"Adam..." I whisper to the figure beside me, which is spread across the bedside, limp as a corpse.

It's 5:30 AM. He doesn't want to speak with you right now, even if you were to inform him the house were burning down around him.

"You don't know him," I respond to the voice in my head, clutching the little blue stone under the covers. It appeared in my bed this morning, but the voice has been going since Wednesday, the second day of school, late in the afternoon. Usually, this is what's known as a bad sign.

I know more than you think.

"Well, admittedly you are a voice in my head that knows my name and everything about my life, convinced I should keep critical information from my loved ones... wait, are you my anxiety?" I ask.

What? No. I'm speaking to you through the rock. I'm an alien.

I smile, knowing I've at least baited it into giving me this much information. I can feel it frowning back from behind the stone. It's funny, the way I can feel it there even though it has no physical presence. I can imagine something sitting on my bed, like a small cat, and when it shifts, I can feel it pressing down on my chest. "Are you invisible, too?" I whisper.

Not for long.

"Will?" croaks Adam from across the room.

My breath catches in my throat as I hear his blankets shift, and my eyes rove over to the clock, which proudly displays 5:45. Shit, I hadn't actually meant to wake him up. I can apologize, now, or I can leave. I remain totally still, pretending that I was sleeptalking, and Adam shifts back away. When his breathing grows shallow, and I'm entirely sure he's asleep, I step out, pacing out of the room and accelerating as I hit the stairs. I turn on the kitchen lights and pretend that this was my plan all along. I can catch my disheveled reflection in the window, full of fear.

There's a dark crease in the window.

"That's you," I say, pointing to it, defiantly. "What do you want me to do about all this? You know that you have me cornered. I can't get rid of the stone, and my life is... okay, so my life is perking up, so I'd prefer if you didn't abduct me, plus, Adam would come for me, and he'd murder you. And Amanda! Both of them!"

The girl you just met would come for me and murder me, the voice muses.

"Yes!" I exclaim. I drop my voice. Every kitchen appliance in the room leers at me in red, electric light. I begin gathering things for pancakes as I explain, in a quieter voice, "I don't know what you want, and I think I'm excited, on one front, that something this crazy is happening to me--"

That's good. That's a good start, Will.

"--but I also don't know if this is magic, or I really am just going crazy," I say. "I mean, I haven't tried to show or tell anyone yet, but in my life? There's no one to tell."

The voice wisely doesn't bring up my twin. The version of me reflected back in our kitchen window looks sadder than me, as if he might want to extend some comfort. I reach out to press a hand against the window, which is now cold as space. My fingers move over to the crack, that nebulous bit where the world has given up altogether, and I dip my fingers in. On the other side, I feel something warm press back, and feel comforted, like receiving a hug from my parents. I think I might want to cry.

I'll be coming for you soon. Can you be patient for me? The voice asks. I know you must be afraid, but I promise that this is all for a good reason. Will, you're special, always have been, and this is the year things are going to look up for you. You are going to save the world.

The words echo in my head. The stone is over on the island in the middle of our room, watching me like a cat, and I can feel tears sizzling off my cheeks with the updraft of hot air from my pancake griddle. I wipe my face off, still sniffling. This is ridiculous. Adam stumbles down the stairs, and by that I mean he walks down, but it sounds like he fell from the first floor to the landing. He's already on his phone when he turns the corner to meet me. I lean to my mix bowl and give him a smug grin. "Hey. Didn't see you there. I was too busy making pancakes and texting my friends. Like an adult."

Adam's eyes flick in my general direction. "What?"

"You'll pass again today?" I ask.

"No, I'll take two," he says. He sits down and keeps texting. At some point he looks up, expectedly, and I harshly click the plate against the table. I scoot into a chair across from him, occasionally pausing to look up, but he's dead silent. I've never seen him this engrossed in talking to the guys before. In fact, I'm at least eighty percent sure his friends aren't awake yet. They always came in late to middle school, so I assumed their parents just lugged them out of their beds and threw them in the car at 8 AM.

