He chewed the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything he might regret and tried to pay attention to precalculus—a difficult task, as he couldn’t quite ignore the little blips of electrical current every time Bethany’s word processor autosaved.
“Do you ever get to go home?” Noam asked, giving up. “Your mother’s still alive, right?”
Bethany snorted. “Yeah, she’s alive. I never see her, though.”
Noam tried to imagine not visiting his mother, if he had the option. He still saw her body sometimes, when he was trying to fall asleep, her face swollen and red and her neck bruised where the rope bit into her skin. Her limp feet dangling inches above the floor.
He put his book aside and twisted to face Bethany properly. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “My mother doesn’t understand magic. It’s like she’s in awe of me and scared of me at the same time. The way she acts, you’d think her real daughter died in the red ward and I’m some impostor come to replace her.”
Noam hadn’t considered that. His mother died a long time ago, but what if his father hadn’t gotten sick? What if Jaime Álvaro had survived the outbreak, only to watch Noam transform into a witching and be snatched away to Level IV?
There was a strange guilt about witchings among the older generations. Seeing a witching was to remember your grandparents’ sins, a stain that wouldn’t wash out. Noam went to the memorial with his school once, the black basalt monument carved with more names than Noam could count.
His parents fled Atlantia because they were worried about the virus outbreaks there. They thought Carolinia was safer.
They’d been wrong.
Atlantians didn’t share Carolinian guilt over the catastrophe, even though their ancestors were equally complicit in the genocide. To them, witchings represented Carolinia—Carolinia, with all its careful protections against the virus, with its militarized QZ border, weekly disinfectant sprays, and government-subsidized respirator masks—Carolinia, which refused to use those same protections to shelter Atlantian citizens. Carolinian armies, which marched south with promises of humanitarian aid and then refused to leave.
No. If Noam’s dad survived, he’d hate Noam just as much as Brennan did.
“I’m sorry,” Noam said.
“Why? It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. It just felt like the right thing to say.”
“Anyway, she’s the reason I got the power I did, I think. So I’m grateful to her for that.” Bethany gave him a slight smile. “She’s a doctor, so I was exposed to a lot of medical stuff growing up. She used to take me in with her to work and let me watch the med students dissect cadavers.”
“That didn’t gross you out?”
“Me?Nothinggrosses me out. Seriously. Try me.”
Noam grimaced. “I’d rather not,” he said. “I just ate.”
She laughed and kicked his thigh.
They worked in silence for another hour or so until Bethany went off to bed, taking her books with her. Noam stayed. Sleep seemed a long way off, chased away by an anxious determination to read just one more chapter, two more, three. Everything was finally knitting together, concepts he learned in math reappearing in physics, the physical laws threaded into the fabric of chemistry, chemical reactions shaping biology...
He could catch up. Hecould.
Ames and Taye returned around one, draped in clubbing clothes and exhaustion.
“Hey, Noam,” Taye said. He was so drunk that when he waved, even his hand looked slurred.
Noam’s grip tightened on his textbook. “Hey.” A beat, Noam turning the question over in his mouth a few times, before deciding he didn’t give a fuck what they thought of him for asking. “Where’s Dara?”
Ames tried tugging her jacket off and got her arm stuck in the sleeve. She laughed, stumbling as Taye tried to help her get free. “Dunno,” she said at last. “Probably went home with someone. Probably suffocating himself on dick as we speak.”
Right. Noam tapped the tip of his tongue against his teeth. It wasn’t any of his business what Dara did. “Does that a lot, does he?”
Taye laughed. “Can’t take him anywhere.”
Ames’s mouth twisted, her expression somewhat less amused. “He usually makes it about fifteen minutes before abandoning us for better prospects.”
She must have seen the look on Noam’s face because she shook her head. “Whatever. If he hasn’t given himself alcohol poisoning again, I’m sure he’ll stumble back here eventually.”
