THE BELL WAS still a few minutes away, and the playground was heaving with bare-armed kids. Sep wove through them, away from homeroom and toward the trees on the edge of the hockey field, squinting through the sun for the red spikes of Daniels’s hair.
Instead he saw Arkle flicking a hacky sack between his feet. Lamb stood beside him—hockey stick strapped to her back like a warrior’s sword, head scarf tight on her wrist.
“I thought you’d chicken out,” she said, snapping a pink bubble at him. Her face was broader than yesterday, more angular. Even her eyes had changed—and there was something familiar about them. Sep tried not to stare.
“And good morning to you, too,” he said. “Did you sleep well, Darren?”
“Eventually,” said Arkle, balancing the sack on his toe, “after one of my ‘special moments.’”
Sep and Lamb screwed up their faces, then met each other’s eyes.
“Why would I chicken out?” said Sep.
“Come on,” she said. “Playing hooky? Running around the woods? It’s not exactly your scene, is it?”
“It used to be.”
She made a face.
“Well, the running-around-the-woods bit.”
Lamb cracked her knuckles. “I’m looking forward to this.”
“You are?” said Arkle. “Oh, me too. I mean, it’ll be so cool to be—”
“Oh yeah: once we sort this out, I’ll never have to speak to you dweebs again, and it can’t come soon enough. And when I find out who it was that broke the rules, I’ll hurt them.”
Arkle stuck out a sulky lip at her. “Don’t mind Lambert. She’s pissed off because her hair won’t sit properly.”
“It’s backcombed, asshole,” said Lamb, folding in another stick of gum.
“You manage to sleep?” Arkle asked, lighting a cigarette.
“Kind of,” said Sep, wiping sweat from his face. “I mean, I stayed awake for a bit, and my mum was—” He bit off the sentence.
“What’s up with your mum?” said Lamb.
“Nothing, she’s fine. She was just . . . working late.”
“She getting sick again?”
“No!” said Sep quickly. “Here, have you noticed the crows?”
“Yes!” said Arkle. “What is that?”
“There were three of them on my windowsill last night, and they were outside my house this morning. They have to be connected, right?”
Lamb shrugged. “I’ve seen them too. Who cares?”
“‘Who cares?’” said Arkle. “Have you not seen The Birds?”
“Nope.”
“Well, neither have I . . . I mean, it’s in black and white. But it’s a horror film about birds! Birds are mental.”
“You worried about them?” said Lamb, nodding at Sep.
“Well, it’s weird. I mean, how come there’s always the same number? And how come we’re all seeing them?” He paused for a moment, then added, “I think they’re what’s hurting my tooth.”
“Your tooth?” said Lamb, wrinkling her nose. “How does that work?”
“I don’t know. I just know my toothache gets much worse when the birds are around.”
“Maybe eat less sugar, dude,” said Arkle.
“And listen,” Sep went on, “last night I was dreaming about crows climbing inside this empty skin”—he tried to say it was his mother’s skin, that the black eyes were hers, wide and flat with painkillers, but he couldn’t find the words—“and when I woke up, Barnaby was there. And so were you.”
Lamb went pale, then turned away and blew another bubble.
“You’re not going all Hadley on us, are you?” said Arkle, blowing a thin cloud of smoke above his head.
“What do you mean?”
“Spooky-dreamy mumbo jumbo. Wait, here she is! Let’s ask her: Princess Leia, can you interpret September’s freaky dream?”
“What?” said Hadley, lifting away enormous round headphones.
“Sep joined your dream gang,” said Arkle.
Hadley looked at Sep intently, and fanned her face in the heat. She was wearing another white glove, this one lacy and fingerless, on her left hand.
“What was it?” she said.
“Crows pushing into an empty skin, like a person’s empty skin,” Sep said, his face coloring.
“Have you noticed the crows too?” asked Arkle.
Hadley nodded. “This morning,” she said. “There were three of them, outside my house.”
“Right,” said Sep. A shiver gripped his spine.
“Right what?” said Mack, joining the group.
“Crows,” said Hadley. “Have you seen them?”
“Yeah, they’re big black birds. Why?”
“We know what they are, numbnuts,” said Lamb. “But there’s three in particular. They’re, like, following us.”
“Oh. Then no.”
“What’re you eating?” said Arkle.
“Muffin,” Mack mumbled indistinctly.
Arkle shook his head. “You might look like a steak in a T-shirt, Golden Boy, but I want to be there when your metabolism slows down. It’ll happen in, like, a second—bam! You’ll burst out like Jabba the Hutt. You can keep Hadley on a chain.”
