“Out in the courtyard.”
“Oh—nothing,” said Nona, barely able to remember. “I wasn’t good at pretending to talk at all. I just pretended I was talking to someone else and I only talked for like ten seconds because I felt silly.”
Hot Sauce did not look convinced. “Better come inside early. We’ve used the hair dryer.”
“What happened? When I talked on the radio?”
Hot Sauce hesitated, then said: “The watcher took off.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Right?”
“I need to investigate.”
“But it’s useful to know, isn’t it?”
But when Hot Sauce shrugged, Nona could tell she thought Nona didn’t understand, knew that Hot Sauce was keeping things back: something she didn’t mind as much when Hot Sauce did it but still minded a little. It was shitty being able to tell when people were holding back from her. Hot Sauce just said, “Come inside.”
It wasn’t a great end to the school day, and it seemed to jinx everything from there on. Nona, sitting at the back with Noodle, found she couldn’t follow what was happening in the Hour of Science, which culminated in a lot of ice cubes removed from strange places to triumphant shrieks from the crowd. And then there was the familiar pop-pop-pop from the street, really close, so they had to close all the blinds and the nice lady teacher had to go downstairs to make sure everything was locked up and they did everything sitting down away from shot lines from the window. They’d all done gunfire drill a million times and hardly any of the tinies got scared, even when the dreary siren started up outside. It was more boring and hot than it was terrifying. Even the Angel only seemed annoyed.
“That’s too close for comfort,” she commented. “Probably a one-off.”
But it wasn’t a one-off, it kept happening. They cut off any plenary time and mopped up ice water and the main teacher read to them from a book after a vote. The tinies outvoted everyone to select a book that wasn’t even good, a soppy tale about some children who went to the beach and weren’t eaten by anything. Another sign of the afternoon being cursed, Nona thought dolefully. At least school was nearly over for her.
People’s parents snuck in despite the fact that there was still shooting going on a couple streets away. Some of them said that it had been like that for hours and their child wouldn’t come back for afternoon school, even though both the Angel and the nice lady teacher tried to get them all to stay until it was better. They were still arguing when Camilla came to pick up Nona, and even though the lady teacher’s eyes brightened to see Cam—Nona could see her pamphlet hand twitching—Cam bundled her out of there before she even got a proper goodbye. The last thing she saw was Hot Sauce sitting by the blinded-up window, thoughtful and still as a statue in the park, only her head was still on of course.
Camilla led Nona by a very circuitous way home. They stopped at the street their building was on, and Cam ducked into a bakery and came out with a warm and probably radioactive paper bag of pastries that had been under the bakery light the whole time. When Nona asked how she got the money, Cam said, “Never mind.”
Nona was annoyed.
“You can just say you stole some, Cam, I don’t mind.”
“I sold something,” said Camilla.
Light dawned on Nona back home, after she had choked down some of the meat roll. She tried not to complain about it, but did the thing where she drank water until she said, “I’m full,” and Cam said, “Then we’ll wait. You haven’t had any protein today,” and she had to eat it anyway. She peeled off the casing and ate the stuff inside and hated the experience, but at least then it was over. While Cam was cleaning up she checked the secret drawer and found that the cigarettes were all gone.
When Camilla came back in to tack up the blackout curtains, Nona said, “You sold her stash. Pyrrha’s going to freak out.”
“Pyrrha will deal,” said Camilla. “Start stretching.”
Which meant it was time for swords. When Nona said passionately, “I hate swords, you don’t even teach me how to use them,” this just got written down on the clipboard as though even her complaints were only useful for research. Nona felt very bitter about life.
But her bitterness slowly ebbed away, as it always did, and turned into something a little more like misery. Pyrrha was late coming home that evening. It had used to be that after the bones and the swords Nona would spend sultry evenings out at the harbour, to swim if the beach was empty and if there was nobody there to see, or to dig clams and cockles out with a stick if there were people. Walking made her tired, but she could swim in the salt water for hours and never get enough of it. It was comfortable and private. Unfortunately, these days if she said, “Cam, can’t we go swimming?” Cam would say, “Remember what happened the last time,” and won every argument that way. That was because what happened the last time was that Camilla had got sick, and less important, Nona had got shot.