I will warn the wise and willful Reader one last time: you’ve enjoyed the sweetest scene we’ll savor for a spell. Wholly hellish horror yet remains to be revealed. Keep your senses sharp and soldier on if grit permits.

We jump to my punishing by bitter Brother Beck, whom I’d left to cover for my failure to clean. He made sure to make me feel his fury in P.E., pressing me with several sets of pull-ups the next week.

I had strength enough to manage eight at most back then, but I dropped on two after half a dozen sets. “On your feet, P!” Brother Beck admonished me. “You still owe me twenty-four, and you don’t want this debt.”

I appealed to Brother Beck with wet and weary eyes. He defied me with a sneer. “Suck it up,” he scoffed. Other students snickered at me in my misery, but I found some comfort in a soul they couldn’t see.

There among them stood the boy, mangled no more. My belabored breathing steadied at the sight of him. He dispelled a look of shock to greet me with a smile, waving with a subtle warmth I savored as I stood.

On the day of his repair, I had learned his name: “Salvador,” he’d shared as I raised him from the muck. Only later would I learn the nature of his presence, having had to hurry for a transport at the time.

I suffered St. Circe’s bleakest bathroom the day after to probe him with the prospect that I was dreaming this. “You could be,” he offered. “I could be. Who knows? It’s happening. Best we bear it, eh?”

Salvador’s easygoing attitude charmed me, shocking as it was with our morbid meets in mind. He surprised me with an eager interest in our synching and curiosity about my character and quirks. I had risked returning to the forest to remove him, but I came to crave his company as we convened. It was nice to have a person present just for me. I began to favor him as we pondered our bond.

He deduced one day that he was summoned by my stress: “Every time we meet,” he mused, “you’re looking a mess.”

“You should talk,” I’d intoned sarcastically that time. I mimed an impression of his tearing at his chest.

Nonetheless, Salvador’s perception proved sharp, signaled by his showing during Brother Beck’s abuse. On assessment of my state, he smirked knowingly. With a snort, I performed a playful squint in turn.

Brother Beck took the look as one I’d meant for him. “Got somethin’ to say?” he boomed bearishly.

I shrunk in his shadow and shook my head on reflex. Beck expelled a scornful grunt and gestured at the bar.

I looked up in longing to conquer the coach’s challenge, but my burning arms defied my desire to rise. I had hope of neither might nor mercy to rely on. I once more eyed Salvador, eager for escape.

Brother Beck bent to block my vision with his face. “Where the mess you lookin’, P?” he demanded then. “Can’t you focus on the task in front of you for once? You ain’t got a chance o’ passin’ Field Day at this rate.”

I despised his naming of the failure I feared. He furthered his taunting with a turn away from me. “Wayne the Main could skip it and still outrank all o’ y’all. She ain’t even gotta try, but look.”

I followed his gaze to the ring around my rival, who was at that moment in the middle of a plank. Rachel kept her core engaged without a sign of strain. She succeeded in withstanding a minute and change.

Brother Beck whistled while Rachel’s watchers cheered. “There’s a gifted girl,” he uttered with a grin. “Bet she gets it from her momma.” I tilted my head, knowing nothing at the time of Rachel’s parentage.

Sweet relief arrived upon the clanging of the bell, signaling the end of our P.E. period. I amassed what might I could to walk away with speed, slowing only when our coach hollered after me.

“Pendrak!” Beck blared. I stopped in my tracks, turning tensely to endure the coach’s final slight. He met my anxious stare with a withering smirk. “See you in detention,” he declared.

I ignored the jeering of my peers to speed away, concealing contempt apparent on my twisted face. Salvador appeared to comfort me as best he could, but I spurned him to spare myself more mockery. Much as I enjoyed our secret synchronicity, it made for a sour secret as the days advanced. I would have to sneak away or sneak responses to him. Brother Beck was not the first to catch me and poke fun.

Such secrecy slowed my knowing of his nature, and Salvador struggled to recount his history. I’d learned of the likelihood that he had been alive: once upon the plane I walked and on another since.

“There was song,” he’d revealed about the second space. “There were stars. We were meant to eat.” I had stopped him sharing any further on that day; pondering his past appeared to reopen his face.