She folded her hands on the legal pad again and looked at me, really looked, like everything up to this point had been preface.

  “Now,” she said. “Let’s talk, Diana.”

  “How long have you been seeing them?”

  Ms. Cho didn’t ease into it. No warm-up questions, no “tell me about yourself.” Just that, dropped in the middle of the room like a weight.

  My first instinct was to play dumb. “Seeing…who?”

  She raised one eyebrow a fraction. “Diana,” she said, and somehow my name sounded like both a warning and an invitation. “You watched Prince the entire time he was in here. Your mother never looked at him once.”

  “Prince,” I repeated, brain snagging on the name.

  “The little one on Patrick’s shoulder,” she said. “The lizard with wings.”

  A breath left me that I hadn’t known I was holding. “You…saw him.”

  “Of course I saw him.” She tilted her head. “What I’m asking is: how long have you been seeing things other people can’t?”

  My mouth tried one more lie. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “You’re bright,” she said. “Too bright to pretend this is a coincidence. You followed Prince’s every move while he was in the room. Your pupils dilated. Your posture changed. Your mother, meanwhile, did not react.”

  Ice slid down my spine. “How—”

  She tapped a drawer handle. “Unusual incident reports are not filed in a vacuum,” she said. “They exist for us.”

  I stared at her. At the pad. At her calm face. “The night of the rink,” I said slowly, “was the first time. I was tagging the wall. I saw this…thing…crossing the street. Six feet long, bright green, smelled like rotten strawberries. Nobody else reacted. Then at the station there was the little one at the light. Then Monday, two more in homeroom. Then a…frilled dog thing in an alley. Then Tuesday at the park, a shield-head.”

  The words picked up speed, tripping over each other on the way out. “I saw some kids with swords. The alley was cleaned after. Alleys don’t smell like bleach. Except I thought maybe that was me being crazy, then your assistant walked in with a miniature dragon on his shoulder like that was a normal accessory and you didn’t even blink—”

  I snapped my mouth shut. My fingers had knotted into the hem of my cardigan.

  Ms. Cho listened without interrupting, pen poised above her pad but not moving. When I finally ran out of air, she inhaled once, slow.

  “Good detail,” she said. “Specific. You don’t embellish. Good traits in an observer.” The interest in her eyes wasn’t the polite kind adults use when kids tell stories. It was…professional. “Yes,” she added, answering the question I’d choked down. “That is why you’re here.”

  I swallowed. “How did you know? I mean…how did Northbridge know to send me a letter?”

  She slid the drawer open and pulled out a thin, well-organized stack of papers clipped together. She set them between us and tapped the top page with her finger.

  I recognized Officer Morales’ careful block letters immediately. UNUSUAL INCIDENT REPORT. My name. The date of the rink. Key phrases underlined: GREEN WORM-LIKE CREATURE. ROTTEN STRAWBERRY ODOR. SERRATED BLACK MANDIBLES.

  “Police, therapists, schools,” Ms. Cho said quietly. “In this city and in others. All have versions of this paperwork. ‘Unusual perceptions,’ ‘disturbing imagery,’ ‘hallucinations.’ When someone talks about seeing…things…they are encouraged to document. If the descriptions match nothing, they’re filed and forgotten. If the descriptions match what is real—” she tapped the stack again “—they are routed to us. Through channels.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Us,” I repeated. It felt like I was standing on the edge of something and couldn’t see the bottom. “Who’s…‘us’?”

  “People who see what you see,” she said. “And people who’ve spent a very long time keeping what you see from hurting everyone else.” She sat back slightly. “We call children like you foundlings. Lost ones. Kids who were born into our world and then drifted—or were pushed—into the ordinary one without knowledge of the rules. Sometimes the descendants of our lines are born without the sight and they integrate into the human world. A generation, or two, or ten later, a child is born with the sight and it awakens at your age. We strive to find those children and bring them back home.”

  My throat tightened. “Do you think my father was…like you?” I didn’t even know what I meant by that, only that every nerve in me pointed in his direction.

