Wednesday passes without incident. By Thursday, I haven’t been near Tori’s spot, and I don’t plan to go today either. I still talk to her and Karma in French and government, so luckily it’s not like the warp is depriving me of my friends or anything.

In computer programming, I sit with my legs crossed, and usually it doesn’t bother me, but after a while, one of my legs go numb, but I don’t pay it any real mind until I have to get up and go to English. Groaning inwardly, I stiffly stand up and try to shake off the worst of it. I limp awkwardly to English class. Mr. Z gives me an odd look as I walk to my seat. I don’t know how to interpret it.

All through English, I bob my leg up and down rapidly, trying to wake it up, but it doesn’t help very much. I try to focus on the lesson, but I’m really irritated by my leg not waking up. After English I go with Lance for lunch. My leg is still asleep but I’m able to walk a little better than before.

We sit together against the fence, but today it’s rather quiet. Not too much to say today.

By time school lets out, my leg is still numb. By time I go to bed at night, it’s numb. In the morning, the numbness seems to have seeped up through my crotch and even higher. One could say I’m freaking the hell out.

But at the same time for some reason, I can’t tell anyone. The words want to come out, but then they die on the tip of my tongue. I can only hope it will run its course.

I kind of have to hobble around at school, but I guess it’s not that bad. I think Z thinks I’m psycho now because he gives me odd looks in both office practice and English.

For lunch today, I decide to go to Tori’s spot. I tell Lance I have to do stuff again, and we part ways. Once I get near to the field, the numbness in my leg immediately starts to ease up. The whole entire effected area starts to tingle and wake up.

This is probably actually the worst part; waiting out the return of feeling.

However, the connection doesn’t go unnoticed – between the numbness for such an unnatural amount of time to the glitchy area. I’m not really sure what it means, or why it would make this happen…but something’s definitely going on.

When I get to the fence and look out, there’s nothing irregular about the field. I shake out my leg a little to get the feeling back. Relief spreads through me as well as the feeling. Everyone shows up after a while and we spend lunch talking like normal.

This weekend I don’t see anyone, I just stay home. On Monday, I feel anxious about the day. In office practice, I think I hear the door open, but when I look up I don’t see anything and I get a headache. The headache carries though the whole day.

In English, I really hope Z’s in a good mood because I want to spend the whole period sleeping. I lay my head down, hoping to just get comfortable at least, but then I end up drifting off. My dreams are diluted with weird visions of the warp getting bigger and bigger, consuming everything, jumping around and spreading. After what seems like seconds, as I’m being devoured by the warp, I’m being shaken awake.

“Vincent,” a deep voice rumbles. A surge of panic courses through me.

“Make it go away,” I mutter, trying to push clouds of unrendered glitchiness away from me.

“Vincent, Mr. Scene, you’re okay,” he says and I open my eyes, trying to fully regain consciousness. I see Mr. Z’s sterile classroom – I’m right here, in the classroom, in this desk, and there’s no warp. Sighing, I sit up straight and face Mr. Z. Class must be over already because there are no other students here anymore.

“Sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” Z says placidly. “I understand that we all have our bad days.”

I rub my hands over my face and stand up, grabbing my backpack. “Thanks,” I say, before I start making my way out of the classroom.

“Vincent,” Z says, stopping me, in a voice that sounds like he’s about to break really bad news to me or something. I stand where I am and turn to look at him.

“Is there anything going on? In your life? Something you don’t want to tell your friends about?”

“Uh…” for a split second I consider telling him about the warp. To have someone who knows…someone I can talk to about this…but I just can’t. “No, there’s nothing.”

Z sighs. “Okay. If there’s ever anything…let me know.”

He says this with an amount of significance that I almost find worrying, but I try to brush it off. I could tell the words were awkward to him. I wish I could go to him about anything…I still dream of the day we go skipping away in to the horizon together. But I can’t tell him about this. He’d convict me to a loony bin.

I nod to what he said and I’m about to leave but then I ask, “Actually, could I stay here for lunch? For today?”

