Sarah Jacobson was grinning as widely as anyone had ever grinned. Summer Vargas sighed and rolled her head, while Jessica Beauregard sat to the side and stared at the ground.

“Not to say I didn’t have any faith in you, but I had absolutely no faith in you. Now, my reward?”
Summer faked a smile and handed Sarah three hundred dollars in twenties. Sarah flipped through them, inspecting each as if she expected them up up and disappear.
“Pleasure doin’ business with you, Vargas. I trust the money wasn’t hard to come up with?”
“They didn’t even ask why I needed it. I think my dad was offended that I didn’t just e-mail him. It was totally a tender family moment.” This diffused the tension a bit, and Jessica was finally able to relax and let her shoulders droop as the other two girls laughed.

“Alright, I gotta go show off my new stack of hard-earned bills, I’ll come by later and we’ll tie one on. Keep it classy, ladies!”
Once Sarah was gone, silence descended upon the dorm room. Summer sauntered over to her bed and fell onto it, sighing into her pillow.
“I’m sorry, Summer,” Jessica said from across the room. “I know you wanted that album.”
“Honestly, it wasn’t really about the album. I would’ve liked to have it, sure, but part of me was hoping that maybe the dreams would have stopped now that I was older…I don’t know. How do you even begin to work around something like that?”

“Tell me about it,” Jessica muttered, falling back on her bed. “It’s like…my entire worldview has been turned upside down. I never would have believed you if I hadn’t seen your eyes.”
“Well, at the very least it shows me I’m not entirely insane. Any time I ever tried to act on something I saw, people ended up thinking I was doing it and just looking for attention or something. At least now I now my eyes go all crazy. It’s kind of reassuring, in a way.” She let loose a small chuckle, and stretched out on her bed.

—

It wasn’t often that Marcus Ellenbee Found himself on the West Campus. He was about as terrible at working with computers (and technology in general) as anyone his age could afford to be, so aside from a single biology course two days a week he had little reason to walk the impeccably straight walkways outside the main building.

In fact, the only reason he was there at all was to check two books out of the library, two books that the East Campus library did in fact stock but had checked out already. Unfortunately, they were absolutely necessary to complete a project he’d been assigned, which resulted in the long walk across the campus as night descended.

Being used to the warm, rustic buildings he spent most of his time in made the West Campus seem stark and sterile. The minimalist lamps were exceptional at doing their job of lighting his way, but they seemed to him to lack any real character. He was thinking about the comfort of stone walls and soft lights as he idly looked to the side and saw a boy standing on top of the roof of one of the buildings, silhouetted by the moonlight.

Marcus paused, tilting his head and squinting as if he thought his eyes had ceased to work correctly for a moment. There was, however, someone on the roof. He stood close to the edge, facing the expanse of the West Campus. A large pair of headphones encircled his head, his eyes closed. No idea how to react, Marcus simply watched, attempting to make sense of the bizarre scene.

As he looked on, the boy opened his eyes and lifted his head slowly, until he was looking straight up into the sky. Marcus’ heart seized, and it felt as if chains had wrapped about his entire body. He could not move, could barely think; all he could do was watch. The boy raised his hands slowly, painstakingly, and for a second he froze in place. His entire body shuddered, and his head snapped back down, a look of terror etched onto his face. He reached up to grab the headphones on either ear, and attempted to wrench them away. Something like a spark passed between his skin and the earpieces and he let go, letting out a weak cry of pain. His body tensed up suddenly, an invisible jolt going through it, before it gradually relaxed again.

And then Ian Westport smiled, and fell forward.

Victoria Rosewood stretched out on the common room couch. She was finding it incredibly hard to be motivated enough to do any schoolwork, and found that admiring the changing leaves through large windows was a far better use of her time. She was hardly alone; in fact, there was a small crowd by the corner that was excitedly chatting, huddled around a laptop, books strewn about the floor, coldly abandoned.

They were calling it various things, as excited young people with something new and illicit are wont to do, though the technical name was Binaural Beat. It spread faster than a trend had any right to, but its versatility made it an instant hit with a large subsection of the student body. It was, in the simplest terms, a series of files that used various sound frequencies to induce hallucinations and euphoria. Depending on the particular track, the effects rarely lasted in any obvious way, and it was of course completely undetectable physically. For those who shied away from hallucinogens normally, it was a perfectly healthy alternative.

The files had been distributed on S-Net, a computer network open to the Farraday Academy students. It was designed to share and store schoolwork, but as the first vanguard of the silicon elite began to evolve, it became a secure place for students to share all manner of other things. There were a myriad of folders that lay beneath a labyrinth of other folders that the average student could navigate blind, but which a teacher would never think to find. It saw a particular boom as music piracy destroyed the compact disc, and it was in this spirit that these particular sound files began to circulate.

Today, a new one had been added, and the common room was abuzz with people downloading it, and discussing their experiences with the others. Victoria had never tried it, not out of any particular desire not to. Rather, she had little patience for a sound file that wasn’t music. She felt that the euphoria so often attributed to the Binaural Beats most likely paled in comparison to the feeling she got from her usual listening. A girl walked over and leaned on the couch, looking down onto Victoria’s face.

“Hey girl, we’re gonna go to Jane’s room and all do a little theta waving. You wanna come?”
Victoria looked up lazily, and smiled. “Thanks Lanie, but I think I’m gonna hang out here. Maybe go take a walk or something.”
“Wow, living on the Edge, are we?” Lanie Peterson responded, chuckling as she sauntered off to join the group. Victoria crossed her legs, closed her eyes, and put on a trip-hop mix to nap to.

Later that night, she walked into the dining hall, an impeccably balanced meal courtesy of the Academy’s meticulous dining staff sitting on a tray in her hands. She surveyed the tables carefully; she was a mealtime drifter, rarely seen sitting at the same table two days in a row. As it happened, she was eating rather later than she usually did, and she found a room much sparser than usual. Seeing no one she particularly wished to sit with, she placed her tray on a vacant table before seeing someone in the corner of the room, out of her peripheral vision.

Marcus Ellenbee was eating a bowl of soup with the urgency of someone who had been told that they would die immediately upon finishing their next bowl of soup. There was a book open in front of him, but it was going woefully untouched. Likewise, he did not seem to notice the approaching Victoria, and it was not until she circled the table and bent down to see from his vantage point that she spoke.

