I'm not sure if I'm more excited or scared to see the limo pull up in my driveway on January 3rd. It's strange to think that the last year was more than some kind of desperate fever dream, through which I have somehow forgotten the torture that is 'other people' and 'the public education system', but I'm also hungering to see certain people again. Seriously, people in the plural.

I really need to tell you about Mikayla sometime. Our conversations have been sparse and short, leaving me hunched in the woods somewhere waiting for you, but those we have had have been mainly this half-silence where the two of us stand on the verge of saying something, anything, even though we know we don't have the right answers for each other.

I enter the car with my backpack and a smile nonetheless, my sharp teeth reflected back in the rear view mirror between two sets of dark-rimmed eyes. "You guys look like raccoons," I say. "Or pandas. Haven, you're definitely a raccoon. Harring, you're not that tubby, but I think you're more of a panda guy. You feeling it?"

"Not the day, Derrick." Ms. Haven turns the key and floors it out of my neighborhood. I want to stick my head out the window but that's stupid and it's cold outside.

"What happened? Some kind of special agent mission? End of the world? Anything I'd want to know?" I ask, flashing her some suggestive eyebrows.

Ms. Haven exhales, hard. "Derrick. Just because we've given you some critical information in the past, arguably when we shouldn't have, you do not have permission to pick our brains at any given moment. Sit down and shut up."

"How many abductions?"

Ms. Haven hits the horn, which cries like a living being. Mr. Harring leans over to her, slightly, and tells her, "He's too smart for us, Ana."

"A child could have guessed that," she responds. "We'll be accompanying you at school today, Derrick, as your whole class is taking a trip to the zoo. It's imperative that your class is kept in line during this venture, seeing as previous field trips have been..."

"I wouldn't dare ruin it for everyone. You know I'm not the only one excited for the zoo trip. The school board wanted the monkeys and lions to see some animals behind bars," I say. "Bet we make a pretty neat exhibit."

"Derrick, for the love of whatever deity you pray to, please close your mouth." Ms. Haven says. I oblige her, fidgeting in my seat. I end up drumming both hands on whatever available surfaces I can put my hands on, from the window, to the car interior, to my backpack. It's only when we finally emerge into the parking lot that I stop, bolting out of the car, and I exit through the open door before they leave.

I know no one, but you're here just as powerfully as the day I first came. I breathe in the air we must be sharing across worlds and rush into the half-full classroom. Everyone is just where they were, like the year hasn't turned over on us, and I realize, smile dropping, that we all still look like a catastrophe. Just how I remembered it, unembellished.

"You seem different," jokes Mikayla as I sit down.

"Do I?" I ask.

"Little more deliberate. Does that make sense?"
"No, not at all." I say. I shuffle my stone around in my hand. I feel like I should be expecting a transmission. I've had seven since we started, but I think that might be taxing the Eye. The surface has this terrible texture, like the plastic toys they give to kids that you can compress, but I feel like it's about to squash and leak all over me. "So, what's the scoop?"

"More abductions," she says.

"Oh yeah. That sounds about right," I say, feigning interest.

"Some third year who got out of the program died over break. I chased that rabbit hole far as I could, but it would have been bad form to show up at their house, so," she shrugs.

"That's never stopped you before. So, I keep seeing Amy," I say, practically rolling onto my back as I fall back across her desk, grinning. "I haven't mentioned you yet, but I will. You two would love each other."
"Derrick," Mikayla sounds worried.

I pull out the Eye. "I see her face whenever I use this. I mean, I don't activate it, it just kind of pulls up, but..."

Mikayla's face drops slightly. She moves a finger towards the Eye and says, "Is it... full of black pus?"

"That's a really negative way of putting it," I say.

She reaches out, this time less tentatively, and I draw my hand back, suddenly seized by fear.

"Mikayla, Mikayla. You're so grabby," I say. "Seriously. Leave me alone."

