“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 was 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 goodbye?”
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, Elle, Darius and Carlos.
“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, though, was that the residual magic seemed to be giving Louise horrible nightmares. One of the recurring ones was of Jillian falling and it had them both a little edgy about the flying.
“Yes, we were originally scheduled for last Tuesday but—” She paused as the sentence led her to the bombing. The teachers seemed reluctant to discuss it, as if they were told not to bring it up repeatedly.