Hey-- do all math classes in public school feel like torture, or is that specific to your school?

I've been studying since I got back, but by that I mean I've looked over the book twice before throwing it against the wall and swearing off math for the rest of the summer. One of my counselors (oh yeah, you thought that woman was the first shrink I've dealt with? I'm a rabid fox. I've had as many people try to help me as the federal government will provide for) said something at some point about 'healthy coping mechanisms', and I believe that if avoiding math lowers my stress levels, then avoid math I shall. That said, Ms. Shinke did not look kindly on this, and everyone was kind of looking at me again, and then the feeling started creeping in... let's just say it's been a long, confusing day, and if I ever find someone to seance you, I'm going to ask you how to graph a standard form parabola.

Never mind. That's stupid.

Ms. Shinke shuts the book at last, and the resounding thump seems to echo around the room. I breathe a sigh of relief, sinking further into my chair, but the numbers are still dancing in front of my eyes. I look at the scattered notes on the page, realize I don't understand half of my own handwriting, and wonder why half of my graphs are so poorly oriented that the lines are curvier than the graphs themselves. Clearly this was a mistake--if I'd performed more poorly on the examinations before school, would they have let me take a different class? Ms. Shinke addresses the class, "And that would be our first lesson of Algebra II. Olive, Alya, may I see you after the bell rings?"

The bell hastily indulges her, as if to say Yes, let's please move along here. The class gathers their belongings. Alya looks to Olive, who closes a much thinner textbook than the rest of us and grins. Alya's own textbook is massive, but it's more telling that she was writing faster than any of us and her textbook is for BC Calculus.

Up and to the left of where I'm sitting, in the designated 'cool kids' area of the classroom, Arthur leans out of his desk and mutters to Brittany, "Weird she's taking both of them. Why would you want the smartest and stupidest kid in the class?"

"Maybe they're trying to do away with the outliers?" Brittany asks.

"We're Extras. We're all outliers." I say, stepping over. Score one for fox hearing.

Arthur stares blankly at me. "Oh, hey Derrick." The conversation goes a little dead and I realize I had nothing to say and they're definitely watching me. Arthur has his nose tilted up so he looks just a liiittle more snottier than usual. I mean, that's hard, but Arthur is on at least five different levels of pretentious right now.

"So. How are you guys doing?" I ask.

"Already wishing I was out of this class, if we're going to be entirely honest." Arthur says.

"Ha!" I catch myself, running a hand up my sleeve and into a defensive crossed-arm position that I've seen them make before. "Oh, yeah. Today was rough."

"It was mainly review." Brittany says. "Alya didn't even blink an eye, and I studied for once, so I was fine too."

Am I supposed to stand my ground here?

"Can't be that easy for all of us. I was busy crying myself to sleep for three months," I tell them.

"Derrick! You coming or not?" Mikayla says. Her glance is sharp and the intent is even sharper. I flash Arthur and Brittany a quick wave and duck out. The look on their faces is inexpressible, a contorted pool of emotion and awkward indignity. Upon meeting up with the others, Mikayla grabs my arm. "What are you doing? Are you okay?"

I look back, trying to remind myself that I'm the only one with advanced hearing. "One, I'm fine. Two, I don't need you to bail me out."

"You can't just vent to people! They don't want to hear it." Mikayla sighs as we walk down the halls. She's still dragging me by the shirt sleeve (not that I'd rather pull me along by her wickedly sharp fingernails), and I'm trailing behind, looking like a blubbering, fish-faced human.

She's right. You need to shut your trap, peeps half my brain. Fox half? Human half? Heck knows.

Finn joins us as we pass one of the counselling offices. "That's an affirmative 'no'." he says.

"Sucks," Mikayla says under her breath.

"Wait, you weren't in class?" I ask. "What were you doing?"

"Making an appeal." he says, his voice cracking in a way much too large and hollow for his four-foot body. "They're not going to let me leave, they don't want me at homeschool, and I still have no legal rights."

We stand in silence for a while, and I try to suppress the itch to crawl out of my own skin. Finn stares at me with all the judgemental cruelty of a ten year old and all the utter disappointment of an adult. It's like I'm being watched by two people. Thankfully, we're cut off by frantic steps down the hallway, which I catch sooner than Mikayla, but not fast enough behind us even before she pounces on us, but I still flinch when Olive jumps on us, swinging her hands around Mikayla and I's shoulders. "Hey, guys." she says, flashing us a toothy grin. "Are you guys doing something after school?" Olive may not have a tail, but trust me, if she did, it would be waving right now.

"Yes. Breathing. It's kind of a habitual thing. Hard to stop." Finn says.

Olive narrows her eyes, her ears falling. "O-o-oh. Alright?"

"We'll see you Tuesday." Mikayla concludes.

Olive opens her mouth, and her ears lower. Her face tenses like she's choking on her own words. "Okay. See ya!" Just as soon, she's running towards the exit. We follow at a safe distance, strangers in our own bodies as the normal people close in around us.

