《Go Again》


 Prologue: It Begins and, Chapter 1: Time Slows

    The day I died, my life flashed before my eyes. Although "flashed" is a rather deceptive term, it was like I got to view it, as much of it in real time as I pleased, pieces of it playing by quickly. My attention waning and the snippet speeding by. I remembered being five, on my dad''s shoulders as he carried me, exploring the wonders of a fair at night, the carnival rides, and the bright lights and sounds popping in my vision. The safety and comfort of my dad''s arms on my feet. Feeling like the surest thing in the world.


    Lots of mundane days speed by. Then I remembered being eight. My dad''s disappearance. The lights that danced in the sky. Mom arguing with the policeman. Them telling her to calm down, to be reasonable, reassuring her that things were not what she thought.


    The next little bit was hazy. I remember mom getting a job, mom losing her job, us losing the house. I remember living in the car. I remember mom always having a bottle with her. I remember mom begging. I remember mom doing things that I can''t remember. She would go off with people. I remember moving across the country and mom getting a new job. Phone calls from neighbors and the social workers showing up. I remember being in court. I remember being in a stranger''s house, stuck with them. I remember mom showing up and taking me back. She had a house, although that was stretching it. The building shared space with three other families. She had a car. It wasn''t very nice, but it got us around. She had a job. She had to wear a suit. She said she was lucky. I remember her eyes always seemed sad.


    I remember being in school for a little while. It''s strange that I can''t remember school before this point. They gave me a test. They told me I had a gift. I didn''t think that I believed them. But that portion speeds by quickly. Hard to hold on to. I was taken out of middle school where I could keep my head down and occupy myself with my own thoughts. I didn''t get along with the other kids, but it was okay. They left me alone.


    I remember Mrs. Grady, my last middle school teacher. She was stern, but she was always nice to me. She would take me aside and ask me how things were at home. Then the test happened. This was the beginning of big changes. Things speed forward for a while, and then I''m able to lay hold of time again as I''m put into high school. This was the pivotal moment. I know it now looking back. Everything changed after the second move. Mom''s promotion. My involvement in high school. My involvement in underground drug rings. I was 12 by this time. How in the world, you might ask? Yeah, looking back on it, it baffles me too.


    I found that this was the point, and I thought to myself, if I could change things here, at this pivotal point, then everything would be okay. If I could only go back and have a different effect on it, then things would turn out different. Even as I thought this with all my might, I fought my brain''s urge to move forward, refusing to let go of this memory, refusing to let go of this time period. I held on to it, though my fingers bled. My brain seemed to be trying to crawl out of my head. What did it matter? I didn''t care. I was dying. I would not let go.


    A screaming pain tore through every fiber of my being, and still, I refused. A voice confronted me and told me,


    ¡°Relent. You will rip your soul.¡±


    Strange, that. Being confronted by a voice in the ethereal darkness of death. I refused.


    ¡°No,¡± I told it. ¡°Tear me apart. I will not let go.¡±


    And then it broke. What precisely I can''t say, but I felt it break. Something inside me or outside me. I don''t know. But it broke. And I was no longer reliving these moments in my head. I was reliving them in the physical. I had apparently stepped into my own memory. My own past. I wandered the high school halls in a daze. Unsure of what time it was or where I was going, my feet taking me forward on autopilot, 12 years old once more. Was this what death was? Did you get to live the portion of life that you chose?


    I had just enough time to bitterly think, I should have held on to the part of life when Dad was still here. Before it came crashing back, and my awareness of having gone back in time began to slip. And my head began to spin. Was I really here? Was this real? Was I 12 again? Or was I lost in a deluded fantasy, living out my memories as my mind tried to cope with death?


    Someone bumped me in the hallway, and my awareness of my future self slipped as I was swept into the crowd''s movement.


    ***


    Chapter 1¨C Time Slows


    I wondered if this was how the ball in a game of breakout felt. I was being jostled back and forth in an overcrowded hallway of students. Every one of them bigger than me. I was trying to swim upstream to my locker, being physically shunted from side to side by the passing bodies and heavy backpacks. No one seemed to care they had run into me. It didn¡¯t help that almost everyone had their face buried in a screen, moving through the hallway like a human rumba.


    I had just reached my locker and begun the combination, when I was struck hard enough to bounce me off the metal door.


    ¡°Hey!¡± Came the voice of walking hall traffic violation. ¡°Watch where you¡¯re going nerd!¡±


    ¡°Go back to walking school, and get a walking license,¡± I retorted without looking. Reaching for my locker again, I felt a meaty hand land on my shoulder.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you say that to my face?¡±


    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, turning and taking in a breath to do just that.


    I thought it was only a metaphor that time would slow down when you''re in a car wreck. This wasn¡¯t a car wreck.


    It was a punch.


    I saw it coming. Every agonizing inch of it. And despite being able to watch it crawl towards my face no faster than a snail, I couldn''t do anything to move my body out of the way. It was like I had lost control. All I did was stare as it crept closer to me.


    Something tickled my awareness. Was I controlling time? This felt familiar. Had I done this before? I don¡¯t remember times slowing down before. Why did this feel familiar?


    I lost hold of the ability to keep time slow. The fist sped up all at once. It came crashing in with terrible force, straight into my nose, knocking me against the locker. Then, overbalanced by my heavy backpack, I fell on the floor. My eyes began streaming along with my nose.


    "Oh, what''s the matter? Is the little baby gonna cry?" came the voice of my adversary.


    Have you ever been punched in the nose before? The fact is, your eyes water. It''s involuntary. Yeah, I was angry enough to cry, but that''s not what was going on. But of course, there''s no reasoning with an idiot. My tormentor was mocking me after having inflicted physical pain.


    ¡°No!¡± I shouted, my voice cracking.


    My brain was full of all sorts of good comebacks, but it betrayed me. Shouting ¡°No¡± at the class idiot was not any of the witty responses that I could have made. Why was my brain not working? Maybe it was because I had just been punched in the face. How fast did brain damage set in? Maybe that''s what was going on.


    I looked up.


    There was, of course, a crowd. Who had anything better to do than watch Timmy Thompson get punched in the face by Billy George?


    I''d read somewhere that having two first names was a dangerous sign of encroaching psychopathy. I didn''t know how that could possibly be. But I figured I was close enough to it with Timothy Thompson.


    My hallway adversary on the other hand, Robert George, he definitely crossed the line. Maybe that''s why he was the way he was. His parents had given him two first names, and his brain had gone crazy his whole life trying to decide which one was his real one.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Of course, all this was spinning through my head while I was sitting there on the floor, having intelligently yelled, "No," in response to my opponent''s crippling opener. I wondered if it was impossible for me to drum up a witty rejoinder in the middle of a fistfight. Should I really be trying out for debate class?


    Apparently, there was more humor in the statement than I could have believed. Because the crowd of kids standing around watching the spectacle were, all of them¡ªwell, I double-checked¡ªmost of them, smiling. I didn''t see anything funny about it, but I was the one dripping blood onto my shirt.


    I looked down.


    Yep, that''s what that feeling was. I was dripping blood. Well, no sense in trying to hide the evidence now. I pushed myself to my feet. Having to unstrap my backpack before this was possible. The thing nearly outweighed me.


    ¡°Are you hungry for more?¡± Said Billy George, looming close enough I could smell him.


    Standing up seemed ludicrous. I was coming back for more. What was this, a lunch line?


    Luckily, my brain was able to kick out something more intelligent than "no" this time. Instead, I retorted,


    "What are you, the lunch lady? Yes, please. I didn''t get my fill with the first knuckle sandwich."


    Apparently, this was the height of humor, because the circling crowd proceeded to burst into laughter. I knew I was going to get punched again, but this was truly my best defense. If I could disarm the feeling of control, then surely the bully would get bored and leave. Or at least, that''s what the books had said.


    Plus, truth be known, I had the death-defying urge to see if time would slow again.


    It did not.


    The second punch caught me right on the cheek. I tried to roll with the punch, having read that somewhere, but I don''t know what that actually meant, and I think I did more harm than good. My head bounced off the locker behind me, and again I found myself on the floor, although this time it was no fault of the backpack. I saw spots, and then suddenly I was on the floor.


    Was this lost time? Time was doing all sorts of interesting stuff today. Maybe I wasn''t in control of what it did, yet. But what can you expect from a 12-year-old? I was sure that by the time I was 15, I would have control of this power.


    ¡°Thompson! George!¡± Mr Pheizer¡¯s voice cracked like a whip over the gathered students, parting them like Moses parted the red sea. ¡°My office, now!¡±


    ***


    In Mr. Pheizer''s office, I sat as far away as I could from Billy, which amounted to two padded chairs and my backpack set beside me as a barrier. My retreat wasn''t due to fear of a second encounter. It was actually due to the smell. Billy stank. He was 15 or 16 years old, and apparently, puberty was doing awful, awful things to him. His face was pockmarked and covered with hair that made him resemble a plague victim, and he had an odor that was irrepressible. I felt certain, deep down, that you could submerge him in a tub of water and his odor would still escape. It was truly awful.


    I had a box of generic brand tissues in my lap, a pile of blood-soaked tissues slowly filling up the small office-sized waste receptacle that had been so kindly provided to me, and currently one stuffed up each nostril, which was making me breathe like I was some sort of lizard. It should have also made it impossible to smell Billy, but somehow, I still could.


    Oh well.


    I couldn''t see the clock from where I was positioned and didn''t have a watch, so I didn''t know how long we''d been sitting there, but it had been long enough that I felt certain that I had missed that morning''s history period.


    Billy, meanwhile, was sitting as if he had won some sort of award, a semi-smug look plastered onto his face, which he curtly dropped every time Mr. Pheizer was in the room¡ªwhich I was sure hadn''t been any time in the last hour.


    I sighed.


    I could be learning about the Roman Empire right now, but no, here I was, trying to escape the stink that was slowly filling up Edmund''s high school sports coach''s office.


    I should explain.


    I''m the youngest kid in Edmund''s High School. They told me it was a gift. I went in for one of those tests where they measure you against other people, and then tell you whether or not you''re smart.


    Well, they told me that I had what was called a gift. I could read and write and remember better than anybody my age, therefore I had to be tortured with being sent to high school early. I was now in sophomore year.


    I think the reason that Billy didn''t like me was because I was already a grade higher than him. I didn''t feel this was fair. I didn''t ask for any of this. Mostly, I was told, and I didn''t get much of a say.


    Like being told to go to this office.


    I couldn''t understand what had been so urgent about getting us both in his office if he was just going to leave us here for an hour. Honestly, he could have left me in my history period to quietly bleed and take notes.


    I was interested in how the Roman Empire fell. They''d conquered the world. Well, not really the world, but you get the idea.


    This was so frustrating.


    I couldn''t even get out my history book and read it because I had been punched before I got it from my locker.


    Why did noses have to bleed so much anyway? When I moved it back and forth, it didn¡¯t feel like anything important was broken, but it just kept bleeding.


    In my mind, I had this morbid curiosity. How much of my blood would leak out my nose if I just let it and did nothing whatsoever to try and staunch the bleeding? Would all of my blood exit through my nose? Was this some sort of release valve that was built into human anatomy?


    I didn''t understand it. There was so much I didn''t understand.


    It wasn''t fair.


    The whole world was full of interesting things and adults treated you as if you were the problem for being in it, instead of helping you understand things.


    Ugh.


    Don''t even get me started about how adults respond to questions about things they don''t understand.


    Like time slows.


    I wondered if I could do those everyday, or if I''d have to escalate in order to exercise the power again.


    Escalation didn''t seem like a good idea.


    After a punch, what came next? A kick? A baseball bat? A car? This sounded like it would be a very short-lived adventure.


    I would have to find a safer way to test my powers. Maybe I could sign up for dodgeball. I bet there was a good chance that I could not only test the time slow there, but whether or not my life would flash before my eyes.


    I wondered about that. Why would the brain replay one''s life right before the end? Was it fact-checking? Did our brains get uploaded to a server and they had to make sure there were no syntax errors before upload? Something tickled my awareness. It felt like I had forgotten something important. Something I had to do.


    The door to the office opened, breaking me from my questions. Mr Pheiser stepped in, carrying a pair of manilla folders.


    Perhaps I should say, he lumbered in. I didn¡¯t know what the weight classification cut off was, for when you were too heavy to walk, and then began to lumber, but whatever it was, Mr Pheiser had crossed it.


    He was huge.


    He could palm a basketball and had to duck through doors huge. I was pretty sure his gut outweighed me by itself.


    The weird thing was how all that weight set on his frame. From a distance, Mr. Pheizer looked like a portly, but normal sized human. Up close, his very mass seemed to emphasize exactly what I was not. Perhaps this is how planets felt getting around each other and experiencing gravity. Mr. Pheizer had gravity, and I was caught in his orbit.


    Me, 4 foot 5 inches, all of 70 pounds. I felt just about as out of place as I possibly could in Mr. Pheizer''s presence. He turned sideways as he edged past filing cabinets to swing his gut over the edge of the desk in a practiced movement that was remarkably nimble for a man of his size.


    My brain skipped a beat as he came within a hair of knocking over a pencil cup without touching it. I wondered how often that cup had been knocked over and then reset before it found the perfect place for it to live, or if this man actually somehow had the sort of proprioception where he knew exactly how far out his gut swung and had never knocked that cup over.


    He settled into the desk chair and steepled his fingers, peering at us over them after having laid the manila envelopes in front of him. I noticed they had my and Billy¡¯s names on them. Billy¡¯s was a lot fatter than mine.


    "What am I gonna do with you boys?" he rumbled. His voice did that. It rumbled. It was a low, gravelly tone that was perfect for a man his size.


    I realized that me and Billy were being lumped in together. I wasn''t sure whether I was supposed to speak up or raise my hand, so I tried both, raising my hand and speaking up. Unfortunately, Mr. Pheiser''s gravity must have been affecting my ability to speak clearly as my voice came out as a squeaky,


    "Umm¡­"


    Which was completely not what I had meant. I''m much more articulate than this. Except, apparently, after being punched in the face.


    ¡°Mr P.¡± Billy said, ¡°He started it, I just finished it, because I¡¯m not a quitter.¡±


    The statement was so ludicrous that I didn''t even say anything in my own defense, waiting for Mr. Pheizer to mock Billy into silence. But instead, to my horror, Mr. Pheizer seemed to take my silence as assent. After giving me a hard look, he began nodding.


    "Hey! That¡¯s not true,¡± I said, ¡°that¡¯s not how it happened."


    "Quiet," Mr. Pheizer said, his voice cutting across both of us, as Billy had begun to speak up as well. "I''ve heard enough. You know our school has a no-tolerance policy about fighting, no matter who started it. You''re both equally guilty."


    ¡°Wait a minute,¡± I said, not having learned my lesson yet, ¡°That¡¯s not fair. He walked up and punched me.¡±


    ¡°One week detention for the both of you,¡± Mr. Pheizer said.


    "Detention," I squeaked, still not judging the situation appropriately. "This is the first week of school. You know what my mom''s gonna do to me?"


    Mr. Pheizer lowered his head so that he could aim a glare at me. "I could have you expelled for fighting. What would she do then? Now it''s two weeks for both of you.¡±


    I sputtered, barely keeping what I had to say under control. The injustice of it absolutely astonished me. I get punched in the face and have to share the punishment of the boy who punched me.


    I looked over at Billy. Instead of looking chagrined, he looked smug. He had the gall to look smug. Clearly, he was enjoying my discomfort and didn''t seem to care at all that he was facing detention. It occurred to me then to wonder how much detention he had already faced.


    I could be expelled for being punched in the face? That would go on my permanent record.


    I had plans.


    I wanted to go to college. I wanted to become a paranormal researcher. I wanted to be a scientist. I imagined that the line of research that I wanted to go into could be a well-paid position in the government.


    And here, in this little backwater corner of the great American Northwest, my entire future was being held hostage by a pimple-faced thug and a retired football coach.


    Unbelievable.


    I kept my mouth shut, figuring the punishment was going to increase again anyway, and I best get on with it. Otherwise, I would only make it worse.


    It got worse.


    Before we got out of Mr. Pheizer¡¯s office, Billy¡ª clearly enjoying my discomfort with detention far more than he was worried about the punishment¡ª managed to poke the bear, so to speak, once more and got our punishment increased to three weeks.


    I was given a slip of paper that had to get signed by my legal guardian, which was my mom. Sweet bouncing curse words, I dreaded that encounter. I was told to show up for my first day of detention after classes Monday.


    I discovered I had in fact been in Mr. Pheizer''s office for two hours, and I had missed that morning''s history and math. Both classes I found relaxing, but now I would have to catch up with extra homework. Not relaxing, just a chore.


    My high school experience was off to a great start. I wondered if this news was going to cause Mom to relapse. Honesty is often the best policy, but when living with someone recovering from addiction, sometimes the time to be honest is tricky.


    I decided I was going to forge my mother''s signature rather than attempt an encounter that would potentially put me in the foster care system. If only I could hurry up and do my paranormal research, I was sure I could find Dad.


    ***

 Chapter 2 — Forgery, Detention and… Telekinesis?

    The rest of my day at high school was as uneventful as it could be. This was the end of the first week of orientation. I had started as a sophomore. They hadn''t even had the decency to start me as a freshman. And so, not only was I the youngest kid in school, but I was by far the smallest sophomore in the whole school. And that included Emilio Rodriguez, who was only three inches taller than I was, but he had a good 50 pounds on me.


    Having already been here for a week, the day that I got landed in detention being Friday, I was used to the passing jibes that the bored children threw at me.


    It helped to think of them as children.


    I know they were older than I was, but shouldn''t we judge by behavior instead of by actual time spent on this planet? I figured they would grow bored of poking at me, with passing comments like, "Who let the baby in here?" and, "Oh my gosh, my kid brother followed me to school."


    Honestly, I figured they could be more creative. If I was going to take the time to drop an insult on a stranger, I would at least put some creativity into it. No, the eventful part of my day was the last class when I realized that if I was going to forge my mother''s signature, I was going to have to come up with a plausible reason why I was going to be staying after school every day for the next three weeks.


    She wouldn''t believe that I had signed up for sports. There was not a sport that I could be competitive in. Size isn''t everything, but tell you what, it sure counts for a lot. I could volunteer that I was in some sort of study group, but I don''t think she would believe that either. I was going to have to discuss this with Cece when I got back to the house.


    I hadn''t intended to make a friend of the babysitter, but she was the only person I could talk to.


    ***


    ¡°Hey Freak," Cece said as I came in the front door of the house.


    "Hey, Creeper," I shot back.


    Mom and I had moved for work recently, although saying mom and I had moved for work makes it sound like I have work. I don''t. I''m 12. I have school. I have problems. I have the only working theory as to where dad went. Never mind that.


    The move had been recent, and mom was convinced that 12 was not yet old enough to be left alone in the house. I tried to convince her otherwise, but she began citing state law, child abuse, and the foster care system, which was fair enough. I had to relent. A former alcoholic having custody of her only child was a remarkable thing in and of itself, and so mother had called around, and several days after us moving in, Cece had responded to the babysitter ad.


    She was in college, taking some online classes, and was able to work on her online stuff using our Wi-Fi. In our first interaction, I had helped her out with a paper that she was writing, and ever since that¡ª and her discovering my interest in paranormal research¡ª she decided that my nickname was Freak.


    Needing an equal nickname, I decided that her strangely inappropriate conversational references, made her deserve the nickname Creeper.


    "So," Cece said, "how was the first week of high school? Do you have a girlfriend yet?"


    I shook my head. "I''m 12," I said, figuring the statement should stand for itself.


    Cece shrugged, "Never stopped me."


    I decided to leave that alone. "I need your help," I said.


    She looked up from her phone for the first time. "Really? Alright, it''s gonna be hard, but I can teach you how to get a girl."


    In spite of myself, I blushed. "No," I said, "that''s not what I want help with."


    "Well, it''s clearly what you need help with," Cece shot back.


    "It is not," I yelled.


    She began laughing at me.


    "Look, I''m serious, I need your help."


    "And I told you I would help you."


    I sighed and handed her the slip of paper that my mom was supposed to sign. She looked it over and then gave me a once-over for the first time.


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Uh-huh," she said, looking the paper over. "Fighting? Ok, we can definitely get you a girlfriend."


    I sputtered and yelled at her. "I don''t¡ªyou know what, never mind. I have to forge Mom''s signature."


    She quirked an eyebrow at me. "Really? You have to?"


    "Yes," I said emphatically. Why was she not getting this? "You know what she''ll do if she finds out I''m in detention?"


    Cece shrugged. "Spank you?"


    I shook my head at her. "Would you stop that?"


    "What? It''s a logical conclusion."


    "Not the way you said it," I shot back.


    She grinned. "I can''t help it."


    I shook my head. "Listen, I''m serious. If she finds out I got detention and near expulsion in my first week of classes, she''s gonna flip."


    ¡°So what? My mom flips on me all the time.¡±


    "Your mom''s not a recovering alcoholic who receives monthly visits from a social worker to check up and see if she has relapsed," I said. ¡°I¡¯m one relapse away from getting thrown into the system!¡±


    ¡°Point to you.¡± Cece said, ¡°but do you really think one little detention would push her to drink?¡±


    ¡°C¡¯mere,¡± I said, and walked over to the computer.


    Cece stretched and rolled off the couch. ¡°Gonna show me your browser history so I know your type when I set you up?¡± She waggled her eyebrows at me.


    I gave her my best flat stare. ¡°Just get over here Creeper.¡±


    ¡°All right, show me what you got Freak.¡±


    I logged into webarchive.org and then accessed Find-My-Phone for the previous Tuesday.


    I looked up at Cece. "Do you remember how on Tuesday Mom was an hour late and she said that she had an especially stressful day at work?"


    Cece nodded slowly. "Yeah."


    "Check it out," I said. I showed her on Find-My-Phone. "She parked here in front of Happy Liquor for an hour before driving home.¡±


    Cece let out a low whistle and then a curse. ¡°Wow.¡±


    ¡°You see?¡±


    ¡°You are massively underutilizing your skill set. I¡¯m gonna put the word out for contract work at my school. We¡¯re gonna make money-money.¡± She began furiously typing on her phone.


    ¡°Would you please take this seriously?¡±


    ¡°Hey Freak, I am.¡± She said without slowing her typing. ¡°If you have the foster system after you, we can work something out if we¡¯re making money. Money is the solution to any problem.¡±


    ¡°Can money keep my mom sober?¡±


    She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. ¡°This conversation just got way more intense than I was prepared for. Fine, I get it. You¡¯re worried. Let¡¯s go forge that signature.¡±


    ¡°I can do that. Not my first time. What I need help with, is explaining where I am until 5 or 5:30 every day. I¡¯ve been wracking my brains, trying to think of something to tell mom.¡±


    ¡°Psh, that¡¯s easy. Just say you¡¯re at a girl¡¯s house. Wait, you¡¯re an experienced forgery artist?¡± She began to type again. ¡°Why did you wait until now to tell me? How much do you charge per job?¡±


    ¡°Can we focus on something other than romance and crime? I need something mom will believe. My first dentition is Monday. I¡¯ve got two days to figure something out.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me? Romance and crime make the world go round.¡± She finished whatever she was doing on her phone held it before her, looking satisfied. ¡°There are no better plausible solutions to anything.¡±


    I laughed at that. ¡°Not even money?¡±


    ¡°Romance and crime both depend on money, so that¡¯s besides the point.¡±


    ¡°How does romance depend on money?¡±


    ¡°Really? Tell me who has a better shot with a woman, a homeless man, or a millionaire.¡±


    ¡°Point to you. Now give me an idea for an excuse.¡±


    ¡°Nuh uh, I already gave a perfectly good one, it¡¯s your turn.¡±


    ¡°Fine, chess club.¡±


    "Do you even know how to play chess?" Cece asked.


    "Well, no," I say, "but I could learn. How hard can it be?"


    Cece shook her head. "No way. It''s too lame. Plus, chess is so 2000s. My college hardly even has a chess club. Does your high school even have one?"


    "Does it matter?" I ask. "I don''t think my mom''s gonna check."


    "Yeah, but she might," Cece points at me. "That''s sort of the point. Any excuse you have has to stand up under scrutiny, even if scrutiny is assumed to be non-existent."


    "Okay, your turn," I say.


    "Hey, that''s not fair. You shoot a lame one and now it''s my turn again. I already gave you one good one.¡±


    ¡°It needs to be believable. Plus, don''t you think that my mom would want to meet the girl if I''m spending two hours at her house after school every day?"


    Cece shook her head. "Maybe, but I bet she''d want to meet her dad even more.¡±


    "Ew," I say. "I don''t want to talk about it."


    "Fine," she says. "How about this? We tell her you''re at my house."


    "What?"


    "Yeah," she says. "This is great. That way, I still get paid for the time, and you have a plausible cover story."


    "Why would I go to your house?"


    "Psh, why wouldn''t you?"


    "No, seriously. What about that whole scrutiny thing?"


    "Okay, fine. I could say ... that I have to be doing daily quizzes at my house, and they won''t let me log in over your IP address so... Can Freak please get off at the bus stop near my place, and then I''ll drive him over after."


    I tap my chin. "That could actually work."


    "See? I told you telling her you were at a girl''s house is the solution."


    I wrinkle my nose at her. "What? You''re hardly a girl, Creeper."


    "Excuse me," she says, putting her hand on her hip. "I''m more girl than you could handle."


    "Can we change the subject, please?"


    Her phone chimed, and she typed like a maniac for a moment then grinned.


    ¡°Whatever Freak, I hope you¡¯re as good as you boast at forgery.¡± She held up her phone. ¡°I got us our first gig.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I peer at the screen. She had a subreddit page open. ¡°You posted on reddit and now someone wants you to come meet them? I¡¯m twelve, and even I know that¡¯s a bad idea.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡± She looked at her phone. ¡°No, dummy, I¡¯m not meeting a stranger I met on reddit. That¡¯s just how I use the dark clipboard for campus. I¡¯m already a frequent poster, so I get to post without mod-checks. The clipboard runs mirror through reddit and uses bots for returns when you¡¯re not on a secure device.¡±


    I quirked an eyebrow at her, ¡°Did you just make up a bunch of garbage so I didn¡¯t learn how to get to the site?¡±


    She stuck her tongue out at me. "Yep," she said. "I''m not giving you the keys to the Rolls."


    "Keys to the what?" I sputtered, not understanding what she was talking about.


    She waggled her finger at me. "I''m making sure that you don''t cut out the middleman."


    "The middle¡­ What are you talking about? You''re not making any sense."


    "Well, we gotta go."


    "Go? Where?"


    "I just told you. I got us a gig! We''ve got to hustle if we''re gonna make it there."


    "Make it where? Mom''s gonna be home at 6," I said.


    "Yeah, it''s 3:36 now. We''ve got plenty of time. Come on, there''s money to be made."


    "Money to be¡­ what?" My brain sputtered to a stop. "You mean that you actually signed us up to go do a job for somebody?"


    "Yeah, duh," she said.


    "I can''t believe you. I can''t go anywhere; I''ve got homework."


    She quirked an eyebrow at me. "You? Homework?"


    Alright, she knew me too well. I had already done my homework for the day on the bus.


    "Yeah, paranormal homework," I said, folding my arms.


    "Paranormal homework?" she said. "Alright, Freak, what''s your paranormal homework?"


    "I''ve got to practice telekinesis," I said.


    "Telle¡ªwait, I knew you were smart, but you can move stuff with your mind?"


    "Well," I said, hesitating. "Not yet, I can''t. But how am I supposed to be able to if I don''t practice, huh?"


    "Well, you''re about to have plenty of time in detention to practice, so let''s go. Otherwise," she dangled her car keys in front of my face, ¡°I might just forget where you¡¯re supposed to be for your alibi, and let slip something about your detention.¡±


    ¡°Hey! That¡¯s extortion!¡±


    ¡°Big word for a twelve-year-old. It¡¯s not extortion, it¡¯s the price for my silence, now get in the car.¡±


    ***

 Chapter 3, Remembering the future, Drugs and shady dealings

    Five minutes later, we were in Cece''s old beater Mazda, doing 80 on the freeway.


    "Where are we going?" I shouted over the road noise.


    Cece''s old Mazda had the peculiar quirk that if you got it going over 60 miles an hour, it would begin to shake. If you got it going over 80 miles an hour, it began to shake violently. It was doing this now, shaking and rattling so hard that I had to yell to be heard.


    Cece, meanwhile, was driving as if it were a Sunday stroll. One hand casually draped over the wheel, fingers hanging down, the other hand sitting on the stick shift, leaning back like she didn''t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, I was white-knuckled on both the armrest and my seatbelt, praying that if there was anyone out there who was watching, would they please keep this rattletrap from from falling apart.


    "Downtown!" Cece shouted back. "Near campus. We''ll be in a residential neighborhood. Probably student housing."


    I had not really explored downtown before, having only been in town for two weeks. Mom had driven us through part of the downtown district one day while she was driving to work, before she had arranged any sort of school or babysitter situation. But she had had me wait in the car, saying I could be murdered, to lock the doors. I did see a homeless person, but they didn''t look particularly dangerous or criminal. I don''t know. Maybe I was a bad judge of that sort of thing.


    Cece took the exit ramp at speed and braked hard at the light. My stomach did flip-flops as we lurched to a stop. I wondered if a person''s driving reflected their personality or if it was just a matter of training. I was eager to get my own driver''s license and not be in the control of other people''s driving whims. It was often a terrifying experience. People seemed to take physics and momentum for granted, comfortable in their little box, not realizing death was only inches away. Perhaps I was being dramatic. Alas, though death was only inches away, all that happened was my stomach turned over.


    I wasn''t able to make time slow. The bright side was, if Cece did crash, I could practice escalation theory. But then again, I would probably not live through it. So, best not to find out. Downtown traffic was light, and it only took us moments to navigate to where Cece''s GPS was guiding us.


    As the car slowed down enough that I was no longer fearful for my life, I began to pay attention to my surroundings. The downtown houses were all old brick, that sort of red or multicolored brick that you saw with older architecture. It seemed to me to convey a sense of age, and it occurred to me to wonder what it was like to be a young person¡ªrelatively speaking, college-age people were still old to me¡ªliving in such an old building.


    And then I thought, what if you''re an old person living in a young building?


    Something in my mind clicked.


    When it happened, I was overcome with a heavy sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu, like I had been here before¡ªnot this place exactly, more like this moment exactly. It was like I remembering things that were about to happen.


    ¡°Stop!¡± I shouted, pointing out the windshield.


    CeCe stepped hard on the brakes, reacting to my shout. A blue Volkswagen van zoomed in front of us, blowing a stop sign. She opened her window and yelled obscenities at the van as it sped down the street.


    ¡°Woah,¡± CeCe said, ¡°Nice job wingman. I didn¡¯t see that jerk.¡±


    How did I know what was going to happen right before it happened?


    There was something underneath all of this, something I wasn''t remembering, and I couldn''t put my finger on what. We drove for another minute while I was lost in thought.


    CeCe braked hard again, causing me to look up, fearing another speeding van. There was no van. We had arrived. I shot her a scowl. She grinned back.


    The sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu remained. It was so strong I was having trouble thinking. CeCe jumped out of the car, danced around to my door, and yanked it open.


    "All right, freak," she said, "it''s showtime."


    I unfolded myself slowly from the car and looked up at the brick structure in front of us, 1342. I looked up at CeCe, trying to get her attention, with barely the ability to speak. She looked down at me.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Don''t worry," she said, "everyone gets stage fright their first time. You''ll be great.¡±


    I shook my head hard. Swallowing, I managed to find my voice. "No," I said, "that''s not it at all. I don''t care about your weird extortion ring."


    She scoffed. ¡°You¡¯re way off. It¡¯s totally not extortion yet.¡±


    "I¡¯ve got a bad feeling."


    She looked at me, quirking an eyebrow. "A bad feeling? Really?"


    I nodded. "Yeah, it''s hard to describe, like d¨¦j¨¤ vu, but on a whole other level. It''s like I remember being here before, and I don''t remember why yet, but I don''t want to go into that house."


    She looked at me. "That''s pretty lame, Freak," she said. "Come on."


    She grabbed my arm and began to physically tug me down the sidewalk. I couldn''t believe her. When she thought she knew what was best for someone, she could be a beast. Struggling not to fall, I followed along, almost helpless in her wake, trying to figure out what it was the feeling was trying to tell me. Why did I have a bad feeling? What was this sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu?


    As we stepped up to the door and she rang the bell, the familiar dinging of the chime sparked the memory, and all at once I knew. Inside we would find an average-looking boy about CeCe''s age, who desperately wanted me to forge a prescription for some sort of sleep aid I''d never heard of. But that wasn''t what I had a bad feeling about. It was his roommate, who would overhear the whole process, and who had a gun. It hit me all at once.


    The door opened, and a suddenly very familiar-looking guy in a blue baseball cap opened the door.


    Blue cap guy looked Cece up and down appraisingly and then cast a dubious glance in my direction.


    "Um," he said, leaning closer. He spoke in almost a whisper, "Are you, Dark Angel?"


    Cece began to give an affirmative in what was clearly what she thought was a cool person voice, but I couldn''t help it.


    I lost it.


    I burst out laughing, gasping for breath.


    "Dark Angel?" I said, barely containing my laughter. I couldn''t believe it. Of all the things, on the ¡®dark clipboard¡¯, she had the handle, Dark Angel. Through my gasps and tears and laughter, I looked up to see she had a stormy glower on her face, and the guy at the door looked like he was ready to shut it in our faces.


    I didn''t really care, but I decided I needed to get myself under control. I realized, with a sobering splash of cold down my spine, that I had lost hold of the sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu.


    I could no longer remember the future. Why didn¡¯t I want to go in this house? I couldn¡¯t remember anymore.


    I stopped laughing as abruptly as I had started. Cece had her hands on her hips, giving me a deadly scowl.


    "And what of it, Freak?" she said.


    I shook my head. "Nothing. I just remembered something funny," I said, grasping my side, which had begun to stitch. I cast a wary glance into the house, trying to get back the sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu. How was I supposed to avoid the danger if I couldn''t remember the future?


    The feeling was gone, and I was beginning to doubt myself. If it hadn''t been for the Volkswagen, I felt sure I would completely dismiss it.


    It had evaporated like a dream upon waking. I didn''t understand what was happening to me. Cece and Blue Cap guy talked for another minute, and then he decided to let us in, Cece offering assurances that I was, in fact, a necessary part of this whole interaction.


    Once we were inside, I became aware of a pungent stink that reminded me of my great uncle Frank, who was sick with some sort of palsy. Parkinson''s, I think it was. Why did this place smell like my great uncle Frank''s? Cece took in a deep breath and raised an eyebrow.


    "Hmm, reefer, huh?" she said. "Vape or old school?"


    Blue cap guy grinned at her. "Vape," he said. "Gotta travel out of state to pick it up, but it''s easy enough to put in the pack." He patted his backpack, which was sitting on the couch.


    Ah, I made the connection in my mind. So this must be what marijuana smelled like. I had heard it had a distinctive odor, but I hadn''t been prepared for this. It reminded me of the smell of burning beetles with a magnifying glass.


    ¡°Ew, why would anybody want to smoke this?¡± I muttered under my breath. I shook my head. The sense of urgency and danger were gone. I felt calm and present, the remembered future a distant thought.


    What had I been worried about before? A person, or maybe an animal? I couldn¡¯t remember.


    I needed to make a note to tell Cece about my premonitions, or whatever they were, so that I didn''t lose hold of them. Thinking of telling Cece something caused me to think of her handle once more, Dark Angel, and I began giggling.


    Cece shot me a dangerous look. "Yep," she was saying, "kid''s the real deal, boy genius," she said, with a little bit of an edge to her voice.


    "You''re kidding," blue cap guy said. "He''s the one going to do it? Whoa,¡± he held up his hands, ¡°I''m not sure I''m comfortable involving kids."


    "Hey," I said. ¡°I¡¯m twelve!¡±


    Both Cece and Blue cap guy gave me a flat look at this outburst.


    Growing angry, I said, ¡°I¡¯m not a kid!¡°


    ¡°Yeah, you are,¡± Cece and the guy both said at the same time. Then they grinned at each other, like this was some sort of accomplishment.


    I rolled my eyes at them, but this did the trick somehow. The guy visibly relaxed.


    ¡°So the kid can really do it?¡± Blue cap guy said.


    ¡°Not if you keep calling him ¡®Kid¡¯ he can¡¯t,¡± I said, trying out the third person. It felt weird. ¡°What¡¯s your name? I can¡¯t keep calling you ¡®blue cap guy¡¯ in my head.¡±


    ¡°No names!¡± Said blue cap guy, tension creeping back into his face.


    ¡°Blue cap guy?¡± Said CeCe, ¡°Lame, I was going with discount DiCaprio.¡±


    ¡°Discount?¡± Said blue cap guy.


    ¡°Don¡¯t pout,¡± said CeCe, ¡°that¡¯s a compliment.¡±


    Blue cap guy didn¡¯t look convinced. ¡°Can we get down to business?¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± CeCe said, ¡°let¡¯s see the cash.¡±


    Blue cap guy shook his head, ¡°Payment on delivery.¡±


    Cece laughed in his face. ¡°Seriously? I can have you banned from the board for wasting my time. Show me the cash, or we walk.¡±


    Looking defeated, blue cap guy got a bank envelope out of his back pocket. He opened it, and flipped through four hundred dollar bills.


    ¡°Look,¡± he said, ¡°I just need to sleep without any dreams, and then wake up. You know, really wake up.¡± He emphasized ¡®wake up¡¯. ¡°Please?¡±


    He looked so desperate. I remembered mom looking that way. The day she asked the police to believe her. To look for dad.


    ¡°Ok!¡± Cece said, clapping her hands together. Seeing the cash seemed to give her extra energy. ¡°Let¡¯s get to work!¡±


    She pulled a prescription pad out of her purse and began talking to herself, weighing the pros and cons of different drugs.


    ¡°Are you on anything now?¡± Cece asked Blue cap guy.


    ¡°Why?¡± He asked, folding his arms across his chest.


    ¡°Drug interactions dummy, I can¡¯t sell to you again if I kill you.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± he dropped his arms and scratched the back of his head. His cap bobbed up and down as he did so. ¡°Justpot, and beers on Fridays. Does a multivitamin count?¡±


    Cece shook her head, ¡°Any allergies?¡±


    ¡°You sound like a doctor. Can you really write a prescription? We thought you¡¯d just show up with the drugs.¡±


    Cece froze, ¡°We?¡±


    I heard the distinctive sound of a slide being wracked on a pistol. It sounded just like in the movies.


    ¡°Oh yeah!¡± I said, remembering. ¡°His roommate has a gun!¡±


    ***

 Chapter 4, The Man With the Gun

    The sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu came rushing back so fast and hard I felt like I stepped outside of my body. I was looking down at the back of my head, able to see what was about to happen, except things weren''t right. It took me a moment to realize what was going on. I was remembering a different set of events in this room from what was happening now. Cece and I had interacted differently with these people. I had set the events out of order from what I remembered.


    That didn''t stop the sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu, but in my mind, I was remembering us writing prescriptions. Cece had taken photographs of the doctor''s shorthand on the prescription pads and of his signature. It took me a while, studying the pictures, to decipher the code that he had written in shorthand. I could now remember doing it. Boy, it had been a headache. But here I was. I hadn''t even gotten that far in the conversation, and the roommate had come out pointing a gun.


    Why had it changed? Why had we ended up in a worse future? Or was this better? I couldn''t remember far enough ahead in time to have any idea.


    The sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu was causing me to have trouble focusing on my surroundings, but it allowed me to see my past, which was my future? This was really confusing. How old had I been when I had come back? Why couldn''t I hang on to the memories?


    My swirling senses settled down enough that I was able to see what was going on around me. I realized that I had leaned on a chair near the table, having almost fallen over. Cece had put herself between me and the man with the gun. She had her hands up, not in surrender, but in a placating gesture. She was trying to calm the situation down. The guy with the gun was arguing with Blue Cap Guy.


    "Damn it, Billy," he said. "I told you, don''t mention me. You couldn''t keep to that one simple rule."


    Billy looked as shocked as Cece was. "I didn''t know you were going to jump out with a gun the second I mentioned that I had a roommate. What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted back. "Put the gun down, man."


    Now steadier on my feet, I stepped up beside Cece so I could get a look at the guy with the gun. He had close-cropped hair and a sharp widow''s peak. He had an old face, not from age, but from hard use, like he''d spent time on the streets, or doing things that age you quickly, like hard drugs. It was the sort of face that wore hard looks and dangerous intent with ease because he had already been there, done that, buried the body. I knew who this was. I remembered.


    "Charlie Boy," I said, my voice seeming foreign to my own ears. "What are you doing here? This ain''t your beat."


    As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew it had been a mistake. I was speaking from years in the future. Charlie Boy, or whoever he was, reacted, his eyes growing wide. He snapped the pistol to point squarely at my head. The little circle of darkness inside the gun¡¯s muzzle drew my attention, like a black hole, its gravity inescapable.


    "Hey," he said, shouting the word. "Who you been talking to? How the hell do you know me? I don''t know you."


    It wasn''t just the man''s reaction that caused me to realize this was a mistake. I was mentioning future knowledge. What''s more, I spooked the man with the gun. I wasn''t thinking clearly. I raised my hands slowly, trying to fix the situation.


    "Ah¡­ Lucky guess," I said. It was lame even in my own ears.


    Cece looked down at me like she didn''t know me at all, then she looked up at the guy with the gun. "Look," she said, trying to salvage things. "You can have my wallet. Take the money. I don''t care. We don''t want trouble. Nobody has to get hurt."


    Charlie Boy scowled at her, keeping the gun trained on her. "Nobody has to get hurt," mocked Charlie Boy. "Doesn''t daddy''s girl just have the answers to all the problems? Rich-bitch. The hell you got there, huh? You were supposed to bring the drugs. That was the agreement."


    Dawning realization spread over Cece''s features. "You''re user 1342. I thought using your damn street address was a bad idea, but I understand now how you thought it would work. Using a proxy," she jabbed a finger at Blue Cap Guy, who was apparently named Billy.


    "The agreement was for ten bumps,¡± said Charlie Boy.


    Cece nodded slowly. "Yeah. I didn''t bring anything." She tapped the prescription pad in her hand. "I''ve got the power to write a scrip. So it''s not out of reach. But you shoot us, you''re not going to get anything. You know what the police will do if they catch you with this?" She waved the pad at him.


    Charlie Boy looked dubious for the first time, seeming to begin to doubt he was in charge of the situation. Cece had clearly wrong-footed him. She didn¡¯t seem bothered in the least that someone had a gun pointed at her.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    My sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu was fading, and with it, so too was my access to my future memories. The bright side was, I could think more clearly without the future obscuring everything that I was trying to see and think.


    Everything was again fading. All my future memories or knowledge. Slipping through my mental fingers like water.


    A sense of intense frustration for a moment broke through, and I felt the frustration of everything I had been trying to do¡ªmy older self.


    How old was I?


    Everything I had worked for and accomplished, all of it for nothing.


    For nothing? Why was it for nothing? As quickly as it had come, it slipped away again. It was like I was in an imaginary game of tug-of-war.


    I growled in aggravation.


    "Come on," I said, shouting the words.


    Charlie Boy apparently took this as a challenge, raising the pistol again and pointing it straight at my face. "What''s that, kid? You got a death wish?" he said to me.


    "Yeah, sure," I quipped back before I could get my mouth under control. ¡°Strong-arm a 12-year-old, that''s going to earn you some real good street cred.¡±


    The man''s eyes grew wide, unable to believe he was being back-talked by a kid with a gun to his head.


    Why wasn''t I in control of my own mouth?


    "Yeah, big man. You think you''re finally going to earn your red? Come on, why don''t you off a kid? Maybe it will be the first blood that finally gets you in the door," I sneered at him.


    "The fuck you know," Charlie Boy said, taking another step towards me.


    "Oh, nice. Do you have to stand so close to hit your targets?" I said.


    What was wrong with me? It''s like I was trying to get the man to shoot me, but it wasn''t me. It was my future self. It was like he was disappearing and clawing at my consciousness, trying to hijack the situation. Why was I trying to get myself shot? I wanted to scream in my own head.


