“Sounds like a smart man,” Dad rasped. “We’d get along.”
“He’s OK with it now.”
“I have no plans for a dye job, Dad.” I smiled nervously. “You can relax.”
“Good. Good.” He sounded exhausted. I immediately regretted playing along. It was hard to reconcile strong, down-to-earth Dad with this soaked, shaky figure.
“I’ll take two of you to help him,” Neven said. “The fewer people, the faster I fly. I’ll pick up the others afterward. Fill in the new one, would you?” She nodded toward Four.
Red said, “Can I come?”
She and I climbed on, keeping Dad steady between us.
And then we were off.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Aunt Lina’s place was weird.
After dropping Dad off at Temple University Hospital, which had been such chaos that shouts about a dragon in the parking lot barely got any attention, Neven set us down a few blocks from Lina’s apartment building. We walked separately from there; any MGA agents on the streets would spot a group of four Hazels easily amid all the families rushing outside, evacuating with backpacks slung over their shoulders and animals yowling from pet carriers.
Four pushed open Lina’s door and walked right in. She didn’t gape at the exposed brick or arched windows, the same way she hadn’t gaped at the castle-like exterior, the luxurious lobby, or the massive neon letters on the roof. Visiting her aunt in the city had to be normal for her. Visiting another person’s house, period, had to be normal for her.
I tamped down a surge of unease.
My shoes squelched as I followed Four inside. On the couch armrest sat an orange cat who eyed us warily. Lina had left an empty juice container out on the kitchen counter, and some dirty dishes were piled in the sink even though the dishwasher stood open. A stack of mail lay on the dining table, which was covered with crumbs and coffee rings and a used toothpick. I recognized her Post-it–covered refrigerator, which I often saw in the background of our webcam chats.
In my peripheral vision, I caught Four staring at me. “You’re shaking,” she said softly. “You should—you should shower.”
“I’m not the only one,” I said. Four was hugging herself, her skin pale, her clothes soaked. “You go first. You got pulled under. You need it more.”
“It’s fine. I’ll, I’ll . . .” Her teeth were chattering. She backed into the hall without further objections.
I took off my drenched I ♥ NJ hoodie, kicked off soggy shoes and socks, and gratefully accepted the towel Four handed me before she closed the bathroom door. I patted my arms and head with it as I wandered the apartment, leaving puddles in my wake. By the window, I scanned the streets nine stories below for any sign of Rainbow and Red. Everywhere I looked, desperate-looking people had phones to their cheeks, parents dragged along their children, and police shepherded civilians around. Rainbow couldn’t be hard to spot. Not many people outside had hair like hers.
Or hair like Red’s, for that matter.
I’d always known West Ash wasn’t the height of ethnic diversity. I grew up with Dad and Carolyn, of course, and school had Imani and Humberto and others, but all of the school’s nonwhite students and teachers together wouldn’t even fill a classroom.
That’d stood out at me for two reasons: One, because I knew how isolated Caro and Imani always felt in West Ash, and two, because I had a whole contingent of MGA employees to contrast it with, and I’d bet almost half of them weren’t white. I always thought that, sheltered as I was, at least I knew what the country looked like.
Judging by what I’d seen of Philadelphia today alone, I hadn’t known a damn thing. “Almost half” wasn’t as impressive as I’d thought, either. If this was what Philadelphia looked like, TV had been lying to me.
“Too bad you can’t go onto the balcony,” a voice behind me said. I startled away from the window to find Rainbow in the living room, and Red crouching in the kitchen behind her.
I smiled nervously. “Sorry. Hadn’t heard you come in. What do you mean?”
“Old building.” Rainbow shrugged. “Balconies aren’t up to code.”
“They fixed that a few months ago,” Red said, looking up from her crouch. She held a tin of cat food in one hand.
“Not in my world, they didn’t.”
I crossed the few feet to the balcony and tested the door. It swung inward without a problem.
“Oh. Bizarre.” Rainbow blinked.
Red forked the cat food into a bowl. “C’mon, Casper,” she cooed. The cat stayed at a safe distance, unsure what to make of us.
The feeling was mutual. I barely ever saw cats.
Red stood. “Fine, I’ll let you eat in peace.” She seemed so comfortable I wondered whether she’d had a cat growing up. Maybe she still did.
“Hey, Prime?” Rainbow said. “Can I call you that? It’s weird calling you Hazel.”
“Heh. I’ve been calling you Rainbow in my head.”
She cracked a smile. “And the others?”
“Red and Four.”
“That works.” She nodded. “So, um, what did Dad mean earlier, about a townhouse in the city?”
“Oh. That.”
I pictured Rainbow and her—our?—parents and Carolyn all living in West Ash together. No fence, no rift, no Philadelphia townhouse.
I slung the towel around my shoulders. “The MGA has rules,” I eventually said. “Most barns are off-limits. Sometimes, as a safety precaution, the entire lawn is off-limits.”
My words came slow. I’d never had to—never been allowed to—explain anything about the MGA or the rift before. It felt like I was doing something bad. Like agents would burst in and cut me off.
“Even when she was young, Carolyn would ask the agents nonstop questions. They thought it was cute. Doesn’t mean they answered. They tried not to pry into our lives, and we weren’t supposed to pry into theirs.”
“That’s totally different,” Rainbow said.
I shrugged. They were only doing their jobs. “One night about two years ago, during a power outage, agents found Caro testing the doors on