“Of course,” Z says neutrally, as he walks over to his desk.

I retake a seat but near the front of the class this time. I just don’t feel like going outside by the fence or anywhere. This classroom feels like my safe haven right now. I want to stay here, just this once.

We don’t talk at all. He grades papers and I do the little homework I have. But here, I’m comfortable.

After lunch, I thank Z again before heading off to art. At this point I’m just tired and I want to go home.

In art I simply doodle and then in government we have a really weird substitute and Karma and I spend the period quietly making fun of him, which lifts my spirits a little.

After school, the instant I walk outside the government classroom, I know something’s wrong. My headache returns to full force. Karma doesn’t see anything – he just keeps on walking in the direction of his locker. I run out into the main hall and I see that strange warp substance in sticky strings, running along all the halls. No one’s paying any attention to them; no one looks any different at all.

Actually seeing the warp spread around is almost awe-inspiring, but at the same time terrifying. The strings of distortion spiral down the halls, then stop and float for a while.

As they’re floating stationary, I approach it, trying to look at it all around but it has no definite form. I reach out a hand and it instantly reacts, swallowing me entirely.

My immediate thought is, okay, this is it, I’ve finally done something stupid enough to get myself killed. Then my second thought is the realization that my headache is now completely gone. Actually, all feeling at all is gone, but not like a numb limb – it’s a light weightlessness that is freeing and wonderful. I don’t think drugs could ever possibly feel this good.

I try to open my eyes, to look through the darkness I am now surrounded by; I try to move my limbs, to make a sound, try to hear something. But then I realize there’s no use for it, no reason – here, all I have to do is be.

I fully relax myself and start to drift off in to sleep I suppose, or perhaps death, perhaps nothingness; here, at this point, I don’t care.

Until I’m brutally thrust to the floor, all feeling returning to alert me of the way all of my muscles and joints are sore and stiff.

Here, I can open my eyes, and I do so to look around and see myself right where I’d left off in the main hall of the school. It’s deserted.

Standing up slowly, I brush myself off a little and try to reorientate myself to the world. That place…was crazy. Indescribable. I don’t think I could ever explain it to someone else if I tried; both due to the fact that there are no words, and if there were, I’d end up sounding completely insane.

As I walk to the front of the school, I don’t see a single person. Once at the front, though, I see Mr. Z getting ready to go home himself. He catches my eye and looks worried. “What are you still doing here?” he asks.

“I had…um, I was in the library,” I say, despite the fact that the library’s on the total other side of the school. However, Z doesn’t say anything more about it. “Have a good day, then,” he says before getting into his car.

I walk home, too frazzled to even think about what had happened today. When I get home and go to the bathroom I see myself in the mirror and realize why Z looked concerned – my face is pale, my eyes sunken and dark. I frown at myself.

The next day I have a little more color but I’m still not looking great.

After the initial soreness yesterday, by today I’m in pretty good shape. No numbness, no headaches. No weightlessness, but I’m certainly lighter on my feet.

The day passes pretty normally. In English, I arrive pretty early and I barely remember having walked over here. I take my seat and idly look around.

Mr. Z is there of course along with a few students. Lance walks in too after a little while. I watch Mr. Z a little as he writes on the board then suddenly he turns around and stares right at me with this demented look in his eyes and he starts talking but I can’t understand him. Freaked out, my eyes widen a little and I turn to Lance to see his reaction, grasping for any sort of help.

Lance is looking towards the front with his head propped up by his hand, elbow on the desk, and a bored look on his face.

“What are you—” My voice suddenly sounds really loud and Lance looks at me strangely. So does about half the class, that is now suddenly full of seated students, including Mr. Z, who looks normal now. “I—I—” I have no idea what to say. “I’m sorry…I think I dozed off.”

A few kids laugh, but turn back to their desks and disregard me. Lance and Z’s looks linger but no one says anything and class continues on.

I rush out of the room when the bell rings so I don’t have to look at Z and have him confront me or anything. Lance however catches up with me.