    "We''re off script," I heard myself say, almost like it was an answer to my own thought, spoken aloud. "You''ve got to stay close enough to the script that you don''t lose hold of me," I heard myself say, "which means that you''ve got to learn to control your gift."


    It''s like he reached out and tapped me in the forehead with his finger. The sudden motion caused Charlie Boy to react. I had apparently moved, although it wasn''t clear to me, in my muddled state, what exactly it was I had done. His flinch, and poor trigger discipline, caused the gun to go off.


    Time slowed.


    I was sure this was the slowest I had ever seen time crawl because I was able to watch the flame exit the barrel of the pistol around the emerging slug. No one else in the room had had time to react yet.


    I reached for the sense of slow time with everything I was made of. Remembering now, for the first time since I had come back, that feeling of laying hold of a memory as it passed by and holding on past the point of pain, I held on. This time, what I grasped onto was the sense that time needed to stay slow. I needed more time. I had to throw myself out of the way. I had, I realized, to dodge a bullet.


    It was creeping towards me, but I was not as fast as my perception of things currently was. I began to order my body to move, and my awareness was sharp enough that I was able to feel my muscles bunch one at a time like a spring being coiled in slow motion. Like one of those stupid online videos where somebody captures an event in hyper slow motion, and then you watch it take place, unfolding one microsecond at a time.


    The bullet crept towards me, and my muscles loaded to react. The thoughts, the synapses, the nerve impulses that were going down to my body were fast enough, but my body just wasn''t. The bullet had already traveled halfway across the room towards my face, the aim being unfortunately true, as my legs were still preparing to twist me to the side. As cool as it would be to fall backward out of the way like Neo from that old action movie, I could tell already that I didn''t stand a chance. The best I could do would be to turn my head just enough that I could pray it would pass me by.


    The sense that allowed me to keep time slowed was trying to wrench itself out of my grasp, pulling harder and harder at my awareness, my efforts to keep it in hand becoming more and more painful. But that didn''t matter now. If I lost hold of it, I was dead. Plain and simple. This bullet was going to snap forward in real time and cream the inside of my skull.


    I tore at the sense, trying to give every ounce of effort that I had at holding it present, at moving my body. My face began to turn. The bullet had already moved three-quarters of the way towards me. Why was my body so slow? With everything that I had, I desperately tugged with the sensation inside my head and somewhere deep inside my chest. The pain was growing worse and worse. It didn''t matter. I couldn''t focus on that now. I had to dodge a bullet.


    My head turned a little more. The bullet was creeping towards me. It was agonizing to be able to see it, death traveling towards me at roughly the speed of a lazy ant.


    ¡°Is that an appropriate metaphor for death?¡± I wondered to myself. ¡°An ant?¡±


    Why was I thinking about metaphors and ants in a situation like this? I had to turn my body.


    And then all at once, I realized it wasn''t me who had thought. Or at least, it wasn''t current me. It was future me. Was this who I was? Or had he hijacked me? I didn''t know. I wasn''t even sure if we were separate at this point. But here I was, with a strange window of time to speak with him.


    "What do you want?" I tried to scream. Of course, I couldn''t scream. I was still maintaining slow time. But I hoped that I thought it, and that future me was able to think back or reply to my thoughts. This was very confusing.


    ¡°I want to fix things,¡± I felt future me think. ¡°I want to stop them from dying. I want to prevent the catastrophe. You don''t have a lot of time, and I''ll lose hold on you. But try to remember: you have to follow the path that I did. You''re not going to agree with some of these choices. I don''t know why, but we''ve diverged. Regardless, if you stray too far from the path of events, I''ll be unable to reach you. You''ll be unable to access me. It''s going to happen again¡ªthe collapse of everything. Untold and uncounted deaths. It''s more important than you could possibly believe. Yes, our friend Cece is only in it for the profit now, but she becomes an ally. You have to trust me. If you move too far away from the path I walked, changing things will become impossible. That''s why I interfered, but I won''t be able to do this again. Just remember: everything, everyone that you care about depends on you. You cannot fail.¡±


    The timing was perfect. With the word "fail," everything sped up, and a roaring sound invaded my reality and became everything that I knew, right as a horrible pressure snapped my head back. My brain, unable to process what was going on, showed me lights and colors. There was pressure. There was fire. There was pain.


    There was nothing.


    A complete blankness overwhelmed my every sense until I began to try and feel my way forward. I was somewhere, but I had no senses. And then, like the dawning of light, things began to slowly come. I felt my feet underneath me. I had some sense of weight, some semblance of motion.


    I was walking.


    Where was the light? Where was the tunnel? I thought I was supposed to be dead.


    Why was I walking?


    Had I really been shot?


    Was this a dream?


    My brain tried to spin out answers for what I was experiencing. And then I began to feel other sensations, like there was a great weight or pressure on my shoulders. Was this the sense of burden of responsibility that I had just placed on myself?


    And then I was jostled backward as I was bodily shoved aside by a teenager.


    ***

 Chapter 5 — Go Again, day 2

    I opened my mouth to protest at the rude treatment when my surroundings snapped into clarity. I was back in Edmunds High School. I was being carried along in the teenage river flowing down one of the school''s many cramped hall corridors. My sense of unreality helped me to hang on to what had just happened. I could remember going with Cece to make, what, a drug deal?


    She was a drug dealer?


    I shook my head. My future self had told me I needed to, what, save the world? This was Saturday morning cartoon land. I shook my head again.


    I didn''t have the sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu that I had before, but the memories of my first time through these halls¡ªin Mr. Pheizer''s office, going downtown in Cece''s death trap of a car, and getting shot¡ªremained crystal clear in my mind. I shook my head. I was bumped hard from one teen to another for my head shaking inattention.


    I ignore the rough treatment.


    There had to be a rational explanation for this. I''d read a theory about reincarnation and past lives, but this was like I had just lived a day and then died, and now what?


    Was I repeating it?


    Was this tomorrow?


    Was the day I just experienced a dream?


    I needed more information.


    The tide of teenage humanity, either unwashed or over-perfumed, or both, carried me to my locker. I made a grasping attempt at pulling myself from the jostling stream in time to stand in front of it and think. I needed to know what day today was.


    I needed to know where I was in the time loop.


    I allowed myself to think those words for the first time. It felt too surreal.


    Time loop?


    Something hit me hard from behind, breaking me out of my thoughts and slamming me against the locker in front of me.


    "Hey!" came the voice of Billy from behind me. "Watch where you''re going, nerd!¡±


    ¡°Go back to walking school, you human traffic violation," I quipped back without thinking.


    "Why don''t you say that to my face?"


    Realization dawned on me in that moment. This was the same day. I had gone back to the beginning.


    As I turned, I reached hard for the sense that I had been holding when the bullet had been flying at my head. It came easily this time. Before I was fully turned, I saw the cocked haymaker of Billy''s chubby fist moving slowly toward me.


    I had it!


    I had laid hold of it. Time was moving slow. I moved my body out of the way. I actually had control of my senses this time, and trying to move didn''t cause me to lose hold of slow time.


    As I moved my head to the side, I watched the meaty fist and the arm, covered in strange linear scars, travel past my face in ultra-slow motion. Once I was safely out of the path of the follow-up elbow, I let go of the slow time and allowed the fist to crash into the locker with a deafening bang.


    Wincing at the sudden noise, I watched with pleasure as Billy''s face broke first into astonishment, then into anger. It occurred to me in this moment that I probably should have held on to slow time long enough to...


    The second fist came at me from Billy''s left-hand side, catching me right under the jaw and knocking me back against the locker. It was too fast for me to react to, and my sense of slow time didn''t return. I fell to the floor, my backpack carrying me with its momentum. My jaw felt wrong. I wondered if it was broken.


    "Oh, is the little baby going to cry?" I heard Billy taunt.


    Huh.


    I realized that his taunts had nothing to do with reality. My eyes weren''t even watering this time.


    I didn''t have time for this. I had to get out of here. I had to go talk to Cece. I had questions I needed answers to. I needed time to think.


    Why did I have to be in high school?


    Remembering my future self''s warning against changing things too far from the past, I shrugged off my backpack and pushed myself to my feet. My jaw opened and closed just fine, so I supposed it probably wasn''t broken. It hurt enough to be though.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "What, are you hungry for more?" Billy taunted.


    Resigned to my role in this drama, I nodded and gave him a grin that, from the taste between my teeth, I was sure was bloody at this point. "What are you, the lunch lady? Yes please. I didn''t get my fill with the first knuckle sandwich."


    As the laughter rolled around us, I watched how Billy''s face grew two shades redder. It was remarkable how much blood flow he had underneath his cheeks. This time, he caught me straight in the nose, just like before. At least he hadn''t caught me under the eye. I wouldn''t have a black eye this time.


    "Thomason! George!" I heard Mr. Pheizer shout. "My office! Now!"


    This seemed about right. I pushed myself to my feet again, noticing that my nose was bleeding, again. I trudged off to go sit for what was apparently going to be two hours in Mr. Pheizer''s office. At least this was going to give me time to think.


    ***


    ¡°Hey,¡± Billy said, the moment Mr. Pheizerleft us alone in his office, ¡°that was badass.¡±


    I looked over at him, surprised to see he was being genuine. He had a fist held out towards me. The previous time, Billy had not said a single word the whole time that we''d been seated in Mr. Pheizer''s office, except to the sports coach himself.


    I cocked an eyebrow at him.


    "Yeah?" I said, unsure how to respond.


    Billy nodded, appearing to be genuine.


    "Yeah, dude. I thought you were a nerd, but that little punk rocker grin you gave me, and then taking the punch. Holy shit, dude. You¡¯re alright."


    I reached over and bumped Billy''s still outheld fist. I didn''t know if this was too far off script to carry me to the future that I was supposed to go to.


    I didn''t care.


    Having Billy George not be an ass to me seemed like a positive development.


    "Thanks," I said.


    I almost opened my mouth to spark a conversation, but my head was too full of what I had just experienced. I felt numb. Not even the pain in my face felt real. So, I sat in silence, robotically watching the waste basket fill with blood soaked tissues. Billy looked at the floor and didn¡¯t say anything else.


    I had died.


    I got shot in the face.


    Then what, I¡¯d come back?


    Was I reliving the same day over again? Or was I still on the hallway floor from the first time I had gotten slugged, and everything that had happened after was a wild coma-induced fever dream?


    That seemed to be the most scientifically plausible explanation. It was comforting to think this was what was happening. However, I was interested in the paranormal, which by definition was the study of things that were outside our current method of explanation. And so I had to be open to the possibility that what I was experiencing was reality, and try to figure out what I was going to do about it.


    I contemplated the implications that my current only friend in the world, Cece, was a drug dealer. I shook my head. You thought you knew somebody. It was not going to be easy to get to the bottom of this. There had to be more to this story.


    Then there was my future self. If that was really true. He could be an alien for all I knew. He said he couldn¡¯t do this again. Way to be freaking vague future self, or alien. What couldn¡¯t he do? Possess me? Reverse the day? Spin a hopelessly obscure set of warnings?


    I vowed then and there to never turn into that prick, alien or not.


    Despite my mind spinning on the problem for the entirety of the time I was seated in the office, I was nowhere by the time Mr. Pheizer came in and we began the dance of negotiating how much detention we were going to get. To my amusement, even though neither Billy nor I made any protests this time about the punishment, Mr. Pheizer seemed to take our silence as a lack of respect, or something, and went ahead and raised it to three weeks anyway.


    I was given the same slip of paper with the same scrawled signature to go get signed by my guardian and shunted out of the office. The rest of my day, at high school at least, played out just as it had before. My mind too full to do anything except keep my head down and take it as it came.


    ***


    ¡°Hey Freak,¡± Cece said as I walked in the door.


    She didn''t look up from her phone. This was typical behavior for her. But I felt out of place, lost in an ocean of emotions that I didn''t know what to do with. It had all been too much. I had already lived through today¡ªwell, scratch that¡ªI had already lived through most of today and died, and then had to live through it again.


    It made the homework easy on the one hand, but I didn''t find the homework challenging to begin with, so that wasn''t really a plus. The school¡¯s repetition was boring already, and this was only my second go-around.


    Worry crinkled my forehead as I thought I might have to do this again. Apparently, I was loitering in the doorway for far too long because Cece actually looked up from her phone. She started to say, "So, first week of high school, got a girlfriend¡ª" she stopped mid-sentence, staring at me.


    The look on my face must have said loads about my mental condition, because I had never seen Cece speechless before. Not even a man with a gun pointed at her chest had made her speechless.


    "What''s wrong, freak?" she asked, real concern entering her tone.


    ¡°I¡­¡± I started to say but stopped.


    I didn''t know what to tell her. I didn''t know if I could trust her. She was dealing some sort of unknown drug in some sort of dark web thing on her college campus. Besides all that, I had just been bullied into being shot in the head by my future self¡ª or an alien¡ª, who told me that I had to follow some sort of weird drug dealing path in order to try and correct the future.


    It didn''t make any sense.


    If I was back here to make changes¡ª to, what, the apocalypse?¡ª then how was I supposed to make those changes if I had to follow the same path?


    I shook my head.


    Was there some crucial moment?


    I pictured the superhero in a movie on the big screen, waiting until just the right moment to reach out and snatch the MacGuffin away from the bad guy.


    ¡°I¡­¡± I tried again, staring at Cece, desperation in my eyes. I wanted to open up. I wanted to tell her everything. I couldn''t even tell my mom I had detention. She might relapse. All this?


    Hey mom, I died today, and oh yeah, I¡¯m possessed by my future self and have to save the world¡­ yeah right.


    What was I supposed to do?


    Heck with it, I thought. If I get it wrong, future me is going to come out and bully me in front of a gun again. I may as well tell somebody.


    So I spilled.


    The whole horrible day, living it twice, coming back here, her getting us a gig, going to the house, her being on some dark clipboard as DarkAngel, having a prescription pad, me getting shot, being sent back to the beginning again, my future self telling me that I had to stop the end of the world or some ridiculousness¡­


    I trailed off, after having talked for nearly 10 minutes straight, searching her eyes, hoping that on some level, somewhere, I would find understanding. Some sort of sympathy, that she would believe me and not scoff me into silence. I couldn''t bear it if I was alone right now. Even if my only companion was someone I barely knew.


    Cece looked thoughtful for a long time, staring at me. "All right, Freak. I know a way to test this," Cece said.


    I quirked an eyebrow at her.


    She pulled up her phone and began to type furiously. "We''re going to put the advertisement out on the message board, which you''re right about, and that is creepy as fuck, by the way."


    Cece casually cursing in conversation with me was new. I must have actually rattled her.


    "And we''ll see if someone responds just like you said they did. What was the house number again?¡±


    "1342, same number as in the user handle,¡± I said, ¡°And let me guess: then we go and meet them and see if we get shot."


    Cece scoffed. "Pfft, no. Hell no. The next thing we do is go to a priest. You need a fucking exorcist, bud."


    I shook my head. "Would you stop cursing so much, please? It''s too much right now."


    Cece smirked. "What''s the matter? That word make you uncomfortable?"


    I shook my head at her. "You make me uncomfortable, Creeper," I said. "No, I just want a little bit of normalcy. And you casually cursing in conversation with me is out of character."


    "Normalcy?" she shot back, still typing on her phone while talking to me, somehow. "That ship sailed a long time ago, Freak."


    She typed for another minute the held her phone up with the same satisfied expression she¡¯d worn before.


    ¡°Kay, done!¡± She said. ¡°Now we just gotta wait and see if this user asks us to work.¡± She dropped her phone on her stomach and put her hands behind her head.


    ¡°User 1342, he¡¯s gonna ask for ten bumps for four hundred dollars,¡± I said.


    Her phone dinged. She held it up, then went pale as she read it. ¡°Holy shit,¡± she whispered.


    She looked at me, her eyes wide, ¡°Freak, just tell me one thing and I¡¯m onboard, ride-or-die.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I asked.


    ¡°What are the winning power-ball numbers for tonight?¡±


    ***

 Chapter 6, Plans of Conquest, Confrontation, and a Chicken

    ¡°Oh, ha, ha,¡± I said.


    Cece put a hand on my shoulder, ¡°Timmy, I¡¯m being serious. I could conquer this whole State with that kind of money.¡±


    I had a laugh, half-cocked and ready to go, for when she broke and gave me a grin and a playful slap. But between the hand on the shoulder, the eye contact, and her use of my real name, I had a dawning realization of horror: She was serious. Deadly serious. Who talks like this? Conquer the state? For a moment, I was genuinely curious.


    Truth be known, if I had the winning Powerball numbers, I probably would have given them to her. I wouldn''t mind knowing a modern world conqueror. If I had ever met anyone in my short life that I would believe was actually capable of pulling off such grotesquely grandiose claims as to conquer a state, Cece would have had my vote. In the short time I had known her, she had proven to be the most open-mindedly effective person I''d ever met.


    Let me qualify that. I''d met school teachers, I''d met state employees, I''d met government officials¡ª once, okay? I can count it¡ª And I''d met Cece. I had never seen her boast that she could do a thing and not then go get it done. Which is why I chose to come to her with my clearly paranormal problem.


    So, all this to say, if I had the winning Powerball numbers, I would have spilled them right then and there. Perhaps I am a bad person. Maybe this is where my future self came into things. Partnering up with Cece for a life of crime. Me, the genius inventor behind the scenes. Her, the criminal mastermind who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Again, Saturday morning cartoon land.


    I shook my head, all of this going through my mind and me zoning out for a minute before looking her in the eye and answering honestly, "I''m not old enough to play the Powerball. And," I said to her, "I didn''t live all the way through my previous day. So I have no idea what the Powerball numbers are."


    Cece nodded. I swear I saw a tear in her eye before she put on her regular chipper demeanor. "That''s okay, freak," she said. "If we don''t get you out of this first try, you can make it up to me. You bring me those Powerball numbers. I''m telling you, we''re going to do great things. Great things," she shook her head.


    "Look, this is all very well and good," I said. Cece made a scoffing sound at my language choice. "But, I''ve got a serious problem and you''re not really helping. Instead, you''re focused on conquering the state and money.¡± I paused for a second. ¡°Actually, last loop you went on about crime and romance.¡±


    Cece looked at me. "Other me sounds wise beyond her years.¡± She grew serious. ¡°All right, freak. I''ll level with you. This is a lot to take in. You clearly have some voodoo gift to be able to know things that you shouldn''t know, including what appears to be the future. But I''m a big girl. I''m not just on board with everything that you told me."


    I deflated. This was what I was afraid of. I would tell the only person that I could talk to, and she would shoot me down.


    Cece seemed to catch on to my look. "Hey, hang on. I didn''t say I wasn''t going to help you. I said, I''m not on board with the idea that you''re caught in some sort of time paradox. Is yesterday or today in a different reality?" She shook her head. "Whatever. I''m not saying that I believe you, but I''m not saying I don''t believe you either. What we need is an expert," she said.


    "An expert?" I asked. "You mean like one of the characters from the TV shows you''re always having me watch?"


    Cece shook her head. "No, those are make-believe. I mean a real expert. I told you, you need a priest."


    I looked at her like she¡¯d actually lost her mind. "A priest,¡± I had never¡ª in our illustrious two-week relationship¡ª heard Cece profess anything that seemed to be a sign of faith. I quirked an eyebrow at her. "Are you serious?"


    "Yeah," Cece said. "Serious as cancer. I know a guy. Well, gal, actually. But,¡± she hesitated, ¡°you know what, never mind. You''ll see when you meet her."


    ***


    Yet again, I found myself in CeCe''s car doing 80 down the freeway, wondering how it was she lived through driving this thing every day. Being in the same place, at the same time, on the same day, brought with it a strong sense of unreality. I''d been here before, and last time, it had not turned out well.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    A knot of tension began to tighten in my gut as the memories, still too fresh to really contemplate, were brought sharply to the surface.


    We went downtown again, but this time we took a different exit. As the new scenery unfolded before me, the tension I was feeling relaxed just a little bit. My sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu, which yesterday had so strongly been pushing me towards something I couldn''t identify, was now completely absent.


    I realized, as we pulled into a different district and a memory of the blue Volkswagen flashed through my mind, that I''d either lost the ability to experience the d¨¦j¨¤ vu or I had wandered off the path. I was fairly certain that past me had not gone with CeCe this day to see a priest. The most likely set of events in my mind was that I was close to the original set of events in my first run-through, the irony being that my future self''s presence was the thing that had derailed me from following the path he wanted me to follow.


    I decided there was something truly transcendent about nearly dying every time I stepped into Cece''s Mazda. Because once we were finally moving slowly enough that I wasn''t afraid the car would fall apart underneath us, I found the courage that I hadn''t been able to find since I walked in my front door.


    Looking over at her, with her usual casual grace at the steering wheel, pretending as if she was driving a reliable machine instead of a demolition derby reject, I asked her, "Cece, what kind of drugs are you dealing?"


    In response to my question, she hit the brakes hard enough to throw me against my seatbelt. She looked over at me with a glare. "Are you wearing a wire?"


    Stunned, I shook my head slowly. She burst out laughing and resumed driving. ¡°Don¡¯t be so gullible,¡± she scolded.


    I rubbed my sore chest and gave her my best scowl. "Ass," I said, trying out cursing. Seemed like the occasion deserved it.


    Cece looked over at me. "Ass?" She asked. ¡°I think what you''re searching for is, fuck you.¡±


    I made a rude gesture in her direction.


    "All right, good enough, Freak," she said. "You want to know what kind of drugs I''m dealing," she said, "because you want to know what kind of person is about to take you to church."


    I bobbed my head side to side. She had more or less nailed it in one.


    "Well, Freak, you can relax. It''s not cocaine or methamphetamine. I got in on some next-gen new-wave stuff. Dealing it before it becomes legal. When it does, I''m gonna have my foot in the door."


    I looked over at her. "What is it?" I asked.


    "Let''s just call it a sleep aid," Cece said. "But the side effects are self-confidence and peace of mind. Besides, I''ve seen the health of everyone I prescribe to improve."


    I gave her a dubious look. That sounded like a line if I ever heard one.


    "Don''t worry about it right now," she said. "You and I, we got bigger fish to fry."


    She pulled to a stop, again much harder than necessary. I really wished that I could hurry up and learn how to drive. We''d been driving through a rough neighborhood for the last four or five minutes, long enough for our awkward conversation and her impromptu hard breaking.


    We pulled up in front of what I can best describe as a house right out of a Halloween horror movie. It was tall, it was old, it had gables and structures that loomed, and it looked dilapidated enough to be haunted. My eyebrows climbed up my forehead as I gazed at the thing.


    "Is the priest we''re going to see still among the living?" I asked.


    "Very funny," Cece said. "Yes, she just so happens to be. Get out of the car."


    Cece hopped out with her usual exuberance. I followed as she skipped up the walk, then cut across the yard and opened the gate beside the house.


    Cece got well ahead of me, as I was neither in the mood to jog nor to make it to the back of, and perhaps inside of, this super creepy house. Seriously, when Cece had said we were off to see a priest, I thought we were headed for a Catholic church. Instead of waiting for me or knocking, Cece disappeared through a side door before I got there. The screen door slammed, and I then heard what sounded like gunshots and someone began screaming. I couldn''t tell who was screaming, but it was definitely a woman''s voice.


    "Come on," I said, "I just want to live through the afternoon," and I broke into a run.


    ***


    I skated to a stop in front of the screen door, snagging its handle and yanking it open, not really sure what I was going to do when I got inside with apparent gunfire and screaming, only to discover nothing was what it seemed. My brain stuttered to a stop as I stared into what was apparently a kitchen. I say apparently, because inside this kitchen was an explosion of chaos.


    The first thing I was able to discern, staring into it, was that CeCe was not, in fact, being murdered. The banging I heard was none other than a large string of firecrackers exploding, their fuse slowly burning up the wall, leaving a trail of floating paper shrapnel and smoke. In the middle of the room, there was a woman. That''s about all I could process of her because she had her hands up in the air and she was screaming like she was being murdered, but there was no one touching her and the only things around her were paper shrapnel, smoke, and chicken feathers.


    That was the other thing¡ªthere were chicken feathers everywhere. At first, I didn''t notice them because the room was not set up like any sort of normal kitchen I had ever encountered. The walls, the cabinets, the countertops, and the people inside of it were covered with more baubles, knickknacks, bric-a-brac, and colorful ornamentation than I think I''ve ever seen outside of a National Geographic special. There were painted wooden and plastic beads everywhere. Amongst the bead tangles, like explorers of some multicolored jungle, peeked photographs, exotic bird feathers, wooden carvings of every sort, and street vendor paraphernalia from at least twelve different religions, and that was just at a glance.


    The colors were mind-jarring, but the thing that really stood out as I stood there, mouth agape, screen door hanging open, and CeCe standing just to the side of the entrance, her being the most normal and muted colors in the whole place¡ªwhich is not typical for her¡ªwas the old woman holding a chicken by its neck, apparently using it as a very active feather duster to beat something out of the air around the screaming woman.


    I opened my mouth, not sure why, couldn''t find anything to say, closed my mouth again and then, because I didn''t know what else to do, I opened it once more. The woman in the middle of the kitchen continued to scream, and the old woman with the chicken continued to walk in circles around the woman on the floor, beating something I couldn¡¯t see out of the air with the flapping, clucking, protesting chicken. I thought to myself, the chicken was the real victim of this whole situation.


    Then, as abruptly as everything had started for me, all noise and motion stopped, with the exception of the floating paper bits, smoke, and feathers. The woman in the middle of the room collapsed into a fetal position, head down on the floor. The old woman in the colorful dress and what must have been a good ten to fifteen pounds of ornaments and beads, proceeded to use her teeth and other hand to tear the chicken''s head off and draw a circle on the ground around the prone woman with the bird¡¯s blood. At this point, the old woman closed her eyes and began to mutter under her breath, and everything in the room slowly settled.


    I closed the screen door as quietly as I could and took three massive steps back so I could no longer see into the room. Shaking my head, I muttered to myself, "What the actual..."


    ***

 Chapter 7, Jemima

    As I stood there beside the house trying to process what I had just stumbled into, I looked down at the cracked cement beneath my feet. There was an ant making its slow progress across the sidewalk, bearing a burden. I squatted down, having nothing better to do with myself than look at the ant and the beetle it was carrying. It reminded me sharply of speaking with my future self and watching the bullet. Was this a coincidence? Was I seeing a warning? I shook my head. Perhaps it was possible to read too much into things.


    I waited there. I watched the ants. I did not want to go back in. I thought about going back and getting in the car. If not for the previous day''s experience, I''m pretty sure I would have. If not for being shot in the face, I think watching a woman decapitate a chicken with her teeth would have been the weirdest thing I''ve ever seen. As things stood, it wasn''t. I sighed. Of course, Cece would know this sort of person.


    I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if this was a cult, or witchcraft, or supernatural, or just a show that people paid money for. I''m twelve. I''m not stupid, but I have no idea what I walked into. After an interminable amount of time, the woman who had been on the floor came out and walked down the path. She seemed like a normal person. She gave me a warm smile as she passed and continued on her way.


    I could hear voices inside. Cece, and what I presumed to be the older woman who had brutalized the chicken.


    After a little bit longer, Cece came out, first peeking her head around the door, then giving me a troubled look.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong, Freak?¡± She asked, walking up to me.


    I didn¡¯t qualify that. What was wrong¡­ Cece had a majorly different world view than most people.


    ¡°What was that?¡± I asked, ¡°Some sort of demonic ritual?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Cece looked affronted, ¡°That was a blessing.¡±


    "That was a¡­ what?" I said.


    Cece nodded. "Yeah, that poor girl had suffered two miscarriages and needed the current pregnancy to take."


    I shook my head. "You''re kidding, right?"


    Cece looked back at me, flat, serious. "No, not at all," she said. "I told you we needed an expert."


    I couldn''t argue that, but I still doubted the level of expertise that I was walking into here. I sighed. It probably wouldn''t be worse than getting shot in the face. I may as well give this a chance.


    "Okay," I said. And Cece and I stepped back into the kitchen.


    As I stepped back into the kitchen, the visuals of the room assailing my senses, the old woman was tidying up, as placid and pleasant as any grandmother I had ever seen, happily sweeping up feathers and firecracker bits while humming to herself. I stood there, completely unsure of what to say, when luckily, the old woman saved me from the trouble.


    "You do have something hanging around you, boy," she said. Her accent was strange. Now, I know I''m not the most worldly person, but I couldn''t place it. If I had to guess, I would have guessed Jamaican; however, there were tones that were completely wrong for it actually being a Jamaican accent.


    The old woman shook her head. "You almost broke the blessing that I was making."


    "I''m sorry," I ventured. I didn¡¯t know what else to say.


    The woman, still not looking up at me from her cleaning, shook her head. "I''m going to have to give you more attention before I know what''s going on."


    Cece broke into the conversation at this point. "So, what he told me was true?" she asked.


    The old woman did look up at this point, her sharp eyes pinning Cece. "Girl, I don''t know what he told you, and I don''t know yet what''s true. What I said is he does have something hanging around him, and I don''t know what it is, but we''ll get to the bottom of this. Believe me," she said, "we surely will."


    ***


    Removed from the abrupt chaos that was apparently a blessing, I found I rather liked the old woman. She had a no-nonsense air about her, but she was kind in a way that I really appreciated. Her name was Jemima, and I now understood why Cece had hesitated to qualify anything about her. She served as the religious figure for the local community in more than one capacity.


    She had continued to calmly go about cleaning up her kitchen, and I had offered to help, which she had turned down, telling me I needed to take myself and the aura I was carrying to the other room. She shooed me into her dining room and sat me down at her table where she had a plate of cookies. Of course, I helped myself.


    Cece was not waiting with me at the table. She was in the kitchen, talking to Jemima about people and their lives. Cece was a regular part of all this. I couldn¡¯t hear what they were saying from the table, but after a minute of hearing them, I¡¯d grown bored and zoned out. Cece had inquired about some girl and a guy she wanted to be rid of. I cared little about who was in a relationship with whom, especially when I didn¡¯t know them. The most interesting part was apparently Jemimia had given the girl porcupine quills for protection. The world was a weird place.


    The room I was in was quite normal compared to the one I had come from. Yes, there were still more things on the walls than anyone whom I had met before would use to decorate with, but it didn''t hold a candle to the kitchen.


    The most interesting part was the series of photographs on the wall in front of me. Jemima, surrounded by what I guessed were family. There was a picture of her with two women who looked to be twenty or maybe thirty years younger than she was. They were dressed similarly, in their headdress, in the dress they wore, the way they carried it. I guessed they were her daughters.


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    Beside these two women were what I guessed were her daughters'' children. There were five of them in total, two on the right, three on the left. They were all fully grown, and several of them had grown children standing next to them, with small kids of their own. Four generations in a photograph.


    The thing that was interesting was being able to track my way across the wall and watch these people all age in reverse. The small children disappeared. The adults progressed backwards as the photographs got progressively older and older, the occupants getting younger and younger. Until at last, everyone in the photo I¡¯d begun with disappeared, except Jemima.


    Around that time, there was a man who appeared in the pictures beside Jemima. He was an interesting fellow, reminded me of a blues player I''d seen on the cover of an album once. In no picture did he appear without his hat, a tall feather sticking out of a band. This was not the sort of hat you typically saw. This was the kind of hat you would expect to find on an old Australian crocodile hunter or in a movie that was a period piece. I didn''t know the name for this style, but the hat was obviously leather, wide-brimmed, kinda like a cowboy hat.


    The man only wore a vest, no shirt. He never appeared with a shirt on. He had several necklaces and a very lean, hard look to him. He had on what¡ª I couldn''t tell because of the age of the photographs¡ª looked like leather pants with a belt that had a very realistic-looking skull for a buckle. I was reminded of a dangerous character in a movie, but I couldn''t put my finger on who.He stopped appearing in the photographs long before they were in color. Long before the children were very old. This made me sad for them, thinking of my own dad.


    The peace of sitting in this room and studying the old photographs was a welcome reprieve from my previous day. Jemima had come in and checked on me once, asking if there was anything I needed and handing me a glass of ice water. I told her, "No, thank you." But after taking a sip of the water, I realized I was really very thirsty. I wasn''t sure when the last time I had eaten or drunk anything was, but my body was telling me I needed it.


    Eventually, Jemima came into the room with me and sat down at the table. She didn''t say anything. So, after a little bit, I decided to fill the silence. I asked something that had been burning in my mind.


    "Is that blessing you did really going to work?" I asked her. Unable to help myself, I blurted, "And those porcupine quills, will they help? I''m so confused. What do you do? Are you actually in communication with the spirit realm?"


    Jemima studied me for a while, her eyes¡ªthe sharpest part of her old face, which was filled with wrinkles and years of lines¡ª seemed to take in everything. After a while spent considering me, she answered, "That''s a lot of questions for a little boy," she said. "But then again, you have an old soul."


    I had heard people use this term before. I began to shake my head to state that I was simply precocious and possibly autistic, when she held up her hand.


    "No, I see that you have an actual old soul. You have a young one as well. The old one is uninvited, but yours nonetheless. The young one belongs. And yes, it is full of many questions."


    "To get back to your questions¡ªwhich I believe are being fueled by both of your souls right now¡ªyes, I am in contact with the spiritual. No, the porcupine quills will not work. The woman I gave them to does not believe. Without faith in a thing, a thing cannot work. Yes, the woman for whom I just performed the blessing will carry her child to term unless something comes and interferes with the blessing that I cast."


    Before I could ask my next question, she continued, "It''s because she believes in the thing, and so it has the power to help her." She studied me for a long moment. "I need to do a reading on you."


    In this room, there was religious paraphernalia from all sorts of religions. I pointed over to them.


    "Which one''s real?" I asked her.


    "Oh, they''re all real. There are things behind each of them. I tell you though, some are much bigger than others," she said. "There are some that I don''t touch."


    She pointed over to a crucifix. "That one, for example, is too big for me. He wants me though. He keeps asking me to trust him. Some day I might, but I got to give up what I got to trust him, and that scares me." She pointed over to Buddha. "This one is friendly but not very helpful." She pointed over to something I was unfamiliar with. "I have authority here. This is what I use to protect people who mine. It not very nice, but I know how things work here. So I pay the price it asks of me.¡±


    "But you''re not really interested in God now, are you? You want to know what is real."


    I nodded. I did want to know what was real.


    "Well, many things are real¡ªthings you would not believe, but they are real in their own place. Here, they are not so real. About heaven, before you ask, I don''t know. I have not been told, and I have not been to that side. What I do know is what I can reach and what I can touch. And so I will use what I can touch to help you."


    This whole conversation was creating questions for me that I had previously not thought of. I had two souls? Both mine? At least I could rule out possession by an alien.


    ¡°You got to pay a price before I can read you,¡± Jemima said. ¡°That the way it works for me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I don¡¯t have any money.¡±


    ¡°Not that kinda price, boy.¡±


    ¡°What then?¡±


    ¡°Your first born child.¡±


    ¡°What? Wow¡­ really? What if I never have children? Do you get stiffed, or have to pay for it yourself? Seems costly for a reading.¡±


    Jemima burst out laughing, ¡°Don¡¯t be so gullible, boy.¡± She continued to hoot and laugh.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, scowling. ¡°I¡¯ve heard that before.¡±


    ¡°The price you got to pay is to give me your luck, for a time. You not going to like me if you do. But I can see you already have died twice, and yet, here you sit. So I think you can afford to give me your luck for a while.¡±


    ¡°So what, I¡¯m going to lose at games of chance until my luck comes back?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°Nothing like that, but yes, you would lose a game of chance, unless you wanted to lose, or needed to. You have no idea what I¡¯m asking of you, do you, boy?¡±


    ¡°Today has made me feel like I have no idea about anything,¡± I said, being honest. I shrugged, ¡°Fine, ok. You can have my luck. Cece trusts you, and I trust her. How long will it take to come back?¡±


    ¡°Different for every person, boy. Hopefully, it won¡¯t take long. Short answer is, I don¡¯t know.¡±


    "Okay," I said. "What do I do now?"


    "That''s easy," Jemima said. Quick as a snake, she reached across the table and stuck me with a pin.


    "Ow!" I said, trying to pull my hand back. She was the fastest old lady I''d ever seen. Before I pulled my hand away, she had her bony hand around mine, stronger than you would believe. She took my thumb, which she had jabbed with the needle, and pressed it against a gold coin.


    Looking closer, I realized the coin was probably not gold. It was brass or something. I don''t know. It had weird symbols on it. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. It looked old, ancient, antique. Actually, it reminded me of Jemima. And then, quick as a wink, she let go of me and put the coin in her pocket.


    I blinked at her. The thumb pricking wasn''t bad. She had squeezed out a drop of blood onto the coin and then let me go.


    Resisting the urge to suck my thumb after having had it pressed to a coin, I put my hand in my lap. Partially to make sure it was out of reach. I felt strange. It was like some part of me that had been confident was now less so, diminished.


    "Now what?" I asked, looking across the table at her.


    She looked at me. When I say looked, I''m not sure anyone had ever seen me like she was looking at me now. She looked deeper.


    "Now, I read you," she said. The way she was looking at me, I wondered if there were words appearing on my forehead.


    "Don''t you need tarot cards or bones or dice or something?" I asked.


    She shook her head. "That''s not how my gift works," she said. "Mmm, now I see why you got two souls. One is broken," she said, "and one is not, but they are the same soul. You can''t have two souls¡­¡± she looked at me for another moment, her eyes moving like she was reading, ¡°Mmm-hmm, now it makes sense why you have died. It''s going to keep snapping you back until things are in alignment."


    "In alignment," I said.


    "Uh-huh." She narrowed her eyes at me. "That''s also why you more open now," she said.


    "What?" I asked, not sure what she meant.


    "Having a broken soul opens your mind. You been experiencing things outside the norm? Maybe seeing things other people can''t?"


    I looked at her. No, I had not experienced seeing things other people couldn''t. But being able to slow time, or at least my perception of it, was well outside the norm.


    Jemima nodded. "Yeah, you know what I mean. I can see it. Well, it''s going to continue. But you''ve got to try and reconcile that broken soul, the old one that you''ve got inside you. I think if it weren''t broken... It would have taken over, crushed the one you got now. But since it''s broken, it can''t do that."


    "Crush my soul," I said. "You mean future me would have taken me over if he wasn''t broken?"


    Jemima nodded. "I expect so. That''s some powerful stuff, for him to come back like that. I don''t know how he did it. But you," she pointed at me, "you got a fight ahead of you if you want to stay you. That thing haunting you, your future self as you call it, oh, it''s going to try to take everything."


    Feeling lost, I asked her, "How do I fight back?"


    "You got to want it more, boy. When he tries to take from you, you got to hold on. Harder than he can. You will have to outlast him. He got no way to renew himself now, but he older, so it not going to be easy.¡±


    She leaned back in her chair, still looking at me, but not as intent. ¡°You will talk to him as your soul and his get closer. He¡¯s got to kill you to live again. I expect, he will try to trick you. Take what he tells you, and weigh it careful like. You come see me again when you feel that you can¡¯t go on. Because you will. When life forces you to kill or be killed, good people often choose to die, because they good. But the thing riding you boy, it¡¯s evil. Your job, if you want to take care of the people in your life, is to beat that evil. Do not let it win.¡±


    She fell silent after that. Letting it linger. I felt dizzy. I put my head in my hands. My future self was evil? I¡¯d come back to take over my past? Why? I had more questions now than right after being shot. I couldn¡¯t make a single one of them into a cohesive sentence. I sat that way until Cece came back. She and Jemima spoke and then Cece took me to the car. Feeling numb, I let her guide me, without really seeing anything.


    ***

 Chapter 8, Things Get Weird, Go Again Day 3

    Sitting in the car, I looked down at my hands in my lap. I still felt off, weird. Cece looked over at me as we begin to drive out of the neighborhood. The clock on her dashboard said 5:39. She shook her head, "We''re going to have to punch it if we''re going to beat your mom home."


    I shudder at the thought of what Cece considered really punching it. Her normal driving scared me.


    ¡°Wanna talk about it?¡± Cece asked, turning to look at me and blowing a stop sign.


    "I don''t really feel like it," I said. That was true, and I was worried if I distracted her while she was ¡°punching it¡± we¡¯d crash and die.


    Cece shrugged and stepped on the gas, motoring out of the neighborhood.


    I wasn''t sure what Jemima had shared with Cece in their quiet conversation. Maybe she had warned Cece that I was evil, or at least that apparently I was going to grow up to be evil. How was I supposed to process that? How was I supposed to fight with my future evil self? I probably should have asked more questions, but I wasn''t feeling good. Ever since that finger prick, all I wanted to do was go home, lie down, and go to sleep.


    Cece drove, not saying anything, allowing me room to process. How are you supposed to handle learning that you grew up to be evil? I didn''t feel like the sort of person who would grow up to be evil.


    I looked out the window, watching the neighborhood pass by. As we drove by a dark house, I caught a glimpse of Cece reflected in the window. She was bent over with her head in her hands instead of her hand on the wheel. She was shaking her head back and forth, and I heard her saying, "No, no, no, no."


    Startled, I whipped around and looked at her. But upon turning, when I looked, she was sitting up straight. Hand draped over the wheel as usual. I blinked.


    She looked over at me, drawn by my sudden movement. She raised an eyebrow and I shook my head, turning back to the window. We¡¯d passed by the dark house. Without a dark background, I could no longer see a reflection.


    I glanced at Cece again, just to be sure, but she appeared normal. My pounding heart began to slow down just in time to get on the freeway. I tried not to watch the speedometer. I didn¡¯t want to know.


    As the road noise increased and the car was pushed past the point where it began to shake, I tried to keep myself and my mind off things by staring out the window. As we pulled around and passed a semi-truck with a dark paneled side, I could once more see Cece reflected in my window. She was curled up in the driver''s seat, head in her hands, shaking her head back and forth.


    This time I could hear her clearly, which was weird because of the excessive road noise. She was saying, "no, no, no, no." Except, while I was watching the words leave her lips, the voice she was using wasn¡¯t hers. It was a gravelly, hard-used voice. A man''s voice.


    I turned slowly this time so as not to distract the driver¡ª or maybe to try and sneak up on whatever it was I was seeing¡ª and looked at Cece.


    She looked normal. Sitting up, leaning back, one hand draped over the steering wheel, one hand on the shifter, she caught me looking again, glanced over, she smiled and winked. She turned back to the road, weaving between cars.


    I turned back to the window to try and catch another glimpse of Phantom Cece, or whatever it was I was seeing, but I could no longer see a reflection. I had been ready and willing to write it off as my mind playing tricks on me the first time. But twice? Plus, I still felt weird. Something was going on.


    I began to lean backwards and forwards, trying to get something dark in my line of vision so that I could catch a glimpse of Cece reflection again. Sitting really low in my seat, I was able to use the passing trees to catch glimpses of Cece''s reflection.


    Every time I caught a glimpse, the voice would come in, like turning on a radio or television. Reflected Cece, whom I began thinking of in my mind as ¡°Not Cece¡±, still had her head in her hands, shaking her head back and forth. I caught snatches of what she was saying: "I knew kids were stupid, but I didn''t know they were that stupid. How stupid was I when I was twelve?"


    There was a break as there were no trees, and I squirmed around, trying to find a new angle where I could again see and hear what Not Cece was saying. I had no idea what was going on. Real Cece looked over at me from where she was driving and said, "Are you okay, Freak?" I guess I must have looked very strange, wiggling down into my seat the way I was.


    I sat up more. "I''m fine," I said.


    I don''t know why, but I didn''t want to tell her about it. Maybe because it was her reflection doing the talking. Maybe because I was beginning to feel like this actually crossed some line where there was no way she would believe me. And I really wanted to keep her as a friend.


    We passed a dark van, and I caught another glimpse. "Tricky, tricky, tricky, that little backwater crone."


    There was a space, and then we passed a black Escalade. "What does she do? Cons him out of our luck. I can''t believe this. We need that."


    There was another space, then I caught a glimpse as we passed a dark Ford truck. "Calling me evil? You''re the one stealing luck from children, you old crone."


