Gwendolyn reached the school. She stopped at the foot of the steps, the way she did every day, even when she was running late.

 

This was the last place she’d seen her mother. Before Mother’s memories had been erased. Before she had been turned into a Faceless Gentlemen and kidnapped by the Blackstar.

 

They had argued. “I’ve had quite enough of this new attitude of yours,” Mother had said.

 

“Good,” Gwendolyn shot back. “You won’t have to deal with it anymore, and if you like, never again! I’ll vanish, and you won’t have a freak for a daughter.”

 

The memory did not improve her mood.

 

The School’s corridors were deserted. All of which made her feel painfully exposed. It is remarkable how you can feel as though everyone is staring at you even when no one is around.

 

At least she got an elevator to herself as she rode up to one of the higher floors where all the fifteen-year-olds were taught. Peeking through the door to her classroom, she saw no sign of Miss Sahida. The teacher must be out for lunch, leaving the students huddled in groups and chatting amiably. None of them had ventured out into the courtyard in this rain.

 

Gwendolyn snuck inside, trying her best to remain unnoticed. Though she couldn’t resist bumping Cecilia Forthright’s desk with her hip, just a little.

 

Cecilia glared up at her. “Leave me alone, oddling.”

 

Gwendolyn just smirked. Cecilia Forthright had made Gwendolyn’s life miserable for years, but ever since Gwendolyn had returned from Tohk, her old bully seemed to have lost her power. Even cronies like Vivian Coleridge and Janette Tice-Nichols had abandoned her.

 

As Cecilia had lost her friends, Gwendolyn had gained a few of her own. Tommy Ungeroot, Missy Cartblatt, Ian Haldrake, and Jessica Tawny sat at the back of the class.

 

“Heya, Freckles!” said Tommy.

 

Gwendolyn sank into her usual chair. “Stop calling me that,” she said, more out of habit than anything else.

 

“Nope!” He grinned. Tommy had grown into his features, and his front teeth didn’t stand out so much. That was about all that had grown. He was shorter than the rest of them, with the last traces of baby fat visible in his cheeks. He had taken to wearing the same yellow bow tie every day, which he thought very funny.

 

Ian arched a delicate eyebrow. “Someone’s late again.”

 

“Yes, I know, sorry.”

 

“You missed maths.” Jessica said. “It’s all right, I took notes for you.”

 

“Is your mum angry?” Missy asked.

 

Gwendolyn tried not to squirm. “She… doesn’t know. Too busy writing.”

 

Ian scoffed. “Wish my mother were that oblivious… she’s got her nose so far up my business she can smell my—”

 

“Did Miss Sahida notice?” Gwendolyn said.

 

He rolled his eyes. “Of course. She always notices when one of her precious pupils goes missing.”

 

“You know she likes you,” Tommy added. “Just use a little pity to get out of trouble.” He reached out and gave her hat a playful tousle.

 

“Stop it!” Gwendolyn shouted, smacking his hands away. “Don’t. I mean it.”

 

Tommy looked instantly mortified. “Oh cripes, I’m sorry… Dunnow what I was thinking.”

 

Ian snorted. “I heard Miss Sahida raking you over the coals yesterday for your poor marks. I bet your mother won’t even let you out this weekend.”

 

Tommy simply grunted. “Who says I care what she says? I’ll be there, whether mum likes it or not.”

 

“Good.” Ian slicked back his ultra-stylish hair. “Could today go any slower? God, if I can just make it to tomorrow night, it’ll be a miracle.”

 

“I know,” Jessica said. “Tomorrow’s Revels are supposed to be exceptionally good. I hear rumors that Zelda has some new singers lined up.”

 

The Revels. Her friends were always talking about them. Secret gatherings that had sprung up all over the City since the Change. Parties where people would share their music, or poems, or art, or whatever other creations they could think of. They were full of young people bursting with ideas. Her friends went nearly every weekend, and it was all anyone in class talked about.

