I fully expect Sunday to be a debacle from the second I put on the tracking wristband, but my fears are at least somewhat assuaged when I arrive at a decent-looking house all the way across down, nudged back towards a city park that reminds me of home.

Think we're in your neighborhood, at least, we passed it. I want to ask, but I don't know how to get the message across, still. Olive bursts out the door and walks me up the stairs, with H&H waving goodbye on the steps. Her house is homey as it gets, from wood floors besieged by natural lighting to her paintings hung up over every conceivable piece of wall, all with that same intimate sense of detail that stunned me the first time. Her dad... dads... sit in the living room on the left, which has a decent TV set up and a long couch with blankets strewn over both the armrests.

"Hey! Look what I dragged in!" Olive cheers.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Renard. Olive's mentioned you," says one of the men. He looks like a lumberjack. They both look like lumberjacks. I feel like either one of them could crush my head like an egg.

"Cool," I say. Everything was a mistake.

"We should bake cookies, and go outside, and-- actually that's it, really. Is that okay? I've been planning this for a while but I don't actually know what else we'd do, so, um... I have all the ingredients ready." Olive perks up. You can tell because her ears flap several times.

"Sure?" I say.

"Alright! I kind of need help with the reading sometime, but I make these a lot, so we probably won't even need the box," she says. "I can't keep focused on the words. You can't either, right? I see you not looking at them in class."

She probably stares at me while I'm staring at Mikayla. This almost, but not quite, tempers how strange the realization is to me. I try to give her a reassuring smile as I guide her through the process. She moves like a small brand of fire across the edge of a leaf, quickly and without mercy. It must be five minutes before we have those suckers in the oven, on their way to being golden-brown.

"You're pretty good at this," she says.

"I didn't do anything," I offer.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess not," she says, opening the back door. "Woods?"

We follow a staircase down out into the woods beyond, past a hardly furnished garden. Olive dashes out, turning a full circle in the leaves, smiling all the while. The winter thaw is beginning to break, even though it should be at its worst-- we're having a particularly warm February. It's not the strangest thing that's happened yet, but it's still unnerving. "Nice weather," I remark.

She nods. "Unnatural, but I guess. All the plants are going to come up and then it'll snow again, and then everything will die."

Wow. Morbid.

"But that's okay. Life is really really resilient. Otherwise everything would be dead already," she says. "You know, forever."

The phone buzzes. Mikayla. Derrick its been getting worse there are deer

I being typing back a response, then pause and try to slide the phone away. "Come on!" Olive calls from a distance, and I swear if she had a tail it would be waving like crazy right now.

We wander further out into the woods and my reception begins to drop. The trees sway in patterns overhead, their voices a harsh rasp against the hush of the land, and my heartbeat picks up in my chest. There's something I'm not doing, or not saying... Olive ventures onwards, like she has somewhere to go. I sprint after, the whole time feeling something pulling me forwards onto the ground. It's like my center of balance has lurched forwards, but I know I can't give in. Olive trips over a branch at one point and jumps right back up, looking behind her.

We haven't talked this whole time. It's intensely weird, and I know she has to know I'm uncomfortable. "Cookies," I begin.

"Oh, my dads will take 'em out," she says.

"No, but we... I'm hungry," I lie, biting my tongue.

"Okay," she says.

I look down at my phone, the corner reading No Service in accusatory letters. "I have to..."

Derrick. No. That's rude. I draw the phone up anyways as we walk back. Olive slides close to my shoulder, looking over at it. As we reach civilization, the messages begin to spill forwards, all of them from Mikayla.

Reema can't be who she says she is.

Think there might be portal back involved in all this??? Not that you'd have to do all that but I know the rest of the class has been thinking about it

Derrick. Response.

Been to two sites today with Hoshi. Hard to get her out of apartment lolol

I mean ignore the lol that was Hoshi's idea

Derrick are you dead

You dingus

"Do you?" Mind? I almost begin, but Olive's eyes are soft and round. I don't know if I'm doing this as a favor to her or not. Do I want this to be a favor? Could I live with myself knowing that I was only friends with someone out of pity? Even the word twists my stomach. It's not pity. I feel for her. "Do you... miss it?" I ask.

"Yes," she says. "But it's more the afterwards. All my senses don't work indoors, and um, everything is too loud or not loud enough, and it doesn't feel right, and I can't explain."

