Daniel idled at the curb with the wipers ticking an irritated rhythm. Wet light jittered over the windshield, breaking into beads and scurrying away. The dashboard clock said 7:19. He tapped the steering wheel like he could move the minutes along by force.

  Lisa hugged her bag in her lap. The car still smelled faintly like takeout from last night. Ginger, soy, something sweet burned into the seats. Her father had put on a proper shirt and, yes, real trousers. He kept doing those little self-checks—belt? wallet? phone?—as if leaving the house now required an inventory.

  “Okay,” he said, forcing brightness into his voice. “Another day, another empire to collapse.” He glanced at the wipers, then at her. “Rain in May, huh? Who would’ve thought?”

  She gave him a sideways look. “I’m just glad to see you in your pants again. Outside, I mean.”

  He smirked. “The neighborhood has standards. Can’t greet the new neighbors in a dress shirt and boxers.” He peered past the rain streaks toward the row of townhouses across the street. “I should actually meet them. I keep seeing curtains move and thinking, ‘Ah yes, people. Remember those?’”

  Lisa tried to smile. It came out thin. The gate to Westridge High was a block ahead, beyond a grey vein of sidewalk and puddles that turned the streetlights into coins.

  “Dad,” she said, before she could lose the nerve. “I need to tell you something. It’s about Mom.”

  He stopped tapping. The wiper thudded at the end of its arc.

  “What about Mom?” His tone lowered a degree, just enough to chill the air between them.

  “She’s been… acting weird.” The word felt childish, wrong. She tried again. “Not just stressed-weird. She said things. And she—” Lisa swallowed, the memory knifing through. “She said it like it was a joke. But it wasn’t a joke, Dad.”

  He stared through the glass. The car filled with the small noises of rain and engine and the whisper of air from the vents. She searched his face for surprise, anger, anything. What she found instead was withdrawal, like a tide pulling back from shore.

  “Don’t do this,” he said quietly.

  “Do what?”

  “Start something before school. We’ve been trying so hard just to keep things together.” His jaw worked once. “It’s hard enough as it is, Lisa. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”

  “I’m not making it.” She leaned toward him, voice sharpening. “Dad, listen to me. Something’s wrong with her!”

  His fingers tightened around the wheel. “Stop!”

  Lisa jumped, shrinking back into her seat.

  He exhaled, closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, the warmth he’d tried to paste on earlier was gone. “We’re new here. Your mother is adjusting. You’re adjusting. We do not—” He paused, searching for words that didn’t pry open whatever he’d nailed shut inside. “We do not turn on each other because of a bad day.”

  “A bad day?” The words came out too loud. She stared at him. He wouldn’t look back. His eyes kept on the road, on anything not her.

  “Just… be strong for the family today,” he said, softer now. “Okay?”

  She held his gaze as long as he’d allow. Then she nodded because nodding ended things. Her hand felt clumsy on the door handle.

  “I’ll be strong,” she said. The words tasted nothing like what she felt. She pushed the door open and stepped into the rain.

  “Lisa—” he started, but whatever else he meant to add drowned in the hiss of the downpour. She shut the door, lifted a half-hand wave that he didn’t see, and turned toward the gate. The sedan pulled away and merged into the slice of morning traffic. She reached for her umbrella in the back pocket of her bag and found nothing.

  “Great,” she muttered, watching the taillights blur red through the rain. “Perfect.”

  She jogged a few steps, phone half-raised, but he’d already turned the corner. Calling would do nothing. Either he wouldn’t pick up, or he’d tell her not to make it harder than it needed to be.

  “Good morning,” a voice said behind her.

  She startled, almost slipped. A navy canopy slid into view above her, cutting the rain. Theo stood beside her as if he’d been grown from the sidewalk. Hood up, glasses beaded with dots he hadn’t bothered to wipe.

  “Out in the rain already, Miss Bell?” he said.

  “It’s Lisa,” she said automatically.

  “I know,” he replied, unbothered. “But ‘Miss Bell’ has a ring to it, don’t you think?” He angled the umbrella so it covered her a little more. “Also, points to me for being correct about the umbrella.”

  She huffed, breath fogging. “You’re really going to take a victory lap on weather.”

  “I take victory laps wherever I can find them,” he said, and the corner of his mouth bent toward a smile before he caught it. “Walk with me?”

  Stolen story; please report.

  They fell into step toward the gate, his shoulder just close enough to touch hers when a gust shoved the umbrella sideways. She edged back, then forward again when the rain bit at her cheek.

  “How’d you sleep?” he asked, conversational like asking the time.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “Much.”

  “Good,” he said.

  She turned her head. “Excuse me?”

  He cleared water off his glasses with a push of a finger. “Not sleeping is a very human response. Worry when you sleep like a rock. That’s… other people.”

  “What other people?”

  “People who’ve already decided the scary thing is normal,” he said. “Or who like what the scary thing does for them.”

  “Sounds like you’ve met a few,” she said, looking a little astonished.

  He hesitated, then shrugged once. “Reactions vary. But in the end, everyone copes in their own way. Some freeze. Some plan. Others just run. And there are some—” his eyes wandered toward the sidewalk—“who decide it’s easier to drown.”

  Lisa curiously followed his gaze.

  Up ahead, Mia moved through the rain, her hair dark against her cheeks. It caught the light in a sparkling halo that wasn’t kind. No umbrella. Just her, head down, walking slowly toward the gate, and for a moment it felt like the rest of the world had already ended.

  Daryl trailed behind her, his steps slowing to match hers.

  “Mia,” he called softly. “Hey, wait.”

