“Calias shrire, osebrord.

  Rycri jawiel, pecazien, ipotetiel, kufro.

  Rokia hoshy, zilius, noprepien, ophebrilia, uwyewo…”

  “I’m sorry, but what is going on?!”

  The crowd backed away from Alexis, who was kneeling by a circle drawn with chalk on the floor with a couch cushion in the center. A ring of plushies encircled the couch cushion. “Does she actually know what she’s doing?” A girl in the crowd queried.

  “Of course she does. Look at how effective her Cayto-summoning ritual was!” Ivan shouted, gesturing at the newcomer by the doorway. A stunned expression crossed Cayto’s face, and he stared at the floor self-consciously.

  Alexis laughed. “Actually, that was supposed to summon an eldritch abomination from the underworld,” she corrected. “But results are results.”

  “I don’t see a difference,” a boy quipped, earning a few snickers from the crowd. Alexis shook her head and stifled a laugh.

  “Okay Joshua, very funny,” she said in the same tone of voice as that of an exasperated mother responding to her children bombarding her with inappropriate questions. Then she turned to Cayto. “Thank you very much for attending my dorm party. Sorry about the other partygoers, I hope they don’t bother you too much. Don’t worry about people treating you differently because of the incident the other day either, as I explained to everybody here that you apologized, I accepted it, and we’re on good terms now, no hard feelings. They seem to be taking it rather well. Anyway, leave your shoes by the door, hang up your jacket on the coat rack, and enjoy your stay,” she instructed Cayto while he removed his rain boots. Then Alexis looked out the window, where the rain pattered onto the sidewalk. “My, my, the weather outside isn’t looking too hot, is it? Hope the rain clears up soon…”

  Feeling more than a bit out of place among the crowd, Cayto sat on the floor by the corner. Why am I even here again?

  Oh yeah, I wanted to make things up to Alexis after insulting and shocking her and everything. Since she told me that all she wanted was for me to attend her dorm party, I felt bad saying no—

  “Would you like a drink?” A girl asked, pulling Cayto out of his thoughts. He started in his seat.

  “Sorry, I’m underage.”

  The girl laughed. “I meant if you’d like to drink water or juice or soda or something like that. Not alcohol, of course.”

  Cayto stared at the ground. Not even a minute in and I’ve already made my first blunder…

  “Water, please,” he requested. Then the girl walked off into the kitchen.

  A moment later, Alexis approached Cayto with Skye in tow. The former smiled. “Hey, I brought Skye over here!” Alexis announced. “I know you both dislike small talk, so why won’t you bond over that? I’m sure that would make for some riveting conversation,” she joked. Then she left Skye behind with Cayto.

  Skye was the first to speak. “Oh, hey Cayto,” she greeted, speaking so softly that he could barely hear her.

  “Hi.”

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Neither am I.”

  A minute passed with nothing but awkward silence between Skye and Cayto, which was eventually broken by the girl from earlier coming back with their drinks. “You requested water, right?” She asked, handing Cayto a paper cup full of water.

  “Yes.”

  Then she turned to Skye. “And you asked for orange juice?”

  Skye nodded. “Yes.”

  After Skye and Cayto received their drinks, more time passed with not a single word uttered between them. Eventually, because he was that sick of the unbearable silence, Cayto was the first to speak again.

  “Sure is crowded in here, right?” He asked.

  Skye nodded. “Yes, it’s very crowded.”

  Okay, Cayto thought. This is going nowhere.

  Guess I’ll just give up and embrace the silence.

  Fortunately— or was it unfortunately?— a new arrival intervened. And of course it had to be Ivan, out of all people. Please don’t let me do anything embarrassing, Cayto silently prayed to whatever higher beings were listening. Then he thought back on the trashcan incident. But again, it might be too late for that.

  “Hey Cayto! Think fast!”

  Cayto jumped in his seat. Ivan threw something at him but he didn’t know what it was, and then the object flew by his face and bounced off the wall behind him, landing on the floor. Cayto picked up the object, which he now realized was a charcoal-colored rock, and examined it, turning the rock over in his hands. The rock had a few specks in it that glittered under the light.

  “Why did you do that?” Cayto asked Ivan.

  Ivan laughed. “Why not?”

