Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Best days of my week. Will Rosenbloom, in the past tense, used to eat his lunch under the stairs and his after-school snack there, too, after my brother made it clear he didn't want me sticking around. While my brother did clubs, I debated if the art kids would bite my head off or not (they were anime elitists, and as someone who hadn't religiously watched everything that came out that season, I feared them with every bone in my small-child body) and sometimes played the DS I snuck into school against my parents' wishes.

That kid lives on the other side of the world from me, temporally. I imagine him under the moon, blinking in the darkness as he plays the latest Pokemon game. Similar chiptunes drift up from behind me. I didn't know that video games could be a social activity, but they are here. It feels so good to escape with someone. This is why, in most stories, children fall in groups.

We did, right?

Amanda and Megan are chatting idly in the corner, over the third day of the Magic: The Gathering tournament we were swiftly eliminated from. (Apparently when you put two people who don't know how to play Magic together, what you get is not one competent player, it is two people desperately arguing over the right move to make in a game they don't understand.)

Megan says, "I don't think representation is as good as we make it out to be. There's just so much that needs to be covered, and we have so many places, but so little of it can truly strike mainstream at once, so no matter what we do, it's going to be a long, long road, and people will be complaining all the way up about having it shoved in their faces--"

"I mean, true, but are you thinking about something in particular?" asks Amanda.

"Polyamory?" Megan suggests. "Think of one good trio that you don't just insinuate from the reading, watching, or telling."

"Betty, Archie, and Veronica?" asks Amanda. "Sorry. Read a lot of comics when I was little."

"Imagine them all getting together, though," Megan says.

"Pretty hot," Amanda admits.

"Definitely not going to happen! Ever!" Megan throws her hands up. "It's just-- I mean, I know people aren't-- and most people get jealous-- and it's not that I don't like love triangles, I have this special place in my heart for them, but--"

"Oh wait," Amanda says. "You know in the Kane Chronicles, where at the end, both of the girl's-- Sadie, right-- both of her love interests end up being the same person, and then she dates both of them?"

"That does not count!" yells Megan.

From the front of the room, one of the girls playing Magic yells, "Amanda, what did you do now?"

Amanda puts her hands up. "It's civil."

"Lover's quarrel," her competitor says. "Keep your eyes on the cards, Lisa."

Half the freshmen laugh, including Megan, even though her face is desperately flushed.

"Speaking of polyamory, how's my brother?" I ask, at a somewhat more discreet volume.

Megan stills from a bubbling stream to ice in a matter of seconds. "What?"

"It was a joke," I say. "You know, the kind where you fake out like you're going to say something related, and then you say something completely different?"

"Right, right," Megan says. "He's... fine? Why, are you worried something's up with him?"

"He was bad, and then yesterday happened, and now he's worse," I say, with a quick, demonstrative flash of my hands. "He'll barely talk to me to start with. He's all," I imitate his grumbling, low voice, "You don't get what I'm going through, Will, and I'm all," I pitch my voice up, "Adam, please, tell me a-a-anything." I sound pathetic. I'm revelling in it.

An unexpected hand closes around my back. "Oh, Will," Megan draws me into an embrace. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," I say. "I'm just worried about him."

Megan says, "He's doing alright. He's just temperamental."

"Are you guys... doing anything together?"
Megan looks at the ceiling. "No," she says. "Nothing extraordinary. Otherwise, you two would be the first to hear about it."

Amanda raises an eyebrow.

"I mean, have you two been up to--"

"Nope, nothing," Amanda says. "Just this."

"Sometimes we meet outside of school to work on our project!" I insist.

"Right, right," Amanda says.

"How's that going?" asks Megan.

Amanda and I have made zero progress on our "webcomic".

"I can always hit you all up with some script ideas if you want," she says. When she smiles, the whole room lights up. Megan Briggs might be the world's most effective low-cost lighting implement. This is when the late bell rings, and she slings her bag around her back. "I should get going, though! Text me if you have ideas!" She falls into the crowd. Everyone knows her. Everyone wants a piece of her, just for a second. I can see why Amanda would be so upset about not having her all to herself. I'm experiencing second-hand envy.

"We've got a few hours before we agreed to meet, right?" asks Amanda.

"Right," I say. "Get some homework done. It's what I'm doing."

"Oh, Will. It's so bold of you to insinuate I do homework," Amanda says.

Shiloh's been helping me with mine, I think, but she and Karen get so weird about that. I give her this uneasy smile, like yeah, of course, thanks Amanda, and then pretend I'm going home to do homework, either. The weight of the world, and by the world I mean my backpack, lifts from me as I enter the Veins, although I do it skew and end up in the "fleshy part". I look down at my gloved hands and clench them. The motion looks better in my head, but that's essentially where I am.

