The chalkboard was a lie.

  Mr. Harrison was drawing a geometric proof, the white chalk screeching against the slate in a series of jagged, high-frequency bursts. To the thirty other students in Geometry, it was just a math lesson. To them, the chalkboard was a solid slab of stone, the chalk was a solid stick of calcium carbonate, and the floor beneath their feet was a dependable, unmoving foundation.

  They lived in a world of certainties. I lived in a world of ghosts.

  I stared at my desk, my palms pressed flat against the cool, faux-wood laminate. If I looked hard enough—if I let my focus slip just a fraction of a millimeter past the surface—the desk ceased to be a desk. It became a frantic, swarming hive of empty space and agitated particles. I could see the lattice of atoms, the way they shivered in place, held together by nothing more than a silent agreement of physics.

  My mother always told me to "stay grounded." She didn't realize that for someone with my... condition, grounding was an act of extreme violence. To stay still, I had to fight every natural impulse of my biology. I had to force my own molecules to mimic the sluggish, heavy rhythm of the wood and the steel. I had to pretend to be a solid object in a universe that was trying to shake me apart.

  Keep the frequency low, I commanded my blood. Slow down. Be lead. Be stone.

  The bell rang for lunch. To most, it was a signal of freedom. To me, it was a physical assault. The sound was a massive, bronze-colored wave of kinetic energy that crashed through the classroom, rattling the windows. I felt it in my marrow. My vision flickered for a second, the edges of the room blurring into a grey static before I managed to swallow the vibration back down.

  "Thorne! Earth to Jace!"

  Ollie was standing over me, his backpack slung over one shoulder. His energy was a messy, neon-orange blur that cut right through my grey fog.

  "Lunch, man. Come on. I heard they're serving that weird 'mystery meat' tacos again, and I've got a theory that it's actually repurposed N.E.A. rations," Ollie chirped, his voice echoing off the walls with a careless volume that made me wince.

  "I'm coming, Ollie. Give me a second," I muttered, slowly peeling my hands off the desk. There were faint, damp outlines of my palms left on the laminate—not from sweat, but from the heat my body had generated just trying to stay still.

  I followed him into the hallway. The cafeteria was a sea of noise, but it wasn't just the shouting or the clattering of trays. It was the resonance. Twelve hundred teenagers, all of them radiating hormones and raw physical energy. It was like being trapped inside a giant tuning fork.

  Ollie led me to our usual table in the far corner. He sat down with a thud, leaning in close, his eyes scanning the room like he was a spy in a low-budget movie.

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  "Did you see him?" Ollie whispered, though his "whisper" was still loud enough to turn heads two tables away.

  "See who?" I asked, keeping my head down as I opened my milk carton.

  "The guy in the grey polo by the North exit. N.E.A.," Ollie said, nodding toward the doors. "He's just standing there. Not doing anything. Just... looking. It's creepy, right?"

  I didn't need to look. I could feel the man's presence. It was a cold spot in the room's frequency, a void where the teenage chaos died out.

  "They're everywhere now, Ollie. It's their job," I said, trying to sound bored. I had to sound bored. If I sounded scared, Ollie would ask why.

  "But in the cafeteria? During lunch?" Ollie poked at a taco with a plastic fork. "My dad says they're putting up more of those 'air quality' sensors in the gym lockers too. It feels like we're in a zoo, man. Like they're just waiting for one of us to grow a second head or start floating."

  "They're just looking for the S.I.Z. symptoms," I said, my heart starting to thump rhythmically against my ribs. I squeezed the milk carton a little too hard. "The government is paranoid after what happened at the Kroger. They think Oakhaven is the epicenter."

  "Do you think they can actually tell?" Ollie asked, his voice suddenly serious. He leaned in further, his messy hair almost touching my forehead. "I mean, do you think they have, like, a 'freak-meter' or something? What if you're just a normal kid having a bad day and suddenly you're in a white van on your way to a lab?"

  "That's not how it works," I snapped, then immediately softened my tone. "At least... that's not what the news says. They look for environmental anomalies. Major stuff. They don't care about 'normal kids'."

  "I don't know, Jace. That guy over there... he's been staring at the same group of sophomores for ten minutes. He looks like he's waiting for a fuse to blow." Ollie shivered. "It gives me the chills. I'm glad I'm just a boring, loud-mouthed human. I can't imagine living like that, constantly checking over your shoulder."

  I looked at Ollie. He was eating his mystery meat now, completely oblivious to the fact that the "freak-meter" he was joking about was practically screaming inside my own chest.

  "Yeah," I said, my voice steady only by sheer force of will. "It sounds exhausting."

  The agent's gaze swept toward our corner. I didn't vibrate the table. I didn't break a glass. Instead, I did the hardest thing a person like me can do: I became perfectly, unnervingly still. I didn't even blink. I watched the agent watch us, my mind a blank slate of grey stone.

  The agent's eyes paused on our table. He saw two teenagers—one talking animatedly with his mouth full, the other looking tired and disinterested. He saw nothing. He moved his gaze to the next row.

  The rest of the day was a test of endurance. By the time I walked through the front door of 1242 Blackwood Drive, my head felt like it had been cracked open and filled with hot lead. The "Atomic Exhaustion" was settling in.

  I ignored my mother's call from the kitchen. I stumbled into my room and locked the door, leaning my back against the wood. The silence was a vacuum.

  I walked over to my desk and picked up a single copper penny. My hand was shaking—not from the power, but from the raw, human terror of the day. I sat the penny on the wood and let go.

  I didn't fight it. I didn't try to be lead or stone. For a brief second, I let the "bees" under my skin fly. The penny didn't explode. It didn't hum. It just shivered for a fraction of a second, a tiny, honest movement that no one else would ever see.

  I collapsed onto my bed, burying my face in the pillow. I was a Thorne. I was a resident of Oakhaven. And for one more day, I was invisible.