I'm dropped off much faster this time around. The limousine swings in, slides out, and only manages to attract a moderate amount of attention instead of drawing the eyes of every normie in the area who I don't want looking at me. Trust me, though, I still get plenty of stares. I don't pass well as most of the kids in my class, including Alya and Sarah, the former of whom dresses like no normal human I've ever met and the latter of whom has taken it upon herself to paint her face with those atrocious gray streaks. I don't think you could scream "I'm a special snowflake!" louder than that.

Sarah enters school way before me, books clenched around her waist instead of in her deflated backpack. She smiles all the while, trying to catch the eyes of everyone in the area (and is that girl walking with her? Hard to tell). She's not just trying too hard, she's just trying.

"That's the kid from the lab incident."

I swing around, searching the crowds.

"Poor guy." There's two people standing in the periphery of my vision. They're a perfect pair, a blonde girl (whose sentiment I just heard) and some cocky male, his hair an angrier, darker shade than my own ginger. I freeze up, begging myself not to try anything stupid.

"I mean, sure, but he's not the one who's-"

In my defense, I am a creature of instinct, and it was one long, instinctive motion.

The kid is on the ground before the cursed word leaves his mouth. My fist falls back, commotion stirs around us like dead leaves, and regret hits me like a bird hitting an office building window. Tough luck. Might as well commit to this.

"Dude, I didn't say anything, I-"

"Shut up." I say, adrenaline rolling off my shoulders in torrents.

From the crowd, a few people are closing in, ready to help him up, but one girl dives down and helps him up. There's so much spite in her eyes as she looks at me that it makes me pause. 

"Sorry--" No one's heard me. A teacher has a sweaty hand around my arm, confining if ineffective, and she yanks me to the side. We're in the lobby of the school before I know it, then off to another winding hallway. I watch the main office fall behind us, and then we come to a small, wooden door with one of those refractive windows so nothing inside is visible. All that shines through is the pallor of incandescent light.

Releasing me, the teacher proclaims, "You should be ashamed of yourself."

I want to be.

I can see fear in her eyes. "Before we go in, I want you to know I'll be reporting this to administration, and if I catch another peep from you it'll be suspension. I don't know where you went to school before this--"

"Homeschooled."

"--and did anyone express, at any point, it was okay for you to hurt other children?"

"I get that it was wrong. Can I just go in now?"

Her face stews with fury, but she opens the door, which whines as it swings out to us. (Everything in this building is crying out for mercy.) I enter the office, sitting down on one of the cheap plastic chairs, and breathe in the enticing smell of citrus. It's mixed with something close to genuine, maybe incense, and though the room shares the ugly lighting and plethora of posters I always imagined of a school nurse's office, it's also personalized as much as your average classroom. Plenty of the posters talk about mental health, there are sticky notes all over the place (from former students?) addressed to "future classes", and many of the tidbits are remarkably Extra-centric.

I swing my legs as I sit down. Arthur sizes me up, unimpressed. Attempting to break the stifling silence, I ask, with an air of confidence, "Why are you here?"

"Just a check up. You?"

I cross my hands. "Well."

"We've got a delinquent on our hands, Reema." The teacher says before slamming the door.

Arthur sucks in a long, pained breath. "You're impossible."

I look at the walls. Be you! Whenever acceptable! At least whoever was here before us had a good sense of humor. Heck, whoever wrote this could still be here. I imagine her, and then I'm thinking of you again, writing ridiculously optimistic notes on the wall. Smiling. You, in the nurse's office for reasons that have nothing to do with your health, just to accompany me and chide me for doing stupid things...

"So, which of you boys wants to go first?" calls a voice from the back. A young woman, in her twenties for certain, exits in a colorful hijab. She has a wiry set of glasses and a winning smile, and as much as I scrutinize it, it looks far from faked. Someone's an incredible actor.

"By all means, take him first. I'll miss Ms. Shinke's rambling so much, but," Arthur crosses his legs, pulling his phone out of a pocket. "Taking one for the team."

"You're witty, Spielwell. Now, if you wouldn't mind coming this way..." She twirls her pen, then looks at her clipboard, "Derrick?"

I get up. Arthur flashes me a 'good luck' look between pictures of his own face, and I follow the nurse into the back. She opens another door (how many do you need?) into a room the size of an especially spacious closet, which fits her desk, one chair, and little else. It's lit by an ornate lamp and contains a bookshelf built into the desk, along with several of those trendy miniature succulents.

She sits down, tilting her pen back and forth. "Let me guess. There was a fight?"

I shrug.

"How'd that start?" she asks. "Don't worry. I'm here to help you. It's alright for you to be totally honest."

I stare her down, looking for some minute cue that she's faking all this excessive kindness. "Kind of a lost cause. I hit a kid. Yes, it was deliberate; no, he didn't make fun of me; no, I don't really regret it. Yet."

