“But Dennis in particular. Christopher is, he says he doesn’t remember everything. He looked at me when I first walked up and it was like, he was looking at me and trying to remember the particulars, and maybe he failed, because he looked embarrassed when he saw I saw him looking. He doesn’t remember his dad. He’s quieter, more introspective. But he’s… he feels like someone who could fill in the gaps and become the Christopher I knew.”

“Yeah. I get that. Could be the tinker power is always running, so it picked up a good grounding from a lot of different places and times.”

“Dennis is weird. The inner voice that he had, that looked at this fucked up world of ours and laughed at it and called attention to it, that started everything by questioning the situations we were in, being skeptical of people until they proved themselves, that’s his outer voice now. And his old outer voice, that was cynical and frustrated because he asked those questions, he challenged, and he adapted, he got hurt and tired and heartbroken… that’s the inner voice now. Like there’s something dejected but stubborn at the core of it all, and that’s where the jokey quips and skepticism come from now.”

I remembered what she’d said about Christopher. What she wasn’t elaborating on with Dennis.

“Makes you feel like he might not make his way back to being the Dennis you knew?”

Vista shrugged. “Feels like it. But who knows? Maybe they’re talking among themselves and Dennis is telling Chris how little Missy is different. That I’m bitter, I’m pricklier, I’m more arrogant, I don’t know.”

“People change. I think that happens. But from where I stand, first of all, I think you’re great. I can’t imagine them badmouthing you. You’re too cool for that.”

“Pshh.”

“I don’t know a single person that doesn’t like you. Rachel Lindt likes you.”

“But I’m different.”

“Yeah,” I said. I inhaled. “We all are.”

“Sucks.”

“In its way. But I’m optimistic, when it comes to Dennis. I’ve seen the way things are laid out, how things are set up, the information stores they have, the way they store every detail of our lives, sorting it…”

“Creepy.”

“Yeah. But comprehensive in the midst of that creepiness. The individual pieces are all still there. Give him time to sort it out.”

Vista was very still, staring at a point in the wall above the boys. I might’ve thought she was using her powers, but we were supposed to avoid powers in this building, which was a bit different from Breakthrough being under a general restriction. That, and there was no reason for her to use them.

She didn’t seem very reassured, or even like she was listening.