Jared nodded. He stood up but lost his balance and immediately fell over.
“Whoa,” Deirdre said, catching him and helping him onto the futon. “Jare?”
“I’m okay. I think I just need to rest.” He lay back on the futon, letting his head sink into the cushion, his eyes closing.
Deirdre turned to go.
“D?” he said, his eyes still closed.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
***
As a general rule, Hazel Huck kept to herself at school. Her closest friends, from the math club, the chess club, and Advanced Placement European History, could be more accurately described as friendly acquaintances. She went to school. She went to class. But she lived in Azeroth.
“I’m sorry, Hazel, about that man.” Paula Lake was a nice girl with bad acne, bad breath, and no social graces. She more or less vomited the words at Hazel as they passed in the hall between sixth and seventh periods.
Hazel didn’t know what she was talking about, but since Paula was so often the butt of someone else’s joke, Hazel simply nodded politely and smiled.
“I know how hard you tried to raise money to save his life. I play a level twenty mage, and I saw the ‘Save Jared’ T-shirts all over the place. Once I heard it was you, I wanted to talk to you.”
This has something to do with Jared Stone? Hazel thought. “Thanks,” she said. “We did our best, but it probably turned out okay. The television network has a lot of money. I’m sure they’ll take care of him.”
“Don’t you know?” Paula asked.
“Know what?”
“Oh, wow.” Paula snorted. She then recounted the events of the preceding night, talking so fast that Hazel could barely keep up.
It took Hazel a beat to process it all. The news hit her like a slap in the face. Given her love of dogs, the part about Trebuchet was particularly hard to hear. She thanked Paula, closed her locker, and left school. Thirty minutes later, she was logging in to Azeroth.
***
Sister Benedict was up with the sun. She went through her normal morning routine, using the toilet, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, dressing. She had taken a bath the night before and now felt clean, scrubbed, and ready for battle.
Her novices, sensing from the Sister the importance of the day’s events, were assembled in the convent’s central courtyard early, shifting nervously; some of the younger women whisper-ing and giggling. They were mostly under twenty-three years old, and given that they had eschewed the trappings of larger society, they were, as a group, socially younger than their years. They resembled a gaggle of conservatively dressed Catholic high school girls as much as they did pious Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration.
Sister Benedict strode into the morning sun like Patton, her posture so perfectly perpendicular to the ground that she seemed to glide more than walk.
It’s a beautiful day, she thought to herself, and she was right. In typical Portland fashion, the weather did exactly what it wasn’t predicted to do. The forecast had called for a cool rain, but the system had blown through without producing any precipitation, leaving a deep blue sky with cottony clouds and a light wind.
“All right, girls,” she called in her most authoritative voice. “What are we going to do today?”
“Save a life,” they answered in unison, their enthusiasm and sincerity barely evident.
“Come now,” Sister Benedict answered. “What are we going to do today?”
“Save a life,” the novices answered again, this time with more gusto.
“Right. Now line up.”
The dutiful girls fell into a single line organized by height, shortest in front, tallest in back, as if they were the Von Trapp children meeting Maria for the first time. The young nuns stood with ramrod-straight posture, trying to emulate their leader’s bearing. And then they waited.
Sister Benedict looked at her watch, a heavy, ugly, utilitarian thing that made her wrist look more masculine than normal, which is to say, very masculine. The bus she had arranged to transport them to the Stones’ house was running late. This made her seethe.
“Timeliness, girls,” she said, addressing those closest to her, “is next to cleanliness, and we know what that’s next to, don’t we?”
“Godliness,” a few of them answered halfheartedly. Sister Benedict shook her head and walked off. The morning wasn’t unraveling in the glorious way she had imagined.
She went back into the convent to call the bus driver, a devout man who owned his own limo company and often provided the sisters with pro bono transportation.
“Mr. Jenkins,” Sister Benedict practically spat into the phone, “while I understand that your willingness to provide the bus is an act of charity and generosity, it does not excuse your being more than fifteen minutes late.”
“Oh, Sister,” Mr. Jenkins responded. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Mr. Stone, his entire street is cordoned off.”