The rest of the day, evening, night, and next morning passed by with no one else mentioning Jeffrey’s drawings or assuring him he had cool powers.

He might have felt a little more aggressive than usual each time he came to scan through lists of suggested videos to choose from, particularly whenever tapping to play a possible best option.

Back in homeroom, the need to put his pods and device away felt like a harsh prison sentence.

Still, he was determined not to be a weirdo today. He simply wouldn’t get distracted, no matter what. And he certainly wouldn’t let himself doodle anything.

As he rolled these resolutions over in his mind to make them click, sink in, and stick, he caught a flashing mental snapshot of the sharp white teeth he’d seen (or, imagined seeing, he corrected) before leaving Finnel’s office the day before. This caused him to snap his face and eyes around to focus on the first real thing they could find, Mangelo Peck’s old Pokemon pencil case.

Jeffrey stared into the rounded eyes of Squirtle and Bulbasaur, letting their rich colors rid him of all strange-face visions and other nonsense.

“What are you looking at?”

He didn’t hear the words right away. Or, he heard them, but it was like they were happening somewhere else . . . in a video he might be watching, maybe . . . so it couldn’t be his job to figure out who was talking, to whom, or why, nor what the right response should be, by when...

“Dude, what are you looking at?” snapped Peck again, edging his triangular face, point-first, into Jeffrey’s view.

Jeffrey said nothing, but looked away, over at Mrs. Racca, the homeroom teacher, her bright smile always easy to pinpoint and track along with.

Peck seemed ready to drop the matter.

But then Colin Frey, a big-boned kid definitely destined for something like football or bodyguarding, leaned forward from behind, and grunted, “Why you staring at his case, bruh? You into Pokemon or something?”

To this, Peck couldn’t seem to resist adding, “Yeah, gotta catch ‘em all, huh bruh?”

Jeffrey had never heard Peck say bruh before. Still, he felt too tired to offer back anything richer than, “No. Never got into it.”

“Looking for Pikachu, huh bruh?” pressed Peck. “Haha, loser!”

Peck’s eyes gleamed. To actually call Jeffrey a loser was worlds beyond any of the snively, sort of playful comments he’d made in the past.

Yet as Colin’s broad face clouded over with a frown (obviously not on board with the hostile direction Peck was steering things) the hope in Peck’s eyes fizzled and went dark like a blown-out fuse. “Or maybe he wants to draw his own Pokemon, like yesterday?” Peck quickly suggested. “You making your own franchise there, bruh?”

Jeffrey probably never would have actually voiced a response like: Well, it’s your pencil case, right?

Thankfully, he didn’t have to, since the hellish grating sound of the schoolbell tore through more than just the air, slicing his very psyche with the ambition of a classic alarm clock . . . the kind in love with murdering ends of soft and joyful, carefree dreams. The noise was so deep and grating it might as well have reprogrammed Jeffrey, Peck, and Colin all at once, erasing their conversation from existence, or at least saving and closing it as a file to access later.

Following the bell came a sudden static crack, then a disgusting squeakish slurp out through loudspeakers in the ceiling. This second of unbearable sounds kicked off a period of what only the most dedicated of researchers alive might identify as breathing. It wasn’t easy, paced, natural (human) breathing. It wasn’t even the rhythmic Scuba swells of a Darth Vadar. Rather, this breathing came in haphazard bursts, forced, as if either apathetic or afraid. Each inhale was held at its peak for an unpredictable period before what most listening would fear to be a final dying release. None of the stammered out-breaths fell into any kind of sequence. Each was as untimely as it was horribly agonal.

Out of nowhere, mid-wheeze, Finnel’s voice echoed forth, evolving and growing up from a low murmur to bits and pieces of phrases with some recognizable words. “...soccer team… first line… Mr. Willaker… no, no, no… if needs be… three hours, no more… a limit on the…”

Even though what he was hearing made Jeffrey almost sick, he felt glad for the distraction.

Glancing slightly left, he saw that Peck still appeared entirely spellbound by the sound creaking and dumping through from above.

Finnel ended with another round of the merciless, staggered breathing.

Then just as a sputtered bang signaled the doctor signing off, a second robotic-death-call alarm lasered Jeffrey’s brain as if to wrench him personally awake for…

Oh no, he thought, for it was Wednesday, which meant double PE. That meant two hours outside, unable to watch the clock, before even the ten minutes of alone time he might get for morning recess.

Nothing could be worse.

The people-stream was up and moving. So Jeffrey rose and let himself be swept along as well, out past a few makeshift trailer classrooms and an endless stretch of pavement punctuated by worn basketball hoops and clean, new cinderblock handball walls.