“Enjoying our dinner, are we?”
Marcus jumped, and went into a panic, attempting with absolutely no success to appear as if he were reading instead of staring longingly at Cherry Ashford, who was sitting across the room eating by herself. Victoria was laughing.
“Oh my god, dude, you were in a trance! You are Stage 3-ing real bad.”
“I wasn’t looking at- I was just reading and spaced out- what are you doing sneaking around anyway-…what is Stage 3?”
“Don’t you know, my young Marcus? You’ve got Cherryitis.”

Cherryitis is not recorded in any current medical text, but over the last two years it had been observed so frequently that for the girls of the Farraday Academy it was an immediately identifiable medical condition that afflicted nearly every boy and even several girls at the Academy at least once.

The disease known as Cherryitis had 6 Stages:
1.) Awe. Upon seeing Cherry Ashford for the first time, it was almost impossible to avoid being taken back with her nearly otherworldly beauty. It was characterized by hanging jaws and wide eyes.

2.)Infatuation. Once the initial awe subsided, the infected would gaze at her from afar, wondering if they might possibly have a chance with her. It was characterized by frequent signing.

At this point, most would lose all hope and give up or move on to someone that actually ever showed interest in dating. For those who did not, however:

3.)Obsession. This was the state of continuing to pursue the far-off hope that some sort of relationship with Cherry Ashford would be even remotely possible. Symptoms included being pitied by everyone who knew what a poor fool one was.

“Stage 3? That’s ridiculous, I don’t have a disease, I was just spacing out and Cherry happened to be over where I was looking.”
“Marcus.”
“Besides, she’s not even…that…pretty…”
“Marcus.”
“Oh man she’s perfect and she will never even look at me for more than a second. I am pathetic, I am a sham of a man, I will be alone forever-”
“Marcus, you just got what everyone who ever looked at Cherry Ashford got. You can beat this thing, you can. You just have to make a choice: You can either pine for her forever until you die and crumble into dust, or you can admit that she is undateable and move on with your life.”

Marcus stared at Cherry for another couple of seconds before responding.

“I think…I think I want to pine forever.”
“Well, at least you’re stickin’ to your guns,” Victoria conceded, smiling as she sat across from him and obstructed his view. As much as it was her instinct to pity any of Cherry’s innumerable fans, Marcus was just so innocent and nice that she couldn’t help but forgive him.

—

Over in the West Campus, Kyle Moran knocked on Ian Westport’s door. He had not seen his best friend in days. Even before that, however, he had noticed that Ian was distant, seemingly going through the motions rather than actively engaged in anything. Kyle hesitated to call him addicted, but it seemed all he cared about was the Binaural file he’d shown him. Always that one file, over and over again. One of the ten least prudish people at the school, even he was beginning to worry. Something was not right.

On the other side of the door, Ian was in the middle of another session. Despite his initial reluctance, it had become a frequent habit. In fact, Ian now did it more than almost anyone else at the Academy. Most assumed he was just letting loose a little, but there was more to it.

Ian was chasing something. Partially it was a feeling, something wholly unique among the experiences his friends had related to him in using it. Something about it was different for him, and he wanted to know what. Part of it was a nagging in the back of his head, something that told him he had to keep doing it, to keep looking for something hidden deep in the frequencies that only he could find.

And then he was chasing a hand, coming down out of the infinite white. All he had to do was grasp it, to hold it in his, and he would finally understand…

Jessica Beauregard tipped the water bottle slowly, letting the cool liquid drip into Summer Vargas’ mouth. Her eyes were half-closed and unfocused, trails of sweat engraved on her face, dripping from stray strands of hair matted to her forehead. Jessica would have barely thought her conscious if one of Summer’s hands wasn’t gripping her forearm tightly. She put the bottle on the table next to the bed and spoke softly, biting her bottom lip between words, as if scared each word might explode.

“Sum, can you hear me? Please tell me you’re okay.”
“What…what time is it?” Summer’s voice was deep and shaken, barely more than a whisper. Jessica glanced at the clock on her bedside table.
“Little after four.”
Summer’s eyes closed, and she let out a sigh. Barely three hours had passed. She turned, freeing herself from the embrace of her roommate, and wordlessly rose and made her way to the door, grabbing a ratty hooded sweatshirt off of her desk chair. She began to open the door, but it quickly slammed back. Jessica’s palm was pressing against it; a stern look from narrowed eyes stabbed Summer, who looked away.

“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m not going to use, calm down. I just need some air.”
“I’m not worried about you using, I’m worried about what just happened to you!”
“It was a bad dream,” Summer sighed. “Just some bad stuff I’d rather have forgotten. I just need to shake ‘em out of my head.”
Jessica stared down her roommate, then frowned and grabbed her own coat.
“Well, I doubt anyone will be looking for kids outside at four in the morning. Let’s go.”
Summer went to protest, but she had rarely seen Jessica look anything but awkward or nervous, so she surrendered and left their room.

The grounds of the West Campus were crafted with the same angular precision that the building itself was known for. Razor-straight sidewalks lined with sleek, solar-powered lamps gave the outside a clean, chic, art deco look. Summer walked along the sidewalk, hands in her pockets. Though Fall had only just begun, already there was a chill in the air and Jessica watched her breath escape in white wisps as she waited for her roommate to speak.

Summer said nothing, but eventually stopped and leaned against a light post. Jessica propped herself up against the one opposite, and they stared at the smooth white concrete.

“I used to have these nightmares, when I was little.” Jessica jumped with surprise as the silent space between them suddenly filled with words.

“They were bad, really bad. So bad it started to make me scared to go to sleep, y’know? I was afraid I’d have a dream so bad I’d never wake up, and so I started staying up as much as I could. But that just made things worse. I started to drift off all the time, and I’d always end up having another terrible dream. I really started to lose it.

But my parents, they weren’t really the hands-on types, and they already weren’t so impressed with the kind of kid I was. So I hid it, best I could, just kind of…withdrew, as much as I could. Then when middle school was ending I was at this party, and I’ll spare you the details but thanks to what I took there I slept. Really slept, for the first time in, God, years. Drinking, smoking, pills, if I can get high I don’t get the nightmares. Eventually it became…habit, I guess. I was scared to stop because of them. That’s all it was. I didn’t mean to worry you, it’s just…something I’ve been dealing with for a long time.”
Neither girl looked up. Jessica had never heard her roommate talk so much or so honestly, certainly not since she’d begun her bet with Sarah Jacobson. She bit her lip, the nervous habit the girls both shared, and a whisper escaped her lips.

“I don’t believe you.”

The crisp night air seemed to swallow her words, swirl them around in the space between them until they were diluted and lost.
“Excuse me?” Summer said quietly, eyes now locked on the girl standing across from her. Jessica’s voice shook. “I don’t believe you,” she said again, louder this time.
“You think I’m lying?” Summer said indignantly, her head tilted.

