Sketch’s room was doing its best to calm him down.

  Posters lined the walls—Blade Runner, Princess Mononoke, a giant Gundam looming over his desk. The ceiling stars glowed faintly in early evening dim, Orion half-faded above his bed. His laptop balanced on his knees, some mid?season shonen anime running with the subtitles on, characters yelling about friendship and power?ups.

  His hand wasn’t watching, though. It moved on autopilot across the page of his other sketchbook, the normal one. Lines became a rooftop, then a vaguely human silhouette, then a cat that didn’t look like any cat he’d actually seen. Nothing stuck.

  His mind kept sliding back to the bench.

  To Theo’s grin. To the way he’d remembered “Mikey” without being told. To the warmth of him, just there, too close, breath on Sketch’s cheek and that stupid flip in his stomach.

  He let the pencil rest and pressed his thumb into the groove along its side.

  Okay. Logic. Do this like a checklist.

  Think about him.

  He did. Theo’s face, up close. The tiny scar in his eyebrow. The way his hoodie had smelled vaguely like cedar and laundry detergent instead of Axe.

  Question one: did he want to see him again?

  His brain said, yes, for answers. His stomach did the flop thing again.

  Question two: did he want to…kiss him?

  His whole body recoiled at that, like he’d touched a live wire.

  “Um. No,” he muttered out loud. “Nope. No, I don’t.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “So what the hell was that?” he asked the anime characters, who had no helpful input.

  He thought of what Diana had told him about Ms. Cho. Influence. Pressure. Invisible barometric shifts making people lean in.

  He hadn’t felt pressured on the bench. No heavy air. No weird buzzing. It had all felt…natural.

  He shuddered.

  “Natural,” he repeated under his breath. “Gross.”

  Okay. Diana hadn’t said anything about attraction being part of it. She’d just talked about charm, about people liking you, wanting to agree with you. Maybe Theo was a different…type. Or maybe they could aim it, dial which reaction they wanted.

  His fingers found the edge of the card in his hoodie pocket and tapped it.

  He pulled it out.

  Thick cardstock, nicer than anything his school had ever printed. In dark green ink:

  NORTHBRIDGE ACADEMY

  Ellen Cho, Dean of Admissions

  A phone number beneath, and, embossed above it, the school crest. He ran his thumb over the raised lines. Bumpy. Real.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “Guess I was right. It is about the school.”

  He didn’t want to call.

  He really, really didn’t want to call.

  But they’d come to him. Theo had walked into his life like a transfer student in a spy anime—the kind who turns out to be from a secret organization, there to recruit the oblivious kid with hidden potential. Except Sketch didn’t have potential; he had graphite. And apparently, that was enough to get noticed.

  They knew who he was. Probably his name, his address, definitely that he was connected to Diana. Theo had been in his school like some kind of plant.

  “Dammit,” he whispered.

  Who knew what they’d do if he didn’t call? Show up at his house? Manipulate his mom? Take the choice away entirely?

  He stared at the card for another long moment, then picked up his phone from the nightstand. His hand left a little graphite smudge on the screen.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  He dialed the number before he could talk himself out of it.

  It barely rang twice.

  “Northbridge Academy,” a calm voice said. “Office of the Dean of Admissions. This is Patrick.”

  “Hi,” Sketch said, voice cracking on the single syllable. He cleared his throat. “Um. My name is Mikey Tosconi. I got a card from…from Ms. Cho.”

  There was the faintest pause. Keys clicked in the background.

  “Yes,” Patrick said. “We’ve been expecting your call, Mr. Tosconi. Can you come by tomorrow after school? Bring the sketchbook.”

  ***

  Sketch sat on the edge of the chair like it might eject him.

  Ms. Cho’s office was nicer than any room he’d ever been in that wasn’t a hotel lobby. Warm wood desk, soft rug, shelves with actual hardcovers arranged by color. A window with real plants on the sill that weren’t dead. Somewhere, something citrusy?sweet was steeping.

  He’d been offered a seat. Then she’d just…looked at him.

  Not mean. Not even particularly intense. Just…steady. Like she was flipping through files behind her eyes and he was the only tab open.

  Maybe unnerving him was the point. He couldn’t see why she’d need to bother. If half of what Diana had said was true, this woman could run rings around him in her sleep.

  The silence stretched. His palms started to sweat. He shifted his weight, the chair creaking very slightly, and realizing that made a noise in the too?quiet room, he froze.

  Finally, she held out her hand. Palm up. Expectant.

  “Give it to me,” she said.

  His brain ran in three directions at once. What? Phone? Soul? Then her eyebrow lifted a millimeter and the pieces slotted into place.

