Page 8 of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

“Oh. I can find things when Ineedthem, personally—like I found Angela’s kitten, which meant I found her mother, which meant I found out the school existed, and I needed to be here so I could be safe. And I can find things when people mention wanting me to look for them, or when I decide to look for them. But just being around something that’s lost or hidden doesn’t mean I’ll automatically find it. Not unless I somehow know I ought to be looking.”

“How the hell did she think you were Nonsense, even for a minute?” Cora sounded frustrated. “That’s a lot of rules, and they’d have to be consistent for you to rattle them off that easily.”

“I didn’t tell her everything,” said Antsy uncomfortably. “I didn’t feel… It wasn’t right, you know? Not yet. She wouldn’t have understood. And so maybe what Ididsay made it easy for her to think that the Store was Nonsense. I don’t know.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Cora, pausing as she reached the top of the stairs. “She’s seeing what she wants to see. She’s been doing that more and more lately. Through here.”

The stairs had ended at a door. Cora opened it, and Antsy followed her into the third-floor hallway. The students who’d been at the school longest were housed here, all except Sumi, who was on the second floor for the sake of the trees, and Christopher, who was in the basement for the sake of the shadows. Antsy didn’t come this high very often. She’d never needed to.

Somewhat more concerningly, Seraphina’s room was on this floor. Cora gave her a reassuring look.

“Christopher’s still dealing with them, or he’d have met us here. We’re almost to the attic.”

“We’re going to see Kade?”

“Kade was the one who asked the rest of us to keep an eye on you—well, Kade, and Sumi, who says she can see a quest taking root before it knows it’s been planted. I’m not sure she’s kidding about that. Seems like every time something weird happens, she’s right at the middle of it.” Cora snorted laughter. “Like anything at this school could be called ‘weird’ in comparison to anything else.”

The attic door was small compared to the doors around it, which led into proper rooms and had thus been allotted more space in the hallway. An almost-polite sign readingKEEP OUThung at eye level, which had always struck Antsy as odd, since Kade wasn’t that antisocial. He managed the school wardrobe, collecting and cataloging any castoffs, as well as hand-making special items for people who could pay. He took money, favors—usually chores around the school—and information, as he tried to chart as accurate a map of the worlds as he could.

Hewould understand that a Nexus was neither Nonsense or Logic but something entirely its own, straddling the lines in a way too nuanced for most worlds to manage. It was fascinating how hard people from Earth seemed to find that idea, since Earth was a Nexus too, but Antsy supposed it was hard to look at your own nose. Still, if anyone would be able to hear her talk about the Store and reallylisten,it was probably Kade.

She should have come to him months ago, and realizing that as she waited for Cora to knock made her feel foolish. She shrank back as Cora lifted her hand, suddenly grippedby the urge to turn and run, and was on the verge of doing it when the static lit up at the back of her mind and she froze, trying to figure out what she was supposed to be looking for.

Cora knocked. The door opened. Kade must have been waiting for them. The static got stronger. He smiled as he saw Antsy.

“Hey, Antsy. You all right?”

Antsy nodded. “Angela told a lie to get me out of group, and then she took me to where Seraphina was waiting, in the library, and Seraphina got real close to me so I couldn’t not see how pretty she was, and told me I was going to find her door. I didn’t want to, so I pushed back as hard as I could, but she wassopretty, and I was about to say I’d do it when the lights went out.”

“Christopher,” said Cora.

Kade turned his smile to her. “Makes sense. Boy does like a simple solution. Come on, Antsy. We’ve been waiting for you to be comfortable enough to join us, and since we’ve run out of time to wait, we need to go.”

He turned then, heading up the narrow flight of stairs to the attic, and Cora gestured for Antsy to follow.

Kade stepped to the side at the top of the stairs to let Antsy pass, and she emerged into the wonderland that was his room. He’d been at the school so long that his environment had been completely reshaped to suit him, books and bolts of cloth piled in semblance of furniture. The only piece of real furniture in sight was the table where he kept his sewing machine; Antsy wasn’t sure he even had abed.

Sumi was sitting on one of the piles of books, if anyone could call lying on her back with her legs in the air, ankles crossed and feet propped against a wardrobe,sitting. She had a length of ribbon in her hands, and was weaving it through her fingers in an intricate design that Antsy recognized but couldn’t quite place. Emily was on the floor next to her, Sumi’s inverted pigtails just barely brushing her shoulders, her legs stretched out in front of her and her toes pointed at the far wall. She looked up sharply at the sound of footsteps, and looked faintly embarrassed when Antsy appeared.

“I’m so sorry,” Emily said. “This is all my fault.”

“Fault’s like salt, it spreads around,” said Sumi dismissively.

“She’s right,” said Kade, as he followed Antsy into the attic and moved aside again, this time so Cora could come up. “Emily, you didn’t do anything wrong, you just asked a question we were still trying to put together. And you wouldn’t even have known to do that if you hadn’t heard us talking about it.”

“And you wouldn’t have heard us talking about it if I hadn’t gone and enrolled in Whitethorn to get Cora back where she belongs, and hauled you out for good measure,” said Sumi.

Emily flinched. “Don’tevertalk like you shouldn’t have done that,” she said, hotly. “Don’tever. I was dying in there.”

“And now you’re living out here,” said Sumi serenely. She craned her neck, grinning at Antsy. “Hello, Trinket. You here to give an answer?”

“It’s still my fault,” said Emily. “If I hadn’t tried to bring it up in the cafeteria, Angela wouldn’t have heard me. That was what gave her the idea!”

“And we’re getting off topic, which is a neat trick when we haven’t even managed to get on topic yet,” said Kade. He rubbed his face with one hand as he moved to sit on his own pile of books. “I swear, if I ever figure out how I turned out the responsible one, I’m going to start setting fires for fun.”

“You stayed,” said Sumi. “Long and long and long enough that I don’t think anyone but Elly-Eleanor remembers a time when you weren’t here, and maybe even she doesn’t remember anymore. And when things got bad, you didn’t run or hide, youhelped. And then you helped again when my daughter showed up, remember?”

“What?” squeaked Antsy.

---