At my expression, Tara added, "She knows things that have no basis in reality and she dismisses any evidence that happens to disagree with what she knows."

"She found papers and a half-empty baggie of pot behind the stage curtains and had Leo Neztsosie hauled off by Deputy Tomez, saying he'd put it there."

"Oh? She saw him?"

Tara shook her head. "Well, she said she did. Later she said she just knew he put it there."

"Thank god for cell phones," Jade said. "Monica Munez was getting some video of the dancing, and in the background you could clearly see Shelly Clew put the baggie behind the curtain. I mean, clearly."

"Monica didn't even see it. A week later she put the video up on her Facebook page and someone else spotted it." Tara said. "The school district settled out of court. I don't know how much, but Leo says his college is paid for."

"Why did Ms. McClaren think he did it?"

"He was sitting at a table at that end of the room. She also doesn't like him."

"Why does Ms. McClaren still have a job?"

"The school board was split on it," said Tara.

Jade snorted. "Yeah. There was the half that wanted her fired and the half that were members of her church."

"Be fair," said Tara. "One of the board members that wanted her fired was also a member of her church."

Jade said, "Yeah, I guess." She looked sideways at me. "I couldn't believe how fast you got out of her way."

Tara laughed. "Good reflexes! I blinked and missed you moving, but Caffeine's expression changed from fierce to oh shit as she realized she missed you."

I smiled weakly. "Just lucky, I guess."

I hoped everyone in that room thought they'd blinked.

The bell rang and we went our separate ways.

By the end of the school day I was sick of people.

It was the incident in the cafeteria. In PE they stared. In humanities they stared. In art they stared. They stopped talking in the halls as I walked by and their voices resumed in hushed tones after I passed.

I hoped it was just the bit with Caffeine jumping across the tables. Or that I was a weirdo because of the way I acted, or dressed, or who I hung out with, or even that I must be one tough girlchild because Caffeine had gone for me more than once without effect.

As long as it wasn't because I could jump.

Jade and Tara suggested Krakatoa, but the thought of more eyes watching was too much and I begged off.

"Saturday morning, though," said Jade. "The van to Durango. I swear, you don't show up and I'll quit."

I crossed my heart and then made a straight line across my throat, something I learned from Mom, but they didn't get it, so I had to say, "Cross my heart and hope to die."

Mom looked surprised when I showed up. She was sitting in the living room and reading some kind of report, her phone sitting beside her on the end table.

"Everything okay?" Then she frowned. "No. It's not, is it?"

Sometimes I don't hate that she knows me so well.

I only left out jumping, that time in the shower, and how I got out of Caffeine's path in the cafeteria.

Oddly enough, Mom seemed more concerned about what I told her about Ms. McClaren than about Caffeine.

"Tell you what-you ever get called into that woman's office, say you have to go to the bathroom, then come get me or your dad."

I held up my phone.

She nodded. "Sure, try that first since it would get us anywhere in the county. But if we're at the cabin you might have to come fetch us."

Part of me wanted to protest that I could handle the crazy Ms. McClaren but instead I said, "Thanks, Mom. Glad you got my back."

THIRTEEN.

Millie: Old Allies Millie was listening to an argument about anthropogenic climate change at an international relief conference in Washington DC. The meeting was being held at the Ronald Reagan Building, convenient to the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was one of many different meetings happening there; she'd almost walked into a symposium on computer forensics in law enforcement just down the hall.

She was tired and really annoyed at the two gentlemen who were not arguing about the evidence, but about the nomenclature. Global warming. Climate change. Anthropogenic global warming.

I should have gone with the computer symposium.

The particular session was an emergency meeting added at the last minute to discuss the impact of a particularly nasty storm system headed into the Bay of Bengal. It was five months until the regular monsoon season would start, but there it was nonetheless, carrying a ridiculous amount of moisture and headed right for Bangladesh.

The moderator of the panel finally quashed the argument about names, and the panel started discussing areas of particular sensitivity regarding the impending rain. Of particular interest to Millie were a couple of areas not normally at risk but in peril because of repair projects on flood control embankments and dikes damaged during a nasty cyclone seven months before, at the end of last monsoon season.

Millie took a lot of notes.

As she exited the session she came face to face with a woman with short silver hair who was heading for the door to Woodrow Wilson Plaza. The woman sidestepped Millie, saying, "Excuse me," and the voice confirmed Millie's first impression.

Millie controlled an impulse to jump away. She took a step to the wall and looked around for observers, but there weren't any obvious watchers, just people streaming by in both directions-coming out of the meeting rooms, heading to the restrooms. Millie turned and followed the woman, catching up and falling in step with her in the middle of the plaza.

