• Who is watching the classroom from the green building?
• How will Hot Sauce investigate?

Then her mind wandered.

• What will Pyrrha check out for Camilla today?
• Why is the seat such a nutritious part?
• Who am I?

So her drawing wasn’t much good, and was further harmed midway through the lesson, when the teacher was taking Honesty and Hot Sauce and Born in the Morning for integers while the nursery class copied things down off the board. One of the tinies who didn’t like going to the bathroom alone tugged on Nona’s sleeve, so she ended up standing in front of the cubicle lost in thought, and then she got distracted looking at herself in the mirror. It was such a relief to be pretty, and to have the braids that Pyrrha had given her look so dark and juicy and glossy. Cam said her hair was drying up and she had white spots on her nails, but Nona couldn’t see it. When the tiny emerged from the toilet Nona helped it wash its hands and return promptly to the numbers on the board, and by then the Angel had arrived.

The Angel looked less like an angel than ever that morning. Nona always liked the science teacher’s face, which was sort of snub-nosed and thin and crinkly around the eyes, but that morning she was frankly untidy. She was a gallant little person of fortyish who gave the impression that she had learnt a lot early in life and discovered late that it was no real good to her or anyone else. This lent her teaching a weightless, secretive feeling, like it was really all for fun at the end of the day. She liked to wear button-up shirts, often with suspenders to hold up the trousers, and a dust jacket to keep her clothes neat walking through the city; but that morning her shirt looked like yesterday’s shirt and her face looked like yesterday’s face—careworn, with her freckles fading into the background of her skin. All of the Angel was tinted in soft greys and browns, but she had delicious reddish freckles scattered on her cheeks and nose which added life and vivacity to her face; not so much today. As Nona led the tiny by hand into the classroom, Hot Sauce had paused on integers to say, “Good morning, sir,” which caused a reverberation around the classroom of equally respectful Good morning sir—Good mornings; but the Angel’s answering “Good morning, everyone” was distinctly pallid.

Hot Sauce noticed that. Nona watched as Hot Sauce never fully returned to integers, but quivered at the front desk with the others, her eyes constantly flicking back to the Angel. Nona thought the Angel was moving like someone who hadn’t slept well. Sometimes Pyrrha went out late at night and came back smelling like alcohol, and Camilla would say nothing at all, but if Palamedes was there he would say, “Really, Pyrrha?” and Pyrrha would just say, “Really, Sextus,” and then the next morning she would be walking in that same rumpled, weary fashion—though Nona thought she exaggerated it for effect. Nothing Pyrrha drank could really hurt her. She had even drunk the contents of the bleach bottle once. When Palamedes had asked why, Pyrrha said she had realised she wasn’t used to being tortured while immortal and wanted to get a head start, and Palamedes said bullshit because he thought Nona had not been listening. Nona wondered if the Angel had been drinking too, albeit not bleach, which had given Pyrrha some sensational hiccups. She shared this thought with Hot Sauce and the others at break time after numbers and reading, when they huddled in the corner with their sliced fruit.