(Content/trigger warnings for this chapter: self-hatred, bullying, fatphobic comment, mention of anxiety)

-Ranya-

Windshallow High School reminded me of a spiderweb—hairline cracks split across the peeling red-painted bricks, halls intersecting with halls intersecting with more halls, and the fragility. Sometimes purple water dripped from the ceiling. Sometimes one of the doors fell off its hinges. Sometimes one of the walls caved in.

But more than that, Windshallow High School was a spiderweb because of the people. Spiders scuttled through the halls, tittered in the bathrooms, and sank their fangs into unsuspecting passersby.

It was my job to exterminate them.

My heart beat quick as I turned to the first page in my notebook in the reeking bathroom stall, slicing myself on the paper's edge. I grimaced. The world flashed with bright colors just as painful from the Watcher's hallucinations. But I would fight it. Especially because today's ostracization was a little more… personal.

The hall was still packed with students, and the caved-in wall a few feet ahead didn't help. I needed to quickly get lunch, present my findings, and get back to the bathroom to try to get Dakota to help me again.

I shoved my way into the crowd and the pressed, sweaty bodies of my classmates.

"Do you think she's on drugs again?" a porcelain-skinned girl whispered to my left. My chest panged its familiar ache.

"You see the way she's clutching the wall for dear life?" a boy with a similar face replied. "Definitely."

Another boy with the stench of a landfill purposely knocked into my side as the world swerved particularly hard, and I crashed onto a hard pothole in the floor. Laughter rang out around me, and some people stopped to watch. My knees throbbed. People whispered speculations on what drugs I had to be using this time.

"It's like those strange storms from the news!" someone said.

"No, Ranya's worse."

What storms? I narrowed my eyes and dug my fingers into the rough grooves of the wall to try to stand. The first time, I fell back on my knees. The second time, too. The third try, I made it back up. Whispers grew around the hall as people watched my progress.

Laughter continued to bounce around me as I got my lunch and balanced it in one arm while I used the other to keep me stable. I nearly fell several times. Usually I fell.

I soon made it into the high-ceilinged gym crammed with half-broken tables. Cracks ran along the walls in jagged patterns—more like fangs than spiderwebs. It reminded me of the feeling I'd begun to have this past week like needles on my back— that something dangerous was coming.

I quickly made my way to the bleachers on one end of the room, dropped my tray on the bottom one, and set up my area with my trifold poster board and its text and photos.

Then I extended my pointer from my bookbag, managed to stand up without stumbling, grasping a nearby rusted railing, and cleared my throat. The rust dug into my hands in my death grip.

All sounds in the room silenced. The only time when people pay attention to me not as a drug addict. My pointer suddenly vanished from my hand with a tinkling sound. I gasped, and titters bounced around the room—some about me, and some about the curses of Windshallow. I collapsed hard back onto the bleachers as I reached for my bookbag again. Laughter erupted across the room. I fished out a black mechanical pencil and left my bookbag open as I stood back up.

I smacked the pencil into my hand and began in a loud voice, "Today's ostracization: Caelum Zobrist. For bullying Viola Aasen behind her back." People quieted. A few tables away, Caelum, a tall normally-tan girl who people called attractive (though I didn't see it) with long normally-blond hair rigid against her sharp back and shoulders, narrowed her large normally-corn yellow eyes. Today, she glowed entirely blinding white. Viola, whose hair was shorter and her body rounder and brighter, stared at Caelum with a blank expression. I don't remember Viola's normal hair color, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't neon orange.

I glanced at my now-strobing-green watch and cursed myself. Only seven minutes now?

"I don't have time to tell you how I found out, but I have proof." I slid my phone out of my pocket and promptly dropped it on the floor with a clatter. Peals of laughter echoed around the room as I bent over and picked it back up. I stood, steeled my shoulders, and maxed the volume.

Over the people chatting in the video's hall, Caelum's high voice, which I had amplified, said, "I told that to Viola."

A second voice said, "So why are you friends with her again?"

There was a pause. "She just follows me around, and I let her. She doesn't help my image—she's fat with tasteless clothes—but gives me gum, and I can get her to pay for things. It's worth pretending I'm her friend."

The video ended. Viola's face was pale—I think—while Caelum's was contorted into as many wrinkles as the many insults she'd spewed over the course of her life. Then her face smoothed, and her eyes widened with false innocence. My blood boiled. She never stops. She ran with controlled strides to the front—to me—her high heels sending echoing knocks through the gym.

"I didn't mean it!" she said. "Denise was embarrassing me with her friends and threatened to spread a rumor that I was pregnant! I had to pretend to hate Viola so Denise would leave me alone!"

"Surely that was what happened," Viola said so quietly I could hardly hear. People who knew of Caelum muttered in agreement. Or the vision of her she's created over the past year, anyway.