“Are you okay?” he asks, looking concerned. “This isn’t the first time you’ve acted funny. Yesterday you fell asleep, even.”

“Yeah…I’m fine. I guess I’ve just been pretty tired. I don’t get great sleep but I’ll start to try to.” The lies just roll off my tongue. “Anyway, I have to go,” I add and quickly shuffle off to sit with Tori.

That warp…I know I must get closer to it, more often. If I allow it to…it will show me its purpose – it’ll show me everything about it.

As I sit by the fence with Tori, Jon and Karma, I feel very peaceful inside myself. This freaking warp is taking me on an emotional roller coaster, but at this point there’s a sort of tranquility present within me that I think is here to stay. Before there was the slight freaking out stage but now I know as long as I stay near to the warp, it will be kind to me.

I sigh happily, closing my eyes, listening to my friends’ conversation, as well as the subtle breaths of the glitches all around me.

--

For a long time after that first time in Z’s class, I guess I keep dozing off and seeing weirdly realistic things. Usually it’s people just saying strange things to me in loud voices. I find myself asking the question “what?” increasingly often as I try to discern reality from my imagination.

One of the most annoying of occurrences of this is as I’m hanging out with Lance for the first time in a long while during lunch, and I’m sitting between Lance and Beau, as has become the usual. Lance and Lucifer are talking to my right, and Beau and Tyr are talking to my left. I don’t try to squeeze myself into either conversation; I just sit there and listen to them both a little, amused by their exchange without having to join in.

When abruptly, they all turn to me and start saying my name. At this point, I’m used to these strange encounters, and I just furrow my brows and will it to go away. It’s like from some terrible cheesy horror flick. I close my eyes and try to block out the sound. When after a good five minutes they don’t shut up, I finally yell, “What?!”

The noise instantly stops. In reality, they all look at me from their conversations. I bury my face in my hands and sigh warily. “I am having a really off day,” I mutter.

Lance, I know, is concerned but says nothing – he’s used to my outbursts by now. Tyr is indifferent I bet. Of Lucifer’s reaction I don’t really care, nor can I really judge. Beau doesn’t say anything, which I’m grateful for, but just starts rubbing circles into my back.

Usually, for some reason, I have a lot of…incidents, shall we say, in Mr. Z’s class. I guess it’s because it’s right before lunch, and his class it when I think about the warp the most. I’m positive the incidents and the warp are connected. But I’m not sure how…I’m not sure what I have to do to make them stop.

The incidents keep getting longer and longer, and more intricate. Before, reality and the incidents would be jaggedly sown together. Now, the seams are starting to get less and less visible. Sometimes I’ll talk to Lance or Tori, about things we talked about the other day, and they’ll have no recollection. Either it’s because our discussions were a fabrication of my mind, or the time I ask them about it is.

It even got to the point where I would imagine a whole day at school, and then be brutally hurled back to reality by a loud noise made out in the street, outside my bedroom window, and realize I spent the whole day in bed.

For a while, it didn’t faze me. I don’t know why or how it didn’t faze me. But after that day I realized I hadn’t done any of the things I had seen in my mind; had only just been in bed…I started to freak out a little. I looked around my room as though expecting someone to come out and say, just kidding! You’re not going insane! Ha ha, silly Vincent, you really fell for it.

But no one comes out and says that. My instincts tell me I need to be near the warp. I need to go to that place. I need to, I need to, this instant, right now, I need to or I’ll die, I’ll die…

Closing my eyes, I clutch my head tightly in my hands. I can’t. It’s 5:42 pm. The school gates have to be closed…I can’t go now…thank God it’s a Tuesday, I have school first thing tomorrow…real school; I can’t stay home…I won’t. I’ll feel compelled to go, I just know it.

Taking a deep breath, I set my alarm clock for early the next morning. Then I set a few more alarms around my room, just to be sure. I check my clock to make sure it really is Tuesday; it is. At least my incidents are accurate.

