Morning spilled through the kitchen like watered-down orange juice. Our place always looked like a hug in daylight—small, neat, and stitched together from other people’s stories. The table was a rescued diner two-top with a cigarette burn at the edge that Mom sanded down and sealed. The chairs didn’t match, but they both had cushions Mom had re-covered with fabric she found at a yard sale, tiny blue flowers marching in rows. A quilt draped over the back of the couch had been mended so many times that the stitches made their own pattern. The rug was faded, the kind of Persian knockoff you find rolled in a church basement sale, vacuum lines straight as a runway. The air smelled like coffee and lemon cleaner, with a ghost of last night’s rain sneaking in through the cracked window over the sink.

  I loved it… sometimes. Sometimes it made me feel safe. Sometimes it made me feel like a smudge on a freshly wiped counter.

  My sneakers sat on the radiator with the sad dignity of a patient waiting for a doctor. The torn lace hung down, crisped at the end from when I’d tried to melt the fray with a lighter. It looked like a pale worm. I looked away quickly, throat tightening.

  Mom stood at the counter in her supermarket polo. The nametag said Linda in loopy script. She’d pulled her hair into a high bun that would be a low bun by the end of her shift. Her makeup was the fast kind: mascara, a swipe of blush to pretend she’d slept. She was scrubbing a perfectly clean mug with a dishcloth like it had offended her, then set it down on the drying rack and lined it up with the other three so their handles pointed the same way.

  The citation lay on the table like a yellow tongue. She’d smoothed it flat so many times the paper was starting to remember being something else.

  “We’ll need to call the rink,” she said finally, voice careful. “Apologize. See what they want you to do to make it right.”

  Make it right sat in my stomach like a rock. “I can do community service,” I said. “Scrub graffiti. Or…teach old ladies how to double-knot shoelaces.”

  Her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Then it wasn’t. She picked up the dishcloth again and ran it along the countertop, even though the cleaner’s shine could have blinded someone. “I should’ve—” she started, and stopped. The dishcloth slowed, then started again. “You’re smarter than this.”

  Heat crept up my neck. She didn’t yell. Mom never yelled. She had this way of making disappointment sink into the walls like a sponge. It seeped into the couch, the rug, and the air until I could taste it.

  Say it. Tell her. Tell her about the thing in the street and the lizard at the station and how the world had skipped like a record with a scratch. I opened my mouth.

  She turned to pour coffee, and the words dried up. What if she looked at me the way Officer Morales had, polite and not buying it? What if she thought I was trying to distract her? Worse: what if she believed me, and then what? Doctors. Questions. Pills.

  “I’m sorry,” I said instead. It sounded like I was borrowing the words from someone who meant them more. I did mean it. Just not in the way she thought.

  “I know,” she said. She set a mug in front of me. The ceramic was warm under my fingers and chipped at the rim. It had a cartoon bovine, and the words Don’t have a cow! in a font that had to be older than me. Garage sale, two summers ago, a quarter. “We’ll talk about…consequences when I get back from the store.” She swallowed. “Grounding, probably.”

  Grounding. The word pushed against the thing in my chest that wanted to claw its way up and out. I stared at the mug and tried to picture the cow with serrated mandibles. It made me nauseous.

  “I want to talk to Sketch,” I heard myself say. The impulse surprised me as much as it did her.

  Mom’s head came up. Her eyes softened, something unspooling there. “Sketch?” she repeated, like she was testing the name for cracks. “From across the street?”

  “Two houses down,” I said, suddenly defensive for no reason. “He—he was there tonight. As a lookout.” Great. Add that to the list of things I probably shouldn’t be saying. “I just. I want to…talk.”

  She leaned back against the counter, dishcloth twisted between her hands. The corners of her mouth lifted, real this time, even if it was small. “Good,” she said. “That’s good.” She glanced at the clock on the stove—one of the numbers was missing a bar, so it always looked a little wrong. “I have to go in ten. Run over. Be back in an hour. We’ll…figure out the rest after.”

  She was pleased. I could see it. A little sun shining through the storm. I didn’t know what to do with that feeling.

  “Okay.” I stood. My chair’s leg squeaked against the floor. I grabbed the sneakers off the radiator and flipped them over to check if the soles had melted. They hadn’t.

  On the treacherous shoe, I threaded the limp remains of the lace through enough eyelets to pretend it did something, then shoved my foot in. The other shoe’s lace I double?knotted. I glared down at them both like that would help.

  “You need a new pair. Do you want bus money this week?” Mom asked, already reaching for her purse. She always asked, even when we both knew the answer was no, because I walked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. Another lie. Not about the money. About everything else.

  Sketch's house sat two down from ours on the opposite side of the street. Where our triplex crouched tired and peeling, the Tosconi place stood straight-backed in faded dark brick. Not fancy—the porch steps had a chip, and the storm door's screen had a patch—but solid. Lived-in without looking beaten down. The kind of house where both parents came home for dinner and asked about homework.