    At this point, it clicked what I was hearing. I leaned closer to the window as we shifted lanes once more and began to pass another dark semi-truck. "Unbelievable. And she actually had the stones to call me evil. I don''t go around taking luck from children."


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Leaning close to the window, I said, "Are you my future self?" Real Cece shouldn''t be able to hear me over the horrible vibration inside the car.


    Not Cece''s head snapped up, and I realized something was wrong. Her eyes wrong. They were not fully in their sockets, hanging out the front, one partially deflated. Her skin was tattered, hanging off her face in fleshy flaps. It looked like she was a couple weeks dead and decayed. The eyes themselves, though they appeared to be about to fall out, held a burning intensity that I had never seen before.


    "You can hear me now? Is that what she did?" Not Cece moved in the most horrifyingly unnatural way I had ever seen. Bending and twisting out from underneath the steering wheel and the seatbelt without bothering to unbuckle it. She scrambled across the middle console and across my seat to slam against the window right in front of me, giving me a first-hand view of her gory visage. Flecks of blood spattered the window as bits of her skin were knocked off with the impact. She screamed at me in that Not Cece voice, "You get your ass back to that house and get that coin before we''re royally fucked!¡±


    I screamed. I''m not ashamed to admit it. I screamed the most terrified scream I had ever screamed, recoiling from the window, falling backward over myself, ripping my buckle off in blind panic. I collided with Cece, who turned towards me and my gibbering, mad terror, looking out my window for what had terrified me so.


    "What is going on?" Cece yelled over the road noise. We finished passing by the dark surface, and I could no longer see the horrible face or hear the horrible voice. I stammered and pointed, attempting to articulate what it was that I had just seen. My heart was beating in my throat. Having difficulty taking a breath, I turned to look at Cece, and as I did, I saw out the front windshield. The line of traffic in front of us had come to an abrupt stop.


    Shifting my focus entirely, I pointed out the front window and did my best to scream, "Look out!" Except my voice cracked and it came out broken and wrong. Cece looked up and recoiled. But I was on the shifter, and she attempted to throw me off and step on the brakes just as we caught up with the tail end of a semi-trailer. The lower metal bumper of the truck was spaced just right to go over our hood and enter the window at 75 miles an hour.


    ***


    I screamed. It was the only thing I could think to do. Open my mouth and scream.


    As I screamed, I felt a hard impact on my shoulder, and I was shoved backwards.


    I stumbled, and then I sat down, my backpack having overbalanced me. I looked up and processed what was in front of me for the first time, blinking twice, trying to make sense of what had happened.


    A large, blonde teenager had looked up from his phone long enough to shove me. "Freak," he said, and walked around me, looking back down at his phone. I opened my mouth to reply, couldn''t think of anything, so I shut it.


    The human tide of teenagers flowed around me, most of them on their phones. No one stopped to offer a hand. Sighing, I sat in the middle of the hall for a moment, teenagers shuffled around me and bumped into me. Getting tired of being bumped into, I shrugged out of my backpack, stood, and then picked it up, heaving it up and over my shoulder.


    I started to make my way to my locker before I thought about what I was doing. I slowed to a complete stop and stood there, trying to process what had happened.


    We had died.


    That was a bad traffic accident. I hadn''t even thought to slow time. And that face¡­


    What was I doing? I abandoned the hike to my locker, turning and shouldering my way through the crowd towards the bathroom. It took me three tries to remember which direction it was in. I felt so disoriented.


    At last, I made my way in and hesitated before stepping in front of the mirror. I dropped my heavy backpack on the floor, tired of the burden. Then slowly stepped forward, bracing myself, ready to see Not-Cece¡¯s horrible, rotting visage leering at me once more.


    Blessedly, she was not there. The mirror was blank. I stepped closer, puzzled. I stepped to the side, trying to catch sight of my reflection. Stepping further to the side, I put one of the stalls in my line of vision through the mirror. I could see a pair of sneakers underneath the door.


    I didn¡¯t notice anyone was in here when I came in. I turned and looked at the stall to only then realize that I hadn''t been able to see my own reflection. Facing the stalls now, the door that I had seen closed with the sneakers peeking out from underneath was now sitting open. No sneakers, no person, nothing out of place or unusual in front of me.


    With my back to the mirror and the awareness of what I might see when I turned back around, it took considerable force of will to turn back towards it. After several deep breaths, I made myself do it.


    Facing the mirror once more, there was no bogeyman inches from the glass ready for his next jump scare. Instead, the sneakers sat underneath the stall again, and I could hear the same rasping, dirty, gravelly voice that I had heard coming out of Cece''s mouth in the car window reflection. The voice echoed around the bathroom, sounding like it was really coming from behind me. From inside of the closed bathroom stall, as the the mirror portrayed.


    "You''ve really done it now," the voice said. "This is¡­This is something special. You¡­ Fucked us. Like screwed the pooch. But you had to take it out back, kill it, and let it set in the sun for a week before screwing it. Oh, I don''t think it could have been possible to screw that up worse. You have no idea what you''ve done. You fucked us. It''s all over."


    Looking at the sneakers in the reflection in the mirror, I had a realization and looked down at what I had on my own feet. They were exactly the same. Those were my shoes that I was seeing sitting in that stall in the reflection in the mirror. As soon as I looked away from the mirror, the voice stopped, cut off mid-word and mid-bathroom echo as abruptly as shutting off a tv. Reluctant, but needing answers, I looked back into the mirror.


    He was gone. I mean, I was gone. I mean, Not-me was not there. The stall was open, the door sitting at the exact angle as the real stall behind me.


    Caught up with the surreal nature of standing close to a mirror and not being able to see myself, I reached out and touched the glass. There was no trace of my hand. Stepping to the side, I looked for Not-me. The bathroom was empty. I didn''t see him.


    I stepped out of line of sight of the mirror and leaned against the wall. My heart was beating hard, and a knot was forming in my stomach as I looked for Not me in the mirror. I leaned over and reached for the faucet to splash cold water on my face, careful to stay out from the line of sight of the mirror.


    As I leaned over the side of the sink, I caught a distorted reflection of my own face in the chrome faucet handle, and the voice was back full force in the bathroom.


    "I didn''t know it was possible to screw up this bad in such a short amount of time, but you did it. You managed it. First I have to go and fucking break my leg coming back, and then once I''m here, well, guess what? Then some dumbass kid''s put in charge. I don''t know who you are, but you''re not me. I don''t remember being this stupid. I was not this stupid before I was born. One hundred and nineteen years I''ve been alive and you¡¯re the stupidest person I¡¯ve ever encountered.


    I needed to make it past one-twenty. There''s a hard limit on life, you see. I''ve been trying to find a workaround. And I do. I finally find one. I gotta die to make it happen, but it''s okay. I can relive the time I''ve already lived, so I don''t have to spend it wasting my life on the things that I''ve already discovered. You know, I dedicated my life to the paranormal. I found it. All of it. Well, almost. I didn''t find enough of it, clearly.


    Breaking my goddamn leg, coming all the goddamn way back here, just so a kid gets to be in charge of my entire damn life and the first thing he does is he goes and he fucks us."


    He continued to ramble this way. The face in the handle, Not me, was distorted, hard to make out. The mouth moved in time with the sounds I heard echoing around the room. I stepped back from the faucet, letting the water run, and the rambling cut off abruptly. Just then, the bathroom door slammed open.


    I had dropped my backpack right in front of the door, and the abrupt motion caused the bag to spill across the room, its contents ripping out all over the floor. Billy George stood in the bathroom door, staring at the mess on the floor.


    "How am I supposed to use the bathroom with this mess, nerd?" he shouted. "Get this trash out of my way."


    And he proceeded to wade into the room, kicking my papers and books and school things aside. I protested on reflex.


    "Hey," I said, stepping towards him.


    Billy, acting upon what was apparently his first reflex for any problem, jabbed me straight in the nose. I fell back against the sink behind me and turned to try and catch myself before I fell on the floor, my hand grabbing the edge of the sink, my face coming level with the faucet, the rambling voice coming back.


    "And then you had to go and give it away. You have no idea what you''ve done. You fucked us. Oh, you fucked us. We are so fucked."


    I pulled myself up and turned away from the voice in time to catch another blow from Billy, this time in my gut. I doubled over and fell on the floor. It was too much. The gut punch, the day, the car accident, Jemima, the lack of reflection. I began to vomit on the bathroom floor.


    ¡°What is going on in there?¡± Someone outside the bathroom shouted.


    I heard movement near the door and a familiar voice barked, "Thomason! George! My office! Now!"


    ***

 Chapter 9, Out of Luck

    The mess took a while to clean up. My backpack had fallen apart in a weird way, both the zipper and two of the seams had fallen apart, so it was now useless as a bag. My stomach hurt, and my nose was bleeding again.


    Mr Pheizer took Billy away, then returned with Clyde, the school custodian. Clyde had gray hair and a slight stoop. He looked ancient to me, but moved with a quick grace. As I wondered how he could move so well, I caught sight of my reflection in a chrome stall handle.


    ¡°It¡¯s called economy of movement,¡± Not-me said, ¡°And no, I can¡¯t read your mind, thank god, it¡¯s obvious what you¡¯re thinking from your face. You¡¯ll want to work on that before trying your hand at poker.¡±


    Not-me had calmed down, and sounded almost civil. I began to stack my books by the wall, losing sight of my reflection. One of the history books had a stylized oversized letter on the cover, filled with a reflective silver. A bloodshot eye peeked out of it.


    I opened my mouth to ask a question, then glanced at Clyde, thinking better of it, and kept quiet.


    ¡°Yes, I¡¯m still mad at you,¡± Not-me said.


    That hadn¡¯t been what I was thinking. I set the book down and stepped into a stall to grab a book that had been kicked behind the toilet. I glanced at the chrome handle on the toilet as I bent down.


    ¡°I¡¯d like to see you work towards a thing for the better part of a half century, only to watch your past self ignore reasonable instructions and blow it all up, and see if you don¡¯t get spitting mad too.¡±


    I opened my mouth to reply, glancing over my shoulder for Clyde, then whispered, ¡°You seem pretty horrible. Are you a zombie? Why do you curse so much?¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m stuck between worlds, not a zombie. You don¡¯t need to whisper. Clyde Fischer, prickly old coot, turns his hearing aid off when he has to be around kids. And you¡¯d curse too if you were incorporeal and needed to throw a tantrum. Can¡¯t stomp your feet on this side.¡±


    I stayed bent over by the toilet, Clyde was ignoring me. After a moment of silence, Not-Me sighed, ¡°Look kid, I¡¯ve always been hard on myself. I didn¡¯t say anything to you I don¡¯t say to myself in my head, but¡­¡± he hesitated, ¡°that¡¯s clearly not fair. When I came back, I was supposed to slip into my own past, not into your head. I¡­ fuck me kid, why couldn¡¯t you just go get that coin?¡±


    ¡°Why are you so upset about the coin? I can just go after school today and get it back, or better yet,¡± it occurred to me I hadn¡¯t even been to see Jemima yet, ¡°I can just not go see her. Jemima said my luck would come back.¡±


    Not-me began chuckling, ¡°Let me tell you something about what that sneaky, tricky Manbo did to us. As long as our blood remains on that charm of hers, it will continue to syphon off our luck. Luck is not what you think, and no, I''m not going to explain it. I know. You want explanations for every damn thing. Well, guess what? I spent my life pursuing explanations for everything, and now I''m stuck as a passenger in a twelve-year-old''s body.


    ¡°Say that we do go to her house, say we do somehow talk her into giving us the charm. Where''s the blood, genius?¡±


    I thought about this problem for a minute. There was no blood on the coin now, because the day had been reset. It occurred to me that there was no problem. ¡°No blood on the coin,¡± I said. ¡°So what''s the problem?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Not-me said. ¡°This coin has no blood on it. It''s not the charm that''s continuing to siphon our luck. We can go get this charm, and it won''t do us any good.


    ¡°Besides which, I never was very good at voodoo, so forget about that. Now, your typical Manbo, if she''s a luck taker, will link a charm, let it build up for a little while, ¡ªmaybe a day or two¡ª until she has enough for something, and then she''ll spend it. Slam, bam, that''s it. That''s the end of the contract.


    ¡°Guess what? That charm already has way more than enough for what it needs. It''s taken my luck as well as yours. I spent years cultivating luck. The draw will increase as the charm falls in on itself, unspent energy drawing more. The charm needs to be spent or break to expel the excess, but it can¡¯t, because it¡¯s not here. The draw might even out if we find a way to live through this¡­¡± he let out a huge sigh. ¡°I feel like the scientist in a bad movie explaining something to the hapless hero.


    ¡°Listen, here''s the long and short of it. We can''t get that charm back. It''s gone. It''s going to continue to siphon our luck. We''re fucked. Here''s the upshot. It''s going to go from ok to bad to worse. You can''t live without luck. Again, no, I''m not explaining it. What we have to do is find a way to refill our luck before this kills us, except that until out souls merge or cancel each other out we can¡¯t die either¡­ Don''t believe me yet? Just watch how today goes.¡±If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I thought about this. I wasn''t sure what to believe. Jemima had told me that he would try to trick me. That I would have to kill him. That was a big question in my mind. I''ve been wanting to ask about what was going on with my reflection, but Not-Me had just given me too much to think about. The question died before I was able to give it voice.


    I reached down for the book behind the toilet. It had wedged itself underneath the water supply line. I tried to pull it straight back out, but it was caught at a funny angle. I started wiggling it back and forth to get it to come free, watching as the cover began to tear. I resigned myself to need to buy new books. My mom was going to have a fit. Then I wondered if any of this stuff was going to matter. What if today reset again?


    There was a sharp metallic plink sound, and suddenly water was spraying everywhere at a volume I couldn''t believe. I sputtered and coughed and held the book up to protect myself. The metal supply line for the toilet had broken off somewhere inside the wall, and water was now geysering out of the hole. It was spraying so hard it was bouncing off the book I was holding as a shield and hitting the ceiling with some remarkable force.


    I heard a shout behind me as Clyde noticed the indoor storm. Instead of running to me, he ran away. Some help he was. I stood and tried to get out of the way of the jet of water before I was completely soaked. It didn¡¯t work.


    After I stepped out of the stall, something inside the wall also broke, and tiles began to fall off the wall behind the toilet, one of them catching the water just right to deflect it back onto the ceiling once more. I was drenched, and the ceiling was now raining.


    I looked around at my school supplies, all of them now in a puddle and hopelessly ruined, or about to be. There was no way I was going to be able to salvage anything. I glanced over at the mirror on the wall, and I could again see a pair of sneakers beneath the toilet stall that wasn''t gushing water.


    "Are you beginning to get the idea?" Not-Me said, his voice echoing around the bathroom.


    ***


    I made my way over to the door, wanting to get out of the water spray and the wet. The bathroom floor had a drain set into the tile, but it was not working. Either my school supplies had clogged it, or it didn''t work. The room was beginning to fill with water, which was a little alarming. I had no idea so much water could come from a toilet supply line. Already it was up to my ankles.


    Reaching the door, I struggled to open it. I was able to pull it open partway, making waves in the water, but the door''s automatic opener, high overhead, whined a mechanical whine, then stuck, leaving the door open a crack. I remembered Billy slamming the door open. Had it broken then, and just now stopped working?


    I tried pulling harder, but the door wouldn''t budge. Desperate to get out of this room and the water spray, I pushed on the door to give myself a little momentum to pull harder, and the door shut. I heard a click overhead as something in the machine that controlled the articulating arm stuck. I pulled hard on the door, but it didn¡¯t budge. Now it was stuck shut.


    Someone on the other side began banging on it, shouting something I couldn¡¯t make out. I stepped back, remembering my backpack, and thought to myself that it would be unlucky if the door were to burst open while I was standing in front of it.


    I stepped back over to the mirror, looking for the sneakers underneath the stall door. After a second, I found them, although they were submerged in water now.


    "Well, that''s unlucky," Not-Me said.


    I shook my head. "Not helpful. Do you have any ideas on how to get us out of here?"


    "Forget about getting out of here, kid. I''m trying to figure out how to get us some luck back."


    "Why are you hiding?" I asked, thinking to myself that it would be a lot easier to talk to Not-Me if I didn''t have to hunt for him like some sort of creeper every time I wanted to say anything.


    "Trying to do you a favor, kid," Not-Me said. "The last time we were face to face, it didn''t go so well."


    I thought about that. I supposed he was talking about when he had been Not-Cece. This was why I had begun thinking of him as a zombie.


    "Yeah," I said, remembering. "You scared the bejesus out of me."


    Not-Me began to chuckle at my word choice. "Bejesus? Christ, kid, I forgot I was ever so young. Yeah, sorry about that," he said.


    "Look," I said, "I''m not scared. You just freaked me out and the rest..." I trailed off as I realized.


    ¡°It was just unlucky,¡± Not-Me finished for me.


    "Yeah," I said.


    "Alright, kid, you asked for it." He opened the stall door and stepped out. It was me, except much like Not-Cece, I was falling apart. He looked like a zombie from a horror movie.


    "Ew," I said. "That''s gross."


    Skin was hanging off Not-Me''s face in tatters, and he had lost one of his eyeballs. There were bloody, festering wounds on Not-me and rot had taken chunks of his flesh off his body. Pieces of Not-Me''s face had gone gray with decay.


    "What''s going on? If you''re not a zombie, what are you?" I asked.


    "Trapped in-between sides," he said. "Anything that I use to talk to you is just going to fall apart," he said. "I don''t really have any control over it," he shrugged, and one of his arms made a boneless move and locked high out of place. He didn''t seem to notice. "I can''t actually affect anything from this side," he said.


    "Why is my reflection gone?" I asked, looking for real me in the mirror.


    Not-Me tapped his chin. "That''s a good question, kid. I''ve never been trapped in-between worlds before. It looks like your reflection is gone because I''m using it."


    "Huh?" I said. "That doesn''t make any sense. That''s not how mirrors work."


    "No, that''s not how you think they work," Not-Me said. "How they actually work is a matter of some debate."


    "No, it''s not," I said.


    "Alright, then explain to me what''s going on, Einstein."


    He had me at that. I was being the closed-minded person in a discussion. I shook my head.


    "Can other people see my reflection?" I asked him.


    "That''s a great question. It sure would make you spooky as shit if they couldn''t. Can you imagine sneaking up on people?"


    I thought about it. I could, actually. I wasn''t sure this sounded like fun. "How do we fix it?" I asked.


    "Who cares, kid? Not having a reflection is the least of your problems right now. What we need to fix is the fact that we''ve basically become a lightning rod for everything that could possibly go wrong, no matter how unlikely."


    "Okay," I said, "do you have any idea how to do that?"


    Not-Me tapped his chin thoughtfully again, the action causing bits of flesh to break away and fall off. I winced at the gruesome image.


    "You know what? Actually, I think maybe we can. I think we need to go back and pay Jemima another visit. I was only there for a short time. I think I know what she did."


    I looked at him. "You told me that she bound us together."


    He shook his head. "No, that''s what I thought happened. I think she did something much worse. But in this case, it might be good for us because perhaps we can get her to do it again."


    ***

 Chapter 10, A little lucky

    Whoever had been banging on the bathroom door gave up. Their insistent pounding seemed to convey the idea they thought I had the ability to open the door and was simply choosing to stay in a slowly flooding room. The water sloshing around my feet was a little distracting, but my mind began to spin with possibilities. Everything so far had been happening to me, and I was getting tired of it.


    I looked at the zombie version of myself reflected back in the mirror, standing almost where my real reflection would be. I resisted the urge to reach up and touch my own face, to make sure I didn¡¯t have pieces of skin hanging off. The muted green tile of the bathroom walls and the dripping water served to help center my mind as I stoped focusing on the gruesome visage and begin thinking.


    "You went back," I said, ¡°and picked up again from an old point in time.¡± I gestured to myself. "Could I do that?" I asked. "Go back to right before she put my blood on the charm?"


    Not-me shook his head, causing more skin to fall off. He was decaying at a rate that would make a claymation horror filmmaker proud.


    "No, that won''t work, kid," said Not-me. "Took me years to set that up. You don''t have the time, the materials, or the ability. I believe if you went back, we would both go back, and probably at that point, we would explode."


    "All right. Let''s see," I said, writing off that idea. I cast around in the water, happily stepping away from the horror show happening in the mirror. Eventually, I found a pencil and a pen. I walked over to my stack of books. The heavier ones had kept the stack weighed down, and they hadn¡¯t floated away. The lower books were completely submerged, but looking at the ones out of the water, I could see dry pages.


    I took the second one down, having not been as exposed to the bathroom rainfall.


    "Algebra 2. Neat," I muttered.


    I carried it to a part of the room that wasn¡¯t raining. The school bathroom was not very large, containing three sinks, four urinals, and two stalls. The smell from the water, doing a deep soak on the high school bathroom floor, was eye-watering. There''s a musk that teenage boys seem to be able to apply to any bathroom they communally occupy. Without any sort of immediate crisis to focus on, the smell was beginning to encroach on my senses.


    I shook my head to focus. Opening the book to a dry page, I quickly sketched the coin that Jemima had used to press to my finger. Studying the symbols, I feel pretty sure I got it right. I stepped close to a urinal, catching a distorted reflection in the chrome handle.


    "This is the symbol," I said to Not-me. "Could we use this like a cork to plug up our luck?"


    "Huh," Not-me said. "I never thought of that.¡±


    ¡°What if we draw it backwards? What would the effect be?"


    I quickly sketched the coin in a reverse image. It''s easy enough to turn it around in my mind.


    "Wait, how the hell did you do that?" Not-me said. "I don''t have eidetic recall. Can you remember everything you''ve seen?"


    I shook my head. "No, not quite, but with a little focus I usually can remember anything I want."


    "This is very interesting, kid. I seem to have stepped into a divergent past," Not-me said.


    I brushed that off. It seemed unimportant at the moment. "What if I drew it on my skin?" I asked. "What gives a symbol like this the ability to take our luck? You can tell or feel that we''re actively losing luck, can''t you?"


    "Yeah, I can feel it. It''s pretty easy on this side," he said.


    "Alright, let''s experiment." I sketched the symbol on my hand. "How about that?"


    "Okay, but you¡¯re wasting your time, kid. You don¡¯t have the authority to¡ª" Not-me was silent for a long moment. ¡°Holy shit.¡±


    He disappeared out of the reflection. I leaned back and forth to try and catch sight of him.


    ¡°What?¡± I asked. There was no answer.


    Closing the book so it didn¡¯t get wet, I sloshed over to the mirror to try and find him. ¡°Come on, don¡¯t leave me hanging, what?¡±


    He stepped back into view, startling me. His appearance slid in from just to the side, like he was standing close to the mirror. More skin had fallen off his face, and I could see his skull underneath. I wondered what would happen when he was just a skeleton.


    "That shouldn''t have worked," he said.


    "What shouldn''t have worked?" I said. "You''re not very good at this whole conversation thing."


    "Oh," he looked apologetic, scratching the back of his head. That might have been a normal gesture, but on zombie me, it was grotesque, as he caused his whole scalp to slough off.


    ¡°That¡¯s so gross,¡± I said. My stomach was protesting after having recently thrown up.


    "That shouldn''t have worked, kid," he said.


    "What do you mean? Seems like simple geometry to me," I said.


    "Well, it hasn''t worked completely. Hang on. Before I try and explain it, draw one on your other hand."


    I did so, not bothering to ask questions. Getting the symbol perfect with my off hand was a little tricky, but I managed it.


    "Holy shit," he said.


    I looked up.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "Yeah, you said that before. Why do you keep cursing?"


    "Because I''m stunned. This shouldn''t work."


    "Why?" I asked. "It seems pretty straightforward to me. It¡¯s just math, isn¡¯t it?"


    "No, it''s not math, you idiot. Look, that symbol should not hold the ability to alter reality if you can''t back it up with authority. Get it?"


    "No," I said.


    "Look, did you spend the last twenty five years in Haiti practicing their religion and apprenticing under a master? I think you would remember if you''d done that, wouldn''t you, kid? Or have you spent the last forty to sixty years studying underneath some of the more powerful deities? It takes a lot longer to build up momentum with some of the other religions, but if you''re willing to put in the slow burn time, there''s a lot more power there."


    "Uh," I said.


    "Exactly. Holy shit, holy shit! It worked. It really worked. You stopped the leak of luck."


    "Leak of luck. That''s a real tongue twister, isn''t it?"


    Not-me''s excitement was palpable. He was shaking his head, which caused more and more skin to fall off, exposing his skull. I was getting the answer to my question. I was now talking to a skull. It didn¡¯t affect his ability to speak.


    ¡°Alter... reality?¡± I asked. ¡°Wait, does this mean I have superpowers?¡± I said, feeling excited about this turn of events for the first time.


    ¡°Uh, no. No, not really.¡±


    I deflated. I got stuck with a zombie for a reflection¡ªa luck deficit. And I didn''t even get superpowers as compensation.


    ¡°So what can I do?¡± I said. ¡°You seem really excited about this. Can I draw more reality-altering math?¡±


    ¡°Uh, actually, you might be able to do some of that. Although what you would probably be most excited about would be the basic psychokinetic abilities that this should have unlocked.¡±


    ¡°Psycho... kuh... what?¡± I was lost. ¡°Wait, psych... oh! Psycho, as in... of the mind. Kinetic, as in movement. You mean telekinesis?¡± I shouted.


    My shouts apparently drew the attention of someone. Whoever had been working on the bathroom door had given up banging on it. But now they resumed, their shouts on the other side indistinct, especially compared to the uncanny clarity of Not-me''s voice whenever I was looking at a reflection.


    I flinched as the window behind me shattered. It wasn''t a large window; it was one of those high up, only-big-enough-to-let-in-light bathroom windows. Looking over, I saw a man''s face peeking through. He was wearing a fireman''s hat. I waved at him. He looked around the room, frowning.


    ¡°Are you in immediate danger?¡± He shouted.


    I realized then that the spraying water was fairly loud. It had become background noise for me as I was talking to Not-me. I sloshed across the room to speak with him.


    ¡°No,¡± I said.


    ¡°Are you hurt?¡±


    ¡°No.¡°


    ¡°Can you open the door from your side?¡±


    I explained to him that the automatic mechanism had jammed shut and now it wouldn''t budge. He craned his neck so he could see the door and then nodded.


    He looked at the window and sighed. ¡°When will they bring the buildings up to code with egress? Hang tight, kid. Stand clear of the door. We''ll get you out.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, as his head disappeared.


    ¡°The fire department''s going to break me out,¡± I said, feeling kind of excited about the prospect.


    I sloshed back over to the mirror and stepped up close, looking back and forth, trying to find Not-me. I spotted him after a minute, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his chin in his hands. He was one hundred percent a skeleton now. Even my clothes seemed to have rotted away and fallen off of him.


    "Tell me how to move stuff with my mind," I said, feeling excited.


    "Huh?" Not-me looked up. "No. We''ve got to figure out how to refill our luck. Otherwise, we''re going to be reliving this day for a long time."


    I cast a wary glance at the pipe spewing water out of the wall. I could see the pipe now; the force of the water was not just coming out in a single jet but had been spraying out in a broad arc, and it had caused more of the wall and the tiles attached to it to slough off and fall into the room. Now I could see the inside of the wall. It was very interesting. I had never seen a wall opened up like this before.


    I turned my attention back to Not-me. "If we step outside, are we going to get struck by lightning?" I asked.


    He shook his head. "No, I don''t think it''s quite that bad yet, but it''s pretty bad. I wouldn''t play near a busy street if I were you. Or use power tools. You know what? Actually, I changed my mind. It''s bad. It''s real bad. I think our only chance is going to be to try and stay near other people."


    "People?" I asked. "Why?"


    "Well, their ambient luck will make it less likely that something off the wall will happen to us."


    "Huh," I said. "People have ambient luck? Is that, like, an aura?"


    "I''m not playing twenty questions, kid. Forget about it. Just, once we get out of here, try and stay near people for as long as you are alive."


    "For as long as I... You make it sound like dying today is a foregone conclusion."


    "Have you made it through yet?" Not-me asked.


    I didn''t have a good answer to that, so I stuck my tongue out at him. "I''m getting tired of dying. And if we''re going to die at the end of the day anyway, then teach me telekinesis. I want to move stuff with my mind," I said.


    "Ugh, you''re such a child. Fine. First, you have to imagine every inch of the action that you want the object that you''re affecting to take. Then you have to exert your will in order to use your authority on the object. The trick is, it requires real muscle to move. Some things are true across the universe. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And in this case, if you want to apply leverage on something, you have to lever from somewhere, and you have to apply force."


    "Huh?" I said, not really following the explanation.


    Not-me shook his head. "Alright. Too complex. I get it. How do I explain this? Think about what you want something to do. Imagine it happening, then use part of yourself to do it, but without moving. Then... Push."


    "Push," I said.


    "Yeah, don''t get hung up on that step. See steps one through three."


    "So what? I just..." I looked over, trying to find an easy target. The room was full of water and floating bits moving back and forth, but I decided it might just be random chance if I tried to move something and it went the direction I wanted in the water. So, I held my book out in front of me, maneuvered myself until the ceiling wasn''t raining on me anymore, and then placed a pencil on top of it.


    I remembered I had seen a magician make a pencil on top of a book spin. I had always wanted to try it. So, I imagined how that pencil had looked spinning. With some force of will, I changed my imagination to picturing the pencil on the book right in front of me spinning. Nothing happened. I had to move it without moving, I remembered.


    I reached up and spun the pencil with my fingers, then stopped it. I focused on picturing how that had felt, but didn¡¯t move my arm this time. I imagined moving my arm. I imagined the pencil spinning. Focusing, I tried again. Still, nothing happened. I sloshed back over to the mirror. After peering back and forth for a second, I found Not-me.


    "It''s not working," I said. "I thought you said I had authority."


    "Yeah. You do have authority. But you don''t have will. That has to be developed."


    "How do I develop will?" I asked.


    "Meditation," he began to tick them off on his fingers. "Hard work. Investment. Practice. Deliberation."


    I let out a deep sigh. "This is going to take forever."


    ¡°Hey, kid.¡± The fireman''s head reappeared in the window. I looked up.


    "Yeah," I said.


    "Come over here."


    I walked over.


    ¡°Stand clear of the door,¡± he said.


    "I''m standing clear," I said. I was all the way across the room. I didn''t know what he wanted. He lifted a walkie-talkie up to his mouth and said, "All right, he''s clear."


    There was a thundering boom. Startled, I turned and looked at the door. I heard a voice squawk on the fireman''s radio. And then the fireman said, "Still clear. Hit it again."


    And again, there was a boom. I wanted to ask what they were doing, but the fireman, leaning in the window, seemed intent on watching the door and speaking into the radio. Five more times this happened, and then there was the sound of wrenching steel. If you''ve never heard the sound of wrenching steel before, I don''t recommend a front-row seat. It screamed like the end of the world. I dropped the book I was holding and threw my hands over my ears.


    Then the noise stopped. I was pretty much too late to do anything about blocking it out, and my ears were ringing. The fireman said something, but at first, I couldn''t hear him over the ringing in my ears.


    I looked up. "What?" I said, shouting, my own voice sounding dull to me.


    The fireman shook his head. ¡°The door twisted in the frame. We''re going to have to cut you out, kid. Sorry. Just unlucky.¡±


    I started laughing at this.


    ¡°Why don''t you try and find a dry place to wait," he said, looking around the bathroom.


    I gave him a thumbs up, then made my way over to the bathroom stall that was not geysering water and crawled up onto the toilet, sitting on the tank with my feet down on the seat. It was nice not to be standing shin-deep in water.


    After a few minutes of sitting there, the water in the adjacent stall stopped spraying, kind of petered out, and ended. I let out a sigh of relief that I didn''t know I''d been holding as the room finally stopped filling up with water.


    Then I waited¡­


    ¡­and waited.


    Feeling bored, I took the pen back out of my pocket and examined the symbols I had drawn on my hands. I began experimenting with doodling more of the symbols around the ones I had already drawn. If two were good, more were better, right?


    After I had drawn five or six on each hand, of varying sizes, I began to work my way up my arm, continuing to doodle. I drew the symbol backwards as well as forwards. Forward was becoming too easy.


    I heard a voice as I worked, somewhere in the background, too indistinct to make out. Doodling the symbols was interesting, and it began to feel important. My luck would be completely good with enough symbols.


    The ringing in my ears was growing louder instead of quieter. Was this how your ears were supposed to react? I began to feel a little bit dizzy. It became harder to focus on making the next symbol. I dropped my pen at some point, it falling into the water. I felt mildly irritated at that. I would have to go fishing for it so I could sit and doodle some more.


    As I bent down to climb off the toilet, I caught sight of my reflection. The voice that I could mildly hear beforehand came thundering in my ears.


    "What are you doing?" the voice shouted.


    "Huh?" I said, not comprehending.


    "Wash the symbols off! Quick!" I heard the voice shout.


    "Wash them off?" That didn¡¯t make any sense. I had just taken all this time to carefully draw each and every one of them.


    "Come on! Before you..." I didn''t get to hear before I what, as I passed out, falling forward off the toilet. I remember thinking it was good there was water to cushion my fall.


    ***

 Chapter 11, Go Again Day 4, Enter The Mosquito

    Someone bumped into me, breaking me from my thoughts. I readjusted my backpack and made my way down the hall, toward my locker. I felt like I had just woken up, stepping out of my dream, directly into my school day. What had I been thinking about?


    I didn¡¯t tend to forget things. The thought was troubling. Why didn¡¯t I remember what I had been thinking about a moment before? It felt important, but I couldn¡¯t lay hold of it. I stopped in front of my locker, my feet bringing me there without my input.


    As I reached for the combination lock a gruff voice startled me,


    ¡°Hey kid! Wake up! We¡¯re bleeding luck!¡±


    I began to turn to see who had spoken when an impact from behind jolted me forward and my feet slipped out from under me, like I was standing on ice. My head hit the ground and then everything around me changed. I blinked, then shut my eyes to process.


    The hallway had gone from packed, to empty, except for me and two arguing adults. A woman was standing with her arms folded, her back to me. In front of her loomed a man, who could only be Coach Pheizer. I kept my eyes shut. I had a monster of a headache and the adults were talking about me, so I wanted to listen.


    ¡°Sandra, I¡¯m telling you, the boy¡¯s fine,¡± Mr Pheizer was saying, ¡°go back to your class and let me handle this.¡±


    ¡°Frank, this is not the military, I need to get this boy to the nurse, so she can check him for a concussion. I don¡¯t appreciate you making me feel like I need to protect him from you.¡±


    ¡°The boy doesn¡¯t need protection Sandra, he needs the opposite, in fact, or life will eat him up. Boys need to get into fights, otherwise they don¡¯t grow up right. I get it, but if I don¡¯t head off our new crackpot-in-residence and hand out punishment before he can, he¡¯ll suspend Thomason. You know how he is with,¡± he made air quotes and made his voice mocking and nasal, ¡°no tolerance.¡±


    I cracked my eyes open to peek at the adults. I had to confirm this was really Mr Pheizer. He was on my side? I thought he hated me.


    Sandra let out a deep sigh, ¡°Yes, I do know how Principal Morrison is, but this boy might have a concussion, Frank. Are we putting policy above the safety of students now?¡±


    ¡°He doesn¡¯t have a concussion¡ª¡°


    She jabbed him in the chest with a finger, ¡°You don¡¯t know that.¡±


    It was his turn to sigh. ¡°Yes, I do. And I can watch for signs of a concussion as well as anyone.¡±


    ¡°What you can do, is write him a day of detention and he can spend it in the nurse¡¯s office, now. I¡¯m not budging on this.¡±


    ¡°Sandra, George is struggling. You know that. If I don¡¯t put them in a room together now, this will happen again. I¡¯ve seen it a thousand times. If they share a punishment, they¡¯ll bond. If not¡­¡± he trailed off.


    Sandra shook her head. ¡°Times are changing Frank, these kids are under more pressure now than ever. You can¡¯t treat them like you were treated and expect them to thrive. You need to do better.¡±


    Mr Pheizer threw his hands up in the air, ¡°Fine! Coddle the boy, watch how it turns out for him. When this happens again, you can apologize.¡±


    He walked away, his footsteps loud in the hall.


    ¡°Patriarchal old fool,¡± Sandra muttered.


    She turned toward me and knelt, putting a hand on my shoulder. ¡°Timothy?¡±


    I opened my eyes slowly, trying to look like I had woken at her touch. How did people wake up, slow and blinky or¡ª


    ¡°Ow,¡± I moaned, the overhead light hurt my eyes now that they were open all the way.


    ¡°I¡¯m Miss Billings. Do you know where you are?¡±


    ¡°In purgatory?¡± I said, keeping my eyes shut. Getting shot had hurt less. ¡°Do you think it would help if I told god I¡¯m sorry?¡±


    ¡°Timothy, this is serious. Do you know where you are?¡±


    I groaned, ¡°In a strange and humorless land?¡±


    ¡°Timothy, do you know where you are?¡±Stolen novel; please report.


    I made a mental note to avoid trying to make Miss Billings laugh. ¡°High school,¡± I muttered.


    ¡°Very good Timothy, do you know what day it is?¡±


    My brain kicked out, ¡®the first day of the rest of my life?¡¯ But I stuck with the humorless truth, ¡°Monday, November tenth. Want the year too? It¡¯s twenty-one thirty-two.¡±


    ¡°Timothy,¡± Miss Billings frowned at me, ¡°this is not an appropriate time for humor. I need you to take this seriously. You may have a concussion.¡±


    I pushed her hand off my shoulder and sat up. This felt like being cared for by a disgruntled DMV receptionist. Moving sent shooting pain through my head, but I didn¡¯t care.


    ¡°Ma¡¯am,¡± I heard myself say, ¡°I told you the date already. Now, if you please, I must see to more important things than this childish line of questioning.¡± My mouth was on autopilot. I hadn¡¯t thought any of that before I said it.


    ¡°Timothy,¡± Miss Billings furrowed her brow, ¡°Today is Friday, November tenth, and the year is twenty twenty-four.¡±


    ***


    I sat in the nurse¡¯s office, looking at her wall calendar. She had turned down the lights for me and given me some Tylenol. She was on the phone with someone now, discussing my symptoms. She said I didn¡¯t have a concussion, then became confused when I answered her questions. She didn¡¯t know what was wrong and wanted to speak with a doctor.


    The date on the wall calendar was wrong. The year was wrong. I was thirsty.


    I¡¯d had three glasses of water, but they hadn¡¯t touched my thirst. I was so thirsty.


    I stood from the bed and went to the sink. The nurse had told me not to drink any more for a while, but I couldn¡¯t take it. I turned on the tap and filled the paper cup she¡¯d given me.


    I drained it, then I filled it again. As I reached to turn off the faucet a voice startled me, ¡°Tell me something, kid.¡± I froze, listening to the man behind me speaking. ¡°If I put a big red button in front of you, and told you not to push it, you would push it, wouldn¡¯t you?¡±


    I turned to face the stranger, but the room was empty. I stared at the empty, quiet room for a long moment.


    The hiss of water reminded me I¡¯d left the faucet running. Frowning, I turned back to shut it off. Again, the voice spoke. ¡°Your little stunt scrambled us up real good.¡±


    I spun quickly around, but the room was still empty. All I accomplished was to refresh my headache.


    ¡°Who¡¯s there?¡± I called.


    The nurse leaned into the room and looked at me. She put the phone to her chest and mouthed, ¡°No water.¡±


    I held my hands up. ¡°Ok,¡± I said.


    I set the cup down and turned off the faucet.


    ¡°You¡¯re not thirsty for water,¡± the voice said.


    ¡°I¡¯m not?¡± I said, holding still.


    ¡°No. You¡¯re thirsty for luck.¡±


    It came back to me then, broken and disjointed. I remembered repeating this day, but I also remembered snippets of being older, like I had dreamed it.


    ¡°While you were busy testing the limits of how far you can stretch a temporal loop before it breaks, I was doing some thinking,¡± said the voice.


    I knew that voice now. It was me, but also not me. I made a face as I remembered watching him fall apart in the mirror.


    ¡°What happened?¡± I asked. ¡°I remember being in the bathroom¡ª¡°


    ¡°You happened, kid. Like a tornado in a trailer park. First you had a great idea, which shouldn¡¯t have worked, then you had a horrible idea, which we shouldn¡¯t have survived.


    ¡°Tell me, why in the name of everything that¡¯s holy, would you, upon learning you have the power to bend reality with a symbol, decide to see how many times you could draw that symbol on your own flesh before your soul exploded?¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± I paused. Why had I done that? ¡°I¡¯m not sure. I wanted to draw two on each hand, then ask what happened, but after I started, I wasn¡¯t able to stop.¡±


    ¡°Screwing with the occult is funny like that. Welp, I got good news and bad news, kid. The bad news is our luck has hit absolute zero. We are become anathema upon the fabric or reality, and every big-bad in existence will try to squash us the second they notice us. The good news is that you created a vortex with that stunt you pulled, creating movement where there should be none. Drowning yourself to avoid the feedback of your actions was brilliant. When we zeroed out, the vortex was still going. It¡¯s now funneling into us.¡±


    ¡°You mean our luck is refilling itself?¡± I was ready to do a mental fist pump.


    ¡°No. We¡¯re still at zero. You opened a channel into our spirit that didn¡¯t exist before.¡±


    ¡°Why is this good news? Wait, our spirit has channels?¡±


    ¡°Yes, like waterways, not like radio or television. It¡¯s good because that means maybe we can survive this mess. Help me test an idea. Draw the symbol again, backwards, on the palm of your hand. Just once. Then go set your hand on the nurse. Pretend you want something, doesn¡¯t matter. See what happens.¡±


    I frowned. ¡°You want to do to someone else what happened to us?¡± A horrible thought occurred to me. ¡°I¡¯ve become a vampire?¡±


    ¡°No! Don¡¯t be ridiculous. You¡¯re a mosquito, not a vampire. If this works, she¡¯ll never miss the luck you take. Or, would you prefer to find out how many different ways we can be killed in a day?¡±


    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, relenting. The idea of dying over and over was not appealing.


    I found a pen and inked the symbol backwards onto my palm. Once I was happy with my work, I blew on my palm to dry the ink. My hand began to tingle. I wasn¡¯t sure if I was feeling the magic, or vortex, or whatever, or if it was all in my head.


    I felt sick to my stomach, nervous at what I was about to do. The nurse sat just on the other side of an opaque window. It was set in a metal frame with a door to the room beside it. She had her back to me, the door open a crack. I let out a shaky breath. I felt so thirsty.


    I walked to the door before I could think anymore. I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder.


    ¡°Miss?¡± I began to say, but I was startled by how my hand behaved.


    I tried to set it on her shoulder, like a polite person would, but when it was close, it leapt toward the contact, like my hand and her shoulder were magnets. I cried out and stumbled, trying to pull away from the movement, but my shoelaces had come undone, and the foot I tried to lift was caught under the other.


    My new human magnet hand saved me, as it didn¡¯t slip and I caught myself. The nurse startled and turned toward me, looking concerned.


    ¡°Are you ok?¡± She asked me.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said and nodded, feeling suddenly lightheaded. I tried not to sway, and I tried to pull my hand away, but it was stuck.


    ¡°Hang on doctor,¡± she said into the phone, and set it down. ¡°Yes Timmy? Did you need something?¡±


    She didn¡¯t seem bothered by my hand, but to me, it felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. I felt sure Mr Pheizer couldn¡¯t have ripped us apart.


    ¡°I just wanted to say,¡± I said, trying to think of what to say.


    Maybe: April fools! I superglued my hand to your shoulder!


    The feeling hit me before I could spit out my improv fail.


    A rush of, something, filled me, like a desperate breath after breaking the surface of a pool. My thirst disappeared, along with my headache and fatigue. I felt better than I could remember feeling. Maybe ever.


    I smiled at the nurse, feeling elated. She blinked, one slow, long blink, then her expression returned to normal. She cocked her head and prompted me, ¡°Yes dear?¡±


    My hand was my own again. I pulled it away, feeling guilty and embarrassed. The nurse looked fine, but I felt like I had picked her pocket.


