i. A GAME OF KICKBALL SENDS GWEN'S BULLY TO THE PSYCH WARD
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In all the years of gym class being a thing, it has never been fun. That was the one thing Gwen could think about as she loitered with her team, waiting for the moment that she had to step up to bat― or, in this case, kick.

She had never been particularly athletic. Short and a little stocky, she had always been a prime victim for teasing. And her kickball team was already on their second "out," so she knew she'd get stuffed in a locker if she got the third.

"Teasing" was a nice way to describe how the kids at school treated her. Getting shoved in the hallways, called plenty of colorful names, and having pens launched at her head in history class probably qualified more as "bullying." But when ninety percent of the school did it, the administrators liked to pretend it didn't exist.

Anyways, it wasn't just gym class that sucked. Every class sucked. Gwen had always been a solid C+ student, and she couldn't exactly skate by in Pre-Algebra. But English had always been the worst― all of the letters seemed to float right off the page.

Her parents had worked something out with the school to give her more time on tests, which was great, but it only ended in kids calling her "special ed."

Her classmates were demon spawn.

"Gwen!" One of them shouted from the outfield. "Kick it right here!"

Zach Sanford. Probably the worst offender when it came to bullying her. Gwen didn't know why he acted so high and mighty, since he'd been held back two whole years. Maybe lording over sixth-graders made him feel better about not being in high school yet.

She had been on edge all day, from the early-morning pop quiz in Pre-Algebra― which she had definitely bombed― to having bits of a PB&J sandwich flicked at her throughout lunch. She spent recess trying to wash jelly out of her hair.

And now he wanted to humiliate her in front of their gym class? Game on. She wasn't going to go down that easily.

Naturally, she did go down that easily. The girl pitching rolled the ball to her, and Gwen gave it her all... Except she kicked it straight to the kid at third base.

She had taken off running, so she didn't realize that she'd gotten the third out until she heard groaning from her team. The first baseman, only five feet to her right, gave her a shrug as the teams began to change sides.

"Come on!"

"Nice job, Gwen."

"Who let her go next?"

Gwen felt her face burn. She wanted to turn around and snap at her teammates, but whatever insults she was about to spit at them came out as a little squeak.

Zach strode up to her. "Thanks, Gwen. I knew I could count on you."

She glared at him. He paused. Then, a downright evil grin spread across his face.

In the loudest voice ever, he said, "Are you going to cry?"

A few giggles from the crowd. Gwen tried to blink the tears away, but it was too late. Now the twenty-four other sixth-graders in the room knew that Gwen Rosales was crying because she got the third out in kickball.

"Gwen." That came from Coach Harris, the gym teacher. "Why don't you grab a drink at the water fountain?"

Gwen didn't listen. She didn't want a drink at the water fountain. She wanted to punch Zach Sanford in the face hard enough to pop the wires off of his braces.

But punching Zach and messing up his braces would mean getting expelled, and she couldn't afford for that to happen. This was her eighth school in eight years. She didn't want to see the look on her parents' faces if she came home with that kind of news.

He was still leering down at her, though. And as all of the anger inside of her began to bubble up, Gwen realized that she wouldn't necessarily get expelled for saying that his mother should have swallowed.

Actually, she didn't know what that meant. But someone had said it to her at the last school she got kicked out of, and it had been enough for her to hit them, so it had to mean something bad.

Insulting him somehow became the diplomatic option. But in the split second after he gave her that stupid grin, Gwen let the anger take over.

She screamed at him.

It wasn't an insult. She just... Screamed. Whatever came out of her mouth wasn't even a word. Some more people began laughing, and Gwen realized that now she really would be called special ed. Normal girls didn't scream for no reason.

But Zach wasn't laughing. He adopted a look of utter horror, went white as a sheet, and Gwen figured that he did it to freak her out. She turned away to go back to the outfield, her cheeks still tinged pink.

The girl who had been pitching drew everyone's attention back to her. "Coach! Coach!"

"What?" On the sidelines, Coach Harris glanced up from his paperback. "What is it?"

"Something's wrong with Zach!"

Gwen turned around to see that Zach hadn't moved. He hadn't even blinked. He kept staring at her, but his eyes weren't seeing. Like his vision sort of passed right through her, and Coach Harris, and probably even the walls of the gymnasium.

There was a wet patch down the front of his jeans, which Gwen might have laughed at if she hadn't gone cold and clammy with dread.

Coach Harris sent a kid to find the nurse, and in the meantime, he tried to get Zach to sit down or at least drink some water. Zach didn't budge.

