. . .

Martin sits down.

“Anyway,” he says, “I graduated! I got a certificate and everything.”

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “That’s useful.”

“Aww,” he says. “Does someone not have a certificate from all her years of shuttling between increasingly baroque and terrifying foster homes?”

She squints at him. He shrugs.

“Your sources of knowledge disturb me,” she says. “Are you a Taoist demon?”

“It’s a good school,” Martin says.

“A goat?”

“That’s just mean,” says Martin.

“You wanted me to think you were a goat!”

“That could have been anybody,” Martin says, “interfering with your divination like that. We should form a crime-fighting duo and hunt the real culprits down. Or a detective agency!”

“Really,” she says. She sighs.

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