    ¡°I¡­¡± I began. What could I say? I¡¯m sorry! I just took your luck because I¡¯m the world¡¯s first luck vampire and a possibly evil version of my future self has possessed me and I¡¯m stuck living this day over and over again¡­


    ¡°I¡¯m feeling much better,¡± I said, being honest about something.


    She looked me up and down, ¡°Your color has returned. You do look much better. Let me finish up with the doctor and I¡¯ll come take another look at you.¡±


    I retreated to the bed and sat on the noisy paper. I kicked my feet, feeling like I could run a mile. My stomach twisted and I looked down at my palm.


    The symbol was gone!


    Alarmed, I jumped up and tiptoed to where I could see the nurse¡¯s shoulder. I expected to see the ink staining her shirt, but it was as empty of the symbol as my hand was.


    I checked my other hand, just to make sure I was not crazy. Both hands were symbol free. I realized this didn¡¯t mean I wasn¡¯t crazy.


    ***

 Chapter 12, Ripples and Reflections

    As the nurse looked me over, once more checking my pupils and asking me questions, I watched her for some sort of negative effect. I had taken her luck. I was a vampire. She was doomed. I¡¯d doomed someone.


    Except that she seemed perfectly fine. She didn¡¯t break everything she touched, or hurt herself or drop anything or even seem to be in any less of a chipper mood than she had been when I¡¯d come in.


    Her name was Jolene Streep. She was somewhere in her mid-to late fifties with a comfortable midwestern figure.


    ¡°Well Timmy,¡± said Mrs Streep. ¡°It looks to me like you¡¯re just about right as rain. We¡¯re going to have to chalk this up to the wonders of Tylenol.¡±


    I could hear Not-me laughing, as I glanced at the reflection in the stethoscope, ¡°Tylenol my ass, it worked! We¡¯re not completely fucked!¡±


    I glanced away quickly, silencing the voice. Mrs Streep seemed like the kind of person who never cursed, or spent time around anyone who did. I felt my face heat with embarrassment as Not-me cursed from her stethoscope.


    ¡°I¡¯d like to keep you here for the rest of the day,¡± Mrs Streep said. ¡°You were quite confused when you came in, and I wanna keep and eye on you. I¡¯ll have your lunch and homework brought in.¡±


    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°Thank you Mrs Streep.¡±


    This was fine with me. I wanted to stay too, to see what disaster I¡¯d wrought. My good mood kept returning, despite my worry. I felt grumpy that I felt cheerful. I had just fed on my first victim and was high on the joy of killing.


    Mrs Streep winked at me and bustled over to her desk. After sitting, she peeked back in, her rosy cheeks bunching up with her smile. ¡°Do you want a book to look at dear?¡±


    ¡°No thank you,¡± I managed.


    She went back to her work and I cast around the room for something reflective, but out of her line of sight. I came up with an actual hand mirror. One of those cheap plastic ones, shaped like a hairbrush. I held it up to my face. There was no sign of Not-me. Not being able to see my reflection was really weird. It reinforced that I was now a creature of the night.


    I glanced at the window, where the bright sunshine was shining off the blinds. I walked over, entranced by light. I knew what I had to do. I needed to end it, before I struck again. I pulled the cord, withdrawing the blinds, letting the warm light fall on my face. Outside, the sun shone on green grass. Birds were singing and there was a tall tree with big green leaves. I didn¡¯t melt or catch fire.


    I glanced at Mrs Streep. She was humming as she worked. I held the mirror up again. Again, I didn¡¯t see Not-me. I slowly panned the room, looking for him. When I got to Mrs Streep, she leaned back and poked her head in the room again.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Said Not-me, using Mrs Streep. Her face had gone gray and she had an ugly expression.


    I was so startled I nearly dropped the mirror. I spun around, my sneakers squeaking as I did. The noise caused the real Mrs Streep to lean in. She looked rosy and cheerful as ever.


    ¡°Oh, what a good idea,¡± she said. ¡°Letting in some sunshine to brighten things up.¡±


    She went back to what she had been doing. I turned back lifting the mirror again. ¡°What am I doing?¡± I said, keeping my voice down. ¡°What are you doing? You can¡¯t use her. What happened to zombie me?¡±


    Not-me walked into the room using zombie Mrs Streep. ¡°Zombie me?¡± He said. ¡°That may be the most unflattering reference to my appearance I¡¯ve ever heard. What do you mean what am I doing? I thought you wanted to talk.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re making a nice lady fall apart!¡± I hissed. ¡°I¡¯ve already doomed her with my evil thirst, and now your desecrating her memory! Stop it! Just use my skeleton.¡±


    ¡°Doomed her? Your evil¡­ wow. I forgot how full of monsters and junk my head was at your age. Let¡¯s get this straight. Your figure fell apart. I can¡¯t use it, because it¡¯s less than dust now. I told you anything I use to speak with you falls apart. You¡¯re not a vampire, and the worst that will happen to her with the luck we took is she may lose her keys, maybe she¡¯ll break a nail. Unbelievable. I don¡¯t remember being this dramatic.¡±


    ¡°But,¡± I sputtered, trying to decide whether to believe Not-me. The real problem was, he sounded reasonable. He just looked evil. ¡°But, there¡¯s been a reset since you used my reflection to speak to me. Isn¡¯t it back?¡±


    ¡°Nope. It¡¯s gone. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s coming back.¡±


    ¡°What happens when you destroy someone else¡¯s reflection? Do they become reflectively handicapped too?¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    ¡°Good question actually. I don¡¯t know. I suspect only your ability to see them in reflections is affected. Go hand Mrs Streep the mirror and tell her you want to show her a magic trick. We can test two things at once.¡±


    ¡°Magic? You mean have her try to see me over her shoulder or something? What¡¯s the second thing?¡±


    ¡°Mrs Streep can¡¯t resist checking her makeup. That¡¯s why the mirror is here. She will closely inspect her face. If it looks any different to her, you¡¯ll see right away.¡±


    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. I was beginning to feel a little better.


    I walked over and and got her attention. ¡°Excuse me Miss, but I wanted to show you a magic trick.¡±


    She looked up, her eyes bright, looking interested. ¡°Oh goodie!¡± She said. ¡°I love magic.¡±


    I wondered at how years of life had made this woman cheerful and happy, while it had made me grumpy and crass. Setting that aside, I handed her the mirror and told her the plan. She would turn around and try to find me with the mirror. I would magically be gone, but she could turn back anytime she chose and I would magically be right there.


    She agreed, but like she was playing along to humor a child. She exaggerated her motions turning slowly and counted before she looked. How young did she think I was?


    ¡°Oh my!¡± She said. ¡°You¡¯re gone! I¡¯m going to look now.¡± She turned back and gasped, this was genuine. ¡°How did you get so close?¡± She eyed me. ¡°That was like real magic¡­ can you do it again?¡±


    I grinned at her. ¡°Try to catch me,¡± I said. I felt doubtful she even looked the first time.


    She turned quickly this time, bringing the mirror up and actually looking for me. I could see her face in the mirror as she panned back and forth across the room. She even cheated and leaned a little bit to try and see which corner I was hiding in. Well, that confirmed that, I thought to myself.


    Then, without any warning, she whipped around and seeing me standing right there, screamed. She couldn''t have made my day any brighter if she''d been deliberately trying. I had an enormous grin plastered on my face.


    A little breathless, she looked me in the eye. "Oh, how did you do that?" she said, stunned.


    Grinning wider, I said, "Magic."


    "Wow, you know, they said to expect good things from you, but I had no idea you were so talented," she said.


    "They did?" I said, curious. I found the more interaction I had with Mrs Streep, the more I liked her. "They said to expect good things?" I prompted.


    She nodded, "Indeed, yes... That was really quite something. I''m afraid I may have disturbed someone, with my," she put a hand over her mouth, ¡°little outburst.¡±


    She held the mirror up and checked her reflection. She fluffed her hair. She looked herself in the eye. Then she checked her cheeks and her lipstick.


    Then she set the mirror down on her desk. "Timmy, if you''ll excuse me," she said, "I''ve really got to go freshen up. I''ll be right back. You just be a good boy and stay in here." Then she bustled out.


    I walked over and picked up the mirror. Turning it, I found the grotesque Not-Mrs-Streep. I nearly screamed. She had weeping sores all over her gray face, and was wearing a demonic smile.


    ¡°Well,¡± said Not-Mrs-Streep, ¡°that answers that. Looks like her reflection is fine, and yours is gone for everyone.¡±


    ¡°Hang on,¡± I said. ¡°So, my reflection is just gone forever?¡±


    ¡°I don''t know, kid,¡± he said. ¡°Yours is actually the first case I''ve ever heard of.¡±


    ¡°You mean, ours?¡± I said.


    He shook his head. ¡°You know, I''m not actually sure if we are the same person anymore.¡±


    ¡°You said that. But why is that important? Don¡¯t we still have to save the world, or something?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the tough part kid, and why I bring it up. I didn¡¯t become a luck vampire when I was your age.¡±


    ¡°I thought you said I wasn¡¯t a vampire!¡±


    ¡°Whatever, it explains your condition well enough. You prefer I called you a mosquito?¡±


    ¡°No. And so what you didn¡¯t become a luck vampire? I bet you also didn¡¯t get possessed by your future self. How does that stop the need to save the things and the people?¡±


    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s even possible now, for you to end up in the same future I did.¡±


    ¡°So?¡±


    ¡°So, we have no way to know if the disaster will happen, or if it will happen the same way. My plan had been to guide you into a near identical future, then change things at a crucial juncture. Now¡­¡±


    ¡°Now what? Just tell me the future and we can plan to change it.¡±


    ¡°Telling you the future does change it! That¡¯s why I¡¯ve resisted answering your questions.¡±


    ¡°Problem solved then?¡±


    ¡°It changes the future in unpredictable ways. It could be a worse future if I tell you! In fact, if that Manbo hadn¡¯t tried to channel me and fixed me to you the way she did; I could have guided you until I could take over.¡±


    ¡°Take over?¡±


    ¡°Sure kid, if we ended up in the same future, we¡¯d be the same person eventually.¡±


    ¡°So she was right! You are trying to take my soul!¡±


    ¡°Take your¡­ we are literally already the same person. I¡¯m not taking anything. I¡¯m saving people. Get your head out of your ass.¡±


    ¡°I thought you said we are not the same person. Which is it?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the point! You have knowledge I didn¡¯t have at your age, hell, you have authority and weird powers I didn¡¯t have. Yesterday, our pasts were identical. Today, they are not. To get close to the disaster, you have to live my life, but as a luck vampire.¡±


    I thought about this for a little while. "If it''s that important, why don''t we give it a try," I said.


    "Give it a try? That means we''ve got to go back to the beginning again."


    "Go back to the beginning?" I asked.


    "Yeah," Not-me said. "You''ve got to go get punched in the face. By Billy. And then you''ve got to get three weeks'' detention and be desperate enough to show off to Cece."


    "Oh yeah." It seemed like a long time ago that Cece had taken me out on a job. I remembered now. ¡°She was involved with something. She told me it was new wave drugs.¡±


    Not-me chuckled darkly. "Yeah, I shouldn''t tell you about those."


    "Why?" I said. "I thought they were important to this."


    "It''s going to make it harder for you to play the wide-eyed part if you know what''s going on."


    "What¡¯s going on?" I said. "Go back to the beginning? Does that mean we''ve got to die again?"


    Not-me chuckled. "Life''s cruel, isn''t it, kid?"


    "How are we going to do that?" I said. "You expect me to what? Go off myself somehow?"


    "Kid," Not-me said, "our luck''s gonna run out."


    "What?" I said.


    Not-me chuckled again. "Yep. All you have to do is not feed. Luck will take its course and the loop will reset itself."


    "Wait," I said. "I thought I fixed us. I refilled our luck. Is it still draining?"


    "No," Not-me said. "It''s worse than that. It hit an absolute zero. You know what that means?"


    "It''s empty," I said.


    "No, that doesn''t mean it''s empty. It means it stopped moving. Everything that exists has a level of ambient luck. The attention of powerful spirits and the divine affects how much luck you have. But the important thing is that they all have it. People. They¡¯re generating it.


    ¡°Well, ours stopped moving. It ain''t draining and it ain''t generating. We don''t have the attention of anything. I suspect that¡¯s why we have no reflection. You remember I told you that we had become anathema on the fabric of existence?"


    "Yeah," I said. "I thought you were being poetic."


    He laughed. He laughed and laughed and then looked me in the eye with the melting face of Mrs. Streep. "No, kid, that ain''t it at all. We fell off the radar. We got the attention of nothing. We are a bug and everything out there is going to want to squash us when they see us. When we use up our luck, if we don''t feed and get more, we will naturally fall victim to the cruelty of the world and the attentions of the things that lay underneath."


    A chill passed down my spine. It was like his words had a weight that caused the world around us to ripple, like a stone thrown into a pond. I shook my head.


    "How do we use up our luck?" I said.


    "Just living," Not-me said. "People don''t know how much luck they need just to get through a day. That hit that you took off the nurse, that won''t be enough."


    "Enough for what?" I said.


    "To make it all the way through tonight. You''ll see." He smiled, a twisted, melted, bloody, sore-ridden smile that filled me with dread.


    ***

 Chapter 13, Spirit Realm 101 And Pseudonyms

    I opened my mouth to try and change the subject to a more friendly topic after that extremely morbid declaration, accompanied by not-me''s ability to smile like a complete lunatic monster. But right at that second, Mrs. Streep bustled back in. She was humming a merry tune, and as I looked up, I saw that she had redone her makeup. She looked up at where I stood in front of her desk holding her little hand mirror, and she gasped.


    "Oh!" she said, hurrying over. She reached past me and clicked something on the computer. I turned and looked. The monitor was blank, which confused me because it had been blank when I had walked up to it. She seemed to have put it to sleep or turned it off before she had left, and I had thought nothing of it, being way too distracted speaking about the need to let my luck run out and die.


    I pushed that out of my mind. Looking at the computer and then at Mrs. Streep, she looked a little worried.


    "You didn''t read anything there, did you?" she asked, sounding concerned.


    I shook my head. "No," I said, honestly.


    "Oh, good," she breathed. "Very good," she said. "I wouldn''t want to..." She fumbled for a second, looking unsure of what she wouldn''t want to do. "Shock your young sensibilities," she said, "with confidential patient knowledge, you know," she added, blushing.


    I wasn''t sure what was going on, but I assured her, "No, I didn¡¯t read any patient files. When I came over here, the monitor was off."


    She seemed visibly relieved at that. She deflated. "Oh, thank God," she said, and then covered her mouth with her hand. "Excuse me, I meant thank goodness."


    I eyed her. This seemed too much fuss to make about patient confidentiality. Maybe she''d gotten in trouble before. I knew what that was like.


    I walked back into the other room. She asked for the mirror, so I gave that back. Returning to the bed, determined to find something useful to do with my time, I got out one of my school books, deciding to read it. Perhaps I would find something interesting inside.


    ***


    The school textbook was written with some sort of otherworldly sorcery. The longer I looked at it, the sleepier I got. I shook my head, looking up and pinching the bridge of my nose. I didn''t tend to get sleepy when I read things.


    ¡®This book must be enchanted,¡¯ I thought to myself.


    Either that or the author had discovered some sort of secret hypnotic science to embed the text with. Layered suggestions of sleepiness and boredom. That was definitely it. This book was written by an evil mastermind. Maybe that''s what magic was. Maybe magic was just the ability to apply knowledge beyond current understanding.


    Just then, something scuttled across the floor like a mouse running across the room. Except this was closer to the size of a hamster or a guinea pig. It was quick, small, and gray.


    I looked up, but as soon as I looked, I didn''t see anything. I leaned forward off the table, being as careful as I could not to crinkle the table paper and spook whatever rodent had found its way inside. But despite leaning forward and being able to see underneath the counters and the edges of the bed, I didn''t see anything.


    That was strange. With the bright linoleum tiles, the white cabinets, and the curved vinyl toe kick lining the wall, there was nowhere for a little creature to go. I could see pretty much the whole room. Confused, I closed my book and hopped down. The bed had drawers and reminded me of the type you see in hospitals. Also, it was on casters, so there was a little room underneath. It looked too small for a creature the size of what I thought I saw. But what I ¡°thought¡± I saw was quickly becoming more firmly lodged in my mind.


    As I laid down and looked under the bed, I could clearly see the linoleum floor through to the other side. There was some dust underneath and a tongue depressor. I stood up, puzzled. I felt sure I had seen something. As quietly as I could, I stepped so that I could peer into the room where Mrs. Streep sat at her desk. She was sitting at her computer, merrily typing away.


    I leaned down and looked. Nothing under her desk or her chair. The room she was in was also well lit. The floor was empty. It wasn''t very wide, although perhaps a creature could have slipped between the cabinets on the other side of her. Curiosity overcame me at this point. Mrs. Streep was so intent on whatever it was she was typing that she didn''t look up.


    I walked a little bit further, angling my line of sight, so that I could catch a glimpse of her screen over her shoulder. I knew I shouldn''t, but she had made such a fuss about it earlier that I really wanted to see what she was doing. Was she playing a game? I wanted to know what she was playing. I looked at her fingers. No, she was definitely typing. She was smiling and humming to herself. Every now and then, she would giggle and start humming a new tune. She was certainly enjoying her work.


    Moving far enough behind her that I could see the monitor over her shoulder, I became even more puzzled. It was completely blank. It wasn''t even on, as far as I could tell. The monitor was just a flat black, the same thing that any screen for any computer that''s unpowered looks like.


    She stopped typing, bringing her hand up to her chin. She tilted her head back and looked up. I held my breath, trying not to make any noise and draw her attention. After a second, she grinned and bit her knuckle, letting out a little happy noise. She then set to typing whatever it was that was making her so happy.


    I felt deeply confused at this point and embarrassed at having looked. I backed away as quickly as silence allowed. Thankfully, I was able to get out of her line of sight before she noticed I had spied. I got myself another drink of water, climbed up on the bed, and tried to read a little bit more of my book. This time trying to decipher the code that the genius who had written it had layered into the text. I wondered if this text only worked on me, or if anyone who tried to read it would grow sleepy. I needed to find a way to test that.Stolen story; please report.


    After about a paragraph, in which I was already succumbing to the drowsy effects of the book''s magic, something scuttled across the floor once more.


    I looked up quickly this time, determined to catch it. The second I looked, it was again gone. I closed the book and fished around the room for something reflective. I needed to know if this was in my imagination or if there was something going on.


    ***


    My search yielded a spoon, of all things. This was clearly not a room in which spoons belonged. However, upon opening one of the drawers, I found a gathering of disorganized clutter, which contained a simple metal spoon. I took the spoon and closed the drawer, careful to remain quiet. Mrs. Streep continued to type, and I had no desire to break her creative fugue.


    The spoon gave me a distorted reflection, which always seemed easier to catch sight of Not-me when I held it up. I was able to see distorted facial features, which at this point I knew were Mrs. Streep''s. I was glad for the distortion because it made it hard to make out what disgusting things "Not-me''s" presence was doing to poor Mrs. Streep''s reflection.


    ¡°I saw you crept over and snuck a peek. Was it educational?¡± He said, a smile in his voice.


    ¡°What?¡± I said, confused.


    "At what Mrs. Streep is writing?"


    I blinked.


    "She''s writing?¡± I kept my voice to whisper. ¡°I see that she''s typing at her computer. But when I looked, the monitor was off.¡±


    "Uh-oh," not me, said. "This could be a problem."


    "What could?¡± I said.


    "I can read the monitor. You''re telling me you can''t see anything on there. Are you sure?"


    "Yes," I said.


    "Crap," not me, said. "This is going to complicate things."


    "What?" I said.


    "We need to test it. I don''t want to worry you about it yet. Why''d you get the spoon, kid? I was enjoying reading over her shoulder.¡±


    ¡°What is she writing?" I said.


    "Romance."


    "Wait, What?"


    "Romance. She''s a romance novelist. She moonlights as a nurse. She''s actually making a good enough living that she has no need to be here at the school, but she enjoys interacting with kids."


    "What is romance?" I said. "That''s... Wait, is that a book genre?" Something clicked. I had seen romance as a book genre in the library. The books tended to have women who looked close to fainting, or men who had forgotten to put on shirts. But that was okay. They were clothed in muscle.


    "Huh. Romance," I said. "What''s it about?"


    Not me started laughing at this. "It''s about romance. You''ll find out when you''re older. Maybe you should pick up one of her books. She writes under the pseudonym, ''Pen is the Mighty.'' You''ll frequently see it on book jackets, ''P.I. The Mighty.'' It''s pretty clever."


    I shook my head. "What is clever about that? Is this a reference to the pen being mightier than the sword?"


    "Forget it, kid. You''ll get it when you''re older. What''s up? The longer I talk to you, the quicker this thing falls apart."


    I saw in the spoon''s reflection he was gesturing at himself. That was clearly true, from what I could see, but I was glad I could not see the details.


    "Isn''t this dangerous future knowledge that you¡¯ve just given me?" I said to him.


    "What? No. You found out she was a romance novelist the first time you came into her office, you little sneak. You can''t help sticking your nose in other people''s business.¡±


    I frowned. Was that true about me? Was I a snoop? I sighed. Now was not the time to have a moral debate with my zombie future self. I would clearly lose... to somebody who should clearly lose. It wasn''t fair.


    "No," I said. "What I want to know is if what I''m seeing is real, or a part of this... whole thing that''s happening to me, or if I imagined it."


    "I don''t know, kid. What thing are you seeing?"


    The timing was absolute perfection. It scuttled across the floor right as I was going to try and explain it. I looked again. It was gone when I looked, but it had been headed for Mrs. Streep''s part of the nurse''s office.


    "That," I said, "it just ran across the floor. Did you see it?"


    "Oh, you can see that?" not me, said.


    "So you could see it too. Where did it go?


    ¡°Ah, alright. Well, you''re going to make a fool of yourself if I don''t explain this. You''re seeing into the spirit realm. That is what I like to refer to as an imp, although some cultures would disagree. In classic Americana lore, this became known as a gremlin."


    "A gremlin," I said. "You mean, like, one of those little creatures that''s supposed to break machines?"


    "Yeah," said Not-me. "That''s not very far off from the truth."


    "What is it?" I said.


    "It''s a gremlin. What do you want from me?"


    "No, seriously. What is it? And where did it go?"


    "Oh, you can''t see it? Try looking for it with your peripheral vision. It will be easiest to do that if you keep your focus on the spoon, or on a book, or something, and try to catch it out of the corner of your eye. Resist the urge to look directly at it. If you¡¯re not practiced, direct sight will make it disappear."


    I tried this, keeping my focus on the spoon and slowly moving my vision around so I could look out of the corner of my eye. I caught sight of it. It was gray and indistinct, seen only out of the corner of my vision, but it was climbing the chair to where Mrs. Streep was.


    "What''s it doing?" I hissed. "We¡¯ve got to stop it!"


    "No, you don''t have to stop it, you fool. It''s just going to take something out of her pocket and hide it. This appears to be the consequence that comes of us having taken some of her luck."


    "What? You mean we summoned that thing?"


    "Stop!" not me said. "You''re making it sound like a demon. We didn''t summon shit. That," not me sort of pointed, sort of gestured at the gremlin, "is a natural part of existence. These things are almost like machines themselves. They live to complete their master''s bidding. They can''t go anywhere they don''t have permission to go. They can''t do anything they don''t have permission to do. They are searching for agreement, and when they find it, they will follow through by causing things to happen that wouldn''t be allowed to if the person had more luck."


    "What?" I said.


    "Think about it this way. There are realms and domains. A Big-Bad''s in charge of an area. Big-bad gives authority to some minions to accomplish stuff on his behalf. Those minions are in charge of smaller areas, right? Is this sounding like a kingdom yet? The minions are in charge of large areas. They need gangs to run things. The gangs use automated bots to enforce most times, and so things that are outside of favor or permission with Big-Bad get sent a little bot, or gremlin if you want, who come and enforce the will of Big-Bad so things come into alignment. It''s sort of an auto-cleanup of the universe. Lose a little luck, attract a little gremlin. Lose a lot of luck, attract the attention of someone who has the oversight of the gremlins. He''s got numerous methods at his disposal to try and correct you. If you are unlucky enough to attract the attention of the overseer you are going to get squashed. He has ways upon ways of removing things that don''t fit his picture of his little kingdom. I don¡¯t need to mention the Big-Bad. That belongs in the realm of gods. Welcome to spirit realm 101 kid. Leave the thing alone. It''s probably going to take something that she wants and hide it."


    I watched as the gray indistinct figure rifled through Mrs. Streep''s pockets. After a second, it emerged with something. I couldn''t see it well enough to tell what it was. I kept the gray thing in my peripheral vision. It carried the thing above its head as it climbed down the chair and then across the floor. It scuttled to the cabinets in my part of the room. It walked up the cabinet without slowing. Upon reaching the top, it walked across the countertop, found a place, and set whatever it had taken down. Having accomplished this, it walked to the edge of the counter, walked down the cabinet, walked across the floor, and scuttled out of the room.


    I blinked at Not-Me and the spoon.


    "Gremlins!" I said.


    I moved the spoon down so that I didn''t have to watch Not-Me fall apart, and walked over to inspect what had been set in a hiding place behind a stack of papers. It was a little USB stick. I cocked my head at this. I didn''t know anyone used these anymore. Everything was so much easier to just transfer online.


    The sound of typing caught my attention. I picked the USB stick up and moved it to the front of the papers. I decided not to try and hand it to Mrs. Streep. That might raise more questions that I didn''t want to talk about. But at least I was putting the thing where she would find it.


    I sat back down on the bed and glanced down at the spoon.


    "Hey!" said not me. "What the hell did you do?"


    I looked down at Not-me. "What?"


    "Never undo the work of a gremlin within seventy-five minutes of it having done it."


    "What?" I asked. "Seventy-five minutes? That''s a really odd and specific number. What are you talking about?"


    "You need to give the gremlin time to report back that it accomplished its task."


    "So?" I said, "I didn''t interrupt it. It hid it."


    "Kid, didn''t I tell you it was more like a machine?"


    "Yes," I said, feeling exasperated.


    "Well, machines have odd ways of keeping track of things. The gremlin has been alerted that its task has been undone and is going to come back."


    "So?" I said.


    "It''s going to bring help when it comes back, jackass. What do you think is going to happen to you, and Mrs. Streep and probably this whole damn room when the gremlin returns with the gang leader?"


    ***

 Chapter 14, Consequences and decisions

    The warmth slowly crept out of the room as I processed what Not-me had told me. I noticed other aspects of the place, like the temperature shift had caused my perception to shift with it. Instead of smelling clean, the antiseptic smell of the nurse''s office took on a bitter stink. My nose itched, and I wanted to get outside. What I wanted was to do something. I shook my head.


    ¡°No,¡± I said.


    I made a decision. Not-me didn''t know what was best for me all the time. He said that we were completely out of options with the luck curse. But I figured it out. I could figure this out too. It''s what I did. I found answers. I solved problems. This is what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to find Dad.


    I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I couldn''t think about Dad now. I couldn''t afford to cry. There was stuff to do. I raised the spoon and spoke.


    "Okay. What is going to come? And don''t just repeat what you told me before explaining. I need to understand."


    "You know, I genuinely don''t know," said Not-me. "There''s some spooky, scary stuff out there, and I don''t know what was in charge of this local area when I was your age. I never stuck my nose in it and found out."


    I raised an eyebrow. "Stuck my nose in it?"


    "Yeah," said Not-me. "You''re like a bull in a china shop. The minute you see something out of place that might be supernatural, paranormal, or potentially dangerous, you stick your hand in and find the button and press it."


    "Hey," I said. "That''s not fair."


    "Oh," said Not-me. "Tell me one instance when you saw something potentially paranormal and dangerous and didn''t touch it."


    I couldn''t think of anything. He had me there, but it was a tilted argument to begin with because my whole set of paranormal experiences had begun when he had apparently possessed me.


    ¡®Stop now,¡¯ I thought.


    I was literally arguing with myself.


    "Forget about it. Okay, something''s coming. You don''t know what. Probably scary. Is it after me for touching the stick? Or is it after Mrs. Streep for not having received the bizarre consequences of us taking some of her luck?"


    Not-me shook his head. "It''ll be tagged to the USB stick, kid. The mission didn''t get completed. Only something that can interact with the supernatural would have been able to interfere. No one else would have noticed. It''s a special quality that gremlins have. People who don''t know how to look, don''t see them. They also don''t see what they''re doing. How do you think they get away with so much shit?"


    I shrugged. "I don''t know. I only learned about them like a minute ago. What do they get away with?"


    "That''s not important. Why are you asking? This thing''s falling apart." I could see bits of Mrs. Streep''s skull in the spoon''s reflection. This was not an image that I ever wanted to have. The antiseptic smell of the room became sharper, and I winced as I began to think what formaldehyde smelled like, the memory coming back sharp and clear.


    "Okay, it''s tagged to the USB. So does that mean that if I pick up that USB stick and go somewhere with it, that it will follow the stick?"


    "Yeah, that''s what it''s gonna do. So what? Honestly, this wasn''t how I wanted to reset this loop, but it''ll work as well as anything."


    "Fuck that," I said.


    "Oh, using big boy words now, huh?" Not-me said.


    "No, seriously," I said. "I''m not going to lay down and die. That sounds like the stupidest thing I''ve heard of. We need to find out all that we can so we can succeed."


    "No, you don''t," Not-me said. "You need to keep your head fairly empty so you can head towards the right future."


    "I think you''re wrong," I said. "I think you were wrong about what would happen when you came back. I think you were wrong about what happened when you possessed me. I think you were wrong about us being..." I glanced up at Mrs. Streep, almost having repeated Not-me''s language verbatim, and then thought better of it. "Out of luck," I finished. "And I think you''re wrong about how we head into the correct future. And I''m going to try something."


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I grabbed the USB stick. Moving as quietly as I could, I left the room. I''m sure Mrs. Streep would eventually notice my absence, but I had bigger fish to fry, as the old adage goes. I moved down the halls at a walk. The surest way to attract attention is to look like you don''t want attention or to run. I was pretty good at being ignored. I had been practicing it for a long time now.


    I walked down the long hall past the lockers and exited the building, then crossed a sidewalk and a green lawn to reach a building that housed the principal''s office, the counselor''s offices, and an administration office in which an overworked secretary handled the majority of everyone else''s jobs from the look of things. I trotted up the steps, went inside, and knocked as I stepped in.


    I had found that if you were assertive enough in your own certainty, most of the time, you could get away with being believed, even if you weren''t supposed to. I had picked up a bad habit a couple of years back of telling people things that I knew for a fact were untrue. But I wanted to see if the people that I was telling these things to would call me out on it and say, "No, it''s not true," or "Wow, no, that''s not how that works," or "That''s a lie." What I found was people, unless they''re babying you, are reluctant to confront and correct. And oftentimes, they''ll believe even the absurd. My experiment ended in more failure than anything, and I was known by all the kids in the neighborhood that we had moved from as an outrageous liar. I supposed it was a fair reputation, but it felt unjustified, because I had been ready to own up to the lie, curious who was going to call me out on it, when no one ever did.


    So, I pushed open the office door, lightly knocking as I peeked my head in. "Excuse me," I said. "Mrs. Streep sent me here to use the phone so I can call my mom for a ride."


    "Oh, it''s over there, dear," the woman behind the desk said. I didn''t remember her name. I glanced at the nameplate on the desk. Mrs. Harwood, it read. Names were weird. I wanted names to make more sense, to have an important significance or meaning or an underlying logic behind them. In storybooks I had read, your true name held a certain amount of power. And in old stories, people were named after deeds or inherently embedded traits or qualities that they possessed. Names seemed to hold less significance now. The woman behind the desk didn''t look like a hardwood or any sort of woodworker that I could tell at all.


    I walked over to the phone, picked it up, and dialed Cece''s number from memory. She picked up on the third ring.


    "If this is spam, I''m going to find your mother and give her a bad day," was the first thing that she said.


    "Hey, creeper," I said.


    "Oh, hey, freak. What''s shaking?" There was a pause. "Hey, why aren''t you at school, kiddo?"


    "I need you to come pick me up."


    "I''ll be there. Where you at?"


    "I''m still at the school. I''ve got an important errand I need to run, and it''s urgent. I need you to take me to see Jemima."


    "Whoa, freak. You just freaked me out on another level. How do you know about Jemima?"


    "It''s a long story," I said. "I don''t even know if you want to know it. But you''re welcome to hear it. We need to get there ASAP. It''s probably going to be dangerous," I said.


    "Well, shit yeah, son," Cece said, sounding genuinely excited. "Count me in. I''m there." There was another pause. "All right, I am four miles away, residential roads. I''ll be there in eight minutes. Be near the road. Let''s go." She ended the call.


    I hung up and glanced at the lady behind the desk. She didn''t appear to have listened to my conversation. I thanked her and excused myself and went to stand near the road. I didn''t know how Cece planned to make four miles in eight minutes on residential streets, and I didn''t want to know. What I did know is that she would be here in eight minutes. She didn''t exaggerate. It was simply not in her nature.


    ***


    I timed her. Cece made it in seven and a half minutes. She came to a screeching stop, tires smoking. She leaned across the car and threw open the passenger door.


    ¡°Get in!¡± She shouted.


    Her eyes grew wide as she looked behind me.


    I turned to look. There was a figure in a dark cloak sliding across the lawn toward me. When I looked directly at it, it vanished.


    ¡°Timothy, get in the the car,¡± Cece¡¯s voice was commanding, no nonsense, ¡°Do it now.¡±


    I turned and leapt into the vehicle. I yelped as she screamed off the curb before I was all the way in. My door slammed shut. I struggled to sit up against the momentum of the acceleration. I looked out the back window. The dark figure slid off the sidewalk and onto the road. I had to keep moving my eyes back and forth to keep it visible.


    It reminded me of the classic depiction of death. It was a tall figure in a dark cloak and cowl. Floating a few inches off the ground, flowing toward me like a fog. The garment it wore, was darkness incarnate, black becoming insufficient in the ability to describe it. It was like an absence of things. The opening to the cowl contained nothing but a feeling of dread. It was physically hard to look at, the feeling quickly becoming overwhelming. While I had the figure in sight, the world behind and around it dimmed and took on gray tones. We were leaving it behind quickly, but I felt certain it would follow where ever we went.


    I lost sight of the figure as we made a hard turn. I was thrown against the door, and decided I needed to buckle. Looking at Cece, she was concentrating on driving for the first time I had ever seen. Clicking my seatbelt, I glanced at the speedometer. We were doing over a hundred, blowing stop signs like we were earning points for each one. More than once, Cece swerved around a car that was in the intersection, missing them by what had to be inches.


    I looked at her face. Her mouth was set in a hard line. I realized that she had seen the figure. When I had looked, it disappeared like the gremlins. Which meant, what? It was something that existed between worlds? In the spirit realm? Cece could see it too?


    Cece looked over at me, still driving like a maniac, screaming around corners, taking risks. "All right, spill," she said, looking me in the eye.


    So I tried to tell her everything, about reliving the day, about helping her write prescriptions, about getting shot, coming back, discovering it was my future self, about going to Jemima''s, about her taking my luck, but it not stopping, about me having to try and find a way to stop it, about me becoming what was now essentially a luck vampire.


    She brought the car to a hard stop at the mention of Vampire and looked over at me. "Vampire?" she said.


    I nodded. "I know, creature of darkness, right?"


    She shook her head. "I''m serious, you mentioned that other people can''t see your reflection?"


    I nodded.


    "There is an easy way to test this," she said, and she tilted the rearview mirror so that she could look me in the eye. Her expression grew perplexed. She looked in the mirror, and then down at me, then up in the mirror, and then down at me. Somebody behind us honked. I could smell burning rubber from where she had laid it down on the asphalt coming to a stop.


    "Holy shit," she said. "So what? You became this luck vampire thing, and then what?"


    I looked over at the mirror, then I looked at her. I explained what I had done to the school nurse, and then interfering with the gremlin, and then the consequences, and how I had been speaking with Not-me, and learning about all these things, and his suggestion that I needed to head towards his future in order to fix things. The person behind us honked again, but Cece was immune to their prodding.


    She looked me in the eye. "So what, you''ve decided to take control of your life," she said, "instead of living the same day over and over?"


    I shrugged. "I don''t know," I said, "but I''m not gonna sit and wait for death to come and take me. I''m gonna go back to Jemima. Whatever is after me, can be after me at her house, since she started it."


    "And what about your other self?" she said.


    "I''m on the fence about how much I trust him. I think he''s being honest, but I think future me has compromised judgment. As best as I can tell, he''s been wrong about almost everything," I said.


    Cece looked thoughtful, then she started driving again. "All right, in for a dime, in for a dozen."


    I cocked my head to the side. I didn''t think that was how the saying went. It felt good to tell somebody. It felt good to have somebody on my side. I needed to process what was happening to me with somebody that wasn''t my zombie future self.


    It was time to go talk to Jemima again, and if that figure in the dark cowl caught up with me there, well, I figured Jemima had it coming.


    ***

 Chapter 15, Seeking Truth

    I would not have thought it possible, but I felt a deep sense of relief when we made it to the freeway, and Cece decided to slow down and only do eighty. I turned and asked a question that had been bothering me. "Aren''t you afraid the car will fall apart?"


    She gave me a look like she couldn''t believe what she had just heard. Then she frowned the way some people shrug and said, "Not while I''m driving it."


    I looked at her. What did she mean by that? "You mean if somebody else drove this car, it would fall apart?" I asked.


    Cece grinned at me. "Almost certainly. Things work for me," she said. "They won''t necessarily work for other people."


    Cece looked over at me. "Do you really want to talk about why some things work for me that won¡¯t work for other people? Because I really want to talk about how your future self is trying to... press-gang you into living a life that it looks very much like you don''t want.¡±


    She navigated a tricky snarl of traffic, cutting someone off and using a exit lane to move around a slow car.


    ¡°And now you¡¯re a vampire!" She grinned at me. It was perhaps the most disturbing expression I have ever seen on her face.


    "How cool is that?!" she shouted.


    I really had not anticipated this reaction from her. In my mind, this encounter had played out with first skepticism, then reluctant acceptance, and then a wary distrust that would build separation between us that I would be unable to ever patch. I know, a morbid line of thinking. But my experience was, anyone who really valued me and I got close to, left. My experience with Dad¡¯s disappearance has predisposed me to believe that, I know this, and I still have to feel it. I had just made my first friend when Mom and I had to move away¡­


    All of that came bubbling up, threatening to overwhelm me with everything else that was going on, and I pushed it to the back of my mind, forcibly tamping it down so I didn''t have to feel it.


    I let Cece''s declaration replay in my mind. "How cool is that?!" I looked at her smile, and suddenly I felt something lift off my shoulders, and I smiled back. "You mean, you still want to be my friend?" I said.


    "Hell yeah!" Cece said, clearly excited. "We were solid, Freak, but now, you and I, we''re gonna do things you wouldn''t even believe."


    "Oh," I said, "you mean, you want to use me for your drug stuff?"


    She quirked an eyebrow at me. "I guess I shouldn''t question how you have knowledge you shouldn''t have," she said. "But damn! No! I don''t want to use you! I want to partner with you! There''s a big difference!"


    I looked at her. She looked at me. I became worried at how much attention she was paying me instead of the road. I glanced out the front window to make sure that she knew that I thought she should be watching the road, and then looked back. She was still looking at me.


    I pointed out the window. "Don''t you need to watch the road?"


    She shook her head. "I need you to accept that I''m on your side," she said.


    "I really think you should watch the road," I said, pointing out the front.¡±


    "Watch it for me."


    I sputtered for a second and then looked out the front window as requested. "Um, we''re good so far. White car, 500 feet ahead."


    We were still on the freeway, and Cece was overtaking every other driver. Even though, after the previous breakneck experience, this pace felt sedate. As the white car got closer and closer, I lost my nerve. I turned to Cece.


    "Okay, fine, yes, you''re on my side, I believe you. Please, will you watch the road?"


    She winked at me and avoided the car without looking. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I didn''t know if this much adrenaline was good for someone my age. While I counted, I breathed. This was a trick I had learned years ago. The way to survive being overwhelmed was to focus on breathing and to force it into a four-count. Usually, all I needed to do was the first four-count in and out. After breathing out, I looked at Cece.


    "You''re not mad that I''m luring whatever that thing is to Jemima''s?" I asked.


    She cocked her head at me. "Jemima''s a big girl. She can take care of herself," Cece said. "I''m on your side, not hers. If she started a fight with you, Freak, as far as I''m concerned, I''m in your corner. Let''s go sort it out and see what shakes loose."


    I let out a sigh of relief but continued to compulsively watch the road ahead of us. I didn''t know how many times Cece could get away with avoiding traffic without looking. I hoped if I ignored her, she would drive without trying to show off.


    She continued to pepper me with questions along the drive, wanting to know every detail. I realized after a minute that she had been driving in circles in order to make sure that I was able to get all the way through. I had been careful the entire drive not to look into any reflective surfaces. The spoon I had pilfered earlier was firmly lodged in my pocket.


    I didn''t want to hear Not-me¡¯s opinion about my decision to confront Jemima. I was sure that he would insult me, curse at me, and insist that we needed to do things his way. But I wasn''t sure I wanted to do things his way. I wasn''t sure I liked him or trusted him.


    Cece seemed to read my mind. "I don''t really trust your future self," she said. "I think he''s playing a long game that we don''t understand yet."


    "Well, he did say that I needed to help you with your whole drug thing," I told her.


    "Hmm," she said, tapping her chin, "I wonder why. I think that we should get Jemima''s opinion, and then I think we need to talk it through. You need to make up your mind about what you want to do," Cece said. "Don''t let me do it. Don''t let Jemima do it. Don''t let... Not-me do it. That''s totally a clever name, by the way. We''re going to use that."


    I grinned, happy at the praise.


    Cece drove around another corner and then pulled down a street that looked familiar. I began to recognize the neighborhood and the houses until we pulled to a stop in front of Jemima''s house, still looming like one straight from a horror movie. I looked up at the structure, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.


    "You can do this," I said to myself. Besides, I was on a deadline. I don''t know how I knew it, but I was certain that the dark figure I had seen at school was still on its way.


    Walking around the house with Cece brought back vivid memories of stepping into a kitchen that was an explosion of ornamentation, colors, and chicken feathers. For me, that event marked the beginning of all of this. As I walked down the sidewalk, looking at the cracks and ants scuttling back and forth, I remembered the expression on Cece''s face right before we had crashed. I don''t know how I had had time to see the truck and see her face, but it was right there in my mind¡ªthe look of horror she wore right before we impacted the back of the semi.


    Reflecting on it now, I''m glad that I had not laid hold of my ability to slow my perception of time. It would have only given me more time to appreciate the horror of the moment. And even though it had been just a moment, it was still with me.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Cece was fine.


    I watched as she pranced up the walk and banged on the kitchen door. I wondered why she knocked this time when she hadn''t before. I knew she was fine, but still, something inside me was a stone sitting heavy, deep down, knowing I had watched her die.


    I took a deep breath and followed her, stepping into the kitchen that thankfully did not contain a screaming woman and Jemima shaking a chicken. The kitchen actually had a pleasant aroma of fresh-baked sweet bread, an undercurrent of cinnamon and some other spice that I couldn''t quite put my finger on, perfuming the air. I noticed this time the room seemed peaceful, like the pressure I was feeling wasn''t able to follow me into her kitchen. I wondered about that. Before this series of events, I had never paid so much attention to the feeling of a space, but now it seemed important.


    Cece was not in the kitchen, and neither was Jemima. I could hear low voices in the dining room where I had waited before. I stood in the kitchen, wanting to be near the door, not sure if I was walking into a trap, or if Cece really was on my side. After her confession in the car, she had me fairly convinced. However, I had only known her for two weeks. Though she had fast become my best and only friend, she was still an unknown quantity in some ways. After all, I''d been promised before that people were on my side. But I don''t think it''s possible for people to always keep their promises, whether they want to or not. And so I stood, feeling a little wary, right at the threshold to the next encounter.


    Cece came back into the kitchen first, smiling a reassuring smile before dropping it for a more serious face and coming to stand beside me with her arms folded. Then Jemima walked into the kitchen. She was exactly as I remembered, down to everything she was wearing, with the exception that when we had spoken before, she had a chicken feather lodged in her hair. I had not pointed it out, but used it as a piece for thoughtful contemplation when I wanted to ponder what it was she was saying.


