I stumbled into the same hallway, an exasperated groan ready on the edge of my lips, my heart pounding, my right hand involuntarily clutching at my chest, when I realized this may be the same hallway, but this was not the same world.

Someone bumped into me, and I hardly noticed. I was standing still, but I couldn't get my bearings. Everything around me looked different. Every person that walked by had, I hesitate to use the word 'aura' because it sounds trite, but they did. It was this glowing presence that surrounded them—some people to different degrees of size and brightness and all of them different colors or a mix of colors. I stared, open-mouthed.

The teenagers walked through the hall, most of them with their noses down in their phones, and then one caught my attention. It was a boy. His aura was almost completely black. He wasn't looking at a phone. He wasn't looking at anyone. He was looking at the ground, and the expression on his face... As I focused, I felt a pit yawn before me as if the world had fallen away and I had suddenly become aware that I was trapped. I was trapped inside a room, and there was no way out. There was no one to talk to, and there was no reaching any escape. I would be here until I died, and no one cared, and that was right because no one should care; I didn't have any value. I knew it to the core of my being, and I couldn't wait to do the world a favor and end my existence.

The boy pushed past me, and I was broken out of whatever that was. My own emotion set came rushing back, and I was sharply aware for a moment that those had not been my feelings. Then confusion crashed over me. I stumbled and fought my way through the crowd, trying to get to somewhere safe, trying to get to somewhere without this ocean of new sensations.

A girl walked by with her nose buried in her device. She had a pink aura around her. There were pure threads of white, and her face was a mask of concentration. Suddenly, my heart swelled. I felt elated, hopeful, bright, light. Oh, things were possible. There was a future that was what I always wanted, and all it depended on was... I broke away from her, trying not to get lost in anyone's aura. I found it helped not to look at their faces.

I made it to my locker, and then I remembered what day I was in. I stepped forward as Billy bumped into me, lessening the impact by a significant degree.

"Watch where you're going, nerd," Billy said.

Not feeling like it, I attempted to diffuse the situation. "Sorry," I said.

"What? I didn't hear you," Billy said.

I could see there was no way out of this. Inspiration hit, and I plucked a pen out of my pocket, slowing my perception of time. I could hear him in slow motion talking. It was really weird.

"Heeeeeeeeey," he said. "I saaaaaaaaaaaaid, loooooooook aaaaaaaaat meeeeeeeee."

I quickly sketched the inverse luck symbol. If anyone had this coming, it was Billy. My perception of time still slowed, I turned. It had been a breeze to draw the symbol perfectly with so much fine motor control. There was Billy, but it wasn't Billy. It was a mess. He had an aura that was only red. It was deep and it was angry and it was roiling and it was full of rage, but this rage felt more like the blackness that I encountered on the other kid. I shook it off, careful not to look at his face.

The punch was already in the air. Why did he want to punch me? I swear he got out of bed this morning with the intent to punch me in the nose. With little more to do than watch the punch creep my way, I looked at the crowd that had given us room. I wondered why they were all standing off instead of doing anything. Someone had a blue aura. It was tinged with green. She was looking at me. I focused on her for a second. She was sad. It was like she wanted to help, but she couldn't because she needed something. I don't know if I was getting better or worse at reading people. She needed something. There was a sick feeling of fear. Sympathy, but also fear of loss. What was she afraid she would lose?

I was out of time to try and parse the confusing jumble when the fist was close enough. I raised my hand that had the symbol and put it in front of the fist. I thought it might be a showy way for me to use my new vampire power. What I hadn't expected was that the freezing motion that the symbol attached would affect both of us.

Time sped back up, and his fist collided with mine with a meaty smack, but there was an immovable force between our two hands. He had punched much harder than I had moved my hand. I heard the knuckles in his hand protest. Billy shouted in pain, alarmed, and tried to pull his hand away, but of course, our hands were stuck.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I discovered we weren’t stuck together. What happened was that we had both been stuck to something that neither of us could see, and it was immovable. So it looked like I had caught his fist, then was casually standing there, holding it as he desperately tried to pull away.

The ripple of colors in auras around me showed me that people were shocked. And was that impressed, or was that upset? Glancing around at their faces, and sampling the emotions, I realized they were impressed, but more along the lines of shock than approval, and they were upset, like afraid of losing something upset. What were they afraid of?

The rush hit me. A wave of energy filled my body, like I had drunk the pure essence of good-mood, mixed with life. I felt lighter. Stronger. My backpack was no longer a burden. I felt sharper, the world taking on a clarity it had been missing before. The pure joy of it became a shield to the emotions crashing all around me. I was able to sample the auras of the people I looked at without getting caught up in them.

