Yeah, so Maris never shows back up to school. We weren't exactly sharing friendship necklaces, but seeing her empty chair and remembering that last timid shake before she was escorted out of the room by Ms. Shinke fills me with a deep pit of dread I can barely describe to myself. During the week, I tune it out like I've learned to tune out lessons and sit listening to the rattle of the radiator, which has increased to a dull hum to furious death rattling ever since the weather dove down into the "wear long underwear" side of cold. However, when the weekend rolls around, it brings a storm with it. I remember, vaguely, staring up into the dark sky as the first drops of rain came pouring down, and the way the last few birds leaving north flew up from the trees as the woods thundered up with noise. It was almost beautiful, save for the two hours I spent wasting our hot water afterwards in the shower and the ensuing day I spend inside, watching television reruns over bad music so I can't hear either.

All of this ends when I hear a rapping on the door.

Here's the thing about living out in the middle of nowhere--you do it so no one feels incentivized to knock on your door. In fact, you do it so no one ever shows up at your door again and you can live in hermit peace and raise your single antisocial son until he gets taken away by mad scientists and you have to pretend he doesn't exist until he goes to college and probably gets shot in his mid-twenties, or something. So whenever someone knocks on the door, it's either a really clueless mailman or a serial killer, and today is not mail day. Regardless, I open the door and Frederick and... the woman who's name I totally remembered to remember... are standing outside in full MIB attire.

"You heard?" I ask. "I was not a collaborator. If Arthur tells you differently, it's just because he doesn't like me, personally, so disregard anything he says. I'm being serious this time. I promised I'd keep my head down."

Ms. Haven (YES) tips her glasses down and looks to Frederick, who can't even muster up disappointment. The tips of their coats blow in the fall wind, and Frederick shakes his head. "That's not why we're here. We actually need to speak with your parents."

I settle back onto the couch, disappointed, as they proceed to talk to my parents outside, practically in the woods. I try for a while to make out their lip movements, as they've purposefully moved out of my line of vision, but even my incredible fox hearing doesn't function through solid wall. When they finally come back inside, they pass right by me.

"If we take the shortcut down Hayseed over to the next liminal space incident, we could be back at HQ before five and finally take that free off hour--" I hear Ms. Haven say, and I perk up.

"There's been another one?"

"Yes," Ms. Haven says.

"Could I come?" I ask, making big sad fox eyes. "I've been sitting here all day eating garbage."

"In theory, if there's really nothing else you can do around the house that would be more productive, I suppose we could stand to enrich your weekend somewhat." Frederick suggests.

"You are going to get us both fired. There is no way this isn't a breach of at least five times of protocol and so help me I will list them right here." Ms. Haven folds her arms, which ramps up her intimidating factor to a smooth nine.

I pipe up, "Actually, all my friends have been going to them. Plus, they might be associated with us--you know, Extras who've already been on a quest. I could be your lucky rabbit foot."

"Mr. Renard, what are you trying to pull on us?" asks Ms. Haven.

"Come on, Ms. Haven." I say. "I'm a good boy." She looks taken aback, so I shoot her finger guns to seal the deal. "Yeah. You heard me. I remembered your name and everything."

"Get in the car before the novelty wears off," she says, opening the door, and I race into the car and buckle myself up. If I had a tail, it would be-- no wait. That's extra dumb. I sit and grin my face off as we pull away from the house, away from hours of solitude, and away from dozens of puddles of still water reflecting back trees. The city looms above us, at first just above the car but slowly growing into downtown skyscrapers and streetfront stores on top of residential buildings. By big city standards, at least what I've seen of them from television, it's not terribly impressive, little more than a few blocks of fully developed land, but no gray box perfectly captures the feeling of knowing that if any one of these buildings were to collapse, you would be dead. I'm pretty sure that's true anywhere, but man, if I've ever felt it as much as I do here.

The limousine rolls to a stop in front of a 7-11, which has just the slightest film of dust over the sign. I'm surprised to see a familiar face out front, leaning against the window like a rebel without a cause, and when she looks up to me it's only with the most profound disappointment that she states, "Derrick."