    "So," Jemima said, "you have returned, boy." Her rich, warm accent rolled over me, and I wanted her to be the good guy. I wanted her to be the person I could believe in. I wanted her to be the person I could trust. She just sounded so much better than Not-me.


    I folded my arms, remembering how she had used my blood to take my luck. Then it struck me. She was speaking as if she remembered our first encounter. I narrowed my eyes. "Do you remember speaking with me before?" I asked.


    "No," she said. "I don¡¯t. But I have heard from someone who does remember. And they told me what it was that we said."


    I wondered at that. "You took my luck," I said to her. "Last time. And it all left."


    Jemima nodded, the beads around her neck and hanging off of her shawl rattling as she did. "I know. I did that on purpose, boy. Come on. We have to go to the other room. I have things set up for you. It will be in there that we can have a clear conversation. We need to have everybody who is party to events present. And in order to do so, I have to do some preparation."


    I didn''t know what she meant, but I followed her into the other room. Cece seemed encouraging about the whole thing, and I discovered she had a ring of candles set up at her kitchen table and, of all things, an actual, honest-to-God, crystal ball sitting in the center. I let out a laugh.


    "Does that thing really work?" I asked, unable to resist. I didn''t care that there was gravity to the situation. This was fascinating. I didn''t know that that was a real trope, that people actually used crystal balls.


    Jemima nodded. "That is a real crystal ball. They don''t work unless they''re made by a master craftsman. So don''t think you can go to any shop and buy any bauble. And then you have to have the gift. OMost people don''t know what they''re doing. But that''s not important right now. What is important right now is that you have a passenger, and we need to include him in the conversation."


    I froze. That''s what she meant? A chill ran through me. I didn''t want to include Not-me in the conversation. He would win. Every time I spoke to him, he convinced me he was right. It was like he muddled my thinking. I wasn''t sure what was true, and I wanted time to process everything without him. I was tired of speaking with him. I felt like he was trying to take everything from me, and it was his fault I was in all of this mess to begin with.


    I shook my head, backing up. "I don''t want to talk to him," I said.


    Jemima cocked her head at me. "Why not, boy? You''ve been talking to him a lot. I can see it on you."


    "He''s too persuasive," I said. "I don''t know what I think when he''s around. When he''s talking to me, the things that he points out are the things that make sense. It''s only when I''m away from him that I can make my own decisions."


    Jemima nodded. "You are wise for someone so young, boy. You don''t know the truth of what you just said. All of life is like that. That doesn''t mean you have to be afraid of someone else and their opinion. You can listen to him, and you can still leave and have your own opinion. This is an important thing to learn, boy. You''re going to need it as you grow. You''re going to need it in order to survive what''s happening to you right now."


    "What is happening to me?" I asked her.


    "What is happening is that I have given you back your agency, boy. You were fated to follow the path that your passenger had you on. There was no escaping it. He would guide you no matter how many times it took. Now, you and he are connected but separate because you are now divergent from him. You have the power to choose. It is unfortunate that what I did to take your luck caused you some pain, but I could see no other way forward."


    I didn''t know what to say. Now Jemima sounded perfectly reasonable. I came here ready to confront the bad guy, and here she was making me feel like she was on my side. I took a deep breath and nodded. "All right. I''m ready. Let''s bring Not-me into the conversation. What do we have to do?" I said.


    "Sit down at my table. Let me light the candles and get you a cold glass of water. You look like you''ll be needing it."


    It occurred to me then that we might not have time for this. I didn''t know how quickly the dark figure was going to catch up to me. And I didn''t know either if I should tell Jemima because I had planned to use it as a weapon, but now I wasn''t sure if I needed a weapon. Why was life so complicated? I sat down at the table and put my head in my hands, unsure of what to do.


    Cece walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, Freak. Take a deep breath. We got this." I looked up at her, grateful for the support.


    "I don''t feel like I can do this," I said to Cece. My hands were shaking. I looked down. I didn''t know why they were shaking, but I couldn''t stop. I felt sick to my stomach. I looked at her. "I want to go home," I said. "I want to go back to the way it was before."


    Cece nodded, a look on her face that wasn''t quite pity, but it wasn''t sympathy either. It was, if I had to try and label it, I would guess, understanding? "I know, Freak. Believe me, I do. There''s no going back, though. Don''t think about going back. Think about going forward. Who you are, you get to keep, okay? This," she gestured to the room. "This," she gestured to me, her hand moving up and down.


    She pulled a mirror down off the wall and held it up. "This," pointing to my lack of reflection. "That doesn''t tell you who you are. That doesn''t define you."


    I caught a glimpse of something in the mirror before she pulled it away. Not-me was here. I thought about Cece''s words. Really thought about it. "You sure about that?" I asked her.


    "Freak?" she said. "I''ve never been more sure about anything in my life. You get to choose. No one else gets to choose for you. And I''m right here. If you want to go, give me the word. We''ll split. I got your back."


    That did it. Those words made me feel like maybe I could. Maybe I could do it. If I wanted to go, Cece would take me away. I took another deep breath as Jemima came back into the room and began to light candles. I quietly watched as she did. I was curious, having taken the one piece of magic from her that I had, what else I could learn by observing closely as she performed whatever it was she was doing. She was muttering something, but she kept her voice low enough that I couldn''t distinguish the words. Too bad, I thought. Although, to be fair, I don''t think that being able to summon a spirit and speak with him was the sort of magic that I wanted to know how to do. I was still curious.


    After she finished lighting her circle of candles, she sat down at the table and directed Cece and me to sit at the other points of what formed a triangle. The table was small enough that we were able to join hands at her direction, and then Jemima invoked my future self.


    "Timothy Thompson, I summon you, present yourself now, here."


    The room that we were sitting in grew colder. This was weird because when I spoke to Not-me, the room didn''t grow cold. The candles guttered and the light seemed to dim, but not from the candles. The ambient light surrounding us dimmed, and the candles became the only source of light in the room. I looked around, trying to see what was going on. It was daytime outside. There were windows in the room, and they should be casting light in through the curtains. But everything had darkened, and it continued to darken until we were sitting in blackness. Jemima, Cece, me, and the table were the only things that existed. The darkness was absolute. The only sources of light were the candles pressing back against the blackness.


    I had the urge to jerk my hand away, get up and run, but I found that it was once more locked into place with a familiar sensation to what I had experienced when I took a bit of Mrs. Streep''s luck. Then, Not-me appeared in the crystal ball. It wasn''t zombie Mrs. Streep, for which I was grateful. It was the face of an old man, weathered lines carved into the features, a hard scowl set into his face. I was immediately put in mind of Clint Eastwood. I had never seen any other scowl that could compare to Mr. Eastwood''s, but this one would have given it a run for its money.


    The familiar, gravelly, raspy tone of Not-me came as if he was sitting in the room beside us.


    "What the fuck is this?"


    Well, at least some things hadn''t changed.


    "Oh, I see now. God-damn it. What the fuck did you do, boy?" Not-me said.


    I looked at him, keeping my mouth a hard line. I wasn''t going to answer that right now.


    Jemima spoke up. "Hey, you crusty old fool. What are you doing harassing this boy?"


    The head of Not-me, inside of the crystal ball, turned to face her. "Oh, you. I should have known. How''d you get him back, huh? Cast a spell?"


    "The boy came to me of his own free will. I think he intended to attack me."


    Not-me turned and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? Oh, that''s what your plan was. I get it now. Clever. Wouldn''t work, though. That thing can''t get inside here. You would have had to caught her outside in order to transfer that malice." He looked at Cece. "How much did he tell you?"


    "Everything," she said.


    "Well, it''s good to see you again. I''ve missed you."


    She looked affronted at that. "Excuse me? I don''t know you."


    He laughed, seeming to be amused by her ire. "Yeah, I know that. But I know you. I know you better than anyone. There ain''t no one who knows you the way I know you."


    Cece cocked an eyebrow at that. "Bet," she said.


    He chuckled and turned back to Jemima. "So, why are we here? This sucks, by the way. This is really uncomfortable. Has anyone that you put in this goddamn ball told you that this is fucking uncomfortable?"


    Jemima nodded slowly, not ruffled by his tone. "I know it, and you''re just going to have to endure it."


    He harrumphed, and then I swear he turned and spat. Nothing happened on our end of the table, but the gesture was pretty clear.


    "All right, well, say your piece. I''ll listen, and I''ll answer your damn questions, you bitch."


    "Watch your tongue," she said, seeming ruffled for the first time.


    "Oh yeah? Watch my tongue. I''ll say what I want."


    "You will not. I will make this more unpleasant for you."


    "I don''t think you¡ª" He screamed. After a second, the screams turned into wild laughter, and he looked her in the eye. "Just kidding. Nope. No, it doesn''t work on me. I''ll say what I want. And I''ll leave when I want. Watch."


    Suddenly we were back in the room. Everything was lit normally. It was all the way it had been. We were sitting at the table, and it was like I had been plopped into my chair. I let out a whoosh of air as I landed, confused at what had just taken place. Cece looked startled. Jemima looked ruffled, her clothes out of place. All the candles had gone out.


    She looked from Cece to me, to the crystal ball, which was now empty, to the well-lit room, let go of our hands, and stood. "Well," she said, "we''re going to need sandwiches and something to drink before we have that conversation. What would you like, boy? I have peanut butter and jelly, or I have roast beef."


    Surprised, I took a second before I answered. I was hungry, I realized. I hadn''t known until just this second that I was hungry.


    "Uh, roast beef, if you don''t mind," I said. That sounded really good. I''d been living on peanut butter since we moved into the new house.


    Jemima looked at Cece. "How about for you?"


    "Yeah, I''ll have some roast beef. Oh, do you have any of that lemonade?" Cece said.


    Jemima nodded. "I''ll take care of it. You make sure those candles don''t move, you hear?"


    Cece nodded, as if this was old news, and she knew exactly what was going on. I looked over at Cece, realizing I had no idea what I had gotten into.


    ***

 Chapter 16, A Decision

    I looked over at Cece, then at the crystal ball in the middle of the table. It struck me as odd that Jemima who was Haitian and practicing a form of Voodoo, used a crystal ball. I thought crystal balls belonged more to Europeans, Africans and Australians. I hadn¡¯t read anything about them being used in Haitian or South American occult practices.


    I looked at Cece. I said as much. She looked at me. "Freak, you are just full of the most obscure knowledge. Jemima tends to be a jack-of-all-trades kind of gal."


    "Huh?" I said.


    She gestured at the religious paraphernalia plastered all over the walls. "I mean, she''s not a holy woman of one specific religion."


    That didn''t make a lot of sense to me, but I figured I still had a lot to learn.


    "Is Not-me always that nasty?" Cece asked.


    I thought about that, and I shook my head. "No, he seemed particularly grumpy this time," I said.


    I decided to pull out the spoon and ask. After a second, I got Not-me''s distorted reflection. From the amount of skull I could see, it looked like he was still using zombie Mrs. Streep.


    "Fine mess you got us in now, kid," he said.


    "Why were you being so rude?" I asked.


    "Rude? There I am, minding Jolene Streep''s business, happily reading over her shoulder, and then suddenly, I''m in this damn place."


    "Huh?" I asked. "But I drove all the way over here with Cece. Weren''t you watching the whole time?"


    Not me shook his head. "No, it doesn''t seem to work that way. I seem to be tethered close to the last place you caught a reflection of me. Why are you here? I thought we had an agreement, kid," he said. "I thought you were going to give it a try, to save people."


    I shook my head. "You talked about how everything was ruined and it was all doomed, and I felt like I didn''t have another choice," I said.


    "Ah, so you decided to go to the witch, huh? Well, why''d you drag me here?"


    "I want to get enough answers that I can make up my mind about what I want to do," I said. "I don''t know what I think."


    "Well, that''s remarkably self aware from a twelve-year-old. All right. Fine. What do you want to know?"


    "I want to know if I can trust you. I want to know if you''re telling the truth. I want to know if I''m stuck with you."


    "Well, that''s a good set of questions. Fine. I''ll play nice. But only as long as that bitch behaves."


    "Hey, would you please stop cursing?"


    "Really? That''s what has your hackles up?


    ¡°Why do you curse so much? I don''t curse."


    "You will. Once you''ve lived as long as I have. I earned the right to curse. Besides, it means more when I say it. It means hardly anything coming from you."


    I put the spoon down and looked up at Cece, who was watching me closely. "He says he''ll play nice as long as Jemima does," I said.


    Cece smirked. "Oh boy. Well, we''ll see how this goes."


    After a little while, Jemima came back into the room and served us sandwiches, grapes, and lemonade. She did not seem to be in a hurry to resummon my future self. It felt good to not be in a hurry. I felt like I had been in a hurry for too long now. Jemima and Cece ignored me, which surprised me at first, and then I was grateful for it.


    They talked shop about the neighborhood, and I recognized the meat of the conversation, realizing I already knew this info. Who was together with whom, who had broken up with whom, which relationship was going well, who had gotten a new job, who was struggling, who was sick, and who had a kid on the way. I tuned it out, and I ate, and I thought. And for a little while, I stopped and enjoyed not thinking.


    Once we had cleared our plates and Jemima and Cece had finished chatting, we cleaned up the table. Jemima walked about with a careful eye on the placement of the candles on the table. After she was satisfied with it, she again walked around the room mumbling to herself and lighting the candles. We took our places and joined hands and using my name, which was rather strange, she again invoked the spirit of my future self.


    Once more the room dimmed to black, which I wondered about. I wanted to get up and walk around and see if the room was still there or if I was somewhere else, but my hands were stuck in this strange spiritual cement once more. So I contented myself to watch the face of my older self appear in the crystal ball. I tried to look for my facial features to see myself in the old man, but it was difficult. His ears were too big and his nose was too long. His eyebrows and his eyes were sort of the same, but his eyes had a strange milky quality to them, like he was wearing opaque contacts. He again had on his signature scowl.


    "Took you long enough," he said. "You know how boring this place is?"


    Jemima raised an eyebrow at him. "Boring? My place?" she said.


    "Yeah, I spent nearly two decades apprenticed to you. It''s not like there''s any part of it I don''t know."


    Jemima raised both eyebrows and looked up at me. "Apprenticed to me," she said.


    Not-me nodded. "Yep. I have the gift. The knack, you called it."


    "Ah, you had the knack. I see now why Cece has taken a shine to you," she said this to me. "But what caused you to want to apprentice to me? I already have an apprentice."


    "Well, that''s in the realm of dangerous future knowledge," Not-me said. "I don''t think that''s important right now, because if Kid here decides to follow my path, then he doesn''t need to know what''s coming."


    "I don''t think that''s true," said Jemima. "I think he does need to know what''s coming, or he will not succeed."


    "What? How do you see it that way?"


    Not-me and Jemima proceeded to argue temporal mechanics for a minute. They bandied terms back and forth that I was unable to parse, having never heard them before, and then both ended the argument with disagreement and a harumph.


    "So," Jemima said, "you believe that the only way to prevent a disaster is to end up in a future where a disaster is about to happen and only then do something about it."


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Not me scowled at her. "Of course. How else are we supposed to change the future?"


    Jemima shook her head. "The future does not change suddenly. The future changes one day at a time. I think that if you stand a chance of undoing this disaster, that you must partner with this boy and undo the things that are wrong one-at-a-time. There is no other way to have a significant enough impact."


    "What?" Not me said. "That''s thousands of events. That would take years."


    "Exactly," Jemima said. "It would take years. So, the way I see it is that small things add up, or many drops of rain make a flood. Besides, this will be the boy''s decision. He''s the one that you have to get to cooperate now. Because he''s the one who has the power to change things."


    "Oh yeah? I got the power to reset the event marker. I can make him repeat the same day over and over again until I get the results I want. You don''t think I''d keep him trapped in the same day forever?"


    Jemima cocked an eyebrow at him. "Are you so spiteful that you would torture yourself to get what you want?"


    "Oh, please. You think I''m afraid of a little pain? What I want is to save people. You are the ones standing in my way."


    "I think you are standing in your own way," Jemima said.


    "I forgot how irritating you were.¡± Not-me said.


    ¡°Thanks for the information, by the way."


    "What information?" Not-me said.


    "That I''m going to live at least another two decades. That''s longer than I hoped."


    Not me began to chuckle, and then it turned into what sounded like a genuine laugh. Something warm. And it was very odd seeing it, because for a moment he softened.


    "I forgot how much I missed you, you stubborn old mule."


    "Don''t call me a mule," she said.


    "Ah, well, that inside joke didn''t develop for years anyway. Listen, I don''t like how you''ve already thrown a wrench into everything, but I see your point."


    "Oh, you see my point?"


    "Yeah, the boy''s got to decide." He turned his back on her. "All right, kid, here''s what she thinks. She thinks that we could prevent the disaster if you and I go around fixing things and killing monsters.¡°


    "Monsters," I said.


    He looked at me. "Yeah, monsters. And fixing things."


    "What kind of monsters?" I said excitedly.


    "No, that''s not the point. You''re missing the point. Monsters aren¡¯t fun. We¡¯d be in danger all the time if we did that, or¡­ what we could do is spend the better part of a decade preparing ourselves, getting ready to be able to step in and stop the event dead in its tracks. One fell swoop and it would all be over. This is much more likely to succeed. The dilemma about it is you have to try and live my life as this strange luck vampire thing that we''ve been turned into in order to end up in the same future."


    I wasn''t sure what I thought. If it had been clear that the life that Not-me lived was the one I wanted, I think that''s what I would have chosen. I was beginning to long for some normalcy. However, the idea of monsters sounded good.


    I looked up. "Do I have to decide right now?" I said.


    "Yes," Not-me said at the same time that Jemima said, "No, you don''t."


    They glared at each other.


    "He damn well does have to decide right now," Not-me said.


    "Why?" Jemima asked. "If you have the power to reset the marker, as you called it, which I presume is when this boy begins again, does he have to start deciding this second? It sounds to me like he has all the time in the world."


    ¡°Hey!¡± Cece said. Everyone turned and looked at her. "What about a compromise?" She suggested.


    "A compromise?" Several of us said at once.


    "Yeah. I mean, how close to your life does he gotta live in order to end up in approximately the same future?"


    Not-me hemmed and hawed for a second before finally admitting, "I''m not sure. It would require experimentation and probably a number of do-overs."


    "Okay," Cece said. "So, let''s assume that in order to end up in a similar future, you don''t need to live the exact same life, just hit the major markers."


    Jemima nodded. "I believe you are correct on this one."


    Cece grinned. "All right, so let''s say that you hit the major markers. Why can''t you also do that whole raindrop monster hunter thing? I want in on that b.t-dubs. I think monster hunting sounds cool as shit."


    I looked from Jemima to Not-me to Cece and shrugged. My nose began to itch. I beginning to not like having my hands stuck. It was becoming awkward.


    "Okay," I said. "I''d be willing to give it a try."


    Not-me let out a huge sigh. "Okay, all right, fine. We''ll give it a try.¡±


    ¡°Do I really need to go get punched in the face by Billy and get detention,¡± I said, ¡°or can I just offer to help Cece and we go meet Blue Cap Guy?"


    "Blue Cap Guy," Not Me said, looking confused for a moment.


    ¡°You know, where I got shot on the face last time?¡± I prompted.


    "Oh, I see," Not-Me said. "Yeah, that meetup did set a ball in motion. Basically, Cece proving she''s got the goods gets the attention of someone else, which is important down the line.¡°


    "Okay," I said, "I''ll agree to try and keep my life on track with where Not-me¡¯s life went on one condition."


    Everyone at the table looked at me. "What''s that, kid?" Not Me said.


    "You have to teach me telekinesis," I said.


    Not Me shook his head, laughing. "Fine, and I presume you want to moonlight as a monster hunter?"


    I grinned. "Yeah."


    Cece leaned forward. "Count me in."


    "Okay, okay, okay.¡± Not-me grumbled. ¡°Can we break up this Scooby-do gang moment?


    ¡°Now I want answers," I said. "We''ve talked about what I''m gonna do and what you want and what Jemima wants, but what am I exactly? What am I capable of?" I looked at Not-me and Jemima.


    Not-me shook his head. "Don''t look at me. I told you, this is something I never heard of before. If anyone knows anything about it, it''ll be Jemima."


    Jemima studied us for a moment, then responded. "What you became was not what I had planned. I did not expect to affect you both. I had expected to only rid you of your passenger. You see, once luck is low, a passenger will lose interest. I did not realize that you were already bonded. I thought that you had an evil spirit."


    She squinted at the old man in the crystal ball. "Why do you have such a wicked aura?" she asked him.


    He turned and looked at her. "Excuse me, you''re one to talk."


    She shook her head. "You have done things in your lifetime that have scarred you."


    "Yeah, well, I don''t have to be proud of what I''ve done, just what I''ve tried to accomplish."


    "But those are not the same things, are they?¡±


    "I''m not gonna argue semantics, but sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty to do the job in front of you."


    "I don''t find that to be true."


    "Yeah, this coming from a woman who created a vampire."


    I chimed in and explained to Jemima that our luck had continued to drain.


    Not-Me took over and filled in the blanks about his luck following too, and the charm being separate from this reality was unable to break. And our luck absolutely zeroing out.


    Jemima nodded slowly and then shook her head. "That should have destroyed you both," she said. "How was it that you survived?"


    I looked at her. "I thought you said you did what you did to us on purpose."


    "I did," she said. "It had consequences that I did not foresee. I am imperfect. It was a mistake."


    I stared at her.


    "I''m sorry," Jemima said. "Please, if you can, forgive an old woman for foolishness. I thought to rid you of an evil spirit. Instead, I have changed you in a way that I don''t quite understand. So tell me now, how did you survive?"


    Not-Me took over the narrative. "Kid here took your symbol and drew it all over himself."


    "He did what?" she said.


    "Yeah, take out your coin."


    "I can''t. My hands are stuck."


    "Oh, well, you know which one I mean. He drew that symbol, and it actually had the power to affect things."


    Jemima cocked an eyebrow. "Really? He had authority over that symbol. This should not be so.¡±


    ¡°What would a twenty-year apprentice to your craft have?" Not-Me asked.


    Jemima let out a long "hmm" at this.


    "The kid appears to have my authority," Not-Me said. "So, upon learning that he has the authority to bend reality, he draws it all over himself. But, not just forward, he draws it backwards as well."


    "Oh," Jemima said. "It would have created a vortex, likely tunneling a new channel into your soul. But the feedback," she said, "that would have destroyed you, especially with that channel open."


    "Well, then the kid goes and drowns himself, and we reset to the marker, and he totally dodges the feedback."


    Jemima began to laugh. "So then what happened?"


    "Well, that was when our luck totally zeroed out. It completely stopped moving, which meant that we were out from underneath the vortex and the draw of the coin, but then we were at no movement."


    "Mmm," Jemima hummed at that again.


    "So then, I have the clever idea of drawing the symbol backwards again, to see if we could fill the void."


    "Nature abhors a vacuum," Jemima said.


    "Exactly," Not-Me said.


    "So you drew it backwards and then took some luck. This makes sense to me now. You have restarted the battery, but not in the normal way. I can see that you are ambiently absorbing the favor in this room."


    "Favor?" I asked.


    "Luck, if you like. You label it how you will. You are absorbing from me and from Cece and from things that inherently have luck in this room. It''s no wonder that you caught the attention of the entity that you did. Once you messed with his work, he would be able to feel the ripples."


    "You mean... As I sit here, I''m growing gradually more lucky, and everyone around me is growing gradually more unlucky?" I asked.


    "Effectively, yes. But it''s not significant. You''ll have to practice with controlling your aura, or you will attract the attention of everything that likes to stomp on bugs. It will also be helpful for you to be able to turn it up and down. I suspect that the trick you did in order to take a little luck from that lady will be required of you to do again and again to maintain anywhere near a normal level. I don''t know what the consequences of this will be. But I think since you have the knack, I can give you a gift to make it easier for you to understand. I can open your eyes so you can see."


    We were interrupted by a loud boom, not like thunder, but like we were inside a giant drum, and somebody had just struck it. I could feel the air reverberate with the bass of the explosion of noise, and I could see the blackness ripple, though I could not distinguish different shades of color. It was like the pressure it exerted on my eyes allowed me to see how it was rippling.


    We were all pushed forward onto the table by the pressure, which seemed to come from every direction, except for Not-me, who appeared unfazed in the crystal ball. He began to laugh.


    "Wow, what timing.¡± Not-me said. ¡°I didn''t think it could get in here."


    Jemima, looking strained, looked up at me. "I will give you what I promised," she said, her voice coming out more like a groan. "I bless you in my name. And in the name of my mother, and in the name of my mother''s mother, and in the name of my mother''s mother''s mother, may your eyes be opened, and may you see."


    With that last word, it was like something rushed out of her mouth, a wave of vermilion color that hit me right in the face. I tried to dodge, but my hands being pinned to the table by this spiritual glue made it impossible to get out of the way.


    It felt like being slapped by a wet cloth. I blinked my eyes clear, only to discover there was nothing there. Confused, I looked around and felt a cold jolt of energy as I saw we had been joined by another figure in our room. The dark cloaked figure that I had seen in front of the school now stood in our blackened room with us. I could see him straight on, without trying to use my peripheral vision.


    Cece looked frightened. She looked over at Jemima. "Release the summon," she said.


    Jemima shook her head. "I can''t. It is holding us here." She looked up at the cloaked figure. "How dare you step in here? You are not allowed.¡±


    The dark figure spoke, his voice echoed, as if from far away, but with such terrible volume and force that I could still physically feel it when he spoke. "This one," he said, "has trespassed on my master domain. He is now mine."


    He reached towards me.


    "I forbid you," Jemima shouted, ¡°In the name of my master!¡±


    But the cloaked figure did not stop reaching for me. As he did, I felt a pain in my chest, sharp and hard, like something had kicked me, but it was inside, like the middle of my chest had begun to break. My throat began to lock up. I tasted bile. My left arm began to tingle and then throb with excruciating pain. I wanted to bend over, but that would lean me closer to the figure. He looked at Jemima.


    "Take it up with my master. Your complaint is noted."


    He stepped closer, and the pain grew in intensity until spots popped before my vision. And then, graciously, I saw no more.


    ***

 Chapter 17, Go Again Day 5, Same Hallway, New World

    I stumbled into the same hallway, an exasperated groan ready on the edge of my lips, my heart pounding, my right hand involuntarily clutching at my chest, when I realized this may be the same hallway, but this was not the same world.


    Someone bumped into me, and I hardly noticed. I was standing still, but I couldn''t get my bearings. Everything around me looked different. Every person that walked by had, I hesitate to use the word ''aura'' because it sounds trite, but they did. It was this glowing presence that surrounded them¡ªsome people to different degrees of size and brightness and all of them different colors or a mix of colors. I stared, open-mouthed.


    The teenagers walked through the hall, most of them with their noses down in their phones, and then one caught my attention. It was a boy. His aura was almost completely black. He wasn''t looking at a phone. He wasn''t looking at anyone. He was looking at the ground, and the expression on his face... As I focused, I felt a pit yawn before me as if the world had fallen away and I had suddenly become aware that I was trapped. I was trapped inside a room, and there was no way out. There was no one to talk to, and there was no reaching any escape. I would be here until I died, and no one cared, and that was right because no one should care; I didn''t have any value. I knew it to the core of my being, and I couldn''t wait to do the world a favor and end my existence.


    The boy pushed past me, and I was broken out of whatever that was. My own emotion set came rushing back, and I was sharply aware for a moment that those had not been my feelings. Then confusion crashed over me. I stumbled and fought my way through the crowd, trying to get to somewhere safe, trying to get to somewhere without this ocean of new sensations.


    A girl walked by with her nose buried in her device. She had a pink aura around her. There were pure threads of white, and her face was a mask of concentration. Suddenly, my heart swelled. I felt elated, hopeful, bright, light. Oh, things were possible. There was a future that was what I always wanted, and all it depended on was... I broke away from her, trying not to get lost in anyone''s aura. I found it helped not to look at their faces.


    I made it to my locker, and then I remembered what day I was in. I stepped forward as Billy bumped into me, lessening the impact by a significant degree.


    "Watch where you''re going, nerd," Billy said.


    Not feeling like it, I attempted to diffuse the situation. "Sorry," I said.


    "What? I didn''t hear you," Billy said.


    I could see there was no way out of this. Inspiration hit, and I plucked a pen out of my pocket, slowing my perception of time. I could hear him in slow motion talking. It was really weird.


    "Heeeeeeeeey," he said. "I saaaaaaaaaaaaid, loooooooook aaaaaaaaat meeeeeeeee."


    I quickly sketched the inverse luck symbol. If anyone had this coming, it was Billy. My perception of time still slowed, I turned. It had been a breeze to draw the symbol perfectly with so much fine motor control. There was Billy, but it wasn''t Billy. It was a mess. He had an aura that was only red. It was deep and it was angry and it was roiling and it was full of rage, but this rage felt more like the blackness that I encountered on the other kid. I shook it off, careful not to look at his face.


    The punch was already in the air. Why did he want to punch me? I swear he got out of bed this morning with the intent to punch me in the nose. With little more to do than watch the punch creep my way, I looked at the crowd that had given us room. I wondered why they were all standing off instead of doing anything. Someone had a blue aura. It was tinged with green. She was looking at me. I focused on her for a second. She was sad. It was like she wanted to help, but she couldn''t because she needed something. I don''t know if I was getting better or worse at reading people. She needed something. There was a sick feeling of fear. Sympathy, but also fear of loss. What was she afraid she would lose?


    I was out of time to try and parse the confusing jumble when the fist was close enough. I raised my hand that had the symbol and put it in front of the fist. I thought it might be a showy way for me to use my new vampire power. What I hadn''t expected was that the freezing motion that the symbol attached would affect both of us.


    Time sped back up, and his fist collided with mine with a meaty smack, but there was an immovable force between our two hands. He had punched much harder than I had moved my hand. I heard the knuckles in his hand protest. Billy shouted in pain, alarmed, and tried to pull his hand away, but of course, our hands were stuck.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    I discovered we weren¡¯t stuck together. What happened was that we had both been stuck to something that neither of us could see, and it was immovable. So it looked like I had caught his fist, then was casually standing there, holding it as he desperately tried to pull away.


    The ripple of colors in auras around me showed me that people were shocked. And was that impressed, or was that upset? Glancing around at their faces, and sampling the emotions, I realized they were impressed, but more along the lines of shock than approval, and they were upset, like afraid of losing something upset. What were they afraid of?


    The rush hit me. A wave of energy filled my body, like I had drunk the pure essence of good-mood, mixed with life. I felt lighter. Stronger. My backpack was no longer a burden. I felt sharper, the world taking on a clarity it had been missing before. The pure joy of it became a shield to the emotions crashing all around me. I was able to sample the auras of the people I looked at without getting caught up in them.


    The connection between Billy and myself broke, and he fell, still playing tug-of-war with the strange force when it vanished. The kids¡ª was I thinking of them as kids because of the bleed through I had experienced of Not-me after the vortex?¡ª The teens, all became more afraid as Billy struggled up. I needed to get the the bottom of this. Were they afraid for Billy?


    ¡°What the hell nerd?¡± Billy said.


    ¡°My dad owns a dojo and I¡¯ve been training since before I could walk,¡± I lied. I backed it up with a smirk. I felt so good! It was easy to be glib.


    Billy shook his head, and smiled back.


    ¡°Thompson, George! My office! now!¡±


    I winked at Billy and walked through the crowd.


    ***


    I beat Billy and Mr. Fizer both to the office by a good bit and reached in my pocket, only to remember I didn''t have a spoon. We had reset. I was grateful that this time I didn''t stumble into the reset not remembering the previous go-around. It seemed like that had been a consequence of whatever I had done with that whole vortex that Not-me and Jemima had talked about, and something about channels I didn''t understand. I didn''t feel like I needed to make sense of it right now, though. What I needed was Not-me to show up and tell me a couple of things.


    After a second, I was able to catch a reflection in the nameplate sitting on the desk. It looked like he was still using zombie Mrs. Streep. She was nothing but a skull now.


    "Make it fast, kid," Not-me said. "This thing''s about to fall apart."


    Of all the questions that were spinning through my mind in that moment, and all the things that I needed answers to, I settled on one.


    "Give me pointers on telekinesis. I''m about to have time to practice and little else to do," I said.


    Not Me laughed¡ªa dark chuckle that I thought was completely inappropriate.


    "Fine, kid," he said. "A deal''s a deal." He again reiterated moving stuff in my imagination and using my muscles without using my muscles. Then he said to me, "I''ll give you the secret. Everyone''s muscle for telekinesis, if they have the knack for it, is different. It took me years to discover this, so this is a hell of a cheat, but here you go. The muscle that you are able to use is your tongue."


    I blinked at that. I didn''t know what to say. "My tongue?" He couldn''t be serious.


    Just then, I was interrupted by Billy and Mr. Fizer entering the office. I looked up. I noticed that Mr. Fizer''s gravity was not as heavy as it had been the last time I had been in here, feeling like I was being towed into whatever outcome he wanted. It was weird. Was this a result of everything that happened? Had my perceptions of the world shifted so I was no longer affected by things like the gravity of an adult, or was it having to do with something much more physical? Was it the luck that I had taken?


    I wanted to test it. I wanted to draw the symbol again and try to get a hold of a little bit of Mr. Fizer''s luck. If I could take some of it, and I found his gravity decreased even more as my gravity increased, then I would have a working theorem.


    "Sit down, boys," Mr. Fizer said, his voice no-nonsense. I sat.


    The colors around him weren''t angry. I looked at his face and tried to sample his aura but found that he wasn''t open like the kids were. I couldn''t just read him. That was weird. Was this because he was the first adult I encountered, or did he have some sort of gift too? I knew way too little about all this stuff to make a conclusion.


    Billy was still a roiling mass of red. I looked over at him. I shouldn''t have done it, but I couldn''t help it. I sampled his emotions. Rage filled my entire being, so pure and so visceral that I wanted to tear his head off with my hands and my teeth. There was an undercurrent that kept me from moving, though. It was like I was trapped inside a bottle, like I couldn''t get out, like I had no agency to move my body and act on my own rage. It was like everything was outside of my control.


    This was a very familiar feeling to me. I had long felt that my own life was outside of my control, and it shocked me in that moment to feel camaraderie form between Billy and myself. I had thought he was the antithesis of what I was, and here I was encountering the same emotion set that sat inside me: a feeling of angry impotence at the lack of control I had over my own life. People like my mother, whose addiction seemed to run her life more often than she did, had control. People like the state, who came in and told me what I had to do, had control. People like Mr. Fizer, who stepped in and stomped around and told me what I had to do, had control. I didn''t get to choose.


    And here was the same feeling in Billy. No wonder he was so angry. But, what did this have to do with me?


    I looked hard at the feeling of rage he had towards me. He wanted something he felt I had taken. I realized then that was exactly what it was. Billy wanted to punch me in the face because he felt like I was taking away from him his portion of something. What was it? How could I have possibly taken anything from him? I didn''t know him. Well, I knew him much better now, having relived this day over and over, but I had never had so much as a conversation with him before this. I knew him by reputation only.


    "You boys wait here. I''ve got something important I have to do and I don''t have time to deal with you," Mr. Fizer said. The same line that he''d given us the first time he''d left us here for two hours.


    He left. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I knew that I had plenty of time to wait. Watching as he danced his way out from behind the desk, he performed the same maneuver that he had on day one, nimbly stepping between the filing cabinet and the desk, his gut coming millimeters away from knocking over the pencil cup.


    I knew I had my target. I was going to spend the next two hours practicing my telekinesis and trying to understand how I was supposed to feel about Billy feeling the same as me.


    ***

 Chapter 18, Telekinesis, Billy And Hamlet

    I expected telekinesis to leap to my command as easily as my ability to slow time had. After an hour of trying, this did not prove to be the case. It didn''t help that Billy kept interrupting. Me being able to not get punched in the face by him seemed to make me cool in his book, and he kept trying to start a conversation. I was only mildly irritated by this because I had something else I had planned to do with the quietude.


    "Hey," Billy said again. "What do you think Mr. P is going to do? I mean, this already feels like a bonus. We don''t have to sit through math. I wonder if we''ll get to miss history too."


    I cocked my head. Math and history? Billy was on the same class schedule as me? I hadn''t noticed. I wondered at that. I realized I didn''t really know Billy at all. Were we in the same grade?


    "Yeah," I said. "We''re definitely going to miss history, too."


    "Oh, sweet," Billy said, sagging, in visible relief.


    I cocked an eyebrow at him. He didn''t like history? I didn''t know people didn''t like history. It was so fascinating. Shaking it off, I made another attempt at the pencil cup. I imagined what it was I wanted the cup to do¡ªmove towards the edge of the desk. My mental thoughts cheered it on. I pictured it moving, the cup sliding just half an inch closer to the edge. I imagined my tongue pressed up against the side of the cup, which was a little gross, I''ll admit. But I did it nonetheless. And then I pressed my tongue up against the roof of my mouth. And focusing on that movement, I imagined the movement¡ªmy tongue pressing not on the roof of my mouth, but on the cup. Nothing happened. I tried pushing my tongue against the front of my teeth. Nothing happened. I tried every single variation of pushing my tongue in any direction I possibly could. Still, nothing happened.


    "Seriously though," Billy said, "what do you think Mr. P is going to do to us?"


    I looked over at him. "He''s probably going to give us three weeks of detention," I said.


    "Whoa, three weeks? That would be righteous."


    I processed that. Righteous. He wanted detention? My mind clunked to a stuttering stop. Who wanted detention? Why would you want to stay after school instead of going and doing anything else?


    I looked over at him. "You mean... you would be happy to get detention?" I asked.


    Billy nodded. "Yeah, dude. Then I wouldn''t have to go home."


    I blinked at him. Detention was better than going home? There was a tinge of a color in his aura that hadn''t been present earlier. It wasn''t all red. There was a little thread of white. This color stuff was confusing. What was white supposed to be? Red seemed to be anger, I thought, but honestly, the feeling was much more complex.


    I needed more time with it.


    I debated about asking Billy why he didn''t want to go home. But I realized I was afraid of the answer. I didn''t want to know why Billy didn''t want to go home. Why was I afraid of the answer? That wasn''t normal. I wasn''t normally afraid of answers.


    Oh, there it was.


    Something deep in my gut. Billy was like me. Except that he wasn''t. And how much he was like me with how he felt scared me, and I was worried that if I delved into why he didn''t want to go home, I would discover that I wanted the same thing, except that I had never acknowledged it, and it felt like a rock sitting in my stomach¡­ I didn''t want to know how I felt.. I stuffed that one down in the back of my mind. I found a box, and I buried it.


    I had not realized that I did not want to know how I felt, but now that I was able to put words on it¡­ It was true.


    I didn''t want to have my emotions. They were a waste of time. Feeling things was not productive. I wanted to be productive. I wanted to learn. I wanted to help people. I wanted to go find Dad.


    Nobody else was doing anything. It was up to me. But there was more on my plate now. I clenched my jaw at the thought that Not-me had never mentioned Dad. This was the most important thing. There was nothing more important than finding Dad.


    ¡®Why hadn''t he mentioned whether or not he''d found Dad?!¡¯ I mentally shouted.


    Was this one of the things that I didn''t want to feel? I hadn''t realized you could shout inside your own head, but I definitely was. I looked over at Billy to make sure I hadn''t actually shouted out loud. Billy was staring at the carpet, a quiet smile on his face, seeming content, humming a tune that I thought was classic rock. I didn''t know he was a classic rock fan. He didn''t wear any of the paraphernalia. Apparently, I had not shouted because he was not giving me a look like I was out of my mind.


    I had been afraid to ask Not-me, and I had been afraid to feel that I was afraid to ask. I didn''t want to know the answer. If Not-me had found Dad, he would have said so. Wouldn''t he? I didn''t know. I found a new box. I opened it up, and I stuffed that one in there, too.


    Redirecting my attention, I again went through the motions of pushing the cup forward, but...


    ¡®You''re a coward!¡¯ I heard shouted in my own head. It was my voice, but it was not my voice.


    What was wrong with me? In that second, as I was imagining the cup moving across the desk, pushing but not pushing with my tongue, the feeling of anger at myself, at my future self, at my own cowardice, at my own neglect, at the fact that I hadn''t found Dad and the people who had taken him away from me had gotten away with it flooded over me all at once, like a wave rushing from head to toe, causing an involuntary shudder, and I tasted a metallic taste. Was that blood?Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Through the pounding, ringing in my ears, the cup on the desk in front of me, which I had been fixated on with a stare that penetrated through it and carried on beyond, scraped. It was the tiniest movement. Then the metallic taste went away and I realized I had tasted the cup.


    Gross.


    But it had worked! Hadn¡¯t it? The pounding in my ears receded as I focused on breathing. I was about to lose control. Breathe¡­ In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four¡­


    Had I imagined the cup moving? I let out a juttering sigh, as if my diagram was spasming after a long cry.


    Billy¡¯s stink made keeping up the breathing exercise difficult. He smelled like moldy cheese and sour body odor. I leaned farther away, clinging to the four count like a rope at the edge of a pit.


    "How did you do that?" Billy said. I thought he was asking about the cup. It hadn''t moved much. Had it? I was doubting that it moved at all. I looked at the desk, and I looked at him. I fumbled with it. I was having trouble talking. I needed to hold on to my breathing. The crashing inside my head was too much.


    "Um" was all I could manage, which was good because I had been about to over-explain about telekinesis when Billy said,


    "Your dad''s not really the owner of a dojo, is he?"


    Oh. I understood. He wanted to know how I had caught his punch. Billy was massaging his knuckles.


    "That really hurt. That''s the same way it feels to punch a wall."


    I looked at him. He knew what it felt like to punch a wall. Why would you punch a wall?


    Breathe¡­ In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four¡­


    ¡°That was badass,¡± Billy said, ¡°could you teach me how to to that?¡±


    I looked at Billy, my eyes watering with the deep breaths of his stink I was taking in. A line of white larger than before streamed across his aura and I reached for it, my own emotions threatening to drag me into them.


    I felt hopeful, if I could catch a punch like that, I could protect mom. I could actually do some good. We wouldn¡¯t have to be scared anymore. I would actually be able to be someone who wasn¡¯t worthless¡­


    I surfaced from Billy¡¯s aura. A single tear escaped my eye before I could stop it. I felt like I had spied on someone¡¯s private life. I shook my head.


    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°That line about my dad and the dojo was just banter. My dad has been gone for four years now. I just got lucky with the punch.¡±


    Billy processed that, his mouth turning down into a frown. The white thread shrank, but was bigger than before. Then he ginned at me.


    ¡°You¡¯re lucky,¡± he said. ¡°No dad is better than my dad.¡± He leaned back in his seat, ¡°You¡¯re alright Tim.¡±


    He held out a fist, and I stared at it for a moment.


    ¡°Call me Freak,¡± I said. Then I reached over and I bumped his out-held fist.


    Billy nodded then closed his eyes, and leaned his head on the wall. After a moment his breathing evened out and he let out a gentle snore.


    I realized then that my emotions weren¡¯t trying to crash over me anymore. Taking a peek at Billy¡¯s made mine easier to manage somehow. A shudder passed through me, and I stared at the floor, trying to process what had just happened.


    ***


    I stayed like that, eyes on the floor, almost unthinking, enjoying the fact that I had returned to a point where my emotions were not vying for my attention. Billy, for his part, continued to nap, his snores turning into more of a rasping quality and kept jerking his head forward every time he''d have a loud one. He only shifted in his seat and fell back asleep. I didn''t try to contact Not-me, and I didn''t try to sample Billy''s aura again. I had had quite enough of that, and so I stared at the floor until Mr. Pheizer came back into the room.


    He opened the door, and I glanced up. It startled Billy awake, and he snorted himself to blinking awareness. Mr. Pheizer frowned at this, and I swear a quiet smile played across his face for a moment and then was gone. The look on his features I would have called irritation, but as I reached to try and figure out what he actually felt, I again encountered a wall.


