“I’m safe, you’re safe. My parents are safe, and they are my parents, just to make that clear. I have pictures of them holding me while I’m a baby. I don’t have any runaway tinkerings, there won’t be any captives in the basement, nobody’s going to die or get maimed. There’s nothing ‘vital’. Can we just go?”

I nodded.

We walked to the train, joining the tail end of the short line of people that still hadn’t boarded.

“We all have weird or broken families,” Kenzie said. “Rain doesn’t have any family he gets along with. Ashley doesn’t have anyone except her twin.”

“Twin?”

“Kind of. Her roommate, now. Sveta only has Weld, Chris doesn’t have anyone, Tristan and his parents don’t talk and he only gets to see them because he goes to church with them. Byron has it easier but it’s still awkward. You’ve got family business I’m not going to poke my nose in.”

“Thank you.”

“So it leaves Byron and me with mostly normal families. I can say the word ‘family’ and half the people in the group get a teeny-tiny surly or sad look on their face and the other half get an ‘oh no’ look.”

“Which one am I?” I asked.

“Depends on the day, but you’re a tie-breaker a lot of the time, so that’s fine. What I’m saying is everyone has these ideas going in, some of which are outright wrong, like Ashley’s, and something as simple and basic as dinner with family and it becomes this big thing.”

We boarded the train.

“What am I even supposed to do in this situation, Kenz?”

“Do what you were going to do. I know you checked up on Chris and he didn’t like that, and this is you checking up on me. Difference is, I’m okay with that, I’m even happy you care. Just don’t—don’t go in with the wrong ideas. Because that’s not fair.”

I considered that for a moment. I saw her looking up at me with large eyes, kinky, glossy hair in two balls close to the base of her neck.

No judgment. I gave her a nod, and she practically skipped at the confirmation, like the moment gave her a boost that accelerated her, saw her moving ahead in the aisle to a possible seating location.

We took up one set of four chairs, each of us taking two seats, depositing our bags and things in the empty seats. Kenzie looked around a few times before putting down her helmet and cloaking device, the visuals distorting as the cloaking adjusted to the change in orientation. The seat-bottom briefly disappeared as the camouflage took hold, Kenzie tapped the cloaked cloaking device, and it returned to normal.

“It’s not a long trip,” she said. “We’re going to the next station.”