  I climbed the front steps and knocked. Footsteps, then the inner door swung open. Mrs. Tosconi peered through the screen, flour dusting her dark hair like snow. She had Sketch's—Mikey's—nose and the same way of tilting her head when she was thinking.

  "Diana!" Her face lit up. "Mio dio, it's been too long. Come in, come in." She unlatched the screen and practically pulled me inside. The air smelled like garlic and something sweet baking, with a kick of cinnamon. "Mikey! Your friend is here!"

  The living room looked like a magazine had exploded in the best way. A sectional couch faced a decent-sized TV surrounded by shelves packed with DVDs. The coffee table held a neat stack of art books and a bowl of those wrapped strawberry candies that only existed in other people's houses.

  Family photos crowded the mantel—graduation shots, vacation grins, a few with Sketch and an older boy who had the same coloring and features but was broader, no mismatched eyes, sharper around the edges.

  His brother Tony, before drugs, before jail.

  "He's upstairs," Mrs. Tosconi said, already heading toward the kitchen. "Go on up. I'll bring you something to eat."

  "You don't have to—"

  She waved me off with a flour-dusted hand. "Psh. When did you get so skinny? Go."

  I climbed the stairs, my sneakers squeaking on the hardwood. The walls were lined with more family photos, but these felt different from the formal ones downstairs. Candid shots: Sketch at maybe eight, grinning around a missing front tooth, holding a crayon masterpiece; Tony hoisting Sketch onto his shoulders at some carnival; birthdays frozen mid-cake; Tony laughing as he buttoned Sketch’s coat when he was younger than when I met him.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Sketch’s door was cracked open. I knocked anyway.

  "Come in."

  He looked up, shock etching his features when he realized it was me, then his face slipped back into neutral.

  His room was a comic book store crossed with an art gallery. Every inch of wall space was covered—movie posters for Blade Runner to Princess Tutu, convention flyers, fan art prints of characters I half-recognized from anime shows. And scattered between them, his own work. Sketches pinned up with thumbtacks, some in ink, others in those colored pencils he always carried: A dragon curled around a tower. A girl with impossible hair floating in the ocean; detailed anatomies of hands and eyes, and the study of light across a face.

  It was still there, between a Princess Mononoke poster and a print of The Iron Giant—my favorite, the one he’d drawn in seventh grade after I’d had a week from hell and he’d said, “Here’s something to make you feel brave.”

  Colored pencil on heavy paper, the kind with a weight you could almost feel from across the room. The image: a girl in a battered spacesuit standing on the sloped roof of a city row house at night, one boot planted on a rusted vent, the other on the seam of two tar paper panels. The suit wasn’t shiny sci?fi; it looked lived-in—scuffed knee plates, a patch over the left elbow, a strip of duct tape holding down a frayed cable at her hip. Her helmet was under her arm, and the hair spilling out was a mess of curls, the exact chaotic energy of mine when I didn’t wrestle it into a hood or suffocate it with a band.

  He’d drawn the city as he loved it: water towers with peeling paint, a tangle of clotheslines, satellite dishes pointed at nothing, windows lit in warm squares. He yoked the colors with ridiculous control—indigo shadows crosshatched so they glowed instead of going muddy, streetlights laid in with a dull orange pencil that somehow looked like real haze.

  Her eyes—he’d given them a slight mismatch on purpose, one a shade lighter than the other, like we were twins. The line work on her hands made them feel strong, while still pretty. In the corner, on the lip of the roof, he’d tucked a tiny folded paper crane. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it. An Easter egg he hid in all his favorites.

  I’d forgotten how good he was.

  I loved it because it made me feel like I could stand somewhere high, look out over all the messy parts of my life, and still choose my next step. He’d drawn me as an astronaut without the vacuum of space—a suit of armor.

  Looking at it, I remembered he’d made it when people were calling him names in the hall and I’d walked past like I didn’t hear. Just before I ghosted him, he’d drawn me brave.

  In his place, I would’ve trashed it. He was always the nicer one.

  He sat cross-legged on his bed, sketchbook open in his lap, sunglasses close at hand on the nightstand. Inside. Safe.

  His mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue—looked up when I walked in. He didn't reach for the sunglasses that he wore whenever he went out, even in school, despite getting sent to the principal over it more times than I could count.

  With me, he never did.

  "Hey," he said, setting the sketchbook aside.

  "Hey." I hovered in the doorway like an idiot. "Thanks. For last night. You didn't have to."

  He shrugged. "You were scared."

  "I was stupid."

  "That too." But he said it without heat. He scooted over and patted the comforter. "Sit. Your mom ground you?"

  I perched on the edge of his bed, careful not to knock over the stack of manga beside his pillow. "We're scheduled to ‘discuss consequences’ when she gets home from work." I made air quotes. "Which means, probably yes."