“Shut up!” said Hadley.
Sep clenched his jaw.
“Where’s your keeper?” Arkle asked Mack, grinning.
“What?”
“Daniels.”
Mack’s face darkened. “He says he’s sick.”
“Really?” said Sep. He felt immediately lighter.
“It’s your turn today,” said Lamb, pointing at Mack. “Are you worried?”
Mack flashed her a perfect, square smile. “Not so far. And we’re all together now—we can handle it.”
Lamb rolled her eyes. “Okay—we’re all here, so let’s go. I’ve got a surprise for you dweebs.”
“Hang on,” said Sep.
“Why?” said Hadley. “We need to go—the bell’s gone; the teachers will start their late-coming rounds.”
“Exactly! What’s the problem?” snapped Lamb.
“I forgot to bring a new sacrifice!” said Sep, his stomach sinking. “I was so distracted this morning, I left the house without one. I’m going to have to go back home.”
Lamb dragged a hand over her face. “Fine!” she growled. “But you’ll have to do it right now, because we need to get to—”
“Get to where?” said Tench, leaning out from behind a tree, the sunlight glowing redly through his ears.
“Class, sir,” said Arkle quickly.
Sep blinked. The cigarette had disappeared as if by magic.
“Wonderful. Strange place to find you all . . . together,” said Tench, frowning at Sep. “Another detention, I think, Darren. I could see your puffs of smoke from my office. Come along then; the bell’s gone for homeroom.”
“But, sir, we can’t,” said Lamb, slapping Arkle’s head as Tench turned away. “We have to—”
“What do you mean?” said Tench, puzzled. “School’s started.”
“But—”
“But what, Miss Lambert?”
Tench turned back to them, his broad face impassive, his eyes wide. Sep’s heart sank.
“Nothing,” said Lamb heavily. Then, as Tench strode off, she turned and hissed: “First break, all of you head back to my farm.”
“What?” said Sep. “Why?”
“Come on, you lot,” called Tench, hurrying them on with sweeps of his huge hands.
They shuffled forward to catch him, then headed five abreast toward the side entrance. Lamb went first, letting the door swing closed in Sep’s face. Arkle and Mack followed her, and Sep found himself holding the door for Hadley.
Looking over her shoulder at the distant forest, he tried to breathe out the knot in his stomach.
“This is a disaster, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, think about what the box could be doing. We need to get there, like, now.”
She nodded. “We’ll just have to leave at break, like Lamb said.”
As she moved past, he tried desperately to think of something to say, and blurted: “What were you listening to?”
“It’s a mixtape,” she said, looking fondly at her Walkman as though the bands were waving through the little window. “Fleetwood Mac, Wham!, Hall & Oates—”
“Yuck,” said Sep, before he could stop himself.
She raised an eyebrow. “Snob much?”
“I didn’t mean—” Sep said, blushing. “I just don’t—”
“I love Hall & Oates. They’re like a mix of new wave and soul. They’re fun, and . . . sincere.”
She looked at him with her deep, warm eyes. Sep felt his defensive coil being stripped away with a little squeeze in his stomach, and opened his mouth to speak.
To his surprise, what came out was: “Have you seen the comet yet?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was amazing. It’s actually changed the way I think. You realize how tiny we are, and it makes me feel—”
“Insignificant?”
She frowned at him, then smiled. “No,” she said. “Not at all. Think about it: you, September Hope, cleverest boy in school. You’re standing there, with all your skin shedding and hair growing and the blood rushing around. You’re, like, a miracle—”
Sep realized he was leaning in toward her, and tried to straighten up without her noticing.
“I mean, imagine,” she went on. “Every ancestor you’ve ever had avoided car accidents and wars and disease and . . . saber-toothed tigers! And they had the exact babies they needed to so you could exist, because they were your grandparents and great-great-great-great-grandparents. Imagine if a cave-person relative of yours had slipped at the wrong time and fallen off a cliff—all their children and their children’s children would never have existed.”
She flopped her head on one side and looked past him, up at the sky, imagining the comet tearing through space.
“We’re all little miracles,” she said, “everything about us: all our stupid habits and our jokes and our weird faces, on a spinning ball that’s the perfect distance from the sun. And now here we are, you and me, sitting on top of a million years of history.”
She smiled again, then turned into the lobby.
Sep followed her, wondering if she could hear the thud of his heart, and trying to remember how to breathe.