Max was standing next to me, keeping me steady, and I stared at him for a long moment trying to decipher his look. My face was turned away by an insistent hand on my cheek, and I allowed it to move me. These hands belonged to Roman. It took every bit of my remaining strength not to react to that.

James was hovering behind them, looking skeptically between the three of us. He didn't want to be here, his eyes flitting towards the door every few seconds, but the urge to stick close to his friends seemed to out-weigh his discomfort.

“School's not out for another hour and a half.” Max said, “We should probably bring him to the nurse.”

“He'll probably send him home. He'd have to walk and he'd probably get lost and die in the snow somewhere.”

Is that all Roman thought me capable of? Did it even matter what I wanted at this point, or did I not get a say because I'm clearly incapable of making good choices. I wanted to scream, tell them I wasn't useless or weak. I wanted to tell them to just fuck off and let me die if that's all they expected of me anyway. I settled for trying to pull away from them. Maybe I could lock myself in one of the stalls until they got bored and left.

Max grabbed my arm to stop me and my mind went completely blank. The whimper that escaped me was truly pitiful, and much louder than I would have preferred. I could feel my ears flush with embarrassment and I ducked my head to avoid their gazes. Roman and James were probably going to laugh or call me a girl. Max would probably drop my arm like it was plagued and never look at me ever again. I waited for either to happen and felt confused when they didn't.

Max did loosen his grip on my wrist, but only to very gently pull my sleeve up. At some point an angry and mottled bruise had spread near my slightly swollen wrist. It was probably a sprain, I thought.

“That looks like a sprain,” Max said, as if he could read my mind. “Shit dude, this looks really bad.”

“We can just grab Sam and go to the ER.” Roman had joined Max in studying my bruise. James stood resolutely where he was, looking longingly at the door.

I tensed, then tried to pull my hand away again, biting back the pain.

No ERs, no hospitals. Mum was always worried they'd find out and kidnap me to dissect me and experiment on me. She said she'd once had a recurring nightmare where she found me all cut up on an exam table screaming for help.

“Jules, you really gotta get this checked out.” Max said, “It could be really bad. It could be broken!”

I shook my head fiercely and the nausea swept back in, churning heavily in my stomach. I thought I was going to be sick again but there was nothing left in me. Next thing I knew I was in Sam's SUV, settled comfortably between Sam and Roman.

“I think he's snapping out of it.” James said from the front passenger seat, his body twisted awkwardly to keep an eye on me.

“You alright?” Roman asked for the third time that week, and I had to wonder if I was.

Clearly I had stepped into an alternate universe at some point. One where I wasn't actually the most hated kid in school, one with free car rides, and after school snack invites, and Roman-Fucking-Miranda asking if I'm alright. This universe still had pain, though, and it still had consequences. It still had me in Sam Kingsley's car, heading towards the hospital in the city instead of my home in the suburbs where I could crawl into my little attic bedroom, wrap myself up in blankets, and cry until everything stopped hurting.

“Dude, if he yaks in my car...” At least I could count on Sam for normalcy. I considered asking him if he remembered precisely when the temporal shift had occurred, just in case he held the key to getting back to our own reality.

“Relax,” Max said as we pulled up to the hospital, “He's feeling a bit better, aren't you, Jules?”

That nickname again. Had the world ended and we just never noticed? I looked out towards the imposing building I'd been warned against since childhood. I'd been born here, and I never went back. Mum didn't even take me for my first check-up until she knew she couldn't wait any longer, and had chosen Dr. Emmett because he was the first name she saw after two solid weeks of trying to swat me off the ceiling with a broom.

I couldn't go in there. I'd made a promise to my mum that I'd come to her with all my injuries and we'd go to Dr. Emmett together. He wasn't exactly trained for major stuff, but he was good about finding people who wouldn't ask too many questions for all of that.

Max was trying to usher me from the car and I glared at him, unwilling to budge. He smirked at me broadly and I knew then that he was going to be trouble.