“I don’t think you’re lying about everything,” Jessica said slowly, choosing her words carefully. “I think maybe you had some kind of nightmares, and the drugs help you keep them away, but…but you’re not being honest with me.”
“I’m not sure what you want from me,” her roommate replied. “I mean, you saw me having one-”
“That’s not what I saw,” Jessica replied gravely.
“Then what the hell did you see?”

Jessica’s chin now rose as she strained to look straight at Summer.
“Your eyes were…blinking, sort of. I could see them moving, but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t REM or anything, it was…they were white, Summer. White a-and…cloudy. There were shapes in them, moving around, and I,” Jessica’s words became a jumble as her eyes began to brim over with tears. Summer simply stared, her eyes narrowed.
“I have not told one single person this, Jessica. Not one,” she finally muttered, as she closed the gap between the two.

“My dreams…” Summer paused, opened her mouth a couple of times without saying anything. “I see things. People, places…events. I see true things, Jess. I see things, and they happen. I don’t always remember them, and mostly people’s faces are all blurry, so I can’t even be sure of what’s going on but…I dream about things, and they happen, and the more I do it the worse the things get. I hoped it wouldn’t happen again, but it did. I saw a-a cat I think, and, God, I can’t believe I’m actually telling you this. I…”

And her eyes widened, and she looked off into the distance.

“I saw someone die.”

“I’m telling you man, ecstasy has nothing on this. You have to trust me.”
“Stop messing with me Kyle, it’s a goddamn music file. It’s not going to do anything.”
Kyle Moran rolled his eyes, chuckling.
“I know, I know, I said the same thing. But it’s not music. It’s…it’s amazing, man. I haven’t even so much as touched a joint since I got into this.”
Ian fingered a large set of headphones. He pursed his lips, contemplating Ian’s suggestion. He was, by nature, an absolute skeptic, which Kyle would have said did not reflect his viewpoint but rather a compulsive need to be difficult whenever possible.
“The first time I tried it, I thought it was total crap. I did.”
“Kyle, you would lick the bottom of a freaking rock if someone told you it’d get you high.”
“Absolutely I would, and meanwhile you’d be in your room stoically refusing to take any chances. What is it gonna hurt you to listen to this thing for ten minutes?”
As he rolled his head back, Ian Wesport groaned. He had already decided to try it, but he liked to make Kyle work for it; it was a terrible habit, but he just hated giving in.
“Give me the stupid headphones.”

Ian slipped the sleek silver headset over his ears. Kyle had brought his own over; his parents bought them for his birthday, the kind of top-of-the-line technological wonder that most kids drooled over in magazines. According to him, the high is at its greatest when the ears are completely covered, and according to the specs these things could block out the noise of an earthquake at a glass factory four feet away. Ian gave Kyle a thumbs up to start the file. Kyle flashed him a self-assured “I knew I’d get you to try this” smile before starting up the sound file on his MP3 player.

It’s like a thousand bees buzzing next to his ear. The first few seconds are so irritating it’s painful, and Ian’s hands flash up to pull the headphones off. Kyle grabs his wrists, shakes his head, and mouths to his friend to close his eyes. The buzzing gets lower and less grating, but it still sounds like some sort of perverted static.
“This is bull, Kyle. I’m getting a headache.”
“That’s normal, stop being a baby and hang on,” he replies, though Ian can’t hear him.
Though he still wishes to hang on to his insistence on being difficult, Ian decides it’s easier to just go with it. He focuses on the noise, which is now more of a hum than a buzz. The pitch is low and strong, and he can feel the slightest trepidation in the foam of the headphones. His temple is starting to throb less, and he breathes slowly, in and out, like Kyle told him to. It’s actually sort of relaxing; he wants to think about how stupid what he’s doing is, but finds it hard to concentrate with the sound.

It’s almost a dull nagging now, something he’s not listening to as much as he is simply hearing it. Bereft of any other ambient sounds, his focus shifts to his head, to the warmth that slowly increases in volume. The sound becomes deeper and richer as he stops trying not to concentrate on it, and he can almost feel the sound swirling around in his head, like tawny brandy in thick, deep glass. He entertains a thought that it’s the vibrations ricocheting off his skull, but it takes him twice as long to articulate to himself as it should. Slightly shaken, he attempts to form another thought but finds that it quickly fades, like a paper crane in a midday breeze, and as they fly he does not mourn their passing, cannot even pay them any attention after a few seconds have passed.

His lips slowly curve upward in a thin smile. He is not conscious of it, however; his consciousness is grainy and imprecise now, and images begin to flash across his inner vision. They seem at first to be sequential but by the time a few have passed he seems to lose the narrative. There are three sounds flooding his ears now, humming and buzzing and ticking in obtuse, abstract patterns that he cannot seem to follow or derive any meaning from. As the sounds swirl about his skull they seem to settle in the back of his head, and he can almost feel them pushing up against the pillow.

It occurs to him suddenly to examine the rest of his body, which he remembers is lying on a bed, but he can’t seem to place himself within the space he knows he is supposed to be occupying. His body seems possessed not by a weightlessness but by a complete lack of reference from which to judge his position. There is no up or down, those terms don’t apply to this space – there is only the sounds, ebbing and flowing but decidedly unlike anything that nature offers. The pace changes at random, the sounds jerking forward or back at illogical intervals. It should be jagged and jarring, and on one level he acknowledges this, but on another they seem to blend together in a way that makes perfect sense, and is in fact euphoric.

The warmth comes next, spreading from his fingertips down his arms. He can feel it traveling down his blood vessels, spreading from the outside in, coming at last to his head. He can feel his mind engulfed by the tide as his thoughts become entirely incoherent. He watches his own thoughts as if from a distance, seeing the images that pass through his consciousness but unable to draw any meaning from them. Like a dream half-remembered even as it happens, experience becomes an abstract concept.

Gradually, like a tide coming in at midnight, something begins to envelop him. It’s a warmth, tinted white, like a light that starts to engulf his body. There is initially a feeling not unlike fear, but it’s far off, like he’s getting it from someone else, and as he lets himself float deeper into the brightness he begins to hear a voice. It could be a hum, it could be someone trying to speak, he is unable to discern anything from it. He realizes distantly that hearing this voice is the most important thing in the world, and without moving he tries to will himself towards it.

