Alma usually sat alone at lunch. It was something that had happened gradually.
On her first day of school, she had given herself a long pep talk. “Time to acclimate,” she had told herself. Then she had picked a table that was a little out of the way, a quieter table with kids who didn’t look too perfect, kids who didn’t look like the sun followed them around. Kids who might be her friends.
None of them had talked to her.
True, as her father would point out later, she had not talked to any of them either.
It had hurt, nonetheless.
The next day, she had sat at the same table, with the same results.
By the third day, after her first episode, she was afraid of what would happen if she tried to sit with a crowd. So she had found a seat at an unoccupied end of a table in the far corner of the cafeteria. She had sat there, alone, unnoticed, unspoken to, for the last three months.
But on Monday, Hugo plunked his lunch box next to her and sat down.
“I have been considering our options for wind,” he said without preamble. “I don’t know of any feasible possibility other than the funnel you suggested, and since the jar that Shirin provided has a windmill inside of it”—he shrugged, a jerky up and down of his shoulders—“I suppose it’s just one more hypothesis to test.”
Since Alma had been thinking about the Starling and the elements too, it didn’t take her too long to recover from her surprise. Setting down her bag of pretzels, she asked, “What’s wind made of anyway?”
Hugo shook his head, his curls fluttering back and forth. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said. “Wind is simply the movement of atmospheric gases—air moving around because of differences in pressure and the rotation of the Earth.”
“What would make air true though?” Alma wondered.
“If it was unpolluted, possibly?” Hugo pulled out a turkey sandwich and a bag of carrot sticks. “Or less polluted, at least. My best hypothesis is that wind on top of a mountain would be the truest or purest. Generally speaking, air speed increases with height, so it’s windier the higher up you go. There are pollutants, of course, but likely fewer than in the air in closer proximity to towns and highways. And we do have mountains, you know, to the east of Four Points, although they’re quite small. Perhaps we can meet tomorrow after the lecture to conduct further research.”
“That sounds perfect,” Alma said, popping a pretzel into her mouth to celebrate their successful brainstorming.
She was smiling to herself when she felt eyes on her. Someone was looking at her.
Across the cafeteria, there was Shirin. She was at her usual table, a table that Alma would never have considered sitting down at in a million billion light-years. When she saw Alma looking at her, Shirin grinned and gave a tiny, quick wave.
Alma waved back. Then she watched as Shirin turned to her group of friends, laughing at something another girl had said, her big smile for them now.
In Old Haven, Alma had thought she knew everyone and everything. But here in Four Points, there were thermal springs hidden in the woods and popular girls joining Astronomy Clubs and her own Alma-ness growing day by day. Now that she was getting to know Four Points, she wondered how much of Old Haven she had missed.
“The deeper you go, the truer it becomes.” It was amazing how much there was to learn about everyone and everywhere.