I've got the intuition of the Veins by now. A lot of it comes down to faith: if you believe that you know where you're going, that there's a path through the darkness, there will be one. Maybe that, too, is a projection of my imagination. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole structure of the place is based on the way I want things to be.

As for the real world... I emerge at the bottom of a hill, alone. The bottom entrance to the lair is a lot more dangerous, and I'm not here to contend with Ignatius's pets. I'm here to do what my team wants. Go for the heart.

The house is smaller than I remember it. All the shades are drawn, and the wood patio sags under my weight. Leaves are still plastered to the half-icy surface, which is perilously slick. It would be undignified to fall here, so I don't.

This would be my last chance, right? What am I trying to prove to them? To myself?

Nothing. That implies it's a selfish action. I'm an altruist. I'm an optimist.

My hands seize on cold metal. It's unlocked, to my surprise, so I enter the house.

There's no tea on. Vines cradle distended paper as they snake through the room, cutting up to the ceiling. Succulents patrol the halls, unseeing, morphed into vaguely humanoid shapes. All of them are still attached to their comically small pots, sometimes at the 'leg', sometimes at the back of the head. They seem to notice me, all their needles flexing, and I remain dead still.

They begin filing into the basement. The rest of the house is equally distended, burned here from Karen's lightning, a cabinet blown open by Amanda's magic, and Garrett's halberds have scoured deep lines in the flood. Furniture is pushed up towards the front of the house to create an unconvincing facade of normalcy.

I shiver. The cacti turn around, their featureless faces seeming to observe me without seeing me. Crackling noise sounds between them.

"Where's Ignatius?" I demand.

The cacti continue to crackle in conversation.

"Is he down there?"

The noise intensifies.

I hold up my shield. It emits a faint light, and I can feel the chill from it sweep throughout the room. The crackling from the cacti grows more frantic. "Please let me through," I insist, again. "I can... I can be more firm with you if you make me. Is that understood?"

The cacti form a protective wall. I knock one out of the way by ramming it with the shield, point blank, which is more difficult than it sounds given it's no more than three feet tall. It falls away into the darkness, and I follow it, feeling a thin layer of spines pierce my back as my other adversaries fire off at random. I hold the shield up against my face and keep running down the stairs. The rank smell of decaying plant matter greets me, but something has shifted.

Several figures scurry back into the darkness.

"Ignatius?" I ask. Nothing answers. The cacti close in behind me. I begin to hyperventilate. There are no portals down here. "Ignatius, please, I just want to talk--"

Something moves in the darkness, gently swinging on the periphery of my field of vision.

"Hello?" I ask, my throat dry. I brandish my shield. "Hello?"

Shiloh's instinct begins rubbing against mine, creating terrible friction. My mind is a sea of storms. My vision is going dark. I can't let him take over now, but Shiloh is trying to jerk the reins back. I feel my hands give way beneath me, as if something else is tugging them tighter than the flesh of my arms is holding them in place.

Drawing my shield forwards, I say, "If you don't explain yourself, I'm going to have to throw this. Can you please just say something?"
There's a place in the darkness that's deeper than the other darknesses, like one of Garrett's portals. It is a thin line from the ceiling to the floor, differing in width, swinging gently from side to side. I approach it, expecting Ignatius to jump, and instead the light of my shield, pressed almost against my face, catches on something I can only see in the periphery of my vision. All of Shiloh's instinct begs me to keep the shield up, but as I drop it, I see a dangling pair of legs, then trace up the body to a dark suit to the asphyxiated face of a stranger, staring up at the ceiling.

I drop the shield and fall to the floor. Shock keeps me still. I don't know how long I sit there, trying to reconcile possibilities, justifications, the sheer look of his face-- I still cringe when I see violence on television-- and the smell of it is so bad I think I might gag. I can hear my own breath coming out in heaving gasps.

Amanda appears in the dark, brush brandished. A fire burns atop it.

"Luna," she calls. "Luna?"

I can't speak.

Amanda's brush extinguishes. I feel her arms close around me, and then, without warning, they tighten until her hug has become a stranglehold. "Where is he," she whispers. "Where is he where is that sick man where is he why would anyone do this Will--"

She's just speaking so that there's noise. "We have to go," I say. "I can't fight."

"We can't leave him like this," Amanda says. "What if he kills more-- what if he--"

"I don't want to die," I whimper.

Amanda picks me up. I lean against her.

It's not a game any more.