He feels, or at least believes he can feel, himself moving through the whiteness, the consistency of a cloud but none of the cold or wetness, and as he rises he can see a large hand, reaching towards him, and he hears the voice so clearly now, and he understands everything, and once he grasps the hand he can finally be happy, and then he’s lying back on the bed and the sounds have stopped and his entire body is tingling like a leg that’s fallen asleep, and his ears are ringing.

He began to move parts of his body as if testing them, trying to readjust to having a physical shell. He looks around lazily: yes, this is my room. This is the physical space I occupy. This is reality.

Kyle was staring at him, head tilted.
“So, uh, what’d you think?”
“I don’t…I don’t even know how to describe it, dude. It was…”
“I’ll take that as a good thing. Kinda weird, though. Most people really trip on it. You just looked like you were sleeping.”
“Whatever it was, I think I need to do it again. Do you have any more?”
Kyle smiles wide, and Ian knows he has misspoken.
“Oh, for the love of-”
“I FREAKING TOLD YOU!”

Marcus Ellenbee had already been in the library for nearly forty five minutes when Victoria Rosewood arrived. He was by far the shortest boy in his year, and Victoria was the tallest in hers; as she neared the table he was sitting at, their size difference was almost comical. With an uneasy smile she sat down, and after they had greeted each other and opened their books there were a few moments of shaky silence. At last, she spoke, trying her best to make contact with his eyes, which were putting up a fight and looking everywhere possible besides at her.

“What kind of music do you listen to?”
Marcus looked, briefly, as if he’d been asked why the sky is green, or if he had any nice fish in his pocket. Victoria was staring intently at him now. It was far from a strange question, but not one he had expected to be the first words either of them spoke to each other. He shook his head slightly, then answered.

“Uh…old stuff, mostly. I like big band, 40′s stuff, 60′s brit-rock…” He pursed his lips a bit as his words trailed off; he felt immediately as if he’d said the wrong thing, and wished he had thought of something a little more conventional. Victoria looked deep in thought, categorizing this information and storing it in a file with Marcus’ name and face on it. At length she nodded shortly, and smiled at him.

“Very cool. Don’t see a lot of taste like that in this place. Tell me you’re a Billie Holiday fan.”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t like Billie Holiday. No way they have a soul.”
Victoria laughed warmly, and all at once Marcus was at ease. He couldn’t have imagined himself being the sort of person that would interest Victoria Rosewood even a little bit. She had this wild, bohemian air about her, and was arguably the most popular person in the school who was not disliked by a single person. While he knew, as did everyone, that she had a transcendent and all-encompassing love of music, he was so used to regarding his own tastes as obscure (as they had been painted by others) that he simply assumed he could not relate to her.

“So, you like this class? Not a lot of sophomores are willing to put themselves through it.”
“I’ve always loved medieval writing,” he responded, his fingers smoothing one of the pages on their aged text. “There’s this…I dunno, a sense of wonder, I guess. All the texts from this period are so self-assured and wide-eyed, in a way that’s totally not ignorant, even though we may think of those times like that now. Honest, maybe? It’s hard to describe. Their capacity for belief is awesome.”
“Wow,” Victoria breathed, and she stared at the pages of her own book, as if trying to discern some special sign or quality that she felt she couldn’t see.

Marcus looked up suddenly, his face reddening.
“Sorry, that was a really lame answer, wasn’t it? I’m kind of a nerd about this stuff, I-”
Victoria laughed, and Marcus’ blood seemed to freeze in his veins. He had fooled her into thinking he was cool, and now she knew the truth and was going to let everyone know they were right about him, and he was going to be more of an outcast than ever, and now she was talking and he decided to listen to what was probably his social death sentence.
“Would you stop being so jittery around me? I’m not a piranha. I’m more of…a clown fish, maybe? Mm. No. A dolphin. Smart and beautiful. And totally friendly.”
“Er,” he stammered, now a deep tomato scarlet, “sorry, it’s just, you know, you’re-”

“What,” she snapped, head tilted. “Popular?”
Marcus’ mouth hung open slightly, as he searched for words. He had absolutely no idea where he stood with her at that moment, and was quivering with anxiety over his precarious position.
“You gotta stop worrying so much, Marcus. Labels like that apply at this place only in the broadest sense. It’s worse your first two years, I’ll admit, but once people adjust to this place, you’ll find a pretty clear divide between people who are halfway decent and people who think their God’s gift to humanity, and I would more than surely like to hope that it doesn’t take more than a couple minutes to tell which group I’m in. So stop trying to put yourself down, because I can guarantee you every last person at this school is as lame as you are.”

“Except for me,” she added, grinning broadly. “I am, by far, the coolest person here, and I officially declare you cool enough to hang with me. That good enough for you?”
Bereft of words, Marcus simply nodded.

—

Summer Vargas chewed her bottom lip idly. It was a habit she had picked up in the last four days, in which she had not so much as looked at an illicit substance. Jessica Beauregard was quietly supportive, although she was inwardly ecstatic that her roommate was taking care of herself, even if it was only with the aim of winning a contest. Though she was accepting her roommate’s alternative lifestyle, she guiltily wished she would abandon it.

Having grown up without anyone of Summer’s dubious disposition around her, Summer was unsure what to expect of her impromptu detox. She half-expected her roommate to go into sudden fits and calling out desperately for reprieve, to be assaulted by constant, intense mood swings, or perhaps to relapse so suddenly and strongly that she did permanent damage. Even she regarded these scenarios as wildly dramatic, but was surprised to discover that the only change in Summer’s demeanor was what seemed to be a pervading and mysterious nervousness.

Summer had not been one to react to anything with any real sense of interest, but she had developed a jittery nature over the last few days that didn’t seem to be physical. Jessica had seen her looking over her shoulder more than once, and a couple of times she actually jumped at things she had seen out of the corner of her eyes. Both were things entirely uncharacteristic of her, and when asked about it she simply said it was coming down off of her near-constant high and that she would be fine.

While this explanation was enough for most of her friends, Jessica did not believe it. Perhaps it was a result of living with her, but she felt that it was something more primal than withdrawal. It seemed, to her, like Summer was actively afraid of something. Moreover, the dark bags under her eyes had only grown darker, though her skin tone overall had brightened a shade. She broached this subject only once; Summer vehemently denied it, attempting to laugh it off, but she would not meet Jessica’s eyes as she said it. Unsure of what she could do, however, Jessica simply attempted to stuff her worries into a dark closet and tried not to dwell on them.

So it was that she looked away from Summer’s new lip-biting habit and attempted to focus on the set of calculus problems she’d been given for the night. Though she found the class on the whole rather simple, the workload was still excessive, and she was sleeping almost silently by eleven.

