The school decided to place Kirby and Nancy into different classes, even though they were taking all the same subjects. The woman in the office told them it would be “less distracting” if they were separated.

“I hope we at least get the same homework assignments,” Kirby said. “Then we can each do half of them. That will give me a lot more time for practice.”

Nancy could not restrain a sigh of exasperation. Dancing was all that Kirby could talk or think about. Ever since she had started her lessons at the Vilar Dance Studio, she seemed to have stepped into another world. She rose in the morning an hour early in order to do her exercises before breakfast, and she rushed out of the building after school without even stopping at her locker so she could catch a bus to the dance studio.

At home she talked about “the girls in class,” but it was her ballet class she meant, not her classes at school. To Nancy it sometimes seemed that in less than a month’s time she had lost not only a father but a sister as well.

School may not have been important to Kirby, but it was very important to Nancy. She was a good student and spent time on her studies. Her mother had been an excellent tutor, and her vast background of travel plus her natural love of reading had given her a far better fund of knowledge than that of most of her classmates. She did her assignments quickly and easily and knew in her own mind that she probably could have skipped a grade if it hadn’t meant passing up Kirby, which would have been unthinkable.

Still, with all her ability as a student, Nancy found herself completely lost in the swirl of student life. She had never known many other young people, and now suddenly she found herself thrust in a group that, although they were her same age, looked a great deal older. The boys stood a head taller than she, and the girls were beginning to fill out into feminine curves and all wore makeup. Beside them, Nancy felt like a stick.

“Well, you must have skipped a few grades,” a teacher named Ms. Green had said to her the first day, regarding her with doubt. “Are you taking all your classes at the high school, dear?”

“I didn’t skip any grades,” Nancy said, flushing scarlet. “I’m a freshman.”

Every face in the room turned to inspect her curiously, and she felt like shrinking into a ball and rolling beneath the desk.

After class, the boy who sat behind her gave her hair a tug as he followed her down the aisle.

“You’d better be nice to old Green Bag,” he said teasingly, “or she’ll send you back to kindergarten.”

Nancy didn’t even bother to glance at him. The tone of his voice reminded her of Brendon’s.

“Get your filthy hand out of my hair,” she hissed back in her most irritated-sister voice.

The boy never bothered to speak to her again. In fact, as the weeks went by, Nancy found that very few students made an effort to stop and talk to her. A few of the girls called “Hi” in the hallways, and there was one plump girl in her English class who always wanted to borrow paper. Aside from this, she felt as though she were invisible to everybody. They ran in cliques, since many of them had known one another since kindergarten, and they seemed to look straight through her without seeing her at all.

At lunch periods, she and Kirby sat together. This wasn’t very satisfactory because most of the time Kirby’s mind was a million miles away. Kirby could have had dozens of friends if she had wanted them. There was something about her soft prettiness and the dreamy look of her eyes that had the boys jostling and shoving one another in order to stand next to her in the cafeteria line. But Kirby did not seem to notice or to think about popularity one way or another. She carried her tray from the serving counter without looking to right or left and sat with a little smile on her lips, mentally rehearsing the steps of the latest dance routine while she ate a dainty lunch of cottage cheese and tuna.

Bored with no one to talk to, Nancy took up her old habit of reaching with her mind to the places beyond her. She could always find her mother; that was never any problem. Elizabeth had taken a job at the Palmelo Library, and when Nancy closed her eyes and stared at the inside of her lids, she could see her there, helping people at the desk or stacking books on the shelves.

Their mother’s decision to immediately go to work had come as a great surprise.

“I always used to dream about being a librarian someday,” she told them one night at dinner. “I didn’t go to college, so that was impossible. But now, believe it or not, there’s an opening for an assistant in the children’s room of the library, and it doesn’t require a college degree. Can you imagine having your very first job at my age?!”

“I think it’s cool,” Kirby said. “But won’t you be kind of bored working in the children’s room? Wouldn’t it be more fun in the research section or something like that?”

“Heavens, no,” Elizabeth said. “Facts are your father’s area, not mine. I’d love to handle the books for children. I’m an expert on all the old fairy tales. I adored them when I was little, and in the children’s room I’ll get to hold a regular story hour for preschoolers. Imagine being the one to give them their first introduction to fantasy and magic!”