"Hey, Brittany!" I call, trying to tone down the enthusiasm. With a quick 'ehem', I continue, "I didn't expect you to be here. I'm only here because my parents... uh, my..."

Brittany stops me with a dismissive hand gesture, not even bothering to look up from her phone. "You don't need to come up with a word for it. They're serving a parental role, who cares, just don't call them anything."

"Oh." I say. "Yeah. Anyways, they said they could get me out of the house."

"I was downtown for a friend's dance competition. Usually they hold them at our school, that is, my old school, but this is 'city-wide', so I guess they threw the Brooks kids in there too." She clicks her phone off. "Of course, none of them won, but I guess you have to at least give people a chance."

"Uh huh." I say, looking up at the buildings. Wow, they really are massive. We're talking at least four trees tall here, maybe more.

"Derrick! You wanted to make yourself useful, now get over here." yells my supervisor.

"Want to come back into the shifty alleyway?" I ask.

Brittany opens her phone again and closes it. Folding her arms against each other, she sighs, "I guess I might as well. My parents won't be here for a while."

"Right. Well, don't die." I say. "I get the feeling that would really throw a wrench in your plans for the evening."

"Do you ever listen to anything that comes out of your mouth?" she asks.

"As a habit, I try not to." I reassure her. "It makes it that much easier to make the magic happen."

"I'm going to vomit." Brittany says as we descend back into the alley. I catch her ears in the sunlight as we pass into the dark and odorous world stuck between the buildings (like the area in between the toes of a giant... wonder if any of the Portal-classes ever had to deal with those), and it strikes me that her ears, usually decked in silver, have a few pink holes where piercings should be. "Hurry up, Renard."

"Fox nose says no," I protest, following her anyways.

"Aren't you like, eight percent fox? That's like when people demand that colleges give them scholarships because they have one great-grandparent who wasn't whiter than Duke's mayonnaise."

"What I am is classified and probably a load of bullshit." I scoff. "Like hell am I ever getting scholarships."

"Not all of us have given up hope yet." Brittany says, smugly. "I'll have you know that this is going to make a very insightful college essay."

"Good for you," I whisper under my breath.

"If you two want to come, you're going to have to stay with us, so we'd appreciate it if you picked up your feet," Ms. Haven informs us, somewhere in that fun uncanny valley between maternal concern and genuine annoyance. We're going to have a heck of a time staying with them, even if they're right next to us-- the MIBs barely stand out against the alley shadows, and as we walk, it only gets progressively darker. It's like we're running on an endless treadmill of trash cans and locked doors, but the end always eludes us, progressively growing darker still. It's disorienting, and all the animal in me says no, because that's the one part of me that has yet to evolve out of common sense.

The MIBs continue their descent, while Frederick holds up a device and takes notes on a pad. Ms. Haven herself is reading out numbers or discussing causes (blah blah high levels of activity blah blah irregular abduction I wish I could understand half of this but it's so far over my head you'd need to put me on top of a building to catch it) but as I get closer to Frederick, I realize he literally has dozens of shady devices in his jacket. He looks like the kind of person you've been told to avoid on the streets, like he's going to whip open the whole jacket and ask me if I want to buy a ghost device. I snort, imagining the transaction, and Ms. Haven whips around. "Derrick, this is no laughing matter."

"What are we here to do, exactly?" Brittany asks.

"What teenagers do best," Frederick explains, waving the thirteenth device in the air before moving on. "Exacerbate things."

"Are we going to go into a portal?" I ask.

"You can't go into a portal." Ms. Haven snaps. "It's a transitional space that doesn't transition to anywhere. Think of it like a door of infinite thickness, or a pocket in this world. Our reality is a large, stretchable blanket, and this is an object dropped into the center of it, not a hole."

"You mean magic shit works like spacetime?" I say.