One o’clock came, and Summer rubbed her eyes to keep herself awake. She knew that she could not last much longer like this. She licked the blood from her raw lips, and gave her entire body a shiver to try and shake off the chill that was running up her spine. Four days, roughly two hours of sleep altogether, stolen in short bursts during lulls in classes. Her free time had been spent mostly drawing in a small notebook, whose pages were now filled nearly to the brim with abstract whorls and lines that formed an intricate pattern that served to keep her mind occupied. Two weeks, she knew she shouldn’t have agreed, but she wanted to prove she was more than a junkie, and she had no guarantee it’d happen again, and she thought about how she’d eaten her hamburger before her fries at lunch when it was normally the other way around, and soon she was embraced by the warm depths of sleep, curled against the wall, a look of sublime peace on her face.

It started as a whisper, the gentlest ghost of a sound in the distance, so quiet it may not have even been a sound at all, but it drew closer and clearer and soon she was hearing words, chanted over and over again in a language that she could not understand, and even as she tried not to hear it she knew there was nothing she could do now that it had begun.

The dull grayness began to take form; she had no body here, no presence, but simply watched from afar as shapes began to emerge from the nothingness. There was a cat, thin and golden, and it looked forward with its ears forward, but suddenly turned its head to look at where she would have been if she was real anymore and its eyes widened before it bounded off. There was a ground now, it was cobblestone, and someone was stumbling across it, crying in deep, heaving sobs. Their form was obscured, as if seen through warped glass, and she could not see who it was. A hard rain fell, the drops coming from nowhere.

Everything suddenly tilted, and she was in a candlelit room. A short, jet-haired boy was standing before a red-haired girl who was standing in the corner. He was right up against her, one arm supporting him gently against the wall, and above his head the soft light played across her face, but it too was warped. He began to speak.
“It was you. It was always you.”
Through the filter that hid the girl’s face, she thought she saw the outline of a smile.

Now she was watching another scene, a different boy who had shaggy blonde hair. He was rocking back and forth, eyes shut tight, whispering to himself, holding a large pair of headphones so tightly to his head that his knuckled were bone-white. Suddenly they opened, the white visible through the perpetual gloss that seemed to hide identity from her, and he got up and began to run, snatching a knife off of a table that materialized in her field of vision as he ran past.

The body suddenly jerked back, however, and now it was falling, red trails marring a suddenly clear face. It turned, slowly, clearly falling but with nothing but abstract shapes around it to judge location, and looked at her. The boy spoke to her then, right to her, but the words swirled in the ether and were lost before they reached her. Turning his head back, he hit the ground hard, the sickening mixing of a thud and various cracks echoing throughout the scene, and as it fades back into the gray emptiness the sound grew louder and louder, until it was overwhelming, drowning out a sound she now recognized as her own screaming.

Her eyes bolted open, and already she could feel the cold sweat that soaked her. Someone was shaking her madly, but her vision was unfocused and her body unresponsive. Jessica’s face was almost as wet as Summer’s, and she called her roommate’s name through heavy sobs, and as she saw the girl’s eyes open she embraced her tightly. Gradually, Summer began to feel her physical body again, and she turned her head slowly and attempted to speak through a hopelessly dry mouth.
“Water…”

Jessica Beauregard blushed slightly as she watched her roommate blow out a thin plume of blue smoke. It wasn’t that she was a prude or anything, but she had only been at school for two months and was still getting used to things. She had enrolled at the academy with an eye towards business; numbers fell into place in front of her like ants lining up to feed their queen, and though she could done nearly anything involving math her parents had insisted that she use her talents to go into business, with the goal of becoming a CFO. With her skill it would not be difficult, but she came to Farraday in the hopes of attaching a name to her resume that no company would ignore. Her career path, however, wasn’t something she thought about in particular, though she was slightly bothered that it had been chosen for her. She simply loved math, and found it as easy as walking, or breathing. What she actually did with it didn’t matter terribly, in the end.

The girl with whom she now shared a room, Summer Vargas, was on the whole an unspectacular student when compared with the norm, though she did have an artistic bent that some who knew her well mused was entirely chemically based, though she herself said that the question was irrelevant. If she had one problem, it was a decidedly impatient quality that seemed to drip into all aspects of her life. She liked speed, both the concept and the narcotic, and anything that attempted to staunch her pace invited her sudden and severe disintrest. Jessica was perhaps the one exception to this rule; the room had been vacant the second half of the previous year, and Jessica was to Summer something not unlike a younger sister. The indifference with which she regarded anyone who could not keep up with her lifestyle seemed somehow misplaced and unnecessary on the bookish, dark-haired girl she now lived with.

This wasn’t to say that she made any great deal of accommodations for her new roommate. The first night she got there, Summer attempted to sell her half a box of painkillers she’d swiped from her mother before the term started. Jessica respectfully declined, then proceeded to pace the halls outside her room for an hour wondering whether her new choice of school had been a good one. It was a few days before she drove up the nerve to talk to her roommate about it.
“Oh sorry, did I freak you out? I totally didn’t mean to-”
“No, it’s cool, it’s my fault for being sheltered I guess…”
Summer laughed, but there was a hint of uncertainty, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not it was a joke.
“Well I mean, have you tried anything?”
“I’ve coughed my way through a couple of soggy cigarettes, but other than that I haven’t seen much, let alone doing it. Lame, right? I came from the middle of nowhere…”
“Listen, I do a whole bunch of crazy stuff but I know it’s stupid. You’re probably going to live a good ten or fifteen years longer than me. I respect anyone that doesn’t constantly need to be messed up. All power to you, girl.”

Jessica smiled widely, for the first time since she’d arrived.

She hadn’t really expected Summer to sympathize with her, but she did, and though she partook of no shortage of illicit substances in her presence she never offered Jessica anything again, and did her best to assuage her awkwardness when she could. It was, however, something of a slow process. Jessica still found it difficult to hide the fact that drugs and alcohol made her uncomfortable, and Summer was still fumbling through trying to make her feel alright, a length that was entirely foreign for her to go to. However, they were making progress.

Jessica’s back was now against the wall, knees hugged to her chest, as she read a small graying paperback. Summer passed the rolled up paper to Sarah Jacobson, who was sitting on the floor. She took a much longer time with it, inhaling slowly and savoring the feeling. In her two years at the academy she had very quickly built up a reputation for making a complete fool of herself within minutes of ingesting anything more powerful than an antacid, though to her popular credit she didn’t let it stop her.

