Chapter 5: Names and KissesThe next day happened. Alex did not. Garrett, growing more and more tense as the hours went on, wanted to pace back and forth, which rocks generally didn’t. He said, to Quen and Karis and Maggie and Lilac and Jen and shy little Tamlyn, “Think about names. About knowing a thing.”
They were gathered this afternoon in one of the workrooms, one of the places he’d constructed his best shields: dense bricklike layers of almost physical essence of stone. He’d given them the morning to write home or kiss each other or whatever students did, because he’d thought Alex might appear; now they watched him, wide-eyed, as the day tiptoed toward evening.
He said, “When we talk about names. About knowing. I don’t mean this is a cabbage, and that’s a goat, and that’s a collectio
