending today learning how to use it.”
Jillian breathed out a curse that only Louise could hear.
“Today?” Louise asked fearfully.
A weird side effect of playing with the spells was that the residual magic seemed to be giving Louise horrible nightmares. One of the recurring ones was Jillian falling, and it had them both a little edgy about the flying.
“Yes, we were originally scheduled for last Wednesday but. .” She paused as the sentence led her to the bombing. The teachers seemed reluctant to discuss it, as if they had been repeatedly told not to bring it up.
“But I thought it was moved to tomorrow,” Louise said.
“There was a conflict in schedules, and we got bumped to today. Go down to the theater with Mr. Howe.”
He held up his hand to check them and stepped into 502. “Behave!” Mr. Howe growled at his class. “I’ll get a full report, so don’t think I won’t know.”
With that warning, he led them downstairs. The twins followed, exchanging glances that spoke volumes. The flying instruction was a full-day affair. Jillian was better at lying, but she was going to be strapped into a harness and suspended from the ceiling all day. Louise would have to be the one to call Lain.
The flying instructor was a giant. He towered over the twins and was nearly a foot taller than even Mr. Howe.
“I’m Rob Noble. I’m with Flights of New York. In the next two days I’ll teach you how to operate the equipment and help you choreograph the entire play. I’ve done hundreds of productions of Peter Pan, so I know the characters and I know the scenes. I can give you complete blocking instructions or I can just make suggestions. This is your production, not mine. Today we’ll get you comfortable at flying and then choreograph everything but the fight on the Jolly Roger.”
He held a harness that was a belt with wide suspenders and straps that looped through the legs. The reinforced back had one large ring. “We’ll be using these flying harnesses, and only them. Safety is very important, so never try to hook the wire to something like a belt or a piece of clothing and expect it to hold. The harness goes under a costume. It can’t be dyed or painted, because that might weaken the material. You’ll want a T-shirt on under it; you don’t want it up against your skin. Stage manager?”