"We will be approaching the bus now. Remember, they will have security at the zoo, and we will have two trained federal agents accompanying us. If you want to pull anything, you have Tuesday through Friday to be insolent, but now is not the time. Thank you." Ms. Shinke says as the class heeds her words and begins fiing out. I step up so that I'm a little closer to the 'main' group, but it dawns on me, probably a little late, that I still don't know how to socialize with normal human beings. I keep a slight distance, listening to Arthur talk about his family's vacation to the Bahamas.

Mikayla's closes to my side, like a ghost. "Do you still keep her chain in your bag?"

"Yes, of course," I say. "Why?"

"I didn't realize it was still so recent to you. Are you sure that's healthy?"

"Me? Not healthy? Don't you have a crush on some... fox guy? You know, like yours truly? That's a little shifty, Mikayla." I say, laughing it off. This is a dangerous amount of confidence and I feel like a small child on a sugar high, but I'm happy to see her again. "Are you excited for the zoo trip? Spirit animal quest, right?"

Mikayla shakes her head with a Derrick, you're stupid sigh. "No, I have a lot of traumatic memories associated with them and I hate zoos. They're all behind bars, Derrick."

"These are humane enclosures. You're being unfair," I tell her.
"I'm being unfair."
"Yeah. I'm going to go sit down somewhere." I gesture to the bus. "Come, don't come, everything's up to your discretion."

The front, where Mr. Harring and Ms. Haven must have already settled, is a desolate wasteland free of teenagers. All of us have crammed like sardines as far into the back as possible, like the natural cool kids we are. I take a seat next to Hoshi, who is humming to herself in that beautiful voice of hers, swinging her legs back and forth. As I sit down, she looks my way, her eyes bright. "Hello, Derrick!"

"Hey," I say. The bus moves beneath us, murmuring and hissing as it lurches to life. I look behind us to see what conversation is going on, but peeking around the edge hurts my neck and is painfully awkward.

"Hi, Derrick! Are you excited to see the animals? Oh! Oh! I bet we'll see real wolves and foxes. Doesn't that make you excited?" Olive asks.

"Are you excited, Derrick?" says Brittany, equal parts passive and dismissive.

"So, Hoshi," I say, pretending I haven't heard her. "Do you like music in America?

Hoshi squints. "I used to listen to English Vocaloids."

"It doesn't scare you that a robot can do your job?" I ask, using all of my meager knowledge about Vocaloid. It dawns on me that this was a poor way to start off any conversation, and I can't parse out if she's offended or not. Her jaw's a little slack and she definitely doesn't seem pleased, but if anything, terribly confused would probably be a better fit. I fidget with my clothes as I await a response, hoping that the bus takes a turn too hard and flings me out the emergency window by fluke coincidence.

Hoshi says, "I think it concerns a lot of people. Others think they will never get as good, and it is true, the... I don't know how to say it, but it's very different in the vocals and use. This just means that is not the same thing, so Vocaloid is no more dangerous to human singers than any other development in the industry. I see it as a new, exciting application of the medium."

I sit in silence, perspiring slightly from the human bus interior, which has already managed to glue my trenchcoat to my bare arms. I try to turn my head slightly towards the isle, as if nothing could possibly be less interesting, and listen.

"You were out all break with them and they didn't say anything?" Arthur asks.

"I don't think they wanted to approach it. It's a bit of an awkward conversation topic, so it's best if it never gets brought up," Brittany responds. "It's not like they're required to discuss 'what I am now' at length. I'm glad we're still friends. It was good enough."

Arthur puts a hand around her shoulder. Every hair on my body stands on end as she leans into him. "Good enough," he repeats.

The bus stops. Hoshi wipes her glasses off with her shirt. "Mr. Harring and Ms. Haven are supervising us?" she asks as she looks into the front of the bus.

"Yeah, my main men are tagging along," I say. "They're cool."

"There is nothing cool about the authorities, Derrick," Castelia says. Her backpack is suspiciously lumpy. I'm really hoping that she's not hoping to liberate the animals or something equally stupid. It's our first day back. We could all use a reprieve from people trying to pull something.

