“Thank you,” said Nona meekly. Now that the adrenaline had passed, all the fight had left her; she just felt frightened and shivery. When the Angel said, “Hot Sauce, how badly is she hurt? Nona, have you had your stonemouth jab?” she couldn’t think of anything smarter to do than tuck her hands inside her jacket and say, “I’m fine! Not hurt at all!”
“Horseshit,” said the Angel. “You’re all over blood. There’s a first-aid kit beneath your seat, Hot Sauce—”
“Really I’m not. It can’t be my blood. It must be someone else’s. Maybe it’s tomato sauce. Who knows? It could be anything. But please don’t worry about it.”
Not, as Pyrrha would have said, her best effort. But maybe the rising pitch of hysteria in her voice convinced the Angel, because she only said, “I’ll check you out tomorrow. If you start to feel faint or get a fever, let someone know, all right?”
“I will. I will. I promise.”
The person in the driver’s seat muttered, “I can’t believe this.”
“Yes?” said the Angel. “Were those your dulcet tones making commentary?”
“If people knew this was how you spent your time, Aim—”
“They should hope to God they spent their own time half so usefully,” said the Angel wrathfully.
“Pretending you can bandage bipeds? Teaching snot-nosed kids about particles?”
“None of us have snot,” said Nona, deeply offended. Then she thought about it and said more truthfully, “Anyway, it’s not Kevin’s fault.”
The driver didn’t say anything. Hot Sauce spoke up— “We love her.”
The driver said, to the Angel and not Hot Sauce, “Now I see. Chance to be her, huh? A little independent living for once?”
“It is my enormous privilege to be they. Just drive,” said the Angel crisply. “I don’t pay you for your opinions.”
“You don’t pay me anything,” said the driver. “I’m here for my bloody sins.”
The drive would have been extremely exciting had Nona’s carsickness not warred with her homesickness. Around twenty-six highly unusual bad things had happened to her today, and she had assumed she only had room for six unusual bad things before she had a tantrum; it must mean she was growing up. The driver gunned the ignition and drove in all the places cars weren’t meant to drive. Thankfully a lot of other cars were doing that too. Many times there was a huge bump as the car went onto the pavement, or had to swerve suddenly, or rattled down along a little road that didn’t have the type of terrain meant for a car. Most terrifyingly, the car once drove down a whole road that had been closed to cars due to the crevasses and potholes, right through a plastic snapper that had an illustration of a car falling down a huge hole, and Nona couldn’t help uttering tiny shrieks every time they drove close to those huge black lightless wells. Noodle uttered tiny aroo … aroo … aroo sounds with her, as though in sympathy, even when the Angel said without any particular heat, “Shut up, dog. We’ve been through worse.” Nona felt embarrassed that greater courage was expected of the dog than of her. Hot Sauce settled back in the car seat, and Nona noticed with absolute disbelief that she had fallen asleep. Nona closed her eyes and put her feet close to Noodle.
And then it was suddenly their road. The Building loomed high above the car window, and tears smarted in Nona’s eyes to be finally home after such a long and hideous day. They had to wait until the gate opened before pulling into the deep garage. Nona didn’t even question why the truck that the Angel was being driven in was allowed access to the gate: maybe whoever was manning the gate saw the grille and thought better of stopping them. The lights had all been turned off in the underbuilding where the other cars and trucks and motorcycles went, and it was astonishingly dark, all except for the truck’s big headlights.
There were people next to idling trucks, next to cars, people with their dust hoods up, people with their guns out, or people standing and talking quietly. When they saw the truck they turned their heads, then immediately looked away again. The driver turned off the lights—it was now so dark inside the car that Nona could barely see herself—and the Angel said, “Will you be all right from here?”
“Yes,” said Nona. “Yes, I think so.”
“School will be in session tomorrow,” said the Angel.
The driver said, “No, it won’t,” and the Angel said, “Yes, it will. Can I depend on you, Nona?”