  Skye adjusted her position, scooting in closer to Ivan and Cayto. “Well, when we were at the gym trash cans a few days ago, Juniper wanted to give you that rock,” she explained to Cayto. “She thought it would make you like her more. But since you left, she never got the opportunity to give it to you directly, so instead she gave it to Ivan, who—”

  “Threw the rock at my head instead of handing it to me like a normal person,” Cayto finished, his cheeks burning at the memory. “Seriously, I’ve had enough rocks flying at my head this week since Hazel. I don’t need another one.”

  Skye giggled. “Bold of you to assume Ivan is a normal person.”

  Ivan put a hand on Cayto’s head, ruffling his hair. “And it's bold of you to assume that you’re any more normal than I am,” he commented. “Seriously. There’s no way a guy could be bestowed with an extremely high-pitched scream upon birth, spend all his life producing shock devices for a corporation dedicated to eliminating his own kind, get kidnapped via possession, face brain damage from electrocuting himself, make a full recovery only to return to the exact same place where he initially electrocuted himself, work with children, be haunted by a garbage monster from the underworld, and get involved with Alexis without coming out with an abnormal amount of resilience. Or a few screws loose. Or both,” Ivan listed. “I know, Cayto likes to pretend he’s all proper and put-together, but I’m placing my bets on him being the most unhinged out of all of us deep down. I’d be more surprised if he wasn’t.”

  Cayto curled up into himself from a seated position, burying his face between his bent knees and hiding it with his arms. By Blanche, this could only get even more embarrassing if he chose to look up, since his heart was now racing and his face was burning with the heat of a thousand suns. There’s no way he wouldn’t get clocked out for blushing if he did.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, it had to be right at that moment where Ivan suggested that he, Skye, and Cayto get up and go to a different room.

  “By the way, I forgot to bring this up, but I have something to show you guys. Follow me,” Ivan instructed, and Skye followed him. Cayto was left with no choice but to trail after the two.

  The trio entered a small room adjacent to Alexis’s dormitory. The room was empty, save for a patchy couch and a gaming console by the window. Cayto did a double take. That logo on the console looked all too familiar.

  HFX-200. The second in the HFX line, produced by Halifax Electronics and Industries.

  Ivan chuckled nervously. “Sorry about the company that produced the console. Skye, I know you don’t like Halifax Industries, and neither do I. Not sure about you though, Cayto. From your behavior I would've thought that you idolized HI above all else, but Alexis tells me that you hate it as much as Skye does, if not more. I’m not sure who’s right here, so I won’t assume anything,” he said. Then he booted up the console. “But anyway, brand name aside, wanna play Firezone? Alexis has it on here.”

  Skye nodded. “Yeah, sure, sounds great.”

  “Is that some sort of fighting game or something?” Cayto asked. “Sorry, but I’m not too great at those.”

  “Neither am I,” Skye responded. “Whenever I play against Ivan, he wins, like, 90% of the time. But that only makes it all the more satisfying when I do beat him.”

  Suddenly a fourth person burst into the room, a girl wearing a denim skirt with suspender straps and pink-and-yellow bows in her hair. “DID SOMEBODY SAY FIREZONE?!” She hollered. “COUNT ME IN, ‘CAUSE I’M READY TO WHOOP Y’ALL’S ASSES.”

  Cayto couldn’t help but gawk at the party host’s grand entrance. Alexis?

  ***

  Alexis giggled and tossed a pink-tipped pigtail over her shoulder. Then she curtsied. Skye, Ivan, and Cayto stared at her. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re all stunned by me gracing the room with my presence. I can’t blame ‘ya,” she quipped. Meanwhile, Firezone's menu music played in the background. “So, who’s going first?”

  “I’ll go,” Ivan agreed. “Who wants to play against me?”

  Skye walked to the couch. “I’ll do it.”

  In all truth, Alexis’s gaming console, that she kept in the empty storage room next to her dormitory, seemed to be permanently imbued with a bittersweet quality. It was a gift from her father, from a time when she was young, dumb, and naive, a time before her life began falling apart at the seams. She was nine and her family had just made the decision to uproot her from her happy countryside home and relocate to Thunderport, the bustling metropolis of Cloudgate. “We’re moving here for a better life,” her mother had explained as they were unpacking the boxes. “We can’t afford to pay our bills anymore, and Papa had just received a job offer in the city that he can’t turn down. He will be working at Halifax Industries.”

