She peered across the linoleum-basted hall to the clock. In an hour she could walk back home to her real life.
You are coming back tomorrow, Blue told herself. And the next day.
But it felt like more of a dream than Cabeswater.
She touched her palm with the fingers of her other hand and thought about that flag Malory had found, painted with three women with red hands and her face. She thought about how the boys were off exploring without her.
She became aware of Noah’s presence. At first she just sort of knew that he was there, and when she considered how it was that she happened to know, she realized she could see him slouching beside her in his rumpled Aglionby uniform.
“Here?” Blue demanded, though really she was pleased. “Here, and not in the raven cave of death?”
Noah shrugged, apologetic and smudgy. His proximity chilled Blue as he pulled energy from her to stay visible. He blinked at two girls who walked by pushing a cart. They didn’t seem to notice him, but it was difficult to tell if it was because he was invisible to them or just because he was Noah.
“I think I miss this part,” he said. “The beginning. This is the beginning, right?”
“First day,” Blue replied.
“Oh, yeah.” Noah leaned back and inhaled. “Oh, wait, no, it’s the other one. I forgot. I actually hate this part.”
Blue did not hate it, because that would require acknowledging that it was really happening.
“What are you doing?” Noah asked.
She handed him a brochure, even though she felt self-conscious sharing it, as if she were giving him a list for Santa Claus. “Talking to the counselor about that.”
Noah read the words as if they were in a foreign language. “Ex-per-ie-ence di-verse fo-rest types in the A-ma-zon. The Sch-ooool for E-col-o-gy fea-tures a stud-y a-broad — oh, you can’t go somewhere.”
She was very aware that he was probably right. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“People are going to see you talking to nobody and think you’re weird.” This amused him.
It neither amused nor worried Blue. She’d gone through eighteen years as the town psychic’s daughter, and now, in her senior year, she had already held every single possible conversation about that fact. She had been shunned and embraced and bullied and cajoled. She was going to hell, she had the straight line to spiritual nirvana. Her mother was a hack, her mother was a witch. Blue dressed like a hobo, Blue dressed like a fashion mogul. She was untouchably hilarious, she was a friendless bitch. It had faded into monotonous background noise. The disheartening and lonesome upshot was that Blue Sargent was the strangest thing in the halls of Mountain View High School.
Well, with the exception of Noah.
“Do you see other dead people?” Blue asked him.
Meaning: Do you see my mother?
Noah shuddered.
A voice came from the cracked office door. “Blue? Sweetie, you can come in now.”
Noah slid into the office ahead of her. Even though he looked solid and living in the strong sunlight through the office window, the counselor looked right through him. His invisibility seemed downright miraculous as he sat down on the floor in front of the metal desk to pleasantly eavesdrop.
Blue shot him a withering look.
There were two sorts of people: The ones who could see Noah, and the ones who couldn’t. Blue generally only got along with the former.
The counselor — Ms. Shiftlet — was new to the school, but not to Henrietta. Blue recognized her from the post office. She was one of those impeccably dressed older women who liked things done right the first time. She sat perfectly straight in a chair designed for slouching, out of place behind a cheap shared desk cluttered with mismatching personal knickknacks.
Ms. Shiftlet efficiently checked the computer. “I see someone just had a birthday.”
“It was your birthday?” Noah demanded.
Blue struggled to address the counselor instead of Noah. “What — oh — yes.”
It had been two weeks ago. Ordinarily, Maura made sludgy brownies, but she hadn’t been there. Persephone had tried her best to re-create their undercooked glory, but the brownies had accidentally turned out pretty and precise with powdered sugar dusted in lace patterns on top. Calla had seemed worried Blue would be angry, which bemused Blue. Why would Blue be angry at them? It was Maura she wanted to slap. Or hug.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us,” muttered Noah. “We could have gone for gelato.”
Noah couldn’t eat, but he liked the gelato parlor in town for reasons that escaped Blue.
Ms. Shiftlet inclined her head to Blue without disrupting her perfect posture. “I see here you talked to Mr. Torres before he left. He has a note here about an incident in —”
“That’s all taken care of and done with,” Blue interrupted, avoiding Noah’s eyes. She slid the brochure across the desk. “Pretend like it never happened. All I’d like to know is if there is any way to get here from what I’m doing now.”
Ms. Shiftlet was visibly eager to get off the topic of anything that could be considered an incident. She consulted the brochure. “Well, this looks like a barrel of monkeys, pun intended! Do you have an interest in wildlife? Let me pull up some information on this school.”
Noah leaned over. “You should see her shoes. Pointy.”
Blue ignored him. “I’d like to do something with river systems, or forest —”
“Oh, this school is very competitive.” Ms. Shiftlet was too efficient to let Blue finish her sentence. “Here, let me show you the average scores of the students who get accepted.”
“Rude,” Noah commented.
Ms. Shiftlet turned the monitor so that Blue could see a somewhat demoralizing graph. “You see how few students get accepted. That means financial aid would also be very competitive. You’d be applying for aid?”
She said it like a statement instead of a question, but she wasn’t wrong. This was Mountain View High. No one was paying outright for a private school. Most of Blue’s peers considered community college or state schools, if they considered college at all.
“I don’t know if Mr. Torres went over the types of schools you need.” Ms. Shiftlet sounded as if she suspected he hadn’t, and that she judged him for it. “What you need is three different types. Reach schools, match schools, and safety schools. This one is a wonderful example of a reach school. But now it’s time to add some others to your list. Some schools that you can be sure you can get into and afford. That’s just good sense.”
Ms. Shiftlet wrote reach, match, and safety on an index card. Underlining safety, she slid it across the desk. Blue wasn’t sure if she was supposed to keep it.
“Have you filled out your application fee waiver form?”
“Four of them. I read online I could get up to four waived?”
This show of efficiency visibly pleased Ms. Shiftlet. “So maybe you already know this is your reach school! Now it’s time to make a sensible backup plan.”
Blue was so tired of compromises. She was tired of sensible.
Noah scratched his fingernails on the desk leg. The sound — which was admittedly uncomfortable — made Ms. Shiftlet frown.
He said, “I’d be way more sunshiney if I was a counselor.”