“Sounds like us!” someone called, from the back of the room.

“You bet,” Clancy said, and talked for the next hour and a half about how the Pilgrims interacted with the native tribes, about Jamestown, about all the things my mother used to teach at her high school. And when he had used up all his time, he took a small bow and motioned for me to follow him outside amidst all the groans and complaints from the Cubbies. We were both still chuckling as we walked to the fire pit, where they were just starting to set up for dinner. I felt a number of eyes latch onto us immediately, but I didn’t care. I actually felt a small thrill of pride.

“So?” Clancy said, as we stood beside the Office’s porch, listening to the bells calling everyone to dinner. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m ready for my first lesson,” I said.

“Oh, Miss Daly.” A smile curled at the edges of his lips. “You already had your first lesson. You just didn’t realize it.”

Two weeks passed like a page tearing from an old book.

I spent so many hours of so many days locked inside Clancy’s room, pushing images into his mind, blocking him from trying to do the same, talking about the League, Thurmond, and White Noise, that we both fell out of sync with the camp’s schedule. He had his daily meetings, but instead of asking me to leave, he had me wait on the other side of the white curtain, where we were now conducting most of our practice sessions.

There were times he had to go out and inspect the cabins, or handle an argument, but I almost always stayed up in that musty old room. There were books and music and a TV at my disposal, which meant I never once had the opportunity to be bored.

I still saw Chubs at some of our meals, but Clancy often had food brought to us. Zu was even harder to track down, because when she wasn’t in class, she was with Hina or one of the older Yellows. The only time I really spent with the two of them was at night, before the camp’s lights were shut off. Chubs, more often than not, was a ghost—always working, looking for ways to catch Clancy’s attention by stitching up the kid who’d split her lip or suggesting a more efficient way of harvesting the garden. The longest I sat with him was when he took out my stitches.

Zu, for her part, delighted in showing me what she had learned in school, and the tricks the other Yellows had taught her outside of it.

After a few days, she stopped wearing her gloves. It only really hit me one night, while she was brushing out my hair. I had pulled away to go switch off the lights, but she beat me to it—she snapped her fingers, and the overhead light blinked out.