Rain had two boards, like Kenzie. One on wheels, another on the wall behind. Unlike Kenzie, they weren’t even remotely organized by topic. Snag, Love Lost, Cradle, ‘5’, known acquaintances, tinker hands, contact pads, timeline for Snag’s operations, known places the cluster had been with lines drawn to names of acquaintances, name ideas with ‘handbreak’ crossed out because Tristan had apparently vetoed it, a crude calendar with the names of cluster members filling in blanks, Love Lost due tonight… and so on.

Just red marker and some brown, presumably to put in different words in gaps yet keep them distinct. Or because Kenzie had stolen the red marker to draw hearts.

Tristan’s was next to Rain’s, and Tristan’s was mostly devoted to team name ideas, room layouts, broader organization and schedule, and some minor notes on money spent. Byron hadn’t really showed up in the hideout, but Tristan had still devoted a quarter of the board to him. A list of movies. Aimed at letting Byron maintain a degree of communication with Chris and Rain, it seemed, from the comments on the side.

Sveta was taken up by a mix of art and names. She’d written out names not in a list, but as solitary words. Images had been drawn around them. Beneath ‘Moor’, a girl’s hair, wavy, with a fish head poking out to the right from between the two curtains of hair. It was very detailed for art on a whiteboard, with each scale getting a texture. Above ‘Lash’ was a feminine figure in stark black lines with back arched, head back, and breasts pointed skyward, the breasts so pointed they could have been used for Kenzie’s geometry homework. To the right of ‘Cirrus’ was a face drawn out in lines, frowning. ‘Berth’ was sitting in the bottom right corner in tiny text. The image was so small it was barely legible. It might have been Sveta’s rendition of herself, potato-shaped with arms and legs flailing. A line was drawn between its head and the word ‘no’, a speech bubble without the bubble.

I felt oddly fond at seeing it. That kind of mental working was inexplicable to me, but I liked seeing the hints of it.

After Sveta was my whiteboard, neatly organized, then Kenzie’s two, which I’d already noted.

I wanted to help them.

No. The boards didn’t convey it, the boards were things as they should be, even, but they needed help.

On so many levels, they needed help.

The by-proxy interaction with my mother had affected my mood. Natalie’s words and concerns had too, but it was hard to know how many of those were my mother’s and how many were her.