mean, Iâm supposed to be with the swim team. Iâm supposed to do a relay tomorrow. In the morning.â
âCome, have dinner with the rest of us,â said Mrs. O, and beckoned. âYou need to eat a square meal.â
âButâand just leave Jax here? Alone? What if he wakes up alone?â
âHe needs his rest,â said Mrs. O. âAnd securityâs on high alert now anyway; this room is protected, though I know you canât see that. The light treatment we gave your brother hasâ¦draining side effects.â
Cara saw there was a pedestal sink in the corner, towels neatly hanging on a brass rack beside it, and walked over to scoop cold water onto her face and neck.
âDid they catch Roger, then?â she asked when she had dried off again. She felt better already.
âNot yet,â said Mrs. O.
Cara took a last look at Jax as she followed the teacher out the door: he seemed peaceful in the dim light, surrounded by the walls of portraitsâas though they were looking down on him, a host of guardians.
Four
Cara went to supper at a long table in the Instituteâs kitchen , a room that was so big she couldnât see all of it at once. It was down several flights of stairs from the room under the high domeâin the core of the building, as Mrs. O called it.
There was the âcoreâ and the âshell,â sheâd told Cara as they came in; the core was the old part and the shell was the new, which looked like a thousand other office buildings. Like the rest of the rooms in the core, the kitchen had no windows, but there were open fireplaces at each end. And there was an actual stone floor with big gray flagstones, which made her wonder how many floors there could be beneath it. After all, a stone floor had to be heavy.
The table was lined with adults she assumed were teachers. She sat down beside Mrs. O, and someone handed her a plate with spaghetti and sauce on it, then a small bowl full of grated cheese with a delicate silver spoon. Cara was reaching for the spoon, idly wondering why the parmesan wasnât just in a green-plastic shake container like it should be, when it occurred to her that half the teachers could be reading her mind at that very instant.
Her hand went a little limp.
âSoâif some of the people here are mindreaders,â she said under her breath to Mrs. O, âdoes that mean theyâre reading me right now? Because with Jaxâ¦â
âNo, dear, we have an amnesty,â said Mrs. O, smiling. âWhat Mr. Sabin was talking about. Amnestyâs what we call it between friends. We donât use the old ways on each other unless thereâs either a clear crisis or a personal understanding. Thatâs why we didnât find out about Roger until you told us. We donât read people as a matter of courseâonly when we feel we have no other choice.â
âIn that case,â said the bearded teacher with the glasses, âwe erred on the other side, didnât we? Big mistake. We were so busy with Jax, we didnât bother to read you. Or we might even have caught up to Roger.â
âIn other words, donât worry,â said the teacher with the neatly cut silver hair. âYouâll have the usual amount of privacy while youâre eating your spaghetti.â
âUnless you do something that enrages us, that is,â said the bearded teacher, jokey. âBy the way, Iâm Glen. Or Mr. Trujillo, if you prefer. Like the despot.â
Cara went to reach for the spoon again, but the bowl of parmesan had already moved down the table. Still, she was too hungry to wait, so she started to eat without it.
âI didnât get to tell Jax this,â she said slowly, twirling spaghetti on her fork as Mrs. O poured herself a glass of red wine from a fat-bottomed bottle in the middle of the table and Mr. Trujillo, across from them, forked up salad in a messy way that left