The journey ended at a dismal locker room cube, where shorts were donned and jeans stuffed in his backpack as hastily as possible.

Stepping out again, as ready as he’d ever be, he felt a low breeze cool his ankles, knees, and shins.

A moment later, waiting for much of the rest of the class to catch up, his eyes fell to a crack in the black pavement where a thin line of grass or baby weeds peeked up and over. This split connected to a web of other open gouges through a scratched network of rough markings and tiny crisscross lines.

For an instant, it looked as if the ground itself bent and stretched the way a person might after being forced still in a seat or bed for far too long. The pavement appeared to break into a thousand fissure patterns, then ripple out into liquid waves.

But Jeffrey quickly looked away, knowing he was seeing the sort of thing he wished he wasn’t strange enough to imagine.

Unfortunately (he thought so), his angling eyes met Gel’s. She stood about a car-length away, silently staring at him as the rest of the girls around her chirped and giggled in jumpy twos and threes. It seemed she’d been telling the truth about being in his PE class. And the knowing, cutting look in her eyes suggested she was fully aware of at least the type of thing he’d just seen.

But it was nothing, he assured himself. I just visualize things. And of course it would be obvious to her when I’m thinking that way, if she’s that way too. It’s not special. It’s not a power.

Ms. Batener, the PE teacher, sounded her whistle, causing everyone to fall into a circle formation that narrowed around her as she strode forth.

All got numbered off into two big dodgeball teams.

Ms. Batener emptied out a large mesh sack of red rubber balls in the center, whistling again to signal it was time to start.

Jeffrey sighed and stumbled sideways, basically falling until (at the very last moment) bringing his right leg and foot out to catch himself. As he took a second lazy step, falling to his left foot, a ball drifted by on the ground. He considered ambling the other way, pretending not to have seen it. But he decided this simple single reach, grab, and throw could serve as an easy enough contribution to the game (he didn’t plan on making more).

Torquing his torso to redirect his bumbling dance with gravity, he then watched, paralyzed, as Peck’s noodle-prong arm speared downward from the side and caught the ball like a pelican stealing a fish.

“Uh, no!” called Peck, loud enough so all nearby would hear.

Jeffrey caught his own weight again just before collapsing over in uncoordinated shock. He skidded to head the other direction, away, as Peck brought the ball up to ear-height and flung it weakly at the other team.

Jeffrey didn’t see whether anyone was hit. As he glanced up, his focus came immediately to Gel. She stood motionless at the back of his team, her arms locked straight with palms out behind her, and her eyes cast down at the ground.

No wonder he’d never noticed her before. She didn’t even seem all that there when looking directly at her, like she might be only the idea of a person . . . a black-clad ghost captured in a picture from another life, having no real part amongst its surroundings.

Or maybe…

A ball whizzed by Jeffrey’s head, snapping his attention back to the game. Instinctively, he shot diagonally down, dropping to his version a ready crouch. He knew he could run and move incredibly fast if he had to. The nearest ball was about three steps in front. He contemplated dashing for it, maybe surprising everyone.

In his periphery, he still saw Gel, a silhouette posed like some mythic guardian set to defend the gateway to another realm.

He turned to watch, powerless, as a ball bulleted straight to connect with her stomach, hard, causing her to cough and double over in winded surprise.

Then just as he made the decision to launch himself at the ball before him on the ground, and actually try, he was popped in the hip by enemy fire, and felt all his anxious excitement drain like liquid from a tapped barrel.

Together, Gel and Jeffrey sauntered to the benches at the side of the court to wait out the game.

Jeffrey’s heart sank to see Peck already there, Peck’s brittle legs folded up beneath him into angles only an insect could properly manage.

“He got you!” Peck chortled, glancing left and right to see who else might join his fun.

Jeffrey sighed again, not quite wondering what to say back.

Gel lowered herself to a bench behind Peck the way a careful robot might, one designed to waste no motion.

“He got you bad!” insisted Peck.

“Yeah, you got got, son!” added Ricky Vase, a tiny kid whom one might suspect of being skipped some grades if not for the broken, hi-low aural landscape of his obviously changing (or near-changing) voice.

“Yeah!” Peck perked up, seeming somehow more complete now that he had an audience/accomplice.

Jeffrey gave little thought to the braindead taunts leveled by his two attackers. Rather, he watched the edges of everything seen fade to a frightening wash, which only served to highlight the presence of Gel, who didn’t fade.