The next day, I awake to the tumultuous sound of my alarms going off in unison. I amble around my room and slowly turn them all off individually. I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. I take a shaky breath and drag my fingernails down my cheeks. My face is pale, eyes dark with bags…I almost look worse than Lucifer. I’d make him proud like this, I would. I can’t believe I’ve been going around looking like this. How had I not glanced in a mirror once, in all this time? How long have I looked like this?

Groaning and shaking my head, I simply get dressed, grab my backpack and leave.

I forgot I set my clocks for earlier than normal. It’s still dark out as I set off for school, but I don’t really care. Let it be dark. If the crisp, cold San Francisco air that’s whipping across my face is real, then that’s good enough for me.

It’s like having lived in a dream land all that time…sure, I realized that one day yesterday had been fake. But was that it? How long had I been…having an incident? (I refused to submit to calling them hallucinations.)

Once I arrive at school, the sun has started to rise, and I make my way to the field immediately. There’s barely a person in sight. Once I get to the fence overlooking the field, there isn’t any warp in sight either.

Taking a deep breath, however, I am calmed by being at the place where I first saw it. I can tell, deep down, this is reality – I am here, looking out, feeling this fear and anxiety, right here, in a moment in which I almost wish I could retreat to a dream world anyway.

I take the rest of the day slowly. It seems if I don’t try to rush things, they all happen easier and without incident. I try not to think of the warp slowly. In English, I focus on the lesson, and talk with Lance quietly every once in a while. When the bell rings for lunch, I make my way to the door, indecisive about where I’ll go for lunch.

“Vincent,” Z says behind me. “A word.”

I look back, hoping this isn’t an incident. Z is looking at me expectantly. “What?” I ask, to be sure.

“Could I please speak with you?” he clarifies.

“Sure,” I say, making my way back.

There’s still a few laggers in the class room. Z glances at them and says to me, “Wait just a moment.”

Once the class has cleared out, he waits up until the second the door slams closed before reopening his mouth. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The anomaly in the school.”

“Wh-what?” I ask again, stupidly. It feels like reality, but I can’t believe it yet. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Z says. “It’s everywhere – those weird abnormalities that no one else sees but you.”

“I—I, uh—” I don’t know how to respond. How does he know?

“How much have you seen? Tell me everything.”

“I—well I first saw it in the field,” I concede, both extremely confused but also desperately wanting to talk about it. “In the baseball field—in the bleachers.”

“Interesting,” Z says, looking away in thought. “Perhaps it’s different for everyone?” He continues, mostly to himself.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, needing answers before I want to say much more about the warp.

“I…well, have a seat, I suppose,” he says, gesturing to the desks, as he sits behind his own. “I’ve seen the anomaly, too, since five years ago. The reason I’ve been so intrigued by you lately is because I’ve noticed you were going through the same thing I went through. Massive headaches – they were evident by the look on your face – and falling asleep a lot. And can I assume you’ve randomly gone numb a few times?”

I nod. So does he, very slightly. “And, you’ve also had a few very strange spells that made sense to no one – except for me. Yes, I went through the same thing at first – to a point where I hardly knew who I was anymore. Do you know how long you’ve been out of school?”

I cringe. “More than one day?”

“A week and a day,” he says.

I sigh, looking down in thought. Shit. Why is this happening? Why does it have to be me? I’ve always kind of skated through life without a tremendous amount of physical or emotion exertion, really, come to think of it…and now, faced with something so beyond anything normal – a really bad break up? Yeah, that could have been a nice wake up call. But this?

I start with a question I truly hope Mr. Z knows the answer to. “How do I make it stop?”

“First I need to know how much you’ve seen of this thing. Tell me everything – every nitty-gritty detail. You said you first saw it by the bleachers?”

“Yeah…at first it was barely worth a second glance…” And so, I tell him everything. Every place that I saw it, its approximate size, what I felt about it, around it, during it. I also tell him about any “side effect” things like my headaches and numbness.