The rest of the class had formed a semicircle around them, talking in hushed whispers. Then the nurse, Mrs. Giles, showed up after a few minutes, and she easily cut through the crowd of alarmed sixth-graders.

She had come in a few months ago when the previous nurse had to go on maternity leave― weird, because the old nurse hardly showed it. Gwen didn't realize she had been pregnant until she left.

Mrs. Giles was a short lady, shorter than most of the kids, but she carried herself with authority. And she was old, with pure white hair and a face creased by wrinkles. Startling gray-blue eyes peered out over her square-framed glasses. She always wore a baggy cardigan, too. Her nails, long and claw-like, had been painted purple and glittery.

"Give him some space, now!" She chirped, and the semicircle of students shuffled back a few feet.

You could have heard a pin drop in the gym as Mrs. Giles examined Zach. He had been mumbling nonsense under his breath, but it didn't seem to faze her.

Chipper as ever, Mrs. Giles looked around the gym. "Can anyone tell me what happened?"

The other kids gave Gwen a wide berth, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end when Mrs. Giles met her gaze.

When Zach noticed her, he cringed away, his eyes wide. The mutterings began again, except this time they sounded more like whimpers. Mrs. Giles only patted his arm and motioned for a girl to come over.

"Would you take Zach to my office?" She asked. "I'll be down in just a minute."

The girl nodded and tapped him on the shoulder. Zach didn't budge.

"You might need to guide him," Mrs. Giles added helpfully. "Hold his hand."

In any other situation, a girl and a boy being told to hold hands might have gotten some laughter from their classmates. Instead, the class parted like the Red Sea when the two passed them, the poor girl holding Zach's limp hand away from her like he was a ticking time bomb.

Coach Harris cleared his throat. "Five minutes left. Go change, everyone."

The class began to file out, grabbing their backpacks from their places along the wall and heading for the locker rooms. Gwen took that as her chance to escape the scrutinizing gaze of Mrs. Giles, even though she hated changing in front of the other girls in her class.

"Not you, dearie."

Gwen froze. She was going to get detention for a month, she just knew it. Detention for a month and a handwritten letter of apology to Zach. Slowly, she turned to face Mrs. Giles, who had been waving Coach Harris and his paperback novel out of the gym.

They were alone. She had goosebumps again.

"If you think I did anything, you're wrong," Gwen said, with far more courage than she could afford to have.

Mrs. Giles laughed. "I don't think you did anything. I know you did."

"I don't even know what happened to him," she replied. "He just... Freaked out."

"You and I both know that's not true."

"Don't put words in my mouth," Gwen retorted.

Mrs. Giles bristled. For a moment, fury flashed in those gray-blue eyes. She covered for herself with a typical, nice-old-lady-smile. "That's no way to speak to your elders, Gwen."

"Don't put words in my mouth, ma'am."

Instead of immediately giving her detention, Mrs. Giles laughed. "Now, dearie, what you did to that boy is deplorable."

"I didn't do anything."

Gwen knew better than to pick a fight with a teacher, but she wanted this stupid old lady to get her story right before she took it to the principal... And her parents.

"You cause us so many problems, Gwen," Mrs. Giles said. "Just like your parents."

Now it was Gwen's turn to bristle. Her parents? How did her parents cause the school problems? Was her educational plan really that much of a hassle?

She began to protest, but Mrs. Giles cut her off. "You make yourself very easy to sniff out, Gwen."

"Really?" Gwen deadpanned. "I mean, I don't think so. I use deodorant."

Mrs. Giles wasn't smiling anymore. "You're not very funny. And now I think you ought to pay for it."

Nothing about that conversation had been normal. And yet, it still shocked Gwen when Mrs. Giles shed her cardigan to reveal two feathery wings. Her long nails grew even further, until they became talons. Purple, glittery nail polish shone on them under the gym's fluorescent lighting.

Mrs. Giles flapped her wings, and Gwen took off running. She was ten feet from the door when a gust of wind sent her sprawling.

Wind. Wind? How did an indoor gymnasium have wind?

Scrambling to her feet, Gwen turned to see Mrs. Giles flap her wings again. Another gust of wind, and the contents of her backpack skittered across the linoleum floor. Oh, well. It was her fault for not zipping it fully.

Mrs. Giles took to the air, and Gwen had a split second to panic before she hurtled down, her talons outstretched. She'd lost her shoes, and Gwen saw the glint of much uglier, not-painted talons headed straight for her face.

She rolled to the side, and felt a breeze on her back as Mrs. Giles took a sharp turn to avoid crashing into a cart of basketballs that had been pushed against the wall.

