Free The Wizard's Dilemma, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Page B

as they tooled up and down the aisles with the cart, Nita began to feel normal, almost against her will. But then, while standing there with a bottle of mouthwash in her hand and working out if it was a better bargain than other bottles nearby, Nita’s mother suddenly turned to her and said, “What kind of dinosaurs?”
    Boy, Nita thought, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t mention the giant squid!
    ***
    When Nita and her mom got home, Nita and Dairine helped put away the groceries (and Nita helped her mom keep Dairine out of them); so it was half an hour before she could get up to her room and fish out her manual. As she picked it up, she felt a faint fizz about the covers, a silent notification that there was a message waiting for her. Hurriedly she flipped it open to the back page. At the top of the page was Kit’s name and his manual reference. In the middle of the page were the words: If you need some time by yourself, feel free.
    Just that. No annotation, no explanation. Nita flushed hot and cold, then hot again.
    Why, that little— He wouldn’t even just get out his damn phone and call me!
    Then she went cold again. Or else he’s really, really mad, and he doesn’t trust himself to talk to me.
    And then hot. Or maybe he just doesn’t feel like it.
    Nita felt an immediate twinge of guilt… and a second later stomped on it. Why should I feel guilty when he’s the one who’s screwing up? And then can’t take the heat when someone tries to straighten him out about it?
    Time by myself? Fine.
    “Fine,” she said to the manual.
    Send reply?
    “Yeah, send it,” Nita said.
    Her reply spelled itself out in the Speech on the page, added a time stamp, and archived itself. Sent.
    Nita shut the manual and chucked it onto her desk, feeling a second’s worth of annoyed satisfaction… followed immediately by unease. She didn’t like the feeling. Sighing, Nita got up and wandered back out to the dining room.
    Now that the groceries were gone, computer-printed pages were spread all over the dining-room table. While Nita looked at them, her mother came in from the driveway with a couple more folders’ worth of paperwork, dropping them on top of one pile. “Stuff from the flower shop?” Nita said, going to the fridge to get herself a Coke.
    “Yup,” her mother said. “It’s put-Daddy’s-incredibly-messed-up-accounts-into-the-computer night.”
    Nita smiled and sat down at the table. Her father was no mathematician, which probably explained why he pushed Nita so hard about her math homework. Her mom went into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of tea, and put it into the microwave. “You should make him do this,” Nita said, idly paging through the incomprehensible papers, a welter of old faxes and email printouts and invoices and Interflora order logs and many, many illegible, scribbly notes.
    “I’ve tried, honey. The last time he did the accounts, it took me a year to get them straightened out. Never again.” The microwave dinged; her mother retrieved the cup, added sugar, and came back in to sit at the end of the table, sipping the tea. “Besides, I don’t like to nag your dad. He works hard enough. Why should I make it hard for him when he comes home, too?”
    Nita nodded. This was why she didn’t mind spending a lot of time at home; with the possible exception of Kit, she seemed to be the only person she knew who had an enjoyable home life. Half the kids in school seemed to be worrying that their parents were about to divorce, but Nita had no such fears. She knew her folks fought—they would vanish into their bedroom, sometimes, when things got tense—but there was no yelling or screaming. That suited Nita entirely. It was possibly also the reason her present fight with Kit was making her so twitchy.
    Her mother paged through the paperwork and came up with a bunch of paper-clipped spreadsheet printouts. “Though privately,” she muttered as she took the papers apart and started sorting them by