We break for lunch. Erza has her hands crossed at the desk and watches me like I'm supposed to say something, but when I'm approaching the door I hear her croak "Mr. Renard," and walk a little faster. If I know anything about foxes, it's that I know next to nothing about foxes, but I do know they're not pack animals. Teenage humans, however, are some of the most vicious pack animals there are, and I can not let myself be isolated now.

I know you'd be better at talking to people than I am, seeing as this is your school I'm trespassing on, but whoever you may have hung out with, I don't think we'd be able to see them now. They've graciously provided the Extra kids with a separate table. "It's for the first week or so," Arthur explains to Brittany and a few other tall, intimidating girls, "We just need to suck it up."

I survey the whole group. Several of the students are clustered at the middle, spreading out in both directions. Olive is waving to me at the right end of the table, with open seats on either side of her. Nope. My eyes fall on Mikayla and Finn, from earlier, who are at the edge of the group, with the first available seat on her left side. I situate myself there and begin eating wordlessly, waiting for someone to strike up conversation, but the dull roar of the cafeteria is overwhelmed by an acrid, dark cloud of disinterest.

"So." I say. "Do you guys... want to talk? At all?"

Mikayla pauses, looking up from her soup thermos, and tilts her spoon. "No."

"I dunno. If we wanted to talk, we would have snatched a seat next to the lady's man over there." Finn shrugs. "You know, if you want to go kiss his ass, you're free to do so."

The silence resumes.

A teacher comes up to Alya, who bolts up, waving to the other kids. I squint, already imagining the best way to slide into her seat. If I could get myself right in the middle, I could join in that conversation, lose myself, stop talking about this. I want to stare off into the distance in an edgy but socially intriguing way. Raw silence gives me too much time to think. I shouldn't be here. Maybe you should, maybe neither of us should have made it, I don't know, I can't stop thinking about it, my gaze is still on the seat and the empty chair next to me, I can't get out of my head at all-

"Don't bother switching in there. It's not worth it." Mikayla smiles wryly.

I slam my hands on the table. "Are you a telepath?!"

She shakes her head. "For one thing, now I definitely know you're trying to ditch us. For another, you're eying the chair like a raw slab of meat."

"Do you eat raw meat? Is that a fox thing?" Finn asks.

Before this becomes a running theme for the year (we had to get the most embarrassing powers, didn't we?), I lift my unfinished lunch and clarify, "I'm eating a sandwich. It's ham and cheese."

"Raw ham?" Finn asks.

"Deli ham." I growl. "Are all you dream classes going to be depressing and mean?"

"I dunno. Sarah's..."

"Evil." Mikayla mutters.

"An extrovert?" I suggest.

"Good compromise." Mikayla says, ruefully turning the spoon in her hand. Sarah is across the table from Arthur, making small talk which will likely help them bond, thus establishing a clique before we even end the first day. By the rules of every teen movie I've ever watched, I'm already dead meat, and it's not even noon.

Dead, raw meat.

"So. That chain." Mikayla says, and I turn back to the two of them, heart pacing. "Were you..."

I lower my gaze, my features hardening into what I can only assume looks like an unfriendly snarl. "Yeah. Actually, my double went to this school."

Her eyes widen at 'went'. "I'm so sorry. I know what it's like to lose someone."

Someone. Maybe it's just the tone of voice. Maybe I'm just a little crazy right now. Maybe I'm really not over it all yet. I don't know what guides me, but my fingers slide across the table and I mutter, voice teeming with sarcasm, "Let me guess. Someone in your otherworld died. Thank goodness you get to leave all of that behind anyways."

She blinks, indignant. "I lost."

"Wow, really? I'd bet you anything half this class lost. Losing is trendy right now. Sort of like the uptilt in females-"

She knits her eyebrows, white teeth flashing. In the wild, this is a sign- stand down. I know nothing about the wild and everything about adrenaline. I am goading her on in my head before the words leave her mouth. "This is some kind of cocky facade, isn't it? I bet you cry like a baby whenever you so much as stub your toe."

I grin. "You want to bet? I'll go jam my foot against the wall. Give myself a papercut. Bite my tongue--I have fox fangs. Now that hurts. I can endure any kind of menial pain, trust me, but can you think of any pain as biting as being here?"

The bell rings. Mikayla screws the lid back on her soup thermos slowly, places it back in her bag, and rises. She walks back down the hall alone, leaving me with Finn and the receding mob of people who know what they're doing. The latter don't seem to know I exist, but the former is watching me with an expression of horror and mild revulsion. He gets to his feet with an expression ill-befitting of someone of his apparent age and leaves. I bite my lip.

"Nice," Arthur says, patting my shoulder on the way out.