I put the fork down. Adam looks up. "I was... going to go to this activities fair today," I offer.

"Dude. No one goes to activities fairs," he tells me.

"Well, I do," I say, "And Amanda's club is going to be there, so I guess I'm going to give them some free traffic." Adam looks unimpressed. As a follow up, I offer, "Bet they'll have candy."

Adam sighs. "I should probably find out what the tech clubs are out there, so I can join them. If I happen to pick up some candy along the way..."

"You're into STEM?" I ask.

"Colleges are into STEM," he shrugs.

"Right," I say.

"You should try to join something practical, too," Adam offers. "You know, something you can win. That way, our parents won't bug us about joining sports again." He gets to his feet, utensils folded neatly across the plate. "Cinnamon in this one?"

I joined wrestling in sixth grade. It ended about as well as it sounds like it would end. "Yeah," I say. "Little bit of nutmeg, too."

"It's really good," Adam says. "You ever think about going into culinary arts? It's slightly less impractical than art arts."

I pretend to debate this. It's not like committing to being a world-class chef would be any easier than committing to being an artist, but just like with art, I already know that I'm behind. Everyone with a future has been practicing longer and harder. I'm not going to sneak up on anyone from behind, so my pipe dreams are staying in the pipe. Adam knows this. My dad knows this. I know this. "Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'll do mocha art for a living. You know, where people do the fancy looking aesthetic coffee?"

Adam laughs. "I'll put that up there with 'professional YouTuber' in the 'things people aren't going to pay Will to do' category."

"Don't forget Twitch streaming," I say. "Hey, if nothing works out for the pair of us, I still say we do the world's first twenty-four hour stream. We both sleep and work in shifts, so that we never have to stop the stream. It goes on like that, forever, and as long as we don't talk, no one will be able to tell the difference."

"Because of what we sound like, or what we'd say?" asks Adam.

Breakfast is long past over now, but I'm glad to have him on the line, and so I can't bring myself to push him back away, even though we're just standing by the empty table, wasting time. "You're right, it wouldn't work."

Adam smirks. "Don't discount the height difference, either." He ascends the stairs again, with me in tow behind him.

"No, no, I've worked that one out!" I yell after him. Our parents are just waking up in their room, but we'll be gone just around the time they get up to say goodbye. "See, we'll just lower the chair for you."

The two of us cross out every other small inconsistency that would divide us on the way to school, but he quiets up again when we get close. He clicks open his phone, and that dull, cold look overtakes him again. I open my own phone, looking up all the messages I received from the Naval Brigade this morning. I bite my lip. Induction is next week. Everyone's been teasing me about what they'll make me do as an inductee, but they're all teasing. I don't think anyone else has to go through "initiation rites"-- it's just me they're giving a hard time, because I'm already part of the family.

A car roars by, moving out of the drop-off lane. Adam is back with his friends, lapsing into that comfortable rhythm with his friends, and across the street, I'm standing alone next to a searing gash in reality, listening to the bell ring within the school-- you can hear it all the way across the street. I move around a sidewalk crack that's a little more than a crack, and escort myself across.

I spend most of the day lying in wait. This is not a new phenomenon, but I used to have nothing to lie in wait for, so it's more like I was just lying. My classes today are notably devoid of Naval Brigade members. The group chat has gone silent, which leaves me alone again. My sketchbook is blank. There's a faint humming in the background that I thought was the ventilation system, but given circumstances, I'm not buying it anymore.

Are you there? I think.

Yes, thinks the voice, in response. Do you need something?

Answers, I say.

That's unfortunate, responds the voice. I don't have any, yet. However, it occurs to me, as it may have to you, that there's a worksheet in front of you. Likewise, I can't afford to spend all day bothering you--

What, do you have something else to do? Someone else to speak with?

The voice falls back into irritated silence. "Gotcha," I whisper aloud.

"Got what?" asks the other student at my table, a frizzy-haired ginger I have thus far been too intimidated to talk with.

Hoping I sound convincing, I flash her a thumbs up. "I'm great! I finally figured out this... math problem."

