HIGHWIZARDRY 351 gjrls she hung out with had one yet, and she had become the focus of some slight envy. It all made her uncomfortable, and Dairine, sensing this, had been running the subject into the ground for days. She can stuff it right up!, Nita thought fiercely, I am not going to let her get to me! "All muscle, Dair," she said. "Besides, it's where you are that counts. Check this out." She sidestepped to the Mars scale, the needle of which stopped at seven pounds. "Less than the Moon, even." "But it's bigger than the Moon," Dairine said. "But not as dense. That's why its atmosphere's so thin even though Mars is that big; its mass is too small to hold it—" Nita heard footsteps, turned around, and saw that she had lost her audience. "Dairine? Where you headed?" "Bathroom." Dairine's voice came from halfway down the stairs to the lower level. "Well, hurry up, it's almost closing time." Kit, on the Saturn scale, moved over to the Jupiter. "What was that all about?" he said. "I don't often hear you think these days, but if your dad had heard your mind right after she said that, he would've washed your head out with soap." "Oh, crap." She tried the scale for Mercury: three and a half pounds. "I'm growing." "You don't look any taller." "Kit!" "Oh." He looked at her chest. "Oh. I guess." He shrugged. "I didn't notice." Oh, thank heaven, Nita thought, and immediately after that, He didn't notice? She swallowed and said, "Anyway, she's been riding me. I'm gonna kill her if she keeps it up." "Maybe she's jealous." Nita laughed. "Her? Of me?" "Sure." Kit got off the scales and began to pace off the space between the scales and the doors to the planetarium proper. "Neets, wake up. You're a wizard. Here Dairine's been hot for magic since she was a little kid—any kind, Star Wars, you name it—and all of a sudden, not only does it turn out that there really is such a thing, but you turn up with it. From what you had to tell her to keep her quiet after she found out, Dari knows that you and I do big stuff. She wishes she could get her hands on the power. And there's no guarantee she ever will."


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