Something else glittered in the fluorescent gym lights. A pin. Not any pin, but Gwen's pin. Her parents had called it a gift from her biological parents when they adopted her. She would be damned if she lost the last piece of her biological parents because of her murderous school nurse.

Gwen dove for the pin, snatching it up and ducking as Mrs. Giles swooped down again. She ran for the storage room where they kept the sports equipment, shutting the door just as Mrs. Giles slammed into it.

The impact shook the carts of volleyballs and hockey nets, but Mrs. Giles's screech of indignation chilled Gwen to the bone.

She gave herself one minute to come up with a game plan. The storage room had plenty of stuff that could be used as makeshift weapons, right? If she was going to die today, she could at least try to whack Mrs. Giles with a hockey stick. It wasn't a very dignified way to go out, but she'd rather die fighting than die huddled in the storage room.

Her thumb absently ran over the surface of the pin, and her heart dropped as it shifted under her touch. Had she broken it? Squinting in the dim room, Gwen tried to look for any damage. She gave the surface of the pin another push, and it gave way.

Except it didn't break. The surface of the pin pushed in like a button, and the bottom of the pin grew into a sort of handle. She gripped it, and watched as the needle morphed into a ball-and-chain.

The thing in her hand looked ancient, but its shiny bronze finish said otherwise. She'd seen a picture of one before, when her history class learned about the Middle Ages. She couldn't remember what they were called, but that didn't matter.

She had a weapon.

Gwen pushed the door to the storage room open and launched a football out. Mrs. Giles swooped down and punctured it with her feet-talons almost instantly, and the deflated ball fell to the ground with a soft whap. It would have been pathetic if Gwen hadn't been imagining that ball as her head.

If Mrs. Giles wanted to camp out and try to pick Gwen off when she left the storage room, fine. But she had to be ready to take a spiky bronze ball to the face.

"You can't hide forever!" Mrs. Giles crowed.

Gwen cracked the door open and shouted, "Bet you five bucks that I can!"

"Come out, dearie!" She could see the kindly smile on Mrs. Giles' face. "We need to have a little chat!"

Gwen took a second to brace herself, then pushed open the door and darted out. She heard wings flapping, and shot a glance over her shoulder. Mrs. Giles had her foot-talons outstretched, ready to drop down and pick her off.

Perfect.

Gwen stopped running, turned around, and swung the thing in her hands with all her might.

Mrs. Giles didn't have enough time to swerve. The ball-and-chain struck her talons and passed right through them. She disintegrated into yellow powder on the spot, leaving behind a nasty smell and the echoes of her angry shriek of pain.

Panting, Gwen looked down at her newfound weapon, only to find her pin sitting in the palm of her hand. She frowned, but then the bell rang, and she had to scramble to shove her belongings into her backpack and get to her next class.

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The room went deadly silent as Gwen dropped into her seat. She already hated science, and she could tell that this would be a bad class when the kid sharing a lab table with her scooted as far away from her as he could.

Whispers began to circulate.

"She's the one that got Zach sent home."

"You should have heard her scream."

"Mrs. Gallagher said he was in a state."

That made Gwen perk up. Mrs. Gallagher? As far as she knew, there had never been a Mrs. Gallagher at her school.

Turning to the kid beside her, she murmured, "Who's Mrs. Gallagher?"

He frowned. "The nurse?"

"I thought Mrs. Giles was the nurse," she said. "Because the old one went on maternity leave."

"Uh, no?" The kid gave her a weird look. "Mrs. Gallagher's always been the nurse. She's not on maternity leave."

Gwen frowned and turned back to face the whiteboard before she could get called out for talking during class. She just wanted to take notes about the phases of the moon and get this over with.

As it turned out, she didn't even get a chance to take out her notebook. Two minutes into class, the vice principal came on the P.A. system and called her down to the front office.

It wouldn't be her first time having a chat with the principal, but she had never done anything seriously bad until now. Her stomach did some uncomfortable flips as she trudged down the empty halls.

The lady at the front desk didn't even look up. "Gwen Rosales?"

"Yes, ma'am," Gwen mumbled.

"Take a seat."

And that was that. She sat in one of the chairs that lined the side of the front office, bouncing her leg, her heart pounding a rhythm against her ribcage like it was a marimba.

She didn't know how long she sat there. Nobody called her into their office, so she got stuck watching the minutes pass by on the clock. Five... Ten... Fifteen...

Around the twenty-minute mark, a door behind the front desk opened, and the principal stuck his head out. "Gwen? Come on in."

Gwen knew what was about to happen the moment that she stepped into the office and saw her parents sitting at the principal's desk. They didn't look too happy. She took a seat without a word.

Her school's principal was Mr. Parrillo, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and a badly-grown-in goatee. Gwen found herself staring at it as he began his lecture.

