Sorry about the delay. Something shut down my access to the site. But here is the next one!

You know how it goes. You're sitting in class while a teacher calls roll, either having acknowledged your presence already or dreading getting called on by her, and suddenly, out of the blue, said teacher names a girl in class whom you might know due to connection with some famous person.

If I had a dollar for every time that happened…

I caught some murmurs in the students' desks.

"Jorgman? As in Casey Jorgman? His kid?"

"No way! I didn't think –"

"Do you read the tabloids? They're here!"

"Whoa!"

I caught the girl in front of me tapping on the top of her own desk, as the teacher had. Her expression was stony and impartial, in a way that reminded me of the Vortex when he was telling me something really important. Her body language made the message clear to me: We'll talk at lunch.

I rose up, trying not to show my embarrassment. "Here, ma'am," I said, speaking in a neutral tone. I wanted to make up for my friends' rudeness.

"Settle down, everyone," Mrs. Hardcastle said in a firm tone. The class fell silent. Again, I had to marvel at how well this woman could control a classroom. "Good, Miss Jorgman –"

"DJ, please," I said, keeping my tone neutral. Again, I didn't want to sound rude.

Mrs. Hardcastle glanced at me, and I realized that correcting her would be pointless. It's the same way with adults. They make the same "mistake," hoping you'll get tired of calling them out on it.

She continued on with it after that. As I'd expected.

"Delaney Jorgman?" Imira asked me silently as the roll call went on. "That's it?"

I nodded. "What did you think DJ stood for?"

That shut her up. Good. I didn't need another disruption, and I was sure the teacher didn't need one, either.

I turned to Amos. "Be careful, now," I said to him.

"Got that," he responded. I caught his wink.

I still felt a crawling feeling, even though I'd just gotten over that. Why did I get the feeling I was going to have to rein in another VLADJI?

The answer came when Mrs. Hardcastle came to another name:

"Marzera, Vicenza!"

Vicenza? I only understood when Vinny Lee stood up and said, "Here, Señora Hardcastle. Please, Vinny Lee will do it just fine."

Uh-oh. I remembered that Mrs. Hardcastle had ignored me when I mentioned my nickname. Why would she care what Vinny Lee called herself by? On the other hand, my friend wouldn't be allowed to use personal pronouns, either. Which would be great, as I both didn't like referring to people by personal pronouns and sometimes got Vinny Lee's identity mixed up (before she set me straight).

"Very well, Miss Marzera," she said.

Vinny Lee didn't answer. I took it as her taking the hint that there wouldn't be a discussion about it, although I wasn't sure. I could never tell with that one.

Once we got finished, we started the lesson. It was about Ancient Egypt, which I was certain I'd already covered. But I got the sense that all the boring classes were just the beginning. Another set of classes, and I'd have homework for those. I'd sooner take fighting monsters or another grueling training session with avatars over dealing with homework.

"Why'd you do that?" I asked Vinny Lee at lunchtime. The cafeteria was in the school's basement and didn't seem the right size to hold so many students. (Oh, who was I kidding? They probably hadn't expected such a huge turnout.) I could catch a lot of students huddled at tables everywhere. What did you do when there wasn't an open table? I guessed seat-saving wasn't allowed, at any rate. That would have been cruel.

She shrugged and picked at her burger. We'd all gotten burgers, as it was our junk food of choice. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have pizza. The Corleones have cannolis. We have burgers and lemonade.

It was also the one food we could agree on. Amos and Imira had certain dietary restrictions by virtue of their respective religious traditions, and I generally respected those, even if I wasn't bound by them.

"I was testing the waters," she answered me. "If she didn't take to 'Vinny Lee,' I didn't figure she'd –"

Imira jabbed her in the side. Hard. There was simply no playing soft with that one. "Obviously she wouldn't. This is Pat Ed Central, remember? Ain't no place for fetishes."

"Sí, sí, got it, amiga," my friend responded wearily. My friends and I don't dance around Vinny Lee's gender drama, as some despicable people might. But if anyone was blunt about it, telling her she couldn't be male just because it was fashionable, it was Imira. Of course, she's blunt with pretty much everyone, but she only puts up with Vinny Lee's insanity because the girl is struggling to amend it.

