She chucked the underwear back into the open dresser drawer, pushed it shut with her foot, and went into the bathroom for toiletries and a couple of towels. There’s a thought. Beach towels… She opened the towel cupboard and pulled out a couple of big ones, smiling at the thought of lying around under some alien sun, listening to the ocean, doing nothing—
Sunblock! Nita rummaged around in the medicine cabinet, but all the sunblock in there had sell-by dates in the previous year. This stuff is useless now. I can always use a wizardry to do the same job…
She went back into her room, which looked strangely empty without her desk, and glanced around to see if there was anything she’d forgotten. A glance at her watch told her it was one-thirty. Getting close to time to go, Nita thought. Looks like I’m all set—
“Honey? Good grief, what’s going on in here?”
Nita looked over her shoulder. Her dad was standing in the doorway, gazing into her room in some confusion. “Are you going to leave anything in here?” he said. “Are you sure you don’t need the posters on the wall, too?”
“Nope, I’m all done,” Nita said. As she spoke, she bent down to pull the tag of words in the Speech that controlled the pup tent’s access; the gray shadow of the portal slid up into the silvery rod and vanished. Nita took the rod down out of the air, telescoped it down to a foot, and slipped it into her backpack. “You’re home for lunch?”
“It’s lunchtime, yeah, but I’ve already had a sandwich. I just thought I’d see if you needed me to drive you and Kit to the station in Freeport.”
“Daddy, we’re going straight into Grand Central,” Nita said, picking up the backpack and slinging it over her shoulder with one last look around her room. “And you should be getting ready for the visitors.”
“There’s not that much to do,” her dad said as they went down the stairs together. “The place is clean—Dairine did a good job of it. I guess I just wanted to see you off.”
“I know,” Nita said. “Dad, I’ll be fine. This isn’t any worse than going over to Kit’s: I can be home in a minute if you need me. And I see from my manual that Tom’s done something to your cell phone so you can call me any time. It’ll just come through the manual.”
“That’s the only thing I’m not sure about,” her dad said as they headed toward the kitchen. “My cell phone company has too many different ways it charges me to start with. If phone calls to other star systems show up on my next bill—”
Nita grinned. “If they do, I think you should take them right to the phone company and see what they do. And I want to go with you.”
Her dad nodded, smiled, reached out to her. Nita went and gave him a big hug.
“I’ll send you postcards,” Nita said.
“Just don’t confuse the mailman.”
Nita grinned. “Bye, Dad,” she said, and went out.
In the driveway, Dairine was waiting for her, and trying not to look as if she was waiting. “You got everything?” she said.
Nita rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “In fact, that’s what I’m afraid of. You may see me coming back to return stuff.”
“I don’t want to see you for at least a couple of days,” Dairine said, with such force that Nita was a little surprised.
“Well, just do me a favor and call me if anything starts to happen, okay?”
“If I need you, sure.”
This was not the answer Nita had been looking for. “I want progress reports,” Nita said. “If Dad—”
“Dad will be fine! Don’t you trust me with him?”
Nita broke out in a sudden sweat, as any direct answer was likely to get her in trouble either as a wizard or as a sister. “Just set your manual to generate a daily precis, okay? If I don’t hear from you, I can check that,” she said. “That won’t be any trouble.” And it won’t find endless, creative ways to cover up whatever’s happening, either.
“Yeah, sure,” Dairine said. And, without warning, she hugged Nita. “You take care of yourself,” she said. “Don’t get in trouble.”
“Me?” Nita said.
“They say the memory’s the first thing to go,” Dairine said under her breath. She turned and went back into the house, waving one hand more or less behind her. “Have fun…”
Nita shrugged her backpack into place and turned away.
A few minutes later, at Kit’s house, Nita knocked on the back door, then stuck her head in.
In the living room, cacophony from Carmela’s chat utility made a background to more urgent voices.
“You should take a heavier jacket, honey!”
“I don’t think I need to, Mama. The average temperature there this time of year is eighty degrees. In fact, it’s eighty degrees for most of the year.”
“It might still get cold at night if you’re going to be at the beach. You’re not going to have to go anywhere nice, are you? Out to dinner or anything? You should take a good shirt.”
“Mama, I can come right back here and get one.”
“Why waste the time when you can put it in this wonderful magic closet right now?”
“Yeah,” said Carmela’s voice from the living room. “I want a wonderful magic closet, too! Or I’ll take that one when you’re done.”
There was a silence, which to Nita said more about Kit’s state of mind than many words could. “Helloooo!” she said as she walked into the kitchen. “Kit?”
“In the living room.”
She went in there and found him standing in front of his own pup-tent access, looking very resigned and simply throwing through the interface everything his mother handed him. Carmela, sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, as usual, was watching the whole process with intense amusement though not laughing out loud. Nita suspected that ‘Mela knew this could be bad for her health at the moment. “Oh, hello, Nita,” Kit’s mama said. “He’ll be ready in a sec. See that, she’s wearing a heavier jacket—” she said, and hurried past Nita toward the kitchen and the back door.
“What time is it?” Kit said to Nita.
“Almost two,” she said. “We should go.”
Instantly, if not sooner, Kit said silently. I’m beginning to feel like a garage sale here.
You can always smuggle all this stuff back later.
I’m planning on it!
“Here,” Kit’s mama said, coming in with a jacket that, Nita judged, could probably keep Kit warm in Antarctica. Kit took it from her and flung it through the access to the pup tent, where it vanished. “Mama,” he said, “we really have to go, or we’re going to be late. Is that it?”
“No,” his mother said, and handed him a brown paper bag. “Here’s your lunch.”
Kit sighed, twisted around, and put the bag into his backpack, which he was wearing fully slung, as if he’d expected to be out of there a good while ago. “That’s it,” he said.
“I don’t know,” his mama said. “I keep getting the idea I’ve forgotten something—”
“Tell me later, Mama,” Kit said, pulling up the “shade” of the pup-tent access interface and stowing its rod in his backpack. “I’ll call you. And then I can come back for whatever it is.”
Ponch, who had been lying on his back between Carmela and the TV, now got up, shook himself, and stood there with his tongue hanging out. Is it time?
“Yes, it is,” Kit said. “Mama…”
He went over to her and hugged her hard. Nita was astonished to see Kit’s fairly hard-boiled mom actually getting teary, and fighting to manage it.
“Tell Pop I’ll call him tonight,” Kit said.