"We're in French." she says, indicating her completed page of conjugation review.

"Huh," I say, lifting my pencil from my empty worksheet. "That would explain things."

She scoots her paper away from me before I can copy down her answers. I bite my pencil, wishing I'd taken Latin-- from a pure language standpoint, French had been more appealing to me, but now that I was in French class with no friends and none of the chronic burnouts who would have masked my poor performance in Spanish, I was regretting the choice to follow my passion. Meanwhile, two doors down, half the Naval Brigade girls are in the same Latin class. This is the one time of day the group chat is dead, too, primarily for that reason.

Whoever it is you're talking to, can you tell them I say hi?

There's no answer. Something about the silence is disconcerting, even though it's little more than my usual headspace. Fortunately, the bell rings soon enough, and that's plenty of noise, as it heralds in the end of the day. I fly down the stairs, jumping the last three steps, and meet Amanda and her girls already setting up in the cafeteria. A senior is yelling, "All right, you can drop it now. No, 'drop it' doesn't mean throw it-- Amanda!"

"Thank goodness I didn't drop it or throw it," Amanda yells back. There's a box of merchandise at her feet, which has flown open with the force of impact but miraculously doesn't seem to have spilled anything. "It's fine, and they're fine. If you're going to micromanage, you should set it up yourself, Lea."

Lea stoops down and pulls the box back towards herself. "Think I will."

I stride up. "Sassing a senior, Amanda?"

"It's fine, she's one of my friend's older sisters. I live with these people. They've learned how to tolerate me by now," Amanda says.

"You don't make it easy." Lea begins setting up her figurines, which are, by the looks of it, the nice kind. I think my mom might have to mortgage the house to purchase the collection in here, especially since some of them have either been out of retail for years or are from properties that don't sell merchandise in the states. I have serious nerd envy right now, just looking over the smiling box of what essentially amount to frilly-dressed girls and a few frilly-dressed girls holding guns. "There we go. If anyone can name a good five of these characters, I say we let them in."

Rebecca, who is setting up a face paint area with Sally, says from her corner, "We're not allowed to not let anyone in."

"That's a good point," I add.

"I think we should be allowed to make cuts," Lea says. "For example, it looks like almost everyone who showed up was a freshie, despite you guys being new members, so maybe we need to have a little talk with everyone else about probation from membership. I'm just saying."

"Yeah, we're--" I begin.

"I call vice president," Amanda yells over me.

"Not normal president? I thought you were more ambitious than that, Amanda," Rebecca teases.

"It's like normal president, but I'm just full of vice," Amanda says, striking the kind of ridiculous pose that would look substantially better if it was in a comic book and not a thing that she was attempting in real life.

The conversation continues without me. I stand next to the table, grinning, and look over the sea of people. It's better attended than I thought it would be, which is to say that it's not necessarily poorly attended, just kind of middling. Kids are lined up around whoever had their mom buy candy for the table. There are some more professional-looking stalls than ours, but they all appear to be from big, flashy, school-sponsored clubs like the Quiz Bowl or the Robotics club. The Robotics club also has legitimate robots, such as a dozen of those pre-packaged LEGO Brainstormers, a small custom project that looks like a miniature tank, and my brother.

I wave to him from across the cafeteria. It takes him a solid minute to realize I'm there, but when he does, he remains stock still. This is a solid indicator I should be coming to him instead of the other way around.

"I'll be right back," I tell the girls. I run across the cafeteria to Adam, who has distanced himself from the Robotics Club. "Hey!"

"Slow down," Adam warns me. "So, activities fair. This is marginally more impressive than what we had back at middle school," he pauses. "If you squint."

"You should come to the Naval Brigade stand," I suggest. "They really decked it out. Not that you'd want to join, but I mean, it's not like you've met my friends yet, so..."

"Lead the way," Adam shrugs. As we walk across the cafeteria at a nonchalantly slow Adam pace, he continues, "I've already put my name on at least four vaguely interesting clubs. I put you down for Quiz Bowl, too, but you don't have to show up. Just tell mom and dad we signed up for Quiz Bowl when we get home, and that it'd be a good application of your extensive trivia knowledge and a good way to make friends."

