“I don’t make sense? Do you want to share with the class what you told me when I had to go looking for you at the train station?”

“We were late,” Chris said. “I had a health issue. I don’t know what her excuse is.”

“The people who are looking after me hogged the bathroom! I didn’t even get to do my hair!”

“I can talk to them,” Natalie said.

“It’s fine, mostly. I could deal if I could just adjust, but it’s different people or mixes of people with different ways of doing stuff,” Kenzie said. “You can’t talk to them about that. It’s just the way it is.”

“I’ll talk to them about mixing schedules,” Natalie said. “This is solvable.”

Kenzie nodded.

“Your hair looks nice,” I said.

“Thank you. It makes me feel anxious. Anyway! I got to the station late and he was off in my direction, so we were going to catch the train together, but he wasn’t there. And he comes out of the bathroom and—”

“You asked if I wanted to share with the class, and I can’t get five words out before the digressions and you start telling the story for me.”

“You weren’t telling! And, um, if you’re not comfortable telling, that’s okay. But if you are and you’re slinging mud at me instead, I’m just going to tell it.”

“I’ll tell it,” he said. “Apparently taking on a form with a thousand and five hundred angry foetal grubs crammed inside it gets messy. I changed back to normal, but I guess the foetal grubs didn’t all vacate. I had a slurry of their bits in my guts.”

I could see Natalie visibly pale.

“That’s a good reason to not use that form again,” Capricorn said. “That was horrifying.”

“It’d be fine if I’d evacuated while I was still Brooding Anger,” Chris said, giving me a look. “But I was told not to. By someone who isn’t really official leader.”

I was careful as I articulated myself, “A thousand grubs inside you. They had fangs and claws—”

“Technically they were part human, part grub. I think.”

“You said they were nonlethal,” I said. I frowned. “Chris, I don’t believe you.”

“They would have listened to me, after,” Chris said. “I think? Instinctual listening.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“No sounds good,” Natalie echoed me, her voice soft.

“Let’s not terrorize people too much,” Tristan said. “That thing was horrifying.”

“That thing was me. Anyway, I’m done talking about this.”

He tossed his bag onto the table by his favorite chair, then removed the fanny pack. It joined the bag.

He gave me a hard look when we made eye contact. With everyone going to their workstations, only Sveta and I lingering, I opted not to bug Chris.