 

Except for her. She couldn’t afford to stand up in front of a room full of people and share her stories, no matter how much the thought made her toes tingle with excitement. The risk of exposure was too great.

 

“I’m gonna get up and tell my jokes!” Tommy said, tweaking his tie.

 

The others shared a look. Jessica wrinkled her nose. “Do you mean the jokes you were telling us yesterday?”

 

“Yeah!”

 

They all looked at each other again, then looked away. Ian coughed.

 

“Aww, whatever,” Tommy scoffed. “None ‘a you appreciate real comedy.”

 

“Are you coming this time, Gwendolyn?” Jessica said. “The Revels aren’t the same without you.”

 

“Yeah,” Ian said. “We’ve all seen what you’ve been writing in that notebook.”

 

“You know I can’t,” Gwendolyn said, cringing. The fear of missing out grew more painful every time they asked. “My… my parents don’t approve.”

 

“That don’t make no sense,” Tommy said. “Your parents are writers. They create new stuff all’a time, how can they be down on the Revels?”

 

“They just…” Gwendolyn searched for an excuse, but she’d been running out of them recently. “They think I’m too young. It’s terrible, they still treat me like a little girl.” It would be nice if that were true. She wouldn’t mind being a little girl for a while.

 

“You could sneak out,” Tommy said. “S’what I always do.”

 

“Yes, but my parents aren’t so busy with my dozen brothers and sisters that they don’t notice I’m gone.” It came out sharper than she’d meant to.

 

“All right. I get it. I’ll leave you alone.” He got up and went to another desk across the room and put his head down.

 

Ian nudged Gwendolyn’s shoulder. “Good grief, girl, could you be a little more sour?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Anyway, I heard a hot bit of gossip on the mono. Bernard Finkmeyer told me that Armand Barbington has been talking to Jannette Tice-Nichols—”

 

“But they talk all the time,” Missy said.

 

Ian rolled his eyes again. “Yes, but there’s talking, and then there’s talking—”

 

“Oh, please, no one cares,” Jessica said. “Can’t you ever talk about anything important?”

 

He grinned wickedly and leaned back in his chair. “No, I’m utterly incorrigible. Anyway, I guess Janette got all bothered because Armand sat next to Cecilia the other day, which is a huge no-no. None of them have hung out with her in ages. Not that I can blame them.” Ian and the others looked over at Cecilia, who was sitting with her nose in the air as though everything in the room were beneath her notice.

 

But she must have noticed something, because she looked back at them and gave them all a dirty look. Gwendolyn and Ian returned it in kind.

 

The buzzer sounded, and more students filed back into the room. Miss Sahida ushered the last of them in, went to the front of the class, and clapped her hands, “Desks away! Chairs in a circle everyone!”

 

Several students groaned. Gwendolyn didn’t blame them; there was nowhere to hide in a circle, and she would have much preferred to stay in the back row. But they pushed the desks to edges of the room and rearranged the chairs, just as they did every afternoon.

 

Missy pulled her chair up next to Gwendolyn’s and leaned close. “Are you all right?” she whispered, brushing back stringy blonde hair that always seemed to be in her face. “What kind of day is it?”

 

Gwendolyn shrugged. “A normal one. It’s fine.”

 

Gwendolyn may have been a clever noticer, but Missy was as well, and she had noticed what the others never had. Namely, that Gwendolyn struggled with being pulled between two poles: a manic energy that made her dangerously impulsive, and a deep depression that could leave her stuck on the couch for days at a time. Missy had made a habit of checking on her friend. Usually Gwendolyn was touched by this, but today it just irritated her, which was a warning sign itself that she wasn’t as all right as she pretended.

 

Missy seemed to sense this too, and she frowned, but didn’t have time to press the point.

 

“Good afternoon, class,” Miss Sahida said, wheeling her creaky wooden chair over to the circle.

 

“Good afternoon, Miss Sahida,” the class responded in unison.

 

“Gwendolyn, thank you for joining us,” she said with genuine warmth. “What kept you?”

