Dara twisted around as soon as he was in, the corner of his mouth tilted up. Noam slid across the back seat in front of Ames, Taye behind her and Dara claiming the front passenger seat. “Come on!” Taye called from over by the curb, his breath clouding in the air before his face he’d finally caught them a cab and stood holding the door open, stomping his feet to keep them warm. She wore sky-high glittery heels Noam was pretty sure he’d break an ankle trying to dance in those.Īmes gave him a mysterious little smile and exhaled cigarette smoke in his face. “Have you ever been to the Pinwheel before?” Ames asked. Still, they spent about five minutes loitering on the sidewalk while Taye tried and continually failed to hail them a cab. Now Taye was outside knocking on Noam’s door telling him to hurry the fuck up. That meant by the time it was Saturday, the day of Dara’s party, Noam’s head was so full of geology and anatomy and physics he was amazed he remembered his own name. As if oblivious to how much mental energy Noam was spending trying to decrypt his code, Lehrer gave him just as much homework as usual- on top of everything his new, regular teachers were giving him. Noam lingered after lessons every day, hoping Lehrer would ask him to stay late again and give him another hint (or another note, or even another several notes), but Lehrer seemed to have said all he planned to on the matter. How was that supposed to help the refugees? Was Sacha planning some kind of electromagnetic attack against them? Was Noam meant to use his newfound power over electricity and magnetism to build a Faraday shield and protect them?

Noam stayed up late thinking about it almost every night that week, turning the word over and over in his mind until it lost all meaning. Why Lehrer was passing him notes about this was a little harder to understand. There was only one thing that could mean, of course-Faraday, as in Faraday shield, as in a conductive material of some kind that could block electromagnetic waves.

The fever king victoria lee