  "Could be worse."

  "Could be better." I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. "Sketch, I want to tell you something. And you're going to think I'm losing it."

  He leaned back against his headboard, arms crossed. The afternoon light through his window caught the blue eye differently than the brown. "Try me."

  So I told him. The thing in the street—green and slimy and wrong. The way it had looked at me with those black-dot eyes. The lizard at the precinct, fluttering around the light while everyone ignored it. The smell of rotting strawberries, which still made my stomach clench when I thought about it.

  He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment, just measuring me.

  "You think I'm crazy," I said.

  "I should." He reached over to his nightstand and pulled out a fresh sketchbook, spine uncracked, pages clean. "But I believe you."

  Relief hit me like a slap. "Really?"

  "Really." He flipped the sketchbook open and grabbed the pack of colored pencils from his desk. They were the good kind, Prismacolors, tips sharp as needles. "Tell me about the street thing again. Start with the shape."

  I described it while he drew. His hand moved quick and sure, laying down the basic form in light strokes, then building up the details. The cone-shaped head, the swollen body, the mass of tendrils. When I mentioned the mandibles, he paused.

  "Like bug parts? Or shrimp?"

  "Bug. Serrated. Black." I watched him add them to the sketch. "God, that's it. That's exactly what it looked like."

  He held the sketchbook at arm's length, squinting. "Color?"

  "Bright green. Like—like toxic waste in a cartoon."

  He selected a green pencil and started adding color in smooth, even strokes. The thing took shape under his hands, looking less like a nightmare and more like something that could exist. Still horrible, but normal horrible instead of crazy-person horrible.

  "Now the flying one," he said, flipping to a fresh page.

  By the time Mrs. Tosconi knocked with a plate of still-warm cinnamon rolls, he had three detailed drawings: the slime-worm-thing, the spiky lizard, and a third one I'd considered not mentioning–little more than a shadow, something I thought I'd glimpsed at the edge of a parking lot two weeks ago but had convinced myself was a trick of the light.

  "These are incredible," I said, studying the pages. They looked like field guide illustrations, precise and clear. "You made them look... possible."

  "Maybe they are." He set the sketchbook carefully on his nightstand, next to the plate Mrs. Tosconi had left. "Question is, why can you see them?"

  I flopped back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He'd stuck glow-in-the-dark stars up there in textbook-accurate constellations.

  "I don't know. Maybe I'm having some kind of breakdown. Maybe all the stress about Dad, and Mom working so much, and trying to fit in with Montana's crowd finally broke something in my brain."

  "Or," he said, "maybe they're real, and most people just can't see them."

  I turned my head to look at him. "That's not more comforting."

  "Wasn't trying to be comforting. Just logical." He pulled his legs up, hugging his knees. "Think about it. If you were having a breakdown, why would the hallucinations be so detailed? So consistent? And why would they be things you've never seen before, not mixed-up versions of stuff you know?"

  "I watch a lot of weird movies."

  "Not that weird." He gestured at his walls. "Trust me, I've seen weird. These are different. They're... I don't know. They fit together. Like they belong to the same world."

  He sat up, suddenly nervous. "Are there any here? Right now?"

  I looked around his room carefully, scanning the corners, the spaces behind furniture. "No," I said after a moment. "I don't see anything."

  "Okay." He let out a breath.

  I told him, "When I do see one, I'll tell you. Maybe you can too, if you know what to look for."

  "Deal." He reached for a cinnamon roll and broke off a piece. "We'll figure this out, Di."

  We. The word settled into my chest like a warm stone. I'd forgotten what it felt like, having someone on my side. Really, on my side, not because I was useful or cool or could get them something they wanted. Just because.

  "I'm sorry," I said. The words came out smaller than I meant them to. "For... you know. Middle school. Dropping you."

  He was quiet for so long that I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he shrugged. "You were trying to figure out where you fit. I get it."

  "That's not an excuse."

  "No," he agreed. "But it's a reason. And you're here now."

  "I'm here now," I repeated. It felt like a promise.

  We spent another hour talking—not about monsters or my dad or the citation crumpled in my pocket, just normal stuff. His birthday next month, the anime convention coming up in the spring, whether the new Spider-Man movie would suck. Easy conversation, the kind we used to have before I decided he wasn't cool enough to be seen with.

  When I finally left, it was with something I hadn't felt in years: the certainty that someone had my back.

  Walking back across the street, I glanced up at his window. He was there, silhouetted against the warm light of his room, watching to make sure I made it home safe. When he saw me looking, he raised one hand in a small wave.

  I waved back, and for the first time since the night before, I didn't feel like I was going crazy.

  Maybe I was seeing impossible things. Or maybe, the world was stranger and more dangerous than I'd ever imagined.

  But at least I wasn't experiencing it alone.