I meet up with Mikayla, Finn, and Sarah when we're off the bus. Olive is there too, standing a little ways apart from the group, gaping at the statue of an elephant near the entrance. "I love this place," she says.

I don't think anyone else is that excited. Ms. Shinke comes out of the bus last, wrapped in a large overcoat, and hands out worksheets and pencils, as well as clipboards. "We will be splitting into three groups."

Dangit.

Olive grins at me. Mikayla asks, "Why don't you find a group, Sarah?"

Sarah laughs in the way girls do when you've personally offended them. "I'm part of your group. Dream-classes stick together, right? Anyways, I have the best stories to tell you from over break-- I mean, my breaks in consciousness, back in my Otherworld, this summer."

Finn is watching the sky with a dull expression. Hoshi, who is standing with her arms folded just away from the group, headphones in, looks up as Ms. Shinke waddles over and hands out six clipboards and papers. "You six will be with Mr. Harring," she tells us.

Mr. Harring, whose coat is full of half-covered monitors and detectors, looks like a guard's worst nightmare, but somehow we get him through security. The man at the entrance gives us a long, slow shake of his head as Mr. Harring scoots inconspicuously around the metal detector and we enter the park proper.

Mr. Harring adjusts his dark glasses. "So you kids will be learning about the phyla of the animal kingdom today. We'll primarily be in the invertebrate house for this purpose, but if you finish early we can check out the 'cool animals'." He says this last part with air quotes. "Personally, I'm impartial to sharks."

Mikayla rolls her eyes. "Alright, team, move out. I want this over as much as you do."

"Are the other groups going to be there?" I ask as we move through the near-deserted park. Most of the things on the main road are either information buildings, stores, or restaurants, along with a bunch of information on conservation. "Oh yeah, are we doing anything interesting today, or is that totally out of the question?"

"It's part of your curriculum. The non-Extra groups came before Christmas break-- holiday break," Mr. Harring says.

"Gre-e-a-a-t," I mutter.

"And then my markings lit up like lightning, here and here... that's how I knew Adasia was still watching over me, even from the grave." Sarah continues. I've already heard four times about how her fallen friends, for whom she's applied the fairly obvious face paint, had their light "manifest through her" after their untimely deaths. Sarah has a death count going close to A Tale of Fire and Ice at this point.

"Oh, wow, tarsiers!" Olive calls from across the main road. She's already sidetracked and gaping at some particularly sultry looking mammals, who are under the heating lamp, glaring at us poor, sad fellow primates. "Look at their eyes!"

"Ms. James. Come on," Mr. Harring says.

Olive's ears perk up. "Okay! I'm coming!" Five minutes later, she's on about squirrels. No, the squirrels were not part of an exhibit, no, that did not stop her from chasing them halfway into another exhibit, and yes, it is cold as sin outside. At this point I want to be under a heat lamp. I find myself envying all the animals who have retreated into indoor enclosures. Almost nothing here is awake or moving save for us.

The invertebrate house smells somewhat like lake water, and the individual exhibits are small. I look down at my worksheet, which has runny lettering by now, and realize that I don't remember a single one of these phyla. "Mikayla, can you help me with this?"

"You've dug your own grave, Renard." Mikayla is sketching an octopus on her paper.

The animals in the invertebrate exhibit are more active, which unfortunately doesn't make them any more interesting. Sarah passes the time by regaling us with the several different distinct phyla of animals in her otherworld, including something like invertebrate rays the size of school busses that could be ridden around and snails with hollow shells. The longer she goes, the more abstract these get. "And it has huge eyes with a hundred compound facets, but a quadruped body, and sensors like fur."

"Cool, cool." Mikayla says. "Before all of you ask to copy my answers, I'm almost done here."

"It's not my fault I don't pay attention in Biology," I whine.

"Yes, Derrick. It literally is," Mikayla grumbles.

"I wrote my name. That was a lot of effort."

"Me too!" Olive says. "And I drew a lobster, too, but I can't really label it. Want to see it?"

"I'm good," I say, since I think I'm good on chicken scratch for the day.