I hesitate at the part where I got swallowed by the warp. Z can sense my reluctance. “I need to know everything to be able to help you. There’s no right or wrong answer here.”

Taking a deep breath, I tell him all about it, in as much detail as I could, not worrying about sounding crazy. Once I’m done, I wring my hands together and wait for his response. His expression turned more serious throughout the retelling.

“Well,” he finally speaks, looking straight into my eyes. “First and foremost, you must never let the anomaly take you over ever again. Do not ever go to that place again.”

I open my mouth to protest but he quickly cuts me off. “I don’t care how much you think it will give you access to some grand bank of information about it—” ah, the sarcasm again; though it does sting a little in its truth, “—under no circumstances are you to do that again. That’s the anomaly getting a hold on you. That place you thought you felt yourself drifting to, inside there? That is death. You stay there too long and you will die.” His voice is very forceful and serious. It makes me want to crawl under a rock.

“Okay,” I say in a small voice. “I won’t.” I’m kind of touched by how adamant he is on making sure I stay okay. To my fuzzy little teenage mind, it’s like he’s trying to protect me. How adorable. “So how…?”

“To answer your original question, you just have to stay away from the anomaly to make everything progressively stop. You’ll want to give in and go back, but you have to stay strong.”

“But what…is it? Why is it there?”

“I hardly know anything about it. I’ve been teaching here for six years now, and it’s been here since I came back for my second year of teaching. And I went through the same thing you’re going through now. I wanted to find as much as possible, and I thought I could do that by getting closer and closer to it, further and further into it. I was fascinated by it. I went through the symptoms too – all the pains and delusions. It took me a lot longer to realize how dangerous it was, though.

“I didn’t have anyone else who knew about it, who I could talk to. Very frequently I ended up inside the anomaly, and honestly, it was wonderful – how could it be bad? It made all my problems go away. But I almost lost my job over my frequent, unexplained absences and I tried to stay away from it, but it made me crash. Without it, I was miserable. I know the other side of it is death, because that’s how far I had gotten wrapped up in it. I could feel the stench of death all around me. That’s what mostly made me realize I had to stop. All I did was never seek out the warp again, and though it was hard, it did get better. It will always be there, but if you don’t go to it, it can’t harm you.”

I regard Z for a while, who just looks tired. Dredging up all those old memories. “Okay,” I say. “Staying away should be…easy. Half the time I feel like I should haul my ass away from it anyway.”

Z looks at me, dead panned. “Language.”

I pause, before laughing. It’s so obscure for him to really scold me on language after all that. It’s truly hilarious to me right now.

Z cracks a small smirk. Then, “In all seriousness, you will have to work hard to stay away. If you give in even once, it will set you back immensely. If you ever feel it compelling you, just come to me, any time.”

“Thank you,” I say sincerely. “Have you…have you ever met anyone else who sees it?”

Z pauses. “No. You’re the first.”

I frown, not buying it. “Really?” I slather on the incredulity.

Z sighs. “Okay, I have, but now is not the time to talk.”

“All right,” I concede, sighing exaggeratedly. “But one day.”

“One day,” Z agrees.

He’s about to say something else but then the lunch bell rings. I stand up and as an afterthought add, “Oh, what’s my make up homework? I guess I have a week to make up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

I’m surprised by this. I would have thought, regardless of circumstance, my duties as Z’s English student would have remained the number one priority. I smile gratefully and thank him again. Then I laugh a little warily. “I’m always thanking you and I give nothing in return…talk about useless. And now I’m another burden for you to look over.”

“Nonsense,” Z says, finding a pad of paper on his desk and writing something. “To see a person again who sees the warp…it’s reassurance of my sanity. It gets pretty wearing, dealing with this on your own for so long. Now, we can help each other. It’s more than thanks enough.”

The late bell rings and I flinch. Z tears out and hands me the paper he wrote on. “A late pass.”

“Awesome. Thanks. Again,” I laugh.

“Just be sure to stay away from it,” Z says. “That’s all I need from you.”

I nod and say goodbye before leaving and heading off for art.