She only had one more class before the end of the day, and luckily Quinn wasn't in it. She managed to get through it without another terrifying flashback or magical incident, while the teacher talked excitedly about science and experiments. She didn't even feel the urge to fidget through the entire class, which was a welcome relief from her usual tics.
The day ended and Natalie headed for the street as quickly as she could, while most kids started loading up into the bright yellow school buses. Natalie couldn't take one of those, as she wasn't going anywhere near the district. She'd be taking a city bus again, but for extra safety she'd also be starting from a stop further away from the school. She left the school grounds on her own and started down the sidewalk, as brisk as she could without breaking into a full on run.
Running looks suspicious. Running calls attention to me. Walk, don't run.
Of course, since she was only walking, she hadn't gotten far enough away from the school before other kids who lived close had caught up to her. Natalie did her best to ignore them, though a few tried to say hi to the new kid, or pointedly talk about her from a distance and see if she'd respond. They all split off in the end, except for one.
Of course Quinn would be one of the kids who walked home. And of course he would happen to walk home in the same direction as her. Natalie tried to speed up, but Old Man Boris' instructions had been super specific. She did not run, and that gave him all the time in the world to catch up.
"Hey, Jenny!"
She slowed down. Trying to ignore him would only make things worse, when he already suspected something. She put on her smile and waited for him to catch up. "Hi, Quinn."
"You live out this way too?"
"No. I'm just going to the bus stop. Down on uhh… the one with the 7-Eleven. I live on..." she trailed off, not sure how to answer. Luckily, Quinn saved her the effort.
"You just moved, didn't you?" He grinned. Natalie just kinda gazed back at him. In truth, she couldn't remember the name of the street because she didn't live there. That was just where she was supposed to go after school. Their actual house was… somewhere else.
"Yeah, totally did." She looked around, then quickly crossed the street with Quinn at her heels.
"Wanna walk home together then? I actually just live one street over."
"Oh. Sure, I guess." She'd probably be overjoyed, if she didn't have a snapped pencil in her pocket and no actual home address to go to. "Thanks."
"Anytime."
They walked in silence for a few minutes, Natalie feeling increasingly uncomfortable. It wasn't that she didn't like spending time with him, but she didn't know how much she could say. She wasn't Old Man Boris. She hadn't lived this life for decades. How was she supposed to just lie about everything to everyone she met? Nobody could keep that up.
"Look," Quinn started, and Natalie snapped.
"A boy was running at me and I kinda flipped him over and hurt him and everyone freaked out. Then I was hearing them talk about Rallsburg and about the bodies and stuff and it was so terrible and I freaked out again. I didn't mean to."
Quinn's mouth was stuck open for a few moments. "Oh."
"Yeah," Natalie said, looking down at the ground.
"Well, I don't know if this makes you feel any better, but the guys want you to join the football team now. Not that you're allowed to," he added hastily. "It's a boys-only thing, even if you could probably beat most of them."
Natalie looked up in surprise. "They weren't freaked out?"
"That you're amazing at sports and can suplex one of the best players?" Quinn grinned. "I think half of them want to ask you out."
Natalie's face flushed with red. She glanced away.
"Was that bad? I'm sorry."
"I just..." Natalie started, but she closed her mouth suddenly. She wondered if Quinn counted himself among that group. "It was my first day at a real school. Ever. Is it always that crazy?"
"Nope. Don't worry, it'll calm down real soon." Quinn sighed exaggeratedly. "You'll be dying of boredom like the rest of us in no time."
They turned the corner and there sat the convenience store she was supposed to go to. She pointed at it. "I'm actually supposed to wait there to be picked up."
"I thought you took the bus?" Quinn asked, surprised.
"I do, but…" Natalie trailed off, realizing what she'd messed up. Today was a special case since she didn't have a bus pass yet, but she doubted Lily would want to run into her new tagalong. As little information as possible. "Lily's taking me out on an errand."
