Free Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson

front door, and they both became very straight and solemn when they saw me.
    “Hi, pumpkin,” said my dad. He smelled of beer, but I could tell he wasn’t drunk, only mellow. He propped my mom against the wall and stooped to peer at me, looking more like a tame bear than ever. “You all right? Something bad happen at work?”
    He’d forgotten about the makerspace already—that was how little it meant to him. How little he understood. And yet I knew he didn’t mean to hurt me. He was only trying to protect me—and despite everything that had happened last summer, part of him still believed that he could.
    He was wrong, but I didn’t want to be the one to tell him so. If things went bad with Sebastian and the relay, he’d find out soon enough.
    “It’s okay,” I said. “Just—this guy at work keeps hitting on me. Not harassing me,” I added as Dad started to bristle, “but he’s been hinting around, hoping I’ll go out with him. And I don’t want to.”
    “Which one?” asked Mom, struggling out of her coat. She knew most of my regular coworkers by sight, since she shopped at Value Foods every weekend. “That Chinese boy?”
    Actually, Milo’s family was Korean, but I wasn’t going to get into that now. “No, Mom. Jon. The blond guy who works the express lane.”
    “The cute one?” She gave an owlish blink. “What’s wrong with him?”
    She’d liked Brendan too. “I’m not interested, Mom. That’s all.”
    “You’re too picky,” she told me with a shake of her head. “You’re seventeen and you’ve only had one proper boyfriend! I’ll never be a grandmother at this rate.”
    She spoke lightly, smiling all the while so I’d know she was only teasing. She didn’t really expect me to be thinking about marriage and children at this age. But I knew enough Latin to remember in vino veritas, too. I wanted to tell her not to get her hopes up, but if there was ever going to be a good time for that discussion, it wasn’t now.
    “So you’re saying I shouldn’t hold out for a guy like Dad?” I said, and the flush in Mom’s cheeks deepened as Dad kissed her temple.
    “Oh, no,” she told me with a hiccup of laughter in her voice. “You absolutely should.”

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    When I woke up the next morning, there were two texts waiting for me. The first one came from my old cell number and read:
–Sunrise Café. 11 am. Pancakes?
     
    Trust Sebastian to tell me nothing that I actually wanted to know. I texted back:
–Pancakes first. Then I kill you. WHAT HAPPENED???
     
    While I was waiting for his answer, I opened the second message, from a number I didn’t recognize. It said:
–U OK? GET UR PHONE ALRITE?
     
    Great. Jon had made Milo give him my number before he let him out of the truck. I was trying to think of a polite way to ask him never to text me again when Faraday’s reply came through.
–Milo says French toast is better. Also, no need for violence. It’s all fine.
     
    Which didn’t tell me much either, except that Milo was there and that Sebastian thought he’d solved the problem somehow. Probably by telling him my entire life story and trusting to Milo’s inner goodness, which wasn’t my idea of a workable solution at all. Muttering a few swear words, I kicked off the duvet and headed for the shower.
    “I’m meeting some friends downtown for breakfast,” I called over my shoulder twenty minutes later, ruffling my still-damp pixie cut with one hand. “I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?”
    “Friends? You mean some of the people from—” Mom came out of the kitchen and stopped dead in dismay. “Oh, Niki. Are you really going to wear that?”
    I looked down at myself automatically, though I already knew what I was wearing. Dark tights under frayed jean shorts, a long-sleeved tee with a barely visible pattern of sine waves across the chest, and a brown suede jacket I’d nabbed from Goodwill last week. Tori Beaugrand would never have worn anything like it, but that