I spotted the ash blond girl approaching our table. No one else had done this. Unsure what to do with us, I guess. I tried to recall the girl's last name from the roll – something with an L? I didn't recall.

"Pryvit," she said softly to me. "Hello." She gestured toward our table. "This table taken?"

Okay, so she was a foreign exchange student. I wasn't sure what tipped me off – her accent, her troubled English, her speaking in a foreign language (most likely the last one) – but I knew off the bat.

"Uh, no," I said. What else do you really say to that?

The girl smiled and settled down next to me. I didn't argue with her decision. If I wanted any connections, this girl was as good a place to start as any.

"I am Olga Levpravda," she said. "From Ukraine."

Well then. "DJ," I responded. "And what have you heard?" Because I guessed Olga had settled in that seat in history class for a reason. There was no seating chart, as I said before, and most people would have defaulted to sitting with their friends if that was the case – or people they'd really want to talk to. Why would she want to talk to me?

Her expression shifted to surprise, awe, then a mask of calm. I guessed she'd heard a few stories about us, although most of our exploits hadn't gone public, being small-scale fights with monsters. How did she know about them?

"Why so surprised?" she asked.

"I… didn't think you'd heard," I said after a moment. "About us."

She tilted her head. "I see strange things, too."

I frowned. How did she? But of course this probably didn't mean anything, this coming from a foreigner. Everything's strange to them.

"You not believe me?" she said quietly, studying our faces. Gosh, she was almost as good at gauging expressions as Amos.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," I confessed.

And I really wasn't. If she did mean the monsters we dealt with… how could she possibly know about any of that? Most people didn't see the monsters we dealt with. If they knew, it was generally because they'd run into an avatar at some point. (Avatars, I had learned, could upend your perspective just by showing up.) But she hadn't said specifically that she'd run into them. And I was pretty sure I would know if she'd had an encounter with an avatar.

Olga gave me a slight shrug and played with a crochet hook in her hands. Some kind of fidget, I supposed? Of course, I hadn't met that many girls who fidgeted with a crochet hook, let alone kept it on their person like it was some sort of lucky charm. This convinced me even more that she should be my ally, if she was indeed that strange.

"Tell what you mean," she said.

I bit my lip. How could I phrase this? "Well, you said you've seen strange things. What do you mean by that?"

Olga frowned, as if struggling to figure out how to put it. I guessed her English vocab wasn't that stellar. "Strange beasts. Monsters. In my town, my home. I see them… everywhere, even back home in Ukraine. Ever since…" she said something that sounded like Herod zennia.

"Excuse me?" I asked, because Herod was not one of my favorite names.

"Sorry. Slipped. Since my birth."

Now that was a new one. I had never run into lifelong monster seers before – well, aside from the avatars. This meant Olga might be a little more knowledgeable against the monsters and how to beat them. A slim might, but it was better than nothing.

I finally admitted I had never seen a person like her before.

Olga glanced down at her crochet hook and gave it another twirl in her fingers. "Well, I am… flattered." She extended her hand – the one not holding the hook, of course. "I not ask how you know, but you have very good friends. I know. I see. We see a lot of each other in this school."

"Uh, thanks, I guess," I said, extending my own hand.

She shook my hand. "It is a pleasure to meet you, DJ," she said. "And your friends. I hope to see more of them."

"Encanto," Vinny Lee said in reply.

I couldn't tell whether Olga knew Spanish or not, but she seemed to pick up the sentiment. She nodded and smiled back.

After lunch, I couldn't stop thinking about Olga's words. Yes, we would certainly be seeing more of each other. Heck, we were in the same school. But I got the sense she'd meant it in another sense entirely. She genuinely wanted to hang out with me, as I had with her. She'd picked up on the fact that I'd fought monsters (was it really that obvious to her?), and it piqued her curiosity. She hadn't exactly known about the avatars. But I could show her.

But did I want to? Sure, I knew she could handle weirdness. She could see it, and she'd been dumped into another country, which was a difficult situation in itself. Clearly, this was no ordinary girl.

But did I want to drag her into my problems? Did I want to get her involved in my life?

That is a very good question. Verse for the update: Romans 5:20. Stay tuned!