He shrugs. "I'll keep in touch, I guess."

<I'd really like to have something more specific set up. No school, can't call you, you can't even show up at the house and ask Renée for our whereabouts in case she knows where Robin is. Where are you going to be?>

"I don't know, around? I'm not planning to disappear for another week or anything. You'll hear from me."

<Could you come by regularly - like, I don't know, lunchtime every day? So we know when to start worrying if we need to start worrying.>

"I don't think I can manage regularly," he says. "But I can try for often."

<Why don't you think you can manage regularity?> asks Bella tightly.

<By which she means she wants a good head start if Yeerks get you again,> Andi contributes. <Or whatever.>

"I don't have good access to clocks while I basically can't be human-shaped in public," he says. "Or, like, food, for that matter. And doing things at the same time every day is hard even when I at least theoretically know what time it is."

<Perhaps we could get you a clock to stash in whatever hideout you will be using most often. Certainly we can feed you, at least in morph, even if human-amounts of food going missing would be suspicious. Is there anything else we can do to make it less hard for you to let us know that we do not all have to panic and melt into the desert on some reasonable schedule?>

"I'm not really gonna have a place to stash a clock. I'm not really gonna have a place," he says. "I can't be that pinned down. Anytime somebody in Phoenix sees my face, they might kill me or drag me off to a Yeerk pool. And I have to sleep at least a few hours a day. So every day, I have to find somewhere to sleep where I'll be safe for a few hours. But the best places aren't always going to be the same, and the best times aren't always going to be the same either. Keeping to a routine isn't just hard anymore, it's dangerous."

<I had imagined, like, a rooftop accessible to pigeons but not humans where you'd hang out when you needed to be a human for a minute. Wrong mental image?>

"Yeah. I mean, maybe I'll find a place like that - one that's safe to use that often - but I don't know I will; I don't know there's such a thing."

<Okay. But you'll check in as often as you can?>

"Yeah. With whoever I can find out of you guys and Ethan and Robin."

<We need a way to refer to you on the phone.>

He shrugs. "Make up another nickname, I guess, it's not like I can only have one."

<Okay, I'll think of something.> Write write.

<Do you need anything while you're here?>

"Something to eat would be nice."

And Bella goes down the stairs, and comes up with a Rubbermaid of tuna and bowl of strawberries.

Om nom nom.

"I could sneak you a brownie but then I wouldn't get one after dinner, how hungry are you?"

"Pretty hungry. But I'd rather not steal your brownie."