"Yet. That's interesting... do you think you'll regret it later?"

"Always do." Damnit, I'm practically bleeding sentiment over here. I straighten myself up, place my hands on the table, look at the lamplight off my fingernails. There's no noise in this room. It is incredibly unnerving.

"Look at those claws." she says. I draw my hands back with a jolt. "Oh, sorry. You were ground-class, right?"

"Yeah. They're not pretty. They're awful and they could take out a man if I tried." I stare back up at her. "If I'm sorry, can I leave now? That's how it goes, right? We discuss ways to make sure it doesn't happen, then you let me go, pretend I'm reformed, pretend to be shocked when I come back in here?" I'm more tired than I thought. My head stings with the weight of unneeded, unwanted, unhelpful adrenaline.

The nurse smiles. "Believe it or not, I'm being paid to help you, not to mold you into whatever box the school system wants you kids to fit in. That's my story, I'm sticking with it."

"They pay you anything?"

"Ha ha. I make a very respectable salary."

"How'd that happen?"

She folds her hands. "There's a high demand for those who specialize in Extras. I majored in psychology, but I have a minor in supernatural phenomena, which only recently became a valid field of study. In fact, I was amongst one of the first graduating classes at my university."

"Congratulations." I say. "Shame you ended up working at a public school."

"You seem to be very negative about public school, given that you've only been here two days." she responds. "The facilities here are a great deal more sophisticated than you might think, and you have more allies than you know. We're not, as you say, going to 'pretend you've reformed'. Especially not after a single short session."

"I have to come in again?" I ask. This is a social death sentence. I need you here right now. I needed you an hour ago to hold my hand and prevent me from punching people. I am being pinched to death by the four walls and the physical space of the room has nothing to do with it.

"Barring another incident, you could always come in to discuss other issues, if you'd like." she says.

"I don't need help," I state. "Thanks."

"I think you might want it, though, Derrick." She steeples her hands in the most typical teacher way possible. I stare at them for a moment, sure that the gesture can't be genuine, but she is still watching me with her lips pursed and genuine sentiment warm as the lamplight across her face. "We also have grief counselling, if you want to talk about-"
I stand up, the chair falling back behind me (it clatters to the floor with an unamused thump). "I'm good."

"I'm going to let you off with a warning, then. It was nice to meet you."

Stooooop with the sweet talk. Stop smiling at me like that. Please stop looking at my eyes and face and claws like I'm some kind of commodity... "And you as well." I say, trailing off. Carefully, I open the door, and shut it a little too hard.

Arthur is still in the room, looking up from his phone with regal disinterest, and he slides it into his pocket. "I trust that went well?"

"I guess," I slide my hands into my coat, for safety.

Arthur puts a hand on my shoulder. "Hey. Buddy. Quick advice?"

"I'll take it." I say.

He smiles; I think I even catch something akin to a light, faked laugh. His hand tightening just enough for me to feel it through my jacket, he mutters, "Don't do anything else stupid. You make us all look bad."

My eyes narrow. "Sorry."

I leave the room and accelerate down the hallways, spurred on by every student I think I see glance my way. I end up in the bathroom, hands on the plaster sink, half bent over, praying with every pulse of my violent heart that my parents haven't been called. I stare at myself for a while in the mirror, admittedly, thinking something ingenious like Get your shit together, Derrick.

The door opens and I twist the faucet, letting the hot water run through my shaking hands, and some guy, a junior at the youngest, carves a wide arc around me to the stalls. I exit fast as I can, rubbing my hands on my pants, and something dark rises in my throat when I think about re-entering the room.

Can't have failed that fast, that hard. It's impossible to screw myself over this quickly. I would have to be singularly miraculous at social self-destruction. I'm eighty percent sure that was in no way part of the genetic experiments deal. It's not like they gave me DNA with a fox riddled with anger issues and a severe case of anxiety.

I stalk the hall, half-dodging teachers (was that a dirty look? Do they know?), and wind my way back to our singular room. I can already hear Ms. Shinke's voice from within, rambling about magical misdemeanors and the many, many ways one can be forcefully subdued by a non-magical police, and my frown continues to creep down the sides of my face. In my mind, I'm thinking about the two of us working from the bottom of the pecking order, when I wouldn't have fallen this hard without you.

In the end, I do what you would have done: I enter the classroom without a word, flip my lapels, and take a seat. (Not that you'd wear a coat with lapels. Actually, I think I could see that. Can't unsee it. You'd make it work.) When Arthur returns, I catch a round of whispers from around his desk area, which are shut down at once by a slap of Ms. Shinke's almighty pole.