 

“Uh… doctor’s appointment,” she said, her imagination leaping to the rescue. Again, she felt as though everyone was staring at her.

 

“Well, I do hope everything is all right. Just give me your note at the end of class.”

 

Gwendolyn stiffened. Stupid, she thought. Her breathing sped up. Stupid, stupid.

 

Why hadn’t she just said she’d overslept? Now she was going to be caught in an obvious lie. Miss Sahida might even want to call her parents.

 

One little slip, she reminded herself. That’s all it took. One mistake to ruin everything. Everything she’d worked so hard to build, all the secrets she’d kept, all crumbling down around her. Her breathing sped up. Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision—

 

She felt someone squeeze her hand. She looked to see Missy, who was giving her a knowing look. Missy took an exaggeratedly slow breath, nodding at Gwendolyn to do the same. She did, breathing slower and slower until Miss Sahida’s voice came back into focus.

 

“First things first. Who has a book they’d like to share with us today?”

 

No one said anything. There was a lot of fidgeting in seats and avoiding eye contact.

 

Miss Sahida leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I see. Perhaps you’re all the worthless snot-nosed brats the other teachers have been telling me about,” she said with a wry smile.

 

Jessica raised her hand. “I’ve got one. I’ve been reading Edward R. Newsome’s Philosophy of Change—”

 

There was a fresh chorus of groans, but Jessica silenced them with a fiery stare. “—and he puts forward a compelling argument that it is up to the younger generation to shape the society that we’re going to inherit, since the older ones don’t have any incentive to do so.”

 

“Interesting,” said Miss Sahida. “And how do we make those changes?”

 

“He says that the best thing for change is art. Art shapes culture, culture shapes the way we think, and the way we think shapes the world we live in.”

 

“A novel argument, if you’ll pardon the pun,” Miss Sahida said. There was another round of grumbling, but Miss Sahida only smiled. “So to that end, lets say we analyze some of these new art forms that have flooded the City since the Change.”

 

For the next several hours, they looked at the creations of the Cityzens from the past two years. When Gwendolyn had freed the City from Mister Zero and his army of faceless men, the Lambents had changed. The glowing baubles had been draining the Cityzens of their imagination for centuries, but now they dazzled everyone with shared ideas and information and all the stories from before the Whyte Proposal had banned them all. All of which you will doubtless know if you have been fortunate enough to have joined us throughout Gwendolyn’s Marvelous Adventures and Fantastical Exploits.

 

And as for the rest of you? Well, who’s to say you cannot start a story in the middle? Such is life, is it not? We are always in the middle of some story or other. Life offers few clear beginnings or endings. There is simply change, shifting from one moment to the next, whether we like it or not. This story is a different story than the last, just as you and I are different people each time we meet.

 

Gwendolyn had changed as well. She once would have been thrilled at a discussion of the City’s brand-new clothing, art, and literature, but instead her mind was frantically searching for a way to explain her phony doctor’s appointment. She didn’t even have a doctor. Where did one get a doctor? Perhaps she could forge a note…

 

“Gwendolyn?” Miss Sahida said.

 

“What? Yes?” She glanced up.

 

Miss Sahida gave her a tiny smile. “Daydreaming again?”

 

“No…”

 

“Ah. Well then, perhaps you’d like to answer the question I asked?”

 

“Um, also no. No thank you,” she added.

 

Miss Sahida gave her a measured glance that said I know you don’t want to participate, and while I respect your feelings, I’m going to call on you anyway. It was a very specific sort of glance. “We were analyzing metaphors in literature.” The teacher wagged the book at her. “And you know this book better than anyone else in the room. After all,” and she held it up to point at the cover. “It was written by your parents.”

 

And sure enough, there it was.

 

On Wings of Splendour

 by Marie and Danforth Gray

 

All eyes turned toward Gwendolyn. It made her want to pull her hat down until it swallowed her whole head.