  The umbrella in his hand found her again, casting shadow over her slight frame. He edged closer until their arms almost touched, but she never once looked at him.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he pleaded, searching her profile for any sign she’d heard him. “We can still leave today. One bus. That’s all it takes.”

  She didn’t slow, though her lips parted as if she might say something.

  “I don’t care where,” he went on, the umbrella drifting further over her, letting his own sleeve darken with rain. “Coffee in the city. The coast. Somewhere with sun.”

  He drew a shaky breath. “You remember the dream? Just us walking out the front doors, sunlight on our faces.” His voice cracked. “We could make that real, Mia.”

  She finally stopped at the gate, eyes still down. All the while, rain kept pounding steadily on the umbrella.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It is,” he said, almost begging. “It is for us.”

  Her hands stayed in her pockets, but he could see her knuckles flexing beneath the fabric. “If I go… someone else takes my place.”

  “And if you stay, you…” He broke off, shaking his head. “I can’t watch you do this anymore. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  He was waiting for her to make the decision, the one that might still change everything.

  She stood there, motionless, eyes moving from side to side. Then, with her eyes lowered, she took a small step. And another. Rain traced down her face, mixing with something else before she ducked her head.

  Daryl lingered where the sidewalk met the school’s brick path. The umbrella hung useless in his grip now. He watched her cross the courtyard, her figure getting smaller beneath the awning, until the school doors swallowed her whole.

  He remained a moment longer, as if waiting for her to turn around. She didn’t.

  Finally, he turned too, walking the other way.

  Lisa realized her hands had curled into small fists around the straps of her bag. Theo said nothing. He didn’t have to. The rain then blurred the last of Daryl’s shape.

  They started walking again, the gate’s iron bars slick beneath their hands as they pushed through. The courtyard spread out ahead, puddles shining under the pale morning light. Students hunched in groups, hurrying for cover.

  A figure stood under the front awning. Tall, thin, hair too carefully parted for this humidity, notebook balanced on his arm. He wore glasses that made his eyes seem closer together than they were.

  On either side of him, two broad-shouldered guys from the athletics program loomed in identical windbreakers. Juggernauts. One held a golf umbrella above all three like a portable ceiling. They looked like a very strange and very confident weather formation.

  Theo and Lisa stepped out from behind a wall of students, water dripping from above. Theo glanced toward the awning and slowed his pace.

  “Ah,” he murmured, almost to himself. “There he is.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They climbed the shallow steps. The tall boy raised his chin exactly one degree, as though a king acknowledging visitors at a predictable hour.

  “Theodore,” he said, warm the way steam is warm. “On time, of course.”

  “Gary,” Theo said, and put the umbrella down to fold. Raindrops dotted his hair and made him blink. He didn’t wipe it away.

  Gary’s smile landed on Lisa, measured her, filed her somewhere. “And you must be the new asset.”

  Lisa’s shoulders stiffened. “Actually—”

  “Her name’s Lisa,” Theo said, cutting in before she had to finish.

  Gary nodded as if he’d already known but enjoyed hearing it confirmed. “Our campus is full of variables,” he said. “It’s pleasant to add a constant every now and then.”

  The way he said it infuriated Lisa, though she didn’t show it.

  He then tucked the notebook under his arm and snapped his fingers once. One of the Juggernauts produced a laminated sheet from a folder; Gary gave it a cursory glance before handing it back.

  “Big morning,” he went on. “Our sensors recorded a spike in anomalous contact on secured doors. Significant. Fifteen percent above last week’s mean.”

  “You should stop baiting it, then,” Theo said mildly.

  Gary’s smile flashed. “Research requires provocation, my dear Theodore. Otherwise, one merely takes notes on the rain.”

  Lisa stood between them, still trying to figure out what any of it actually meant. She looked to Theo instead. His expression didn’t change, but his voice lost its softness. “Weather doesn’t rip people out of hallways, Gary. This isn’t data. It’s collateral.”

  “Collateral,” Gary repeated, his smile thinning slightly. “I prefer to think of it as proof. Proof that the solution is real, and that our methods work… whether some of you moralists like it or not.”

  He snapped his fingers again.

  Both Juggernauts moved as if on command. The one with the scar through his eyebrow stepped forward, placing himself in front of Gary.

  “You know,” Gary said, almost pleasantly, “you could save yourself a lot of remedial labor if you just came back where you belong.”

  He gestured toward the broad shoulders flanking him. “Some of us are building something that lasts longer than a bell. This… collection you run with? Outliers. Useful occasionally. Unreliable often. The Game only rewards those who organize.”

  Theo looked at him for a long second, like he was measuring more than words. His jaw tightened, just barely visible. “You should try saying ‘hello’ like normal people,” he said finally. “Work up from there.”

  Gary pretended to consider it. “Hello.” He turned the word like a pebble, then glanced at his watch. “And now that I’ve exhausted my daily allotment of small talk”—his eyes sharpened behind the lenses—“we’ll catch up at lunch. I’m hosting a preliminary at the physics lab. You’re invited to stand in the doorway and scowl. Bring your… friends.”

  He tapped the notebook once at his hip. “Stay dry,” he said, then turned on his heel. The Juggernauts moved with him, the umbrella orbiting like a moon that had picked a planet.

  Lisa let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Gary Lin,” Theo said. “Self-appointed director of the Order of Applied Physics.”

  “That a club?”

  “It’s a faction.” Theo delivered it flatly. “Brain trust with muscle. They hoard power and time. They call it stewardship. Everyone else calls it monopoly.”

  “And you?”

  “I call it Wednesday,” he said. “Come on. Juno’s waiting.”