Amanda and I sit in the Veins until my limbs unlock. Shiloh sits on my lap, emitting a deep, rumbling purr, and I numbly run my hands through his white fur. She picks cactus needles out of my back and I lean into it, feeling every single spine slide out even though it pierced the costume and not me. Amanda keeps rubbing my back, and I lean so close to her I'm in danger of pressing the spines in further. It doesn't matter. I just need to be close to someone right now.

"It's okay," she tells me. "We'll have him next time, with the others."
"We can't tell them about this," I say.

Shiloh does not say anything in my arms, but I can feel the weight of his judgement.

"They might run for it," I say. "I don't want them to stall out on us. We can't do this alone."

"You really don't trust them that much?" Amanda asks.

"I can't," I explain.

Amanda's eyes cast down. She's almost done removing the needles when Karen walks in, arms folded, dark thundercloud of hair swinging about her face. The sudden intrusion makes me flinch. Can't help it. I try to dry my eyes off. Shiloh presses his face against mine, which I guess is his way of helping... it's nice to know he's in.

"What are you doing, braiding his hair?" asks Karen.

"Yeah," I say.

Karen's arms fold tighter. "Well, I didn't hear back from any of you on the intel, but I found out what's on the other side of that river. For one thing, about five miles down one way, you've got a power plant. On the other, up near that private school... Prince Academy? Crown? Bougie High. Over there, you have a bunch of rich assholes in ten-million mansions. Few local politicians. Lot of CEOs for companies that operate in the industrial district. At least we know nothing of value can be lost on that front."

I suppress my gag reflex.

"Karen," Amanda says.

"It was a joke," Karen says.

"Seriously?"
Karen shrugs. "Can we leave now? I've got places to be later. Big party down the street. I know this takes dibs, which is why I'm here in the first place, but I'm not here to sit down on the braid train."

"Where's Garrett?" I ask. My voice sounds like my vocal chords just went through a wood shredder, or another iteration of puberty. Maybe both in rapid succession.

"Maybe he can't--" Karen begins.

Garrett enters.

"You're late," she says.

"Just got off my shift at my job," Garrett says. His face flushes. "But you know that."

"Let's go," Karen says.

"I don't know if I--" I begin.

"Will, this is not the time to pussy out," Karen says.

"Excuse me?" Amanda rises.

"Amanda," I beg. "I'll be up in a second. Can we just talk about things as a team?"

Garrett steps in the way. "Someone might know something about teams, here--"

"There's a reason we keep everything we do to ourselves, here," Karen says. "It's safety."

"For us as people, Karen, or just for your feelings?" Garrett asks.

"Us!" Karen says. "Safety is my top priority here. For us, for other people-- for everyone! That's what superheroes are all about. We keep the world safe. We keep ourselves safe. Heroism is the preservation of life, of the normal. I'd rather be a vigilante, too, but not in this situation. This needs for us to--"

"What definition of safety do you have that includes cutting me out of your public life?"

"You're suspicious."

"How?"

"Garrett--"

"How, Karen? Are you embarrassed of me? Can you admit that you don't want to be seen with Mr. Milk Toast? That you'd love to indulge in comics, in fantasy, in whatever, but as long as it's in a safe little corner where no one else can see it? Are you worried about it defining you, Karen, are you living in 2010 where people are still around to judge you? Are you embarrassed?"

"Shut up!"

"You were always the down-to-earth one," Garrett accuses her. "I always believed,out of our whole group, that you, at least, weren't just using this to-- to make you feel better about yourself."

"Guys," I say. "We can work this out. If you'll both just calm down for a second--"

Karen's fists crackle with electricity. "Are you going to have Shiloh tell us what to do, Will?"

"That's not fair," Amanda says.

Shiloh looks at me, nudges my leg. I don't think I can take any more of this tonight. "Go home," I tell Karen. "Go to your party. We'll start again tomorrow. We've always had time, right? No sense of urgency now. Everything is going to be fine. Promise."

Karen sighs. "Fine. Fine! I'm going." On the way out, she punches the wall as hard as she can. I expect her to jump back, clutching her hand, but instead, she dents it.

The room returns to silence. I stare after the dent in the wall.

"If there's anything to do without her," Garrett suggests, "I'm still down to do it."

"No," I say.

"No, as in we're not going to, or no, as in there's nothing to do?"

"I don't know," I say, already striding towards the exit. "Ask Shiloh."

I throw up when I get home. I keep waiting for Adam to come in, since I can sense him hovering outside the door. He's probably waiting for me to leave so he can use the bathroom. I shudder over the porcelain rim.

I'm so afraid, I imagine telling him.

I imagine it over and over again, but every time I rise to bring the vision out of my mind, something holds me back.