"Thanks," I say.

"I'd make another round," he adds. "You want to put your name down for eight clubs, four of which you'll actually attend. You're going for a fine mix of prestige and actual interest, trying to broaden appeal. I have it down to a science."

"Maybe you should get a degree in that."

"Psychology?" he asks. We're at the stand by now. "Not particularly interested in helping other people with their problems, harsh as that sounds. People are unwieldy. Machines follow a consistent set of rules." He surveys the Naval Brigade table, and simultaneously, the Naval Brigade table surveys my brother. Something tense and electric runs through the air, and Adam reaches for one of the figurines at random, one of the more scantily clad women who so happens to be holding a gun. "They let you bring this into school?"

I blush violet.

"Excuse me, can you put that down?" asks Lea, ascending from her chair to a height greater than the previously insurmountable Adam Rosenbloom.

"Are we not supposed to touch anything?" he asks, obeying. There is some legitimately fake concern in his voice.

"No," Lea says. "I don't think you're interested in joining, either, are you?"

Adam shrugs. "Not especially, but I was interested in meeting my brother's friends. I don't think I'm being particularly obtrusive. Just providing some free table traffic. You could use it."

Rebecca and Sally, who have been doing each other's faces in turn, both look up. Amanda is definitely gesturing something to me, but I have no idea what it is. I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed of Adam right now, because that's never happened before, but fear isn't out of the question. Afraid of him or for him? I have no idea. I just sit there and drink in the sweet, sweet, anxiety-triggering silence.

Adam's phone begins ringing from his pocket. His fingers flex towards the wrong pocket, then he grabs the phone and opens it. "Well that's convenient. Now?" Whoever's on the other side answers, and his eyes squint in a way I've never seen before, especially in Adam. My sibling senses tingle with the anticipation of danger I'm not facing. He swings the phone around, withdrawing it into his pocket, and says, "Sorry, I've got something with friends this afternoon. Good talking to you, Will, I love all of your partially naked women as well as your--" he gestures to the Naval Brigade, "Fully clothed ones. Really seem like your kind of people. See you later."

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"I'm just going. See you." He shrugs as he exits, but he's not strolling. I know my brother, and I know that my brother strolls everywhere, regardless of circumstance.

"That's the other Rosenbloom," says Lea. "Have to admit? Not a fan."

"He's not that bad when you get to know him, he's just abrasive," I say.

"Think he's hanging out with Megan? She said she couldn't hang out at the stand today either." asks Rebecca.

"No using the M-word," Sally warns from the corner.

"M-word? She sits at our table. She's a foundational member of this team," Rebecca says. Once again, the conversation is going around me instead of with me.

"So foundational that she's not here," Amanda says with a roll of her eyes. "I know the seniors are doing college apps, and all the juniors are trying to forge an alliance with that new Dungeons and Dragons club, but at least she could have showed up."

"It's Megan. She's probably doing service work or caught up in some random novel at the library, which we'll all hear about tomorrow. You know how caught up she gets," Sally reassures her.

Amanda snaps back, "If she were doing something, she'd probably be doing it here. She's not that flighty."

"Should you talk to her, or would that be awkward?" asks Rebecca.

"Of course it wouldn't be awkward! We're still--" Amanda pauses, searching the ugly gray ceiling overhead for a word that definitely isn't written there. "--best friends."

I think of the brown-haired girl who first met me at the table. She definitely wouldn't be my first pick for 'secret drama source of the group'.

"We were dating," Amanda adds, as if I didn't get it. "But it was a mutual thing. Figured we weren't really old enough."

We're a week into school, and I've already bumped into two freshman couples making out in the hallway like the world's about to end. I make the decision to keep my mouth shut, and text my brother, hastily, Where are you? As I slip my phone away, the group lapses back into long, intermittent silence occasionally cut by awkward conversation about characters we have displayed on the table. I keep clicking my phone open for an answer. Amanda keeps looking out for someone. A few people walk by who seem like they know what's up, but a lot of other people just glare at us, and I can feel my arms shaking. I don't think anyone noticed. I really hope no one else noticed. I probably shouldn't have agreed to a public position.