    He had two manila envelopes, as he did the first time, and again did his nifty maneuver between the cabinets and the edge of the desk. As he passed, he bumped the pencil cup, and it spilled across the desk onto the chair and onto the floor behind it. Mr. Pheizer let out a grumbled curse and slapped the manila envelopes down, looking up sharply at both of us. I put on my best completely innocent look. He glared at us both. I was relieved to see Billy caught the brunt of the glare, and I was a secondary consideration.


    "Were you boys getting into my desk?" he asked.


    Both of us shook our heads. Billy chimed in for me. "No, we sat here the whole time, Mr. P. Honest."


    His frown deepened for a second, and then he seemed to take Billy at his word. Meanwhile, I fought down a thrill that I now knew it had worked. I had managed to move the pencil cup. It hadn''t been much, but it had been enough. So it hadn''t been my imagination.


    Mr. Pheizer set to trying to clean up the pencils and right the cup, which required him to move the desk because he didn''t quite have enough room to get to everything behind it. I was alarmed at how easily the man moved the desk, like this was an easier task than bending over. After a moment of grunting, during which I heard several more curses, reminding me of Not-me, he eventually had everything back in its place. I watched as he meticulously reset the desk and put the pencil cup intoits exact place.


    Finished, he once more grabbed the manila envelopes and sat down in his usual spot behind the desk. I was sure his glare this time contained genuine irritation. He launched into the familiar spiel of telling us that the school had a no-tolerance policy about fighting, which I felt significantly less affected by now. Surprisingly, Billy this time volunteered that he had started it. Mr. Pheizer eyed both of us and shook his head.


    "It doesn''t matter who started it. I''ve got to give you both the same punishment, understand?"


    Billy nodded, looking a little ready to argue, but I knew the dance was pointless either way. So, being curious, I volunteered, "Would a week''s detention be sufficient?"


    Billy shot me a horrified look as if I had betrayed him with that. Mr. Pheizer shook his head. "I think you boys need three weeks to learn your lesson," he said, at which Billy looked visibly relieved. If Mr. Pheizer was aware of the interplay going on, it didn''t show on his features. The rest played out as I expected.


    We accepted our detention slips, acknowledging that we had to go get them signed by a legal guardian, and we left the office. Billy stopped me once we were out in the hall.


    "Hey, uh, Ti¡ª I mean, Freak?"


    I looked up at him. "Yeah?" I said, curious where the boy was going with this.


    "Listen, you''re alright. If you ever need help, like somebody hassling you or something, you come tell me, okay?"


    I looked at him. He seemed genuine. I was surprised. I wanted to ask him if he fought everybody that he became friends with, and why he had singled me out to try and punch in the face, but I thought better of it, having already experienced way too much of Billy''s life. I just nodded. He accepted that, and we went towards our next class. We were on the same class schedule I discovered, as we reached English.


    He slid into a seat in the back as I took my usual seat in the front. When I glanced back at him, he shot me a smirk. I returned the smile and then kept my eyes forward. Was everyone more complicated than I thought, or had I just not given Billy enough credit?


    The teacher walked in. He was a put-together looking young man. I shook my head; that was probably Not-me influencing my thinking. He was in his late twenties or early thirties. He had a neat comb-over style haircut, and he wore the English teacher-appropriate sweater vest.


    He stood behind the desk and looked at the students. "All right, the first week''s almost over, which means if you haven''t transferred out yet, I got you for the rest of the year." He winked at the class, which got no response. His name was Mr. Hinkley, and he wrote his name across the blackboard again, as he did every time he entered the room. I wondered why he didn''t just leave it up there.


    "I''m going to want a writing example from all of you. This won''t be graded, but I will need it by Monday," he said. The class all groaned at this news. I had already heard this before. "I want you to read the CliffsNotes on Hamlet, and then I want you to go to the end of the story and imagine a meeting beyond the grave between Hamlet and his father. You are to write me a two-hundred-word scene in which Hamlet and his father have a confrontation about everything that took place during Hamlet''s ill-fated attempt to find revenge and peace for his deceased father. It''s up to you to decide whether the ghost indeed found peace at the end or whether he was upset with Hamlet''s attempts to enact revenge.


    "You will have the rest of this class as a study hall to read through the CliffsNotes, which I''m going to hand out to all of you. I encourage you to read the play on your own. You''ll be able to find it online, or if they''re not all checked out, you can go to the school library and check out a copy. What I want from you is to know: do you think Hamlet was right, or do you think Hamlet was wrong? I need your writing to reflect this. If you want to get to work on the scene, you have the rest of the class period to attempt to do so. Handwritten is fine. Typed is also acceptable."


    He then volunteered one of the students to hand out copies of the CliffsNotes, which I was already quite familiar with, and left me to sit there and contemplate the question. When I had first written the scene for Hamlet encountering his father, I had concluded that his father was indeed pleased with his actions and could now rest peacefully. But after the experiences I recently had, I was now not so sure. If I ever got to turn this assignment in, I was curious whether or not I would conclude that Hamlet''s father had found closure.


    ***

 Chapter 19, Auras And Emotions

    Having no need to read the Cliff''s Notes on Hamlet again, I studied Mr. Hinkley, trying to see if I could read his aura. It was the same as with Mr. Pheizer. I hit a wall. I was unable to discern anything about what he was feeling.


    Maybe it was something to do with adults. I didn''t have enough information to understand it. Having been thrown headfirst into the deep end with Not-me and Jemima changing everything about my life, I now had many more questions about the world and how it worked than I had before.


    Just then, something caught my eye. Movement along the floor, a gray shape scuttled into the room. I looked up, and this time I could clearly see the gremlin. it was smaller than the one I¡¯d seen before, this one was about the size of a mouse. Being able to see it, I understood now why Not-me had labeled them as imps. The word "gremlin" conjured to mind a diminutive humanoid with troll or goblin-like features that would climb inside mechanical workings and sabotage them with clever little hands.


    The creature before me was not humanoid at all. It was much more like something you¡¯d see under a microscope. It was a big puffball. It looked for all the world like an extra-thick, extra-large, gray dandelion poof. The wiry stalks that made up its body extended out from it, and it ran on those, extruding limbs as it had need. It didn¡¯t seem to have a top or bottom or front or back. Every part of it looked able to move the way the prehensile limbs did. Like it was made of arms.


    It turned down the aisle of seats and stopped beside me. It seemed to lean back, then it looked at me. It had two bright, lambent little eyes set somewhere inside of the puffball itself, giving off a blue glow. It studied me for a moment, blinked twice, and then turned and continued on its way.


    I watched as it made its way all the way back to where Billy sat and then proceeded to dive into his backpack. I saw the bag move slightly, but no one else seemed to notice. After a minute, it emerged triumphant, holding something above its head. It looked like a folded piece of paper. The mouse gremlin then scuttled down the backpack and then back up the aisle.


    I glanced up, looking for a reaction, but nobody noticed either the paper, or the creature. It moved past my seat, made a right turn, and then scuttled out under the door. I raised my hand, and when the teacher noticed, I asked for the bathroom. I dashed to the desk, under the pretense of needing to go, and followed it out into the hall. I wanted to know where the mouse gremlin was going.


    I could just hear Mr. Hinkley say, "No running," as I skidded into the hall, my sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. Looking left and right, I felt a jolt of panic as I didn''t see the thing. Then I caught sight of it. At the end of the hall, it was just turning a corner. Ignoring the teacher¡¯s admonition, I took off at a sprint, chasing after the creature. How had it gotten so far so quickly?


    As I blasted down the hallway, I took the corner so fast that I had to push off the lockers. I caught up with it around the next turn as the thing had slowed its roll in order to climb the wall of lockers. As I skidded to a stop, I noticed the rough characters "B.G." scratched into the locker''s face. The creature had made it up to the top of the locker where the little slotted vents were, and was busily shoving the piece of paper inside it.


    I saw enough of the paper at this point to realize what it was. It was Billy''s detention slip that he needed to get signed over the weekend. After the creature shoved the slip all the way inside the locker, it then proceeded to shove itself through the vent. After a little bit of effort and a slight popping sound, it got inside.


    I noticed, standing there staring at the locker, that there was a faint smell of smoke, like striking flint would produce. I think the mouse gremlin had made it. I longed to open the locker and see what it was doing, but I was leery of attracting the ire of the cloaked heart squeezer. I put my ear to the locker. I heard rustling paper and a thump like a closing boom.


    I suspected it was hiding the paper inside a book. I waited, curious. There was another thump and more rustling. After a moment, the mouse gremlin squeezed itself out from the vent and then fell to the floor with a gentle plop. It then scuttled away, picking up speed as it rolled down the hall. It went faster along a straight stretch.


    I kept pace with it for a minute until I realized that my hall pass was not a get-out-of-jail-free card and I was going to have to go into a bathroom and then return to class or catch more trouble. I longed to follow the creature back to where it came from; then I remembered the dark figure in the cowl. Mr. Grabby. Maybe I didn''t long to follow it exactly. But I was curious. I would enjoy observing from a distance.


    I made a mental note to try and tell Billy at the end of the day to get his detention slip out of the locker. But I had the sneaking suspicion that it wouldn''t matter. I''d be back in this day again. And again. And again. I shook my head at this. No, I couldn''t get lost in that line of thinking. I was not going to be stuck in this day forever. I was going to make it out. I had already made progress.


    I found the nearest bathroom and dashed inside. I stepped up to the sink to wash my hands, lost in thought about what the gremlin or imp, if you prefer, was off to do and where they dwelled. Where was it going? It had to go somewhere. When I glanced up into my reflection in the mirror, I nearly screamed. I spun around because standing behind me was the bloody-toothed visage of Billy grinning like a freaking maniac. Of course, when I spun around, the room was empty, and I realized who had been standing there wearing Billy''s skin, grinning at me with a blood-stained smile.


    Taking a deep breath, not enjoying any clarity of vision when it came to seeing Not-me, I turned back around to look at zombie Billy again.


    "Well, color me impressed, kid," Not-me said. "I saw your little stunt, following the imp into the hall. You managed to resist the urge to touch it. I didn''t think you had it in you."


    The temptation to throw him a rude gesture was overwhelming, but I found the willpower. "Where do they go?" I asked. "When they return, or when they''re not here?"


    Not-me raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, I wondered that myself. I guess maybe you are me a little bit still. When they''re not needed, they go to unused spaces. Preferably places that have been lived in or occupied for longer periods of time but become disused. They find it very comfortable there. If you were ever to explore an abandoned building, you would find a surplus of them milling about, living their lives instead of trying to produce an effect or perform a task."


    I was surprised at this news. "Living their lives?" I asked. "I thought you said they were more like machines."


    "Well, they certainly are when they''re on the job. It''s an easy way to explain them. How would you explain an amoeba?"


    I looked at him. "I would call it an amoeba?" I ventured.


    Not-me shook his head. "They''re more complex than that. When left on their own, they''ll maintain an abandoned place, causing it to stay around for far longer than an old structure really should. That''s why some old buildings will stand for hundreds of years when by all earthly means, they should fall over."This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Huh." I thought about that. "Are they what ghost hunters find when they go searching for ghosts in abandoned buildings?" I asked.


    "Well, they¡¯re some of what they find. Most of the time, no. They''re far too clever for your average ghost hunter. Somebody who has a respect for the spirits can leave them presents, and they will actually show themselves, but even that''s rare. Some creatures of the spirit world are far more canny than others. I would say the imps are among the most canny, which is why they''re very effective in the tasks they get sent on."


    "What other kinds of things are the imps sent to do, other than what seems like mild mischief?"


    "Lots of stuff, kid," Not-me said. "I don''t feel like giving a lecture right now. Aren''t you supposed to be in class?"


    I shrugged. "I''ve already done it twice," I said. "I don''t know what good being in class now will do."


    "Prevent you from being missed? I saw you actually had some success with telekinesis. I''m surprised," Not-me said. "Did you figure out that you have to stop bottling your emotions to actually take advantage of using it?"


    I pressed my lips together. "Do I have to do that every time?" I asked.


    Not-me nodded, the wicked-looking grin returning to zombie Billy''s features. "Yep. Telekinesis is impossible with bottled up emotions. You''re going to have to use your emotions in order to actually use telekinesis."


    I didn''t like the sound of that. How much did I bottle my emotions? This wasn¡¯t going to be a big deal, was it? And so what? It¡¯s not like being angry ever helped anything.


    ¡°I''m not even sure I used my emotions,¡± I said, glaring at Not-me in the mirror. ¡°I think I used Billy¡¯s¡ª That''s the thing I wanted to talk to you about. I''m seeing colors all over people. I want to call it an aura, but that sounds too trite to actually be true. What am I seeing?¡±


    Not-me laughed. ¡°It''s their aura¡ª No, it''s not as simple as some people think it is. It contains multiple layers of stuff, but it''s essentially whatever a person is leaking.¡±


    ¡°Leaking?¡± I said. ¡°Gross!¡±


    Not-me laughed again. ¡°You have no idea, kid. Just like anything that a body leaks, it''s also contagious.¡±


    I yelped. I had the sudden urge to wash my hands. The sink was right there, so I began.


    ¡°Yuck,¡± I said. ¡°You mean I got essence of Billy all over my, what, my mind? My soul? My insides?¡±


    Not-me laughed again. ¡°No, don''t worry about it. You can shake it back off as long as you don''t own it.¡±


    ¡°Own it,¡± I said. ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Well, it''s simple. Take the emotions you felt when you looked at Billy. When they popped into your head, did you think that they belong to you?


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡±


    ¡°You know what? Freud had a way of putting it that I really liked. He said that owning stray thoughts is like a man walking into a darkened room and tripping over a coffee table and then believing the coffee table is part of himself.¡±


    ¡°He said that?¡± I asked.


    ¡°More or less. Forget about the coffee table. The point is, if you believe that the things you feel when you look at someone else''s aura, or when it leaks onto you when you''re not paying attention, belong to you, then you will begin generating the same emotions that will belong to you.¡±


    ¡°So, how do I keep...¡± I washed my hands harder. ¡°Clean? I don''t want the essence of Billy rolling around inside me or essence of anyone else for that matter. I want to be me.¡±


    ¡°That''s what I decided right before Big Black came in and squeezed my heart to death.¡±


    Not-me laughed again. ¡°Big Black, I like that. We should use that for him. It''ll piss him off.¡±


    ¡°Who was he?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Don''t worry about it, kid. That''s not important right now. What''s important is, you need to figure out how to get control of you. You have to live today. You can''t get caught up in everyone''s emotions. You need to learn to control it.¡±


    I sighed. This sounded like a chore. ¡°How do I do that?¡±


    ¡°You need to practice meditation,¡± Not-me leered at me. With Billy¡¯s broken features. It was like he was trying to get a reaction from me.


    ¡°Go back to class, and take hold of the you that¡¯s inside of you and use it to throw out intruders. Be conscious of what you¡¯re thinking. Spend timed periods deliberately blank, throwing out stray thoughts and emotions. When they pop up, tell yourself ¡®that''s not mine¡¯ and just walk away.¡±


    ¡°I''m supposed to sit in class, and walk away when¡ª¡°


    ¡°No, I don''t mean literally. I mean walk away in your head. You have to dismiss the thoughts by acknowledging they''re not yours and then return to center.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°This sounds hard.¡±


    ¡°It''ll get easier. You have to practice. This muscle needs to be built up.¡±


    ¡°I got a muscle in my head?¡± I said.


    ¡°Yeah, you do. And you''ve got a muscle in your soul, too. And you''re not good at using any of them because you''re just a kid.¡±


    ¡°Why is everything so much work?¡± I said.


    ¡°It''s how life is. Work and pain are the barriers to all progress. Now, pay attention to me. You focus on who you are. Who you want to be. And you hold that in your head. If you want to accelerate the process and make it harder, all you have to do is open your eyes and sample somebody''s aura. As soon as that leaks onto you, you can practice dismissing it. It would be good practice for when you''re alone and you get intrusive thoughts. Things that pop into your head¡ªthat''s an aura leaking out from somewhere or something. Big Black likes to leak his aura all over a neighborhood. And everyone who picks it up and owns it becomes his partway. And the more thoroughly they own it, the more influence he can exert by thoughts that he puts in their head.¡±


    I grimaced. ¡°That''s insidious. How do we stop it?¡±


    Not-me''s eyes bugged out. ¡°Stop it? You can''t stop it, kid. That thing''s too big to even consider. We''re after smaller fish.¡±


    ¡°It''s not right,¡± I said.


    ¡°Damn straight it''s not right. Jemima called me evil. Look at Big Black and what he''s doing.¡±


    ¡°What is he doing?¡± I asked.


    ¡°How many kids in this school do you think suffer from suicidal thoughts, or thoughts of self harm?¡±


    I cocked my head. I had never thought about it. I had never struggled with it myself, so I hadn''t considered.


    ¡°Uh, I don''t know. One?¡± I guessed.


    Not-me laughed. ¡°You are naive. Wow. Okay. You just watch. Every kid you see that has blackness in their aura, and not just a regular black, a black like blacker than black, like Big Black is. Every time you see one of those, you will find somebody who''s suffering from suicidal ideation, or self harm.¡±


    ¡°What''s ideation?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It''s an obsessive fixation that you have little to no control over, and it becomes more and more real in your mind until you act it out. Forget about that. Watch for that darker-than-black blackness. Every time you see it, you''ll see somebody who has intrusive, self-harm, or suicidal thoughts.¡±


    I thought back. I had already seen a kid with black in their aura. In fact, he was almost consumed by it. I hadn''t understood what I was looking at at the time. I thought back to Billy. Had I seen any black in his? It was so red it was hard to tell, and I was having trouble studying it. I wasn''t sure. Now I wanted to go look at Billy''s again, but I was afraid to feel what he felt. I didn''t want to be Billy. I wanted to be me.


    Then I remembered what Not-me had said. ¡°What happens if I can''t walk away from an aura that I sample? I asked Not-me. What happens if it jumps on me and I can''t clear my head?¡±


    Not-me dropped his leering smile and looked me in the eye. It was really creepy on zombie Billy. ¡°Then you come talk to me. I''ll set you straight. You at least have that going for you. Listen, kid, you''re emotionally stunted. You don''t know it, but other emotions will be hard for you to feel.¡±


    ¡°What? How?¡± I said. I hadn¡¯t felt like I was emotionally stunted.


    Not-me shook his head. ¡°You hold yourself aloof from people because you don''t get them. You don''t read body language well, and you don''t understand that yet. Hell, I didn''t figure it out until I was twenty. I don''t know how much of it you know or don''t know, but you just got kicked into the deep end with this aura crap. So, you want to survive it? You have to be aware of the effect you have on other people.¡±


    I shot him and incredulous look. ¡°The effect I have on other people?¡± I said. ¡°I don''t have an effect on other people. I¡¯m twelve.¡±


    Not-me shook his head. ¡°No, your body language, the way you hold yourself, the way you''re aloof from everyone, you have quite the effect on everyone. You don''t even know it. Why do you think nobody helped you in that hallway when Billy struck you?¡±


    ¡°Um, they''re assholes,¡± I ventured, trying out cursing again.


    Not-me shook his head. ¡°No, kid, that ain''t it at all. You''re so aloof that people feel like they can''t approach you. You don''t make eye contact. You don''t look people in the face. Most times you speak without thinking or giving other people room in the conversation. You run people right over. You are as atypical, high-functioning autistic as they come.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°I already know I''m autistic,¡± I said. ¡°I read an article.¡±


    Not-me shook his head. ¡°There''s a big difference between knowing something and doing something about it, kid. What you need to do is you need to work harder just to blend in and make people see you as something that''s safe.¡±


    I didn''t want to do this. This sounded like even more work. I huffed out a sigh.


    ¡°I''m going to go back to class and practice meditation.¡± I turned the water off and reached for the door. At least I could tackle one thing at a time.


    A thought struck me and I turned back to the mirror.


    ¡°When did you do all this work?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Not until I was in my late twenties. After my first heartbreak.¡±


    ¡°Heartbreak?¡± I said.


    ¡°Yep. I pushed someone away that I wish I hadn''t. Then I started trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Turned out what was wrong was I hadn''t equipped myself with the proper tools to handle who I was.¡±


    Not-me¡¯s expression grew sour.


    ¡°Now enough of this bullshit. Go back to class and practice. You''re going to need it for tonight.¡±


    ¡°Tonight?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, if we''re gonna make it through today and not have to reset the damn loop again then you''re gonna be somewhere dangerous tonight and you''re gonna be around unsavory people. You''re gonna want to have a semblance of control over your new aura crap by the time you get there. Otherwise, it''s gonna kick your ass.


    ¡°But don''t worry,¡± Not-me grinned. ¡°If you get it wrong, you can always try again.¡±


    I groaned. This was turning into a long day.

 Chapter 20, Overdose

    My head felt full, ready to burst, as I exited the bathroom and made my way down the hall back to class. Was I really bad with people? I had never thought I was. Quite the opposite, actually. Sure, I didn''t enjoy being around anyone my age, and sure, I hadn''t met anyone in the high school that I enjoyed being around, but I liked being around adults. That was fine. Not-me couldn''t be correct, could he?


    As I stumbled into class, barely aware of my surroundings, Mr. Hinkley looked up.


    "Thomason, are you okay?" he asked.


    "Huh?" I said, putting the hall pass on his desk.


    "Well, first you ran out of here," Mr. Hinkley said, "and then you''re gone for a long time. Afterwards, you come back looking pale."


    ¡°Yeah, I''m okay, I just... had an unpleasant experience,¡± I said before I thought about how that might sound.


    "If you''re sure, Thomason," Mr. Hinkley said, "I could send you to the nurse¡¯s office." I became self-conscious of the quiet classroom behind me. I glanced back. Of course, everybody in the room was looking my way.


    What I hadn''t taken into account what eye contact from everybody in the room might do to my budding psychic senses.


    Right in the middle of assuring Mr. Hinkley that, yes, I was fine, I became overwhelmed by combined auras of the room. Every single emotion and every carry-on and rider in their auras hit me all at once.


    ***


    I was lying down, which was weird because I don''t remember lying down. I had been standing up. I blinked, trying to focus and see what was going on. The light overhead was too bright, and my head hurt almost as bad as when I had my occult hangover.


    A figure loomed into my blurry vision. They reached out and placed a hand on my arm.


    "Hey, asshole!" they shouted. "Wake up!"


    I came alert, like I had been splashed with cold water. Nurse Jolene Streep was leaning over me, but that had not been her voice. I blinked, confused, looking around the room to see if anyone else was there.


    "Easy now, darling," Mrs. Streep said. "You took quite the tumble. You got a little bonk on your noggin. Don''t you worry though, we''ll get you all fixed up."


    I reached up and touched my head. Sure enough, I had a lump on my forehead. I caught sight of a reflection in Mrs. Streep''s stethoscope, and Not-me yelled once more,


    "We need to establish some ground rules!"


    ¡°Why are you shouting?¡± I said, putting a hand to my head.


    Mrs. Streep put on a very concerned expression. "Timmy, dear, I wasn''t shouting," she said.


    "I''m shouting because you left me in the fucking bathroom for two hours, you asswipe!¡±


    I winced. Why was he able to hurt my ears when he seemed to be a figment of my imagination? I closed my eyes so I didn''t have to hear him, and then what he said rolled over me.


    I tried to sit up, but Mrs. Streep was looming, and she put a hand on my chest. It was embarrassing how little pressure it took to keep me down. The swinging stethoscope moved back and forth in my vision, and every time it swung in front of me,


    "You left me," it swung back, "in the bathroom," it swung forward, "of a high school," it swung back, "for two hours," he shouted.


    "How are you feeling, Timmy, dear?" Mrs. Streep asked me.


    "My head hurts," I said, being honest.


    The stethoscope swung back into my vision, "IT WAS THE GIRL''S BATHROOM."


    I squinted at the stethoscope. "I was in the girl''s bathroom?¡±


    Mrs. Streep looked very perplexed at this. "No dear, you were in class, don''t you remember?"


    "Couldn''t you just leave, or turn yourself off?" I said.


    Mrs. Streep put a hand on my forehead. "You''re rambling, dear, excuse me a sec, I''m just going to get the thermometer." She stepped away, and I didn''t have to hear Not-me anymore.


    I closed my eyes and put a hand to my head. I did not feel good. And I didn''t think it was the bump on my head that was making me feel this way.


    It reminded me of summer camp when we had been doing an arts-and-crafts project, constructing little PVC figures. We had gotten out primer and pipe glue. It smelled something awful. After about thirty minutes of working on my figurine, I felt dizzy. When I tried to get up, I fell over. The headache that followed was like what I was experiencing now.


    That had been back when Dad was still around. When he learned what happened, he laughed and said, "Yeah, you got high, little dude." He was the only one that ever called me little dude.


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    I rubbed my head. I''d gotten high? But the only thing that I had been exposed to was... The combined auras of an entire room of students. There must have been twenty-five students in the room. Everything they were carrying focused on me.


    I sat up.


    This turned out to be a mistake as the wave of dizziness and nausea caused me to nearly fall off the table and I had to lean over and throw up.


    It was not fun.


    Mrs. Streep came running in, "Oh dear, oh dear. Don''t worry about that. We''ll get you sorted out. Hang on, love."


    I''ll give her this: Mrs. Streep did not appear grossed out about my vomit at all. I was rather impressed. And I was also too weak and dizzy to do anything about it. So I let her wipe my chin and help me lay back down and heard her bustle about as she set to cleaning up the mess. I wasn''t going to be able to get up and find anything reflective. I could barely move. So struck by a moment of inspiration, I licked my thumbnail and then turned it back and forth until it caught the light just right and I caught a distorted reflection.


    "Oh, clever. Now you think of something clever. I have to hear how many likes Susie got on Instagram and how ¡®Instagram is so last year¡¯ and ¡®Why aren''t you on TikTok yet?¡¯ God, kill me now."


    I moved my thumbnail back out of my line of sight. I realized I had no desire at all to talk to Not-me while I felt like this.


    ***


    Mrs. Streep bustled back into the room and leaned over me, putting a little digital thermometer to my head. The stethoscope swing into view.


    "Thanks to you, I now know who ¡®made it¡¯ with whom last weekend, and and gory details about what they did. I''m never going to un-hear that shit. You know what it''s like to listen to teenage girls prattle on?¡±


    The stethoscope swung out of my view. I closed my eyes.


    "Timmy dear," Mrs. Streep said.


    I cracked an eye.


    "You had one job to do, kid," Not-me shouted. "One job. I told you, go back to the classroom and meditate, because you sampling other people''s auras is something you can''t handle, and what do you do?¡±


    ¡°I''m going to need to look in your eyes dear,¡± said Mrs Streep. She got out a penlight and shone it first in one eye, and then in the other.


    "You go in and try and sample a whole goddamn room. You''re lucky you didn''t start to loop over then and there, but on the other hand, you are allowing us to test the theory of how far we can stretch the bounds of living the loop and staying on the track.¡±


    ¡°Timmy, dear, I''m going to call your mother. I think you might need to go home. I want you to stay lying down."


    I raised my hand. "Wait," I said. "My mom will be at work. I''ve got a number for you to call instead."


    Mrs. Streep came back over so she could take the number.


    "Hey, quit ignoring me,¡± said Not-me. ¡°Listen, this is important. You need to feed right now unless you want to start this loop over soon.¡±


    ¡°Feed?" I said.


    Mrs. Streep looked at me. "Excuse me, dear?"


    "Yeah, genius. Take some of her luck. We''re out."


    "Oh," I said.


    I asked to borrow the pen from Mrs. Streep and wrote Cece¡¯s number down, mumbling an apology that I could only remember it if I started to write it.


    It was the best lie I could come up with.


    My head hurt.


    Then I drew the symbol on my palm. This was becoming easier. I had the pattern of strokes down now, so I didn''t have to start at the top and draw it to the bottom. I pretended to fall off the bed, catching hold of her arm with my luck symbol. Of course, it latched on like a leech. Now, that was a pleasant thought. I was a human leech. Leeching luck.


    Mrs Streep helped me back onto the bed. "My, but you have a firm grip," she said.


    Unable to move her arm or my arm for a moment, she seemed very perplexed. I wondered what would happen if I attempted this in a moving vehicle. I made a mental note to never try it. My hand freed itself and she lifted me onto the bed. Then the rush hit me.


    Liquid good mood ran through my veins. My headache evaporated. My vision cleared; I hadn''t realized it was still blurry. A dull ringing in my ears disappeared. Something roiling in my stomach seemed to decide it was time to be quiet and relax, and I started feeling really good. So good that I forgot I was supposed to be sick.


    I sat up. Mrs. Streep tried to push me back, looking alarmed, but I hopped off the bed. I smiled at her. I couldn''t help it. I felt so good.


    "You know what? I''m feeling a lot better now. I think it must have been something I ate," I said.


    She gave me a worried glance. Then she took a closer look at my head. "Oh, my. The lump on your head is already looking much better."


    I had forgotten about the lump on my head. I reached up and touched the spot. Sure enough, just like she said, it was almost gone. Had I just been healed by luck?


    I handed her the phone number. "Here. This is Cece. She''s my sitter. She watches me after school. Give her a call, and she''ll come get me. Maybe it''s still a good idea that I go home."


    Mrs. Streep seemed pleased by this news, took the number, and bustled into the other room. I stepped over to the drawer where I knew the spoon was and pulled it out. I was not licking my fingernail unless I had to. That was gross. Making sure I had positioned myself so I could not be overheard, I held the spoon up.


    "All right, what gives? Luck heals us? That doesn''t make any sense."


    "I told you it''s not luck. It''s just an easy way to think about it. Jeez."


    "Why is everything so complicated? Why can''t you just explain to me what it is?"


    "You don''t have the foundation to understand what it is. Don''t tell me that I need to explain it to you. You need to start building a lifetime of knowledge. Ugh. You''re so frustrating to talk to."


    "Me? Me? What about you?"


    "Excuse me, dear?" Mrs. Streep said, leaning in.


    I realized that I had been shouting. I was beginning to feel frustrated with Not-Me and our relationship.


    I shook my head. "Sorry, Mrs. Streep," I said. "I wasn''t talking to you."


    She gave me a funny look but leaned back around the corner. That made me wonder who she thought I was talking to, but it wasn''t really important. I was busy being angry at Not-me, which was frustrating by itself because I didn''t normally get angry at people. I was calm; I was rational; I was collected.


    I got angry at video games. I got angry at animals. I got angry at plants. And I got angry at inanimate objects. But I didn''t get angry at people. I just didn''t. I thought that was pretty cool about myself. Someone could spit in my face and I wouldn''t get angry at them. In fact, someone could punch me in the nose and I wouldn''t really get angry.


    I remember the first time Billy had punched me in the face. My reaction hadn''t been anger. Mostly, it had been feeling the hurt of having been punched in the nose for the first time. That hurt. Then my brain spat out what it was that I needed to do: stand up and give him a line so that he won''t feel any satisfaction from picking on you. And people will think you''re cool. That''s it, really. But it was all processed so fast that instead of thinking it, I did it.


    Instead of feeling angry or upset or hurt or sad¡ªI suppose maybe somebody would feel sad if they got punched in the nose. What did I feel? I felt... cold and calculating. I remembered what Not-me had said about my ability to feel emotions and about how I was seen by other people.


    Did other people see me as cold? What could I do about that? I was as personable as anyone. I just didn''t like small talk, that was all. I preferred puns, banter and quips to chatting about inconsequential things, and I preferred to talk about deeper subjects. And that wasn''t at all like anyone my age or close to my age, was it? But that didn''t make me cold, did it?


    Did it?


    I was a cold-hearted luck vampire who needed a ride home from his babysitter because he had overdosed on the emotions of a room full of teenagers, gotten high, fallen over, and knocked himself cold.


    ¡°You¡¯re wrong,¡± I said.


    Zombie Billy stared back at me from the spoon I held. ¡°No I¡¯m not. But what are you talking about? Wrong about what?¡±


    "I''m great with people, and I have a perfect handle on my emotions," I said. Looking at Not-me in the spoon, I could see that he started to laugh so hard he was literally falling to pieces. Through his choking, snorting guffaws, he shook his head.


    "How do you figure, kid? You are not good with people, you are not good with your emotions, you are not going to master telekinesis this year. Forget about it. And aura control is going to be out of reach until you do some goddamn practice."


    I narrowed my eyes. "You said that if I wanted a challenge, I should sample someone''s aura and give it a try. Come back to myself, like you said."


    "Yeah, I know what I said, kid. And what did you do? You went and sampled the whole damn room. That was incredibly stupid."


    I hopped down off the table and lowered the spoon. A mouse gremlin came zipping in. I watched it for a moment, but that wasn''t what I needed to focus on. I ignored it as it scuttled over to go find something of Mrs. Streep''s.


    I slipped out into the hallway. It was empty. Walking a little ways down the hall, I held the spoon up and glared at Not-me.


    "I''m going to prove you wrong," I said, and I put the spoon in my pocket. I remembered I was going to need to look in a reflective surface before I proved him wrong so that he could watch. I felt a smile creep on my face, knowing that he was now stuck in the hallway instead of in Mrs. Streep''s office, where he enjoyed reading over her shoulder.


    I marched to the assembly hall. This high school had a nice-sized hall set up. It seated eight-hundred at maximum. I knew my way through to the back, where they had the entrance for people who were working on stage. They rotated assemblies based on grade, and today was the senior assembly. I had the perfect plan.


    Nobody said anything as I made my way backstage. There were teachers and students working on things, but I found that keeping my head down and walking with intent kept people from stopping and questioning me. There was a thick curtain separating all the activity backstage. I could hear a buzz coming from the other side, indicating that the seats were currently filled.


    If an overdose of luck could solve one problem, what would an overdose of aura do? I held the spoon up, ¡°Watch this,¡± I said.


    Dropping the spoon, I walked through the curtain.


    ***


    *edit: typo

 Chapter 21, Go Again Day 6, Training Begins

    I took a deep breath as I stepped through the curtain. "Hold on to who you are," I said.


    The other side was like stepping into another world. An ocean of light and multi-hued colors washed towards me. It was so intense that I couldn''t see any face of any individual in the crowd. Instead of focusing on that, I walked toward it.


    "I am Timmy Freak," I said.


    I stepped forward.


    The light had a near physical presence. It was pushing on me, pushing me backward, but I didn''t let it. I stepped into it. "I am Timmy Freak." I stepped again. I noticed that there were certain patterns in the light. They were dancing, with each individual color coming towards me like a scintillating worm of energy snaking its way toward me. Resisting the urge to sample them and see what each one felt like, I took another step forward.


    "I am Timmy Freak."


    Who was I? I was an investigator. Now I was a vampire. I was a scientist. I was a researcher. I was a believer in the paranormal.


    I took another step forward.


    The lights began to filter and funnel straight toward me. I realized with that step that the attention of the room had probably not been on me until this moment. There were lights overhead. I was standing in the spotlight. There was a microphone, so I used it.


    "Hello," I said. "I''m Timmy Freak. I wanted to introduce myself." It hit me then. A wave of every color focused on me all at once, and they struck like a snake. I could feel them trying to tunnel inside me. I gasped, out of breath.


    "That''s not mine," I said, trying to focus on the advice I had been given. It was too much. I became aware of something inside me that I hadn''t had a name or sensation for, like a muscle that I had never used before this point and had suddenly become aware of. And there was a thousand-pound weight resting on that muscle. I buckled, collapsing. I could feel the lights were still attached to me, still funneling into me, trying to bore inside me, trying to change me, make me into what they were.


    ¡°I am...¡±


    ***


    Blackness surrounded me. This was new. The pressure and the weight were off, but I still had awareness of the muscle that I had just discovered.


    It hurt.


    I probed at it, like tonguing a missing tooth. So, that was the muscle I needed to work on.


    Where was I?


    I tried to look around, but there was no difference in my surroundings. Everything was black, as far as I could see, with no discernible difference in color. I realized I wasn''t standing on anything. I wasn''t sitting or lying down. I couldn''t feel any sensations coming from my body.


    Did I have a body?


    A voice came out of the darkness. It wasn''t terrible and thundering, booming like Big Black''s voice had been. This voice was different. It was unhurried, calm, assured. I''d label it as regal, except I''d never actually heard a king or queen speak, so I felt that might be a misapplication.


    "I told you once," said the voice, "let go, or you''ll tear your soul."


    Not having a body, I wasn''t sure if I could respond, but I tried anyway. I found the thoughts I had filtered directly into speech, but I didn''t have the muscle control of speaking them.


    "Hi," I said. "I''m Timmy Freak. I don''t remember you telling me anything or meeting you before. I don''t mean to be rude, your honor," I ventured, "but who are you?"


    "I am existence," the voice said. "I am who I am."


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I tried to purse my lips at this but found there was no muscle control there. Instead, my thoughts came spilling out unbidden.


    "That''s confusing," I heard my voice, using some mysterious form that was not my lips, say.


    "Not from my perspective, it''s not," the voice said.


    "Alright, fair enough. Well, it''s nice to meet you anyway. What should I call you?"


    "You should not call me by any name," the voice said.


    That was even more confusing.


    "Why are you here?" the voice asked.


    The answer to that leapt out of my not-mouth before I had time to process what I was thinking.


    "I''m tired of other people having control of my life," I heard myself say. "I wanted to take back control. So I''m trying to grow stronger," I said.


    I could feel the voice smile. It was very strange because I still couldn''t see anything and I still didn''t have a body, but it''s like the presence of somebody''s paternal pleasure was washing over me in this not-place.


    "This is a task I approve of," the voice said. "Very well. I will keep you from tearing yourself apart. Return here as long as you can continue to endure the pain," the voice said.


    ***


    I was about to respond when abruptly I was in the hallway. The familiar scintillating colors rolling off the students were washing towards me. Pain was an understatement. Something inside me was screaming. It was like I had consumed fire, and if my willpower could be burned, I had a third-degree burn on my will.


    Keeping my head down so I didn''t catch any more aura, I made my way to my locker. I pulled out a pen and sketched the symbol on my palm. I didn''t even have to look this time. I wondered what would happen if I sketched the symbol wrong. Something to try later.


    As I got there, I counted to three and then stepped forward as Billy bumped me. It took most of the impact away.


    "Watch where you''re going, nerd," I heard the familiar voice say behind me.


    "Go back to walking school, you human traffic accident," I said.


    "Why don''t you say that to my face," came the familiar retort.


    I turned and slowed my perception of time as I did. I wasn''t confident I could catch the fist without slowing time down. I only seemed to be able to slow things once per loop. The fist was in the air in its familiar flight. I reached out and caught it, letting time resume, watching Billy go from anger, to pain, to shock. He tried to pull away, but again, the luck transfer caused the point of contact to be immovable. Not surprised by it this time, I smiled and winked at him as he tried to pull away. Then when it finally released, he fell on his ass.


    "What the hell, nerd," Billy said.


    "I got rolled in radioactive goo when I was little, and now I have superpowers," I said.


    "What?" Billy said, looking very confused.


    A crowd had formed around us as usual. I kept my head down to avoid any more attention than I was already getting. Their auras were like fires flickering painfully on my burn. I couldn¡¯t feel any emotion from them, only pain.


    The rush from taking the luck hit me, and it helped. My third degree went to first degree, and the attention of the crowd felt less like flame, and more like sun on a sunburn. I tried to rub the spot that felt burned, but I couldn''t reach it. It was inside me, but not a labeled body part.


    "Thompson! George! My office, now!" came the familiar voice of Mr. Pheizer.


    I smiled at Billy and headed into the office. But this time, I wasn''t aiming to get there ahead of Mr. Pheizer and Billy to have a conversation with Not-me. I didn''t want to speak with him again until I had a better handle on what was going on.


    The ache in my chest had lessened, but it was persistent. Feeling inspired, and more than a little bit detached from the consequences if this didn''t pan out, I waited near the doorway until Billy was seated and Mr. Pheizer came into the office.


    While I waited, I sketched the luck symbol on my hand again, curious what a second hit would do, and if I could fully dull the ache. Mr. Pheizer stepped in, and as he stepped up, I held out a hand.


    I should by no means be able to stop the momentum of a man his size, but the luck symbol didn''t let me down. He encountered my hand like hitting a wall, letting out an "oof," and nearly doubling over on top of me.


    "Hang on a second," I said.


    He looked down at me, startled. "What," he had time to say before the transfer did its job and released, and I was bodily pushed backwards by the position we had ended up in, and crashed into the desk, knocking over the pencil cup.


    His perplexed expression crashed into concern, and he stepped over to help me. "Are you all right?" he asked.


    "Fine," I said, though I had hit my elbow fairly hard. The rush was cleaning that up.


    The ache in my will abated, to my great relief. I had read somewhere that the process of growing stronger was to push hard enough with a muscle that the muscle would tear. It was the repair process in which the body recognized the need for a greater amount of strength and would repair the muscle to a stronger state than it had started in before it had torn. That was the logic I was applying to exercising my will and control of auras.


    That thousand-pound weight in the gym auditorium had torn something, I felt sure. And then I had encountered... A deity? It certainly didn''t seem like one of the big bads that Not-me had mentioned. But I didn''t want to tell Not-me about any of it. I didn''t want to see his face.


    In fact, next break, I was going to go look in the mirror in the girl''s bathroom and then avoid reflective surfaces for the rest of the day. As far as I was concerned, his help was just about as useful as a bag of shit. I shook my head at my own thought train. I was cursing more in my head. I needed to stop that, otherwise I''d become old and crusty like Not-me.


    Mr. Pheizer lifted me bodily and set me on my feet with no more effort than a man setting a milk container on a counter. Great, to him I was a human milk container.


    "What were you trying to do?" Mr. Pheizer asked me.


    "Sorry, I didn''t mean to run into you," I lied. "I was trying to see if I could use the bathroom before you tell us how much trouble we''re in. I didn''t get a chance."


    "Can you hold it?" he asked.


    I decided it was unimportant where I spent the next two hours, and I told him I could. I returned to my respective seat, somewhat confident the plan I had would work, and somewhat doubtful. I was about to practice telekinesis until I could turn around and attempt the auditorium again.


    Mr. Pheizer lectured us on all the usual things. Billy was giving me a weird look. I had no idea what he was thinking, and I didn''t want to sample his aura and try it, so I was avoiding looking directly at him.


    After we were left alone in the room, I practiced telekinesis. I knew I had to use emotions to move the cup. But my own emotions were out of reach. I felt like if I dipped a finger in them, they would crash over me with such force that I would be washed away.


    So I cheated. I looked over at Billy, and I sampled his aura. But instead of taking it and applying Not-me''s suggestion of walking away, or feeling it, I channeled it into my efforts to move the cup. The pencil cup, which Mr. Pheizer had put back, tipped over.


    ¡°Yes!¡± I said.


    This startled Billy so badly that he nearly fell out of his chair. He blinked and looked around the room. I realized he''d been sleeping, and I had startled him awake. I had been concentrating so hard I hadn''t even noticed he was asleep.


    "I''ve got this," I said.


    ¡°What?¡± Billy asked, blinking bleary eyes at me.


    ¡°A workable plan,¡± I said. ¡°Go back to sleep Billy, we¡¯re going to miss math and history.¡±


    ¡°Ah man,¡± Billy said, smiling sleepily. ¡°This is going to be a good day.¡±


    ¡°You have no idea.¡± I said, grinning back at him.


    ***

 Chapter 22, Control, And A New Friend

    The success with the cup was not easy to reproduce. The second time I sampled Billy¡¯s aura, it crashed over me, and I spent an hour fighting off a feeling of dark despair and futility. I finally broke out of it when I decided to take some more of Billy¡¯s luck.


    I set my hand on his shoulder hoping not to wake him, but it slapped down when I got close and he snorted awake.


    ¡°Huh?¡± Billy blinked at me, then looked down at the hand on his shoulder. I focused on the transfer, trying to pull the feeling sooner, imagining the symbol and picturing the process of pulling from the person in front of me, desperate to avoid directing my attention to Billy''s face and getting another healthy dose of his aura.


    Something I had never seen before opened up when I did this. Similar to my ability to see people''s auras, I was able to watch the transfer. I saw crystal-clear ropes of flowing water travel from somewhere deep inside Billy, across him to the point of contact, and flow into the palm of my hand where I had sketched the symbol.