Maybe he wished he could be more like her . . . unmoving, yet peaceful . . . unnoticed, though content.

But waves of shaky panic crested over into a mad-dash (familiar) compulsion to flee. And wrong words forced themselves out of his mouth before he could stop them, having wrongly convinced him he’d prefer them to nothing. “Dodgeball’s not life!” he proclaimed.

The briefest of silences that followed felt so filled with anxious turmoil Jeffrey found himself almost relieved when Peck and Ricky burst out in violent chuckles, both laughing so hard they fought to breathe.

“Dodgeball’s not life!?!” parroted Peck, then repeated a second time: “Dodgeball . . . isn’t . . . life! What kind of…?”

“What a dork!” squawked Ricky, his voice a rough battlefield of metal scrapings.

The two boys continued to giggle as Jeffrey sat in unsung torture. And they were right to ridicule him, he knew. For nothing he said or did made any sense.

If he could just settle down, and bring himself into the world as known by others.

If he could only see and care about the plain, everyday things everyone else took for granted.

Sure, even now he wished to escape to the safety of a fresh video to watch. Nothing new. He might also wish to only ever eat pizza, and never need sleep. But something occurred to Jeffrey then, which he’d never considered before . . . that despite such avenues for human connection as comments sections and references to discussion boards, the videos he so loved consuming never really went both ways. He saw them, the folks on-screen, but no one was ever there to see him back.

He felt too strange to be seen, anyway.

As if drawn by a gentle tug on a kite string, Jeffrey’s face tilted ever so slightly up to meet Gel’s relentless gaze. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she turned her head from one side to the other, and back, her message unavoidable. No, declared her movement and rigid expression without words, it’s not you. It’s never been you.

Though Ricky seemed ready to move on to the next joke, Peck pressed in and spouted, “Can’t play dodgeball. That’s, like, barely even a sport. Any idiot should…”

“They hurt you,” Gel called to Peck, sounding light and somber, from the bench behind.

“What? You…?” Peck began, startled. “It didn’t hurt!”

Jeffrey wondered if the confusion he saw come to life on Peck’s face could be the same as his own from yesterday . . . confusion as to who this slight, shadowy girl even was.

“I don’t mean in the game,” corrected Gel. “I mean your parents, and . . . others.”

“What are you talking about, freak?!” Peck almost shrieked, his response more than a tad too fast and loud not to be carrying emotions beyond mere bewilderment.

“Yeah, what a freak!” Ricky heehawed, his eyes shrinking to black pebbles in something akin to glee (but bad).

“You don’t know me!” Peck winced.

“I know about the cabin,” offered Gel, her tone neither rising nor falling.

“Cabin?” Peck gulped. “What do you mean?”

“It’s two long walls made of logs that meet at the top like a big triangle, the logs crossing over to make little spikes. There’s a picture hanging inside. It’s you, when you were little, and…”

“Me and Cuber,” Peck breathed, his slender frame shaking as if embroiled in its own private earthquake.

“What’s a Cuber?” queried Ricky, his squished and beady face stretching to more of an open question mark.

“My dog,” Peck muttered. “He’s the only one that ever… He’s been gone since…”

“And you,” Gel pivoted her piercing stare toward Ricky. “Would you like me to tell them why you had to leave your last school?”

Ricky’s quizzical air morphed again to something of a wide-eyed gasp. Saying nothing, he stood (though stayed about the same height) and raced in a winding arc back to the changing room.

Watching Peck, Jeffrey too now saw the spike-topped cabin in his mind. But he figured picturing something Gel had described couldn’t be all that unusual.

Then he realized the many untold details he noticed in the hanging portrait on the wall . . . the young Peck draped in a green camouflage shirt, smiling wide, with his arm around a large chocolate-brown labrador.

He pondered announcing such specifics in hopes of proving he and Gel had not in fact shared a vision of something real. But a lifetime of only ever feeling slammed and bashed for showing his abnormality left him now a quivering wreck. He’d more likely be elected class president, or take on whole opposing dodgeball teams single-handedly, than actually choose to express his weirdness on purpose.

Plus, despite Gel’s insistence to the contrary, he couldn’t help but re-hear Finnel’s warning about the doctor knowing everything that went on in the school.

So, Jeffrey kept quiet.

Peck also said nothing, perhaps lost in what Jeffrey guessed to be both happy and sad memories of Cuber . . . playing fetch, chasing ducks, and fleeing from geese out at that cabin, the massive sun of bygone summers glistening so bright across the biggest, widest lake Jeffrey had ever envisioned.

For some reason, he felt sure Gel was seeing the very same scene.