Shaking my head, I murmured, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but then she nodded at the bag by my feet. David’s bag. I’d found it in Saylor’s house that last night. There hadn’t been anything else of his, other than a couple of sweaters too not-ugly to bother taking, I guess.

Maybe I’d taken those, and maybe they were hanging in my closet right now. I wasn’t admitting anything.

But I’d been using David’s bag since he’d left, not caring what anyone thought. Ryan had done one of his Mage tricks, convincing everyone David had taken an early acceptance at some college up North, so no one questioned my whole grieving-girlfriend thing.

Chie was watching me with an unreadable expression as I pulled the bag into my lap, and as I rifled through it, she said, “I miss him a lot.”

Her voice was soft and quiet and it made me look up at her. There was no universe in which I’d thought Chie and I could ever be friends, but seeing my own loss reflected in her face felt... good. Or at least comforting.

I’d been keeping my stuff in the main part of David’s satchel, but I hadn’t looked through the little pockets. That’s where I found the jump drive, there in one of the tiny pouches inside the front flap.

It was the same bright blue as The Doctor’s TARDIS, and looking at it made my eyes well up. Still, I handed it over to Chie and watched her make her way over to one of the computers in the back.

It was bizarre how... normal everything felt. Ever since Homecoming, I’d been wishing for normalcy, trying to shove my anything-but-ordinary life back into the box where I’d lived my actual ordinary life. And now everything was normal again, and I hated it.

Opening my notebook, I did my best to outline a story I wanted to write for next week’s edition of The Grove News. It was about the chemicals they use to keep the lawns so green, and I thought it would make Chie happy.

It would’ve made David happy, too, probably.

For two weeks now, I’d been waiting for some feeling, some idea of what was going on with him or where he might be. I had that same faint sense that I’d always had, a weird awareness of him, but all it told me was that he was far away from me.

And moving farther.

I was so involved in sketching out my idea for the story that I was almost startled when Chie suddenly appeared in front of me again, holding out the drive. “Thanks,” she said, and when I took it back from her, she hesitated for a second. I glanced up and saw her chewing on her bottom lip, watching me cautiously.