Alma went to bed early that night, but she woke up feeling somehow even more tired, even heavier. She moved through her classes like a sleepwalker, dazed and dull and barely aware of what was happening around her.
At lunch, she sat across from Hugo, who eyed her from behind his visor-glasses and seemed to be about to speak several times but never actually got any words out.
Then someone crashed down next to her and she had to grab the table to keep from tumbling forward as arms embraced her.
“Alma!” Shirin cried. “Oh my goodness! Where did you go yesterday? I was going to go to your house, but I didn’t know if you’d like that, and I didn’t have your phone number—so obviously I need that right now. You scared us to death! You seemed—well, you were like—”
“Frantic,” Hugo said. “You were frantic.”
“I’m fine,” Alma said, even though she didn’t feel fine. She did feel a little better though hearing her friends express their concern and with Shirin’s arm around her shoulders. “I’m really okay. I just felt sick. But I’m better now.”
Shirin studied her skeptically. Hugo took a bite of turkey sandwich and watched her too.
“So you say,” Shirin said. “Hugo and I decided to meet up at his house this afternoon to build the funnel. Can you come?”
Alma remembered what her mind had told her yesterday. She wasn’t going to be able to save the Starling. She was going to fail, the way she had failed at everything since the move.
But if she stopped trying, then Shirin would return to her perfect group. Hugo would go back to working on his own genius projects. She would go back to being alone. She would not only have failed but given up. She would have given up on the Starling.
She couldn’t do that.
“I can come,” she said. “But if we go to that mountain, we’ll have to go at night. When I look through the quintescope during the day, the quintessence isn’t very bright. I don’t think we’ll be able to see the true wind unless it’s dark out.”
Shirin covered her eyes with her braids. “I was afraid you’d say that,” she said. “It’s going to be like really, really tricky to go that far in the middle of the night.”
“We can do it though,” Hugo said. “My stepfather once forced me to hike with him on that mountain—it’s called the Second Point Peak—and I think we’ll have sufficient time to get there and back before daylight. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
Shirin went back to her usual table after that. Alma called her mother from the front office before lunch ended and got her surprisingly hesitant permission to come home late again.
They met by the door of the Science Lab that afternoon. Alma was ten minutes late, as usual, but Hugo and Shirin either didn’t notice or decided not to comment. They set off for Hugo’s house at the bottom of Second Point, the mountains peeking over the horizon in the far eastern distance.
Hugo’s house was old, like Alma’s, but it was obvious that someone handier than Alma’s parents lived there. There were no potholes in the driveway, the paint was a fresh, cheerful-looking yellow, and the yard was free of dead leaves and winter detritus. It wasn’t as secluded as Alma’s house either. If a star fell in Hugo’s backyard, his neighbors would certainly know about it.
“Marcus is always asking me to help him out here,” Hugo said. “He’s very invested in the upkeep of material possessions—house, cars, various electronic gadgets.”
“I would think you’d like the electronic-gadgets part,” Alma said. She could picture Hugo taking things apart—toasters and televisions, cameras and radios. “That’s very scientific.”
But Hugo frowned. “Not the way Marcus does it,” he said.
Alma remembered how tense Hugo had seemed greeting his stepfather in the General Store, but she didn’t really understand why.
“What, you don’t like your stepdad?” asked Shirin, right to the point. “Because he wants to climb mountains and do yard work with you?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like him,” Hugo replied, his voice flattening. “He’s fine. However, I have a father already. He lives a few hours away, but I see him quite frequently and he is superior in every way. I don’t need Marcus.”
He strode, quick and stiff, toward his house’s front door.
Hugo’s mother was in the kitchen. Alma felt, when she saw her, that she would have recognized her as Hugo’s mother anywhere she met her, not only here in her own house. She was tall and thin like her son. Her skin was the same deep gold color, and she had the same slightly squinty eyes, although hers were behind tortoiseshell, square-framed glasses—two lenses, not one.
She smiled while Hugo introduced her—the kind of huge, thrilled smile that Alma thought her own mother would probably have if she came home from school with two friends.
“Isn’t this a surprise?” she said. “A wonderful surprise! What do you three have planned for this afternoon?”
“We’re building a wind funnel,” Hugo said.
Mrs. Johnson gave her son a fond, proud look. “Is that so? Well, Marcus is out back with the twins, but you should get him to help you when he comes in. You know how good he is at building things.”
“I do not require Marcus’s assistance,” Hugo said firmly. “I am perfectly capable of constructing a wind funnel on my own.”
“On our own,” Shirin corrected.
“That’s what I said,” Hugo replied.
Mrs. Johnson sighed, a small, weary sound. “Up to you, Hugo. I put some chili on; it’ll be ready in a few hours. I thought it was appropriate with this terrible weather. Still no sign of spring, and it always sounds like a storm is coming too!”
“Apologies,” Hugo replied, “but we don’t have time to eat.”
“Oh my goodness,” Shirin said. “I’d like some chili, please.”
“Me too,” Alma said. “Chili sounds great.”
“We’ll make sure you get a break,” Mrs. Johnson assured them with a wink. “Help yourself to the supplies in the garage. And Hugo—you need to let Alma and Shirin help you. You hear me?”