Shadows

  This was so bad. Awful. Hidoi. The worst. Saiaku no jitai.

  I didn’t know what I should do.

  Oh, and Ran did do the dishes that night. Not necessarily so that you didn’t have to do them again, but he had definitely used soap.

  CHAPTER 3

  SCHOOL STARTED SIX WEEKS AND THREE DAYS after the wedding—and nine days after the last message I took out to the shed. I never thought I’d be glad about the start of a school year but nobody was going to argue with me that I had to go to school and any break was better than endlessly trying to figure out where the line was I had to walk at home. All lines were obscured by shadows.

  At least I had Mongo. He liked everybody, including Val, but I was always his first choice. I might have had Bella and Jonesie too but I thought Mom would probably notice if I tried to smuggle a wolfhound and a Staffie cross the size of an ice-cream van upstairs to my room as well as Mongo. (Not to mention the dog food. Bella didn’t actually eat all that much. Jonesie was an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner.)

  The first day of school I stuffed my new paper notebooks and my old ’top in my knapsack and wished I was on my way to the shelter. I’d thought more than once this summer about trying to convince Clare to take me on full time and then I could not bother to finish high school, but I knew she’d tell me to come back when I had my first PhD and she’d be happy to hire me at minimum wage (she had about six PhDs in stuff like molecular biology, very useful for cleaning kennels), and that Mom would have kittens if I tried. No, pterodactyls. But if I lived at the shelter (there was a sort of staff apartment over Clare’s office: it was pretty awful, but I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping Mongo) it would solve brooding about living under the same roof as an illegal magic user bakemono—monster.

  I knew that the stuff they teach you in school about magical hygiene and how all magicians are psychopaths is just grown-up nonsense like if you never kiss anyone you won’t get pregnant (you have to wonder about adults sometimes; it’s not the kissing that does it). But some of the deep Newworld distrust of magic must be for good reason or why did they go to so much trouble neutralizing the genes for magic in my grandmother’s day? How was I supposed to know which was the little bit that was true? I worried a lot about Mom. She was married to the bakemono.

  I hadn’t been sleeping too well since that last message to the shed. I kept thinking that I should go to Watchguard and rat on Val. They’d probably throw him out of the country. But it’s not like we’d go back to the way we were before—Mom would be totally miserable and I’d be the bad guy. And the idea of ratting out another human being—even Val—felt totally kusatta. Slime mold behavior. Toxic slime mold behavior. Especially ratting him out to Watchguard. Our local watch guys were mostly really nice, but they still sent their reports on to the big military Overwatch, and then if it was important Overwatch sent it to the niddles, NIDL, the National Invasion Defense League, and somewhere along the chain of command the sense of humor went out and the guns and zappers and the armored transport vehicles that looked ready to take on a galactic strike force came in.

  I have a little trouble with authority anyway but when the army comes to town you get out of the way and that yanks my wiring. I don’t like big ugly guys who think they’re better than you are because they’ve got a cobey badge on their hats. (Cobey units are the elite of the up-themselves division. Yaaaaaawn. My uncle Darnel isn’t so much up himself, but he’s still a kind of a jerk.) Some state-level Watchguard gizmohead comes to every school once every year to give the standard lecture on reporting silverbugs and doing anything that a member of a cobey unit tells you to do and doing it fast. The major we’d had every year since I’d been in high school was so delighted to be himself that he could hardly stop smiling and throwing his chest out at us and stroking his medals and ribbons and the stuff on his uniform while he talked. (Jill said it was because the medals weren’t his, he’d hired them for the day from Central Costume.) I couldn’t hand anyone over to these bugsuckers, not even Val. I admit when I saw Val across the dinner table I wavered. But I didn’t waver long enough to do him (and Mom) any harm.

  But I was getting short of sleep. Takahiro had taught me to make kami guardians out of paper, and I’d folded so many the last nine days, or rather nights, when I couldn’t sleep that every time I turned around or Mongo wagged his tail a few blew off wherever they were and fell on the floor. I had them along both windowsills and over the door to the hall and the closet door, and I’d run strings through more of them so I could tack them up near the ceiling and around the lampshade and anywhere else I could think of. I’d got pretty sharp at folding kami. There were different kinds of protective kami: earth, wind, sun, moon—and critters. I of course totally specialized in critters.