"Are any of you even listening?" asks Sarah.

"Not really?" Finn says.

Hoshi takes out an earbud. "I have been doing the work. Were we supposed to be socializing...?"

"I'm being polite. None of you ever want to talk about your experiences. We've been given such a gift and a privilege and you won't even take advantage of it--"

Your voice sounds out behind me. "Are you seeing this?"

The room resounds with a crack. A dark rift appears in the ground, spreading towards the walls. Any illusory vision of you has vanished, but the Eye is hot in my pocket. Everyone backs away as the ground itself seems to carve apart, the crevasse full of what looks like eyes and flesh growing out of the inimical darkness below us.

Every machine in Mr. Harring's pockets lights up with noise and sound. "Not now," he says. "Not now..." It dawns on me that just as much as Mr. Harring and Ms. Haven were sent here to protect everyone else if we did something incredibly stupid, they were brought here in case we were in danger from something... else. He begins frantically taking devices out, including what looks like a combination between a gun and a pistol. Other screaming devices fall to the ground, all detecting spectral anomaly. "Stay back, kids."

Olive and Sarah are on the other side of the room. Sarah begins to scream, looking down, while Olive is searching the room with a sudden, definite intensity. She hunkers down, like she's preparing to get into a runner's crouch, and then she jumps the crevasse, her shoes tearing off as her back legs become those of a wolf. Her hands bristle with fur, and her eyes have gone yellow from their normal docile olive green. "It smells like death," she growls.

"It's a portal," Mikayla breathes. She steps dangerously close to the edge. A sound echoes up from the depths. "We're looking into someone else's portal."

A child's soft weeping echoes up from the darkness. Mikayla almost faints over the edge and I grab her back. "What do you think you're doing?" I ask.

Mikayla's eyes are tensed closed. "I can hear..."

"Well, don't be so quick to join them," Finn says.

The cracking grows, the ground beneath our feet beginning to divide. Mr. Harring fires off a shot at several eyes, which burst black blood, and the crevasse grows more erratic, the original scar healing while thin spider-cracks begin to surface up the walls, glowing with black light. The fluorescents overhead crack out, leaving us in darkness, and Mikayla grabs me and throws me against the ground.

"What?"

"Glass," she responds.

"Everyone, stop moving. We need light." Mr. Harring's devices buzz on the floor, barely illuminating our faces. Animals swim in the grim murk of the invertebrate room, but they only show that the time before we face serious criminal charges for flooding the invertebrate hall is drawing close at hand. "Do any of you have any anomalies that would let you manifest light?"

"Sarah?" asks Finn.

Sarah's face twists into a grimace in the dark.

I turn on my phone flashlight. The darkness is growing steadily, eyes bursting back into being, and the crack is widening again, like a mouth. Mr. Harring yells, "Put it towards the rift, Derrick," and I obey, only for him to rattle off another round of shots. Sarah is up against the wall, darkness rising around her on every side, and then, with a sad moan, it begins receding. The universe has decided to leave us alone.

"That was exciting!" Olive cheers. She's entirely back to normal, save for her shoes, which are practically wrecked. "Can we do more?"

I'm looking around for you. "Amy," I say below my breath. I can still scent you on the air, like freshly laundered clothes and the forest at dawn. More than one kind of opening has just closed, but you can't be gone already...

"Kids. I'm going to need to report this to Ms. Haven and my superior. Wait outside," he says. He offers us ten dollars. "Get some ice cream. I don't know."

"Paper?" asks Mikayla.

"You're done. Give them the answers," Mr. Harring says.

Mikayla grimly looks at us incompetent slackers, and twirls a finger over head. "Alright. Dunce squad, outside."

We sit outside, unsupervised and cold. Olive's bare feet wiggle out of holes in her sneakers, but as far as I can tell, the cold doesn't bother her at all. Her face is split wide in a grin that would make a golden retriever blush, big and goofy, while the rest of us are at various levels of mortal terror.

"Ice cream?" I ask the group.