"I think she likes me." I mutter beneath my breath.

"Romantically?" Mikayla asks.

"Hope not." I sigh.

"Think she does," Finn says. "Congratulations. You've got a tail."

I don't think I could blush any harder. It feels like my whole face is burning from embarrassment. I add a number tick to the "awful things that wouldn't have happened if you were here" tally. The blackboard in my mind is laced with white streaks.

"Guys wouldn't know." Mikayla says.

Finn laughs, quietly enough that he doesn't draw attention. "I'm thirty. Most of my friends were married. I would know."

"Guys wouldn't know," repeats Mikayla, looking towards the doors of the school. Mikayla and Finn skirt the edge of the crowd and turn a far right when they hit the parking lot, hanging to the edge of the sidewalk until we've left everyone behind. Mikayla approaches a car with a buster bumper and slightly cracked headlights in the corner and grabs keys from her backpack, her face contorting as if she were holding a dead fish. "Speaking of tails, Derrick?"

I swing around to see Glasses Lady driving the limo, frowning at me with the cold, disappointed stare only a person whose eyes you can't see can convey.

"I'm going out," I announce to Glasses Lady.

Glasses Lady frowns harder. "We are required by law to return you home every day at the time we've discussed with your parental unit."

I flash the puppy eyes. "Every day? Are you saying I can never participate in extracurriculars? Go out with friends? Nothing?"

Mikayla holds a hand to her face.

Glasses Lady whips off said glasses and turns to the man in shotgun. "Back me up here."

"We're government officials. You want me to back you up against a fifteen year old?" he asks.

Glasses Lady turns back to me. "So, what would be the best way to theoretically stall your parents?"

"Questioning session." I say.

She twirls her glasses in her hand and places them back on her face. "If we hear about any kind of illegal activity, there will be questioning sessions. Multiple questioning sessions. We're placing a lot of faith in you, Mr. Renard. Don't mess this up."

I nod, and the limo pulls away. Mikayla looks dumbfounded and Finn is just shaking his head.

"Sorry. Tough parents." I laugh.

"I can't believe that. They should seriously be fired." Mikayla whispers.

"Uh, sure, but they just cut us a break there. We leaving or not?" I ask.

Mikayla unlocks the car and situates herself in the front seat. The car's interior is nice as the exterior, that is to say, not very. Finn and I stare each other down for a second, and he takes shotgun, straightening himself up to get a few extra inches. I situate myself in the back, breathing in the old-car, lived-in smell. It's comforting, in a way that feels like it might also be stabbing a dagger straight through my heart.

"I've driven twice since I returned from my quest, so expect this to go smoothly." Mikayla says, stepping on the gas. "We're heading to Juniper Park. Tell anyone we were pathfinding and I'm going to give you the silent treatment for the next ten years."

As the scenery slides into an urban blur, I ask, "Pathfinding."

"Getting home. Dream-classes have never had any reported success, but to hell with that."

I squint, careful to raise myself so I'm visible in her rear view mirror. "Not to break it to you, but no one has had any reported success.You can't get back."

"Maybe because nobody tries hard enough." Mikayla offers. "Look. I got cut off halfway through a prophecy. If anyone needs to get back, it's me."

You can't seriously think that, I'm thinking, but I respond, "I've never heard of pathfinding. None of the officials mentioned it during my interrogation."

"Why would they?" asks Mikayla. "Look, you at least know how Extra abductions work, right? Leading theory suggests that Extra activity happens on a magical field, parallel to most other properties of matter, like spacetime. This magical field essentially triggers certain events, keeps normals in the dark, et cetera. Regardless, that magical energy concentrates heavily in places, like the sites of Earth-class quests, but the most potent holes happen after Portal-classes depart on theirs. More specifically, we're looking for holes in spacetime we could use to get back to an otherworld."

The seatbelt holds me around my chest, suddenly feeling more and more like a restraint. I've been strapped into the crazy train, and the manic gleam in Mikayla's eyes reflected in the mirror makes my heart accelerate. No way. "You learned this from where?"

"Ten Wikipedia articles and a website from the nineties." With an exhausted groan, the car lurches to a stop. Mikayla jumps out. "Kid got abducted a neighborhood away. Parks are auspicious, so if it's going to be anywhere, it'll be here."

Finn steps out, arms crosses, and I resist the urge to bolt. Fox adrenaline is coursing through my veins, arguing equally unhelpful things such as make a break for it and bite something. Nonetheless, I manage a shaky smile. "So, where do we..."

Mikayla walks right past me and asks Finn, "Anything look particularly auspicious to you?"

"Always check the trees." Finn offers.

"Right. Derrick, you coming?" asks Mikayla.

