“I said, how do you get this stuff off?” Sheena repeated, giving Felix a hard glare. She lifted her fingers, rubbed them together. “It’s like oil. But I can rub it, wash it with soap, scrub, and it’s just there. And it itches.”

“Told you.” Felix shot a glance at Felicity who looked puzzled. “You weren’t there.”

“What is it?” Breez asked.

“Algae,” Felix told her to cut Sheena off. “From the water.”

“Like, from hydroponics?”

“No, the real water,” he told her with all the arrogance he could muster. “Sheena and me, we caught some.”

“How?” Felicity demanded.

“With our fingers,” Sheena finally chimed in. “Now it won’t come off. Feels like oil.”

“Let me feel.” Breez reached out a hand, grabbed Sheena’s fingers, and rubbed them. “Like grease, huh? You know, like Tobi puts on moving parts.”

Breez would know that since her mother, Jaim Elvridge, was an engineer.

“I want to feel, too,” Tomaya got out of her chair and walked over to examine Felix’s fingers. As she rubbed them, his palms began to sweat; the prickling tingle ran from his hand up his arm to the shoulder. “Hey, easy. That feels funny.”

“Why’s your palm all wet?” Tomaya wanted to know, making a face as she studied her hand and then rubbed it, as if trying to get his sweat off. “It’s kind of slimy. Sort of like spit.” She flounced over and dropped with an overemphasized huff into her chair. Still, she kept rubbing her fingers together. “Doesn’t feel . . . what did you say? Tingly.”

“It will,” Sheena warned.

“Did your Mom try and wash it off?” Felicity asked.

“It’s fine,” Sheena told her.

But Tomaya caught the look that passed between Felix and Sheena. She said, “Oh, you did something you shouldn’t have?”

“Must have been bad,” Felicity said.

“How do you know?” Breez asked, bending back to her pad as she started rubbing her fingers on her jumper.

“’Cause they did,” Tomaya said craftily.

“Okay, smarty,” Felix challenged. “What did we do? Huh?”

“I don’t know,” Tomaya admitted, “but it was something.”

“Bet they went where they weren’t supposed to,” Felicity told them with self-assurance. “Got into stuff the grownups told them not to.”

“Did not,” Felix cried impulsively.

Sheena had scrunched her lips into a pout the way she did when she didn’t want any more questions. Felix knew she was pretending to read from her pad, but all the while she kept rubbing her fingers on the fabric of her smock.

Felicity grabbed at his hand, clamped on tight, and looked at his fingers. “They look shiny. Like they got plastic all over them. Your Mom seen that?”

“No. She’s been busy. It’ll go away. Like the time I got ink on my fingers and had to wear it off.”