“Magic!” Brendon exclaimed in disgust. “That’s baby stuff. There isn’t any such thing.”

“Isn’t there?” Elizabeth looked thoughtful. “I wonder. My mother was a highly educated person, but she believed in magic. She used to tell me there were people, some very special people in this world, blessed with the gift. I used to think—” She paused.

“What?” Nancy asked her.

“It sounds silly, I know—but I used to believe that my own mother might be one of those people. She had a way of knowing things—things that people never told her. It seemed sometimes as though she could almost make things happen. Did I ever tell you that she knew about Brendon?”

“About me?” Brendon was intrigued despite himself. “How could she know anything about me? I wasn’t born until after she died.”

“That’s what was so strange,” Elizabeth said. “Your grandmother told me once that she was going to have a grandson. She said he would be very much like his father, except he would have something his father didn’t have. A special gift. And I can’t even remember what it was. She was so old then, and so ill, that she often rambled when she talked. I didn’t always listen closely.”

“I wish she’d been right,” Brendon said ruefully. “I wish she’d given me a talent for flying. Then I could hang in the air over people’s heads and drop things on them.”

“That’s a stupid thing to want,” Nancy said. “Listen to him, Mom! Ever since he started hanging out with that Russo kid he’s been saying these violent things. I bet he means it, too. He would drop things—rocks and bricks!”

“And water bombs,” Brendon said happily. “Greg knows how to make these cool water bombs. He fills them with ink. He’s great with ink.”

“See, Mom!” Nancy squealed. “Can’t you do something about him?”

“He’s only teasing, dear,” Elizabeth said gently. “Boys always tease. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” She never was willing to admit that Brendon was a delinquent.

So now in the daytime, Elizabeth could be found behind a desk at the public library—and at the elementary school, Nancy could sometimes see Brendon, thumping through the halls, poking people. She didn’t spend much time looking at Brendon.

Many times she tried to reach out to her father, but she was never able to find him. That one time she had succeeded, but since then he seemed to have drawn further and further away.

He e-mailed them fairly often—long, interesting letters telling of the places he was seeing and the things he was doing. He was photographing a war—“a tiny war,” he wrote, “between little unimportant territories, but it’s not unimportant to the people who are getting shot. They suffer just as much as if it were a large war with all kinds of great decisions at stake.”

“Do you think he misses us?” Nancy asked one night.

“I don’t know, dear,” her mother answered. “He’s so involved, I doubt that he has time right now to miss anyone. But I do know that he loves you.”

Do you miss him? Nancy wanted to ask, but she did not do so. Something in her mother’s eyes stopped her.

The day of Ms. Green’s social studies test, Nancy had been trying to reach her father. Kirby was late getting to the lunchroom, and Nancy sat by herself at the end of one of the tables, chewing her sandwich and reaching out with her mind. She peeked at her mother, who was checking out books to a friend of hers, and even looked in on Brendon, who was doing arithmetic in long, sloppy columns and chewing gum. Kirby rushed up at last, dumping her books onto the table.

“A pop quiz!” she said. “I just hate that woman! I didn’t even have time last night to read the chapter!”

“You had time for your practicing,” Nancy said. “You bounced around the bedroom for an hour and a half.”

“Well, sure,” Kirby conceded. “That’s different. That’s important.” She collapsed onto the bench and pulled out a carrot stick. “They weren’t very hard questions. I just hadn’t read the stuff. You shouldn’t have any trouble with them.”

“I never do with social studies,” Nancy said. “But Ms. Green makes me nervous. She hasn’t liked me from day one.” She turned to look at Kirby and saw that she was already thinking about her dancing. They finished lunch in silence.

It was no surprise, of course, to walk into social studies class after the bell rang and find the pop quiz there waiting for her.

“Unexpected tests are one of the few ways to discover how well a class is keeping up in a subject,” Ms. Green informed them. “I put you on your honor not to divulge the questions to any of your friends in the classes that come later.”

Nancy opened her notebook and fished in her book bag for a pen. There was nothing frightening to her about a quiz in geography, no matter how much of a surprise it was. The unit they were studying was about Europe, and the European continent was as familiar to her as her own backyard. She had read the unit chapter by chapter during the first week of school, simply for pleasure. Now she straightened in her seat, waiting for the first question.

