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Daneca brushes a brown curl behind her ear. Her purple glove is smeared with ink. “Will you tell me what you are? Will you tell me that?”
I suck in my breath in honest surprise. Then I laugh. I’ve never told her my biggest secret—that I’m a transformation worker. I guess it’s time. She must have worked out something or she wouldn’t have asked.
“You got me,” I say. “You got me there. Yeah, I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you everything I can.”
She nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll be in the library after dinner. I have a paper to start.”
“Great.” I jog down the stairs, running full tilt when I hit the quad so I can make it to ceramics before the final bell. I already have two demerits. I’ve been in enough trouble for a single day.
* * *
My pot comes out totally misshapen. It must have had an air bubble in it too, because when I put it into the kiln, it explodes, taking out three other people’s cups and vases along with it.
* * *
On my way to track practice, my phone rings. I flip it open and cradle it against my cheek.
“Cassel,” Agent Yulikova says. “I’d like you to stop by my office. Now. I understand your classes are over for the day, and I’ve arranged for you to be excused. The office understands that you have a doctor’s appointment.”
“I’m on my way to track,” I say, hoping that she’ll hear the hesitation in my voice. I have a gym bag slung over my shoulder, bouncing off my leg. Overhead the trees are blowing in the wind, covering the campus in a drifting carpet of leaves with the colors of a sunrise. “I’ve missed a lot of meets.”
“Then they won’t notice if you miss another one. Honestly, Cassel. You almost got yourself killed yesterday. I would like to discuss the incident.”
I think of the gun, taped in the closet of my dorm room. “It wasn’t any big thing,” I say.
“Glad to hear it.” With that, she hangs up.
I head toward my car, kicking leaves as I go.
3
A FEW MINUTES LATER Agent Yulikova is gathering up piles of paper and shifting them out of the way so that she can get a better look at me. She’s got straight gray hair, chopped to hang just beneath her jawline, and a face like a bird’s—delicate and long nosed. Masses of chunky beaded necklaces hang around her throat. Despite holding a steaming cup of tea and wearing a sweater under her navy corduroy jacket, her lips have a bluish tint, like she’s cold. Or maybe like she has a cold. Either way she more closely resembles a professor from Wallingford than the head of a federal program to train worker kids. I know she probably dresses the way she does on purpose, to lure trainees into feeling comfortable. She probably does everything on purpose.
It still works.
She’s my handler, the one who’s responsible for ushering me into the program as soon as I am eighteen, per the deal I made with the Feds. Until then, well, I don’t know what she’s supposed to do with me. I suspect she doesn’t know either.
“How are you doing, Cassel?” she asks me, smiling. She acts like she really wants to know.
“Good, I guess.” Which is a huge, ridiculous lie. I’m barely sleeping. I’m plagued with regrets. I’m obsessed with a girl who hates me. I stole a gun. But it’s what you say to people like her, people who are evaluating your mental state.
She takes a sip from her mug. “What’s it been like shadowing your brother?”
“Fine.”
“Philip’s death must make you feel more protective of Barron,” she says. Her gaze is kind, nonthreatening. Her tone is neutral. “It’s just the two of you now. And even though you’re the younger brother, you’ve had a lot of responsibility placed on you.…” She lets her words trail off.
I shrug my shoulders.
“But if he put you in any danger yesterday, then we need to put a stop to things immediately.”
“No, it wasn’t like that,” I say. “We were just following someone—a random person—and then Barron got a call. So I was on my own for a couple minutes, and I saw the murder. I chased after the kid—the killer—which was stupid, I guess. But he got away, so that’s that.”
“Did you talk to him?” she asks.
“No,” I lie.
“But you cornered him in the alley, correct?”
