The house starts shimmering when I get tired. I watch it pass in hazy colors, feeling Adaline and Angel's heavy bodies on the beds as if they were lying on my chest. Everything is hard and ruptured in the wrong ways. I raise a hand to grab myself out of myself, but by now I'm just sick again. I don't want to vomit into the toilets in this house. I can feel my body ringing inside of my body.

My face is covered in sweat. I can feel crystals growing inside of my skin.

I think this might have felt to be sick like Addie was. I wonder if she saw the colors behind her closed eyes when she was sick, too, the constant patterns that keep me up all night, like my blood is gushing out in oil patterns from my body.

I blink back rock dust from out of my eyes when I wake up the next morning. Addie is standing overhead, but it's not my Addie, not quite.

"I think I'm finally giving up," I tell her, trying to reach for her face. "Your hair is all short, and your chin is weird."

Adaline giggles. It sounds weird too, the noise filtering through my ears like a fish making ripples in water as it swims through it. I sit up, head pulsing with heat, and take a better look at her. She's changed everything. Even her scarf is gone. My heart falls. "I think I'm going to be a boy today." Adaline's voice is hushed. "Then people will stop looking at us."
I rub my eyes. "Addie. Go back to bed."

"You can't sleep either, and we don't have much time until the bus comes for us."

We missed it once last week. Angel was upset and asked me to make a car for her. It was one of the times I was most conscious we were just playing one big stupid game. We could have flown over as birds in half the time but we sat there, watching Angel mess with pedals I didn't understand until we realized I couldn't make a car if I didn't know how it worked and Angel couldn't drive. It made me even sicker, and I could barely shapeshift right so Addie got me over there. I put a hand to my head. Even if my vision is good my whole body hurts.

"I don't want to go," I say.

"They won't make fun of us anymore. I fixed everything." Adaline's face curves upwards. "I figured out what I needed to do, and I--I'd do anything for you, Trace, don't be sad. I love you."

"I love you too," I say, "I just don't know what you did."

Angel talks over breakfast. "I'm so happy we're into our second week-- don't you all feel better here? Isn't it so much easier than the constant stress of just--dealing with them? Any of them? You girls have been so good. I'm so proud of you. I hope you realize that I love you. I'm doing this for you both. You're not going to have to grow up to be monsters, we don't have to move everyday, and I'm already applying for jobs. Apparently it's hard to do things without all kinds of credentials, but I'm sure you can whip up some for me, Trace, and come along when I go to apply... Addie, what are you doing with your hair?"

"I cut it," Addie says.

"You look like a boy, Adaline. Make sure to change that back before you go out. Everyone would be really confused if you showed up to school like that," Angel says. "Are you two ready?"

I nod. Addie nods, also, but slower. I'm real concerned about this, but there's nothing to say, so we just get walked to the bus and then put on the bus. Addie puts her head against the window and leans into it as we go to school.

When we get there, the first thing anyone asks, is, "Adaline, is that you?"

"Sorta," Adaline says to one of the girls from the playground. "You said that girls don't date, so I'm-- I'm a boy," Addie says. Her voice falters and cracks on the last words, and she makes the movement she usually does to draw her hair across her face, but there's so little hair, and her white lashes flutter. She closes her eyes like the air is hurting her. I want to pick her up and bring her somewhere safe.

"We'll be playing Jeopardy today to review what you kids have learned in Science for this semester," says the teacher. I don't really like the big person bossing us around, and we can't leave the desks, because it's just like Angel, except we get one big person instead of a bunch like the group and they ask us a bunch of confusing questions. I pretend to know what the answers are and turn in blank papers with glamoured answers on them.

I don't think I'm convincing her at all. She kind of thinks I'm part of the class, but that's even harder to hold up. Reality is twisted like water going into the drain. I am pulling the drain, but I'm also the water. My stomach flattens out. I need to find somewhere to hole up and die. My brain is yelling at me. My body is also yelling at me. This is Angel's fault. This is my fault for not going along.

"The teams will be boys versus girls," the teacher announces. The crowd erupts, and I clasp my hands over my ears. My head is full of rock dust. It's sparkling so loudly, all pinks and blues and colors that there are no names for, afterimages, things swimming through water at dawn and sunset, the black past black past black past black...

Addie stands in the middle of the classroom. "Adaline, go join the girls line."

"She said she was a guy today," says the girl.

"I'm..." Addie says. "I don't know."

"Adaline, whatever this charade is, it's very disruptive. Please go get in the line."

Addi grips my hand, falling to her knees. "They were looking at us funny so I figured this is what they wanted us to be and now I'm like it so everything will be fine, Trace! Look at me. Am I pretty? Can we-- can we be together now? What do I have to do?"

The classroom with its dark greens and two bleak windows stares back at me like a bigger version of all the wide faces watching mine. No one knows what to make of us now. There's just a scene, free of individuals, and we've gone out of the place where they have rules or lines or anything for us. That means we have to make everything up on our own, doesn't it? I can't keep making things up. I'm so tired. All I can do is break, so I guess i'm going to break. I announce, "We're leaving."

Then I start walking out of the classroom.

"Come back here right now. You are both going to the office immediately so we can have this sorted out--" the teacher says. She almost grabs my hand but I slam the door behind me. My heart pulses with fear. There are rooms and teachers everywhere.

There's a door in front of us that leads into a closet, or at least, judging by the wording I can kind of read, not a room, and I twist space so that it opens into nothing. We fall into nothing together, footsteps passing us, and I feel my own body turned and flattened. Two of my fingers have transformed into crystals. I can feel water seeping down my forehead from the effort.

I lean into Adaline's side and cry. "I'm in so much pain, Addie."

"You should have just let me get in trouble," Addie says. She puts a hand against my back. It's shaking. She's a leaf in high wind. I was supposed to protect her from this.

"I didn't know what to do," I say. "I think they think we're even weirder now."
"What am I supposed to do?" she asks.

"Addie, do you want to be a boy?" I ask.

Addie shakes her head.

I nod. "Then just... don't. If you want to be a boy, that's okay, and I would be happy then, but if you don't, then you don't have to be a boy, and no one will make you! Even if our group is bad and we're not... we're not normal, there are some things that we do better than humans, and the best thing that's ever happened to us is us. Let's just be us."

Addie nods. Her blonde hair hits my back and face. It tickles, and I find myself giggling. I give her the biggest hug I can, centering myself on her, and everything doesn't hurt so bad. The crystals are still growing in my body, peeking out, but I can't feel any pain.

"This is as far as we can go," says Addie, in absolute dark.

"Then how do we get back home?"

We stay like that for a while, and when we untwist the darkness everyone was looking for us. Things were not okay for a bit, and then we got yelled at, but they thought that we were just hiding in the closet. There are a lot of holes in their story, because they don't actually know what to do with us. We are older and younger than everyone in the class. Angel comes in at a point, when we don't come home, and she has a long conversation with the people, and then they tell her she's going to need another long conversation.

Angel separates our hands when she walks us back, placing herself between us. "Red would kill you both if he was here," she says, her voice like a knife being scraped across ice.

"Red's not here, and guess who's fault that is?" I say.

Angel might start crying again. We've been crying a lot these days.

I just want Adaline's hand back. She grows her hair out, letting it curl around her face, and the scarf twists back around her neck. We emerge back onto the main road as ourselves, with the sun setting in the distance-- things already coming to an end hold heavy over us, already knowing that it's way too late.