Nameless

again, from the Vultusino grounds. She wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t been already awake from yet another bad nightmare, sweat-soaked and gasping, hearing soft commotion elsewhere in the darkened house.

But Marya wouldn’t tell her what had happened, and Trig didn’t show up. And Stevens only asked her again if she wouldn’t prefer Chauncey to drive her to school?

No, she’d snapped, without the stutter for once, and he had nodded and retreated.

Weak winter sunlight slid through high windows; Sister Grace-Redeeming’s classroom was brimful of the quiet murmur of girls bent over paper, pencils scratching. Ruby shrugged, the gold dangles on her earrings winking. She hunched back over her Provincial History book. It was odd—the only thing looking washed-out today was her friend’s bright copper mane. Every other edge pressed against Cami’s skin even through empty air. Even the dust was painful.

Plus, Cami was itching all over. Maybe it was the wool of the blazer, or just her wanting to be gone. She didn’t even want to go back home, it was too far. Just a closet, or maybe a forgotten corner. Any quiet dark place would have done, just so she could sit and breathe a bit.

She tried to read, but the letters were dancing on the page. The itch was somehow under her skin. A steady irritation, building, a hot prickle of temper.

If I’m angry, why does it scare me? She took a deep breath, staring at the paper in front of her.

The door opened, and a ripple passed through the classroom. Ellie, her eyebrows drawn together and a terrific bruise glaring on the left side of her face, shook her sleek blonde hair down and stamped for the head of the room. She handed a slip of pink paper to Sister Grace, who woke up long enough to nod and murmur something that sounded kind.

Ellie shrugged and hitched her schoolbag up on her shoulder. Turned, her skirt flaring, and stamped to her seat. Her knees were bruised too, and the way she held her bag said that it hurt.

Ruby was bolt-upright. “What the hell?” she mouthed, but Ellie wasn’t looking. She dropped down on Cami’s other side, fishing a pair of shades out of her blazer pocket and jamming them on.

It didn’t hide the fact that someone had socked her a good one. The Strep didn’t hit her in the face often. Maybe it was one of the boyfriends. Who knew?

I know. A terrible, nasty, guilty heat bloomed behind Cami’s breastbone. The blazer.

Maybe it wasn’t that. Don’t leap to conclusions.

She slid her book over, so Ellie could get the page number. She also silently slid her notes over. Sister Grace went back to dozing, the girls went back to scratching with their pencils—and whispering about Ellie’s arrival. The ghoulgirls were hungry for gossip, the bobs would be asking about it, and the fluffs were ready for talk-meat, as always. Gossip was juicy, and even Ruby’s glower couldn’t keep all of it away.

The irritation under Cami’s skin mounted another few notches.

Ellie just sat for a few moments, her shoulders shaking imperceptibly. Cami’s heart was in her throat. Her friend was in her ancient school blazer, shiny-collared and wearing down, fraying beginning at the elbows.

She could suddenly see it, in vivid color—the Strep tearing the new blazer away. You little slut, where did you get the credits for this? Ellie’s hands like little wounded white birds as they fluttered ineffectually, the Strep screaming as Potential flashed and the new blazer shredded to ribbons.

Anger, hot and vicious, sank sharp claws into the back of Cami’s throat. The itching all over her threatened to pop out through her skin. She fidgeted, and Ellie’s head slowly, very slowly turned.

The mirrored lenses of Ellie’s shades showed her reflection. Cami didn’t look like herself—her eyes too big, her face dead-white, the stray bits of hair pulled free from her braid lifting on a breeze from nowhere. The bone pin stuck out, its little colorless dangles gleaming, and its sharp tip jabbed at her nape again. There was a little raw spot where it kept rubbing.

God damn it. She reached up, yanked the pin free, and laid it carefully in the pencil groove at the top of the ancient wooden desk. Ellie shifted, her blank lenses following the pin.

Cami flipped to a fresh sheet of paper. You OK?

Ellie fished a pencil and her history book out. Her notebook was battered too, but she opened it and made the date notation. She leaned over, and Cami’s anger evaporated like steam from one of Marya’s kettles.

NO, Ellie scrawled on Cami’s paper. Later. Who gave you that?

Cami shrugged. Now that the terrible fury had subsided she was queasy, her head aching and the discomfort all over her like crawling razor-legged insects. A guy, she wrote.

Don’t take anything else. Ellie flipped her textbook open. Cami swallowed her retort—she could feel the stutter knotting just behind her lips, a brick wall between her and anything she might want to say. Ellie paused, then leaned over and wrote carefully: There might be charm on it.

Ellie was just slopping over with Potential, wasn’t she. She’d be able to see charm Cami wouldn’t.

But Tor wouldn’t charm her. He just didn’t have the Potential. Besides, he didn’t have to. She was halfway- charmed already; she liked him. Whatever he was after when he talked to her, at least she knew she didn’t goddamn well owe him anything.

So now I’m stupid. Can’t do anything right. She hunched her shoulders, and the prickling all over her went away as she took a deep breath. Her fingers, tense around the creaking pencil, relaxed a little, then a little more.

Ruby peered around her, a tendril of curling russet hair falling in her eyes. She blew it away irritably, and there were two bright fever-spots high on Rube’s cheeks.

She was pissed.

Sister Grace finally resurrected herself at quarter-till, announced a quiz for the next day, and smiled pacifically at the wave of groans. Her round, plump face, flour-pale, framed in black and white, was a serene moon. The Mithrus beads tied to her sash clicked as she passed to the board and wrote the night’s homework in her flowing copperplate script. Cami’s shoulders twitched and she inhaled deeply—chalk dust, a touch of sweat, the funky smell of a room used to corral kids for long periods of time, a breath of clove and invisible fuming from Ruby on her right. From Ellie, nothing but the faint aroma of harsh soap and the also-invisible smell of misery.

The crystals on the bone pin glinted. She was going to have to ask Tor about—

The pin twitched. Ellie tensed.

It hopped out of the pencil groove. Cami let out a soft sound and grabbed for it, but Sister Grace was saying something, and the slight noise was lost. Also lost in Sister Grace’s droning reminder that chapel is after lunch, ladies, don’t be late, was the sound of the pin splintering as it hit the blue-flecked linoleum.

What the— Cami sank back down in her seat. Broken in three pieces, the bone pin rolled away. She grabbed the edge of the desk to keep herself from diving for it, since Sister Grace had turned around and was scanning the classroom intently, looking fully awake for the first time in months.

Ellie’s breathing had turned rapid, her fists clenched. A tear glittered on her bruised cheek, and Cami could see where the back of her earring had scraped on her neck, probably when whoever-it-was belted her.

It was the Strep. Sudden knowledge rode a cresting tide of nausea. Sweat had gathered in Cami’s armpits, dewed her lower back and her forehead. Everything was too bright, and Sister Grace’s gaze passed over them all like the shadow of a giant drifting bird.

“Ladies,” Sister Grace finally said, “you are excused.” The tinkling charmbell rang to signal the end of third session and the beginning of lunch, and Ruby sighed dramatically.

“’Bout damn time,” she announced as a surfburst of chatter swallowed the room. “Who do I gotta kill, Ellie?”

Cami wriggled out of her side of the desk. The shards of the bone pin were numb-cold, frost-burning her