The success with the cup was not easy to reproduce. The second time I sampled Billy’s aura, it crashed over me, and I spent an hour fighting off a feeling of dark despair and futility. I finally broke out of it when I decided to take some more of Billy’s luck.

I set my hand on his shoulder hoping not to wake him, but it slapped down when I got close and he snorted awake.

“Huh?” Billy blinked at me, then looked down at the hand on his shoulder. I focused on the transfer, trying to pull the feeling sooner, imagining the symbol and picturing the process of pulling from the person in front of me, desperate to avoid directing my attention to Billy's face and getting another healthy dose of his aura.

Something I had never seen before opened up when I did this. Similar to my ability to see people's auras, I was able to watch the transfer. I saw crystal-clear ropes of flowing water travel from somewhere deep inside Billy, across him to the point of contact, and flow into the palm of my hand where I had sketched the symbol.

As I focused on it, it felt like taking a deep drink of refreshing, clear water, but this water tasted better than anything I had ever encountered. It was like drinking life itself. I got completely lost in the sensation and in observing the tangled, complex, flowing crystal lines of the beautiful, life-water.

It didn't register the first time Billy spoke. I was so caught up in the moment that it didn't even register that things were progressing differently than they usually did. The transfer of luck, in every instance I had encountered, had only taken a moment or two. The exception being my first attempt with nurse Streep, but I had been zeroed out.

“Get off me!” Billy shouted, trying to pull my hand off or pull away.

I stopped watching the transfer and it stopped, the contact releasing. Billy fell back out of his chair and the rush hit me.

This was more.

I got swept up in the feeling for a moment and lost track of my surroundings. I felt full, like having eaten a good meal, but in a part of me I hadn’t been aware of. The sensation of life and peace filled me, as if in a cavern inside my chest, on the other side of my being.

I looked down at Billy, smiling. “Hey, sorry, you were snoring and I didn’t mean to startle you, but you looked super uncomfortable.”

Billy relaxed at this. Looking less on the defensive.

“How’s your neck?” I asked.

Billy rubbed his neck, like he had just realized he had one. “Sore… um, thanks, I guess.”

He seemed to accept my explanation, though it was complete trash to my ears. It was like my words had more weight to them. Was this the luck? How much had I taken?

"Come on," I said. "Get back up. I won't hurt you."

Billy eyed me and chuckled. "You know, you're kind of a freaky dude."

"Yeah," I said. "My friends call me Freak. You can go back to sleep if you want. I think we have another half hour before Mr. Pheizer is going to come back and yell at us."

Billy seemed relieved at this. "What the hell were you doing?" Billy said. "When you had your hand on me, your eyes were glowing."

"No shit," I said. "Really?"

Billy nodded, still not moving from where he sat on the floor. "Yeah, that was some crazy shit, dude. And I've seen some crazy shit in my life."

I raised an eyebrow. How much crazy shit could a sixteen-year-old have seen? Then I reconsidered the statement, applying a new filter for "crazy shit" to what I'd seen with my recent experiences in mind. Who was I to say that the boy sitting in front of me had not, in fact, seen some truly crazy shit?

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It was true, what William said. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in anyone's philosophy.’ I think I had already met God, or a god. Recalling what Jemima had told me, there was more than one out there.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I could imagine being upset, but I had not been attached to the idea of the non-existence of any sort of deity. And so the revelation of the existence of the deities, through an encounter, neither shocked nor disappointed me.

All this spun through my mind as Billy stared at me, and I smiled at him. "Sorry about that. I was trying to get out of your head," I said to Billy.

Billy’s expression went blank for a moment, "Out of my head?"

I decided, since no one could follow me through the loops, honesty was the best policy.

"Well, I sort of psychically sampled your emotion set and was lost in a cycle of depression, or despair— I don't know. I couldn't label it exactly. But I was staring at the floor feeling useless, wondering if anything was really worth doing. And I realized I was living in your emotion, not mine, and I needed to take a little bit of your luck to get out of it."

Billy just blinked at me.

That was fine. I really didn't expect a critical analysis from the person I was destined to share detention with.

“Fuck man, that makes perfect sense. Close to home, ya-know?”

“If that makes sense, what sort of crazy shit have you seen?”

“I’ll do you a favor and not tell you. Trust me. There are things you can’t un-see and things you can’t un-hear.”

Billy got up, and as he did, a swarm of mouse gremlins came charging into the room from under the door. I had never seen more than one, or them appear so fast. At a glance, I estimated there were between two and three dozen. How much luck did I take?

Whatever I had been about to say in response leaked from my thoughts like a handful of sand as I watched the swarm. I must have had a horrified expression on my face, because Billy looked at the spot I was focused on. He frowned and looked at me.

