and that’s whirred up!

you’re dreaming again.

you shouldn’t be — you’re on the clock, after all, and you can’t have your boss getting on your ass again. not after last time.

but— no, that can’t be right, isn’t he in jail? you put him there, all of you. he deserved it. you needed the money. you needed him gone. you needed out.

your reflection blurs in the televisions. it always does, greens and reds swirling into a muddy brown that makes you grimace. it’s painful if you look at it for too long.

there’s something wrong, though, about the reflection. you should know, you’ve seen it enough times to nearly recognize it. something’s always off, though.

you’ve never seen the eyes of the girl looking back at you.

something tells you you know them all too well.

“lanes?”

you blink. you’re not dreaming, that’s not your job here. you’re restocking the shelves, because your store isn’t going out of business, because you have a steady stream of customers and a solid income and livable wages and a boss that doesn’t hate you. liv is leaning against the shelf you’re stocking, staring at you with something you might call concern if she knew what that was.

she’s not wearing her uniform vest. you don’t know why your brain tugs at that detail.

something must change in your expression, because she cracks a smile, blurring on the edge of genuine but always, always teasing. “you good?” she asks.

she’s younger than you, still in high school, but you’ve never felt like you have the upper hand with her. something about the sharp edge of her grin, knife-like and just as deadly; the glint of her eyes, nearly black until they flash, a flare, a warning signal. you’re not sure she actually knows your name.

you have a girlfriend. why are you focusing so much on high school girls?

(she turned eighteen last month. it’s written on the calendar in the break room in a handwriting you don’t recognize, bordering on chicken scratch if it weren’t for the looping scrawl, the hearts over the i’s. you’ve always been a little dramatic.)

“um,” you say eloquently. “yeah. all good. just… distracted. college, y’know?”

liv rolls her eyes. “oh, i know.”

she doesn’t elaborate. you don’t need her to. you’ve heard teachers mutter about the lost potential of liv skyler like it’s the most devastating thing in the world, whispering in the break room like you weren’t standing just around the corner. student council duties and all, of course. you’d never use your powers for evil.

you’d never started a rumor, necessarily, but if information’s changed hands behind you, well. what were you meant to do about it when you couldn’t see it?

“my mom wants me to go to stanford,” she continues without prompting. she says stanford like it’ll poison her if it stays in her mouth too long.

you blink again, more surprised than anything. “i mean. stanford’s not… bad?” you offer. and then, because if you’re already talking you might as well jump into the deep end, “do you… want to go to college?”

she stares at you for a moment with an expression you don’t know how to read, then down at the ground, scuffing her shoe against the carpet. “i don’t know,” she says in a voice smaller than you’ve ever heard. “i don’t know what i want.”

“oh,” you say. you don’t know what else to. “that’s… yeah. i don’t, uh. i don’t think you have to have your entire life figured out right now, though. you’re eighteen.”

liv looks back up at you, somewhere between irritation and confusion. “you have your entire life figured out.”

you feel like you’re going insane half the time when you walk into work. you don’t know if you know yourself anymore. you think you might be hallucinating on a regular basis.

“not all of it.” you’ve abandoned any pretense of working. liv raises an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving, and you shrug. “shit happens, y’know? nothing’s solid. i don’t know if i’ll even be able to do anything with my degree. i don’t know if i even want my degree, sometimes. i don’t know why i’m here, or why sometimes when i look at you or wendell or usha everything goes all fuzzy for a second, or why there’s someone in the televisions. y’know?”

distantly, logically, you realize you’re spiraling. that you’re word vomiting, incomprehensible statements to anyone but yourself. cleanup on aisle three. liv’s looking at you like you’re going insane. you think you might be, actually.

“there’s someone in the televisions,” she says flatly.

“that’s not—” you sigh, drag a hand down your face. “have you, uh. talked to wendell, recently?”

it’s not really an answer. you’re expecting her to call you on it, but instead she freezes, cheeks turning the softest shade of pink. cute, you think, there and then gone so fast you think someone might have just said it out loud, but you’re the only two in the store, so maybe you are just going insane.

“i don’t— not recently?” liv says, her voice strained. “or. uh. usually. in general. i don’t think he likes me all that much.”

this, for some reason, sets off blaring alarm bells in your mind, flashing red and screaming loud enough you can’t ignore them.

“okay,” you say instead. “well. i don’t… that’s not my business. i just know that, like, he knows something, and i sort of know things, and—” you sigh. reset. “i mean, i don’t really know anything. but there’s… there’s weird shit going on, is the point.”

“there’s always weird shit going on,” liv retorts. “i got, like, possessed last week. i think our store’s haunted.”

you freeze, all too familiar with the creeping, ghostly feeling the store carries, fingers grasping like tendrils around you, around your mind, strangling you until you’re purple and bruised. it feels like someone’s dumped ice water down your back.

“right,” you say lamely. “yeah. uh. what did it… feel like?”

liv raises an eyebrow. “bad? painful? hot? i don’t— or, no,” she clarifies at your look, “hang on, like burning hot, not like. i’m not into being possessed.”

“congrats,” says wendell, who has apparently learned how to fucking teleport in the last two hours since you last saw him.

you jolt, but just roll your eyes when he rests his elbow on your head. liv blinks at him, face slowly turning redder and redder, and as you glance back and forth between her and wendell, the pieces fall into place.

apparently, this is where your brain draws the line, because a white hot pain erupts behind your eyes, and you double over. someone rests a hand on your shoulder, but you can’t tell who because you can’t see a single thing, because everything is just light and color and you are the earth and you are the air and you are the world.

flashes. a forest. a nightclub. a hotel. a race. a mcdonald’s, for some reason. a fight. a prison. a lounge. a boat. a rainforest. the actual goddamn white house. a party.

you are lanie woodward but you haven’t always been lanie woodward, have you?

“that,” liv says, her voice miles away and yet right inside your skull. “it was like that.”

a car. a game. a fight. a kiss.

you don’t see the moments so much as you become them. you are free and bright and electric and you are alive, alive, alive.

“lanie,” wendell says, concern bleeding into fear, “your eyes are turning green? i don’t think that’s, like, supposed to—”