Summer threw back her head, ruffling her hands through short, jagged hair, clearly cut by her own hand with the same impatience with which she did anything. She could not have told you what her parents actually did for a living, nor did it interest her terribly to know. Though she was, in fact, exceedingly wealthy, she found that money held little attraction for her beyond its ability to buy mind-altering substances. She dressed, for the most part, in old tattered garments she’d found in thrift stores or places she didn’t want to specify. Even from a young age, she’d been unable to afford anything much attention, and even now when questioned about her particular disposition she simply said she was easily bored.

Despite her blatant disinterest in most things and people, Summer had a penchant for acquiring friends, although it seemed to Jessica that they were rather more like followers, or disciples. She felt guilty judging her, however, as Summer was in fact the only person who she had actually grown close to. It wasn’t that she didn’t talk to anyone else, but rather that so many at the academy seemed to exist behind ornate ivory walls of their own design, whereas Summer was completely honest about herself and genuinely nice, when it occurred to her to be so. Flawed and difficult to comprehend as she was, she seemed the only one Jessica could truly connect to, without feeling like she was meeting a constructed personality.

“Man, you usually don’t have stuff this good so early in the year. Where’d you get it, Sum?”
“Nabbed it before I came back, little rough coming out for me but it’s a nice change.”
“Look at you, talking like it’s fine wine. You’re such a connoisseur!” Sarah spat sarcastically.
“It’s funny,” she responded with a wry smile, as she took back the cigarette, “but I believe my impeccable taste has been keeping you buzzed for two years now!”

The two chuckled, and Jessica unconsciously moved her book closer to her face. The other two girls continued to banter less and less coherently, Jessica doing her best to stay focused on her reading, feeling as if she were intruding on a conversation she wasn’t meant to hear, even though she was mere feet away. Her attention was roused only when she felt the conversation grow serious for a moment.

“I’m not saying it’s a problem, lord knows I can’t judge anyone, and you have the pictures to prove it. But I’ve never seen you go more than a couple of days without taking something.”
“I get bo-”
“Bored, yes, I know. Just, when was the last time you tried living off of altered states for a week? Just for the hell of it.”
Jessica’s face was now fully red, trying not to listen but intensely interested in where this was going.
“Honestly,” Summer purred, smiling and diffusing the tension a bit, “it’s not something that ever occurred to me.”
Sarah grinned and tilted her head, a gesture that said “of course you haven’t.”

The two girls sat in silence for a little while, passing the almost-done cigarette to each other in turn. Finally, Sarah spoke again.

“Two weeks. I dare you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Go for one week without anything, no herbs, no pills, no drinks. I’ll throw you tobacco but only to keep you from killing someone.”
“C’mon Sarah, I’m not gonna-”
“Not gonna, or can’t? It’ll be fun, let’s see what the Opiate Queen does without her subjects for a little while.”

Summer narrowed her eyes and regarded Sarah, a look of deep concentration on her face. Jessica’s book was now near her navel; she was staring at her roommate. For a second, when Sarah first made the suggestion, she thought she saw a shadow play across Summer’s face. It was a look of terror, but it was so brief she was unsure she had not imagined it in the low lighted room. At length, Summer’s lips went from being tightly pursed to widening into a sly smile.

“And when I win?”
“In the unlikely event,” Sarah chuckled, “that you do in fact last a full two weeks, I’ll give you…three hundred bucks. How ’bout that?”
“Money’s lame. Give me something to inspire me.”
Sarah thought for a moment. The two girls’ eyes were locked, and Jessica was looking from one to the other, not wanting to miss any movement from either. Her disposition had gone from worried to excited, as she got caught up in the intensity.

“You choose.”
The room was electric. The air grew thick and heavy, the moment suspended as if the entire scene were a snowglobe that would never be shaken. Summer licked her lips, Sarah breathed hard, and Jessica watched in awe as an epic, wordless battle of willpower took place. And then, finally, breaking the fragile silence, Summer named her price.
“Raw Power.”
Sarah looked as if she’d been hit by a flying sledgehammer.
“What’s-” Jessica began, but Summer immediately interjected.
“A Stooges album. Punk stuff. Sarah has a first printing EP, personalized and signed by Iggy Pop. It’s valuable, but more importantly it’s a piece of rock history.”
Sarah’s forehead was beginning to bead with sweat. She had made the challenge. She couldn’t back down now. She bit her lip, then sat up straight, looking suddenly officious somehow.
“Two weeks, and I’m adding no cigarettes. I ain’t givin’ it up without a fight.”
“Fine with me.”
“Well then, sister, you got yourself a goddamn deal!”

There were, it was commonly known, two possible prerequisites for entering the Farraday Academy. The first was a superior intellect – even the most basic of classes far surpassed those offered by most universities in both depth and challenge, and more than a couple of alumni ranked among nobel prize winners. The second was immense wealth – top-notch facilities and what the administration felt was a necessary exclusivity drove the price of tuition into astronomical levels. It was, of course, entirely possible to enter the academy without one of these criteria, if the case was that one possessed an extraordinary amount of the other.

That is, there were a number of students whose were not particularly brilliant but whose parents had an excess of zeroes tacked onto the ends of their salaries that excused poor grades. By the same token, there was a small group of students who could not have dreamed of attending normally, but were of such high intellect that the school recruited them; the assumption of most was that the accomplishments of such students would bring more prestige and money to the school in the long run, though whether it was wanting for either of those things was in doubt.

It was said that the Farraday Academy was the breeding ground for the future rulers of the world, and though this came off as the kind of pamphlet-friendly buzztalk that private schools seemed so obsessed with, it was most probably true. The students of the academy went on to become CEOs, top-ranked researchers, senators, doctors. Their average income was nearly double that of the average person, merely by virtue of the education they received there. While there were those who skated by largely on a steady parental cashflow, there were many students who by their second year were taking classes that would make graduate students weep in desperation. With cutting-edge technology and a staff whose selection process was impeccably rigorous and complex it was, without a doubt, a school that was without equal.

The academy had been maintained for over one hundred and fifty years by several headmasters. The turnover for staff in general was low, but few headmasters had reigned for any less than twenty years. The academy was founded by Walter Leighton Farraday in 1839, and even from the start it was the sort of school that most people were not even aware of. It was, at its inception, a place for the elite to train their children to inherit their legacies; in this same vein, Walter Leighton Farraday raised his only son in the school in order to craft him into its next headmaster. It was said that the treatment Marten Farraday received during his four years at the academy were akin to intellectual torture, though the willingness with which he engaged in it was commendable. Walter believed firmly that the survival of the school was entirely dependent on two things: maintaining a meticulously chosen student body and having a headmaster that was the epitome of everything that the academy stood for. It was this high set of expectations that led to the continued overseeing of the academy by the Farradays themselves until William Horace Farraday inherited the headmaster position after the sudden death of his father a scant 3 months before being sent overseas to participate in World War I.

