“Nell’s town.”
“Yes. Not her mother, though. Or Glenys’s mother.”
“Any luck on finding Glenys?”
“Not yet.”
I pull up the CatNet app. It’s late enough in the day that the kids on East Coast time are mostly home from school, so Hermione, Marvin, and Firestar are online.
“LBBBBBBBBBB!” Hermione greets me.
I sigh and wonder how long I can stay in the bathroom before someone notices. “I’m sneaking online time from school.”
Greenberry is online and complaining about the ACT, and Marvin is talking about some new meatspace group he’s gotten into that’s going on a camping trip. “In January?” I ask.
“I live in North Carolina,” Marvin says. “I mean, it’s not optimal weather in January, I’ll give you that, but I don’t live on the surface of Mars, like you do.”
“Marvin,” Firestar says. “Have you joined the Boy Scouts?”
“Nooooooooooooo,” Marvin says. “I actually was in the Boy Scouts when I was eight. Well, the Cub Scouts. You know. Uniforms and all the rest. This is historical reenactment of history that hasn’t happened yet.”
“So it’s a LARP group? Live-action role playing?”
“I guess? Anyway, it’s 100 percent different from the Boy Scouts. Except: CAMPING.”
“I’ve never been camping,” Greenberry says. “I’ve tried and tried to talk my parents into it.”
“I’ll see if there’s a future reenactment group in your area,” Marvin says.
“But why do future reenactment when you can make MISCHIEF,” Firestar says. “Today we had a glitter party. Balloons full of glitter and helium that we released in the cafeteria. And then they popped when they got to the ceiling and rained glitter down on everyone.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’re covered in glitter now?” I ask.
“Even better: so are all the vice principals.”
The door from the hallway creaks open. “Steph?” Nell says.
“Gotta go,” I type, and close the app and flush.
Nell is bright-eyed but also nervous.
“It was all worth it,” she says. “The Elder has granted me a question.”
“What are you going to ask?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Do you think I should ask about my mother, or about Glenys?”
I’m pretty sure that I agree with the people who think her mom just left. “Glenys,” I say.
She takes a deep breath and bends her head over her phone. “Okay,” she says. “I’ve asked.”
When school ends, I send my mom a text telling her I’m going to Nell’s house, and I follow Nell out to the curb where the beater car is waiting. The woman driving the car this time tells me to call her Jenny.
Their house is really not far from mine. It has a big front porch with a porch swing no one ever took down for the winter, swaying in the frigid breeze. Their faded doormat has the remains of a rainbow and (All Are) WELCOME, and the doorbell has duct tape slapped over it so visitors will know to knock.
Inside, they have a lot of stuff: books stacked in corners because they don’t fit on the bookshelves, mugs left forgotten on the windowsill behind the sofa, a chair dedicated to a pile of coats that don’t fit on the coatrack. A papier-mâché jackalope-head sculpture hangs over the fireplace. Jenny adds her coat to the pile. “Did you need—” she starts to ask.
“No,” Nell snaps and then adds “ma’am,” like she’s trying to be polite.
“Okay. Well, don’t forget to offer your friend a snack … okay?” Jenny says, and retreats upstairs.
I follow Nell into the narrow kitchen. She pokes the stack of dishes in the sink. “Why don’t they just wash these,” she mutters.
There’s a complicated chore chart posted over the sink, and I peer at it. “They don’t have you doing any chores,” I say.
“They do this chart up monthly, and I arrived on January third.”
We split a bagel from the freezer, toast it, spread the halves with strawberry cream cheese, and take our bagels on paper towels into Nell’s bedroom.
It’s definitely a mustard yellow. I mean, compared to the Circus House, it’s not that bad, but that’s a low bar. Nell has painted three little samples of different blues on the wall, though, and points out the one she chose. There are two gallons of fresh paint waiting on her desk, along with a pile of old folded bedsheets, four rolls of blue tape, a printed page of instructions, and a green Post-it note on top saying, I HAVE THE BRUSHES AND ROLLERS. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR THEM. —J.
“Did you hear back from the Elder?” I ask.
“No,” Nell says. “I’ve been checking every five minutes.”
“How long does it usually take to get an answer?”
“Depends. Sometimes you don’t ever. Have you heard back from the hacker?”
“There are a bunch of boarding schools that do conversion therapy under another name,” I say. “Glenys isn’t at any of them.”
Nell blinks. “Well, that’s something,” she says.
“Yeah, I figured that was worth passing along. They haven’t found Glenys yet, though.”
Nell nods, and her gaze drifts down to her phone.
“Go ahead and check again,” I say. “I mean, might as well.”
I pick up the sheet of painting instructions. There’s a bunch of stuff Nell is supposed to do before the paint starts going on, including taping the edges of the room so she won’t get paint on the ceiling or the window frames. “Do you want some help with this?”
“Have you ever painted a room before?”
“No,” I say. “I thought you just went at it with brushes, but tape actually makes sense.”
“I don’t want to put you to work. You came for a visit,” she says self-consciously.
I wonder how weird it is to want to help somebody paint when this is the first time you’ve ever been at their house. “I mean, if I want to paint my own room at some point, it might be nice to get practice?”
“Okay,” she says, and gives me a crooked smile. “Putting up all the tape is the most annoying part of painting, though.”
We climb up onto the furniture to affix tape to the edges of the ceiling. Nell keeps taking breaks to check her phone