"I'll... be right back," I say.

I don't even know what I'm doing until I'm already in the bathroom. I try to text my brother again, something about thanking him for agreeing to come at all, and it's desperate, but I've already sent it, and I really shouldn't be scared like this, but he's been weird lately, which is probably on me, I mean, here I am, in ninth grade, completely unable to just confront people--

What are you doing?

"I don't know," I say, quietly as possible. Previous experience has taught me that people can hear you cry in the school bathroom. People will remember your voice, and sometimes, they tell your whole class. "Is this the point where you tell me I'm braver than I think I am, or the point where you tell me I'm useless garbage?"

What do you want me to say? What would be helpful?

"Nothing," I say. "Maybe your deal. Maybe just tell me I'm not crazy."

You aren't, the voice assures me. The stone I picked up yesterday burns cold against my pocket leg. However, I can't imagine there's anything sanity-inducing about sitting in this bathroom, talking to a strange voice in a rock, desperately wishing you were out there with your friends.

Was I wishing that? "Can you see my surroundings?" I ask.

We'll talk about this later. The fair's ending. You should help with clean-up.

I remove myself from the bathroom. The Naval Brigade girls are cleaning up, the fair is slowly winding down, and we have at least eight names on our sign-up list. That's not bad. "You guys need help with clean up?" I ask.

"Where were you?" Amanda asks.

"Bathroom," I say.

She stares right through me. "Okay. Can you help with the figurines?"

We begin putting the figurines in, one by one, occasionally taking a box out so we can repackage the figurine within it. The plastic girls smile out from their stifling containers. Amanda's face passes across the supposedly transparent front of the boxes, for a second both mirror and window. There's something ominously familiar about her expression.

"Sorry," I say, "For earlier."

"You don't need to apologize for him. In fact, don't," Amanda says, narrowing her eyes. "Don't ever take the fall for people who aren't your responsibility. Never let them convince you that you're responsible for them. You aren't."

I continue silently packing small figurines into the box. When we're finished, the girls are back in a cluster, talking about transportation.

"Do you need a ride?" asks Lea.

"No," I say, instinctively.

"Alright then," Lea says. "See you later?"
I guess I will. With a wave that seems more forced the longer I hold it, I cut a hasty retreat out of the cafeteria, down the hall, and out the door towards the corner where I usually meet Adam. The air feels heavy around me, and just as I'm walking out from under the enclave over the door, I feel a few stray drops of rain tap the shoulder of my t-shirt.

I look up at the sky. It's starting to rain, not harsh, pounding rain but a softer kind, the type that licks windows and your cheeks. I'm sure my parents would pick me up if I asked, but I'd be bothering them. The Naval Brigade girls are entering a car together, but I know better than to jump over there. They barely know me. I already said no. I would be an immediate sore thumb, the parents would pretend they were supportive but secretly wonder how pathetic I was, and it would be an overall terrible first introduction. Plus, four girls just entered the car. There's probably no room.

I text Adam for the third time in the hour. Are you around here? Trying to walk home :V

No response again. He usually relents around the third text, even when he's pretending to be colder than he could ever hope to be. This is uncalled for.

The rain begins to fall faster. Water falls down from an empty sky, whose cracked appearance makes it look less like a summer shower and more like one of those empurpled storms I was horrified of when I was young, when the whole world quieted up for hours before the rain began falling hard as hail balls, and all the noise saved up in the sky rung out in deafening peals of thunder.

It's going to start getting harder. If you're not going to find a ride, you should start walking home now.

"Decent advice," I say, my voice hoarser than expected or intended. "You're free to come along if you want. It's not like I'm talking to anyone else."

I'm bad company.

"Yeah," I say, "Story of my life."

I hear something like thunder in the background, which is strange for how light the rain is, but it might just be someone rolling their trash cans back in.

Will, I think I can help you with that.