"If there was a way to go back... do you think you would?" I ask.

She nods.

"There's someone I'm trying to get back to."

She nods again.

"Derrick," asks a faint, distant voice.

Derrick.

"Derrick?" asks Olive.

I squint, reaching tunnel vision. I can sense you there behind me. You start, "I need you to do something for me. I think I know what we have to do."

"I'm not alone," I whisper.

"I know!" Olive says. "That's the great thing. We're not alone, because everyone in our class has each other. That means, even if moving forwards is sad, and hard, we can do it together! Right?"
You can't see or hear her. I can tell your hand is on my shoulder by the phantasmal mist, but I can't react, so I remain, frozen, with the house off in the distance. Past, present, and future hold over me like a fugue, and I feel ice in my throat.

"Let's just get cookies," I say. "Let's not think about anything, and just, go get cookies or something. All of this is depressing."

"Derrick," you say, insistently, already fading out. "If it's a bad time, I'll be back later, but this is serious--"

I turn in the middle of the woods, almost foaming at the mouth from the sheer insanity of it. We've gone from fun fox-wolf solidarity romp to rabies convention in the time it takes to take the cookies out of the oven. "I know it's serious! I know and I'm trying to--"

Olive tilts her head. "Are you okay?"

"No! I'm not!" I say. "Olive. The world is in danger. We're all in danger. This never ends, none of us ever get to leave, and things just keep getting worse at the same time as they're getting better. I think I should be happy, because things are going better, but sometimes I'm just-- just stressed, and I feel like that's ungrateful, and I want to do the right thing, but I never know what that is, and I don't know who's telling the truth-- I just don't know! I just don't. Okay?"

Olive squints. She takes my hand again, her grip soft, warm, and real, and I sense the hurt in your eyes as you look back at me, vanishing. I feel my chest seize up with want but need guides me back into the house, silently, although I'm looking over my shoulder the whole time for you. Olive and I sit down and talk about as much as we did outside, with her biting a cookie chip by chip.

My mouth is hit by an unexpectedly unorthodox wave of flavor. My eyes close, struck by the savory hints of something warm amongst the usual brown-sugar taste of homemade cookies. "This is good."

"We use cinnamon." Olive stares out the window. We're effectively glancing out in different directions. Her feet swing back and forth across the floor, all that pensive, nervous energy still keeping her twitching.

I finish mine. "Thanks, Olive." For several different reasons.

"No problem," she says, cookie still in her mouth. "You should talk to Ms. Reema. She always makes me feel better."

"I think I'm going to have to," I say.

"That's okay," she says, reaching across the table to put a hand on my shoulder. She still has the cookie in her mouth, but she's surprisingly fluent event while she has it in. "People make a big deal about getting help when you're sad, but if you were drowning and didn't take an inner tube, then people would think that you were weird."

I laugh. It's almost endearing, even though there's still that undercurrent of tension in the air, the awful sensation of guilt and fear that accompanies not quite belonging to a place, or not quite wanting to.

I wish I were a better person.

***

Olive catches me entering the office the next day and gives me a thumbs up. I pause in the doorway to check my phone, answering Mikayla's newest slew of messages. My face twitches. I thought being wanted, even needed, would solve more problems than it could cause, but I was so wrong. If you're going in, make sure you ask leading questions.

I'm actually going in for therapy, I say. It's not like I'm going to ask about Amy anyways. We kinda had a pact about that... 'lol' as Hoshi would say

What

What?

Who's Amy

My face twitches. Mikayla. Not. Funny.

"Derrick?" I turn around, my throat seizing up. I am being strangled by a ghost as you reach me, standing in the halls of your own highway, library book clutched to your chest. You stare past me into a mirror in the distance. "You're not going to tell her about us, are you?"

"Really convenient time for you to show up," I say, raising the phone to my ear with a trembling hand, so I can pretend to be on my phone. I duck out of the way of the crowd, and you follow me into the room. Your phantasmal eyes follow me no matter where I go.

Your eyes widen as concern spreads across your features. "Derrick, what's wrong?"

"I don't know," I whisper. People pass us the door, a technicolor storm we're barely spared from. "Are you even real? Are you trying to separate me from my friends? If you want something out of this, you know I can barely defend myself. Just-- just take it. Just stop pretending to be Amy."