“You see a spider?”

I shook my head. He shrugged and turned to sit. He paused, grinning at me. “Check this out,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket.

Worried he was about to show me porn or something, I opened my mouth to object, but he snapped the case off the phone and put the naked device back in his pocket. I shut my mouth and watched. He fiddled with the case for a moment, then brightened. He held it out to me. It was now a vape.

“Want a hit?” He offered.

I shook my head. He shrugged again and brought it to his lips. The gremlins swarmed up his body to the vape, doing something then dropping free before he inhaled. Billy breathed in deep, the vape made a whining noise, then a bang, like a gunshot. Billy recoiled, falling back into his chair. The gremlins swarmed his chair as he fell. I couldn’t see what they did, it was too quick. Billy plopped down. The gremlins danced out of the way. The seat broke and fell through the metal frame, and Billy’s butt followed, leaving him in a painful position with his knees on his chest and his butt on the broken seat.

He cried out in surprise then looked at his strange predicament. “The fuck?” He said, choking out a vape cloud and spitting a broken tooth and blood onto the floor. The burning beetle stink of marijuana and burnt plastic filled the room.

Billy reached up and touched his lips, they had an angry burn already forming a blister. The phone case-vape was smoking in his hand. The black plastic was melted. “Fucking ow. How did this even happen?”

He dropped the ruined vape and tried to extricate himself from the metal loop of the chair. He didn’t budge. The gremlins swarmed his chair again and his next attempt appeared to wedge him in tighter.

“This is some bullshit,” he said. “I’m stuck. Go get Mr P, this is starting to hurt.” He spit blood on the floor again.

Feeling responsible, I said I would and left the room. As I did, three gremlins from the swarm left too, skittering down the hall and away. I looked back at the swarm as the door shut. Billy had a long day ahead of him.

***

As I walked down the hall, I picked a direction arbitrarily. I had no idea where Mr. P. was at this point in the day. I had been to this point in the day several times, but it seemed like I was almost always in the nurse's office.

The hallways were deserted, and I kept my head down, focused on the patterns of lines in the tiles on the floor. A pair of pink converse appeared in front of me. I hadn't expected to encounter anyone. Without looking up, I took a step to the right, ready to go around. But as I did, the pink converse stepped with me. We did the polite step shuffle a few more times, matching each other step for step. Then the owner of the pink converse began to giggle.

"I'm Kaye," said the giggling pink converse owner. "Do you dance here often?"

I looked up. Standing in front of me was a bushy-haired girl with bright eyes, wearing an enormous grin.

And she had no aura. I was so caught off guard by this that I didn't say anything. She was about my height, a little taller, with brown hair and a short nose that fit her round face. Her grin widened at my apparent speechlessness, and she put her hands on her hips.

“You can catch a punch from a boy twice your size and then say something funny, but you don’t have anything for a pretty girl?”

"I apologize," I said. "Normally, glib witticisms are my superpower, but you seem to have caught me off guard."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Really? How so?"

"You don't have an aura," I said.

She blinked. "Wow! You're the only person I think I've ever heard notice."

It was my turn to be surprised. "You mean, you know that you don't have an aura?"

She nodded. "Of course. My mom's a psychic."

"Small world," I said.

"You know," Kaye said, "the normal, polite thing to do when somebody introduces themselves is to return the favor."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just very distracting to be able to look at somebody's face and not be overwhelmed by their aura."

She furrowed her eyebrows. "You mean, you can tell at a glance I don't have an aura, but you have no idea what you're doing?"

"I wouldn't go that far," I said.

"If you can't look anyone in the face, then you have an overdeveloped sensitivity with no control whatsoever. How in the world did you get in this state?"

I shook my head. "It's a long story. I don't even know how to explain it right. But, let's just say that yesterday I didn't have any of the abilities that I do now, and seeing people's auras seems to be the least of my problems."

Kaye folded her arms and began tapping her foot. "Alright, Mr. Can't-Answer-A-Question. I'm willing to help you, but truth be known, I'm jealous. I can't see them. I have to cast out and feel them. But, it looks like my method has taught me better control than whatever method you use. What did you do? Find a genie in a bottle and make a wish?"

"You joke… No, not exactly," I said. "I think I'm paying for the sins of a past life."

"Well, Mr. Can't-Answer-A-Question, let's start by seeing how much control you have over your own aura."

"My own aura," I said. "I didn't realize I had one."

"But, you can see it on other people and you can't be bothered to look in the mirror?"

It was my turn to start laughing. "No, I haven't looked in a mirror since this happened to me."

She raised her eyebrows at this. "You know what?" she said. "We're gonna be friends. Follow me."

***