“No, we definitely don’t need to go into detail about that,” said Jane, flushing pink.“You’ve been so kind about all this,” said Mindy, re...ching to take Jane’s hands.“Well, I suppose things could have been worse,” said Jane.“I don’t know how,” sighed Mindy.“I suppose there’s some comfort in the fact that you’re old enough to understand what has happened ... I mean you’re not some teenage girl who got in trouble and ruined her life.”“Well ... that’s true,” said Mindy. “I didn’t intend for any of. "And Valor asked if Polygal drained," he made quotationmarks in the air, "your 'investiture.' When you responded a littleconfused she changed it to 'energy' that you were drained of. Maybe thisinvestiture is what the monster was after and when we lose it, we getall slow and tired."Robert bit his thumbnail again. "Yeah, but whether we call it glowingand energy or Ardent Resonance and investiture, it doesn't reallyexplain what it is. It's just different names for the same thing we knownothing. "He just transferred in at the beginning of the week, so nobody really knows him—I mean, I only know his name because we've got a class together. But about half the girls in the school are all a-flutter over him now. Everyone says he's nice and funny and polite, and he's definitely handsome ... Everybody's all asking me for, you know, the inside scoop on him or whatever, but there's not much I can say yet, it's not like I've known him for any longer than they have. What do I know about..." She. He followed this up with the ironic and surprisingly perceptive "Are youtrying to turn me into a girl?"Did he realize? The others had generally taken the mascara step as alittle joke of hers and did not appear to anticipate she would takematters any further. Yet she had. Almost every time. You see he wasn'tthe first boyfriend she had done this too but she knew that if she wantedto turn him into a girl she was going to have to be slightly more subtleabout it than telling him that this was.