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champagne) although we shared a bowl of broccoli and gravy to make Jill’s mom happy about vitamins. Arnie and Jill’s brothers all wanted to watch football so we had the perfect excuse to flee to her room as soon as possible. She closed the door like she was shutting something out (besides brothers) and sat down on her bed like she was falling. “I keep thinking—it’s almost like he’s under a spell,” she whispered.
    I gave a violent shiver. “There is no magic in Newworld, baka, stupid,” I said, louder than I meant.
    “Keep your voice down,” said Jill. “I know. There’s no magic in Newworld—which is why your lawyer aunt who defends magic users works seven and a half days a week.”
    Jill sounded maybe a little more stressed than just about Arnie. But Jill did something a little freaky herself. We called it the f-word. F for “foresight.” She said I was the only person in the universe she’d ever told about it. And probably anyone could have seen that her mom and dad were going to break up, so that she knew it just meant she had been more plugged in than your average eight-year-old. But not anyone would have been home throwing up the day her best friend’s dad was going to get killed in a stupid road accident. She didn’t know that was why. She just knew it was her foresight, telling her something really bad.
    She should probably have reported herself. But who needs trouble, you know? It’s not like she ever tried to use it, like Gwenda’s clients (mostly) had. After my dad died, Jill tried to figure out a way to deactivate it, but it was a little like deactivating breathing. You can hold your breath only so long and then your body makes you breathe. Nothing as horrible as Dad’s death had happened to either of us since and she mostly managed to ignore it, like burying that really dreeping sweater you bought on sale during a brain malfunction in the bottom of the drawer. If you’re careful you never have to see it, let alone get it out and put it on. There mostly wasn’t so much of Jill’s f-word that it was too creepo, but it was still more than waking up in the morning with a sense of doom because you knew you were going to flunk your algebra test (besides, Jill got As in algebra) and every now and then it did bug her. And she’d had the scan and the blood test like everyone else.
    I didn’t mention the f-word tonight. But I wondered.
    “Keisha said Gazzy’ll even get you spells if you have enough money.” Gazzy sold what the local crazydumbs needed to get fried. Everyone knew about Gazzy. Even the cops knew about Gazzy. But he was still out there across the street from the high school nearly every day.
    “Spells?” This was Newworld. Even if maybe the gene-chopping hadn’t been quite as thorough as the big posters all over the walls in your local Watchguard office said, and even if Gwenda had more clients than she could handle. “But who would want to put a spell on a hardware store owner?” I objected, more to make Jill feel better than because that’s what I thought. I didn’t know what I thought. Spells? But since I’d seen Val’s shadows, anything was possible.
    “I guess,” said Jill. She got off the bed and knelt on the tiny patch of clear space between it and the door. Since Jill was the only girl in her family she had her own bedroom but it was about the size of most people’s bathrooms. We’d been sharing her single bed when I stayed over since we were little kids and fortunately neither of us had grown up to be a kicker. Jill pulled a box out from under the bed. “Hey, look what Mom brought us. She told me I had to wait till after the wedding though.” Jill’s mom was a beautician, and the shop she worked in was pretty amazing. Jill opened the box. There were about twenty little sample-sized bottles of nail polish, all of them in shades of blue and green and purple. “Oh, big bang,” I said, feeling better than I had all day. Maybe they were just shadows, you