Finn hopped right down to start gathering up the teeth, knocking a few more off the table as he did so. Sarah watched him for a moment, took one of the loose teeth off the table, set it in the vice, and calmly drilled a hole in it. She dropped it into the cup about the same time that Finn came up with a handful of teeth. He dropped back to his hands and knees and started peering along the ground to find more. Sarah just let Cuddles drop off her wrist to the ground, and the white snake promptly slithered into the dark corners of the garage.
"I don't think I want to be in charge though," said Sarah.
"Someone has to," said Finn. Cuddles had shoved several teeth towards him from under various tables and boxes, and Finn was picking them up. "And you were first, really."
"What difference does that make? Besides, it was just luck," said Sarah.
"All right," said Finn. "But we've got to get something started first, and then we can make rules and stuff."
Sarah said, "Most of us live nearby, except for Kayla. All the adults mostly live near the university. So why not set up a camping trip or something? It's cheap, we'll have privacy, won't have to reserve anything. We just need to pick a weekend and get people to show up."
Finn sat back, letting his feet splay out in front of him. He looked up at Sarah and said, "Do people like to camp?"
"Sure, if I can stand it, they probably will too," Sarah said. "Besides, don't you think everyone wants a chance to talk things over? I mean, I haven't seen Sam since we met her in the library, and I still haven't had a chance to talk to Ashleigh. They've both been using the blue for a month now, and I've gotta admit it's making me feel a little crazy, knowing they're out there."
Finn scratched his head and dumped another little handful of teeth up on the table. "I guess. I mean, everyone who uses my red seems nice enough, but I don't know if they're all that anxious for a big meet-up for its own sake. I guess they'll mostly like camping. Well, maybe, I don't know about Taylor. Although I'd bet Kayla is going to go nuts when she hears about it."
"Nah," said Sarah. "Bri told me she's calmed down a ton this summer. I guess they put her in some sort of programming class or something, she's been doing really well."
"Cool," said Finn.
"Here," said Sarah, handing the bowl down to him. "Set that down, Cuddles can finish cleaning up."
Finn stood up and leaned back against the work table. He watched as Sarah drilled holes through more teeth. She'd gotten into a rhythm and was moving as fast as the screw on the vice would let her. Finn scraped all the teeth into a pile and dumped the cup of drilled teeth onto the mat she'd gotten out. He began sorting the ready teeth into piles and rows.
"Tell you what," he said. "Want me to set it up? Call everyone, find a time, that sort of thing?"
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"Yes," said Sarah. His proposal made her stop working on the teeth, and she turned to him with a wide smile. "That's a huge relief, honestly. Maybe make sure that we'd like it to be a regular thing? Doesn't always have to be camping."
"Right," he said, picking up the notebook. "And I can let them know that we aren't just catching up for fun, too. Maybe talk about how we bring more people in as we find them, how we talk, all that sort of thing."
"And what do you think?" she asked. "About new people. Should we be looking for them, or letting them come as they find us, or what?"
"Well, they seem to be finding us pretty fast already," said Finn.
"Sure, a few, when one of us goes out of town or at the school where they've got people from all over the country attending," said Sarah. "But there's got to be more, right?"
"Sure there are," said Finn.
"And remember what it was like before you knew? When we were stuck in the hospital? When the doctors thought we were sick?
"Or our parents worried that we were crazy?" said Finn.
"Or actually thought we were," muttered Sarah. "I just, well, shouldn't we be helping them? I was lucky, to see you explode like that. I don't know if I ever would have figured it out otherwise. And how long would you have kept shouting and knocking yourself out in the hospital if Alexa and I hadn't come around?"
"So... what? I don't know if traveling from hospital to hospital asking about seizure patients is going to work," said Finn.
"No," said Sarah, as she slumped back and focused on her work. "But at least that ought to be something we all talk about. Someone will have an idea. Or at least an idea about how to deal with anyone new showing up."
"Actually, that's good," said Finn. "It'll be a lot easier to get people to give up a weekend to meet if we have something to talk about besides just arranging more meetings. I'll start calling people right away. I'll see if we can manage this weekend, but we might need to wait for Labor Day, even if that's a month away. This'll be fun."
Somehow her talk with Finn had left her shoulders unknotted, and she couldn't really help herself and gave him a fast hug. She squeezed him hard for a moment before turning back to the teeth.
"Awesome. Can't wait to get all the Fog Catchers together," he said brightly, smiling down at her.
And just like that, Sarah lost her smile. She turned to look at him with a frown and a raised eyebrow, "Fog Catchers?"
"No? How about Mist Whisperers?"
Sarah kept looking at him.
"Chroma Coven? Radiant Collective? Modern Magicians? Wizard Club?"
"Maybe we set the whole naming thing aside for now, and let everyone decide what we call ourselves when we're together," said Sarah. "Something else for the agenda."
Finn quieted down and stood still watching her work on the teeth. He had one of the bigger molars in his hand and was turning it over and over in his fingers while he watched. Sarah glanced at him from the corner of her eyes and noticed he was looking flushed. Somehow it made his freckles stand out even more than they usually did against his pale skin. He wasn't saying anything, or doing anything other than playing with the one tooth, he was just watching her.
She kept peeking at him as she worked, but he still didn't say anything. She finished drilling around a quarter of the teeth, then knelt down to put the little drill in its case. She picked up the last half dozen teeth that Cuddles had gathered, let the snake spine wrap around her wrist again, and stood up.
"I think that's it for now. I'm going to experiment with these before I drill them all, in case I need to do something different," said Sarah. "Do you want to come in and get something to eat?"
When she stood up, she hadn't noticed quite how close Finn was standing, and when she asked him about lunch she realized that they were practically touching, so she leaned back and smiled a bit. She started to apologize, but before she could speak one of Finn's hands had come up and rested on a hip, the other held her shoulder, and now Finn was leaning over. She could already feel his breath on her face, and he was still coming.