  “We’re looking into it. It is likely one of your parents was,” she said. “Your mother is a normal human. She doesn’t see Prince.”

  “There’s a name for it?” I asked. “For…what I am?”

  “There is,” she said. “But names come with history, and history is a lot to drop on one person in forty minutes.” Her mouth relaxed into the slightest hint of a smile. “For now, let’s say you’re one of ours. Whether you want to be or not.”

  I stared at the edge of the desk, at the neat grain of the wood. “So when you say ‘ours,’ you mean…Northbridge?”

  “I mean a network of schools and communities like this one,” she said. “All over the world. They go by different names, have different fronts. Some are small. Some are…less small.” A tiny shrug. “This is one node. There are others in London, in Tokyo, in Lagos, in S?o Paulo. When we come across a foundling, we try to bring them in. Here, or somewhere like here. Before they get hurt. Or attract the wrong attention.”

  “The wrong attention,” I echoed. “Worse than getting laughed out of the hallway by four girls in matching lip gloss?”

  Her eyes softened, just a bit. “Oh, yes.”

  I picked at a rough spot on my thumbnail. “How long has this been going on?” I asked. “This…network?”

  “Longer than there have been skating rinks,” she said dryly. “Longer than there have been cities. We’re a secret part of history, Diana.”

  A breath I didn’t know I was holding came out shaky. “So the night at the rink,” I said. “That was…on schedule? For you?”

  She nodded once. “Powers and sight typically emerge in late puberty,” Ms. Cho said. “Girls a bit earlier on average, boys a bit later. Hormones, nervous system changes, the usual suspects. Fourteen to sixteen is common. You’re right on target.”

  “That makes it sound like the world sent me a calendar invite,” I said, then clicked on her words. “Wait. Powers?”

  “Sight is one of them,” she said. “The ability to perceive what others can’t. In most cases, there’s something else as well. A…tilt. Strength in one direction. You may have noticed, over the past few months or so, that people find you more…agreeable. That it’s easier to get them to see things your way. To like you. To say yes.”

  A laugh burst out of me, sharp and unpretty. “Have you met my life?” I asked. “The only ‘yes’ I’ve gotten lately was from the community service office. The girls I tried to impress basically lit me on fire in the hallway.”

  One of her eyebrows lifted, just slightly. “No teachers suddenly warmer to you?” she pressed. “Fewer conflicts? Friends deferring to you more than they used to? People reacting as if you became more attractive overnight?”

  “If anything, the opposite,” I said. “I got more noticeable in the wrong ways.” I thought of Montana’s cool dismissal, Tiffany calling me sad. “No one would ever describe me as ‘compelling.’”

  She sat back a fraction, studying me like I was a test result that didn’t match the hypothesis. “Interesting,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Given your…reaction earlier, I assumed a certain lineage. That often comes with a natural…presence.”

  “Reaction to what?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  “To influence,” she said smoothly. “You didn’t fold when most would have. You also didn’t lean into it. That told me you're resistant to a baseline ability.” She tapped her pen once on the forms. “If you’re not experiencing any…social side effects…then I may have misidentified the strongest thread in your background.”

  “Is that bad?” I asked.

  “It’s unusual,” she said. “Not bad. It simply means we’ll need to test you properly when you come here. See where your strengths actually lie, instead of guessing from a file and a first meeting.”

  “So I might have…powers,” I said, the word still tasting like science fiction. “But we don’t know what they are yet.”

  “That’s a fair summary,” she said. “Sight is universal. Others we’ll identify in training. Some are obvious. Some are subtle.” A hint of that almost-smile again. “And some surprise even us.”

  I picked at a loose thread on my knee, trying to wrap my head around the idea that there was anything about me anyone would call powerful. “Okay,” I said slowly. “So far I’ve got: monsters are real, I’m not crazy, this…network thing exists, and apparently I’m on some kind of puberty timeline for mystery abilities.”

  “Correct,” she said. “And you are being offered a seat at a table where people can explain all of that and help you not get killed.”