house and leading several different projects for the local PTA-^the biggest of them being the effort to get a new playground built near the local

primary school. It seemed to Nita that her mother was always either elbow deep in steel wool and stain, or out of the house on errands, so often that

she didn't have a lot of spare time for anything else.

After a moment Nita heaved a sigh. TVb point in trying to weasel around it, though, she thought. I've got problems of my own.

Kit...

But it's not his fault... Is it

Nita was still recovering from an overly eventful vacation in Ireland, one her parents had planned for her, to give Nita a little time away from Kit,

and from wizardry. Of course, this hadn't worked. A wizard's work can happen anywhere, and just changing continents couldn't have stopped Nita from

being involved in it any more than changing planets could have. As for Kit, he'd found ways to be with Nita regardless which turned out to have been a

good thing. Nita had been extremely relieved to get home, certain that everything would then get back to normal.

Trouble is, someone changed the location of normal" and didn't bother sending me a map, Nita thought. Kit had been a little weird since she got home.

Maybe some of it was just their difference in age, which hadn't really been an issue until a month or so ago. But Nita had started ninth grade this year

and, to her surprise, was finding the work harder than she'd expected. She was used to coasting through her subjects without too much strain, so this

was an annoyance. Worse yet, Kit wasn't having any trouble at all, which Nita also found annoying, for reasons she couldn't explain. And the two of them