William never returned home, however, and thus at the end of a lengthy and strained process a family friend was put in charge. Though the Farraday family never again presided over the school directly, it always kept a watchful eye on the academy and its condition, and the careful screening of headmasters ensured that the academy only became more and more successful as time went on.

With the changing of the guard, as it were, from the Farradays to the outside headmasters, came changes to the way the academy was run, as well. This change came at the tail end of the 60′s. The social and political turmoil bubbling throughout the country seemed to have little effect on those at the school, but the administration took notice. As the age of computers began to dawn, a new class of student was emerging, and Liam Kessler saw a chance to ride the coming wave. He was the first headmaster to actively seek out students who could not afford tuition, but were exceptionally bright. The parents, of course, thought he was crazy; it took a great deal of time, and of success, for them to realize their own children were benefited by this new system. By the mid-70′s, the Farraday Academy had become noteworthy as a haven not only for the wealthy but for the brilliant.

To accommodate the influx of students, and to keep up with new technologies while honoring the Farraday family’s wish for the original buildings to remain, a new set was constructed in the western section of the grounds. West Campus, as it was known, in stark contrast to the antiquated and quaint, almost castle-like structures of East, consisted of clean white square buildings, which housed new science facilities that could update with the times.

That such a project had been thought of as insane by most everyone it affected could scarcely be imagined today; what was once shocking change was now well-worn status quo. Science and math classes were held in West, art and humanities classes in East, and students were mostly quartered in the dorms based on their concentrations. Another of the sweeping changes Kessler had brought on was a total reform of the typical high school education, in which traditional classes were almost altogether abandoned, in favor of more specialized, university-style classes that allowed students to grow in a more personalized and intellectually beneficial environment.

Another casualty of the reform was that the strict, tight-laced control that boarding schools were famous for was done away with, to the utter delight of the students who had grown up hearing horror stories from their parents. The thinking was that, in most cases, the students were of such monetary and intellectual pedigree that to impose too many rules on them would be more of an inconvenience and hindrance than a necessity, and simply added a superficial layer of control. Whether or not this actually worked in practice was arguable, but at the very least it had not yet lead to an absolute collapse and the burning of all the school buildings, which had certainly be expected when the idea was introduced.

In the end the Farraday academy had gone, in the space of roughly a decade and a half, from being the pinnacle of the traditional private education system to a cutting-edge academy that was no less difficult to get into but far more of an oddity. One could not, however, argue with results, and as the academy continued to produce prominent members of society, even those who would never have dreamed of subjecting their children to such an unorthodox system found themselves desperate to get them in.

Exclusivity. It was the cornerstone of the Farraday Academy, and it was a condition that granted its students a certain amount of freedom. Private schools, especially in the old English style, were unabashedly strict and tight-laced, as both a function and an indicator of their high status. Farraday, however, was one step above this ancient tradition, and given the unusually high caliber of students that they accepted, it was surprisingly lax.

“One thing,” the current headmistress (the first in the academy’s history) had once told the New York Times, “that separates us from other schools similar to ours is the fact that we resist the urge to micromanage our students. Something we have found continually true over time is that the type of citizen we cultivate here is ill-served by constant surveillance and rigorous control. We encourage virtue and maturity in our students by letting them earn our trust. In return, they show restraint and good choices that any parent would be in awe of, coming from a teenager. We give them the freedom to grow, and in turn they develop a strict sense of maturity and goodwill that we could not have forced into them.”

Marcus Ellenbee had his arms folded on the long table, his head down on it as his eyes lazily scanned several lines of his book before looking up. It was a cycle he’d gone through roughly every few minutes of the last hour. Spears of sunlight pierced the windows, and there was only one student in the vaulted room besides himself. It was a glorious day, and it seemed nearly the entire student body was outside enjoying it.

Marcus, however, had taken the chance to go to the nearly abandoned library. Something about having it almost to himself was invigorating and exciting, and as he attempted to pore over an old, well-worn novel he couldn’t help but think that he was, by far, the luckiest boy in the whole school at this moment. The reason: the student seated at the table across from his was Cherry Ashford.

Cherry Ashford was, by general consensus of nearly every last person at the Farraday Academy, the most breathtakingly gorgeous girl to ever walk the halls. Her features were both sharp and soft in turn, long dark hair framing her face like liquid ruby, eyes of jungle fauna and a form that was neither strikingly thin nor particularly curvaceous, but modest and substantial.

However, even the careful and categorical appraisal of her individual features (such lists had been compiled with such frequency that it may as well have been a class) did little to illustrate what truly made her special. It was her aura, the way she carried herself, that elevated her to a level beyond normal beauty. She was sweet but quiet, unassuming in a way that made her mysterious and unknowable. She had a small but devoted group of friends, who were fiercely loyal and never betrayed her trust, though they were grilled constantly by those who wished to know more about her. Other than that, she didn’t socialize very much at all.

It went without saying that she drove every boy in the school mad, though most had long since given up the idea that she would grace them with her presence for more than a passing second. She had never been known to date anyone at the school in her two years there, and had politely declined the many requests she had gotten, though every poor boy who had attempted seemed to be drained of all joy and hope for at least a few days afterward. The female population of the school had initially formed a torrent of jealous rage against her, but as she kept to herself and made it clear she did not wish for the attention, it gradually tapered off and she seemed by the end of her sophomore year to have faded into obscurity, an object of beauty that existed always in the background, a flower that unobtrusively made the entire garden more vibrant.

Marcus Ellenbee was not much different, if Cherry’s meteoric rise to an almost mythological status was completely discounted. Rather, from the moment he entered the academy, he had seemed to blend smoothly into the wallpaper, never drawing much attention and not wanting for it. Having been well-versed in the rites of schoolyard torture, he actually found it quite refreshing; though he still endured some ridicule, it was not nearly as pronounced, and certainly less physical. The sons and daughters of the rich and brilliant were more inclined towards cerebral warfare than they were locker stuffing and book scattering. In the end, Marcus found it far easier to ignore, and so he lived out his days in relative peace. It couldn’t be said that he didn’t have any friends, but he had never quite found anyone he really felt he could relate to at the academy. There seemed to be an invisible wall separating him from his fellow students, something that disabled the two parties from ever connecting on a meaningful level.

