Sister Wyx had been on point in predicting detention. I endured a dour hour after school each day. Several students cycled through my prolonged punishment. None beheld the broken boy brooding in the room.

I alone bore the burden of his grim appearance: curled up in a corner of the cramped, crusty space. Several weeks of worry at his haunting had me wilting. I recovered color by a former teacher’s grace.

She was wily Mrs. Mons, lively lioness. I’d enjoyed the blessing of her guidance in fourth grade. She had since retired to enjoy her growing family, but she kindly volunteered to substitute a’times.

Pushing through the creaky door, Mrs. Mons recoiled, smiling through her stumble at the stench of rotten wood. She waved bittersweetly on her way toward her table. I savored the subtle scent of lilies as she passed.

Yet I shriveled in her sight and spurned her greeting, feeling flush and quite ashamed to meet a mentor there. I thought not to burden her with my anxieties. I thought not to worsen my detention with disgrace.

But I suffered stirring by a sickening aroma: bile freshly flooding from the boy they couldn’t sense. He erupted in his corner time and time again, wailing with what resource he retained between bursts.

I upheld my habit of ignoring him intently. I inhaled through teeth intensely grit to spare my nose. Boney fingers at my beckon dug into my desk. I suppose I must have looked a sight in my distress.

“Persi?” Mrs. Mons cautiously intoned.

I persisted in my straining as I looked her way. I felt all the fouler at the falling of her face. “Do you need to see the nurn?” she asked airily.

Far from keen to bother Sister Wyx again so soon, I shook my head softly and sank in my seat. My old teacher tilted her head as mine declined. I recall detesting her attention at the time.

I am grateful now for her stubborn intuition. She persisted in her intrigue through the hour’s detention. She delayed my dashing for the exit at its end. She insisted on a stroll so that we could speak.

I will spare the Reader the extent of our exchange: Mrs. Mons endured a dozen discussions deferred. I met all her asking with a whisper or with silence. I walked weighted by the woes I was too shy to share.

But I opened up as ever by my mentor’s grace, talking of my torment after twenty minutes’ time. I provided vague descriptions of my haunting visions. I spoke the assumption that my ailment had gone grim.

I spoke broadly of the mental burden breaking me: “No one else can feel it. No one else can see.” Mrs. Mons mused upon the matter for a moment. Thumbing her lips thoughtfully, she pondered aloud.

“Couldn’t there be more to what you’re seeing than your sickness? Some of us are sensitive to subtle mysteries. But it’s true that such events are often nothing much. It could be that all of it is only in your head.”

She then gave me guidance that I treasure even now: “Even if it’s only in your head, it’s real to you. So be sweet! Treat your sightings and yourself with grace.” She performed my favorite face, smiling with a wink.

Her suggestion nestled in the soil of my soul. I fixated on the notion in my bed that night. For the first time since the fall that started my ordeal, I endeavored actively to call the boy to mind.

I permitted him a presence in my waning thoughts. I compelled my consciousness to recreate him there. I suffered the sense of him to review his visage. I recalled that time the tears that streaked his severed face.