At this point, I'm just being tugged along anyways, but I decide not to relay this to them. Instead, I approach the trees, watch Mikayla brush aside ivy or hold her hand against trees. She slides out her phone and scrolls through a list. Meanwhile, Finn leans on a tree, holding his arms against himself, almost defensively. His eyes are half closed, like he's in pain, but he's not saying anything.

"Any luck?" I ask.

"No," Finn says.

Mikayla doesn't answer.

I look to him, and he looks to her, and I look back to him, unsure what I'm trying to convey here. Maybe is she okay or are you okay or is this super awkward for you, too? He tilts his head up towards the canopy formed by the tidy pine trees. "The forests were different, back home."

"Home," I whisper. I want to devour the reverence in the syllable. "How long..."

"Twenty years." He lifts himself off the tree. "It was a stupid mistake that dragged me back, but in theory, an inevitable one. Mikayla, isn't there a river in the park, somewhere?"

"Small park for a river," I comment.

"It's one of those little dinky streams. They're all over the place." he says.

Mikayla nods, briefly. "Absolutely right. C'mon!" She bolts off towards the river, hurdles the fence in one jump--

"Am I seeing the same thing you are?" I ask as her dark hair disappears below the curve of the land, where it bends down into the neat little cut of the stream.

"Heightened agility? Sure." he asks. "Let's go."

It's hard for him to keep pace with me, the strain with which he walks reveals that much, but not once does he break stride. He has to climb both wooden logs of the 'fence' between us and the fence, while I just straddle it, but regardless, we meet Mikayla down by a sewer entrance. There's a rune engraved on the metal, akin to an eye, and she places a finger on it. "Nice job, team."

"Are we a team?" I ask.

She clicks on her phone and turns on her flashlight, holding it up to the putrid interior of the sewer before ducking her head to enter. "Why, are you desperate?"

"I don't know. Everyone's already in groups." I say, wrinkling my nose from the scent of sewage that is now pervading all of my senses. I draw my coat closer around me.

"You want to know what I think?" asks Mikayla, her uncharacteristically excited voice bouncing off the sides of the tunnel.

"Sure?" I ask.

"Stop flipping your lapels at everyone." she says with a wry smirk.

"I haven't done that in two days." I argue. "Plus, it's just... it's a privacy thing. Isn't that why girls draw their hair over their face?"

"No one does that." Mikayla mutters. She steps further in, but the sewer is still a sewer, the air is still suffocating, and we're alone in the dark.

"You can't lie to me. I have seen Disney channel sitcoms and the shy, reclusive ones generally have their hair over their face." I say, but something darker is settling into the air. Mikayla steps forwards again, but at last we hit a grate, its ugly teeth barred against us in the pale light. Its rusted features are decidedly not magical and we're all clustered together in the dark, so close we're almost touching, being mocked by the metal face.

Mikayla hits the side of the sewer. Grime shines against her hand in the light of her phone, gripped in the other, and I can see her trembling. "Anything else we could try?"

"Doubtful. Nice try." Finn says, detached.

"Maybe we're too late." I offer. "I mean, there'll probably be another abduction at some point, so you could hit it up the day after..."

"I've been coming here every day!" Mikayla admits. "Scoured the whole neighborhood. Area around it."

I step back, the smell holding in my nose and filling my mind with all kinds of terrible ideas, most of which come down to let's leave please please please. Regaining my composure, I manage, "Is there any reputable proof that pathfinding has ever worked? I'm not talking about underground magazines or cult material. Reputable. Normal, non-crazy people."

Mikayla's shoulders sag. I help her out of the tunnel and up onto the hill, where she sits, still bent over like a dying flower. "Look. I'm sorry I dragged you both into this."

"If it makes you feel better, my quest involved physical and psychological torment for well over a year. I'm not that nostalgic about it."

"What about her?" Mikayla whispers.

"She's dead." I state, teeth grit.

"I know, but even if there was the slightest chance you could fix things, wouldn't you cross the whole world to do it?"

Somewhere in the distance, autumn leaves blow. My heart suddenly slows to a dull murmur, and something dissonant rises in my head, collecting into a singular claustrophobia. I shouldn't be here. I can't be anywhere right now. I get up. "It's late."

Mikayla bolts up. "I didn't mean anything."

"There's nothing you could have meant, and somehow, I still don't believe you. I have no idea what you want, or what you're trying to do, but I'm not getting mixed up in it. Is that clear?"

"I'm not going to submit to fate, that's all. I'm going to do something." Mikayla says.

"We're not doing anything! We're just a bunch of kids dicking around in the park." I say.

"No one said you had to be part of this, Derrick." Mikayla sighs.

"It's late. I need to leave." I say. The sun is still shining overhead. "I need to get home."

"Look, that's fine, but you don't seem well right now. Do you want me to drive you home?" Mikayla asks.

"It's fine, I'll just call my p-parents--I'll see you tomorrow." I say, but when I take off for the edge of the park, Tuesday is the last thing on my mind.