"It's thirty degrees," Mikayla says. Her breath freezes in the air. "This is ridiculous."

"Did you get pictures?" I ask.

"Of course," she says. She jerks her head towards Sarah and Hoshi. "We'll talk later. Kapeesh?"

"No one says kapeesh, Mikayla," I tell her.

Olive gets up, ears perked, and wanders off. I watch her go half-heartedly, turn to Mikayla with a hey-should-we-do-something expression, and Mikayla lifts an eyebrow. "Why don't you go after her?" she asks.

"We-e-ell..." I say.

"That was rhetorical."

"Alright. So I'm on dogwalking duty. You better fill out my sheet while I'm gone," I say, handing her the paper, which is looking increasingly worse for wear. My pencil is also broken, which I must have done without even thinking. I have a tendency to lose pencils and other flimsy appliances quickly, but this is ridiculous. Mikayla takes the paper, still staring at me, and I cast her another glare before running off.

It's not hard to find Olive. The large mammals are just far enough out of the scope of the main road that the zoo seems to close in on you from every angle, an endless labyrinth of trees and enclosures sprawling in every direction. The wolves are out of their dens, watching us from a distance, and Olive has her face and ears to the glass.
Her pupils are dilated wide as they can go. She turns slightly when she sees me, ginger hair bouncing beneath a hat with an embroidered cat face and two perky ears. She's limber as a stick even under her coats and she's shivering slightly, tears running down her face. She leans in, like she's going to fall like Mikayla did earlier, and then sticks two fingers in the corners of my mouth, prying my lips apart to look at my fangs.

I don't know how to handle this. Can't say I didn't see it coming, though. I remove her hand. "Olive. Stop being weird."

"Do you know them?" she asks, drawing back.

"What?"

She points to deer in the corner of the enclosure.

"What the fuck." I press my own face against the glass. "They're here? They should be dead. Those are deer in a wolf enclosure."

"Sort of," Olive says, pressing her own face against the glass. I can sense her . "I thought I heard someone talking to me, so I came over here."

The deer turns our way. A great sense of dread rolls over me. They've followed me here for some reason, haven't they? Is the ground about to split again? How long until it catches us on our own, on some time when we can't fight back, and we just fall back into whatever it is? "We need to go. There are adults. They can help us." I say. "Sort of. I know Harring's kind of a mess, but he--"

Olive grabs my hand as I try to pull away from the window.

"Olive. Drop it."

Olive stares me down, curious.

"Seriously."

"I can hear them yelling from over here," she whispers.

"Yelling? Are the others in danger?"

Olive looks at me blankly. "Not... really?" she asks.

I storm off in the other direction. She yells "Goodbye," to the wolves and deer both and follows, uncomfortably close. She grabs for my hand again and I draw it back.

"Don't tell me to get over it," Mikayla says. Her form shakes against the snow. "You don't know anything about me."

Sarah yells back, "I know that, despite everything that's happened to us, you're sad, angry, and honestly dangerous. You're the whole reason people don't like Extras and you don't even seem upset about it."

"At least I have some friends, Sarah," Mikayla snaps.

Ah fuck. Looks like we missed half a fight.

Sarah's face contorts from something half broken into something pursed and very, very hurt. "I want out."

"Ooooooh, that's unfortunate," Mikayla says. "I could have sworn you're the one always talking about how great being an Extra is, how much you love it, how much you can't understand why we're all upset--"

Finn has Mikayla's phone out. He looks at me and puts a finger to his lips. I open my mouth to say something but to be frank, I'm really more shocked than anything. Olive gives me this quick incredulous stare.

Sarah is tearing up, "If I had known that I would have had to be around people like you all the time, I wouldn't have bothered at all. I hate this class. I hate how selfish and petty all of you are, how none of you even act like you want to get better, how you had the best opportunity in the world and now it just makes you sad all the time. I would have given anything to be one of you--"

"Would have?" Mikayla asks. Her voice is mutinous.

"I made it all up," Sarah says. "I made everything up. Is that what you wanted out of me?"

