I managed a smile, and she smiled back. And our school day had begun.
44
“Now, does anyone remember this area’s name?”
Angel raised her hand. She figured it was time to sound smart.
“Yes, Ariel?”
“It’s the Yucatán. Part of Mexico.”
“Very good. Do you know anything about the Yucatán?” Ms. Solowski asked.
“It has Cancún, a popular vacation spot,” said Angel. “And Mayan ruins. And it’s close to Belize. Its ports are some of the closest to America. So it’s convenient for drug runners to siphon drugs up from South America, through the ports, and then on into Texas, Louisiana, and Florida.”
Her teacher blinked. Her mouth opened and then closed again. “Ah, yes,” she said faintly, stepping back to the world map hanging in front of the whiteboard. She cleared her throat. “Let’s talk about the Mayan ruins.”
“Tiffany.”
“Tiffany?” The teacher looked confused. “I thought your name was Krystal.”
“Uh-huh. Tiffany-Krystal.” Nudge made a hyphen in the air with one finger.
“Okay, Tiffany-Krystal. In language arts we’ve been working on some cross-media spelling words.” The teacher pointed to a list written on the whiteboard at the front of the class. “Those were last week’s. This morning I’m going to give a pop quiz about this week’s words, just to see where everyone is and where we need to focus.”
“Well, all right,” said Nudge agreeably. She waved a hand. “Bring it on. But just so you know, I can’t spell worth crap.”
“Do you know where the dictionary is?”
Fang looked at the girl who had spoken. “What?”
“Our reference materials are over here,” the girl said, pointing. “When we have free study time, you can walk around and do homework. If you need to look up stuff, the computers and other references are over here.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
“No problem.” The girl swallowed and stepped closer. She was shorter than Max and had long, dark red hair. Her eyes were bright green, and her nose had freckles.
“I’m Lissa,” she said. “And you’re Nick, right?”
What did she want? He looked at her. “Uh-huh,” he said warily.
“I’m glad you’re in our class.”
“What? Why?”
She stepped still closer, and he could smell the lavender scent of soap. Giving him a flirtatious smile, she said, “Why do you think?”
“Watch this! I’m gonna fly!”
The Gasman looked up with interest. Some spud from his class was balanced precariously on the top of the metal jungle gym, holding out his arms like wings.
I hope he’s got more than arms, the Gasman thought. Well, maybe he did have wings. After all, maybe there were more kids like them out in the world. No way to tell. That was one of the mysteries to be solved.
“Yeah?” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Let’s see it.”
The kid looked a bit taken aback, then set his jaw. He crouched down a bit and jumped off the top of the play structure.
He couldn’t fly worth a nickel, hitting the ground almost instantly, landing in an awkward, crumpled heap. There was a stunned silence, and then he started wailing. “My arm!” he sobbed.