    As I focused on it, it felt like taking a deep drink of refreshing, clear water, but this water tasted better than anything I had ever encountered. It was like drinking life itself. I got completely lost in the sensation and in observing the tangled, complex, flowing crystal lines of the beautiful, life-water.


    It didn''t register the first time Billy spoke. I was so caught up in the moment that it didn''t even register that things were progressing differently than they usually did. The transfer of luck, in every instance I had encountered, had only taken a moment or two. The exception being my first attempt with nurse Streep, but I had been zeroed out.


    ¡°Get off me!¡± Billy shouted, trying to pull my hand off or pull away.


    I stopped watching the transfer and it stopped, the contact releasing. Billy fell back out of his chair and the rush hit me.


    This was more.


    I got swept up in the feeling for a moment and lost track of my surroundings. I felt full, like having eaten a good meal, but in a part of me I hadn¡¯t been aware of. The sensation of life and peace filled me, as if in a cavern inside my chest, on the other side of my being.


    I looked down at Billy, smiling. ¡°Hey, sorry, you were snoring and I didn¡¯t mean to startle you, but you looked super uncomfortable.¡±


    Billy relaxed at this. Looking less on the defensive.


    ¡°How¡¯s your neck?¡± I asked.


    Billy rubbed his neck, like he had just realized he had one. ¡°Sore¡­ um, thanks, I guess.¡±


    He seemed to accept my explanation, though it was complete trash to my ears. It was like my words had more weight to them. Was this the luck? How much had I taken?


    "Come on," I said. "Get back up. I won''t hurt you."


    Billy eyed me and chuckled. "You know, you''re kind of a freaky dude."


    "Yeah," I said. "My friends call me Freak. You can go back to sleep if you want. I think we have another half hour before Mr. Pheizer is going to come back and yell at us."


    Billy seemed relieved at this. "What the hell were you doing?" Billy said. "When you had your hand on me, your eyes were glowing."


    "No shit," I said. "Really?"


    Billy nodded, still not moving from where he sat on the floor. "Yeah, that was some crazy shit, dude. And I''ve seen some crazy shit in my life."


    I raised an eyebrow. How much crazy shit could a sixteen-year-old have seen? Then I reconsidered the statement, applying a new filter for "crazy shit" to what I''d seen with my recent experiences in mind. Who was I to say that the boy sitting in front of me had not, in fact, seen some truly crazy shit?


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    It was true, what William said. ¡®There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in anyone''s philosophy.¡¯ I think I had already met God, or a god. Recalling what Jemima had told me, there was more than one out there.


    I wasn''t sure how I felt about that. I could imagine being upset, but I had not been attached to the idea of the non-existence of any sort of deity. And so the revelation of the existence of the deities, through an encounter, neither shocked nor disappointed me.


    All this spun through my mind as Billy stared at me, and I smiled at him. "Sorry about that. I was trying to get out of your head," I said to Billy.


    Billy¡¯s expression went blank for a moment, "Out of my head?"


    I decided, since no one could follow me through the loops, honesty was the best policy.


    "Well, I sort of psychically sampled your emotion set and was lost in a cycle of depression, or despair¡ª I don''t know. I couldn''t label it exactly. But I was staring at the floor feeling useless, wondering if anything was really worth doing. And I realized I was living in your emotion, not mine, and I needed to take a little bit of your luck to get out of it."


    Billy just blinked at me.


    That was fine. I really didn''t expect a critical analysis from the person I was destined to share detention with.


    ¡°Fuck man, that makes perfect sense. Close to home, ya-know?¡±


    ¡°If that makes sense, what sort of crazy shit have you seen?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll do you a favor and not tell you. Trust me. There are things you can¡¯t un-see and things you can¡¯t un-hear.¡±


    Billy got up, and as he did, a swarm of mouse gremlins came charging into the room from under the door. I had never seen more than one, or them appear so fast. At a glance, I estimated there were between two and three dozen. How much luck did I take?


    Whatever I had been about to say in response leaked from my thoughts like a handful of sand as I watched the swarm. I must have had a horrified expression on my face, because Billy looked at the spot I was focused on. He frowned and looked at me.


    ¡°You see a spider?¡±


    I shook my head. He shrugged and turned to sit. He paused, grinning at me. ¡°Check this out,¡± he said, pulling his phone from his pocket.


    Worried he was about to show me porn or something, I opened my mouth to object, but he snapped the case off the phone and put the naked device back in his pocket. I shut my mouth and watched. He fiddled with the case for a moment, then brightened. He held it out to me. It was now a vape.


    ¡°Want a hit?¡± He offered.


    I shook my head. He shrugged again and brought it to his lips. The gremlins swarmed up his body to the vape, doing something then dropping free before he inhaled. Billy breathed in deep, the vape made a whining noise, then a bang, like a gunshot. Billy recoiled, falling back into his chair. The gremlins swarmed his chair as he fell. I couldn¡¯t see what they did, it was too quick. Billy plopped down. The gremlins danced out of the way. The seat broke and fell through the metal frame, and Billy¡¯s butt followed, leaving him in a painful position with his knees on his chest and his butt on the broken seat.


    He cried out in surprise then looked at his strange predicament. ¡°The fuck?¡± He said, choking out a vape cloud and spitting a broken tooth and blood onto the floor. The burning beetle stink of marijuana and burnt plastic filled the room.


    Billy reached up and touched his lips, they had an angry burn already forming a blister. The phone case-vape was smoking in his hand. The black plastic was melted. ¡°Fucking ow. How did this even happen?¡±


    He dropped the ruined vape and tried to extricate himself from the metal loop of the chair. He didn¡¯t budge. The gremlins swarmed his chair again and his next attempt appeared to wedge him in tighter.


    ¡°This is some bullshit,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m stuck. Go get Mr P, this is starting to hurt.¡± He spit blood on the floor again.


    Feeling responsible, I said I would and left the room. As I did, three gremlins from the swarm left too, skittering down the hall and away. I looked back at the swarm as the door shut. Billy had a long day ahead of him.


    ***


    As I walked down the hall, I picked a direction arbitrarily. I had no idea where Mr. P. was at this point in the day. I had been to this point in the day several times, but it seemed like I was almost always in the nurse''s office.


    The hallways were deserted, and I kept my head down, focused on the patterns of lines in the tiles on the floor. A pair of pink converse appeared in front of me. I hadn''t expected to encounter anyone. Without looking up, I took a step to the right, ready to go around. But as I did, the pink converse stepped with me. We did the polite step shuffle a few more times, matching each other step for step. Then the owner of the pink converse began to giggle.


    "I''m Kaye," said the giggling pink converse owner. "Do you dance here often?"


    I looked up. Standing in front of me was a bushy-haired girl with bright eyes, wearing an enormous grin.


    And she had no aura. I was so caught off guard by this that I didn''t say anything. She was about my height, a little taller, with brown hair and a short nose that fit her round face. Her grin widened at my apparent speechlessness, and she put her hands on her hips.


    ¡°You can catch a punch from a boy twice your size and then say something funny, but you don¡¯t have anything for a pretty girl?¡±


    "I apologize," I said. "Normally, glib witticisms are my superpower, but you seem to have caught me off guard."


    She quirked an eyebrow. "Really? How so?"


    "You don''t have an aura," I said.


    She blinked. "Wow! You''re the only person I think I''ve ever heard notice."


    It was my turn to be surprised. "You mean, you know that you don''t have an aura?"


    She nodded. "Of course. My mom''s a psychic."


    "Small world," I said.


    "You know," Kaye said, "the normal, polite thing to do when somebody introduces themselves is to return the favor."


    "Oh, I''m sorry. It''s just very distracting to be able to look at somebody''s face and not be overwhelmed by their aura."


    She furrowed her eyebrows. "You mean, you can tell at a glance I don''t have an aura, but you have no idea what you''re doing?"


    "I wouldn''t go that far," I said.


    "If you can''t look anyone in the face, then you have an overdeveloped sensitivity with no control whatsoever. How in the world did you get in this state?"


    I shook my head. "It''s a long story. I don''t even know how to explain it right. But, let''s just say that yesterday I didn''t have any of the abilities that I do now, and seeing people''s auras seems to be the least of my problems."


    Kaye folded her arms and began tapping her foot. "Alright, Mr. Can''t-Answer-A-Question. I''m willing to help you, but truth be known, I''m jealous. I can''t see them. I have to cast out and feel them. But, it looks like my method has taught me better control than whatever method you use. What did you do? Find a genie in a bottle and make a wish?"


    "You joke¡­ No, not exactly," I said. "I think I''m paying for the sins of a past life."


    "Well, Mr. Can''t-Answer-A-Question, let''s start by seeing how much control you have over your own aura."


    "My own aura," I said. "I didn''t realize I had one."


    "But, you can see it on other people and you can''t be bothered to look in the mirror?"


    It was my turn to start laughing. "No, I haven''t looked in a mirror since this happened to me."


    She raised her eyebrows at this. "You know what?" she said. "We''re gonna be friends. Follow me."


    ***

 Chapter 23, Kaye

    I half-followed and was half-dragged straight into what I realized, to my horror, was the bathroom. Kaye pushed me in front of a mirror and said,


    "Okay, tell me what you..." She stopped.


    She had pushed me in front of the mirror and was standing behind me. I could clearly see her shocked expression. Then her skin went gray in the mirror. I heard Not-me, say, "What the fuck are you doing?"


    I stepped out of the line of sight of the mirror without saying anything. I looked at Kaye, who was staring at me with her mouth open.


    "That''s¡­ not¡­ normal," she said, drawing out each word.


    I nodded.


    "So," she said, "are you a vampire?"


    I shrugged. "More of a mosquito," I said.


    She laughed at that. "Seriously, though, can you see yourself in the mirror? Because I couldn''t see you.¡±


    I sighed. "No, I can''t see myself either."


    She looked concerned. "What do you do when you get an eyelash in your eye? Can you see your clothes, but not your flesh? I couldn¡¯t see your clothes. This is weird.¡±


    The thought had not yet occurred to me. What did I do when I got an eyelash in my eye? Or needed to adjust anything about my appearance?


    "Everything is gone for me too.¡± I said. ¡°Do you have a phone?"


    She nodded. It seemed like everybody had a phone except me.


    "I don''t have one," I said. "Pull out your camera. Let''s see if I can see myself with the selfie feature. That might be a nice workaround."


    She pulled out her phone and pointed it at me.


    "Holy shit," she said.


    "What?" I said, walking around so I could see the screen.


    "I took a video," she said. "You don''t show up."


    I looked down at the screen. "Your phone''s off," I said, pointing at the screen.


    She looked at me. "No, it''s not," she said. "Take a look."


    She held the screen up to me. The screen was completely blank. I couldn''t see anything on it.


    "It''s blank," I said. "It looks like it''s off. I can''t see anything."


    She looked at the screen and then at my face. Then she walked over and turned out the bathroom light. A pit formed in my stomach as I realized her screen was projecting light, and I could see very clearly that it was on, but the screen was blank to my vision. She turned the screen around so it illuminated her face.


    "Believe me now?" she asked.


    I nodded. Then I realized the room was dark and she couldn''t see me.


    "Yes,¡± I said, ¡°I believe you now. Will you turn the light back on, please?"


    "Why?" she said. "I thought you were a creature of the night."


    "I''m really not. I''m not allergic to sunlight, and I don''t drink blood, and I don''t have fangs. I just lost my reflection because I was possessed by the ghost of my future self and cursed by a practitioner of voodoo to lose luck incrementally. Except the time loop that I''m in reset before the curse could be canceled, and all my luck zeroed out. So, I began drawing occult circles on my flesh, ¡ªhaving to do with luck¡ª until I created a vortex that made me constantly luck hungry, because when my luck zeroed out, I had no luck at all. All living people organically generate luck, but I no longer do. It¡¯s more complicated than that, but I don¡¯t understand it. Now, I''m stuck in a predicament where I''m able to take other people''s luck, but my future self is keeping me trapped in the same day over and over again until my actions match closely enough the actions that he took in his day so that we head for the future that he desires."


    Kaye turned on the light. A thoughtful look on her face. "You¡¯re serious," she said, studying my face. ¡°I can feel you¡¯re telling the truth. Are you telling the truth, or able to project truth into your words and messing with me?"


    I looked at her. I was about to say "swear to God," but that felt inappropriate after having met a deity. Instead, I said, "Cross my heart, hope to die. In fact, I''ve already died five times."


    She raised her eyebrows. "You''ve died five times?" she said.


    "Well, I think technically six, because my future self came back and possessed me. But how do you think my day starts over?"


    She shook her head. "I was thinking more Groundhog Day and less Edge of Tomorrow."


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I laughed. "You¡¯re just onboard that I¡¯m stuck in a time loop?"


    She grinned at me. "Of course I am. Just who the hell do you think I am?"


    She put her phone away and crossed her arms, posing like a superhero.


    "Uh, I don''t know. Superhero Kaye, apparently?"


    "Yeah, Mister I-can''t-answer-a-question."


    "Oh, yeah. Hi, I''m Timmy," I said. "Local luck vampire. My friends just call me Freak."


    She chuckled. "Well, it''s nice to finally meet you, Timmy Freak. You know what? Knowing what I know about you now, I think that suits you," she said. "I''m going to call you Freak, too. It¡¯s really lucky you met me. I¡¯m exactly the person you need to make it out of this."


    I shook my head. "You''re not going to remember me."


    She leveled a look at me. "Wanna Bet?" She got up in my face. I wasn''t sure what to do. "You come find me," she said. "Every loop. I don''t care how many tries it takes. When you get out of this, we''re going to be friends."


    "I haven''t bumped into you in any of the previous loops," I said. "There''s no guarantee we''ll meet."


    She poked me in the chest. "You make us meet. I''m counting on you."


    I looked at her, feeling a little helpless. "I think the only reason we met this time was because I took too much luck accidentally from... Oh shit," I said. "Billy!"


    Kaye looked perplexed. "What?"


    "I''m supposed to go find Mr. Pheizer. I left Billy in a horrible situation. I took all his luck, and now the gremlins are taking his world apart."


    Kaye tilted her head at me. "The gremlins are taking... I''m sorry, but I''m lost. What are you talking about?" she said.


    I began to run out of the bathroom, but she grabbed my hand and stopped me.


    "Hey, where the hell are you off to? We just met."


    "I''ve got to help Billy out," I said.


    She folded her arms. "Oh yeah? I thought you were stuck in a time loop. How does anything you do this loop matter, if you''re stuck in a time loop with no way out yet?"


    "I didn''t say nothing I do matters. I said nobody will remember me."


    "Think about it this way," she said. "When you start the day over, Billy will be fine, won''t he?"


    I stopped. "Yeah, I guess so."


    "So what you did to him won''t have happened when you start over. How are you planning on starting this one over?" she asked.


    "Uh... I was going to go back to the senior assembly and try to break my brain by overdosing on aura again."


    "What?" she asked.


    I explained what had happened to me the last time I had crashed the senior assembly, how the auras had crashed over me until they had washed me away. And then I had spoken to... A god? The god had said that they weren''t going to let my soul rip.


    Kaye whistled. "Wow. Either you''re the best liar I''ve ever met, and really fascinating, by the way, or you''ve seen some really wild stuff."


    I sighed. "Thank you," I said. "That''s how I feel."


    She held up her phone again. Again, I couldn''t see the screen. This was troubling. I didn''t know why I couldn''t see her screen. I remembered Mrs. Streep''s computer. I hadn''t been able to see the screen either. I thought it was off. But apparently, I couldn''t see the screens. I didn''t have room to think about that.


    Kaye squinted her eyes at me. "Ok," she said. "We''ve got to work hard."


    "What?" I said.


    "Well, we''ve only got two hours before senior assembly," Kaye said. "If you''re going to go off yourself on aura at senior assembly, then we''ve got to get you training and practicing in the two hours that we have. Come on, we''re going to ditch."


    She grabbed my hand again, and she dragged me out of the bathroom, down the hall, and out the school doors. Before I knew it, we were sitting under a tree a good hundred yards from the school.


    "Hmm," Kaye said. "You''re right. Sunlight didn''t melt you. I was kind of hoping it would."


    I made a face at her. "Really? You were hoping I would melt?"


    She shook her head. "Only a little bit. I would have gotten you back in the darkness long enough to keep you preserved."


    I laughed. ¡®What do you say to something like that?¡¯ I thought.


    "Ok," she said. "You have to practice aura control. It''s time to start. Are you ready?"


    I shrugged. "I have no idea," I said.


    "Good," Kaye said. "You''re ready."


    "How do you figure?" I asked.


    "Well, if you thought you were ready, instead of saying ''I don''t know,'' you would definitely not be ready."


    I shook my head. "That doesn''t make any sense," I said. "Are you making this up?"


    "No," Kaye said. "I''m really not. Listen to this: If you see a man wise in his own eyes, I tell you the truth, there is more hope for a fool than for him."


    I cocked my head. "Are you quoting the Bible at me?" I asked.


    "Of course," Kaye said.


    "I thought you said your mom was a psychic," I retorted.


    Kaye looked affronted. "So? Don''t be biased. My mom is a psychic. And I do read the Bible."


    I shrugged. "You know what? That is far from the weirdest thing I''ve heard or talked about today."


    "How are you counting your days?" Kaye asked. "Is each loop-repeat a day, or are you counting everything that happens in the loop as one day?"


    "You know," I said. "I hadn''t thought about that yet. I''ve been too busy getting run over by my days. You know, I was shot in the face," I said.


    "Wow," Kaye said. "What was that like?"


    "You remind me of someone," I said.


    "Oh yeah?" Kaye asked. "Who?"


    "My babysitter."


    Kaye looked affronted. "You have a babysitter?"


    "Ugh, that''s another long story," I said.


    "We''ll have time for all your long stories, but we have important work to do," Kaye said.


    "Important work?" I asked.


    "Yes. You have to memorize enough facts about me that you can quickly and easily convince me that you''re stuck in a time loop and already know me."


    "Really?" I asked.


    Kaye nodded. "Yep. You''ve got to promise. Find me every loop. Convince me you''re stuck in a time loop. And I will help you work on your aura control."


    ***


    I spent the next two hours sitting in the grass underneath a maple tree with Kaye. The dappled sunlight and Kaye''s patient, calm presence made me feel like the horrific events that had sent me into this situation had all been a dream.


    She laughed when I was distracted from attempting one of the exercises by an ant crawling on me. I felt a tickle and looked down. I was instantly taken back to the point where I was pushed in front of the bullet, the exact reason why I was avoiding talking to Not-me. Even though we had agreed that I was going to try his way, but also my way, I felt pushed into everything, out of control.


    "Hey," Kaye said, "Earth to Freak, Earth to Freak, come in, is anybody there?"


    I blinked and looked up from the ant. Kaye had been trying to get me to focus on keeping my eyes closed and sense the stone she was carrying. She had a crystal in her hand that was positively charged, giving it an apparent presence to anyone with a sensitivity. She said it should be no problem for me to feel it, but I was relying way too heavily on my eyesight to tell me what was going on with the auras around me, instead of troubling to actually feel the way she could.


    I tested her and hid the stone. She promised she wasn''t peeking, but she was able to walk straight to it every time, proving that she could, in fact, feel its presence. I thought this would be a remarkably handy ability to have, to be able to feel the presence of people or objects without looking. I started asking questions about what objects had a presence, but Kaye shook her head.


    ¡°We only have an hour left before Senior assembly. It¡¯s time to learn about my safe phrase for in the case of a body-snatcher.¡±


    I gaped at her, processing that sentence slowly. ¡°Safe-phrase, in case of a body snatcher?¡±


    ¡°Sure, let¡¯s say you¡¯re my best friend, but acting weird and I want to confirm you¡¯re not an alien, how do I tell? Or what if, your body was snatched and you found yourself suddenly in the body of a grown woman, how would you convince me you¡¯re my best friend? Well, me and Becky worked it out.¡±


    ¡°This is oddly specific. Do you and Becky expect to need this?¡±


    ¡°After our own government has stated that they have had contact with extra-terrestrials? Better safe than sorry.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I feel like I should be the one making that point. But I haven¡¯t been body-snatched, I¡¯m stuck in a time loop, how does this help?¡±


    ¡°You get a way to prove you know me. That¡¯s how. It¡¯s not fair.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what¡¯s not fair? You want to be stuck in a time loop?¡±


    ¡°Well, of course, but you will grow and get to know me and some day I¡¯m going to be meeting the guy who already knows me, and I won¡¯t know you at all. If I accept your story, it feels like I¡¯ll be forgetting you.¡±


    I looked into her earnest brown eyes, wondering why she cared. She¡¯d known me for an hour. I felt confused.


    ¡°Why do you care?¡± I said.


    She looked stung, deflating a little. She dropped my gaze and stared picking blades of grass. ¡°If you don¡¯t want to be my friend, just say it¡­ then I¡¯ll only have to forget you once.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what to say. I did want to be. ¡°I¡­¡± it took me a second to form the thought, ¡°I do want to be your friend. What I don¡¯t understand, is why you want to be mine. I¡¯m not used to people liking me and wanting to hang out, or be friends.¡±


    She didn¡¯t look up, continuing to pick grass. ¡°It¡¯s hard to explain. I got a feeling, like it was meant to be. I had to be in the hall, right when I met you. It was the strongest one I¡¯ve ever had. My mom says I have a gift for intuition. I¡¯ll get feelings about places, or people. Some are faint and hard to understand. Some aren¡¯t. This one, it¡¯s like a freight train. I¡¯ve never felt anything like it. We¡¯re supposed to be friends. We have to be. It¡¯s¡­¡±


    She faltered, looking up at me. Her eyes studied mine. ¡°Like our-lives-depend-on-it important.¡±


    I swallowed. Her intensity was a little overwhelming. ¡°Okay,¡± I said. ¡°I believe you. I don¡¯t know what to say.¡±


    ¡°Promise,¡± she said, holding out a pinky, ¡°pinky-promise you will find me every loop. You won¡¯t leave me behind.¡±


    I hesitated a moment, but the look in her eyes convinced me. I locked pinkies with her and said, ¡°I will. I promise.¡±


    ¡°Okay!¡± Kaye said, ¡°let¡¯s get busy! You¡¯ve only got an hour left before you die!¡± She grinned at me.


    ***

 Chapter 24, Small Beginnings, Go Again Day 22

    ¡°Okay," Kaye said, "what you have to lead with is ''I know Roscoe, and he said come on in, the water''s great.'' Then you will be able to tell me that you''re stuck in a time loop. To which I will respond, ¡®no thanks¡¯ and you counter, ¡®come on, it¡¯s really, really refreshing¡¯ then I¡¯ll begin backing away from you looking like I¡¯m terrified. Then you say, ¡®you big baby!¡¯ And the code phrases will be exchanged.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s complex. Why not just have one word or phrase and one response?¡±


    ¡°Bodysnatchers, that¡¯s why. We needed to lean on more than one memory sense. It¡¯s from ¡®The Iron Giant¡¯ my favorite movie.¡±


    It clicked, and I could picture the scene. ¡°When they jump into the lake?¡±


    ¡°Yep!¡± Kaye grinned.


    "Who''s Roscoe?" I asked.


    "My teddy bear," she explained.


    "Your teddy bear?"


    "Yeah," she said, "duh, who else would work to say ''jump in the water is fine'' in an invasion of the body snatchers scenario except for an imaginary friend? It''s perfectly logical."


    "I''m sorry, but I''ve never known anyone who''s developed a just-in-case scenario for body snatchers. The people I know develop just-in-cases for fire and burglary."


    "Fire and burglary? I don''t have any just-in-cases for those. Which is a good point and an interesting oversight. I should probably do that, too."


    ***


    Controlling my aura was harder than telekinesis. It required precise imagination, being able to picture in my mind exactly where my aura was, which I discovered was how Kaye used her aura. Things would only ever appear in her imagination, but she had no less of a real sense of it than I did. I could just physically see it with my eyes.


    Then the hard part came. I had to move it.


    Whether it was luck, or Kaye¡¯s direction, I was able to find the ¡®muscle¡¯ needed to control my aura. Imagine being inside a giant soap bubble. You need to shrink the bubble, but the only tool you have to work with are your own lungs. So you take a deep breath. The bubble moves, becoming smaller, but the change is infinitesimal. Now imagine your lungs don¡¯t have the restriction of ribs, they could take in more of the air, if only they were stronger. This is what it was like.


    I pushed and pulled until sweat broke out on my forehead, and I was panting. I felt foolish, feeling spent, sitting in the shade of the tree. Kaye was sitting a couple yards off, waiting for me to contract my aura far enough that she wasn¡¯t in it. I¡¯m pretty sure I hadn¡¯t moved it an inch.


    ¡°This is remarkable,¡± Kaye said, breaking my concentration. ¡°An aura this size comes from years of practice and discipline, expanding over the course of a lifetime of control and training. Someone with an aura like this should be able to move like an athlete, but you have all the muscle control of a newborn.¡± She paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. ¡°Did you know a newborn can be suffocated by the weight of their own head?¡±


    I stopped my practice and looked at her, ¡°No. That¡¯s morbid. Why do you bring that up?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s you. You¡¯re the infant. It¡¯s no wonder other auras are painful to you. You¡¯re wide open, but you don¡¯t have the strength to lift your own head. Any passing aura could crush you, if it was focused on you. You don¡¯t need to crash senior assembly, you could lose a fight with a kitten.¡± She giggled at the analogy.


    ¡°Are you saying I shouldn¡¯t go?¡±


    ¡°Not at all! Are you familiar with ¡®Attack on Titan¡¯?¡±


    ¡°No, what¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Never-mind, it¡¯s a gem. For my purposes, it¡¯s an example of how human ingenuity can overcome something impossible. You should keep trying to lift an elephant as a newborn, but be flexible. You¡¯re not gonna be able to brute force it. You need to work around the problem. This,¡± Kaye poked my bicep, ¡°is never gonna solve the problem. You need to use this,¡± she pointed to my head, ¡°and this,¡± she poked me in the chest. Her eyes grew wide and she stopped, her finger on my chest, staring at the spot she was pointing to.


    ¡°Can I put my hand on your chest?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Sure?¡± I said, not knowing what she wanted.


    She placed her palm flat on my chest, closed her eyes, and stayed still for a long minute.


    ¡°You¡¯ve got two,¡± she said in almost a whisper.


    ¡°Two?¡±


    ¡°Auras. This explains so much. I thought you were a sociopath, or that becoming a vampire had blanked your aura, but I think I get it now.¡± She still had her eyes closed.


    ¡°What? I have two auras? I don¡¯t understand.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I understand either, but you have a big aura, and it¡¯s blank. There¡¯s no information about you in it at all. You also have a little aura. You¡¯ve put it in a cage. It doesn¡¯t reach your whole body. It feels like you have been constricting it to make it smaller. It¡¯s difficult to pick up any information about you through the cage. I think that¡¯s why one person¡¯s aura interacting with yours didn¡¯t crush you. You have extra space to manage it. It¡¯s when the cage around your little aura breaks that you get crushed. You should be capable of things other people aren¡¯t with both auras.¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°What kind of things?¡±


    ¡°I have no idea¡­¡±


    ***


    Before I was ready,it was time to head to senior assembly. Kaye was continuing to encourage me to try again and be creative. She had questions about how luck healed me, and if I was really drinking life force like a ¡®real¡¯ vampire, to which I could only shrug. I didn¡¯t know if what I was taking from people being ¡®luck¡¯ was a white lie from Not-me, told to get me to go along with it.


    I pushed through the curtain, glancing over my shoulder as I did. Kaye flashed me a thumbs up and a grin. Of course, she insisted on coming along. Facing forward, the ocean of colors once again roiled before me.


    ¡°Focus on your core,¡± Kaye had told me, ¡°Try using your big aura to redirect and avoid letting your core get crushed. Maybe try to reinforce the cage and let anything else wash over you and pass by? I don¡¯t know, be creative!¡±


    I stepped into the spotlight and introduced myself, ¡°Hey, it¡¯s great to be here, thanks for having me, I¡¯m Timmy Freak, your friendly neighborhood luck-vampire. If you¡¯ll hold up your phones and attempt to take a picture or a video, you¡¯ll find I don¡¯t show up.¡± I winked at the crowd, giving them my best grin.


    I could hear a murmur begin, and continue to rise as several people cried out, ¡°What the?¡± Or ¡°How is he doing that?¡±


    The crash of focused attention was more intense than last time. Whatever advice Not-me or Kaye had given me was washed away in a multihued tidal wave, that I found I was powerless to resist. My mind conjured, helpfully, the picture of a mosquito, caught in a whirlpool, swirling around and around before being sucked down.


    Hot anger lashed and burned me, as cold despair chilled my innards. Inadequacy bored into my core and anxiety crushed down upon me, like the end of the world. The emotions felt physically painful, and for the few moments I was still aware of my body, I was aware I was bucking and jerking. The pain caused my vision to begin to tunnel and fade, and even as it did my mind kicked out a snarky thought, ¡®I¡¯m a mosquito, being flushed down the cosmic toilet of teenage angst.¡¯


    ***


    When I found Kaye again, it was between classes. For some reason she wasn¡¯t in the hallway when she had been last loop. I got her attention and delivered the line.


    ¡°Roscoe says, ¡®come on in, the water¡¯s fine¡­¡± my brain ground to a halt, that wasn¡¯t right, ¡°great, I mean great.¡±


    Kaye¡¯s look soured and she looked around, as if for someone muffling laughter behind a hand, or a hidden camera. Her eyes darted to the other people, suspicion clear on her face. I faltered at this, but plunged ahead,


    ¡°I¡¯m stuck in a time loop and you¡¯ve been teaching me aura control, oh yeah, my name is Timmy Freak, local luck vampire.¡±


    Her face turned into a full blown frown. ¡°Okay,¡± she said, acid in her tone, ¡°who put you up to this?¡±


    This was not the agreed upon code phrase, but a rejection was a rejection, I supposed. ¡°Come on, it¡¯s really really refreshing.¡± I said.


    She gave me a look like I¡¯d spit on her shoe and stepped closer. ¡°I don¡¯t care who you are, and I don¡¯t care who put you up to this, if you talk to me again, I¡¯ll break your nose, you little jerk.¡±


    The look in her eyes at that moment, the venom she felt for me, you¡¯d think I¡¯d burned her house down, or worse. I was speechless. It was like I¡¯d encountered a different person. I nodded, and she spun and walked away. I watched until her pink converse melted into the crowd.


    Why hadn¡¯t that worked? It had been her plan. Feeling dejected, I wandered out of the halls to practice my telekinesis and aura control. I didn¡¯t want to spend any more time in school. Just when I thought I¡¯d made a new ally, it¡¯d fallen apart. I felt hurt, disappointed. Suddenly alone. I stuffed it into the cage.


    ***


    I fell into a routine. Take luck until healed, practice telekinesis, work on aura control, then crash the senior assembly¡­


    That description is deceptively simplistic.


    This became the marathon hero training montage that appears in the classic action movies, massively oversimplifying hard work and pain wrought growth. The difference is, I wasn¡¯t learning to fight with kung-fu or box. Most of what I was trying to learn was how to exist, now that I was what I was¡­ whatever I was.


    For the sake of the sanity of anyone who happens upon my story, I¡¯m going to skip over large periods of time here. For example, each loop until senior assembly gave me approximately six hours, if I crashed it near the end of their two hour period. I began pushing it to the end of the two hours my next loop, to maximize the time in a loop I had to train, but mostly to avoid the pain as long as I could. Being crushed by the aura train left me entering a loop feeling like I had drunk battery acid while standing in a lake of fire and zeroed out on luck.


    I counted the exact number of hours spent in the loops for a time, but found this number to be a looming distraction, not an encouragement. So I simplified my count to number of loops, roughly estimating that each four loops was a twenty-four hour period. I didn¡¯t sleep, which probably means that I should count each twelve hour period as a day, but I wanted to know total time spent, and decided to count by twenty-four¡¯s. So my count began looking like this:


    ***


    Loop 22, day 5,


    I stumbled into the hall, sketching the symbol on my palm as quick as possible. I slapped the first person in reach, ignoring their protests and drawing deep. My whole existence was fire and pain. I let them go, moving down the hall before I drew too much of a gawking crowd and grabbed a new victim. It took one more person to reach a balance point. Then I began to heal, and I had to grab two more to finish healing without dipping below my balance point. It was taking more luck to heal each return.


    Most of what I had learned since loop six when I first met Kaye, was how to control how much luck I took. I was no longer taking only scant sips, or devastating gulps. I had yet to drain anyone like I had Billy, when I turned him into a walking gremlin snack, or become luck bloated again, like I was when Kaye stopped me in the hallway. Wait, what if¡­


    I stopped walking. I was rewarded by the person following bumbling into me.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± they said, stepping around.


    I eyed the teenager, as they passed. I¡¯d been bumped thousands of times in this hallway. This was the first ¡®sorry¡¯ I remembered hearing. I checked on my luck, more of that idea flashing through my head. I examined the luck I had, counting. My luck was positive by two¡­


    I need to explain. I had to develop my own system for how much luck I had. Having a heads-up-display I could reference with a logical layout, where luck zeroed out at negative one-hundred, balanced at zero and anything beyond was positive, was just a fantasy. What I had, was the ability to look at my core, physically looking at my solar plexus, then beyond. I could see the ropes of twining, crystal, water-like streams, and count them.


    Zero was easy, when I had none, not even a thread, I was zeroed out. I could take less than what it took to form a rope or a stream, but once I had enough, it would form naturally. So I counted the ropes. I guessed average human balance point to be about thirty-six. This was easy to figure out, because every twelve ropes would form roughly a ¡®Dara Celtic knot¡¯ pattern. If you¡¯re unfamiliar, it¡¯s a complex four-quadrant weave of a single strand, that ends up being roughly circular. When two ¡®knots¡¯ got together, they would connect at their center, forming a shape with height and depth. Slide two pieces of paper together, one vertical and one horizontal. If they¡¯re both circular, it¡¯s a very rough sphere. When a third was added, it got interesting¡ª I say as if this wasn¡¯t already¡ª the third knot would rotate through the other two, pivoting in the center. The whole thing would take on a glow at this point.


    This is how I was able to easily tell most people had thirty-six, plus or minus a few. So I began thinking of people with a glowing core as at balance point. Not hard to spot, if you knew what you were looking for, and had the ability to see.


    My idea¡­ I had been careful since I puzzled out balance, not to go beyond it¡ª Why would I take more than I needed, when the people I took from would have a bad day?¡ª Could the amount of luck I carried be influencing how people treated me? I bumped into someone else who wasn¡¯t looking.


    ¡°My bad,¡± they mumbled, without looking up.


    I watched them pass, thinking hard. Did people treat me different with sub-balance luck? I could test this. I cleared my throat loudly, like I wanted attention. I felt several auras lash at me, the biting sting of strong emotions burning me as I deflected them. I felt a pull on my luck as something deep within me healed.


    Looking at my core, I saw one of my knots unraveling. It settled, the loose ropes that did not form twelve, now spinning around the two knots that were still formed. I was two down. I stepped back into traffic and was bumped. The person who hit me grunted, but paid me barely a glance.


    I tried several more people, but they all barely acknowledged me, if at all. No more apologies. I snatched some luck from a passer by, forcing them to pause and look at me in puzzlement, before I let them go and tried again. This time at plus three. I bounced off of someone, meaning to bump them, but they stepped into it.


    ¡°What? Hey, watch where you¡¯re going nerd!¡±


    I looked up. Of course it was him. Billy George looked down at me, a scowl on his face. Then he shocked the hell out of me by reaching down and helping me up. He didn¡¯t apologize, but he didn¡¯t try to punch me either. I was so shocked that it took the hall clearing for me to realize the bell had rung.


    The idea I¡¯d had finished, standing alone in the hallway. Did I need to be positive a certain amount of luck to make friends with Kaye again? Was that why she¡¯d seemed like a different person? What had I seemed like to her? I was pretty sure I had been only six or eight ropes total then. Not even enough to form the first knot.


    I needed to test this.


    ***

 Chapter 25, Go Again Day 120, Dostoevsky

    Loop 120, Day 30


    It''s interesting, the things that you think you understand because you''ve read them, only to discover later that you never understood them at all until you experience them. In ¡°House of the Dead¡±, Dostoevsky writes, "Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and I believe that is the very best way of defining him.¡± Dostoevsky is discussing being a prisoner and adjusting to the most horrific set of changes a person can undergo. I had no idea how true that was until the quote came back to me.


    After I had spent an operative month inside of the loop, I got caught up in routine and testing the effects that luck had. Since my routine had not involved trying once more to get Kaye involved in my training, I was shocked to realize how long it had been since I had made an attempt. I remember it was Loop 22, Day 5; I was thinking, once I know the measure of how luck affects my interactions with people, I will go try again to enlist Kaye''s friendship and help.


    But I got caught up in experimentation, realizing that I had the perfect Petri dish for measuring whether or not a result had an operative change based on luck plus one or luck minus one, and even further. So, I made a point of having the exact same interaction with the exact same person at the exact same time, just with a different level of luck. The results were all over the board. I began to suspect that luck was not the only defining factor of what sort of interaction I had with the people I bumped into. There must be other factors at play. What they were, I hadn''t figured out yet. But I did tend to get a better interaction with people when I had positive luck.


    However, there was something else at play that I wasn''t able to define. I wasn''t able to contract my larger aura, no matter how I pushed and pulled. That didn''t seem to be how I was growing in strength. My untimely end at the senior assembly didn''t seem to be pressing on that particular muscle at all, but instead on the second aura that Kay had pointed out¡ªthe one she said was inside the cage. I had begun to find that I could survive longer and longer underneath the combined attention of the entire senior assembly by dodging.


    Instead of trying to reinforce the cage or contract the larger aura so that people could not direct their attention to me¡ª as I had come to assume would be the case¡ª I instead used the larger aura to redirect the emotions. I found that almost like a practitioner of Aikido, I could redirect the emotions so that they didn''t come in contact with my core aura, as I had come to think of it. Since I had no one to challenge any of my naming conventions, "Core-Aura" had become a name that had stuck. I had been calling it that for weeks, which was a weird thought in and of itself.


    What did seem to be growing stronger was my ability to redirect and also my ability to actually strengthen and maintain my cage. I don''t know what this said about me, that I was choosing to reinforce the cage that held what? My soul? I didn''t think so. My emotions? Really, I wasn''t sure. I needed an expert, which again prodded me with a guilty thought. I should go try again to get Kaye.


    I was standing outside underneath the maple tree. I had been practicing telekinesis when the quote popped into my head from ¡°House of the Dead¡±. I had the disturbing idea that I might be in a prison of my own making. The thought had ground all ability to practice telekinesis to a complete halt. Why had I stayed here for so long?


    That was easy. I hadn''t discovered everything I wanted to discover. I believed that if I spoke with Not-me, or Kaye, or Cece, or any other voice of reason in my life, they would talk me out of continuing to practice and grow. And I didn''t want to stop. I was seeing progress. I was growing stronger. I had superpowers!


    Like, come on. I could move stuff with my mind. Well, with my mind and my tongue, which was really weird.


    Okay, let me explain. I discovered through some experimentation that I was not physically putting my tongue on anything. I wanted to know for sure, which was easy. All I had to do was raid the chemistry lab and see if acid actually burned my tongue when I telekinetically moved some of it. It felt burned like I stuck my tongue in the acid, but I found upon careful examination¡ªwhich was not easy without use of a mirror¡ªI had not burned and blistered my tongue.


    Which meant I now had a wide lexicon of flavors, tastes, and textures that I''m sure most people who are now alive did not. I am sure some poor fool who decided to drink hydrochloric acid also had the knowledge of what that tasted like, but I doubt they got the chance to tell anyone.


    I shook my head. Sherlock Holmes would be proud. I''d always envied Holmes''s ability to categorically remember smells, flavors, and textures and associate meaning to them. I had fancied that someday I could be a Holmesian detective who had superhuman powers of deduction, only to find that much of my ability to remember things depended on me reading it, which meant I had to arm myself for success.


    If I wanted to remember something, I had to write it down, which was sometimes very inconvenient. What would be handy is if I had a screen in my mind in which I could call up, already typed, anything that I wanted to remember without having to trouble to pull out my pen.


    The limitations concerning telekinesis I had found were interesting. To begin with, I was, in essence, using my tongue muscle to move things with my mind. So, I could not move anything that I was not physically strong enough to move with my tongue. I remembered Not-me had said the knack behind telekinesis required the person attempting it to find which muscle, or muscle set they used for it. It would be much more useful to be able to move things with my hand, but I was stuck with what I had.


    The second limitation that I found was I had to spend aura like currency in order to move anything. For better or worse, the cage I had around my core aura kept me from using it at all. And so, that simply didn''t work. But, as I had discovered accidentally with Billy, I could spend other people''s aura. Practicing spiritual Taekwondo had allowed me to take in somebody''s aura and maneuver it around my large aura¡ª I hadn''t thought of a clever name for my large aura yet¡ª Avoiding my core aura long enough that I could spend it as currency.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    I had to have it inside of my large aura to be able to use it. I found I could hold on to somebody else''s aura for several minutes¡ªsometimes as many as ten if holding it was not particularly painful¡ª Oh yeah, did I mention that it was painful? I don''t know why, but having someone else''s aura inside of my larger aura hurt.


    There were things inside an aura I didn''t have a name for that were physically painful to experience. Many of them were very difficult to closely imagine. That is to say, I couldn''t examine them closely enough to put myself in their shoes because they hurt too much. I thought of my spiritual hands as developing spiritual calluses as I got more and more adept at taking these painful things and deflecting them without getting seriously hurt.


    I had yet to spend another loop with Billy in Mr. Pfeizer''s office. There were too many reflective surfaces, and I didn''t want to risk an encounter with Not-me and break the spell. I was really beginning to enjoy the routine I had developed. I had begun spending most of my time outside underneath the maple tree because there were no reflective surfaces anywhere near me. Also, I was stuck in what had to be one of the most beautiful days of the year. The sky was heartbreak-blue, without a cloud in sight. The temperature was hovering somewhere in the mid-seventies, and there was a gentle breeze stirring the leaves overhead, providing a very pleasant backdrop to everything I attempted.


    It kept bothering me.


    ¡°Man is a creature who can get used to anything.¡±


    Unbidden, another quote from that book sprang to my mind.


    ¡°I was always astonished at the extraordinary good nature and lack of malice with which men who had been flogged spoke of their beatings, and of those who had inflicted them.¡±


    A niggling thought plagued me. Was I self-inflicting a form of torture? How did I feel about the punishment that I received every time I stepped into the torturous hell that was Senior Assembly? I needed to get outside of my own head.


    What if I could spend eternity here? I was dead, and this was my afterlife¡­


    That thought killed me.


    Promptly, I stood up and walked straight back into the school. There was one person''s office who I knew I could step into without any judgment or written excuse. And so my feet carried me straight to Nurse Streep''s office.


    She was merrily typing at her computer, and startled as I stepped up to her and said hello. She made a frantic effort to do something on the screen before she greeted me, unaware that I couldn''t see whatever it was she was working on.


    "Hi," I said.


    "Oh, my. I''m sorry, dear. You startled me," Nurse Streep said. "What brings you into my office?"


    "I don''t know, how to describe it."


    "Are you feeling sick, dear?" She blinked. Then her eyes focused on me, and she looked me up and down with a critical eye. "Oh, I know who you are," she said. "You''re young Timothy. My, but it''s a pleasure to meet you. Please come in. Have a seat."


    She directed me to her table with the crinkly paper. The familiar antiseptic smell of the room brought back a memory of watching a mouse gremlin for the first time, and calling Cece and her showing up an absurdly short amount of time, her engine smelling of burnt clutch and her tires smoking.


    Remembering that, I had a hitch in my throat, and at first I couldn''t speak.


    ¡®What''s wrong with me?¡¯ I thought.


    I attempted to speak, but my voice faltered, and I had to clear my throat. I had often wondered why old people cleared their throats so often. Was it because they were so full of unexpressable thoughts and emotions that their throat would close? That seemed like what was happening to me.


    "I just need someone to talk to," I said, giving her as close to the truth as I could manage. What I needed was a psychologist to talk through this situation with because I was in an unprecedented set of circumstances and trying to self-analyze my behavior.