  The first kami Takahiro had ever showed me how to fold was a fox—kitsune—and I’d adapted it so I could have a dog too, although it might have been a wolf. (Eventually I redesigned it further and created a border collie.) There were lots of others: badgers, otters, sika deer, cranes, doves, koi, hares, dragons. It was soothing, folding something familiar, over and over and over, and my stupid brain would settle down and everything would slow down and focus on the piece of paper in my hands, till I became Hands Folding Paper. I’m not sure I didn’t fall asleep like that sometimes. I probably slept better sitting up folding than I did lying down in bed. And sometimes when it was like I’d woken up to find that I was still folding paper I’d find that I’d folded something I didn’t recognize. I began to recognize it, though, because it always seemed to be the same thing: long, sinuous, with a big spiky crest on its head and neck and plates or feathers or something both down its back and along its belly. Unless the jags underneath were legs. I might have worried more about the legs except that I always felt better when I’d folded one of these things; they gave off a funny mix of both peace and strength. I could never do one when I was thinking about it though. I had to be in that Hands Folding Paper space, turn off, and let it take over.

  When I picked up my knapsack for the first day of school, it weighed too much, of course, and as I dragged it across my desk about a dozen little paper critters headed for the floor. I don’t like leaving kami on the floor—it’s not polite—so I bundled them up and stuffed them in one of those useless little pockets knapsacks always have and ran (joltingly) downstairs, thinking that maybe I could stop at Porter’s for more origami paper on my way to the shelter that afternoon. (Another of Arnie’s virtues is that he doesn’t mind kept-under-ruthless-control dogs in his store. He’s even been known to have dog biscuits under the cash terminal.) I could hear Jill’s (latest) car crunching on the gravel of our driveway as I chugged my coffee. Mongo had already guessed what his early walk and my unusual level of activity meant and was in tragic mode.

  “Don’t eat anything I wouldn’t eat,” I said to him. Mom was in the shower and Val and Ran were still asleep. At least I didn’t have to say any complicated good-byes on the first morning of my senior year. I kind of felt that if Val had wished me a good year I’d have a bad one. No, wait, my knapsack was full of kami. They’d protect me. Maybe I should get a kami tattoo. Speaking of things that would give Mom pterodactyls.

  If you’re asking me, school pretty much sucks. It wasn’t going to suck less because it was our last year, except that we could finally see the end of it. But a year was still a long time. And it wasn’t the end because we were supposed to go to college after. I wasn’t bright enough or didn’t take tests well enough (you choose) so I hadn’t been offered any scholarships that would have made it possible for me to go away to school. I’d been thinking I’d go to Runyon, which was near enough I could commute from home, and Dad had gone there, which didn’t mean they had to take me but it helped. I could just about do it by bus, but I was—had been—trying to rewire the board for enough graduation money that with the money I earned at the shelter I could buy some kind of car. Jill’s brothers would find me a cheap one that
ran. But now . . . there was no way I was going to live another four years at home. With Val.

  I also thought, what if someone else finds out he’s a magic user? (Gods’ holy engines. What if he’s a magician. No. Too gruesome to consider. Also supposedly the anti-cobey boxes wired in all over the landscape would pick up magic use of that level. Since there wasn’t supposed to be any serious magic or magicians in Newworld I’m not sure how they thought they knew this, or why it was supposed to be a good idea to waste the tech on something that didn’t exist.) But even if she didn’t have to hate her own daughter Mom would still be miserable if they took him away. And what if they decided Mom had been damaged or short-wired somehow? What about Ran and me? If we got put into care . . . I’d be eighteen next month. Maybe they’d let me be Ran’s guardian. Maybe Mongo would find a hundred gazillion dollars under a tree and I could bribe someone to leave Mom alone. Maybe they just wouldn’t find out.

