Entry 1: Beginning Again

I stop by your grave today on the way to school. I wasn't sure the MIBs would allow it, but what do you know, they pull the limo off the freeway. I'm sure you'd come here before for the death of some relative, seeing as there are a few 'Rivers' scattered around the area. (I had been looking forwards to meeting your family when we returned. The reception was cold.) I don't have flowers on me, so I pluck a few weeds and lay them across, my nostrils revelling in their cut-plant pain. The earthier, quieter scents are almost masked by it, including an unseasonal amount of mud- the grass hasn't grown in over the tomb yet, and the stone is so shiny I could see my face in the reflection. The injury is even fresher than the pain.

"We planned to get you to your destination no more than ten minutes early, for orientation purposes, and we are rapidly approaching ten minutes now. We understand your plight, but we need you to get back into the limousine to escort you to school." suggests a woman in a dress suit and shades. She speaks in the cryptic, calculating tone all the MIBs have. I withdraw from your side, sensing again the keen lack that always comes with giving up on you, and enter the car.

They don't bother asking questions. I know they haven't run out of things to ask about our incident, about CorpInd, or any other number of interesting facts in the two-year trainwreck my life has just barrelled through. This is a pity I've been given as a treat for being cooperative.

The country whirls past in a blur of color. My eyes are drawn at once to the motion of trees and highway signs, which provides all the excitement color no longer gives. The window is clear, so much so that I can see the half-reflection of my face, which offers copper hair messy enough to match the jagged texture of the fall leaves. I try to draw my wandering eyes away from the ears, the one thing besides my hidden teeth that doesn't pass for normal, but as I look at myself I notice all the subtle things that will tip people off by instinct. The corners of my eyes are almost black, my nose is curled, and there's definitely something wrong in the pupils.

I drum my fingers on the side of the limousine. Better public school than another day in the empty house, my parents eyeing me like I'll snap at any minute, but better hell than public school.

Speaking of public school, I find myself in a moment of brief reprieve: even with four entrances, the whole road is stopped up from traffic. The slick black car looks comical as it cuts in between minivans, and I am unceremoniously shuffled out in front of the building, whose massive rafters and glass front tower overhead.

The Brooks School.

Brooks and Rivers. Feels like home already.

I don't think I need to detail your own school to you, even though the school itself was making a show of it. There's not one corner not touting student awards, progressive ideals, or sweeping architectural gestures. I'm less impressed by the magnitude and more that I'm quite possibly standing in your footsteps today. These are the bushes that were here when you were. Likely, despite the grandeur of it all, some of these corners and tackboards have remained uncleaned since. I might pass some stray lint from your clothing at some point. I can't say I'm desperate enough to look for it, to catch your scent, but I also can't say I'm not that desperate.

I shuffle into line for orientation, but my eyes pick out an empty line for me, with a red marker sign that reads 'Extra Services'. Next to A-M and M-Z, this line seems far less coveted. People move out of my way as I enter it, and I catch their eyes, keeping my hands close to myself as possible. That singular moment of intuition in the car was practically fate. I was pretty stupid to hope I'd be passing for normal, even if only that most desperate part of my teen heart was hoping at all.

The counselor at the desk, a bored twenty-something brunette clicking a pen, jolts up when she sees me, reviewing a black-folder clad list and passing me some papers. "You're the new Extra kid."

"I'm a new Extra kid. Get used to seeing a few of us around here." I say, playing it off with a quick flash of my finger guns.

The woman stares at my fingernails. With an uneasy smile and far less sass, she says, "Extras are in Room 063. Always." The last word comes out like an omen.

What curled up and died in her hair this morning, anyways?

What curled up and died in Room 063?

I'm ashamed to admit my gut response is children, and then I'm covering my face, thinking of dozens of reasons this would be easier if you were here. Luckily, navigation isn't an issue, seeing as the rooms are more or less numerically ordered and there are signs everywhere to inform those of us not able to walk down a hallway where to go. While most of the rooms on the first floor lead to offices, elective rooms, or the cafeteria, 063 is located far into the building as they can push it, down a hallway where the counsellors with weird names like 'Recreational Activity Outreach Managing Assistant' dwell. The entrance itself is red-doored, imprinted firmly into the wall, and the scuffed paint accompanies a darkened, blurry window into the classroom.

I turn the handle, opening into an equally drab classroom, with dark walls and low-quality screenshots from the old "Living With Extras!" videos we watched in middle school, when this was something to imagine yourself being, idly, even a power fantasy, instead of a reality with all the empowerment of hitting a brick wall at fifty miles per hour. A desk sits askew in a corner, next to a whiteboard, while the twenty desks and a variety of cupboards are arranged behind that.

Everyone in the room is watching me, including the teacher, who is standing a few feet away. She has straggly hair, almost ginger but lacking a certain commitment to the hue, and dark, menacing eyes. Her gaunt expression and thin lips are matched by a lithe body and pockmarked skin.

I flick up the lapels of my trenchcoat. "Hey."

"Are you a fox?" gasps a copper-haired girl, bolting up so fast that her desk slams forwards into the person in front of her. She's slim, but tall, and she stands on the balls of her feet, which gives her a good few inches, as do the big copper ears extending off either side of her face like earmuffs. "I'm a wolf! We're like twins!"