The connection between Billy and myself broke, and he fell, still playing tug-of-war with the strange force when it vanished. The kids— was I thinking of them as kids because of the bleed through I had experienced of Not-me after the vortex?— The teens, all became more afraid as Billy struggled up. I needed to get the the bottom of this. Were they afraid for Billy?

“What the hell nerd?” Billy said.

“My dad owns a dojo and I’ve been training since before I could walk,” I lied. I backed it up with a smirk. I felt so good! It was easy to be glib.

Billy shook his head, and smiled back.

“Thompson, George! My office! now!”

I winked at Billy and walked through the crowd.

***

I beat Billy and Mr. Fizer both to the office by a good bit and reached in my pocket, only to remember I didn't have a spoon. We had reset. I was grateful that this time I didn't stumble into the reset not remembering the previous go-around. It seemed like that had been a consequence of whatever I had done with that whole vortex that Not-me and Jemima had talked about, and something about channels I didn't understand. I didn't feel like I needed to make sense of it right now, though. What I needed was Not-me to show up and tell me a couple of things.

After a second, I was able to catch a reflection in the nameplate sitting on the desk. It looked like he was still using zombie Mrs. Streep. She was nothing but a skull now.

"Make it fast, kid," Not-me said. "This thing's about to fall apart."

Of all the questions that were spinning through my mind in that moment, and all the things that I needed answers to, I settled on one.

"Give me pointers on telekinesis. I'm about to have time to practice and little else to do," I said.

Not Me laughed—a dark chuckle that I thought was completely inappropriate.

"Fine, kid," he said. "A deal's a deal." He again reiterated moving stuff in my imagination and using my muscles without using my muscles. Then he said to me, "I'll give you the secret. Everyone's muscle for telekinesis, if they have the knack for it, is different. It took me years to discover this, so this is a hell of a cheat, but here you go. The muscle that you are able to use is your tongue."

I blinked at that. I didn't know what to say. "My tongue?" He couldn't be serious.

Just then, I was interrupted by Billy and Mr. Fizer entering the office. I looked up. I noticed that Mr. Fizer's gravity was not as heavy as it had been the last time I had been in here, feeling like I was being towed into whatever outcome he wanted. It was weird. Was this a result of everything that happened? Had my perceptions of the world shifted so I was no longer affected by things like the gravity of an adult, or was it having to do with something much more physical? Was it the luck that I had taken?

I wanted to test it. I wanted to draw the symbol again and try to get a hold of a little bit of Mr. Fizer's luck. If I could take some of it, and I found his gravity decreased even more as my gravity increased, then I would have a working theorem.

"Sit down, boys," Mr. Fizer said, his voice no-nonsense. I sat.

The colors around him weren't angry. I looked at his face and tried to sample his aura but found that he wasn't open like the kids were. I couldn't just read him. That was weird. Was this because he was the first adult I encountered, or did he have some sort of gift too? I knew way too little about all this stuff to make a conclusion.

Billy was still a roiling mass of red. I looked over at him. I shouldn't have done it, but I couldn't help it. I sampled his emotions. Rage filled my entire being, so pure and so visceral that I wanted to tear his head off with my hands and my teeth. There was an undercurrent that kept me from moving, though. It was like I was trapped inside a bottle, like I couldn't get out, like I had no agency to move my body and act on my own rage. It was like everything was outside of my control.

This was a very familiar feeling to me. I had long felt that my own life was outside of my control, and it shocked me in that moment to feel camaraderie form between Billy and myself. I had thought he was the antithesis of what I was, and here I was encountering the same emotion set that sat inside me: a feeling of angry impotence at the lack of control I had over my own life. People like my mother, whose addiction seemed to run her life more often than she did, had control. People like the state, who came in and told me what I had to do, had control. People like Mr. Fizer, who stepped in and stomped around and told me what I had to do, had control. I didn't get to choose.

And here was the same feeling in Billy. No wonder he was so angry. But, what did this have to do with me?

I looked hard at the feeling of rage he had towards me. He wanted something he felt I had taken. I realized then that was exactly what it was. Billy wanted to punch me in the face because he felt like I was taking away from him his portion of something. What was it? How could I have possibly taken anything from him? I didn't know him. Well, I knew him much better now, having relived this day over and over, but I had never had so much as a conversation with him before this. I knew him by reputation only.

"You boys wait here. I've got something important I have to do and I don't have time to deal with you," Mr. Fizer said. The same line that he'd given us the first time he'd left us here for two hours.

He left. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I knew that I had plenty of time to wait. Watching as he danced his way out from behind the desk, he performed the same maneuver that he had on day one, nimbly stepping between the filing cabinet and the desk, his gut coming millimeters away from knocking over the pencil cup.

I knew I had my target. I was going to spend the next two hours practicing my telekinesis and trying to understand how I was supposed to feel about Billy feeling the same as me.

***