Issie hops up beside me and puts an arm around my waist. “So, how is my favorite warrior woman doing today?” she chirps. “Saved humanity yet?”
“I wish.” I adjust my backpack and bump my hip into hers.
She bumps me back. “I thought we should put up a brave front about the whole Nick thing. Is that okay? Because if it’s not okay, I’m totally okay with not being okay, okay? Did that make sense?”
“Sort of,” I say.
“When I thought that Devyn liked Cassidy I had to be brave, because if I wasn’t brave then I would just sob all the time, which was not very rah-rah feminist of me, you know?”
“Girls are allowed to be sad about boys,” I say. “Boys get sad about girls.”
“True … true.” Issie is thoughtful for a moment. “I just don’t know how it fits in with girl power to sob uncontrollably over a guy. It’s a dilemma.”
People nod when we walk by. Some talk.
“I am so scared.”
“I think my mom is figuring something out.”
“I heard my name last night. Someone was whispering it when I went into the driveway.”
“I like meatballs. There is nothing wrong with a good meatball.”
“Crap, this sucks,” Issie says as we catch up to Cassidy, whose braids are adorned with black and white beads today. She smiles and waits for us.
“What sucks?” she asks.
“Boys,” I say.
“And all the typical doom-and-gloom, end-of-the-world stuff,” Issie adds.
“Know it,” Cassidy says. She starts trying to smooth down my hair as we head toward class. “Hey, Zara, I was wondering about what the giant said …”
We talk about it, ponder, go to class, try to focus. I have e-mails about SAT test dates, ACT test dates, college recruiting things. We go to lunch. Nick is nowhere. I make it through another school day. Somehow.
Most of our school is a cell-free zone. The school system hired a contractor to wrap some weird mesh conducting material in the school when it was built ten years ago because they were worried about people using their cell phones to cheat. According to Devyn, the material blocks static-electricity fields or something. They call it a Faraday cage, named after this English scientist who invented it way before cell phones and who has been dead for over a hundred years. According to Issie, there was also a really cool Daniel Faraday character on the television show Lost. I don’t know. Anyway, everywhere in our school the signal is pretty much jammed except for the library.
So when Issie and I step outside, my cell phone starts beeping that I’ve missed ten text messages.
“Wow. Popular,” Issie teases as we head down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. A man is working in a bucket that a truck has lifted up to the electric wires. He wears a white hard hat, gloves, and a coat; working with all that voltage, all that danger. He looks fragile despite his rugged body.
I check the phone. “They’re all from Astley.”
Issie doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure how she feels about Astley, really. She used to be terrified of him, but I don’t think she is anymore. She widens her eyes and says, “And they say?”
“That he wants to meet me.”
“And?” she prompts.
“And he’s worried about me.”
“And?”
“And that’s pretty much it,” I say, shutting the phone and trying not to think about how weak I was last night and how impossibly kind he was during all of it, the way he just held me, rocking me back and forth, letting me cry, telling me about his house on some Scottish island. He was the best kind of friend last night.
I check out the man in the bucket. He works at a bolt, wrenching it. The sound of metal on metal grates against my teeth.
“Does he know about Nick?” Issie asks, pulling my attention back to earth.
“Yes.” I grab the door handle of Grandma Betty’s truck. It stings a bit. I need another anti-iron pill. “He … um …”
“So you told him?”
As I’m thinking about how I didn’t actually, technically tell him, his voice comes from my left and he walks around the back of the truck. I didn’t even smell him I’m so distracted.
“Tell me what?”
“Astley,” I say, watching his face move from something bland into concerned lines. He reaches past Issie, nodding at her, and moves his hand up to touch my arm as I say, “Hi.”
The touch is at once comfortable and uncomfortable. It’s just a tiny brush of fingers to arm through layers of fabric, but it feels excessive somehow and charged, probably because of the whole pixie thing and possibly because I feel awkward about how much I cried last night.
“Hi,” he says back, and he must realize that he’s blocking my view of Issie or something, because he moves aside a bit, mumbles an apology to her, and then says, “I have been trying to get you all day. I was wondering what happened last night that made you so sad and so scared. Would you like to tell me?”
“Oh boy …,” Issie mutters. She straightens her hat over her ears as I explain to Astley what Nick and I saw last night in the woods. As I do, his expression goes from concern to agitation.
“Zara, why did you fail to tell me this before?”
“I was tired …” I search for reasons that don’t involve explaining the truth: that I was moping about Nick and simultaneously distracted by Astley’s niceness. “I’m not sure.”
Conflict-averse Issie interrupts the silence. “Zara sometimes has issues remembering the big picture when human elements are involved—like emotions and stuff. It’s part of what makes her lovable.”
We both stare at Issie. My mouth must drop open, because she gently touches the bottom of her chin as a signal to shut it again. I resist the urge to hug her crazy self.
Apparently so does Astley, who lets out an exasperated sentence. “How angry would you have been if I saw this and did not tell you?”
“Pretty ballistic,” I admit. I rub my hands across my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“I do not need you to apologize—”
“I know.” I interrupt him and pull my gaze away, staring again at the man working on the wires. He plays with currents of electricity, things that will never end, things that make our world work. We even have electricity inside of us. It’s everywhere.