  Did Mom know? How could she not know? Was I supposed to tell her? What was I supposed to tell her? But she knew I hated Val—wouldn’t she think I was making stuff up to be a creepazoid? She obviously didn’t see the shadows and I didn’t suppose Val kept a jar of powdered dragon’s blood on his shelf (at least not with a label on it) or a spell book written on human skin or anything. (Could you tell human from any other vellum? And what did spells look like? If it was in Orzaskani it might look like a cookbook. Boiled Rival Magician. Manticore Liver Pâté.)

  What had Val told her about what happened nine days ago? I had thought things around home this last week were a bit lower watt than they had been with all the newlywed la-la-la stuff going on, but maybe that was everybody trying to avoid me. I’d been trying to make this as easy as possible for the last six weeks and three days with the result that I was beginning to feel as if I might as well go live with strangers, because I was already.

  “Chotto, Mags, lighten up,” said Jill. “This is our last year. All we have to do is not fail.” Jill had accepted a place with enough of a scholarship that she could afford to go. I didn’t want to get a job waiting tables—which paid better than the shelter: everything paid better than the shelter—and a horrible little studio apartment with cockroaches and two-hundred-year-old clanking radiators and a toilet that dripped all night and a No Pets rule so I’d be smuggling Mongo in under my coat, which would not be fun for either of us.

  I had to let Runyon know what I was doing by the end of September. I didn’t know what I was doing.

  “Easy for you to say, oni face,” I said. Oni are the bad spirits like kami are the good ones.

  “Oni butt,” said Jill. “Your problem is that you won’t get off yours except for something with four legs and fur.”

  Jill parked and we strolled toward the main entrance. Most of the other students were smiling and talking animatedly about the summer (some of them more convincingly than others). I heard a lot of people saying stuff about Longiron and Hyderabad and the silverbug mobs. There were a few faces reflecting the range from resignation to dread. I figured I fit into that group. Jill got me by the arm and hustled me, shouting at the people we knew: “Hey, Becky-Ashley-Ryan-Keisha-Dena-Zach-Hadar-Hanif-Jamie-Laura”—she faltered—“Eddie-Jason-Steph. How was your summer? How many silverbugs did you step on? Are you ready to torture Mr. Grass-ass this year?” Mr. Garcia was head of the history department and deserved to be tortured. Jill took Mr. Garcia personally because history was her favorite subject.

  We’d seen all of them some time over the summer except Ashley, who’d been with her dad in Spain. “Hey,” she said to me. “I hear your mom’s remarried.”

  I stiffened without meaning to—I was going to have to get used to this question—but before I thought of something to say, Ashley wrinkled her nose and said, “Sorry. That bad? I sympathize.” She didn’t like her stepdad either, but he was a super-plugged-in, rubber-soled type, a mechanical engineer who stopped people from building bridges that would fall down. And her dad was still alive, even if he was in Spain.

  The first bell rang, and we moved toward the doors, the talkers doing the talking and the listeners doing the listening. I was a listener. Today Jill was talking as if she was going to get a prize if she said a million words before homeroom. Her chin was a little too far up and her hands were making gestures that were a little too large. I glanced at Eddie. He didn’t look bothered. He was talking to Genevra, who was new this year; she’d moved in during the summer, near Jill. Maybe he’d met her there. Genevra was listening with her tongue not quite hanging out. Eddie could be very charming. Dreeping jerk.

  I trailed behind a little, thinking about what I was going to say the next time someone asked me about Val. Ashley and Keisha were yakking away beside me. I glanced up when someone passed close by my other side.

  I had to look up a long way. I’m not short, but Takahiro is majorly tall. He’s also majorly quiet most of the time. He’d grown up in Japan but when his mom died he was shipped over here to live with his dad. The story was that he didn’t know any English when he arrived but his dad enrolled him here anyway and told him to figure it out. Thanks, Dad. Nobody I knew had ever met his dad—he never came to any of the school stuff parents were invited to—and they lived in a gigantic house on the far side of town almost nobody ever saw either. I’d been home with Taks a few times so I could vouch for the fact that it existed and was enormous—and was full of Farworld art and silence. The only other person who lived there was Kay, the housekeeper. I’d met Kay. Kay was one of these people who thought food was always the answer. The way Taks ate, she was probably right. But I’d never met his dad, who traveled a lot, buying stuff for museums and then telling them how to install it and take care of it (according to Taks).