I nudge my lapels up and fall back in line.

We situate ourselves in the same seats when we return, and Mikayla gives no indication of our fight, instead preferring to continue boring that hole in the wall. I look at my fingers, sharpening one nail with another, the part of me that hates everyone and hates myself even more still boiling with resentment for all parties.

Ms. Shinke hits the board with her pole again. Some kid in the front screams like a baby goat. "Now that that's out of the way, we'll continue with introductions. Would anyone like to make a show of themselves?"

I slide one hand against my head. This is going to be a long day. Brittany raises her hand, Arthur's follows, and class rolls on around me. I amuse myself by returning to staring at my awful, mutated nails and listening to the rattle of the fan. If I focus hard enough I can almost dull the noise of the speakers at the front altogether, which calms me down, because I'm sure the fan isn't judging me. If it is, though, at least I know that the fan will die soon, and for better or worse, I'll still be here.

After the skimpy kid (notably, the one who screamed earlier) sits down after showing us his cape, which he clutches like a security blanket, Ms. Shinke holds her pole in both hands like she's about to break it over her leg. Everyone watches with rapt attention as she shifts her hands to the edge, then asks, "So we're done. Now, which one of you is the snitch extrovert?"

"No one said anything to anyone in the cafeteria." Arthur mutters. "I kept an eye on them."

I feel like you wouldn't stand for this shit, although I'm not currently willing to make a stand on the matter. Instead, I slump a little further into the desk and watch Pretty Boy take brownie points.

Ms. Shinke glowers at him. "No one has to have said anything yet. It's about what you will say. Survival rules. There is a snitch extrovert in every classroom." She strides the length of the classroom. "Don't talk to people. They'll ask. Your job is to say as little as possible. Be mysterious, in a non-interesting and abrasively pretentious way. Once they get a hint of something exploitable, something pitiable, they'll follow you like flies on a carcass."

The silence in the room is thick enough to cut with a knife. No one bothers. Our knives have been confiscated.

"Furthermore, those of you who already attended the school may be wondering how to deal with former friends within the school system..."

My mind takes its bags and get up, seeing as I have no 'former friends' to be concerned about. My lips twitch, thinking about what would have happened if you made it, but the wound is still sore. I distract myself by guessing, from enhanced sense of smell, what everyone had for lunch, and that and the rattling of the fan are pleasantly distracting. I slide down my chair, whose rigid back is beginning to irritate me, and stare around the classroom, attempting eye contact.

I look to Mikayla, eyeballing the first bridge I've burned this school year. My nails run over the desk, sliding down the veneer on the wood without piercing it, and I bite my tongue.

Keep your shit together, Derrick. She's at least pretending to watch the teacher. Most of the kids are, though a few have paper out to take notes (or doodle) and I'm sure Alya has her phone snuck under her desk. The two girls in the far back corner are multitasking- they're both not listening to the lecture and making out. I vaguely recall being told I was the only double, so they couldn't have been on a quest together, but there's no way they don't have history.

(Plus, there's nothing that'll make you fall in love faster than narrowly avoided death in an experience that simultaneously draws you together and alienates everyone you have ever known or cared about.)

The rest of the room is teeming with small motions, a flick of a pencil there, a twitch there. My brain is hardwired for movement, so I catch everything, although I have to admit being around so many people and so much static noise is freaking me out. Buildings are a perversion of natural noise. Not only is their ambience not the same but a lot of noise comes from nowhere or goes nowhere. Usually I can ignore it, but zoning out lets that other, insistent part of my mind take over.

Mikayla is staring at me. I almost jump out of my chair, but manage to grab the side of the wooden desk instead. She turns her head, like she wasn't paying attention, and I glare back. My heart is pulsing, but not in a romantic way. It's more of an animal reaction (ha, ha, the irony continues to plague my life): fear.

I wouldn't deny there's a little guilt in there too, but I'm not an emotional connoisseur. I don't know these things, I just suffer through them. I almost say something, gulp it back, attempt to listen to the lesson, zone out again, end up fidgeting with the chain from earlier, and then my eyes fall back on her.

From overhead bursts forth a torrent of noise. I recognize this as the school bell, though it sounds more like cackling demon noise from the pits of hell. Everyone is already reaching for their stuff when Ms. Shinke shouts, "-and that would be all the foods not allowed in this classroom. Tomorrow we'll begin formal studies and discuss methods of self-defense, both physical and social."

Most of the front row is gone before she can finish the sentence. I jump up to follow them, feigning as casual an expression as I can, and turn out into the hall.

"Hey!" yells Olive, waving both arms. Her wolf ears fall back as she runs to catch up with me.