“I guess Roman could always pick up and bring you out.” I tried not to blush, but I'm not even sure that's a thing people can do. Still, I took his warning to heart and slid out of the back seat and onto the sidewalk.

Half-way to the doors I pretended my stomach was acting up again, hoping the thought of puke might scatter my would-be saviors. Instead I found myself led over to bench and slowly lowered onto it.

“You really don't want to go in there, do you?” It was almost like Max had known me for years, like he could predict my thoughts even if I never so much as hinted to them. I shook my head. No, the last thing I wanted to do was go into a hospital while I felt like this. It was a miracle none of them were feeling the same effects the tree had. Bringing that sort of energy into an emergency room probably wasn't the best idea, even if I hid my magic successfully. “How about I go get you some water and a snack from the vending machine to settle your stomach and we wait until you're ready to go in?”

That wouldn't be a terrible idea, I thought. If Max goes in, and Roman continues to hover nearby like he's anxious, James and Sam still in the car fiddling with the radio, then no one would really try to stop me from leaving.

“Roman, make sure he doesn't leave.” Damn Max and his telepathy. I'd have to find another way. “I'll be right back, okay?”

Roman continued to fidget and flounder as Max darted into the building. He looked almost ready to say something. Probably another well-placed 'You alright?' which seemed to make up almost one-hundred percent of our recent interactions. I just wanted to scream again. No one had paid me this much attention in years, no matter how many injuries I came to school with, but now Max was here and suddenly I was noticed.

I wanted to scream again. It was almost odd how often that particular urge had surfaced over just three days.

I didn't wait for Roman to speak, instead focusing all my energy on the parking lot. It took a few seconds longer than I had anticipated, and he'd actually opened his mouth to say something, when a cacophony of car alarms echoed over the otherwise quiet parking lot. Windshield wipers were bouncing back and forth quickly, sprays of wiper fluid covering the glass, lights flashed and horns honked.

Everyone's attention was firmly pointed towards the mayhem, and in that dearth of notice I fled, darting through the bushes and hopping a low fence. I didn't look back.

I wandered for a while, easily navigating the streets of the city. It was an hour or so later that I found myself on the sidewalk outside my house. I stared quietly for a long moment, wondering if it was safe to go in. I'd remembered my narrow escape from earlier, easily picturing the imposing shadowy figure haunting the doorway, and my arm gave a twinge of pain. Instead of following the path up to the porch I walked slowly to the back yard, keeping close to the bushes and eventual fence that cut our property off from Max's.

Behind my house was a forest. Not exactly huge, but big enough and dense enough to get lost in. People rarely came out here, and it had become my safe space. A neutral zone, as my mum had always called them, safe for as long as I respected the boundaries. Further in the woods was a tree-house, settled high in the branches of an old oak tree. It was a marvel the building hadn't collapsed. It should have years ago, and I had to wonder if my magic had anything to do with it's incredible endurance.

I'd cast a spell here, some years ago. It'd flown across my mind like all the others and promised to hide the tree from people wandering in the woods. As far as I could tell it simply made the tree so unbelievably boring that people's eyes would slide right off it. It must have worked because, no matter how many footprints I found nearby, none came much closer than ten feet from the tree.

At the top of the ladder was a small trap door – much lighter than the one to my bedroom, thankfully – which opened into a space just wide enough for an old mattress and a collection of pillows and blankets I'd taken from mum's room. There were string lights attached to the ceiling, which didn't seem to need electricity to function, spare clothes stuffed into a pillowcase, and a stash of water and non-perishable food hidden in one of the walls. I tried to keep my tree-house stocked for emergencies like these; ones where the sharks had smelled blood from afar and were circling to investigate.

It would be cold, but I was safer here than anywhere else, and I could try to use a warmth spell if I really needed it.

I pulled out a sweater from the pillowcase and tugged it on, then built myself a nest. It was barely even dark out but I was exhausted, and my wrist hurt badly, so I curled up under my blankets and let myself drift off.

As I fell asleep, the tiny lights seemed to float above me like fireflies.