  This was all rather distressing news for nine-year-old Alexis, who had no clue what it meant to be paying bills or what sort of work her father would be doing at Halifax Industries. All she knew was that there was no way she could have a “better life” in the city than she did back in the sleepy rural town of Oakwood where she used to live. In Oakwood, she was allowed to roam the streets with only her friends accompanying her, as long as she came home in time for dinner. Now she couldn’t leave her tiny apartment without being hit by the sound of a thousand cars honking all at once, and straying more than five feet from her parents was forbidden. The air was polluted, the streets were dirty, she couldn’t even see the stars at night— what sort of place was this?

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  And that didn’t even cover the soul-crushing loneliness she felt at school as the new kid, the aura-haver, the one whom her classmates deliberately tried to ignore. As soon as she was outed as a telepath, Alexis couldn’t help but note how more people were often at unease around her, whispering to each other in the hallways, keeping their distance as if she was some sort of plague to be avoided. True, she promised she would write to Cecilia, her friend from her old school, but that ended as all pen pal relationships did. One person stops writing, and then they never hear from each other again.

  To help ease the pain of the transition, Alexis’s father would buy her gifts. Comic books, DVDs, new clothing, art supplies, plushies— whatever she asked for, she got. The console was only one gift among the many she received during that time. Money was no longer an issue now that her family had a more affordable home and her father was working a job with higher security and earning potential, and as time passed and he steadily ascended the corporate ladder, the gifts got more and more expensive. When Alexis’s father got promoted to project manager, it was big news in the family, and though Alexis had no idea what sort of projects he would be managing, she celebrated with her parents anyway.

  It should’ve been a happy time for Alexis. Though her family wasn’t extraordinarily wealthy, they were still well-off, and if one looked at their financial history only, it would’ve been assumed that they were thriving. Yet in spite of all that, in Alexis’s opinion, her father getting headhunted by Halifax Industries and his later promotion was the worst thing that could’ve happened to the Binghams. As time passed, he would disappear for longer and longer stretches of time, primarily for work-related reasons. He could never spend any time with his daughter anymore, and by the end of the day, he would always come home grumpy and exhausted. The cheerful, caring, family man that he used to be was replaced by a short-tempered, empty husk of a person, and both Alexis and her mom could sense it.

  “Steven, your daughter is graduating from elementary school and you can’t take a day off work for once? This is huge! Why can’t you be there for her when she needs it?”

  “Sorry Jennifer, but I have an important meeting today with Martin Halifax. I can’t miss it.”

  “Why are you saying sorry to me? It’s Alexis who deserves the apology, not me!”

  Conversations like these were commonplace among her parents. Alexis would always have some sort of milestone, achievement, or accomplishment that she wanted her father to see, or sometimes she’d simply want to hang out with him and nothing more, and he could never be there due to job obligations. There always seemed to be some sort of tension during family gatherings because of it, a tension that wasn’t there before they moved to the city, and Alexis hated it. It felt suffocating, this newfound isolation. Then her mother began giving her the cold shoulder as well, which deeply unsettled Alexis at first, but when she would pass by her mom and overhear fragments of her thoughts, the telepath eventually realized why she was behaving that way:

  I don’t want Lexi to worry because of me. I’ve been a nervous wreck lately, and the last thing I want for her is to realize how nervous I am and get upset because of it. Doesn’t help that she’s able to read minds.

  I don’t like how Steven is proposing that we tag our daughter. Just because his coworkers are doing it to themselves and their aura-having children doesn’t make it suddenly okay.

  I’ve never been so anxious before, I swear to Blanche. Why can’t my husband take a day off for once?

  Maybe if he did, he wouldn’t have wound up in the emergency room from a stress-induced heart attack back in April…

  In January of the following year, Alexis was in seventh grade and had recently received her first phone. It was a nice phone, too— a SilverBox 21, the latest in the line. Produced by Halifax Industries, of course. Her father got an employee discount, so of course he’d take the offer, and when he gave it to Alexis, she was ecstatic, not so much because it was a new and fancy phone, but because of the attention she thought she’d receive because of it. In those cliche teen movies she watched, the popular kids always owned the newest, trendiest, products and would have tons of admirers because of it, and for once, Alexis thought she could finally escape her weird kid status because of her phone’s brand. Maybe it was shallow of her to think that, but God, she had never been so alone in her life before. If her parents wouldn’t pay attention to her, who else would?