Ms. Shinke looks right into my eyes, wrinkled lips pursed, and with an intent glower, looks away. The lecture continues, class settling back in as if Arthur and I had never disturbed it. "As I've explained, it is near impossible to 'get into' the quest of another Extra. While most ground-classes seem like they would cause massive stir, the key players in these battles rise and fall without much fanfare. In the case of individuals, such as Ms. Dhampira, people will be confused when you bring up the erratic behavior of certain characters..."

A girl in the front row confirms, "My neighbors were legitimately convinced I was at camp. It didn't matter what my parents said to them."

"Exactly. Some things may seem less... covert, such as an entire city being in perpetual danger, in the case of Owen, or a whole corporation disappearing overnight without much fanfare. For instance, anyone who purchased CorpInd brand painkillers has switched over to another brand without so much of a second thought."

I suck in a breath, remembering the sensation of said painkillers stuffed in my mouth, my entire body numb (I'll give them this--they're effective). Ms. Shinke is watching me like a hawk, as if expecting something, and I breathe out, crossing my hands. Mikayla mouths something to me. I spread my hands on the table, trying to somehow indicate through gesture that have I no idea what she's saying, and she raises a hand to her head, flicking it.

I squint. What?

She throws her hands up discreetly as possible and scribbles something on a paper.

"Ms. Ahlam." Ms. Shinke asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Taking notes," Mikayla says. "I'm frankly surprised no one else is."

Alya raises her hand and blurts, "I have eight pages of notes."

"Did we have to take notes?" asks Sarah. "Will this information be online?"

The whole class is in uproar within minutes, and through the chaos Mikayla slips me one of her 'notes'.

We all heard about the incident.

Finn is watching me too from his own desk, and I see a few more students not actively engaged in the chaos have caught my eye.

I crumple the paper, my heart pacing to the ambience of Ms. Shinke yelling the board for order, and when everything calms back down Mikayla and I are still glaring at each other.

I shrug my shoulders.

"To continue, once you're out of school, certain resources will be available to you as you integrate into society. Many of you have reflexes, strength, agility, or abilities far beyond that of a normal human... all this information will be available online, as well as the 'notes', in case you missed it. We're in the corner of the school website. Furthermore, starting Monday, orientation will be over, and you'll be taking legitimate classes. I'm trained in all disciplines, but a few of you who have been pre-approved as of the summer will also be taking classes with the rest of the school. The goal is to get everyone approved for external classes by the end of the year, and then approved for full integration the year after. If you've been paying attention across the past two days, things should run smoothly. Given that few of you have, things should go."

"Then what's Friday?" asks Alya, not even bothering to raise her hand.

"You'll know that Friday, won't you, now?" Ms. Shinke says, running a hand along her pole. The class is still for two seconds, stuck in a collective state somewhere between recollection and 'what is she on right now' that ends as soon as the bell blares and the class empties faster than the necessities isle when a hurricane is announced.

(Well, we are a class full of natural disasters.)

Only Mikayla remains behind, taking an extraordinary amount of time with her backpack. My eyes dart between her and Ms. Shinke, determining a route of escape that doesn't further endanger my position with either of them, and settle on hastening my pace. Mikayla grabs me on the back in the hallway and I jolt around, almost knocking her over. I hadn't noticed how frail she was, but she legitimately feels too light for her body.

Like she has bird bones. (I'm seeing you everywhere again. Great. If there was anything I really couldn't deal with...)

"Look. It was an accident, won't happen again, I've already schmoozed it up with the counsellor and I don't want to have a forced epiphany about the error of my ways with you too." I say.

"Did they say something about her?" she asks.

"Almost." I confirm. "Look. Yesterday was... you don't need to pity me. I mean, I would appreciate if you didn't hate me, because I was tripping all over myself and--"

"You were a huge asshole." She crosses her arms. "You managed to insult me personally and my gender, all in one fell swoop. You're a bona fide disaster artist."

"You really do feel bad for me, don't you." I breathe. "Either that, or you're about to beat me up." I hold my arms out. "Do your worst."

She punches me in the chest. It's like being hit by a feather. She pulls her fist back, trembling, and looks down at it, flexing her fingers. "I was in a coma for a year and you were on fox hormones. This is the least fair fight in the history of hallway brawls."
"We could also... not fight." I shrug.

"Are you going to keep saying stupid shit?"

"Absolutely."

"I guess someone has to keep you in line."

"I think I can handle myself."

"Alone?"

"Well..." I pause, realizing the smile dancing across her face. It doesn't quite light her tired eyes, but there's a snarky fire within them, a camaraderie in the making. "I have the limo out front. Later."

"Alright," she says. "Try not to punch anyone else."

"You too," I say. Crap.

I can think of a thousand ways that could have gone better, breaking into a dead sprint amongst the dispersing crowds (way to be inconspicuous, Derrick), but I can think of a thousand ways it could have gone worse. Bird bones. Second chances. Maybe I can work this out.