“I told you: Don’t believe anything the Mad Doctor says!” Gel’s eyes narrowed from their already gritty stare, glinting with fire as the two sat surrounded by the usual sunny scene of food getting guzzled at tables amidst hundreds of lively discussions (mostly mundane).

Jeffrey took more than a moment to land on his next line. “It’s not that I believe him. But can you tell me what happened when you were in there?”

Gel’s face fell. “Once I knew I couldn’t see the secret entrance, I spent most of the time looking for Hunch while the Mad Doctor went on and on. No, Hunch never showed up. Why? What did you see?”

“Well,” he decided to dive right in, “Finnel used this weird necklace from his desk to open a doorway in the wall. And then he took me though to a place where I couldn’t see anything. I mean, it was totally dark, but I also couldn’t use my power the whole time I was there. Anyway, a light came on, and I saw all these machines and things from a long time ago, as well as some newer ones. There was this big pit filled with sand. I saw conveyor belts, twisty pipes, and so much more. He called it his collection.”

“It’s what he uses,” she whispered. “The source of his power.”

“But it’s all just things,” he responded, his voice rising without him intending it to.

“To you and I, it’s just things. But why do you think you couldn’t use your ability while there? I’m telling you: Those things are exactly what we have to find a way to get to and take from that hidden place where he keeps them.”

Jeffrey pictured the various teams that would likely be required . . . all working together in an integrated sequence of clockwork-rotation schedules, employing whole warehouses’ worth of bulldozers, lifts, cranes, etc. . . . to fully excavate the doctor’s secret store of collected treasures. “How?” he begged, sure by the ferocity that flashed across her face she knew full well his hesitation and disbelief.

“I’m not saying we have to take everything,” she explained. “Just the parts he uses to activate the rest. We’ll get that necklace for sure. And if there are other keys, he must carry them with him.”

“How can we know what we’re even looking for?” he asked, wide-eyed, chewing absentmindedly at the crispier edge of a potato wheel.

“I didn’t know about the necklace until you told me just now. But that has to be how it works. It’s the only thing that makes sense of everything I’ve seen. That’s what our ability does, Jeffrey.” Her already ardent features twinkled with fresh urgency. “We see so much at once. And the more we see, the more it all comes together so we can understand.”

On cue, the surrounding world began to shift and change in a way he found he was almost getting used to. He watched as all colors faded around the edges, leaving only white on blackness (and vice versa). Every symbol and representation of every part of everything merged as one in the center of an image showing vast and perfect completion. It was beautiful, just like before. And like Gel’s words, it did make total sense. In fact, he even nodded, both to Gel and to existence itself, for both were (or both stood for) the very same thing. “I get it,” he said. “Everything Finnel has collected, together, gives him his power over the school. He said we’d see his power as magical, but that it’s really not. It’s just we don’t understand it yet.”

“But it is magic!” her voice boomed from both worlds at once. “He’s lying to you, saying it’s not!”

“I believe you,” he muttered as he considered, for some reason, specifically the otherworldliness of Hunch.

“We can’t let him keep all the power,” she continued. “That’s why we’re here. I know that now. Thank you for going all the way in with him. I’m sorry you had to go through to that dark place without me. You’re just starting to really run with your ability, and everything keeps getting mixed up, so you don’t know which way to go. I want to help you . . . to keep showing you how to always get to that singular, complete vision that brings all the pieces together every time so you can know exactly what to do. You don’t have to be divided anymore. You can see for yourself where the Mad Doctor is lying to you, and what must come next.”

Jeffrey had the sense Gel could have gone on reassuring him forever. And he loved the streaks of genuine care he heard and felt emanating from her, through her words. He did believe her.

The thing was, he also believed Finnel, at least in part.

How could it be possible for two diametrically opposed pictures painted by competing, contrasting forces to both be accurate reflections of reality?

For a moment that stretched itself out into what could have easily become an eternity, Jeffrey 1 and Jeffrey 2 scrambled to collect arguments and rebuttals so as to stand on either side of a podium in fierce debate. But neither actually found anything to use against the other.

He didn’t know how both Finnel and Gel (and Jeffrey 1 and 2) could be simultaneously correct. But he did find buried somewhere deep within himself a simple trust that all would be revealed and put right in due time. Gel’s promises of continued insight would prove reliable. And so would Finnel’s assurance that magic and non-magic could somehow explain the same event.

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Jeffrey just needed to see and understand more, that was all.

“I believe you,” he heard himself repeat again to Gel, his tone now even and relaxed.

“Good,” she said. “I believe you too. I believe in you.”

A violent BANG! sounded from tables over, breaking their quiet moment of sweet connection and shared commitment. Jeffrey almost smiled as the two arose and turned, falling reflexively in sync, both at once ready and aware.