"Who's Lily?"
Mom. Not Lily. Why can't I keep things straight around him? "Lily's my mom."
"You call your mom Lily?"
"Yeah. I'm weird," she said abruptly. "Anyway, I should go wait for her over there. I'll see you tomorrow?"
"I mean, if you want, I could wait with you," he said, shrugging.
"You don't need to do that," Natalie said quickly, even though a small part of her mind really did want him to stick around. He couldn't, though. If he knew her, he'd remember Lily better, and he'd know what bus number she took, and all sorts of other information. Natalie doubted Quinn meant her any harm, but Boris had really stressed how important it was to keep as much secret as possible in their circumstances. Quinn couldn't be there.
"I'm really not doing anything else. I don't mind."
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Natalie shook her head, her hair whipping her in the face again as she did. "Look, Quinn, I really liked meeting you and hanging out today. I want to again tomorrow. But—"
He held up a hand. "Say no more. I gotcha. I'll see you tomorrow." He smiled. "Same classes, by the way. Only your fourth period will change every day, so you'll have your elective instead of gym tomorrow. What did you pick?"
"I didn't," Natalie said. She opened her purse and dug through quickly for her schedule, making sure Quinn couldn't see inside it. "Oh. It looks like it's the same one as yours?"
He glanced over it again. "Yeah, you're in technology too. Cool. It's way more fun than art or band. Band is for the slackers 'cause all the real band stuff is in an after school thing, and you'd know if you wanted to be in art class."
She shook her head. "Nope, definitely not."
"So yeah, technology's the way to go." He smiled. "Well, see you tomorrow Jenny." Quinn walked away, leaving her alone at the curbside in front of the store.
Natalie watched him go with a twinge of regret. She waited at the curbside of the store, watching the first bus pass by, and the second. The bus system confused her already. The sign had a giant list of numbers on it, which seemed to be the same numbers as the ones on the front of the buses, but why were there so many? What if she got on the wrong one? Would she just be sent off to the opposite side of the city?
Natalie didn't want to get stranded somewhere she couldn't find her way back. She waited, and eventually her bus pulled up, with Lily clearly seated only one window back from the front. Natalie quickly boarded and dropped a pile of quarters into the slot. The bus driver didn't even glance at her.
She glanced at Lily as she walked by, but Lily acted as if she hadn't noticed. Oh right. We don't know each other. Natalie quickly walked back to a seat near the side door and sat down just as the bus lurched underneath her. They were on their way.
It didn't take long for them to reach their stop, almost outside the city proper. Natalie occupied herself watching the variety of people getting on and off at each stop, fascinated by the massive difference between the people she'd grown up around and these strangers. She made sure she always kept Lily in sight though, terrified of missing her stop. As the bus shuddered to a halt and Lily got to her feet, Natalie hurried out the side door as fast as she could.
In front of them sat a boarded up old store, walled off by chain-link fences as forlorn and abandoned as Natalie felt. Lily was watching her carefully, waiting to see if she followed the instructions. Natalie took a deep breath. She checked both directions, making sure no one was watching them, then pulled back the corner of the fence and ducked through.
First step done. Natalie pulled out her phone and sent a text to Kendra.
She walked around the back of the place, where she found a tiny space wedged between a sealed dumpster—which was actually built into the wall itself—and the big fenced off electrical thing that plugged into the wall. The back of the store store lead immediately into a small park thick with trees, so it wasn't visible at all from far away. Someone would have to be standing back there to spot her darting through the gap.
Natalie finished her mental count to twenty she'd started in her head since she'd sent the text. About a second later, the wooden door appeared in the side of the dumpster right in front of her. She pushed through it quickly and closed it as quietly as she could manage. Ten seconds later, it vanished, returning to the rich textured wall of their house. Lily was somehow already inside waiting for her.
