Jade started shoving her things into her backpack. "Well, time for me to get home. Maybe your dad could give us a ride."

Dad had bought a plug-in hybrid, used, the sporty one with the electric motors integrated into each wheel and an auxiliary generator for long-range driving. Tara definitely approved. "This has got, like, a seventy-mile electric range, right? Around here, you'll be able to get along on just plugging it in."

But Jade had doubts. "Don't make a big deal of it, okay?"

Dad was amused. "Pardon?"

"This town is all about the oil and gas industry. One of the teachers at school bought an all-electric. It had 'Electric Vehicle' painted down the side in eight-inch letters. She lost three windshields in a month. When she replaced the last one, she had the words painted over as well, and hasn't had any trouble since."

Dad blinked. "Really?"

"Honest," said Jade.

Dad dropped Jade at her house and Tara at her apartment complex, which made me nervous. Dad doesn't really drive much. Mom's the driver. Dad could jump before he was seventeen and never really had to drive.

"You were spying on me," I said, when we were alone.

He shrugged. "Just checking out the local scene."

"Spying on me is not cool, Daddy."

He sighed. "Cent, you don't know these people. You don't know what they're capable of."

I knew he wasn't talking about Tara and Jade. "'These people' aren't here."

"You don't know that."

I bit back a scream. He was impossible. "See you at home," I said, and jumped.

I didn't tell Mom everything about my day.

Things I left out: comments about my breasts in the locker room, being knocked down on the basketball court, almost tripping Caffeine on the basketball court, and the shower incident.

OK, pretty much anything related to PE and Caffeine Barnett.

I did discuss Jade and Tara. I discussed Mrs. Hahn's schizophrenic attitude toward girls in math class. I talked about Mr. Hill and biology and how it was okay with him to know more than class requirements. Finally, I returned to Tara and what happened when I asked about her father.

"Ouch," Mom said. "So she covers up a lot?"

"Yeah. Really baggy pants, this enormous hoodie. She could be cold. Her arms are really thin."

Mom frowned. "Oh."

"Oh, what?"

Mom shrugged. "Hard to say. I'd like to meet both of them."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why?"

"It's a parent's job to peer and pry into every facet of their child's life. Didn't you know? Meet any boys?"

I stood up, very dignified and said, "None of your beeswax."

"Ah," Mom said. "Maybe you'll meet some tomorrow."

I stamped my foot. I hate that she knows me so well.

Dad came in the front door, which was really weird, you know? He doesn't usually use doors at home.

"I think I scraped the new car on the garage door."

Mom laughed.

Dad looked offended, but I could tell it was put on. "How was school?"

"Okay. But I need a phone."

He looked shocked, as if I'd asked him for crack. "Absolutely not!" Dad said.

"Why not?"

"Location services."

I looked at Mom. She was frowning. She looked back at me. "It's true, honey. Think about it: a cell phone checks in with the network even when you're not using it."

Dad got his haunted look. "You jump to another city, then back, the network will note the different cell towers with no time between. If nothing else, it will probably generate an alert for an illegally cloned phone. If anyone else is looking specifically for us, it's exactly the kind of thing they'd search for."

"Most of the kids have cell phones. They look at me like I'm from Mars when I say I don't have one. And I could check in with you guys after school without having to borrow one."

Dad probably doesn't realize it, but when he's getting stubborn about something, he juts his jaw forward. He was doing it now.

"I'll only carry it at school. When I'm not there, it will be on its charger, here."

Dad shook his head again. "That won't work. It would take just one slip. Just one instance of leaving it in your pocket when you jumped someplace else."

Mom tilted her head. "I wonder if there's a way to limit the phone to one locale? Program it not to connect to nonlocal networks. Maybe limit it based on GPS?"

I looked back at Dad. "Yeah, like that!"

His jaw still projected forward.

Mom said, "It couldn't hurt to investigate. I'd feel better if there was a way for us to get hold of her after school."

Dad looked at Mom as if she'd stabbed him in the back.

She raised her eyebrows. "It's a tradeoff, obviously, but if she jumps home every five minutes to let us know where she is, that also has problems, right? Someone could see her. The same problem exists for us, you know? We can't follow her around."

Dad looked down at the floor. "She should be at home after school. We just said she could go to school. We didn't say she could go anywhere she wants."

My mouth dropped open. "Daddy! Look at me!"

He reluctantly raised his head.

I stretched both hands out and pointed back at myself.

And jumped.

I was in New York City, on the edge of Washington Square Park. It was dark and cold but I was still wearing my snowboarding jacket, hanging open. I zipped it up and walked, not really paying attention to where I was going. I went down streets that got progressively more narrow and twisty. I was surprised when I found myself staring across traffic at the Hudson River. The wind off the river was hard and damp, numbing my face. I looked at my watch. It had been twenty-five minutes since I'd jumped.

I went back to the house in New Prospect. Mom was there, Dad wasn't.

Mom sighed but didn't say anything.

"Did he get the point?" I said. I was trying for defiant but it came out strident.

"He did."

I looked around.

