The administrator pursed her lips, but turned to her phone and made a call. Sandy stopped shouting and strained to listen, but the woman was speaking so quietly we couldn’t make out what she was saying. Still, within a few minutes a nurse from the emergency room appeared. April was stable; she seemed to have good reflexes, good recall of events: although she couldn’t name the mayor or the governor, she probably hadn’t known those facts this morning. She could name her teammates and recite her parents’ phone number, but the hospital wanted to keep her overnight, and maybe for a few days, for tests, and to make sure she was stable.

“I need to see her. I need to be with her.” Sandra’s voice was a harsh caw.

“I’ll take you back as soon as you finish with the paperwork here,” the nurse promised. “We told her you’d arrived, and she’s eager to see you.”

When I was fifteen, I would have wanted my mother, too, but it was hard to picture Sandy Zoltak thinking about another person with the passion and care my mother had felt for me. I found myself blinking back tears—of frustration, fatigue, longing for my mother—I didn’t know what.

I abruptly left the area, prowling around the hall until I saw Sandra return from the emergency room to the admissions desk. When I went over, she was fishing an insurance card out of her wallet. By-Smart was written on it in big letters; I was relieved but surprised—from what I’d read, the company didn’t provide insurance to their cashiers. Of course, Romeo drove for them; maybe he had real benefits. When Sandra had finished filling out forms, I asked if she wanted me to wait for her.

Her mouth twisted. “You? I don’t need your help for anything, Victoria Iffy-genius Warshawski. You couldn’t get a husband, you couldn’t have a kid, now you’re trying to muscle into my family? Just go the hell away.”

I’d forgotten that tired old insult the kids used to use. My middle name, Iphigenia, the bane of my life—who had let it out on the playground to begin with? And then my mother’s ambitions for me to go to college, the support of teachers like Mary Ann McFarlane, my own drive, some of the kids thought I was a snot, an egghead, an iffy genius. Being Boom-Boom’s cousin, and his sidekick, had been a help in high school, but all those taunts, maybe that’s why I’d done some of the things I’d done, trying to prove to the rest of the school that I wasn’t just a brain, that I could be as big an idiot as any other adolescent.

Despite her spitefulness, I handed Sandra a business card. “My cell phone’s on here. If you change your mind, give me a call.”