    I wondered how big of a psychology section the school library had.


    "Oh," said Mrs. Streep. "Well, I can certainly be an ear to lean on. That''s something I''ve always been good at."


    ¡®An ear to lean on,¡¯ I thought. I think she was mixing metaphors. I didn''t have the energy to make a joke, which said a lot about my mental state.


    "Thanks," I said, which was all I could manage.


    "Are you having trouble adjusting to the rigors of high school?" Mrs. Streep asked.


    That wasn''t what I was having trouble adjusting to, but it was as good a metaphor for what I was going through as anything. I nodded and found myself opening up to this kindly woman and her rosy cheeks and knowing eyes.


    "I just, I feel like I''ve completely lost touch with everything outside of this school and what I''m doing here," I said.


    Mrs. Streep nodded and prompted me to continue.


    ¡°I didn''t realize that I felt lonely until my brain began spitting out prison metaphors from old books I had read.


    ¡°I just thought of my friends for the first time in days,¡±I said, reducing the actual time spent to a believable number since, in her perspective, I had only been in school for a week. If I told her that I hadn''t thought about my friends in weeks, it would seem absurd. And the last thing I wanted to do was ruin this opportunity to speak with someone by creating absurdity.


    Mrs. Streep nodded. "And that bothers you," she said.


    I hesitated. "No," I said. "The thing that bothers me and makes me worried is that it doesn''t bother me." I hesitated. "I don''t feel troubled by the fact that I haven''t thought about my friends."


    A thought hit me right in that moment. Or my mom. Or my dad. A pit formed in my stomach, and my eyes teared up. There really was something wrong with me. I swiped at the water that was blurring my vision and looked down, feeling embarrassed I had lost control. The last thing I wanted to do was lose control in front of somebody who would see me as a child. I was twelve. I wasn''t a child.


    Mrs. Streep took the opportunity to put a comforting hand on my shoulder and give me a reassuring smile. Strangely, I found it helped. "Dear," she said, "you have nothing to feel bad about."


    What did she know? I had completely exaggerated the amount of time and the amount of thoughtlessness that had gone into me becoming hyper-fixated on what I was doing and completely forgetting about the people who were involved in my life.


    "You''re feeling overwhelmed," Mrs. Streep said. "It''s perfectly natural to focus on something that''s new and challenging to the point where other things become a background, because the safe and familiar, can safely become a familiar background, dear. And sometimes, it''s true, our relationships do suffer while we''re in a time of transition. But if they''re true relationships, they will always come back when given the opportunity."


    I gaped at her. This was far more insightful than I had expected. I had just wanted somebody to talk to who wouldn''t think I was crazy. "What do I do?" I said. "How do I manage this overwhelm and transition, like you said, without letting go of my relationships? I feel like I need some sort of check and balance."


    Mrs. Streep smiled. "This is the hard work that comes of true love, dear."


    "True love," I sputtered. "I''m not..."


    She held up a finger. "You misunderstand. You heard me say ''true love'' as if that concept existed. Poppycock. No, I''m talking about love as it is truly. Love, my dear, requires work, investment, a daily effort like a garden. You can''t have love without cultivation. And so, if you think that it''s going to be anything less than hard work to have the relationships in your life that truly matter and to keep them, you''re quite mistaken. And so, like any hard work, you must simply schedule it and grow into being able to accomplish it, dear. Create a calendar. Set reminders. Set aside time. You would be surprised how much ten minutes in a day counts towards building a relationship. If you fail to connect with the people you care about, you will fail in relationship."


    I didn''t know what to say. Apparently, I needed a calendar. "Thank you," I managed.


    She smiled. "Of course, dear. Love is my most favorite thing to talk about, but unfortunately, it''s not an accepted course of study in high school." She smiled at me.


    I had drastically underestimated the woman in front of me. I made a note to myself to look up her pen name and go read one of her books on romance. I thought it would just be useless fluff, but I was beginning to think that it was something much, much more.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to schedule time with people I care about,¡± I said, meaning it.


    ***

 Chapter 26, Time To Burn

    ¡°Hey, you little sadist,¡± Not-me said. ¡°I lost count after a hundred. I didn''t think you had it in you. Well played. Over a hundred loops you left me in the damn girl''s bathroom. I thought that was a hollow threat. But answer me one question, kid. What are you doing?¡±


    I was still sitting on Mrs. Streep¡¯s examination table, and she was still standing close to me, having dropped her words of wisdom on my head. Of course, she had her stethoscope around her neck. I''d been so careful not to look into any reflective surface. And here I was, opening up to this kind lady. Having let my guard down, I broke my own rules.


    I had been absentmindedly staring into middle distance when the stethoscope swung into view. Mrs. Streep was standing there with a hand on my shoulder, letting me have my moment. After I had said that I was going to schedule time with people, I had begun to stare, and she seemed patient enough just to let me.


    Unfortunately, my reverie had been broken by Not-Me''s rude voice. Still, he had asked what I''m doing, and I decided to answer. In a whisper, figuring he could hear me and Mrs. Streep would ignore it, I said, "I''m training. I''m growing stronger. You''ve trapped me in a time loop where I now have all the time in the world. I plan to read every book in the school library, gain a grasp on telekinesis, grow stronger in aura control, figure out this whole luck transfer thing, and then I''m going to find a logical route to the city library, and I''m going to read every book there. I would read all of Wikipedia, but apparently, I can''t see any sort of screen, so that''s a problem. But one for later."


    "That doesn''t sound anything like you''re trying to head in the direction that my life took," Not-Me said. "Sounds to me like you''re trying to do whatever you want."


    "I am trying to do whatever I want," I said. "And once I''ve armed myself with knowledge and skill, I still intend to try and come roughly in alignment with the life you lived for a while. It''s clear that our lives diverge at some point from who I am to become who you are. And after your frank assessment of my glowing people skills, I realized that I don''t want to see the future through your lens, and I don''t want to be who you are. You''re crass, you''re grumpy, you''re rude, and as far as I can tell, you''re probably whatever caused the disaster that you''re now trying to avoid."


    Mrs. Streep patted me on the head and went back to her computer. "I''m not done with the conversation," I huffed up and grabbed the spoon. As she sat down, she poked her head into the room. "Just let me know if you need anything, dear. I''ve just got to take care of some paperwork."


    I gave her a thumbs up.


    ¡°Harsh. I created the mess huh? Let me smack you with some knowledge; You don''t have infinite time to waste. I don''t know if you''ve noticed this, but you''re absorbing me, you little shit.¡±


    "What?" I said, completely not processing what he just said.


    "Yeah, you have as much time to be in this loop as I have been alive before I went back. And every day that you burn here is a day off of my longevity that you''re eating up. But not only that, every time you burn a day, you''re absorbing part of me. I don''t know if you''ve noticed this, but your thought processes have probably been changing to become more like mine. You want to become me, or you want me to become you? As you colorfully painted that analogy before, just keep it up. Keep doing what you''re doing and there will slowly be less and less you and more and more me. That what you want?"


    The thought was sobering. I was absorbing the thinking processes of my future self. Becoming him slowly. That''s not what I wanted at all.


    Dostoevsky came back to my mind. When had I read House of the Dead? I tried to recall. I remembered the book, but I didn''t remember when I read it. I hadn''t read it online. I''d had a physical copy, hadn''t I? But when would I have gotten my hands on a physical copy of House of the Dead?


    All this flashed through my mind in a moment, and I refocused on Not-me.


    "Are you familiar with Dostoevsky''s House of the Dead?" I asked.


    Not-me chuckled. ¡°Of course I am," he said. "Question is; are you?"


    "Well, I am now. I can remember reading it," I said. "The whole reason I''m here, and not still in the loop that I was cycling through, was because I remembered a quote from the book."


    Not Me began to laugh. "Yep," he said. "You are beginning to digest my thought processes. You remember reading a book that I read, but you have not read yet."


    "Does that mean my thoughts and conclusions about the book are yours and not mine?" I asked.


    "I think you''re overthinking it," Not Me said. "I think your thoughts and conclusions are yours, whether they include some of mine or not. After all, I''m just an older version of you."


    "But I don''t want to be you," I said.


    "Well, you feel strongly about that, don''t you? I don''t think there''s any danger of you becoming me, as long as you don¡¯t spend one hundred years in this loop. You''ve diverged so far from any path that could lead you to becoming me that you''re certainly going to become who you are, whether you have some of my thought processes or not. Just as long as you leave this damn day."


    I shifted uncomfortably on the examining table, despite the fact that it was padded. This was proving to be a ten-minute seat at best. The paper underneath me crinkled, and I looked out the window, longing to be out there underneath the tree, enjoying the sunshine. Some vampire I was. I sighed.


    "You keep saying you''re me, and I''m you, but I''m not you," I said, feeling ridiculous, sitting on the nurse''s examination table, having an animated conversation with a spoon. I was glad that Mrs. Streep was engrossed in what she was doing because it occurred to me right then that I looked like I was out of my mind.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Again," Not-me said, "you are oversimplifying it. You and I have the same mind. That''s how I was able to come back and possess you, as you call it. Because we have the same mind, we think in very similar ways. I have spent more time honing my thought processes and informing my worldview by reading. You are twelve, and you have not spent time deliberately thinking and reading. Instead, you''re simply trying to come to grips with your existence. We are and aren¡¯t the same person.¡±


    "So which one is it?" I said.


    "It''s both. Sometimes the thing is both, kid," Not-me said. "You are both me and not me. I am both you and not you. By the time you have lived as long as I have, because of the divergence here, you will be a very different person. At this particular point in time, I can still remember what it was like to be you. So no, you''re not a different person yet. Yes, you''re clearly going to become different, no matter how much of my thought processes you digest, because you will still have your own experiences to inform how you choose to think about things. Life is not so simple as to fit into a template. When you grow and mature, you will make choices. These choices¡ª and how you focus your thoughts¡ª and what you choose to focus on, will choose who you become. I don''t get to choose that for you, even if you remembered every single thing that I''ve ever thought. I''m not overwriting you. You''re not a damn computer program. You''re a fucking person."


    "I''m a fucking person," I said. It occurred to me this was the weirdest positive affirmation I had ever heard of. But I think Not-me had a point. And also, I needed to get out of my own head.


    I hopped down from the examination table and walked over to Mrs. Streep. I put my hand on her shoulder, and I took a bunch of her luck. It felt like a callous move, after the woman had comforted me, but right that second I had to go talk to Kay, and in order to get past whatever prickly defenses that had deflected me before, I needed a lot of luck.


    "Sorry about this," I said to Mrs. Streep.


    She looked up at me. "Sorry about what, dear?" she asked.


    "Hard to explain," I said. "I''m just, I''m unlucky for people I¡¯m around sometimes.¡±


    She chuckled at that. "That''s a funny way to look at yourself, dear."


    I shook my head. "You''ll probably understand in a while. Hey, listen. I''ve gotta go. Thank you for listening to me. I feel a lot better, but I''ve got an appointment that I''ve gotta go catch."


    Mrs. Streep nodded and smiled at me, not seeming to have noticed the luck that I took.


    ***


    I made it out into the hall and passed about forty lockers before I realized I had no idea where I was going. Why didn''t I know where Kaye was this time of day?


    ¡°Because I''m not a creepy stalker,¡± I said aloud.


    I shook my head. I was doing a very poor job of groundhog-daying my experience inside this time loop. I didn''t know everyone''s name. I hadn''t read every book. I didn''t know where everyone was at every time of the day.


    Feeling a little bit overwhelmed, I put my face in my hands and sat down in the middle of the hall to try and think. I could go to the registrar''s office and try to look up Kaye''s schedule, but I didn''t know her last name. So that idea was right out. I could plan to try and meet her in the hallway at the same time as I had met her the previous loop. I had successfully bumped into her, but that was already earlier in the day. I had spent my morning outside underneath the tree, which had become my new favorite activity.


    I could systematically walk through and open every classroom looking for her pink Converse. It would make her easy to spot.


    That was what I would do.


    If I got into too big of a mess, I could start the loop over again. Although, thinking about that, I shuddered. Every loop reset¡­ I was eating a day of not-me''s life and digesting it. I really was a vampire, consuming the soul of my future self. This was so morbid.


    Did this make me a goth? Was I now indulging in teenage angst? With that thought, I decided to disregard the whole thing. I didn''t want to be an angsty teenager. My older self was apparently already full of angst.


    Speaking of which, I stood up with the intent of pulling a spoon out of my pocket and having a word with Not-me when I nearly bumped noses with Kaye. She was standing right there in front of me. I gaped at her.


    "When did you get here?" I said.


    "Just a second ago," she said. "Whatever''s going on in that head of yours must be pretty distracting that I could get this close without you noticing.¡±


    "Yeah, wow, I was just coming to look for you."


    She cocked her head at me. "Really?" she asked, a note of disbelief in her tone. "You were just coming to look for me?" She squinted at something in the middle distance, like she was looking through me. Then she nodded. "You''re telling the truth," she said. "Do we know each other?"


    It occurred to me then that I was supposed to give her the whole doppelganger phrase and response stuff.


    ¡°Come on in, the water¡¯s great,¡± I said.


    Instead of growing angry this time, she squinted her eyes and gave me the responses.


    Then at the end, she said, "Becky¡­ Is that you?" She was studying me, her eyes narrowed, looking for something in my face. I don''t know what.


    I hesitated. I didn''t know how to respond. Why would she think I was Becky?


    Oh, it occurred to me.


    I shook my head. "Sorry, no, I may have misled you by not explaining carefully. We''ve met in a previous iteration of this day," I said, struggling to explain. "I''m stuck in a time loop, and you and I became friends before, and you taught me your whole doppelganger-story-passcode in order to allow me to prove that I know you, except..." I hesitated. Did I tell her what had happened the last time I had tried this when I didn''t have a surplus of luck? I hadn''t even bothered to count what I had taken from Mrs. Streep. Taking a look at my core, I studied it for a moment. I was at plus twenty-five. Each new knot that formed, joined the glowing rotating sphere inside my core and made it glow brighter.


    I decided honesty was the best policy since I probably would get a do-over if I messed up. "Yeah, the last time I tried this, I had a lot less luck. And you looked at me like I had run your cat over or something," I said.


    "Oh," Kaye said. "So this feeling that you''re generating, you''re calling that luck. And you have the ability to increase that?"


    I nodded. "I know it''s not luck. It''s been explained to me before, but I don''t know what it is, and it''s the best word I have for it."


    Kaye laughed. "I like you. You know what? We are going to be friends. Come on." She grabbed my hand and began to pull me down the hall and outside.


    "You''re very forceful," I said.


    She looked at me. "This is what you call being forceful?" she asked. "I don''t think so. I think everybody who is involved in your life is very passive," she said.


    I laughed at that. "Wait till you meet Cece," I said.


    "Who''s Cece?" Kaye asked.


    "My babysitter," I said, "and also my best friend."


    "What?!" Kaye exclaimed. "You mean your best friend status has already been claimed? That''s not fair."


    I shrugged. "Who says you can''t have more than one best friend?" I said, trying to offer an olive branch.


    "No," Kay said. "There can only be one best friend, otherwise the whole thing loses its meaning. We''ll be friends, and we''ll see whether or not I usurp ¡®best¡¯ status from this Cece, so-called," she said. "What is she, your girlfriend?"


    I laughed. "No, I''m twelve, and she''s twenty-two," I said.


    Kaye gave me a look. "Oh. So you think ten years is too much of an age gap?"


    "I have no opinion on that," I said. "I think me being a minor is too much of an age gap."


    Kaye whistled. "Touch¨¦, Mr..."


    I realized I had not introduced myself. "Call me Freak, all my friends do. Hi, I''m Timmy Thompson," I said, sticking out my hand.


    "Timmy ¡®Freak¡¯ Thompson," Kaye said. "That does have a certain ring to it, although we''re going to have to come up with something better for your superhero name."


    "My what?" I said.


    "Oh yeah," Kaye nodded. "You''re going to need a superhero name. You''ve obviously been working on superpowers."


    I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"


    "Well, first off, you just admitted and confirmed that you''re stuck in a time loop. And second off, you clearly have the aura of a hundred-year-old yogi who''s been practicing under a trained master daily."


    "Oh," I said. "I hadn''t looked at it that way."


    Kaye said, "Yeah, they call it the ¡®supernatural¡¯ for a reason. When you learn to use it..." Kay reached out and twitched a finger. To my complete astonishment, the locker at the end of the hall swung open in perfect timing with what she did.


    "You''re kidding," I said.


    Kay shook her head. "No, there''s something happening. I haven''t been able to talk to anyone about it because no one believes me. But things are changing. It''s like the supernatural is becoming more real. Check it out," she said. She finished pulling me outside of the school. Once we were outdoors, she led me over to the tree. "Watch. I need to borrow a little bit of the energy from this tree, but look what I can do.¡±


    She put her hand on the tree and with a look of deep concentration, stared up at one of the leaves high on a branch.


    I waited for another feat of telekinesis. After a long moment, there was a loud snap, like a crack of electricity, and then the leaf burst into flames. I cried out and took a step back as the flaming debris fell to the ground near where I had been.


    "Hey," I cried. "Watch it." I looked at her. "Pyrokinesis?"


    Kay nodded, grinning at me. "Seriously, I''ve been trying to track down everyone who''s been developing gifts at astonishing rates. There''s something happening. No one seems to be taking notice."


    I struggled to close my mouth or form anything to say. It was going to be a contest whether or not Cece would keep the official title of best friend or whether Kay would usurp it.


    ***

 Chapter 27, The Pyro, Boom, Go Again

    I reached down and picked up the charred remains of the leaf. It was brittle and difficult to pick up, and my first two attempts left me holding nothing but crumbled ash between my fingers. Eventually, I got hold of the stem and held it up, looking at the work that Kaye''s mind-fire had done. I grinned. Pyrokinesis was more than I had dared to hope for.


    I looked up at her, my eyes shining. "Can you teach me?" I said.


    Kaye looked thoughtful. "I think so." She peered down at my chest. "Wow, but you have a really bright..." She snapped her fingers. "What are you calling this? I don''t have an operative word for it." She poked me in my chest.


    ¡°Can you actually see that?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°It¡¯s a feeling. But it¡¯s intense, like a freight train pulling at me. It¡¯s centered in your chest.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m calling it luck. I¡¯m a luck vampire by the way.¡±


    ¡°Vampire?¡±


    ¡°Yep, no reflection even. Check with your phone.¡±


    She did, first pulling it out and using the black screen to look over her shoulder, then using the camera.


    ¡°You¡­ weren¡¯t kidding,¡± she said.


    I looked for Kaye''s luck, curious. I blinked twice, not really sure I was seeing what I thought I was. While she didn''t have an aura, what she did have was an astonishing amount of luck. She was at plus twenty-four. Two full knots had formed and joined at the center and were spinning gently, a warm glow emanating from them. I don''t know how I had missed this the first time we had met.


    I explained how I could take luck, but didn¡¯t naturally generate it anymore. Then I told her about the last time I tried to do the doppelganger exchange with her, she had come close to biting my head off.


    ¡°I had negative luck when I tried that time. Less than a normal person. I¡¯ve been thinking about it, maybe that train metaphor you mentioned was driving in the other direction. Pushing you away?


    Kay nodded. "That makes a strange amount of sense."


    "It does?"


    "Yeah, what you''re talking about is totally not luck. Although I don''t know what the right word for it is either. I think luck will do for now. But yeah, if a kid who had a bad feeling about him walked up and brought up my doppelganger phrase and exchange that me and my best friend had made up, I would have gotten upset," she said.


    I looked at her. "Why? Were you worried that your best friend had betrayed your confidence?"


    Kaye shook her head. "Nope. No danger in that. Not unless she''s blabbing to a psychic medium.¡±


    "Oh," I said, getting it now. Understanding why she had gotten upset, I had brought up the words that she and her best friend had made up together. We were quiet for a minute, each lost in our thoughts.


    I held up the blackened leaf, hopeful she would still be willing to teach me.


    She smirked at me and nodded, making a ¡®go ahead¡¯ gesture.


    I explained quickly how I used auras from other people with my telekinetic manipulation techniques. I asked how she was using telekinesis, or pyrokinesis for that matter, without an aura.


    Kaye laughed. "This," she said, poking me in the chest again. "Have you ever tried to use what you''re referring to as luck? I can''t imagine trying to use an aura. Goodness, that would be like trying to lift a truck."


    "Yeah," I said, "like a truck¡­¡±


    It had never occurred to me to try using luck instead of aura in order to make telekinesis work. Well, of course it hadn''t. This was not what Not-me had showed me. Grumbling under my breath, I applied my will and a strand of my own luck to one of the leaves on the trees.I focused, imagining pushing it down. I felt the leaf on my tongue, then with a slap, it fell from its stem, partially destroyed.


    I gaped at the falling debris.


    Kaye grinned at me, ¡°Fast learner.¡±


    I began laughing.


    That was when the school exploded.


    ***


    The pressure wave and noise hit me at the same time, my shock causing me to stumble and fall. Looking up from where I had fallen in the grass, I could see great tongues of orange flame licking out of the school''s windows, the glass now missing from all of them. A good twenty-yard section of the building right in front of me was on fire.


    ¡°What¡­¡± I said.


    My voice sounded weird. I could barely hear myself, like I had cotton stuffed in my ears or I was speaking into a tube and my voice was coming back to me from far away. There was a ringing that, at first, I thought was in my ears, but then I realized it was a fire alarm.


    I sat up, only at that moment realizing that my elbow hurt and that something was pressing into my back. I looked down and realized that I had fallen on top of Kaye.


    "Are you okay?" I said, realizing after that I was shouting. Kaye didn''t seem startled by my shout; she groaned and nodded.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I turned back towards the building. Sprinklers were battling the blaze from inside every window that I could see, except for one. The window straight in front of me¡ª I could see the sprinklers weren¡¯t turning on for some reason and there was somebody inside. Or maybe it was the flames playing a trick on my eyes. Was I seeing aura?


    Then, as the movement got closer to the window, I realized what it was. It was a person. They fell headfirst out of the window, doing some sort of belly flop across the top and then into the grass beyond. I winced as I realized there were still shards of broken glass in that window frame.


    Not knowing what I could do, I dashed over to try and help. The heat from the fire was shocking. By the time I was within ten feet of the figure, it was physically painful to step closer. Ignoring this pain, having recently become used to great levels of it, I pushed forward until I reached the black lump lying on the ground.


    I had been wrong. This wasn¡¯t a person; it must have been my eyes playing tricks on me, some sort of...


    It was in that moment, mid-thought, that the gut-wrenching smell assaulted my nostrils. I was taken back¡ªback to the war¡ª back to when I fought. Back to when I watched people burn. I remembered the smell. There is nothing on earth like the smell of human flesh burning, and those who have partook will never forget. When the world burned, I smelled it everywhere I went. You could smell the cooking meat, the sweet stink of humans burning. The people who had weight on them, like the one in front of me, always smelled sweeter. I hated that I knew that. I hated that it was true.


    I fell to my knees.


    I remembered their screams.


    The figure on the ground reached a blackened hand towards me. I reached down and grasped it. Their skin was crisped, a layer of char making the outer layers crack, angry red showing through from inside. I gingerly held the hand presented to me, trying desperately to offer some comfort. They probably couldn''t even my touch.


    I realized then the figure was lying face up. Their face had been charred to the point that I hadn¡¯t realized what I was looking at until they opened their eyes and their mouth. They took in a shuddering breath and began to spasm, coughing violently. I knew there was nothing I could do, but I sat with their hand in mine as the horrible realization washed over me. The unrecognizable figure that I was sitting before was Mrs. Streep. It was only her room where the sprinklers had not gone off.


    I was still sitting like that when strong hands pulled me away. I don¡¯t remember hearing the sirens, but the fire department showed up at some point.


    Then I was sitting on a fire truck. I don¡¯t know how I got there, but someone had wrapped a blanket around me. There was a thick, viscous goo applied to my head; I had apparently received some degree of burn.


    I remember seeing Cece. She said something, but I couldn¡¯t track, couldn¡¯t follow what she said. I couldn¡¯t stop thinking about the thousands of dead. I couldn¡¯t get the smell out of my mouth. I couldn¡¯t stop tasting what Mrs. Streep tasted like when she was cooked.


    I don¡¯t remember sobbing, but my face was wet, my eyes were puffy. I don¡¯t know when it happened or how long it took, but my mom was there. That stunned me. I realized I hadn¡¯t seen her in more than a month. She hugged me. She said things to me¡ªI can¡¯t remember what they were. And then, at some point, I was lying in my bed.


    My own bed.


    I was tucked in, but sleep never came. I lay and stared at the ceiling until sometime in the night, it happened, and I was in that hall again.


    As I was bumped and jostled by the human river in this all-too-familiar setting, I just couldn''t even. I was done. I turned around and headed for the exit. I couldn''t stay in this place right now.


    And then it occurred to me. I didn''t know what day I was in. I had been in my bed.


    Turning and heading back into the flow of the hallway, I began looking for familiar auras. One in particular stood out. Sure enough, twelve people in on the left, hugging the locker wall. A boy, maybe fifteen, was walking head down. No screen. An aura almost completely black. I supposed, watching him pass, that it was possible that that boy would walk this hall at a particular time every day.


    So I decided to complete the only test I knew that would confirm which day I was in. I went to my locker. I hadn''t been there very long when I was hit by the Billy truck.


    I let it happen. Unable or unwilling or, I don''t know, incapable of defending myself. My head bounced off the locker, and Billy''s usual intelligent retort of, "Hey, watch where you''re going, nerd!" rang in my ears. I''d heard that so many times.


    I turned around and faced him. I couldn''t even muster the energy for a bad pun. He was leering at me. There was a weird look in his eyes, and it wasn¡¯t malicious. I''d seen hate on a couple of people before. I remembered that clearly now. This wasn''t hate. This was something else. He wanted something. What was it?


    I couldn''t tell. I just looked at him. Billy seemed puzzled with what to do with me for a minute. Then he decided to shove me in the chest.


    "What are you looking at, punk?" he yelled.


    I didn''t have a response. I felt numb. None of this mattered. What was I doing? Why was I here? The memory of the war surfaced. What was that? Was that World War III? Billy''s fist came slamming in, bouncing my head off the locker and knocking me to the ground. I sat where I had fallen, not trying to get up, not trying to be a smartass, not really caring.


    Billy stepped in and someone stepped in between us.


    "Hey, asshole," they said. "Why don''t you try picking on someone your own size? He''s just a kid."


    Billy pointed past the person standing in the way. "That''s no kid. Have you seen him?"


    There was an argument.


    Billy didn''t think I was a kid.


    That''s weird.


    He wasn''t wrong, but he had this confrontation with me before this had become true. I wasn''t sure what he meant. I couldn''t track the argument.


    Mr. Pheizer broke it up.


    I was in the detention office. There were three people now. Whoever had stepped in to try and break up the fight was now there too. A tall girl, maybe a senior? I don''t remember having seen her before.


    My mind spun on that.


    I hadn¡¯t seen the senior. Seen her. I hadn¡¯t seen the senior. Seen her, senior¡­. Seignior.


    I realized that I was babbling incoherently in my own mind. That wasn''t a good sign.


    After Mr. Pheizer had some stern words with the girl and Billy, probably me too, I couldn''t pay attention.


    He left.


    The girl and Billy got into a hissing argument. It sounded like a couple of snakes who couldn''t agree on something. But I couldn''t bring myself to care.


    "I feel sick," I said.


    I stood up and left the room. Neither Billy nor the girl, whose name I didn''t know, made any move to stop me.


    I walked to Mrs. Streep''s office. When I got there, something caught in my throat, something that felt an awful lot like a choking hand.


    I couldn''t open the door.


    I wanted to see her. I wanted to know that she was okay. I wanted to know that I hadn''t done¡­


    I felt it as I was standing there at the door.


    Something behind me. Something was watching. Something that wasn''t human.


    I looked down at my core. "Oh yeah," I said. "I didn''t take any luck."


    ***


    Feeling the presence behind me, I knew what was there. Even before I turned, I knew. It was the dark figure in the cloak. The ¡®gang enforcer¡¯ for the big-bad as Not me had said.


    Maybe this figure in the cloak was a heart attack. Maybe it was something more complicated than that. But I had come to think of it as the Grim Squeezer. And I was ready to fight instead of opening the door in front of me.


    Working quickly, I pulled the pen out of my pocket and sketched the symbol on both my palms.


    The voice hit me.


    I had forgotten how much depth it had. Like it came from a mountain. When it hit me, it felt like it had a physical presence, a weight to it.


    "Who are you?" the voice thundered.


    Well, it didn''t know who I was. That was encouraging. This didn''t seem like the sort of fella that I should offer up a name to. Instead, I turned and grinned at the creature.


    "Me? I''m just your friendly neighborhood luck-vampire," I said, and I reached both hands for the creature.


    I didn''t know if creatures had luck. I didn''t know if I''d be able to take luck from whatever this was. A spirit? A demon? An entity? A god? I had no idea. But I knew the last time I had encountered this creature, it grabbed hold of my heart and killed me. And so, I wasn''t going to let it happen this time without at least trying to fight back.


    The result was surprising. The cloaked figure, seven feet of solid black, had luck. Familiar ropes of crystalline, brilliant water, the scintillating dancing forms that seemed to catch an unearthly light and shine with it, leapt to my command. As I reached, I pulled. I pulled as hard as I had ever pulled. The only thing I had gotten good at was being able to take luck and controlling how much luck I took. And I took everything.


    I got more than I had from any person. That was the first surprising thing. The second was the creature''s reaction.


    It screamed.


    It screamed like a grinding, screeching car wreck. It screamed so loud, I was sure my ear drums would burst. But apparently, it was screaming on a different plane than my eardrums currently existed on. And then it was gone.


    It retreated. I was standing there in the luck cloud as it formed into the familiar medallion knots. Until I was plus thirty-six.


    That meant I took seventy-two individual ropes of luck in that moment from that creature.


    I stood stunned, not sure what to do with myself.


    I felt better.


    Something inside of me seemed to be aching still, but I no longer felt like I was stuck in a state of walking torpor. A moment before, I hadn''t had the motivation to do anything. I think I had been in shock. I had read about shock before.


    I let my mind revisit the idea that I could remember experiencing a war, what looked like a world war, and I was in a country tearing itself apart. I don''t know where I was, but it didn''t matter.


    It was unrecognizable.


    The buildings and houses were burned out husks, the people being actively pursued and killed by something¡­.


    I needed more detail.


    A mouse gremlin broke me out of my thoughts as it scuttled down the hall and up the wall to position itself firmly in my sightline. Its eyes blinked at me twice. Then it said in a voice that reminded me of the chipmunks, "You won''t get away with this! You''re going to come to regret this! You have made an enemy!" Then it zipped down the wall, down the hall, and was gone.


    "I didn''t know mouse gremlins could speak," I said.


    ***

 Chapter 27, Fire

    I reached down and picked up the charred remains of the leaf. It was brittle and difficult to pick up, and my first two attempts left me holding nothing but crumbled ash between my fingers. Eventually, I got hold of the stem and held it up, looking at the work that Kaye''s mind-fire had done. I grinned. Pyrokinesis was more than I had dared to hope for.


    I looked up at her, my eyes shining. "Can you teach me?" I said.


    Kaye looked thoughtful. "I think so." She peered down at my chest. "Wow, but you have a really bright..." She snapped her fingers. "What are you calling this? I don''t have an operative word for it." She poked me in my chest.


    ¡°Can you actually see that?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°It¡¯s a feeling. But it¡¯s intense, like a freight train pulling at me. It¡¯s centered in your chest.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m calling it luck. I¡¯m a luck vampire by the way.¡±


    ¡°Vampire?¡±


    ¡°Yep, no reflection even. Check with your phone.¡±


    She did, first pulling it out and using the black screen to look over her shoulder, then using the camera.


    ¡°You¡­ weren¡¯t kidding,¡± she said.


    I looked for Kaye''s luck, curious. I blinked twice, not really sure I was seeing what I thought I was. While she didn''t have an aura, what she did have was an astonishing amount of luck. She was at plus twenty-four. Two full knots had formed and joined at the center and were spinning gently, a warm glow emanating from them. I don''t know how I had missed this the first time we had met.


    I explained how I could take luck, but didn¡¯t naturally generate it anymore. Then I told her about the last time I tried to do the doppelganger exchange with her, she had come close to biting my head off.


    ¡°I had negative luck when I tried that time. Less than a normal person. I¡¯ve been thinking about it, maybe that train metaphor you mentioned was driving in the other direction. Pushing you away?


    Kay nodded. "That makes a strange amount of sense."


    "It does?"


    "Yeah, what you''re talking about is totally not luck. Although I don''t know what the right word for it is either. I think luck will do for now. But yeah, if a kid who had a bad feeling about him walked up and brought up my doppelganger phrase and exchange that me and my best friend had made up, I would have gotten upset," she said.


    I looked at her. "Why? Were you worried that your best friend had betrayed your confidence?"


    Kaye shook her head. "Nope. No danger in that. Not unless she''s blabbing to a psychic medium.¡±


    "Oh," I said, getting it now. Understanding why she had gotten upset, I had brought up the words that she and her best friend had made up together. We were quiet for a minute, each lost in our thoughts.


    I held up the blackened leaf, hopeful she would still be willing to teach me.


    She smirked at me and nodded, making a ¡®go ahead¡¯ gesture.


    I explained quickly how I used auras from other people with my telekinetic manipulation techniques. I asked how she was using telekinesis, or pyrokinesis for that matter, without an aura.


    Kaye laughed. "This," she said, poking me in the chest again. "Have you ever tried to use what you''re referring to as luck? I can''t imagine trying to use an aura. Goodness, that would be like trying to lift a truck."


    "Yeah," I said, "like a truck¡­¡±


    It had never occurred to me to try using luck instead of aura in order to make telekinesis work. Well, of course it hadn''t. This was not what Not-me had showed me. Grumbling under my breath, I applied my will and a strand of my own luck to one of the leaves on the trees.I focused, imagining pushing it down. I felt the leaf on my tongue, then with a slap, it fell from its stem, partially destroyed.


    I gaped at the falling debris.


    Kaye grinned at me, ¡°Fast learner.¡±


    I began laughing.


    That was when the school exploded.


    ***


    The pressure wave and noise hit me at the same time, my shock causing me to stumble and fall. Looking up from where I had fallen in the grass, I could see great tongues of orange flame licking out of the school''s windows, the glass now missing from all of them. A good twenty-yard section of the building right in front of me was on fire.


    ¡°What¡­¡± I said.


    My voice sounded weird. I could barely hear myself, like I had cotton stuffed in my ears or I was speaking into a tube and my voice was coming back to me from far away. There was a ringing that, at first, I thought was in my ears, but then I realized it was a fire alarm.


    I sat up, only at that moment realizing that my elbow hurt and that something was pressing into my back. I looked down and realized that I had fallen on top of Kaye.


    "Are you okay?" I said, realizing after that I was shouting. Kaye didn''t seem startled by my shout; she groaned and nodded.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I turned back towards the building. Sprinklers were battling the blaze from inside every window that I could see, except for one. The window straight in front of me¡ª I could see the sprinklers weren¡¯t turning on for some reason and there was somebody inside. Or maybe it was the flames playing a trick on my eyes. Was I seeing aura?


    Then, as the movement got closer to the window, I realized what it was. It was a person. They fell headfirst out of the window, doing some sort of belly flop across the top and then into the grass beyond. I winced as I realized there were still shards of broken glass in that window frame.


    Not knowing what I could do, I dashed over to try and help. The heat from the fire was shocking. By the time I was within ten feet of the figure, it was physically painful to step closer. Ignoring this pain, having recently become used to great levels of it, I pushed forward until I reached the black lump lying on the ground.


    I had been wrong. This wasn¡¯t a person; it must have been my eyes playing tricks on me, some sort of...


    It was in that moment, mid-thought, that the gut-wrenching smell assaulted my nostrils. I was taken back¡ªback to the war¡ª back to when I fought. Back to when I watched people burn. I remembered the smell. There is nothing on earth like the smell of human flesh burning, and those who have partook will never forget. When the world burned, I smelled it everywhere I went. You could smell the cooking meat, the sweet stink of humans burning. The people who had weight on them, like the one in front of me, always smelled sweeter. I hated that I knew that. I hated that it was true.


    I fell to my knees.


    I remembered their screams.


    The figure on the ground reached a blackened hand towards me. I reached down and grasped it. Their skin was crisped, a layer of char making the outer layers crack, angry red showing through from inside. I gingerly held the hand presented to me, trying desperately to offer some comfort. They probably couldn''t even my touch.


    I realized then the figure was lying face up. Their face had been charred to the point that I hadn¡¯t realized what I was looking at until they opened their eyes and their mouth. They took in a shuddering breath and began to spasm, coughing violently. I knew there was nothing I could do, but I sat with their hand in mine as the horrible realization washed over me. The unrecognizable figure that I was sitting before was Mrs. Streep. It was only her room where the sprinklers had not gone off.


    I was still sitting like that when strong hands pulled me away. I don¡¯t remember hearing the sirens, but the fire department showed up at some point.


    Then I was sitting on a fire truck. I don¡¯t know how I got there, but someone had wrapped a blanket around me. There was a thick, viscous goo applied to my head; I had apparently received some degree of burn.


    I remember seeing Cece. She said something, but I couldn¡¯t track, couldn¡¯t follow what she said. I couldn¡¯t stop thinking about the thousands of dead. I couldn¡¯t get the smell out of my mouth. I couldn¡¯t stop tasting what Mrs. Streep tasted like when she was cooked.


    I don¡¯t remember sobbing, but my face was wet, my eyes were puffy. I don¡¯t know when it happened or how long it took, but my mom was there. That stunned me. I realized I hadn¡¯t seen her in more than a month. She hugged me. She said things to me¡ªI can¡¯t remember what they were. And then, at some point, I was lying in my bed.


    My own bed.


    I was tucked in, but sleep never came. I lay and stared at the ceiling until sometime in the night, it happened, and I was in that hall again.


    As I was bumped and jostled by the human river in this all-too-familiar setting, I just couldn''t even. I was done. I turned around and headed for the exit. I couldn''t stay in this place right now.


    And then it occurred to me. I didn''t know what day I was in. I had been in my bed.


    Turning and heading back into the flow of the hallway, I began looking for familiar auras. One in particular stood out. Sure enough, twelve people in on the left, hugging the locker wall. A boy, maybe fifteen, was walking head down. No screen. An aura almost completely black. I supposed, watching him pass, that it was possible that that boy would walk this hall at a particular time every day.


    So I decided to complete the only test I knew that would confirm which day I was in. I went to my locker. I hadn''t been there very long when I was hit by the Billy truck.


    I let it happen. Unable or unwilling or, I don''t know, incapable of defending myself. My head bounced off the locker, and Billy''s usual intelligent retort of, "Hey, watch where you''re going, nerd!" rang in my ears. I''d heard that so many times.


    I turned around and faced him. I couldn''t even muster the energy for a bad pun. He was leering at me. There was a weird look in his eyes, and it wasn¡¯t malicious. I''d seen hate on a couple of people before. I remembered that clearly now. This wasn''t hate. This was something else. He wanted something. What was it?


    I couldn''t tell. I just looked at him. Billy seemed puzzled with what to do with me for a minute. Then he decided to shove me in the chest.


    "What are you looking at, punk?" he yelled.


    I didn''t have a response. I felt numb. None of this mattered. What was I doing? Why was I here? The memory of the war surfaced. What was that? Was that World War III? Billy''s fist came slamming in, bouncing my head off the locker and knocking me to the ground. I sat where I had fallen, not trying to get up, not trying to be a smartass, not really caring.


    Billy stepped in and someone stepped in between us.


    "Hey, asshole," they said. "Why don''t you try picking on someone your own size? He''s just a kid."


    Billy pointed past the person standing in the way. "That''s no kid. Have you seen him?"


    There was an argument.


    Billy didn''t think I was a kid.


    That''s weird.


    He wasn''t wrong, but he had this confrontation with me before this had become true. I wasn''t sure what he meant. I couldn''t track the argument.


    Mr. Pheizer broke it up.


    I was in the detention office. There were three people now. Whoever had stepped in to try and break up the fight was now there too. A tall girl, maybe a senior? I don''t remember having seen her before.


    My mind spun on that.


    I hadn¡¯t seen the senior. Seen her. I hadn¡¯t seen the senior. Seen her, senior¡­. Seignior.


    I realized that I was babbling incoherently in my own mind. That wasn''t a good sign.


    After Mr. Pheizer had some stern words with the girl and Billy, probably me too, I couldn''t pay attention.


    He left.


    The girl and Billy got into a hissing argument. It sounded like a couple of snakes who couldn''t agree on something. But I couldn''t bring myself to care.


    "I feel sick," I said.


    I stood up and left the room. Neither Billy nor the girl, whose name I didn''t know, made any move to stop me.


    I walked to Mrs. Streep''s office. When I got there, something caught in my throat, something that felt an awful lot like a choking hand.


    I couldn''t open the door.


    I wanted to see her. I wanted to know that she was okay. I wanted to know that I hadn''t done¡­


    I felt it as I was standing there at the door.


    Something behind me. Something was watching. Something that wasn''t human.


    I looked down at my core. "Oh yeah," I said. "I didn''t take any luck."


    ***


    Feeling the presence behind me, I knew what was there. Even before I turned, I knew. It was the dark figure in the cloak. The ¡®gang enforcer¡¯ for the big-bad as Not me had said.


    Maybe this figure in the cloak was a heart attack. Maybe it was something more complicated than that. But I had come to think of it as the Grim Squeezer. And I was ready to fight instead of opening the door in front of me.


    Working quickly, I pulled the pen out of my pocket and sketched the symbol on both my palms.


    The voice hit me.


    I had forgotten how much depth it had. Like it came from a mountain. When it hit me, it felt like it had a physical presence, a weight to it.


    "Who are you?" the voice thundered.


    Well, it didn''t know who I was. That was encouraging. This didn''t seem like the sort of fella that I should offer up a name to. Instead, I turned and grinned at the creature.


    "Me? I''m just your friendly neighborhood luck-vampire," I said, and I reached both hands for the creature.


    I didn''t know if creatures had luck. I didn''t know if I''d be able to take luck from whatever this was. A spirit? A demon? An entity? A god? I had no idea. But I knew the last time I had encountered this creature, it grabbed hold of my heart and killed me. And so, I wasn''t going to let it happen this time without at least trying to fight back.


    The result was surprising. The cloaked figure, seven feet of solid black, had luck. Familiar ropes of crystalline, brilliant water, the scintillating dancing forms that seemed to catch an unearthly light and shine with it, leapt to my command. As I reached, I pulled. I pulled as hard as I had ever pulled. The only thing I had gotten good at was being able to take luck and controlling how much luck I took. And I took everything.


    I got more than I had from any person. That was the first surprising thing. The second was the creature''s reaction.


    It screamed.


    It screamed like a grinding, screeching car wreck. It screamed so loud, I was sure my ear drums would burst. But apparently, it was screaming on a different plane than my eardrums currently existed on. And then it was gone.


    It retreated. I was standing there in the luck cloud as it formed into the familiar medallion knots. Until I was plus thirty-six.


    That meant I took seventy-two individual ropes of luck in that moment from that creature.


    I stood stunned, not sure what to do with myself.


    I felt better.


    Something inside of me seemed to be aching still, but I no longer felt like I was stuck in a state of walking torpor. A moment before, I hadn''t had the motivation to do anything. I think I had been in shock. I had read about shock before.


    I let my mind revisit the idea that I could remember experiencing a war, what looked like a world war, and I was in a country tearing itself apart. I don''t know where I was, but it didn''t matter.


    It was unrecognizable.


    The buildings and houses were burned out husks, the people being actively pursued and killed by something¡­.


    I needed more detail.


    A mouse gremlin broke me out of my thoughts as it scuttled down the hall and up the wall to position itself firmly in my sightline. Its eyes blinked at me twice. Then it said in a voice that reminded me of the chipmunks, "You won''t get away with this! You''re going to come to regret this! You have made an enemy!" Then it zipped down the wall, down the hall, and was gone.


    "I didn''t know mouse gremlins could speak," I said.


    ***