So it was that, on a pristine end-of-summer day, he sat in the library gazing upon Cherry Ashford, who seemed herself eager to escape the throngs of people they were constantly surrounded by. The sunlight flooding in through the windows illuminated her hair, so it seemed as if her face was surrounded by brilliant flames. The effect was staggeringly beautiful, but distantly unnerving somehow. She did not once look up from her book, which seemed tattered and yellowed; Marcus tried several times to glean what it was from afar but it seemed one of the countless, ancient textbooks that littered the library, their covers worn and indistinguishable after decades of study. The fact that she was in here reading an aged book like he was gave him a sense of elation, as if they were somehow similar. He felt childish admiring her from afar, but he wouldn’t ever dare speak to her.

As it happened, he ended up behind her an hour later, as they entered the large Medieval Studies classroom. It had eight students, which was small even by Farraday standards, but the course reading was notably difficult. Those who took it tended to be either those in need of an extreme challenge or interested in reading about torture, Marcus falling into both categories. He was a superb student of literature, who had a gift for reading comprehension and a mind that could grasp abstract concepts with a lofty ease, and possessed an intense interest in things that predated electricity.

“As is tradition,” began the professor, David Hastings, “now that we’ve gotten through the easy readings,” which solicited a chuckle, as there had been only two weeks in the semester so far, filled with difficult material, “we’re going to pair you up, so that you can have someone to read with and bounce ideas off of. I know it’s strange for a literature class, but you’ll find yourselves comprehending far more together than you would alone.”

Marcus looked around idly; there was no one in the class he knew particularly well, and though mathematically his chances of being paired with Cherry Ashford were good, he knew that the universe would not allow for such an incredible event. Sure enough, she was paired with the one member of her tight clique that was also in the class, and as Marcus watched the groups form he found himself last to be assigned a partner.

“Marcus, you’ll be with Victoria.”

Victoria Rosewood was a tall black girl who could have been a supermodel if she had any interest in doing so. Her lithe form was capped by a large bundle of curls, far more hair than should have been acceptable, but paired with her almost-too-thin body it seemed somehow perfectly fitting. There was a common joke that Victoria owned every song ever recorded, but just how much of an exaggeration this was was questionable. She was a veritable encyclopedia of music with nearly limitless tastes, and her gold and purple headphones seemed glued to her ears. Her ability to choose songs to fit a situation was legendary, and no one dared to touch the music during a party if she was anywhere near.

She was also fairly popular, well-liked by nearly everyone, and so Marcus’ eyes were cast down as she sat next to him. She shot him a nervous smile, which he attempted to return, but both looked away quickly as if what should have been a simple moment resulted in a cataclysmic train crash. They hastily and clumsily arranged to meet in the library the next day to discuss iron maidens as the class closed out, and Marcus went to his room wondering if perhaps he would have been better off being in one, rather than reading about them.

The complete lack of ease with which he had interacted with her haunted him as he walked down the halls, and it did not help that he was quite sure that she was now regaling her friends with the tale of his awkwardness. He failed to see, as he went over the events again and again in his head and marveled at just how terribly he had performed, that there was a potted plant in his path. He did manage to realize it had been in front of him, but by that point he was face down in soil, which now covered the floor. He could hear stifled laughter as he picked a large leaf out of his hair, and struggled to recall the feeling of joy that had seized his heart as he watched Cherry Ashford two hours prior, but it had fled like a strange dream lost to the morning. Sighing, he righted the plant and walked briskly to the nearest bathroom, caked with the remains of the poor plant he’d mangled.

Just another day, he thought, in one of the most exclusive private schools in the world.

A thick, orange candle casts a harsh light across the table, four young people seated around it. At the head, a short boy with dark, shaggy hair looks up and begins to speak.

“Welcome to the first meeting of the Farraday Academy Paranormal Investigation Society. Our purpose is-”
“That’s not really the name, is it? I thought you were kidding?”
“What’s wrong with the name?” the boy asks, looking to a bored-looking girl, a headphone in one ear and a blank expression on her face.
“It’s way too long. No one wants to say that.”
“It’s not supposed to be cool, it’s supposed to be descriptive. I mean that’s what we are, right?”
“Well yeah,” she responds, staring at the candle flame idly, “but it doesn’t exactly inspire morale, does it?”

“I dunno,” a statuesque girl with a large afro interjects. “It’s kind of cool, in an ironically British kind of way.”
“I didn’t mean it ironically-”
“I like it too,” a third girl pipes in. She has an open notebook, from which the scratching of a pen can be heard.
“No way, you’re writing all this down?” the bored girl asks, casting a sidelong glance at the notebook.
“Well, this is important, isn’t it? Our first meeting and already a controversy. We have to remember things like this,” she responds, pursing her lips as she examines her wording, squinting in the meager candlelight.

“You’re not gonna record everything we say, are you? I thought the whole point was this was going to be secret and-”
“The name is just what we are, I don’t see why it’s so-”
“I said I’d come as long as it wasn’t lame, and so far all I see is-”
“No reason why I shouldn’t record things, it’s not like I’m gonna go around showing-”
The cacophony of voices only increases as the children continue their intertwining arguments, the small musty room seeming almost to vibrate. At length, the boy closes his eyes and breathes deeply, as if resigning himself to something. He stands up suddenly, and slams something on the table.

“A student is dead!”

Immediately, all the sound seems to evaporate as if through an unseen vent, and for a second no one even dares to breathe. The three girls settle back into their seats, two looking slightly embarrassed. The boy’s face goes red as he begins suddenly to regret his outburst. He quickly seats himself, looking down.

“No, you’re right. We need to focus. We all know something weird is going on here, whether we believe it entirely or not. That’s why we started this club…society…whatever. He didn’t die of natural causes. We all know it in our bones. Although even I have a tough time believing that…that killed him.”
The attention of all four focuses suddenly on the item the boy crashed onto the desk. It is a simple MP3 player, a pair of large headphones attached. There is a dull red stain tarnishing the yellow of the earpieces.

“Putting aside how terribly creepy it is that you took that, how exactly is it that this thing is supposed to be a murder weapon? I mean, the whole “music made my kids violent” thing went out of style in the 90′s, and it was stupid then.”
“I don’t think music made it happen. Not the way you’re thinking.”
“That’s where the “paranormal” comes in.”
“So what, you think a poltergeist possessed his MP3 player?”

“Actually, yeah, that is what I think. Now, it’s time to find out.”