"It's exactly what we wanted out of you." Finn clicks the phone off. "Knew you were fishy from day one. There's your recording, 'kayla."

"You guys literally never told me about this," I say, not sure what I'm more confused by.

"Why would you lie about being an Extra?" asks Hoshi, shocked.

"It's real to me," Sarah says.

Mr. Harring approaches with the whole class in tow, along with our other two chaperones. Mikayla and Sarah stand facing each other, and Sarah's breath is coming out in rasping sobs and hot water stains her face, which is red as it rolls down the markings she's painted on, which smudge off.

"Go ahead, Sarah. Tell them that you're not actually one of us," Mikayla says.

Sarah looks back to the group.

"What?" asks Arthur.

His voice hangs in the air. Somewhere behind us, animals turn in their enclosures, the few warm-blooded animals that can tolerate the cold watching us with a kind of contempt in their eyes, like hundreds of spirit guides all staring down at us.

Sarah runs the other way.

Mikayla stands still on her feet, infinite speed tensing beneath her. She looks towards Ms. Shinke and says, proudly, "We caught a confession on camera, could absolutely use it in court if you want to sue her."

"Harring." Ms. Haven says.

Mr. Harring nods and rushes off in her direction.

"Again, what?" Arthur asks.

"She's lying. I knew she was, and I was right." Mikayla says smugly.

"Jeez." Brittany says. "This is too much for one day. Can we get in the bus?"

"That had nothing on the rift in reality in the invertebrate house," Hoshi says. "Were you incapacitated as well?"

Arthur sucks in a breath. "Three rifts. In the zoo. You're kidding me."

"Not a joking matter," Maris says. Her arm is bandaged. "It would have been nice to have my electrokinesis when I got teleported into one of the enclosures." The whole group is gaping at her. She clarifies, "This was from falling down rocks trying to escape. I was not mauled by a grizzly."

"This has been happening a lot recently, hasn't it?" I ask Ms. Haven.

She nods grimly. "There's a phenomena known as 'splash portalling' around areas where new Extras are being abducted for quests. However, lately, splash portals have appeared with no determinate victim. We've been keeping it quiet, but we fear the town itself might need to be fully evacuated."

The whole class is silent; a rarity for us.

"Is this our fault?" Owen asks.

Ms. Haven bites her lip. "No. Let's get on the bus."

"Seriously? We're just going to leave that?" I ask. "Is everyone okay?"

"Area's been cleared of civilians, although there weren't many here to begin with. There'll be feds like myself scanning the area all night. The safest thing we can do is get you all out of the way." Ms. Haven says. "Bus. I wasn't kidding."

"It's not the zoo. It's the whole town," warns Mikayla.

"And you would happen to know that how, exactly?"

"It just makes sense."

Ms. Haven nods, and I can see her glowering behind her glasses. Nonetheless she escorts us out of the park, to the sounds of a few distant birds and police sirens wailing just above hushed gossip. Our group falls in together, uncomfortably close, and I start fingering Glimpe's Eye, poking it with my finger. It starts yielding less the further you press it, until its almost solid.

"What are you touching?" asks Ms. Haven outside the bus.

I turn around, my face twitching into a half-formed smile. "What do you mean, touching? I don't have anything on me." I put my hands up.

"Derrick."

"There's nothing in there," I say. "I'm fine. If I weren't fine, wouldn't I tell you?'

Ms. Haven says, "Pockets."

I turn them out, holding Glimpe's Eye against the curve of my hand. It's a weak deception, but she looks me over and sighs. "Bus."

I rush in, my heart still racing, and settle far in the back. The group swirls around me, their voices ascending into a dull roar of noise. I see you in the reflection in the bus, looking out towards the others, whose faces are so washed out by the moisture on the mirror that they're hardly visible. You don't seem to notice me there, even when I offer, "Amy, you wouldn't believe how real shit got," and eventually I just hold my gaze to your position, watching the world turn around me.

I couldn't process all of this if I tried.

If I wanted to.

Maybe I really am just selfish.