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mission?” he asked. “Trouble finding this van Sloot person’s grave?”
    “No snag. I left the package where it was supposed to be.” I didn’t meet his gaze. It wasn’t the first time I’d failed to complete an assignment. It was, however, the first time I’d lied about it. “Drop it, okay?”
    “Fine.” After an awkward pause, he said, “So how about that Quantum Bio lecture on Monday?”
    I just stared at him. Charlie’s mental clarity checks were always as subtle as a Tectonic bomb. Transporters had to assess for any confusion in Shifters and report it. Well, he wasn’t getting anything from me tonight.
    “Tantalizing explication of hippocampal biorhythyms,” I said. “Do you want to know who won the last World Cup, too?”
    “You know I have to check.” Charlie turned red, and we stood there in silence while he downloaded my QuantCom’s data.
    “Huh,” he said after a few seconds.
    “Huh what?” I couldn’t afford any “huhs.” Not on this mission. I tried to lean around the podium to see what he saw, but it was all wiggly floating numbers and symbols to me.
    “You had some weird tendril surges toward the end of the Shift. Probably nothing. Anything unusual happen?”
    “No.” Everything unusual happened.
    He shrugged. “I’ll write it off as a data glitch.”
    “Does that happen?”
    “Never seen it with students. Occasionally with some of the teachers.” He popped my QuantCom out of its dock and handed it to me. “You should go find Mimi. She’s been paging me every three minutes to find out if you’re back.”
    “Typical Mimi.” I smiled. My roommate would knit a penguin a sweater if you let her.
    “When you weren’t at dinner, she was—well, you know how Mimi gets. She thought maybe you didn’t come because it was…” He blushed again. “You know.”
    “Tofurky night?”
    “No. It’s, umm…”
    “Oh.” Family Night.
    “I’ll let Mimi know you made it back,” he said. “She’s in the rec room with her parents.”
    “Thanks. Sorry I yipped at you.” It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t caused this bizarre failure of a midterm. “I’m just tired. I’ll grab a chomp, then call it a night.”
    Every inch of my body loosened while it synched up to real time. Aah. The tension from the fade disappeared as my internal rubber band adjusted to the slack. Now that I was back in my own time, I was safe. There was no reason I’d get caught. All I had to do was research this Muffy Whoever tonight, squidge my way through the report tomorrow, and ask Leto for a new delivery.
    I walked out of the transport room, stopped at the first food dispenser I passed, and slipped a section of my hair into the scanner. I placed my order, a slice of pizza and a fizzwater. When the panel door opened, the glass of water came out but no pizza. I looked back up at the order screen. A red X flashed in the corner—over my limit of solo meals for the month.
    “Oh, come on!” I punched a few buttons at random, but the X only got bigger and brighter.
    “Now, now, let’s not break anything,” a kindly voice chimed behind me.
    I looked around to see Headmaster Bergin. He was like a cross between a mustachioed Santa Claus and Theodore Roosevelt—old, portly President Roosevelt, that was. Not to be confused with young, hot Rough Rider Teddy. ( Not that I had developed the teensiest of crushes on him during a class field trip the year before or anything.)
    “Sorry, sir.” I eked out a sheepish grin. “Just got back from my Pre-Tri midterm. I’m starving, but I’m over the limit.”
    “There’s a reason for that rule, Miss Bennis. You Shifters live such solitary lives on your missions. You must embrace comradery where it seeks you, which is often around a crowded table.” Bergin chortled and stepped up to the machine, allowing it to scan his silvery strands. “But believe it or not, I was once a teenager myself. Override.”
    Hard to believe. Bergin had been headmaster here forever,