When the weekend rolls around, I find myself feeling a little bad for Harold, stuck alone with Ryan in the common room. Gwen and I live close enough to go home on the weekends. Ryan’s parents live in LA; they shipped him out here, and I’ve never seen them before. They pay on holidays for a fancy black car to pick Ryan up and take him to the airport for visits, but that’s it. Harold’s parents live in Brooklyn. He could go home, and on long weekends or breaks he usually does, but I think he feels safer here. He always begs the Doctor to make some excuse to his dads to keep him here at Berkshire instead of anywhere else. I think the little dude would live behind the wallpaper and become a part of the building if he could.
But I’m betting that’s about to change, and Harold will start heading home on the weekends as well. Ryan’s not the sort of guy you want to hang around with when he’s in a good mood, but the longer the officials are here, the angrier he becomes, and he seems to be focusing a lot of his rage on Harold.
I texted my mom earlier, asking to stay at the academy for another weekend, but she refused. She’s determined to have “family time,” something she never really cared about before I moved away. I don’t know what she expects from me when I graduate. I mean, I don’t think I’ll go to college, but I also don’t think I’m going to stick around.
Gwen and I wait together in the foyer for our parents to pick us up.
“I’m kind of glad to leave this time,” Gwen says, her eyes on the window. There are a few other students from different units milling around, but we’re standing off to the side. Units tend to stick together.
“Yeah, I get that,” I say. It’s not the same here without Sofía, and if it weren’t for the chance to work on my powers more, I’d rather be home too.
“It’s been super awkward.”
I nod.
“I don’t think I’m coming back next year,” she says.
I whirl around. “What? Really? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Just . . . look around.”
I do. I see Berkshire, far more of a home to me than the house my dad’s going to drive me to. I see Gwen, a member of my unit, a part of my family. Powers are deeper than blood.
She shrugs. “This place . . . I really loved it at first. But now . . . I feel watched all the time. I feel like I can’t be myself. And, no offense, but our unit kind of sucks. You’re okay, but Ryan’s a total dick, and Harold’s practically a ghost. What’s the point? The way this school sections us off into these tiny units . . . look at all these other people.”
She gestures toward the ten or so kids from other units waiting for their own rides.
“We could be friends with them. Instead, I don’t even know their names,” Gwen says. “I spend all day with you guys and Dr. Franklin, taking the same classes from the same tutors . . . nothing changes. At least with Sofía I had a friend.”
“She’s coming back,” I say automatically. I’m still not sure how I can save her, but I know I will.
Gwen narrows her eyes, examining me. “She’s really not,” she says. “You get that, right?”
“What do you mean?” There’s a roaring in my ears, an ocean rising up in my brain, trying to drown out the doubt on Gwen’s face. She says something else, but I don’t hear her. I hate the way everyone underestimates me. They think that I’m not good enough, not strong enough, not powerful enough to save Sofía. I am. I can. I will.
“There’s my mom.” Gwen picks up her overnight bag and heads to the door. Before she can leave, though, the Doctor calls her name from the top of the stairs. She pauses, waiting for him to reach the door, and they go out together. Through the window, I see the Doctor bend down, talking to Gwen’s mother with a serious look on his face. Gwen glances back at me, but I can’t read her expression before she throws her bag in the backseat and drives off with her mom.
The next car to arrive is Dad’s Buick. Dr. Franklin’s already waiting for him, and Dad gets out so they can talk more. Even though I hustle to the car, they finish their conversation before I arrive.
“How ’bout them Patriots?” Dad asks loudly as I approach, obviously cutting off whatever conversation the Doctor was trying to have with him.
The Doc looks a little nonplussed, but he recovers quickly. “Bo’s such a good student,” he says. He reaches for me like he’s going to ruffle my hair, but I’m not ten years old, and that’s kind of a weird thing for him to do anyway, so I duck out of his reach and get into the passenger seat.
Dad doesn’t speak as we drive off.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“What was what about?”
“What did Dr. Franklin say to you?”
Dad turns the blinker on well before he needs to, and he doesn’t speak as he crosses the bridge, taking us off Pear Island and toward Ipswich.
“Bad business,” he finally says when the car bumps from the bridge to the road.
“What do you mean?”
Dad shakes his head. “There’s some bad business going on at that school.”
Oh. The Doctor told him about the officials visiting.
I wonder what Dad thinks about it all. He knows I have power—he and Mom had to approve me going to Berkshire, and the Doctor told them how it’s structured just for people like me, even though my particular power is super rare.
Mom was all for me going; it was Dad who hesitated.