"Becca."

Millie was wearing a red wig and slightly tinted glasses. Becca Martingale, FBI, looked sideways at her and raised her eyebrows, but clearly didn't recognize Millie.

Well, it had been seventeen years.

"Do you have time for coffee?" Millie gestured at the Starbucks a hundred feet away. "Or we could go to the one at the Metreon."

Becca froze midstep, and Millie, walking past, had to turn back to face her.

"Millie?"

"Yep."

Becca stared at her, mouth half open. "I guess I didn't imagine it all."

"I wish."

"Are you all right? Your husband?"

Millie nodded. "Yes. I wasn't seeking you out. I didn't recognize you until I heard your voice."

"I thought you'd heard-" Becca looked around, checking the environment. "We should definitely get a coffee." She pointed at the Starbucks. "Not the Metreon, though."

"All right."

FOURTEEN.

"Cent, in the desert, with a blunt instrument."

Mom went to a reception at a refugee conference in DC but said, before leaving, "Dad's handling dinner tonight at the cabin, okay?"

I rolled my eyes. "At the cabin?"

"It makes him feel safer. Seven, right?"

"Right."

That gave me three hours.

It was sixty-eight degrees in the desert in West Texas, where I'd had my encounter with the young rattlesnake, and the air was still.

I'd arrived standing still, despite the fact that I was several hundred miles south of where I'd left, so my velocity west to east had probably just increased by a good chunk.

I jumped to the edge of the pit, the sinkhole with the water and the island in the bottom. Without pausing, I stepped off the edge and let myself drop toward the water fifty feet below.

I flinched-that is I jumped away-finding myself in the pillow cave under my bed, when I'd only dropped a few feet.

Scaredy-cat.

I returned to the cliff's top. It was fifty feet to the bottom. It would take just a bit over a second and a half to drop to the surface of the water below. I tested my hypothesis with a rock. One-one thousand. Two-one- Splash.

I should at least be able to hold off to the one second mark. And shouldn't I be able to return to the pit's edge instead of my bedroom every time?

I made it to "one-one thou-" before I found myself back under the damn bed. The next time I managed to jump back to the lip but didn't even make it to the second "one" in the cadence.

I kept at it.

At the end of the hour I was dropping a full second and a half and jumping away to wherever I chose. Once I waited slightly too long and my boots splashed into the water before I was gone. They were barely wet on the outside, and the water hadn't had time to soak in.

That was pushing it a bit, but even then I managed to jump back to the pit's edge instead of hiding under my bed.

Good enough.

Considering just the local frame, after falling a second and a half, I was moving forty-eight feet per second. I had to go back and use my desktop to translate that: just under thirty-three miles per hour.

Okay. So I was changing my frame of reference, going from thirty-three mph to zero mph, pretty much instantly. I was changing my physical location about fifty feet when I did this. What I wanted to do was stay in the same place but change my velocity, instead.

There was a sandy brush- and cactus-free wash farther out in the desert. If I fell down there, I wouldn't get stabbed or hit my head on a rock. I got out in the middle and started by jumping to exactly where I was.

Nothing happened. I didn't really jump. I guess my subconscious knew I was already there.

I jumped a foot to one side, like I had when Caffeine dove at me in the cafeteria. That worked, so I tried a half foot. Jumping a smaller distance was harder, but I could stay right where I was and change my orientation, as if I'd spun around really, really fast. One second I was facing the darkening east and the next I was facing the sun, which was nearing the horizon.

I bet that looked weird.

Okay. This time I tried to add velocity.

It didn't work.

I was hoping for the same velocity I'd achieved at the end of the one-and-a-half second drop, thirty-three mph, only up. I'd just changed my velocity that much over at the pit, but when I tried it, nothing happened.

"Crap." I kicked at the sand.

It was like my first jumps. Frustrating, totally out of my control. Maybe it wasn't something I could do, even though I was obviously doing it every time I jumped from a moving vehicle, or north or south of my position. Certainly I'd been doing it from the drops in the pit.

Breathe, I said to myself. It was weird but when I say that, it's Mom's voice I hear. I dropped my shoulders and stretched my neck side to side.

How had I gotten control before? Not those panicked reflexive flinches, but those measured, conscious jumps?

Right, it had been the smell of things.

But how do you smell speed?

I thought back to the pit, to how it had felt as my feet neared the water and the air rushed by. The most memorable thing was the noise, the rising pitch of wind that rose to a shriek as the air rushed by faster and faster. Louder and louder.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember that rushing sound, the feel of the wind, only coming from above. I didn't want to appear in the wash with a downward velocity of thirty-three mph. I wanted to- "Shit!"