“Sedge caught me at my locker between fourth and fifth. No pass.”

“Where’s Vicky?”

“Home with a temperature. Hundred and two point six. She had such an unbelievably sore throat in French, she was almost hysterical—”

“She should try chemo,” I said, reclining on my cushions.

“I know,” said Fiona in her motherly voice. “It’s a good thing we didn’t come see you yesterday. She might have already been contagious.”

“Dr. O says I have more to fear from my own germs than other people’s.” I’d had enough science forced on me in the past six months to last a lifetime.

“So I took her to the infirmary,” Fiona went on. “Guess who tagged along just to get out of French? Guess who inveigled the nurse into letting her stay, so was not in the hall when the bell went?”

“Natalie Flynn?”

“Sniveling sycophant.” Fiona was famous for her vocabulary, which never seemed to match her flyaway appearance. She jabbed herself in the collarbone. “Who took Vicky to the infirmary in the first place? Who knew all the symptoms of spinal meningitis? Hel-lo? I thought I’d make it to study hall in time. I only stopped for a second to check my cell, and I got the detention.”

“Bad luck,” I said, though I know how Fiona thrives on close calls. As I see it, the occasional detention is more like a close-call tax than a major miscarriage of justice.

“She’s vile.” Her nail-bitten fingers sliced the air. “She’s detestable.”

“Annoying, maybe,” I said, stroking Cloud. “Not detestable.”

At first I’d said no way when I heard Miss Sedge would be one of my tutors. I’d thought it was someone’s idea of a joke. But my mother refused to get me out of it. She has this idea about the glorious benefits of facing things. Personally, I’d rather look the other way. But in this case she was right. Miss Sedge is not at all like she is at school, where she has no sense of humor whatsoever. At our kitchen table she acts as if I’m not a pupil or even necessarily a kid, let alone a sick one, but just another interesting person to talk to.

“Did you get my text?” I asked, to move us off the subject.

One great thing about Fiona is she doesn’t stay mad. “I was reading it when she caught me. I’m lucky she didn’t confiscate my cell phone.” She scrambled upright on the beanbag, working her eyebrows cartoonishly. “Jack Bell . . . ?”

I did not want to let her down, and I do not believe in lying to your best friend. However, a certain coolness had taken hold of me. “I went to see him,” I said. “I didn’t know his parents had split.”

“And . . . ?”

“We talked about the Keystone Pipeline.”

“What’s that?”