"Hey." I say, keeping my pace.

"What are you up to?" she asks, her smile so large that it shoves aside her freckles.

"Leaving." I say, nonchalantly.

"Crazy coincidence--me too." Her grin strengthens further, revealing large, if blunted, canines. "Where do you live?"

"Way out of town." I say. Light shines through the glass of the front door, beckoning me. "Guess I've... gotta go now. Bye."

"See you later, foxboy!"

I don't hear snickering but I do see heads. She had to yell that. She really had to. The relief when I touch hand to handle is infinite, and the fall air is full of noise, scent, and more importantly, the people are fewer and farther between. I didn't realize how fast my heart was going until it settles down a bit.

The people move in clumps, save for a few of our number (I can already see Finch ducking through the crowd with a bulging backpack). It reminds me of the preparatory movies I watched, but I don't think you could properly rehearse something like this. It's incredible and more than a little scary and already I'm imagining us as part of the mesh. I need your hand around mine seconds before I say something. I think, when we were together, I learned how to lean on you to get by, but we never figured out how to stop leaning. You are etched into the deepest parts of this experience.

A limo pulls around the curb, humming, and I find myself trapped against it by the continued waves of people. I open one door and slide in, setting my bags down, and take the far window seat, head tilted so it sits askew against the headrest. The engine purrs as it heats up and the limousine crawls through traffic indignantly before sliding into the faster flow of the highway and coasting away.

The MIBs don't say anything for the first fifteen minutes. For a while, I think they're trying to get out of civilian earshot, but I'm eighty percent sure the car is soundproof.

"Are you going to interrogate me?" I ask.

"Of course," the man in shotgun says, "Tomorrow. It's your first day, kid. We'll let you rest."

"I have a question," asks the driver, whose dark glasses shine in the rear view mirror. With something akin to a smile, she asks, "How was your first day?"

I've always loved glasses lady. "It was horrendous," I admit.

"That's high school for you, kid." The man in shotgun is unimpressed.

With a seizing indignancy in my gut, I laugh it off. "I was homeschooled, so you'll have to fill me in: is school always such a dumpster fire?"

"It's important for your education and the safety of the populace that you acquire some standardized training with other Extras and the population at large."

"You're required by law to feed me that, aren't you?" I say.

"We all did it, kid."

I sit up a little straighter. "You were an Extra? What was your world like?"

He adjusts his coat. "I'm not at liberty to part with that information."

Dryly, I murmur, "But we're friends, so..."

"What's my name, Derrick?" he asks.

You're the tall guy who always dresses like he's trying to channel the Matrix, I think, but outwardly I make a drawn-out noise that's far from reassuring and slump against the window. My parents have yet to give me my phone privileges back. I don't see it happening anytime soon, but fortunately, I don't need a phone, because there's no one to text. The memory of your face when I told you, close to the end, sticks in my mind, that shocked, almost offended 'o' your mouth formed when you were surprised. My hair and my whole cheek are both embedded into the window now, watching the woods whip by, and something akin to fear stirs in me.

No deer.

When we reach the long side rows populated by older citizens and families like mine, too good for the suburbs, the limo slows. It rolls into a stop in front of my house. I know little about cars, but being pampered like this is going to spoil me when I have to drive a stickshift two inches from death. This is as good as it gets. Live it up.

The irony is going to kill me before school will.

I mutter something like "Thanks," as I exit, but the second I've closed the door, they drive off. They make the turn back a few minutes later, making the gesture somewhat more dramatic, but it at least alleviates the possibility I was going to receive any sympathy.

I look back to my house, which seems to tower overhead, even though it's a two floor ranch. The driveway is short, which means our backyard is all the larger, but there's really no end to that. There's just the forest, going on too far for a kid to comprehend. When I was little it always shocked me that people had populated so much of the earth-- from here, it looked like the trees owned everything.

At the very least, the scents are familiar to both sides of me. Both sides. Yeah, idiot teen and one-twentieth of a fox, at most. I have about as much fox going for me as the cafeteria food has real meat.

"Home." My parents don't look up when I enter the house. "Hey mom. Hey dad." That kind of gets their attention. I used to call them by their first names. I don't, now, and that makes things a little easier.

My mother approaches me like a rabid animal. "How was your day?"

"Incredible," I say with a smile.

"Did you make any friends?" my father asks. "Any other... of your kind?"

"Plenty." I knew this was coming. Mutant teeth bared, I proudly inform them both, "I'm going to be prom king this year. You watch."

I don't even know if sophomores can be prom king, but I revel in the dumb nods they give me. The stairs groan beneath me as I step up the stairs, uncontested. The floorboards creak beneath my feet, but hey: heavy is the crown.