-23-
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When I woke the next morning there was a lot of sunlight in the room, but the cushion where Priory slept when he stayed over, was vacant. I listened. I didn't hear him splashing in the shower-cube, and the dryer wasn't humming. He was gone.
I found his note pinned on the sliding door. "See you at formula at noon. Your mother wanted me to do some work for her. She got a call this morning, and said she needed me to help. So long. Priory". Priory out running errands for Jhene. Strange. A call in the early morning to Jhene.
I went back and sat down on the cushion. While I was sitting there a bunch of the kids yelled down on the lawn-court. "Hey, Chris! You're late!" I stuck my head out the window. "Be right down!"
"No, Chris". My mother's voice. It was quiet and it had something funny in it. I turned around. She was standing in the doorway behind me, her face pale, drawn, full of some small pain. "No, Chris" she said again, softly. "Tell them to go on to formula without you today".
The kids were still making noise downstairs, I guess, but I didn't hear them. I just felt myself and my mother, slim and pale and restrained in my room. Far off, the weather-control vibrators started to hum and throb. I turned slowly and looked down at the kids. The three of them were looking up, lips parted casually, half-smiling, semantic-tabs in their knotty fingers.
"Hey " one of them said. Sidney, it was.
"Sorry, Sid. Sorry, gang. Go on without me. I can't go to formula today.
See you later, huh?"
"Aw, Chris!"
"Sick?"
"No. Just Just go on without me, gang. I'll see you".
I felt numb.