"She sure seems to! Hey, one more weird question, when you shake things do they heat up?"

"If I do it hard enough, yeah."

"Neat. I wonder if that would still happen in a vacuum or if it's from the air . . . but I said that was the last weird question so never mind. Normal question, what do you like to do when you're not in school or cleaning up at basketball?"

"I like singing and baking."

"Fun! I like science and swarm patrol."

"What's patrol like? My cousin tried it but quit after like a week."

"Well, for the most part you sit in the truck and relax, and then occasionally you sense a swarm and fight it, or somebody calls in a swarm or their alarm goes off and you go there, or if you're me sometimes your powers give you advance warning of a swarm and you go there. And then there's a lot of shooting the bugs with stardarters, or I guess in your case shaking them to death. Except sometimes swarm alarms go off for no reason and you rush to the building and there's no fight. I can see how someone would find it boring, but I can get a lot done on my computer in the truck and taking out swarms is satisfying."

"I guess if you can just do other stuff most of the time it wouldn't be too bad."

"Yeah, I think the real thing that determines whether you'd like it is whether you enjoy the fighting enough that you can relax between fights instead of fretting about them."

"And you like it?"

"I do, yeah. Swarms are dangerous, and dealing with them so other people don't have to feels good. And my powers are helpful for it, too."

"Cool, it's good you know what you wanna be when you grow up."

"I might actually not end up doing that when I grow up, I'm also pretty into science, I'm probably going to major in engineering or biology or both."

"Oh, huh."

"I've still got a year before I have to send in college applications, it'd be nice to have a really solid plan but I don't actually have to have one yet, I can debate stuff for a bit longer."

"Guess so," says Danielle. "I have no idea what I'll do."

"Well, you've got even longer to decide. High school classes and clubs are way better than middle school ones, I bet you'll find something you want to specialize in."

"Yeah, maybe."

Margaret's finished eating; she organizes her trash onto her tray and picks it up. "I'm about done; it was nice talking to you!"

Is there time to find Sumiko or Aaliyah before lunch period ends?

She doesn't have the same lunch as Sumiko any more, but there's Aaliyah over there, bussing her tray. "Hi, Margaret!"

"Hi, Aaliyah! How was your summer?"

"It was okay. We went to Yellowstone."

"Oooh, fun! I did swarm patrol for a while and then I was in a science experiment on my prophecies, they had me predicting disease outbreaks for the CDC and I ended up obsessed with biology. I bet Yellowstone was gorgeous."

"Wow, that's a cool summer job, the CDC thing."

"It really was! I learned a lot and I did some good, too."