For some reason she couldn’t remember at all, she had, on Monday, taken her flute home but left her music folder in her locker. She sat down in her usual spot at the end of the second-flute section. Chin, on her right, was a first flute. She turned to her left. “Can I share with you?” she asked Hubert.
He dropped his instrument. “What? Me?”
“Yeah, I can’t get into my locker,” said Freddy. “So can I?”
There was a distant part of her that knew this was the first time in her life she had ever spoken directly to Hubert. No one spoke directly to Hubert. He was sort of like an alien. You never knew how he was going to react, so it was safer to pretend he wasn’t there. He went beyond Josiah levels of weirdness to an uncanny zone occupied only by the select few. He was far too weird to be bullied. But she needed to share music with someone, and he was sitting next to her, and to be fair, Filbert had been slightly weirder than Hubert.
Hubert, still facing straight ahead, swivelled his eyes around towards her. “Does. Not. Compute. Danger! Danger! Okay, you can share, but don’t breathe on my music stand.”
“I won’t,” said Freddy.
She turned away to see Chin regarding her in amazement. “What are you doing?” whispered Chin.
“Uh,” said Freddy, “sharing Hubert’s music?”
Chin gaped at her for a moment, then shook her head and went back to sorting through her own folder.
Band seemed to last almost as long as math. They were doing a medley from Cats, and they sounded like, well, cats, though not in a good way. Freddy hadn’t practised the flute in so long that her embouchure had turned to mush. She could barely make a sound, and most of the sounds she did make were squeaks. Hubert and Chin winced every time she played. Fortunately, no one else was much better except one of the clarinetists, who had been playing since she was six, and a tenor saxophonist who had, in fact, got rhythm.
Ms. Bains told them to pack up fifteen minutes before the class should have ended. She often did. The unfortunate result was that since even the slowest packing-up job ever couldn’t have taken more than five minutes, Josiah had ten more in which to make his usual scene. “How’s it going, Keith?” he said clearly, his voice cutting through the subdued chatter. “Thrown anyone headfirst into a wall lately?”
He just never stopped. Freddy decided to spend the next little while staring at her watch. The date and time on it were both completely wrong, but perhaps she could will it to force time to move faster.
“Shut up, you freak,” said Keith.
“Did I say something problematic?” asked Josiah. “Isn’t it funny how even though someone else hit the wall, you were the one who ended up with brain damage?”
Freddy gazed raptly at the watch as Keith threw himself on top of Josiah, who had doubtless known he would. Josiah did like collecting bruises. It was becoming kind of boring. The class dissolved into chaos. Freddy thought she caught a glimpse of Cuerva Lachance’s coat swirling past the band room door, but it happened so quickly that she couldn’t be sure.
*
Freddy’s inability to get into her locker did leave her with one advantage. She had been lugging her bag and coat around all day, which had been annoying at the time but also meant she had her bag and coat and could be out of the school the instant the bell rang. While Josiah was still trying to disentangle himself from both of Keith’s fists and a trombone or two, Freddy was dashing across the school’s front lawn towards the entrance used by the Deaf kids. She hoped Roland wasn’t long.
He wasn’t. He must, she thought, have been trying to get home quickly so he could barricade himself in his room again. Todd and Marcus weren’t with him. They didn’t live as close to the school as Roland and Freddy and had to take public transit to get home.
When Freddy fell into step beside him, Roland threw her a disgruntled glance but didn’t comment. He turned very deliberately away from her. The way he kept making sure he couldn’t see anything she said was beginning to bother her. She had to make him understand about Three, but she wouldn’t be able to if he just wouldn’t look at her.
She kept an eye out for Josiah, but they seemed to have outdistanced him for now. It was Mel who caught up with them first. She would have had to go several blocks out of her way to meet them on the way home. She was puffing enthusiastically, her face shiny and red. “Did anything happen? Are we in trouble yet?”
“Not yet,” said Freddy, “but it’s coming soon. He still won’t listen.”
“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” said Mel, bouncing along beside them, “and brainstorming in my notebook and everything, but there are still big chunks of stuff missing. You told me everything?”
“Pretty much everything,” said Freddy, a little guiltily. She hadn’t mentioned Mika or Ban. She kept telling herself she wasn’t sure why, but that wasn’t quite true. The fact that Cuerva Lachance could walk around invisible was bothering her. It was bad enough that they had discussed aloud the fact that Roland was Three. Freddy didn’t want to give away everything she knew. It was possible the key to this whole situation was in something she had already seen or heard.
Roland was still looking away from both of them. Freddy wondered how he could see where he was going. “Has he been like that all day?” said Mel. “It’s denial, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” said Freddy. “He’s still mad at me. Maybe you can get through to him.”
“I’ll try,” said Mel, but then Cuerva Lachance was there, stepping out of the air in front of them, right in the middle of the park. All three of them stopped together, even Roland, who had been staring off to his left and must only have been able to see her out of the corner of his eye.
“I was in a swimming pool,” she said. “Which of you is Three?”
They stood in a row, watching her. Freddy had to stop herself from letting her eyes slide towards Roland. If he gave himself away now, it would be his own doing, not hers.
“Come on. You can tell me.” She gave her fingers a persuasive little waggle. “I’m very good at keeping secrets. Mostly because I forget them immediately, but nobody has to know that.”
The sun was just barely peeping out from behind the perpetual cloud cover. Freddy wasn’t sure why she was noticing that. Cuerva Lachance stood in the weak sunlight, smiling and seemingly simply naively interested. Freddy had rarely found her more menacing.
“There are kids in the playground,” murmured Mel. “She doesn’t … do things … when people might notice, does she?”