Chapter 3: Cael Attends Third Period with the Patience of Geological Time

The school had a smell she was beginning to map.

Chalk and radiator-heat and the specific damp that accumulates in stone buildings built before anyone thought carefully about stone buildings — the smell of Ashveil Secondary was not unpleasant so much as it was insistent, the way old houses insist on themselves, the way cold insists on itself in rooms that have been cold for a very long time. By Wednesday she had stopped noticing it. By Thursday she had started noticing it again, which she understood to be different from the first time. The first time was dissociation. The second time was something closer to being present.

Progress, she thought, without particular enthusiasm.