  I didn’t remember Takahiro’s first couple of years here very well myself—he arrived the same year my dad died, and it took me a while to start noticing the rest of the world again. By the time I was noticing, Takahiro was famous for (a) not talking (b) doing origami all the time, which helped with (a) and (c) getting the highest grades in his class for almost everything. Since this included papers in English you have to assume his English was fine, at least at home alone and quiet with his books and ’top and not in the middle of the playground or the cafeteria with everyone screaming.

  But he still didn’t talk all that much, he still had a slight not-Newworld accent when he did, and he still tended to leave out words like the when he was upset about something because you don’t have the in Japanese. Although I may be the only person who’s figured this out, since Takahiro didn’t get excited or upset in any of the usual ways. I noticed it because the tended to disappear when he talked about his dad.

  So I looked up till my neck cracked and it was Takahiro. “Oh, Taks,” I said, and, not knowing I was going to do this, threw my arms around him. He had spent the last couple of Augusts at this super-whizzy brainiac camp his dad had found to stow him away at so Kay could have a holiday. He was such a good student the school didn’t make a fuss about him getting back a day or two late, as he had last year, for the beginning of term. Since I hadn’t heard from him beyond the occasional text saying stuff like “meteor shower last night. Electric” or “Have scientifically proven oatmeal here made of bleached beetle carapaces” (I’d answered that one “Want my aunt to sue for you? She’s good at it”) I’d assumed he wasn’t back yet.

  He patted my back gently and I let go before I embarrassed him any more. He didn’t hang out with Jill and me and our crowd of loose connections: he was a solid-state brainiac, and hung with other brainiacs. I nodded to Jeremy and Gianni, on Takahiro’s other side, who nodded back cautiously: I was pretty sure the only things they ever hugged were their ’tops. They were either pretending they hadn’t seen me do anything gruesome or were having a telepathic conversation about the atomic number of Venus. (Science: not my best feature.) Probably the second.

  “Bad summer?” said Takahiro.

  “Not the
best,” I said. “They got married.”

  “Ah,” said Takahiro. “Yeah. They were going to.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You?”

  “Not the best,” he said, and smiled. “Some new origami though. I’ll show you.”

  “Great,” I said. “Can—” But the second bell went, and we had to hurry.

  There was a mob at the back of Mrs. Andover’s homeroom as we all fought to get into the last row. Jill and I lost and were in the middle row, but at least we were together. Takahiro sat in front of me in the second row, which instantly made my seat the best in the whole classroom. Even slouching (Taks was always slouching) he was taller than anyone else. Under the roar of conversation Jill said to me, “We’re going to P&P tonight, okay? Laura says there’s a seriously cute new guy making pizza.”

  • • •

  When a gang of us went to P&P, we went later, after the family-supper rush. I took the bus home because Jill was going to the café after school, changed into my grubbies, hooked up Mongo (who had been very good and I only found the last shreds of a paper towel on the kitchen floor, although it might have started as a roll of them) and shot off for the bus that would take us to the shelter. By the time school started the days were already getting inconveniently short. I gave a few of my friends a quick walk (with Mongo accompanying) and settled down to cleaning kennels. I had to turn the lights on to see what I was doing.

  Then Mongo and I went home on the bus and I spent some time looking gloomily at my course outlines. My main claim to scholastic fame is that I read a lot. I always liked stories but it got kind of out of control after Dad died. I read The Count of Monte Cristo in sixth grade (good choice, although Haydée is a dead battery) and War and Peace in seventh (bad choice, what a bunch of losers). But this will only get you so far. The class I was dreading most was something they were calling Enhanced Algebra. This was camouflage for college-track students who needed another math credit but had barely scraped through Algebra I and Geometry. But they’d found a unique way to punish us for being stupid: the textbook was enormous. It was not going to fit in my knapsack. So not only was it going to be a total pain to haul back and forth to school every day, carrying it was going to be this great badge of dishonor: Here’s One of the Dumb Ones. Jill and Takahiro were taking calculus. At least I had friends who could drag me through Enhanced Algebra—as they’d already dragged me through Algebra I and Geometry. They weren’t going to help me carry the book though.