Nona thought about it.
“Camilla doesn’t need raising. You could have raised my status by saying you were mine,” she added. “They would have believed it—we’re both very attractive.”
Crown laughed in her lovely, husky, rippling way. “And there you go, reminding me of someone completely different.”
Then she dropped to a crouch again, but instead of dipping low and scratching Noodle, she gently pressed her thumb to the underside of Nona’s chin; she was smiling now, but she was smiling as though Nona had said something a little sad, and her eyes didn’t sparkle anymore. They hadn’t gone hard as they had at the roadside, but they were shadowy.
“You darling, I know what you are, even if they refuse to see it,” she said softly. “All I can say, sweetheart, is I envy you more than anyone else in the universe.”
15
BUT WITH THIS BOMB DROPPED, Crown refused to stay and tell, and Nona crouched there too open-mouthed to run after her. In any case Nona did not have to mourn long the fact that she was late for work and none of her friends had got to see Crown; Honesty had seen Crown leave from his window seat, and she was gratified when Born in the Morning and Honesty gave each other rabbit punches over who got to ask Nona how old she was and which of their names Nona had to mention to her in the future. Hot Sauce also came over to stroke Noodle and said, “Good. You’re here. Don’t want you to be dead,” which was a lot for Hot Sauce to say.
Nona recalled what Pyrrha had said about Hot Sauce. She looked her over carefully. It wasn’t as easy reading her as it was reading Pyrrha. Hot Sauce constantly stood as though she were disconnected from her own head. Her body and her mind seemed to actively ignore each other. And her burns sometimes made her look rigid in a way that scared the tinies and foxed Nona’s senses. Now Hot Sauce stood like she hadn’t slept very well, but Hot Sauce never stood like she’d slept very well. Her eyes were wrinkled like she’d squinted them a lot, maybe against bright light—or smoke.
“Would you be mad if I died?” said Nona.
“Yes,” said Hot Sauce simply. “You’re my crew.”
This made Nona deliriously pleased, but then deeply anxious.
“Hot Sauce,” she said timidly, “I don’t want you to be sad or mad if anything happens to me. Promise not to be sad—I don’t like it on your face.”
There was a flicker of surprise across Hot Sauce’s eyelashes. But then the others ragged her at the idea that anyone would be sad if she died, and they got into an argument about who would inherit her share of fruit that day as it hadn’t been bagsed, which turned into another fight between Born in the Morning and Honesty, who had not forgiven each other for the rabbit punches and both of whom started promising their worldly goods to anyone who wasn’t each other. Honesty had recovered, although his eye looked even puffier and more multicoloured than it had the day before. The teacher had given him some painkillers to take but he had cunningly spat them out and dried them for resale, so he was entirely happy.
Nona came away promised, on Born in the Morning’s death, a pen that wrote in three different colours, and on Honesty’s his collection of paper throwing stars.
Hot Sauce didn’t say anything after that, just sat by the window alternately watching the Angel—packing little metal pins away into a box and chatting to the main teacher after the Hour of Science, looking fragile still but more rested after teaching and a coffee—and the window.
Nona did not have to wait to ask Hot Sauce what she was going to get told. The teacher, obviously relieved to see her—Nona said she hadn’t been able to get to school that morning for “unexpected reasons” and the teacher gently and compassionately didn’t ask, which made Nona cross again because she could see she was thinking about Pyrrha—gave Nona the job of taking down the old paintings from the peg on the wall and putting up fresh ones that had been done last week. Nona had to stand on a chair, and Hot Sauce quietly held the chair for her, and everyone else was busy taking out the mats for naptime. It was bewildering how quickly the day went, when you had had the morning taken away from you.
Hot Sauce said, “The Angel was dropped off in a car today, at the end of the street.”
“I didn’t see. I caught her in the doorway,” said Nona, taking her focus away from balancing, then refocusing so she didn’t fall off the chair. She unclipped a piece of brown sheeting and admired the painting on it briefly, and then she said— “Is her being in a car good or bad?”