  Nobody wanted to go spirit-hunting with Alexis. Nobody wanted to discuss her favorite movies or TV shows with her, and nobody cared about her growing interest in fashion that was deemed “out of style” by her peers, or “too much.” “Too much” seemed to be an all-too-common descriptor for Alexis. She was either too loud, too eccentric, or too invasive, too much of this or that. Maybe her peers could be impressed by her phone at the very least, so when Alexis came to school the next day, she made sure to have it out whenever she could. Perhaps she wasn’t subtle enough with it— once or twice, while passing her classmates in the halls, she’d overhear comments like show-off or bragger, but mainly inside of their heads. Those silent remarks felt like a kick in the gut.

  That was when Alexis turned to the internet for answers. She’d go from guru to guru for tips on how to be liked, how to become popular, how to gain attention in an increasingly apathetic world. Eventually, while watching an online tutorial, all of the pieces in her mind started clicking together:

  “Don’t make it about yourself,” the person in the video had instructed. “Think about what you can do for others. What can you give to your peers? What problems can you solve? How can you help them? People are inherently selfish, so appeal to their selfishness.”

  That tip was followed by another one which, combined with the last, would stick with Alexis for years to come. “And finally, think about what sets you apart. How are you unique? What can you bring to the table that nobody else can? Focus on that, and people will notice and appreciate you for it.”

  It was as if a lightbulb had been turned on inside the attic that was Alexis’s brain. What sets me apart? How can I help others?

  Hold up— I’m a telepath, right?

  It was at that moment when everything fell into place. Perhaps her classmates were intimidated by Alexis’s telepathy, but wouldn’t the world be a much better place if everybody shared their thoughts freely? Fewer misunderstandings, fewer cases of heartbreak and pain. Gone were the days when would-be couples passed each other in the corridors, too afraid to confess out of a fear of the other’s rejection when their feelings were mutual. Gone were the days when victims of bullying and harassment went ignored and perpetrators went unpunished because the affected party was too scared to speak up. Gone were pointless misunderstandings that made relationships much harder than they should be.

  That was what inspired Alexis to create her first blog, The Thought Bubble. Maybe her classmates would hate her more because of it, now that she was actively trying to pry into their brains instead of keeping to herself as was expected of her, but information was valuable. If they didn’t like her, at the very least they’d appreciate the info she provided them.

  And they did. Within days, The Thought Bubble took off, gaining hundreds of followers in a short amount of time. Few people could pass up the opportunity to see what their friends— and enemies— thought of them. However, when Alexis kept receiving complaints of violations of privacy, she had to resort to posting people’s thoughts without attaching their names to them. Even if she could hear them, those thoughts were unspoken for a reason.

  But even that wasn’t enough.

  Earlier in the fall, Alexis’s father received a complaint from her high school English teacher. “Alexis is using her telepathy to cause disruptions in the social environment at our school,” the teacher reported to him. “She is sharing people’s personal thoughts online and spreading highly specific and accurate pieces of gossip in class. I suggest that you, as her father, have a talk with her on why this is not okay.”

  And so he did. Alexis tried to explain to him how she had an honor code, how she would never upload anything too needlessly embarrassing, incriminating, or reputation-ruining on her blog, how she avoided giving out details such as people’s names to protect their privacy when sharing sensitive information, but her father was having none of it. Not only did he sit her down to talk as her teacher had suggested, but he also booked an appointment at Halifax Aura Correctional Facilities for Alexis the following week. She would never forget that day in the facility— she was so certain her life was over until Juliana and her group of mages came and rescued her. And there was one other person she had encountered that day whom she would never forget as well:

  It was a young man, roughly her age if not one or two years older. He had brown skin and his hair was somewhat on the longer end for a guy— it grew past his face, but it was not quite shoulder-length, either. He was leading Alexis and the other aura-havers through a series of hallways to get tagged, but what she remembered the most about him was his empty expression. It was haunting, really. He looked as if he was inside the HACF building on a physical level only, but in spirit really was elsewhere, lost in time and space, someplace far, far away. It was as if his soul had long left his body, which was inside the building not because of the will of its owner, but because it was being dragged along by invisible puppet strings and did not have the energy— or the choice— to fight back. Living dead was what first came to Alexis’s mind. That was what Cayto looked like back then to her. A zombie.