"Good job," Lily said, patting her on the shoulder. She headed upstairs. Natalie went into the sitting room, where Percy was waiting for her.
"How was your first day?" Kendra asked, glancing up from her book. Percy fluttered off the couch to perch on Natalie's shoulder.
"I don't speak… whatever that is," Kendra said mildly, sipping her tea.
"I tried to teach you."
"I doubt anyone can ever learn it without the book, sadly," she mused, setting aside her novel. "But did you learn anything today?"
"It was the first day. Nobody ever does anything on the first day," Natalie echoed, copying the whining tone of another kid she'd overheard. She didn't like Kendra asking her right after she got home, like she was checking to make sure Natalie didn't do anything wrong. She could be trusted for a single day alone, right? She'd begged them for a whole month to let her have this. Natalie didn't want everyone to get on her case about it now.
"Shoes, dear," Kendra added, giving her feet a disdainful glance. Natalie kicked them off into a corner. She ran and leapt onto the couch, landing with a thump while Percy fluttered away in alarm. Once she'd settled down, he dropped to the couch next to her and eyed her curiously.
None from Cinza. One from Hailey and Alden each, asking the same question as Kendra. Natalie scrolled back through her old messages, just in case she'd missed it somehow. When she reached the happy birthday messages from July, she gave up.
Nothing from Rachel.
Natalie knew there wouldn't be anything—but even so, it stung a little. Did Rachel even know she was going to school now?
She set her phone aside and stared up at the ceiling. She liked Lily most of the time—and to a lesser extent Kendra—but they just couldn't measure up to the two most important people in her life. One of those… well, thinking about him was really confusing now. But Rachel was different.
Natalie had first met her in the forest, actually, back when she was learning how to cast spells. She used to hate animals before she found her magic. No matter how smart they might seem, even dogs, she could never really communicate with them. She just didn't get what everyone saw in them. Then, so suddenly, she'd found that piece of paper that showed her how to really talk to them. How they could become just as intelligent as anyone she knew. They could be her close friends and companions, since she didn't really have any. Jenny was her only real friend, and they were close, but they didn't share a whole lot of interests. Plus, she didn't know about magic, and Natalie couldn't tell her.
Rachel, she could tell. Rachel listened, helped her figure things out, and encouraged her to explore it. Rachel was there when no one else was.
Rachel and Natalie joined the Council together, with Rachel making sure Natalie was listened to and accounted for every time. No one else ever gave her much notice since she was so young and small, but Rachel made sure she got her say. Rachel treated her like an equal member, even if she was just a kid. Natalie wasn't sure anymore if she had deserved it, since she whined a lot and didn't really offer much. Thinking back through a lot of those meetings she could still remember, Natalie cringed at how she used to act. She'd gotten a lot more mature since then—not entirely by choice.
Rachel had always treated her right, all the way to the end. Even when Natalie had been horrible to her, resenting Rachel for her dad's disappearance when she had nothing to do with it, Rachel still acted with kindness.
When the time came though, Rachel had walked on alone, sending Natalie away to try and save everyone else. Rachel had changed in those last couple days just like Natalie had. Everyone else seemed to move on, try to forget and live their lives again. Natalie was playing along for now, but she felt like she hadn't moved on at all—and only Rachel could understand why.
Natalie just wished they could talk again, but every time she logged on, Rachel's account was silent. No one knew where she'd gone. Jackie had dropped them off in Seattle, then taken Rachel and Will further north and vanished. No one had heard from the three of them in months. Rachel had sent them a single message with the address of the site they now used to talk in private, but that was it. Totally silent.
She kept it open on her phone every day since Rachel had sent it. Every day, Natalie checked to see if Rachel was back, and every day she didn't reappear. Natalie didn't tell Lily or Kendra about it. She stayed patient, going through the motions, waiting for the day Rachel would come back and keep her promise.
Waiting for the day Rachel and Natalie would finally go back to Rallsburg and find her father.