I raised my chin and gritted my teeth. "Then why did it happen over and over?" I tapped on another video and showed the crowd.

"Viola? She's easy to get money from," said Caelum's amplified voice from the back of the video's half-sunken-in classroom. "I got fifty dollars off her once."

"I didn't mean that in a bad way," the present Caelum said, bringing her hands to her chest. "I meant that if you needed help, she could support you." People nodded and whispered. Viola frowned.

"Looks like you got the wrong one this time!" a girl with neon pink streaks in her hair shouted in the back.

I clenched my jaw and displayed another video.

"You're my real best friend," came Caelum's voice in the video's bathroom. "Viola's a pushover. And she doesn't have a single opinion that's not based off someone else's."

"Who was Caelum talking to?" came Viola's small voice, suddenly cracking.

"I didn't mean it," Caelum said in a pleading tone. The crowd murmured, unsure. This was just too many incidents for them.

"You seem to have a habit of saying things you don't mean." I narrowed my eyes. "Even if you were pressured, it's no excuse. You can't turn on someone like that."

"But don't you know what it's like being afraid?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't stop me from doing what's right." The poster had more evidence and offenses, but there wasn't time. "Maybe this will finally teach you never to go behind someone's back again." I bit down the pain from my memories—my own betrayal at her hands six years ago. She was the one who had convinced my other friends to turn. My throat tightened. You're the reason I do this at all, Caelum.

Because though I originally began ostracizing people because the school wouldn't do anything, there was another reason, too—it gave me some positive attention, for just a brief moment. People loved heroes. People paid attention to heroes—heroes like the Guardians, characters from my favorite movie and book series. People acknowledged I existed, and not just as the drugged girl collapsing in the hall.

"There's a stronger emotion than fear—pain." I raised my chin. "Fear? As soon as it's gone, it's gone. But pain? Suffering and trauma? That's deeper. It's a part of you even after it leaves. It motivates you forever, for good or ill. And I want you to understand what all your victims go through." I tried to keep my bitterness out of my voice. It would make me look overemotional, and unprofessional.

"Maybe every time Viola wants to give something to someone, she'll think of what you've done, and she won't be able to convince herself it'll be different this time," I continued. "Maybe every day, she will wake up and hate herself for everything she does wrong because, deep down, she believes that you stabbed her in the back because something was wrong with her." Tears burned my eyes.

"I assume that's what you're trying to cause. Is that why you're flirting with three different boys—so you can ruin three different lives? It's your turn to be ostracized. For the fourth time."

Caelum's smile looked too happy, like if she stretched it any wider, her face would crack. "At least it's three more boys than you could ever pick up. You stand there, trying to play the hero, but how many friends do you have, Ranya?"

My chest panged. "About as many as you'd have if you weren't pretty."

Caelum flinched as people laughed and oohed. My chest glowed. Caelum continued to smile too wide. "You must think you are so clever."

"Well, you're not, if I can outsmart you." More laughter.

"So what if these people think you're funny? You get a few seconds where people like you?"

"What, jealous?" I did my best to keep the pain out of my voice. Ignore that Caelum was right.

The bell rang.

At first, everything stood still. Except for my hallucinations, of course. But my classmates' eyes were glued on either Caelum or me. Our two own pairs narrowed at each other like long, sharp weapons. I was tempted to hold that for as long as I could, but I was about to cry, and my chest tightened at the thought of her seeing. Besides, I had to meet Dakota—with the possible danger of the Watcher to myself and my family, that had to come first.

When I broke eye contact, the spell-like silence evaporated as everyone rushed to throw their food away in the large black trashcans in the corner and get to their next classes. A wide space formed around Caelum like oil in water as she strode with sharp movements. Word traveled fast at Windshallow High School, so by eighth hour, everyone should avoid her. One spider exterminated for now.

I quickly crouched, shoved everything into my bookbag, threw it over my shoulders, and stood slowly on the bleachers. The floor swerved too hard, and I fell on my side. It ached from similar falls already. But I carefully stood again and began making my way back to the girls' bathroom by the gym. The one place the paths of Dakota and I intersected.

Unfamiliar colors—they had switched on me—flashed and spun. Before I could register it, I ended up on the hard, potholed floor again on that same, aching side. It took me a second to realize the things smacking me with raw scrapes were shoe-clad feet as people tried to exit the cafeteria. Laughter echoed around me.

"She's an idiot for taking those drugs."

"No wonder she hates herself."

"Sniffing out bullies is the only thing she's good at."

I tried to pull myself up with what I thought was the side of a door, but it turned out to be a leg. I let go.

"You think those storms on the news would make us like her?" a boy I couldn't see asked someone else in a gravelly voice.

"No, she's worse," a girl replied, her voice pure.