  Alexis had seen that same look on her father before, and it unnerved her more than anything. She didn’t know whether it was primarily because she associated it with Halifax Industries, or moreso with her family conflicts and extended isolation, or perhaps an equal mix of both, but either way, she made a promise to herself that she would never have to see it again. And hey, maybe her methods of trying to keep that promise annoyed Cayto, but at least they were working. He certainly appeared to be less dead than he was back at the facility.

  “Ivan, stop trying to change your username to Cayto_the_potato! Alexis already calls me that way too often, I don’t need you copying her as well.”

  Ivan laughed. “Oh, come on, you know you like it. And I’m not the one copying Alexis— if anything, she’s copying me! I was the one who came up with that nickname, y’know. All she did was introduce it to you.”

  “You came up with that?”

  Alexis giggled. “Hey hey, stop fighting. How about you two settle it out with another round of Firezone?” She suggested. “If Ivan wins, he gets to keep his username. But if Cayto wins, Ivan must change it to whatever he wants it to be. Sounds fair?”

  Cayto crossed his arms. “Alexis, I’ve played against Ivan three times already and he won all three games. There’s no way I can possibly win this round.”

  “Well then, guess I’ll have to play on your behalf,” Alexis proposed, pushing Cayto out of the couch and plopping her seat in his place. Cayto yelped.

  “Hey! At least warn me next time!”

  “I’m literally helping you, so you better shut your mouth.”

  “And what makes you think you’re any less bad at Firezone than I am?”

  “Wait and see, potato boy. Wait and see.”

  The next three minutes or so passed in almost complete silence, save for the background music and sound effects coming from the console. Both Ivan and Alexis were locked into focus, all attention on the game and nothing else. Fireballs flew on screen. Laser beams were shot. Competition was tight— and fierce— and neither of them were giving way to the other. They appeared to be neck-and-neck.

  Then the sound effect for the end of the round played, and the Game Over screen with each player’s stats appeared. Alexis had won, but barely. She was on her last health point when she defeated Ivan.

  Alexis lifted herself from her seat and stood in front of her opponent with her hand out. “Come on, Ivan. Hand over your controller,” she commanded.

  Ivan looked up at Alexis. “Why?”

  “You know why. So I can change your username to whatever Cayto wants it to be.”

  “But Cayto didn’t even win! Why is he picking my username?”

  “He did win, by proxy. I played on his behalf, remember?”

  Ivan sighed. “Alright, so Cayto may have won that round. But you never said that he was the one who would be changing my username if he won.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “No you didn’t. You said so yourself that “if Cayto wins, Ivan must change his username to whatever he wants it to be.” You never made it clear whether “he” refers to Cayto or myself, which means that I might as well be the one picking out my own username since Cayto was the one who won that round.”

  Alexis slapped a hand on her forehead. “Wow Ivan, way to twist my words to your advantage. You’re just like Cayto in that sense,” she commented. “I swear, you two are made for each other—”

  At that moment, Alexis heard two head voices, one from Ivan and one from Cayto. The head voice from Cayto wasn’t really saying anything coherent— it was practically just screaming, but silently. But the head voice from Ivan, on the other hand… oh boy, that was something. This scenario was a whole new level of “cliche rom-com misunderstanding,” if not anything else:

  Alexis, what the hell?! What are you getting my hopes up for?!

  You know very well that Cayto hates my guts and likes Hyacinth, right?! Why else would he get mad at me for calling her hot and admitting that I started volunteering at the infirmary because of her?!

  I mean yeah, she is, but Hyacinth’s a teacher! She wouldn’t pursue that type of relationship with one of her students; she cares too much about professionalism for that. Whatever I thought I felt for her was more like idol infatuation than anything else; it wasn’t serious, and it wasn’t real. But Cayto, on the other hand…

  Nevermind, I don’t have a chance with him either, even if I actually like him more. Not when all I’ll ever be to him is that one weird and annoying friend whom he only mildly tolerates at best, or resents at worst because he thinks I’m trying to steal Hyacinth from him.

  Alexis hid a giggle with her hand. Wow, Ivan. You have no clue, she thought to herself. I almost want to spill the entire truth to you right here and now.

  But on the other hand, she continued, they may be better off if I don’t interfere. I wouldn’t want to take away a confession from either Ivan or Cayto; they’ll come to their senses eventually.

  Now let’s just see how long that “eventually” takes them.