In the distance, he saw Mangelo Peck standing next to (not quite over) the still seated Collin Frey, the BANG! having been the crash of Peck’s lunch tray thrown down across Colin’s table. Jeffrey watched as Peck bobbed and bounced, sliding in a misshapen arc. Colin had yet to move.

“Come at me, bruh!” Peck spindled, the impassioned flailing conducted by his unwound-coathanger arms not quite rising to the level of threatening taunts or call-out jabs.

Colin kept completely still, his eyes fixed straight ahead. His meal had been crashed over, obliterated, by Peck’s tray. Remnants of potato and breaded chicken left a trail off the table to the ground.

Jeffrey absentmindedly remembered instances when he’d seen how slowly Colin would eat.

“You think I care?” Peck raged (or worked at raging). “If you do something, you better make sure I stay down! I’m done!” More fast orchestral waving couldn’t quite pass for tight, mocking rap-battle postures.

Colin took a slow, deep inhale, and held it in. His exhale then sounded noticeably tense. No special insight ability would be needed to predict the gale-force storm and island-obliterating volcanic eruption/population-decimating quake fixing to soon flatten, burn, and bury all that lay in its path . . . particularly something so slight and fragile as Peck’s inflatable-tube-person form, which continued to flicker and flap unaware of its imminent doom.

Jeffrey tried to approach by sliding his leading foot forward toward the two about to fight. But the foot wouldn’t move. It felt as if the whole leg had been injected with novocain (or been stolen).

Could Gel be stopping him, holding him back? But how?

Telekinesis, as far as he knew, was not a function of their power.

Maybe this was more like hypnotic suggestion . . . that Gel’s words to him in training about not getting involved, and not using their ability to help individuals directly, now haunted him sufficiently to keep his body from obeying his commands.

“Wait,” she said, obviously aware of his impulse and inability to follow it.

Peck now stood as tall as he could get, his chest puffed out and arms pointed back behind. This brought him close Colin’s seated height (and made it look like he just about had a chest to show).

The moment of electric friction sparked past its point of no return as soon as Peck’s torso pressed lightly against Colin’s mighty shoulder.

Colin slowly looked over as if noticing Peck there for the first time.

Gradually, Colin stood, and continued to rise until he came to tower over his insectile foe.

Resuming his skittering, Peck sputtered more threats: “You think I care, bruh? Go ahead! Bring it! Come at me, bruh!”

As Jeffrey watched the two from where he stood stuck in place . . . their dance of chaos and calm speeding and spinning out faster and faster . . . he felt himself sinking, though remained upright on his feet. In his eyes, the particular arrangement of sharp features that was Peck stopped being Peck, and became instead just the jagged, pointy attributes, themselves.

Next, Jeffrey saw again the slightly younger Peck in that old classroom about to grab and hurl furniture at the same circle of long-tormenting bullies.

But the scene instantly wound back further. Now an even smaller Peck ran through an open doorway into a kitchen where brightly colored birthday presents sat stacked on a plain white table.

Jeffrey looked on as the little Peck tore at the first of many gifts, unraveling a small science set with a bold picture on the box of a goofy-looking kid gleefully placing mineral samples beneath the lens of a mini-microscope.

The next present was a magic set, its box featuring a similarly joyful boy donning a top-hat and presenting an unseen audience with an oversized deck of cards.

The third turned out to be a computer game entitled Adventures in Math. This one’s package showed an enamored girl wearing a tan safari hat and carrying a calculator the size of a pillow under her arm.

As Jeffrey watched, the miniature Peck tore into gift after gift, the unwrapped boxes now lining the table as they had before being opened.

But where were this Peck’s parents? Where was anyone?

A warm tingle began to vibrate out from Jeffrey’s chest to his neck and down both arms and legs. He took a step, then another, no longer paralyzed as if stuck dreaming while awake. He felt Gel’s eyes all but pierce the back of his head as he paced his way, step by step, toward Peck and Colin.

“STOP!” Colin thundered at Peck in what could only be called a final warning.

By this point, much of the school had encircled the table, with faces ranging from curious, to horrified, to enthralled.

“Wait!” Jeffrey heard his own tinny voice intone, and immediately hated the sound. He wished nothing more than to be back with Gel, safe at their own table, out of sight, only watching events transpire (not barging in and taking part). He was glad Colin and Peck seemed not to notice him, their attention fixed firmly on one another.

A pin-drop might have been enough to bring Colin’s tree-sized arm and fist smashing down into Peck’s paltry frame. Oddly, the surrounding clash of all-aged students kept almost silent, no one leaping in to lead a chant of: “Fight! Fight! Fight!...”

The bell sounded (you couldn’t say it rang), clearly worked by Peck’s team of guardian angels.

“After school, then!” screamed Peck, the words clipping and distorting from overexertion.