Sam walked toward Astrid’s classroom. She and Quinn were right behind him.
The classroom was empty. Desk chairs, the teacher’s chair, all empty. Math books lay open on three of the desks. Notebooks, too. The computers, a row of six aged Macs, all showed flickering blank screens.
On the chalkboard you could quite clearly see “Polyn.”
“She was writing the word ‘polynomial,’” Astrid said in a church-voice whisper.
“Yeah, I was going to guess that,” Sam said dryly.
“I had a polynomial once,” Quinn said. “My doctor removed it.”
Astrid ignored the weak attempt at humor. “She disappeared in the middle of writing the ‘o.’ I was looking right at her.”
Sam made a slight motion, pointing. A piece of chalk lay on the floor, right where it would have fallen if someone were writing the word “polynomial”—whatever that meant—and had disappeared before rounding off the “o.”
“This is not normal,” Quinn said.