I crawled as my vision stabilized some until I reached a section of the wall with several large pockmarks and used them to stand up.

I managed to stumble into the bathroom, its stench shooting up my nose. I waited by the one rusty sink that worked, hugging the paper towel dispenser to stay upright.

Dakota soon strode in. The bright colors that I saw on her clothes likely weren't that off. She stood a little lanky and half a foot taller than me, her long umber face glancing around. Scattered across her shirt were pencil-width black box braids streaked with blue and pink, but mostly royal purple. In my vision that day, they were all yellow.

She immediately spotted me, spun around, nearly collapsing, and stumbled back out into the hall.

"Hey, wait!" My chest panged. I tried to follow her through the glowing pink crowd, and water began trickling down the nearest wall. "Look—I know the Watcher visits your dreams. You're hallucinating like me right now. We can work together—"

Dakota's brown eyes widened as she spun back around and tried to find some leverage on the wet wall. "Please keep it down!" She almost slipped.

I winced. "Then come in the bathroom with me. I have something for you."

"No matter what you try, my answer won't change."

"But don't you want to get rid of the Watcher? We can help each other and protect our families. We know things the other doesn't—"

"Please, leave me alone."

"Aren't you tired of being alone?"

Dakota opened her mouth, but then closed it and turned and stumbled down the hall. People giggled and murmured. Dakota glanced out a window.

I dashed after her, tightly gripping the doorframe of the boys' bathroom to keep me steady. "Could you please at least answer one question? I had anxiety for four years before it suddenly vanished." It had begun the night of Isabelle's Guardian Angel's warning. "I think it might have to do with the Watcher. Have you ever experienced—"

"Please leave me alone."

My chest ached again, but I withdrew my wallet, the starry green pendant dangling from the attached keychain, and the money inside. "Look—I have something for you. My mom and I put together $1000 if you would help us." I tried to place it in her hand. She pushed it away.

"Please give up."

"Dakota—"

"Leave."

"What if we met after school to talk? If you didn't want to go to my house, there's this abandoned building that—"

"Leave me alone."

The bell rang for the beginning of the period. As Dakota turned and left, I cursed myself.

I had to turn and totter away, trying to make it to class as fast as I could so that Mr. Glor wouldn't yell at me again. I shoved my wallet back into my pocket.

"Do you think those thunderstorms are real?" a short girl who had a surgery scar across her face asked, gripping his arm tall boy with a holey shirt. "The ones that make you hallucinate, and those hallucinations can kill you?"

"Oh, don't worry about it," he replied. "They'll never come to Windshallow."

"But Windshallow's cursed!"

Huh? That was the third time I'd heard about some strange storms…

Something prickled down my back. I had basically memorized Rise of the Guardians and the Guardians of Childhood books by now. First, I had just liked them so much I watched and read them over and over again, and then I had also needed to go over things for my fanfictions. But even after six years, just thinking about that magical world made me feel lighter.

But it was still dangerous. And strange storms that caused hallucinations that killed people? That almost sounded like…

I pulled my phone from my pocket as I went. I googled "strange storms news," and tapped on the first article that seemed trustworthy.

"On Monday, August 25th, at 5:56 p.m., for approximately 20 minutes, a storm with unusual black clouds struck Burgess, Pennsylvania," I read through wiggling letters. "Eyewitness reports claim they saw 'terrifying' hallucinations that seemed to 'come to life,' and 'even kill.' There have been reported nearly 70 dead and 200 more injured.

"On Tuesday, August 26th, a second storm that lasted approximately 10 minutes with similar eyewitness reports struck Beijing, China. There have been reports of over 10,000 dead and around 350,000 more injured.

"Scientists from around the globe are struggling to understand the cause of these storms. The World Meteorological Organization is advising citizens to evacuate immediately if stark black clouds form overhead or nearby."

That was how the article ended. My first thought of who could be behind the storms would be the Watcher because of the hallucinations. But I remembered how he had worked with Pitch the day they killed my sister's Guardian Angel. And the first storm had struck Burgess—the hometown of Jack Frost, the newest Guardian, and the home of the human children who had helped defeat Pitch in the movie's events. It probably wasn't coincidence.

But my heart rate sped up. I recalled my feeling that something dangerous was coming. I was going to have to face Pitch and the Watcher, wasn't I?

Only Guardians fought Pitch, though. Was the thing that I really wanted that I would have to take from my sister… a Guardianship? I reached into my pocket and touched the smooth green pendant Isabelle's Guardian Angel had given me six years ago.

I couldn't help but smile. Could I finally feel love again? Be the hero I wanted to be?

Except that Isabelle's Guardian Angel, with all his power and foreknowing, hadn't even been a match for Pitch and the Watcher. How would I, a human teen, be one instead?