Alma hadn’t dropped the quintescope just because she was startled.
She had dropped the quintescope because of the voice.
She knew that voice.
She knew that voice from her second day of school.
From the day of her first episode.
On that day, she had left History class with everyone else, one of the herd heading into the halls. It had been a long day. She had been taking her time getting her books while lockers slammed and voices called and laughter echoed around her. She had felt more tired than she ever had, but tense too, brittle and thin, like she might shatter if someone touched her, spoke to her.
It had happened as she turned away from her locker. Someone had shoved her. Someone had yelled, “Watch out, weirdo!”
And then—she really had shattered.
At least it had felt like it.
Now here he was, the owner of the voice.
She wanted to run all over again.
The boy was tall, taller than Hugo, who was standing up now, and much taller than Shirin, who had also jumped to her feet. He had dark blond hair and a scowl, and he looked as unfriendly as his voice sounded.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
“Get what over with?” Shirin asked. She scrunched up her face and pulled her head back. “Ugh. Please tell me you didn’t get a flyer too.”
“What are you talking about?” the boy said. “I’m here for tutoring.”
Shirin let out a long sigh. “Oh, thank goodness,” she said, sinking back onto her stool.
Hugo did not relax. He stayed standing, awkward and stiff, as he faced the new boy. “This isn’t tutoring, Dustin,” he said, his voice flatter and even more robotic than ever.
“Figures you’d be here,” Dustin said. He pushed past Hugo and plopped onto one of the stools. “This is the worst.”
“This isn’t tutoring,” Hugo repeated. “It’s Astronomy Club.”
“I got a letter!” Dustin said impatiently. “It said that I had to come here today after school to get tutoring if I wanted to pass Science. Why else would I be here?”
Alma had been afraid that the boy might say something else to her, but he wasn’t looking at her. He seemed to be trying not to. She reached down with trembling fingers and gripped the handle of the quintescope case. She held on as tight as she could as she backed slowly toward the door again.
“Listen, I’m pretty sure you’re in the wrong place,” Shirin said.
“I’m not in the wrong place,” Dustin insisted. He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and threw it on the table. “See?”
Shirin didn’t look at the paper. Instead, she turned her back on Dustin. “Can we see the telescope, Alma?”
Hugo glanced over at Dustin quickly, then, following Shirin’s example, he half turned his back on him too. “Yes,” he said. “It appears quite antiquated. Perhaps this falling star was simply an optical distortion.”
Alma stopped moving toward the door, but she didn’t want to take the quintescope out. She couldn’t, not with Dustin there. To take it out in front of him—broken, scuffed, all wrong—seemed impossibly painful. It would be like taking out the broken, scuffed, all-wrong pieces of herself.
And more than that—her heart was beating so fast and her breathing was so rapid and short and everything inside her was being turned upside down. She was seconds away from an episode. She knew it.
She had to leave. She had to leave now.
“I actually have to go,” she managed to choke out. “I just wanted to—”
“Smash my billion-year-old telescope into a thousand pieces,” Dustin finished, his words high and quavering in what Alma imagined was an imitation of her own voice. He still didn’t look at her, but he gave a snort of laughter.
Alma was so rattled that when she turned to leave—turned to flee—the quintescope case slammed into the wall.
Dustin laughed again.
The laughter rang in Alma’s ears as she hurried down the hall. Louder than her own breathing. Louder than her own heartbeat. That laughter was the loudest thing Alma could hear.
Until someone yelled, “Hey! Hey! Alma!”
Alma turned to see Shirin speeding down the hall toward her. Hugo was behind, his pace slow and measured, his hair following a beat behind his body.
“Sorry about that!” Shirin said, coming to a skidding stop in front of her. “Ugh. Seriously, what is with that kid?”
“Sorry about what?” Alma held the quintescope case in both hands. She tried to smile. “I’m fine. I’m not upset. I just have to go home. I’m fine.”
Shirin studied her, tugging on one braid, then the other. “So you say,” she said.
“Apologies,” Hugo said. “I’ve known Dustin for a long time and he is often socially inappropriate.”
Shirin rolled her eyes. “Understatement. But listen—he’s in the wrong room. He’s not part of the club.”
“Correct,” Hugo agreed. “He is not.”
Alma felt like she was holding back a tidal wave as she listened to them. Everything inside her was so chaotic, so intense, that it was hard to understand what they were saying. “Part of the club? Is there still going to be a club? Even after—even after what happened?”
“Of course there is!” Shirin cried. “Why not, right? I need—I need something. Something to do, I mean. And we got the flyers, didn’t we?”
“I did not,” Hugo said.
“Okay, okay, we know, Hugo,” Shirin said. “You have ‘no knowledge of any flyers.’ But you said yourself, you’re always in the lab. Mrs. Brisa obviously wants you to join. And we all saw that runaway-falling-star-meteorite thing! What are the chances of that?”
“Highly improbable,” Hugo admitted. “And Mrs. Brisa does often tell me I need more human interaction. The first topic of my lecture series will be stellar nucleo—”
“We can go stargazing on the top of the Fifth Point!” Shirin cried. “I don’t think you can go inside the shop, but people are always up on that platform, and I’m pretty sure I have a telescope somewhere in my room. Maybe we’ll see something else amazing!” She grinned at Alma. “What do you say? Do you want to be in the Astronomy Club?”
It had been so much—too much—all day. All day Alma had been moving closer and closer to an episode, then inching away at the last minute. All day she had teetered on the edge of disaster. It was a miracle she was not in pieces right now. She couldn’t do this again. She couldn’t. She had to tell them no.
But she didn’t.
“Yes,” Alma said. “Yes, I want to be in the club.”
Inside her, the spark grew.