Chapter 5 — The Patterns

Back at home and school, Molly kept watching. She’d started to think that the creature she’d been pursuing wasn’t really a creature at all. It was more like the sea or the stars or the seasons: a pattern that had become easier to notice. It could fill a space before anyone was even in it, and the people simply followed it in.

So she did what any decent detective would do. She started keeping notes in the back of her maths book.

There was the hurry, which could take over a whole classroom even when there was nowhere to go, and got stronger whenever the teacher reminded everyone to be quick. Especially when everyone already was.

There was the judging, which turned things into right and wrong the moment it arrived. Molly noticed it most in the tightening of her own chest whenever her teacher praised her. The pressure that followed approval. The feeling that she had to stay worthy of being a ’good girl’.

One morning a boy two desks over got an answer wrong out loud, and the whole room shifted. A small sound, not quite laughing. Molly felt her own shoulders come up. She hadn’t decided to do that either.

And there was the taking charge. Certain kids always seemed to end up leading without anyone asking them to, while everyone else simply adjusted, the way water adjusts around a rock.

One afternoon she rang Sosta and read the whole list down the phone.

“…and here’s the weird bit,” Molly finished. “Nobody decides any of it. It just happens. Like weather.”

There was a long silence on the line while Sosta thought about it.

“They sound a bit like the Emu in the Sky, Molls,” she said.

Molly stopped, her pen hovering over the maths book.

“That’s so true,” she said. “Since your uncle showed it to me, it’s gotten easier and easier to see, no matter where I am.”

“You’re still a freak, though,” said Sosta.

“Takes one,” said Molly.