God, I wish you wouldn’t call me that. But I just hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and

stamped past him. It was hard to have a satisfying snit on when you were just wearing sneakers, but

I tried.

Since I was a few minutes behind, everyone was already there. Even the teacher, Beaufort, a tall

thin late-blooming djamphir in a faded blue-velvet jacket and striped hipster trousers.

Late drifters—they call puberty for djamphir boys “hitting the drift”—look like they’re in their mid

twenties instead of solidly teenage. They also have something . . . I can’t quite explain it. A shadow

around the eyes, or the occasional quick flicking restless movement as if they’re in pain. Augustine

had done that too. At the time I’d just thought he was weird. A lot of human hunters have tics. Like

Juan-Raoul de la Hoya-Smith, another one of Dad’s old friends. He hunts chupacabras and other

stuff down Tijuana way. He also spits on the floor every time someone says something unlucky, and

his idea of luck is . . . weird.

A ring around the moon? Bad luck. Hat on the bed? Major bad luck. Seeing a squirrel first thing in

the morning? Good luck. Canadian geese? Good luck. But seagulls? Bad luck. He calls them “rats

with wings.” But he loves pigeons. Go figure.

Beaufort made an odd movement, as if he wanted to bow and stopped himself just in time, straightening and pulling his cuffs down. Under the blue velvet, the teacher’s shirt was frilly and weird. It

looked like threadbare silk. “Ah, hello. Hello.”

A rustling movement went through the boy djamphir. None of them had sat down yet; the sofas and

easy chairs arranged in a double circle around the teacher all stood empty. And all of them were

looking at me.

This never got any easier.

I picked a sofa in the second row and dropped down. Leon stood behind me, a silent reminder. I

knew without looking that his hands were crossed, resting comfortably, and his head dipped forward

a bit so his eyes were lost behind a thin screen of fine hair.

He seemed to make just about everyone uncomfortable.

They all sank gracefully down into their chosen seats. The other half of my sofa stayed empty. Just

like always.

It was like having the plague.

The teacher cleared his throat. “Pass in your papers, please.”

I leaned forward. The kid who usually sat in front of me—hair the color of butterscotch and a fondness for really expensive silk button-downs in jewel tones—glanced back, took the plastic report

binder I held out, and blushed bright crimson.

I tried not to sigh. Slid a yellow legal pad and a couple of pencils out of my bag, settled down, and

waited. A sketch filled the edges of the piece of paper on top: blocks of masonry, grass shaded in at

the bottom, and a huge empty space in the middle.