The next class felt like entire years were passing by. Natalie swore she could see her desk aging, like they did in time lapses in end-of-the-world movies. She half-expected plants to start bursting out of the ground around her and start reclaiming the whole building for nature, like they always talked about in the books and shows she liked.

  That sounds better than dealing with this whole mess.

  She still had no idea what Quinn was thinking. Was he trying to bring up the brief moment she'd let magic slip in front of him? Or was it genuinely an invitation to play Conquest, and Quinn had completely forgotten they'd never actually started playing? Did he have ulterior motives? Was Natalie just making it all up in her head?

  "Jenny!"

  "What?" she spluttered, looking up at the board.

  "Can you tell me what the value of X in this problem is?"

  Natalie looked over the board, trying to focus her eyes on it. Everything seemed so hazy. Quinn was in the desk next to her, and she could see him surreptitiously writing the answer on a piece of paper beneath his desk.

  I know how to do this. Natalie forced her eyes back into focus. The problem wasn't actually that hard, once she remembered the order things were supposed to go in. She didn't even need scratch paper to solve it. Nice and straightforward. Rules to follow. No confusion.

  "X equals six."

  "Good. Does anyone need help knowing how she got to that?" The teacher still looked vaguely concerned, but moved on to the next problem after no one else spoke up. Natalie's eyes fell back to the desk again, forgetting the class entirely.

  "Are you okay?" Quinn asked later, once they'd switched to group work.

  The class conveniently split into groups of four that left only two extra, and—as her horrible luck would have it—that left just Quinn and Natalie leftover, in the corner of the room together. He scooted his desk around so that they'd be next to each other, dropping his voice low.

  "Did something happen?"

  "Nothing happened." Natalie looked down at her workbook and tried to start on the first problem.

  "You can tell me anything, you know. I'd never tell anyone."

  "Nothing happened," she repeated. She looked up and saw Quinn's eager eyes. He said he wanted to help and that he was there for her, but all she could see was a source of danger. "Let's just finish these, okay?"

  "Okay."

  He wasn't going to give up that easily. He knew it, and she knew it too. Natalie tried to focus, but she couldn't stop dreading every word out of Quinn's mouth. Her mind kept flashing through images of terrible things happening to him and his friends, and it would all be her fault. Because she couldn't keep one little thing secret. They'd only gotten through half of the problems when he spoke up again.

  "I was thinking. I'm pretty good with the internet. Maybe I could help you find them?"

  "Find who?" she asked, against her better judgment. Her hand gripped the metal bar on the side of her side so tight that her knuckles started to go white. She could feel the urge to push out magic into her hand, but that would lead to a permanently damaged desk and even more questions she couldn't answer. Natalie managed to control it, and the cold metal stayed intact.

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  "Your real parents, duh."

  "My… what?"

  His voice was so low she could barely hear him, but since every other group was joking around by now and the teacher was barely paying attention, she doubted they'd be overheard. "I mean, Lily's not your real mom, right? That's why you call her Lily. She's who they assigned to you."

  Kinda right, but kinda wrong. Not dangerous information though. "...No, she's not my real mom. But I'm really not supposed to talk about it, remember?"

  "Yeah, I gotcha. No one else will know."

  That's not what I meant at all! "How are you gonna do that?" she asked. She wanted to figure out if she needed to be worried, and she knew Quinn loved to show off his plans whenever he could.

  "You can find out a lot if you know what to search. With your name and maybe a little more, we could get a ton of info." He winced. "Not that you need to tell me anything! I wouldn't do anything unless you told me to. I know that stuff is serious."

  "I don't think it's a good idea."

  He looked crestfallen. "Are you sure? No one would know."

  Natalie shook her head. "They can find that stuff out though. They watch all the computers."

  "I wouldn't use a school computer." He sounded offended. "I'm not that dumb."

  "No, they watch all the computers." She remembered the detailed post that Tezofarl had made. A lot of the technical details went way over her head, but Cinza's summaries made the dangers pretty clear. Natalie wished she knew as much as Cinza about how computers and the internet worked, but Cinza told her it had taken years to learn.

  Natalie didn't have years. Sometimes, she felt like she didn't have days.

  "I'd be okay. And think about all the stuff you could find out!" Quinn was getting excited. She felt nervous. What if he went ahead and did it without her permission, despite all her warnings? They were entering dangerous territory. Natalie felt like she was surrounded with no way out.

  Class was nearly over. She only had to get through a minute or two before the bell would ring.

  "Just say the word and I put it into action." He reached over, as if to pat her on the back. His hand brushed the metal bar that connected the side of the desk to the chair back.

  A loud snap-crack stunned the room into silence.

  Quinn pulled back from the chair, wringing his hand in pain. A thick black imprint of Natalie's palm marked the metal bar she'd gripped only a moment before. She stood up sharply, grabbing up her bag. Most of the class was watching Quinn, but the bell was already ringing. Natalie took the opportunity to bail as fast as she possibly could. She practically threw the worksheets at the bin on the front table, totally ignoring whether or not they made it in.

  Natalie could still feel electricity in her fingertips. The last time she'd felt so surrounded, she'd been with Rachel, and Rachel had ordered her to throw lightning. She'd summoned up the electricity from all around her and inside herself, tiny things rubbing together in space that created power in a way she didn't understand. All she did was tell it where to go, make a pathway for it to travel.

  She'd been making it go into her fingers without thinking, just in case she needed to stop anyone from getting near her. It had flowed from her fingers into the metal desk and back again, but her magic kept it moving through her without a problem. It was only once Quinn touched the bar that the electricity found a new path, and started getting violent.

  Natalie hurried into the hallway, where the rows of lockers waited. Most kids were already streaming through, grabbing up the textbook for their next class, chatting, going to the bathroom. As soon as she emerged, everyone was staring at her.

  No they aren't. I'm imagining it. Stop. Breathe.

  They might not be looking at her, but Natalie still felt like impending doom waited just a few steps behind. Quinn was going to come out of that classroom any minute. She could go to her next class, but what good would that do? She'd already screwed up. The principal would be coming for her any minute. She'd caused another incident.

  Natalie took one step toward the exit, then another. No one was paying any attention to her. She broke into a brisk walk, beelining for the doors outside. No running. Never running. Running makes people look.

  She chanced a quick look over her shoulder. Quinn had emerged from the classroom and was looking around for her, but he was looking in the wrong direction. He was looking towards her next classroom, but he wasn't in that class. He couldn't go in to check, since he was already late, and his class was in the other direction. As she'd hoped, Quinn turned away reluctantly and went into his next room.

  The next teacher wouldn't find her for attendance. Her friends wouldn't know where she'd gone. Nobody knew. By the time school let out for the weekend, Jenny Heshire was nowhere to be found.