Ms. Green referred to the sheet of paper on her desk. “Name the countries of Europe,” she read, “in the order of size.”

Nancy bent over her paper. This was easy. She pictured each country as she listed it, as though reviewing the memory of old friends. She gave a special little smile as she reached Switzerland, which had always been her favorite. She thought of the greenness, the high white peaks of the Alps, the sound of cowbells ringing clear and soft through the sweet mountain air. She completed the list and sat quietly, waiting for the next question. Everyone else was still writing. Faces around her were wrinkled into scowls of perplexity.

Honestly, Nancy thought, how can they have trouble with such an easy question? It seemed like hours before Ms. Green picked up her sheet again: “Name all the bodies of water that touch the European coastline.” Another simple list, and not even a long one.

Quickly Nancy listed the names of the gulfs and seas. She wondered idly how Kirby had done with that one. She had been to all the same places that Nancy had, but to Kirby the whole of the continent was composed of ballet companies—the Royal Ballet in England, the State Ballet in Germany, the Opera Ballet and the Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo in France. Whether or not she had ever noticed the bodies of water was anyone’s guess.

She finished her list and went on to the next question: “Name the capitals of all the countries.” Another easy one; you couldn’t visit a place without knowing its capital.

The fourth question was to name the languages; the fifth, the principal industries.

So engrossed was she in trying to remember those that she wasn’t aware of the figure that had stopped by her desk until Ms. Green spoke.

“Nancy Garrett, may I please see your paper?”

Nancy jumped, her pen bounding on the paper.

“I haven’t finished yet,” she said. “I’m only on the fifth question.”

“So I see.” Ms. Green bent over to inspect the paper. “Can you explain exactly how that happens to be?”

“Well, I—I—just haven’t gotten any further. I don’t think anyone else has, either.” Nancy glanced up at the teacher in bewilderment.

“I don’t imagine they have,” Ms. Green said coldly. “Especially since I have only read out loud two questions.”

“What?” Thinking back, Nancy couldn’t remember the exact wording, but she was certain that she had heard five questions. “Maybe I’m wrong, then,” she said. “Maybe I just thought you asked more questions.” Even to her own ears it sounded absurd.

“No, Nancy, you did not imagine these questions,” Ms. Green said. “They are exactly the same questions that I asked the previous classes. I would be very interested in learning how you knew what they would be.”

There was a long silence. All around them, heads were raised and turned in their direction. Thirty pens were held, suspended, over thirty sheets of paper as thirty students waited to hear Nancy’s explanation.

“I—I don’t know,” Nancy said slowly. “I just sort of—knew. I do that sometimes. I mean, I guess things and they turn out to be right.”

“How very convenient,” Ms. Green said.

There was a snicker from the far side of the room. Two girls exchanged knowing glances. A boy with a seat across the aisle cleared his throat.

“Nancy Garrett.” Ms. Green repeated the name thoughtfully. “Don’t you have a twin sister? Isn’t she in my third-period class?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nancy said. She paused and then suddenly the significance of the question came through to her. “You think Kirby told me the questions? But she didn’t! Kirby would never do a thing like that.”

“Did you see your sister during lunch period?” Ms. Green asked.

“Yes,” Nancy admitted. “We ate together, but we didn’t talk about geography. We didn’t talk about anything much. We just ate our lunches and we were both busy thinking about other things.”

Ms. Green picked up Nancy’s paper from the desk.

“I do not put up with cheating in this class,” she said darkly. “I realize that it can be difficult for a homeschooled child to keep up in a regular classroom, but no problems are ever solved by dishonesty.”

“I didn’t cheat!” Nancy exclaimed. “I don’t have to cheat! I know the answers!”

“And evidently you know the questions as well.” There was no sympathy in Ms. Green’s voice. “I would like to see you after school this afternoon in the counselor’s office. I think Mr. Duncan should have an opportunity to hear your explanation. I will have your sister summoned also.”

“But Kirby can’t stay after school,” Nancy said. “She dances. She won’t come. I know she won’t.”

“If she doesn’t,” Ms. Green warned, “you will both be in even more trouble than you are right now.”