Mom said, "He's waiting at the cabin. I was waiting here." We'd been calling the Yukon house, 'the cabin' and the house in New Prospect 'the house' to differentiate. "Go tell him supper is ready."

Supper was a little tense. I would have sat silently through the whole thing, but Mom drew me out and I talked about humanities and biology and math and, very briefly, about PE. At the very end of the meal Dad said he'd talk to somebody about the phone thing, and I apologized for jumping away during the earlier argument.

"Where'd you go?" he asked.

I smiled and didn't say anything.

The very first day of school I'd walked the entire way from the house. A path cuts through the wooded rear of two neighboring properties, well away from the road and houses, before it enters the public woods that are part of the park adjacent to the school grounds.

The second day of school, now that I had my bearings, I jumped straight to the last bit of woods, not on the path, but to a ledge above it, halfway up a limestone cliff. You couldn't see this shelf unless you were above looking straight down, or twenty feet up one of the trees growing below. This let me peek over the edge and make sure no one was around before jumping down to the path where it left the woods.

Most of the kids arrived at the front of the school, dropped off by parents or busses or driving themselves, but there was a cluster of smokers at the edge of the athletic field, sheltering from the wind in the lee of the bleachers and stamping their feet in the crusty snow while they got their fix.

I swung wide, keeping the collar of my jacket pulled high. One of the smokers was a taller girl with one of her sleeves hanging empty. When I reached the door, I glanced back and confirmed what I'd thought. It was Caffeine. Her jacket was partway open and I saw the sling, inside. Worse, her head came up sharply when I turned to look back, and I saw her scowl. I went inside trying not to hurry, but my heart was pounding.

I dropped off my coat in my locker and headed for biology. My heartbeat slowed and I did some slow deliberate breaths, a trick Mom taught me, to finish calming. Tara, it turned out, had a seat at the very back of the classroom.

"No wonder I didn't see you, yesterday. You're way back here in Outer Mongolia."

She nodded. "I'm a buffer zone between nations." She pointed at the empty desk to her left. "Daniel-vania gets a little too talky with Becky-stan." She pointed at the desk to her right. "So Mr. Hill put me here, as an intervening neutral power. Noise in this part of the classroom dropped twenty decibels."

"Did you mind?"

"Nah. Mr. Hill asked me to do it, as a favor."

"Do they pay any more attention in class, now?" I gestured left and right.

"Depends if they're in possession of their cell phones. If they are, then they spend the whole time texting each other. Mr. Hill won't take their phones away if he notices, as long as they're quiet, but a lot of the other teachers follow the cell-phone policy to the letter."

I'd been given a copy of the policy when we enrolled but I wasn't even going to read it, since I didn't have a phone. But then, at the end of the process, they wanted my signature on all the student-behavior policies, so I'd skimmed it. No phone use in the classroom, including texting or any audible alerts or ringtones. Phones confiscated and only returned to the student's parent or guardian at the end of school day.

But I'd still seen people using their phones in class. Between classes, they sprouted in kids' hands like blossoms after desert rain.

"When are you going to get a phone?" Tara asked.

"Working on it," I said.

I gave the school cafeteria one more try at lunch but it was no good. When you have to be told that the green beans are, well, green beans, you know they've been cooked too long. The entree was breaded mystery meat baked so dry and stiff that it defied the plastic cutlery. When I picked it up and tried to bite it instead, it defied my teeth.

"Look on the bright side," said Jade. "Jell-O!"

"Uh oh," said Tara. "Caffeine approaching."

I glanced around.

Caffeine was juggling her tray, her lunch half eaten, and her backpack with her one good arm. It looked like she would drop one or the other at any moment. I wondered why she hadn't just left her backpack and gone back for it after she'd bussed her tray, but then I realized she was walking in the wrong direction to drop off her tray. The dishwashing window was on the other side of the cafeteria.

"Maybe she's changing seats?" I said, half to myself.

Tara said, "She keeps looking at you."

I pivoted off the bench seat and stood, abruptly, while Caffeine was still a few yards away. Her eyes went wide, her tongue went to her lips and she lurched forward, as if she had tripped. But I had my hands on both sides of the tray and, though the food and milk carton slid sideways, I lifted it up and kept it from spilling.

"Oh, you poor thing," I said, loudly. "Let me help you with that."

Caffeine's face twisted, ugly, and I knew I'd guessed right. She'd planned to "accidentally" spill it on me as she went by. There were three teachers on lunchroom duty so she couldn't attack me overtly.

"Where are you headed? I'll carry it."

She jerked her chin toward the dirty dish drop-off window.

"No need for you to go. I'll get it."

I went wide around her. I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd tried to trip me, but I got her tray and dishes to the window without incident. By the time I'd returned, Caffeine was headed out the door.

Jade and Tara looked unhappy and a little disturbed.

"What?"

Jade said, "She spit on your food."

My mouth opened but it took me a moment before I could think of anything to say. "Just when I thought the cafeteria food couldn't get any worse."

Tara giggled and Jade's hunched shoulders relaxed. The corners of her mouth twitched slightly.