Brittany looks shocked. "You get spacetime."
"Ha ha, you thought I was stupid. Well guess what? I watch a lot of television. I have lots of obscure knowledge on very specific topics and no foundation with which to base them on! You wanna go? I can tell you anything about neutron stars and Australian animals but nothing about basic algebra. I'm going to personally fight the Common Core. Fist to fist."

"Thank you, Derrick, we're trying to work here." Ms. Haven says. "Would you say this data is sufficient?"

"You are always welcome, Ms. Haven. Love you! Love your work!" I call while Frederick and Ms. Haven fall back into technojargon.

The two of them walk a little further, Frederick raises a hand, and Brittany begins heading back. "What are you doing?" I ask.

"Leaving," she says. "My parents might be here." She raises her phone again, muttering a string of profanities under her breath, and as I look over her shoulder to see an empty screen and no service, the both of us slam into a wall.

"Oh crap."

Brittany stares up, disgusted. "Where the fuck are we?"

The architecture has warped so that in the area between all the bricks rests dozens of eyes--not pictures of eyes, I mean eyeball-esque features in glorious three-dimensional detail that make me want to throw up. The area between buildings no longer reflects the light of a blue sky, instead going up into that same hazy silver darkness.

"Ms. Haven?" I call. "Frederick?"

"Frederick?" asks Brittany.

I yell. "I know one of their last names and one of their first names."

"I can't believe you. Haven't you been working with them since... August? Fall's nearly over."

"I'm really, really bad with names, okay?" I explain. "And seriously, that's what bothers you?"
"It's a lot easier to focus on than panicking." she responds, pacing back and forth. "Oh god. We're so dead. We are sooooo dead."

"Woof. Thankfully I cleared up my evening." I say. When I don't get a response from this, I announce, "That was a joke. My parents don't talk to me and I spend my days alone in my house, feeling like shit."

Brittany turns, violently, and parts of the wall come straight out, only to reveal another layer of brick beneath. She hurls aside brick, sometimes not entirely in complete parts, and almost hits me instead of the wall behind me. This continues for several minutes and is eventually accompanied by desperate, angry cries as she rips the wall to shreds, even slamming her hands against it. "Goddamnit! Move!" she yells. "Damnit." Her breath is shallow and uneven. "Damnit, damnit, damnit..." Ice cuts up her clothing, blistering out from her back, and she hurls aside more of the foundation. This time, I have to dive out of the way, and the rock cuts the two of us off.

"Brittany?" I ask.

The metric ton of brick soars out of my way and falls to bits further down the passage after hitting a wall. Once she's removed the wall from the wall, all the eyes return to normal brick, which either means we're hallucinating or we're not too far gone. Brittany, though... she looks at me with unrestrained fury. "Don't like what you see? Is there a problem? Is there a problem, Derrick? Do you see a problem here? I could crush you just like these buildings. Really. I could. It would be so--" She lifts a single brick up towards my face, holding it in midair, and heaves, silently, her chest rising and falling. Spines of ice recede and grow on her back, and she clutches herself through her ruined clothing. "It was so easy. It was all I had to do."

I press myself into the corner. "Was that what your quest was like?"

"I just had to punch through things," she confirms. She sniffs. "I didn't have to talk to anyone, or... explain anything... they just gave me two toolsets. Earth. Ice. Stable. Cold. It couldn't have been easier."

"Oh." I say, still pressed against the wall and away from the brick. "Hey, Britt? It's okay if you're not okay, but we're not going to die here. I'm... sorry I kind of got you roped into this."

"I wanted something to do." she says. "Please never tell anyone about that. Ever."

"Absolutely had not crossed my mind." I swear, grabbing her hand. The brick falls on my foot. "Okay. Ow."

"Ha. Sorry about that." Brittany says, politely releasing my hand. "Sorry about everything. Again. Seriously, tell no one. I think Arthur would freak."

"Arthur." The alleys are going to swallow us alive as we walk back, but she's calm, so it's fine... well, it's more fine. I wait for her to calm down before I ask, "Hey. I noticed your earrings were out?"

"Astute observation. Let's not talk about it."

"Your friend. Is she, uh..."

