chapter sixteen

With a start, I realized I was at my desk; George was across from me at his desk, muttering and rummaging; and my phone, neatly centered in the middle of the desk blotter Shiro insisted on using (sometimes she thinks it’s 1970) was chiming.

I glanced at the clock; I’d lost twenty minutes. The good news was, I was fully clothed and felt no new bruises. It could have been worse. Lots of times, it had been worse. And something else—Adrienne, my psychotic “sister,” my third self, hadn’t made an appearance in over two weeks. Maybe our doctors were right. Maybe I—we?—was/were getting better. Falling in love

(not really)

and Moving Day and my work at BOFFO, which wasn’t just interesting but also fulfilling—we were doing pretty good, despite our, uh, eccentricities, and really, we should congratulate ourselves for all we’d accomplished.

With that happy thought in my head, I picked up my phone and pressed the app for Shiro’s notes. I had a pretty good idea what she was going to tell me, but that didn’t make me feel better. When we were kids she’d leave real notes on real paper with black pens, her beautiful spidery writing my first lesson that something could look nice and still be awful. She almost never left me good news. It wasn’t always her fault, but that didn’t make me like it much.

Cadence,

BOFFO has lost funding. Michaela is working on a plan. Only you, me, Emma Jan, and George know. We—meaning George, Emma Jan, and you—are to guide Paul Torn through the transition as carefully as you can. You are also to give him the latest info on Sue Suicide, which George has incomprehensibly began calling Sussudio. Do not panic. About any of the above. That is all.

—S

BOFFO had lost funding? No more FBI work? No more doctors and killers and therapy and meds and work and having a good place to go every day and helping people and no more BOFFO? No more BOFFO? No more

no