 

“You have read it, haven’t you?” Miss Sahida prompted.

 

Gwendolyn took a breath and tried to clear her head. “Yes, of course I have. I don’t know if the author meant to put in any metaphors. I think she just sort of… wrote it.”

 

Miss Sahida blinked. “She? Do you mean your mother? I thought your parents were collaborators.”

 

“No! I mean, yes. They. They wrote it. Together.”

 

“Ah. Well, what did you think of their follow up effort, West of the Wilds?” She reached into her bag and pulled out another book.

 

“I liked that one better,” Gwendolyn said, almost immediately. “It was much easier to write.”

 

“The first one’s better,” said Michael Anders.

 

“No one asked,” Gwendolyn muttered, sinking back into her chair again.

 

Miss Sahida noticed and moved on, sparing Gwendolyn any further attention. “Jessica, yes, I see your hand. Can you tell us what this one is about?” But Gwendolyn couldn’t shake the feeling that Miss Sahida was still looking at her a bit more than usual. Fortunately, she was saved by the end-of-day buzzer.

 

“All right, students, that’s all for today. Put the desks back into rows before the Headmaster sees our little circle and throws a fit. And make sure you’ve done pages ninety-seven through ninety-nine in your math books by Monday.”

 

The class broke into a cacophony of raised voices and screeching desks.

 

Missy gently took Gwendolyn’s arm. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

 

Gwendolyn sighed. But a good friend is there for us whether we like it or not. “This morning was a bit of a struggle. Don’t worry, I’ll hold together.”

 

Missy gave her a sideways hug. “We can always help with the holding.”

 

Gwendolyn squeezed her back, smiling to think of the shy little girl Gwendolyn had once given a pair of rabbit ears. “Thank you. I saw you struggling with your math yesterday. What if I came over this weekend and helped you puzzle it out?”

 

They disengaged, and Missy brushed her hair out of her face. “That would be nice. But I could come to you, you don’t have to come all the way to the Outskirts,” she said, with a hint of embarrassment.

 

“No, don’t come over,” Gwendolyn said hurriedly. “I really don’t mind the trip. It’s always nice to get out of the house. And here…” She took some money out of her bag. “For the Revels.” She knew that Missy’s family had even less than Gwendolyn.

 

“No, I couldn’t—”

 

Gwendolyn pressed the bills into her hand. “Yes, you could. Make sure to share some with Tommy. Don’t let on where it came from.”

 

“I won’t. Thank you,” Missy mumbled.

 

They were about to join in rearranging the desks, but Miss Sahida caught Gwendolyn’s eye, and made a subtle gesture to come forward. Gwendolyn’s heart skipped a beat. She eyed her friends, who were already packing up their things.

 

“We’ll wait,” Jessica said, catching her look.

 

Gwendolyn waved them off. “No, go ahead. No sense missing your mono on my account.”

 

Ian sidled up to her. “Look, if you need me to forge a doctor’s note for you, let me know. If your parents won’t let you Revel, the least we can do is get Miss Sahida off your back.”

 

Gwendolyn forced a smile. “It’s fine, really.”

 

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But next time you decide to skip the School, let me know so I can join you.” He grinned and the four of them headed for the door.

 

Gwendolyn crossed to the teacher’s desk much as a condemned man crosses the courtyard to face a firing squad.

 

Because teachers asked questions. And the questions they asked during class were very different than the ones they asked after. Questions like, Where are your parents? Who have you been living with? Who has been taking care of you?

 

So many questions. She wished she had a moment to close her eyes and slow her breathing. It had gotten very fast all of the sudden.

 

Gwendolyn walked up to face her doom, keeping the teacher’s desk between them. But Miss Sahida motioned for her to come around beside. “Gwendolyn,” she said, letting the name hang in the air.

 

Gwendolyn forced herself to make eye contact, as if nothing whatsoever was amiss, even though her insides were melting. “Yes?”

 

Miss Sahida sighed and took off her glasses. “Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn. What am I going to do with you?”