"It won't happen again. I'm usually better at handling this." Brittany says, waving me away. "I'm usually way better at handling this. At handling everything. It was a mistake--"

"Hanging out with her?" I ask.

"The piercings. I was angry. That too."

"Does she know? Did you hurt her or something?"

"No, yes, I-- she's cool with Extras, but her friends aren't, so... things got messy. I had to go." Brittany laughs. "I mean most people are actually super okay with us, but when people say they're okay with Extras, they mean they're okay with... I don't know, Arthur, Maris, or Sarah, who is literally just chatty. They're still going to avoid Olive, Finn, maybe even people like you (no offense), but that's okay, because they have Extra friends, right? Maybe their third cousin is an Extra. So they're not being a bitch to you on purpose, right?"

"Lot harder than punching things," I suggest.

"Everything is harder than it used to be. Speaking of things you shouldn't be talking about? Please stop pissing off Arthur. What you said to him was really stupid."

"Oh." Man, I am just a well of good comebacks today.

"I don't mean the sentiment was stupid. I mean you phrased it terribly. He mentioned it to me when we were on a date. He couldn't stop laughing about it, actually." Brittany explains.

"You are a couple?"

She shrugs.

"Why do you two stick together?"

"Because I am the dangerous kind of Extra, and if I cling close enough to him, no one ever has to know." She finishes with the most vicious smile I've ever seen her muster, "Look. I really shouldn't be confessing any of this to you, but what you said back in the house a week ago really resonated with me."

I'm trying to remember what exactly I said that didn't make people want to burn me at stake when it hits me, like an unsubtle brick, that she means what I said about saving people. "Right."

"It was so sweet and genuine that I was sure you were lying to look good in front of us." she says, "But I think it made me remember at some point that I did want to be a hero. We helped people back in our otherworlds. Maybe some of us had our missions warped so hard that we barely even did that, but I think there has to be something we could do--even just something we were capable of doing right. Plus, this is... it's what I'm good at. Outside of that? I date the popular guy. I take the accolades. I'm whatever they need me to be."

"You did all this because you wanted to." When she looks at me sideways, I add, "The piercings, your hair, heck, coming to the party. If that's you, then you're not doing a bad job coming out of your shell. But if you want to just go, that's also totally fine. People like hard workers. Things will work out."
"Wow. That was way too smooth not to be rehearsed. Where's this well of practical advice coming from?"

"Deep behind the veil of teenage adrenaline is this secret well of Smart Derrick, Who Can Help People And Make Friends Instead Of Problems And Not Cry About His Dead Girlfriend While Eating A Tub Of Ice Cream At Two In The Morning. We don't talk too much. Don't know if you've noticed." I suggest.

Brittany laughs, genuinely, and I find my face has completely lit up. Just as suddenly, we find ourselves back on the street, and we step into real, genuine sunlight for what seems like the first time in hours.

Just behind us is Ms. Haven and Frederick themselves. Ms. Haven is pulling her hair out, but Frederick says, "See? Just like when we were younger."

Brittany lifts her phone, yells "I'm right here," into it, and then responds, "Gotta dash." She leaps into a car almost as nice as the limousine I've now accustomed myself to cruising around in, and that leaves me with my... it leaves me with the MIBs, who don't do labels. They just do fun, potentially life threatening field trips.

"Hey," I say. "I swear we were right behind you the whole time."
"Well, you did get our numbers up," Frederick says. "I believe that's a success. Get in the car, Derrick."

I smile. "You'll have to take me out more often."
"No," suggests Ms. Haven, quite loudly.

"Maybe not on missions, but I think it's in Derrick's best interest that we get him out of the house." Frederick says. "Besides, we did hear the last bit of that conversation. Derrick, what are your opinions on getting some ice cream?"

I'm too tired to even care how much personal information I might of have unknowingly divulged to the two of them. "Best idea I've heard all day." I lean against the window, letting the sensation soak through me. My stomach growls with approval, and two hours later, as I eat ice cream with two federal agents, I feel more at home than I've felt on the couch for months.