8 BAD NEWS

8 BAD NEWS Lunar day 252 Right after breakfast "We have to tell Nina," I said, exiting the greenhouse. "Right away." "Nina?" Cesar asked, following me with Kira and Violet. "She's not gonna care about your dumb science project." Kira didn't bother trying to explain what was really going on to Cesar. Instead she said, "I think telling Nina is a mistake." "Yeah," Violet said. "Telling Nina is a mistake."

"Nina ordered me to tell her about anything important immediately," I said. "Well, this is important." "No it's not," Cesar said. "It's just a bunch of stupid seeds." I stopped suddenly, having noticed something highly unusual. The doors to the science pod were closed. It was the first time the doors had been closed in the eight months I had been at MBA. I had known they could be closed: If there was an emergency, there were several areas at MBA that could be sealed off from the rest of the base, and the science pod was one of them. But the doors had been open for so long, I had forgotten they even existed. It was unsettling to see them closed, kind of like walking into your house and finding a room missing. It made MBA feel even smaller and more claustrophobic than before. "Why's the pod closed off?" Kira asked, echoing my thoughts. "Mom said she had a call with earth this morning," I said. "Maybe everyone else is on it too." "What kind of call would all the adults have to be on?" Cesar asked.

"Maybe they're asking for more apple seeds," Violet suggested. Kira walked up to the doors and pressed her ear against them. She listened a few seconds, then frowned. "I can't hear anything. These are totally soundproof." That made sense. The science-pod doors had to be thick and sturdy, because they needed to hold up in emergency situations. Unlike the walls of our residences, which were so cheap and thin that I could currently hear my father and Nina arguing in Nina's room on the other side of the base. I couldn't hear them well enough to make out exactly what they were saying, but I could guess: My father was berating Nina for bringing me into the murder investigation, and Nina was annoyed that this was keeping them off their important call with NASA. I started toward Nina's residence again. Kira bounded after me. "Whoa! You seriously shouldn't tell Nina about this yet." "Why not?" I demanded. Kira gave Cesar a wary glance. Obviously, she didn't feel comfortable discussing this in front of him. So she lied to throw him off track. "Like Cesar said, she's not going to care. And besides, we all

have to get to school. Class is about to start." She looked to Cesar. "Didn't you promise that you were going to get Inez and Kamoze there?" "Maybe," Cesar said. There was a decent chance he would have blown this off—Cesar wasn't very good about getting himself to school on time—but then Lily and Patton Sjoberg came around the far side of the greenhouse, heading for the mess. I was surprised to see them up and about. They should have been awake at this time most days, since they were supposed to go to school with us, but the Sjobergs often skipped their classes, arguing that they were on vacation—and besides, they didn't really have to learn anything, because they were going to inherit a huge fortune no matter what. But today, in addition to their general hatred of school and early mornings, their father had nearly died. That seemed like a better excuse than usual to skip school. Patton looked haggard, like he hadn't been able to go back to sleep, while Lily looked surprisingly put- together. She had her hair done up and makeup on, and she beamed when she saw Cesar. (Another thing that I—and everyone else at MBA—knew due to our thin walls was that Lily had a big crush on

Cesar.) "Good morning!" she crooned, like it was a totally normal day. "How's it going, Cesar?" "Okay," Cesar said, heading back into the mess to talk to her. "How's your dad?" "Better," Lily said. "He's still a little loopy, but he'll live." Patton sat down heavily at a table, glowering. He didn't seem that pleased by the idea of his father surviving. Then he noticed me and paled a bit. A month before, when Patton had been trying to beat me up, Zan had rescued me by appearing to him as a terrifying space snake. She had literally scared the pee out of Patton. Ever since, he had been extremely skittish around me, worried that I could summon the snake again whenever I wanted. His family insisted (correctly) that space snakes didn't exist and thought Patton was being crazy—but since Patton had actually seen a space snake and they hadn't, he stuck to his story, no matter how much they ridiculed him. In the meantime, I was enjoying his fear of me to the fullest. It had kept him from bullying me—or anyone else—for weeks. I gave him a friendly little wave. Even that made him flinch in fright.

While Cesar was distracted by the Sjobergs, Kira and I slipped away. Violet followed us. With most of the adults inside the science pod, it was a lot easier to find privacy at MBA than usual. No one was in the control room or the robotics center. The staging area by the air lock was completely empty. We stopped there, though we still took care to keep our voices low. "What if Nina's the one who poisoned Lars?" Kira asked. I looked at Violet. I wasn't thrilled about having this conversation in front of her, but now that Kira had begun it, I knew there was no other option. Violet was obviously fascinated, and any attempt to ditch her now would probably result in her throwing a fit. "Nina asked me to help look for the killer," I said. "Why would she do that if she was the killer?" "To divert attention from herself," Kira said. "Yeah," Violet echoed. "To revert detention from herself." "And this way," Kira went on, "she could use you to help shift the blame to someone else." I thought about my conversation with Nina. "She did tell me to keep an eye on Chang."