No, before you ask, not everyone in our group this year's a shifter. Apparently there was one year where there were no less than ten werewolves and vampires. (That must have been an adventure.) Most of the kids look normal, at least to some extent- they all look disheveled, frumpy, and unhappy to be here, but I'm eighty percent sure that's how public school works.

"I'm not a fox, I'm five percent fox. Genetic experiment. Ground-class. I hang out with the FBI now so that's... that's a thing." I fold my arms, trailing off.

"You can sit down now." The teacher informs me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "The effort was commendable, though."

There's an open seat in the second row, next to wolfgirl, and one in the back, in between a kid who can't be over ten and a girl with hair like a dark cloud. Both of them look like they're about to pass out from the effort staying awake is taking on them. I settle, swinging my backpack around and landing it behind the desk, where it tilts forlornly. It's three years old, riddled with scratchmarks, and belongs to a dead middle schooler who shares my name, address, and phone number.

The teacher taps her fingers against the wall and my head jolts upwards out of instinct, my attention averted from my sad backpack and the rattle of the dying air conditioner. "My name is Erza Shinke, and I'll be your teacher this year."

In the front row, a dark-haired girl's hair flies up. Her ponytail bounces as she cranes her hand skywards, waving it back and forth, and the teacher adjusts herself to look around her.

Clearing her throat, the girl asks, "What subject?"

"All of them." Ms. Shinke mutters.

As soon as she's done, the hand swings out again.

Ms. Shinke folds her arms. "Yes, Brittany?"

"That's unfair."

Ms. Shinke's eyes narrow, and she crosses her hands into a weave, steepling them around her chest. "Quick getting to know you survey. Who here feels personally victimized by life right now?"
I raise my hand for the both of us, several kids in the middle raise theirs as well, and soon two-thirds of the class has lifted their hands.

"This is not the worst thing that's ever happened to you, lass. I don't make the rules, I just perpetuate them by allowing myself to become a cog in the machine. Now. Can someone define for me, in what words, what an 'Extra' is in the context of supernatural occurrences."

The entire class, Brittany included, is still as the walls. The air conditioner judges us in the background, still hacking up its guts.

"For f-" Ms. Shinke kneads her forehead together. "Raise your hand if you're awake."

Two-thirds of the class raise their hands again. The other third is presumably both content with life or asleep. Potentially both. I envy that.

"Good enough. By the end of this year, you'll have explained this to your loved ones and curious onlookers enough times to recite the full history and classification of Extras from memory. Now, I know a kindergartener could at least give me some semblance of a definition, so for the Lord's sake, someone tell me why any of you are here."

The girl next to me raises her hand, although she doesn't even wait to speak. "Because someone got stabbed a few years ago?"

There's a round of whispering, a few aggravated mumbles, and Brittany slams her hand on the table. A blonde, broad-shouldered boy in the front stands up. "We are not dealing with this conspiracy crap today. Who the hell-"

"Sit down, Arthur, or we'll be contacting your father."

Arthur sits down, rolling a pencil across his desk with his shoulders raised until they almost meet his ears.

Ms. Shinke continues, "According to the public school system, you are here because it has been determined your situations are better acclimated to a specialized learning environment. Of course, this is a fancy way of saying that you, like five percent of Asphodel teens, have found yourself at the tail end of the kind of adventure mankind has aspired to since we first learned to tell stories. Some of you have walked in worlds inside your dreams, others have physically visited other universes, and it seems an unfortunate number of you had supernatural adventures within the bounds of our own planet, but whatever the case, you've witnessed something the other ninety-five percent of Asphodel-- and over ninety-nine percent of the world-- will never understand. For some of you, the journey has been rewarding, for others, perhaps less so, but you've all survived."

My ears twitch at survived, before I bat away the butterflies rising in my stomach and get back to picking this woman apart. There's no way that speech wasn't rehearsed. She looks tired, even already bored with us.

It's an even deeper weariness that rises in her voice when she continues, "Congratulations. That time in your life is over, any skills or abilities you've picked up along the way will likely hinder you instead of help you, doubtless you've experienced more than any high schooler has the emotional capacity to handle, and everyone else in this school will assume by default that you are an unstable and potentially even dangerous. Welcome to Extradom... and high school."

AND THAT'S THE FIRST HALF OF THE FIRST CHAPTER.

Of course, the next half gets more into characters, but it was also super long and i didn't want to inundate everyone with all sixteen-ish names when I'm still figuring out how to not dump these characters on the audience. Most of my current names are placeholders because... two weeks... but I actually have a surprisingly solid grasp on the plot itself.

If the above was confusing, keep in mind that there is supposed to be a bit of a learning curve-- I hate exposition dumps, and I do want the audience to kind of piece things together. That said I'd be happy to explain some things that were sloppily explained, and this is a very rough draft to see if I should keep going with this! The story is about grief, the loss of innocence, conventional morality, and children with serious PTSD, but the concept itself comes down to "what if a bunch of teen sci-fi/fantasy protagonists got stuck in a room after the book was over and had to survive high school together". The kids run the gamut from our protagonist, the "lab kid"; to spirit animals, space odysseys, paranatural romance, magical girls, that one thing everyone does with the element manipulation, etc. I have no clue how coherent it is but it is very, very fun to write. Hopefully you enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it, and if so, expect this soon. By soon I mean December. Yeah!