It went about as well as she expected. We're very sorry, but Gwen won't be allowed back next year, blah blah blah... She's a disruptive presence in and out of class... The incident in gym class today was the final straw... Nonsense, basically.

At least it was June. She only had to tough it out for a few more days, and the second that she turned in her last final exam, she would be gone.

"Gwen." Her mother had turned to her expectantly. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"I'm sorry." She paused. If she was going to be expelled, she might as well give Mr. Parrillo her two cents about how he ran his school. "And I'm glad someone finally put Zach in his place. He deserved it."

Beside her, her mother put her head in her hands.

"He had a nervous breakdown, Gwen," Mr. Parrillo said. "You aren't remotely sorry for what you did to him?"

"I didn't do anything," Gwen snapped. "Just like how you don't do anything for me when I get bullied―"

Her father stood up abruptly. "We're sorry about the trouble Gwen's caused you this year. If you'll excuse us..."

That couldn't be good. Her father never raised his voice. So, meekly, Gwen followed her father out of the principal's office, out of the front office, and eventually out of the school. They sat in silence in his beat up red pickup truck until her mother returned.

"What made you think that would be a good idea?" She hissed as the truck pulled out of the parking lot. "We didn't raise you to talk back to your teachers, Gwen―"

"I was right!" Gwen retorted.

"Well, we know that, but he won't believe it!"

She huffed. "Is nobody going to ask for my side of the story?"

Her father caught her eye in the rearview mirror. "We were going to, but―"

"But? But what?"

"But then you kept talking," he shot back.

Gwen shut up pretty fast after that. She knew she'd messed up, because her dad didn't get angry like that. Her mom did, but only when that kind of anger was warranted. Also, it kind of sucked to get roasted by her own dad.

Her mother reached into the backseat and put a hand on her knee. "You're our daughter, Gwen. We'd always believe you first."

"Not this time," she muttered.

Yes, she was in the midst of a pre-teen angsty phase, but Gwen meant that wholeheartedly. She didn't know how she could explain the events of this afternoon to her parents without ending up as Zach Sanford's roommate in the mental hospital.

"Gwen." Her mother turned around in her seat to give her a look. "We're not stupid. We know that boy bullied you―"

She huffed. "It's not that."

Her mother sighed. "Well, would you give us a chance?"

"No! Because you won't get it."

"And why not?"

"Because I almost died today!" Gwen snapped.

She expected her parents to laugh it off. They didn't see the world the way that she did― probably because they didn't have ADHD and dyslexia― but they tried. And what they couldn't grasp, they let Gwen handle.

They were genuinely good parents. Gwen didn't feel babied by them or anything. They treated her like the young woman she was, and she liked that. She liked feeling "grown up" and joking around with them. But they just didn't understand some things.

In fifth grade, her class had gone on a field trip into downtown Philadelphia for a history assignment. The old man leading the museum tour had thick, Coke-bottle glasses, but that didn't fool Gwen. She saw that he only had one eye in the middle of his forehead.

That had also been the year that she'd looked out of the window during an especially boring math class and caught a glimpse of a winged horse soaring above the skyscrapers. But when she blinked, it turned into a far-off airplane.

Those were the things that her parents couldn't understand. She didn't expect them to believe her about her school nurse trying to kill her, either. What rational person would?

But when she said that she'd almost died, the atmosphere in the car changed. The temperature hadn't dropped, but Gwen still shuddered. The look her parents shared sent a chill down her spine.

"Gwen," her father said quietly. "When we get home, I want you to pack a bag."

She frowned. "Are you not worried about me almost dying, or...?"

"You can tell us all about it on the drive."

"On the drive?" Gwen looked between her parents. "What drive?"

Neither of them paid her any attention. They seemed to be having a silent argument with nothing but their expressions.

"We can't," her mother finally murmured.

Her father shook his head. "We have to."

"Guys." Gwen frowned. "I'm right here. What drive are we talking about?"

Apparently, her parents had become hard-of-hearing to the voices of any kids under thirteen. They just kept murmuring to each other.

They might have been fine with talking like that, but it had seriously freaked Gwen out. She had never seen her father so serious, or her mother actually beg him for something. Watching her silently plead with him while he never took his eyes off the road killed a part of Gwen's soul, actually.

A note of panic seeped into her voice. "What drive?"

The truck pulled into their driveway, and her mother turned around in her seat. "Don't ask questions. Just pack."

Her mother had tears in her eyes, which meant that things were really bad. And since Gwen hadn't seen her mom cry since her grandma died three years ago, she decided to shut up and pack a bag.