  “Oh. You…want to see my sketchbook.” His voice came out thin. “Right.”

  He hesitated for a heartbeat. That was stupid; he’d brought it because she said to, because Patrick said to. Of course she’d want to see it.

  He sighed, reached into his backpack, and pulled out the monster book. It felt heavier than usual in his hands. He crossed the small space between chair and desk and set it gently in her waiting palm.

  “Thank you,” she said, like he’d handed over something both expected and important.

  She opened it.

  Page by page, she turned, not flipping fast the way people did when they were just being polite. She looked. Really looked. Eyes moving over each drawing, each note, lingering in places he knew he’d gone over and over with an eraser.

  Sketch’s heartbeat slowed a notch. His shoulders came down from around his ears.

  This wasn’t so bad. Just…an office. A desk. A teacher. She didn’t look scary. In fact, from this angle, she looked almost tired.

  Ten minutes ticked by on the tasteful analog clock on the wall. He counted them in the soft rustle of paper.

  Finally, she looked up.

  “You drew these,” she said. Not a question.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  She smiled.

  It wasn’t big. It wasn’t flashy. But it landed like someone had set a small, pleasant weight in the center of his chest.

  “They’re very good,” she said.

  Warmth flushed up his neck and into his ears. Compliments from teachers usually made him want to vanish; this one slid in like it belonged there.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled, and actually meant it.

  “So.” Her gaze slid back to the book. “You can see them.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “Um…no,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed, the smile not exactly vanishing, just…going on hold.

  “It’s not nice to lie, Mr. Tosconi,” she said mildly.

  “No, really, I can’t,” he blurted. His fingers dug into the edge of the chair.

  There was a pause. Then, she turned her head and pressed the intercom button on her phone.

  “Patrick?” she said. “Do you have those papers I’m waiting for?”

  “Yes, Dean Cho,” came the tinny reply.

  The door opened a few seconds later. Patrick—the same calm voice from the phone, now attached to a neat guy in a Northbridge polo—slipped in with a manila packet. He set it on her desk, then glanced at Sketch.

  “Can I get you anything?” Patrick asked. “Water? Soda?”

  “A—uh—a Coke?” Sketch said. “Yeah. Thanks. That would be great.”

  Patrick nodded and vanished as quietly as he’d appeared. The little bubble of normal politeness that followed him out made Sketch smile.

  When the can appeared in front of him a moment later—cold, beaded with condensation—Patrick was already gone again. Cho hadn’t moved much; her fingers rested lightly on the open sketchbook.

  She leaned forward slightly.

  “Are you telling me,” she said, “that you drew these without seeing them?”

  He popped the tab on the Coke. “Uh?huh,” he said after a sip. The fizz scratched his throat. “I mean, I haven’t…I don’t see monsters. Or whatever you call them.”

  Her eyes scanned his face, searching for something. Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find a lie.

  “They’re very accurate,” she said. “I find it difficult to imagine you could get so close to the reality by…guessing.”

  “Diana gave really good descriptions,” he said, pleased to let Ms. Cho know how great Diana was. “Really, that’s all it took.”

  She made a small circling motion with one hand.

  “It was more of a back?and?forth,” he explained, beaming as he recounted the experience. “She’d tell me what she saw—shape, color, movement first or sound first. I’d sketch the basic form and then ask for clarifications. ‘Longer here? More spines? Slime or scales?’ Stuff like that. We’d fix what was off. That’s…basically it.”

  Cho smiled again. This time it crept all the way into her eyes.

  “Really,” she said. “That is very impressive. You have a special talent, Mr. Tosconi.”

  The words sank in like warm honey. Old defensiveness, the part of him that usually waited for the other shoe to drop after a compliment, went strangely quiet. Of course she’d say that. Of course she meant it. She was just…nice. Safe.

  “I notice you named some of the creatures,” she added, tapping the corner of the Harbor Sprite page. “They’re good names.”

  “Oh.” He pushed his sunglasses up his nose with one finger. “Those came from the book.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “You saw it,” she said.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Diana showed me. The compendium, the kid book. She wanted help figuring it out.”

  “Yes,” Cho said softly. “I thought so.”

  She pressed the intercom button again without looking away from him.

  “Patrick,” she said. “Call Diana Sinclair to my office, please.”

  “Yes, Dean Cho,” came the answer.

  Sketch sat back, the Coke cool and solid in his hand, the lingering fuzz of pleasant approval humming under his skin. He took another sip, the carbonation popping against his tongue.

  Diana was coming; it would be nice to see her again.