"No, no! I'm sorry, I just-- I had to talk to you somehow and this happened. Everyone is forgetting you over here," You run your free hand through the library, slackening your grip on the book. "I'm sorry. You must feel like you're going crazy. Me too, I mean, but... it's rough."

I nod.

"I think there's a way for us to get back to each other. That's all. I just need you to trust me. A few days from now. Middle of town. The eye of the Reema Spiral. Place will be crawling with agents waiting for what they think is a Ground-class retrieval. Get yourself through there and throw the Eye into the portal. We're going to hijack the rift." Your eyes light up with an almost uncharacteristic desperation. I've seen you at your worst but this is a different kind of pain, your beak-encrusted face twitching wherever you have the muscles to express emotion.

"I'm going to need help--" I begin.

"No! You shouldn't bring them," you start. "People just... they can't be trusted. Not the way I trust you. They could get in the way, or drag you down, or..."

"Amy. What the heck happened to you? Of course I can trust Mikayla and the gang. They're the only way I'm going to get in." My nervous laugh trails off to nothing. "They're not going to keep me from you. Nothing could." It doesn't sound as true as it used to. I am besieged by fear, looking at the dark holes of your phantasmal eyes.

"Long as it's not adults," you start, looking down at your feet. "Us pink-slip kids have to look out for ourselves. They're trying to neutralize us, you know? They've been nothing but--"

A door creaks open behind us and Ms. Reema steps through, confused as she is intrigued. You step back. "Ms. Reema," we say in unison. I follow up, "Didn't see you there."

Ms. Reema smiles that awful I understand completely smile. "Office?"

I pause. "Ms. Reema. Do you know... an Amy Rivers?"
"Of course, Derrick. You've mentioned her before, haven't you? Come on in," she smiles.

I can't speak but I can't stay silent. I only nod, following her into the room, and you freeze, contending with your own version of reality. I can sense all my emotions swelling in my body, like poison, but there's so much I can't say now. I twitch, trying to bring back to mind a thousand leading questions that Mikayla'd tried to push me into. "How do you get the numbers?" I ask. "For the Spiral."

"I just mapped existing anomalies and finished the pattern," she says. Innocuous enough. "I was lucky no one else really looks at Asphodel. It's considered too cliche by most scholars, to the extent that the area's usually easily predicted. I know that seems ridiculous to you, when you're living it... oh, we really do sound condescending, don't we. I promise that all of this was done with the intent to help."
Something's off about her answer, but I can't place it. Instead, I think of a nervous tic to submit to, some dazed gesture to insinuate I got half of what she's saying, and I end up kind of but not really smiling. "Oh, yeah. Of course. So uh... you know about the eye of it opening in a week or so?"

"I assume you'll be going." Not terribly concerned, are you?

"I don't really have a say in the matter," I shrug.

"Then I wish you the best of luck. Is that all you wanted to talk to me about, Derrick?"

No. "Yes."

Ms. Reema's face falls, disappointed. "Well, if that's the case, that's fine, but just know I have your best interests at heart." Her voice cuts off towards the end, slowly becoming something more guttural, fringed with a noise not unlike radio static. I turn, breathing heavily, and try to convince myself I'm not seeing a rift across her face, the dark line opening to reveal hundreds of small eyes watching me. "I think therapy's been going really well, too. I understand the loss of Amy has been hard, but you've been adjusting well, and the lack of incidents has been really promising. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm right here."

All the hair on my neck stands as I stare at the floor, trying to slow my breathing as my spit catches in my throat. "I know," I manage, at last, shutting the door.

The messages on my phone have been erased when I open it again. In place of the conversation about Amy are just the tips Mikayla gave me for interrogating Ms. Reema. At best, I followed two of them, but I don't know why Mikayla has ever trusted me to do anything correctly.

Mikayla. Ready whoever you can for the Eye. Full speed ahead. 

(A/N: CHECK OUT THE SNAZZY COVER BY AwsomeDragons/jayisblue! He's an incredible artist and an EVEN GREATER friend and you should follow him on BOTH HIS RADICAL ACCOUNTS YEET

Also when he drew Derrick's trenchcoat black I was shook but when I talked to another friend they were like "yeah it's black right" so uhhh it's canon now thoughts below

also because this is an appropriate chapter how does the shipping landscape look for this book because little known fact: you can ship derrick with anyone and it works

hes like the cinnamon of dating

just put it on anything