WARNING: This story contains depictions of violence, strong language, bullying, reference to drug and alcohol use, and content that may be shocking to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

Brakes screeched like a metal monster as the school bus careened to a stop. We bumped over a set of potholes deep enough to lose a small child in, and then, with a wheeze like a dying rat, the old door accordioned open.

I pressed my index fingers to my ears and secured my headphones deep within the canals. I turned the volume up, blasting the screaming metal du jour as I braced for what was to come. With each click, the noise blaring through my skull crescendoed, and I begged it to tune out the day.

Of course, I knew it wouldn't be enough.

Nothing was enough to tune out this.

The students at the second stop on our route to Sycamore Falls High climbed into the yellow trap, and so it began. The sensation pounded through my head, the pressure building in my temples like a migraine.

First, it was just the feelings.

Tired. Irritated. Nervous.

I felt them each like my own, only for a split second—a single beat of my heart.

But, as the other students drew closer, their feet shuffling over the corrugated alley between the rows, the thoughts became distinct. Like ink settling to the bottom of a swirling flask of water, they cleared, and I heard everything.

I'm going to fail this history test. Who was Socrates again? It's in my notes somewhere... Stupid zipper! Why won't you open? I have this test first period...

I hope Lola wears that tan skirt again. So damn tight...the line of her thong when she leans over her desk...

I sucked in my cheeks, chewing on my own flesh. Not even the screams, crashing drums, and wail of guitars in my headphones were enough to tune it out. The flood of thoughts made my stomach turn. It would get better once I could get off this bus and out of such an enclosed space.

Enclosed space. The words stuck in my head, ringing louder than the drone of other thoughts ricocheting through my skull.

I leaned over and pulled a black, spiral-bound notebook out of my backpack. After flipping through a couple of dog-eared pages, I reached the one where I'd written "experiments" at the top.

A list of bullet points outlined everything I'd tested so far, starting with proximity. I'd learned the distance I could pick up thoughts varied based on intensity, but maxed out at around a hundred yards. A solid conclusion, but not that useful.

The next test focused on obstructions. I initially thought if I couldn't see someone, I wouldn't be able to hear their thoughts, but that proved to not be the case. They behaved more like sound or radio waves. Thin walls muddled them, but thicker walls blocked them completely.

With the pen I kept clipped to the spiral binding, I jotted a new note:

Test enclosed spaces. Do thoughts become louder? Do they echo? Resonance?

After letting out a heavy sigh, I scratched out everything I'd just written.

What was I thinking? Why did it matter what happened in enclosed spaces? These tests were just a distraction. They weren't getting me any closer to figuring out why this was happening to me, and more importantly, how I could stop it.

I flipped through the notebook until I reached the last page I'd written on, the heading bold and black at the top: Anomalies.

I'd scribbled only one word beneath it: "Lola."

Chewing on my lower lip, I traced the pen over the letters until her name stood out even darker than the heading. She was the key to all this. Talking to her was what I needed to do...but how? What would I say?

What the fuck is he writing?

An intrusion of thoughts startled me, and I nearly leapt in my seat. I slammed my notebook shut, but I wasn't quick enough. I could tell from Andy's thoughts he'd seen what I'd written—Lola's name, heavy and bold on an almost entirely blank page.

He was already in a bad mood because his car hadn't started this morning, dooming him to ride the bus with the losers. He was angry about it, and he was looking for someone to take that out on.

Stupid goth freak, he thought. Why is he so obsessed with her? And why does he have to play his music so loud? The whole damn bus can hear it.

"Jay," he called. "Jay! Can you even hear me?"

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the grimy plastic window. It rattled and vibrated against my skull, but even that wasn't enough to turn off my brain.

He snapped his fingers at me. Emo creep. Go crawl back into the crypt you climbed out of before you burn up in the sun.

"Having a nice nap?" Andy yanked the cord on my headphones, dislodging the lifelines from my ears.

I snapped my eyes open and flipped my dark hair out of them, heaving a purposefully melodramatic sigh as I turned to face him.

"What the fuck do you want?" I asked. "You interrupted my blissful dream of being back in my coffin. You know sitting out here in the daylight pains me so."

Andy's dark eyes narrowed for a second, but then he blew a strand of hay-blond hair out of his face and continued. "Your terrible music is so loud I can't even hear myself think."

"You'd be better off not hearing yourself think, Andy."

He scowled. "Turn it down. You think the whole bus wants to hear what you're listening to?"

With a roll of my eyes, I turned the volume down a few clicks. "There, happy? Now, scram."

He didn't budge.

"What do you want now?" I mock-whined.

"I forgot to do my algebra homework." He gave me a leering grin as he glanced at the notebook resting in my lap. The bus jolted over a pothole, and he braced himself against the cracked, fake leather seat in front of us. "If I can't get my grades up by the end of next week, Coach Greyson says I'm suspended from the team."

But that wasn't what he was thinking. He didn't care a lick if he got his algebra homework done or not, and neither did the football team. He just wanted to get under my skin. Andy didn't like me because he thought I was interested in his ex-girlfriend. He wasn't wrong, but not like it mattered. Lola wasn't even remotely interested in me.

"Do you happen to have the answers?" Andy pulled my attention back to him.

"I do," I said. "And all of them are correct too."

He narrowed his dark eyes at me, and his thoughts gave him away.

"Oh, you want me to share them with you, is that it?" I forced a laugh, shaking my head as I shoved my notebook into my backpack. The last thing I wanted was him getting a closer look at what I'd written. "Sorry, I didn't get that. I'm not a mind reader, you know."

The bus stopped at our intersection with Ninth Street, almost to our last stop. We were supposed to go straight here, but flashing orange and yellow lights lined the road ahead.

A tree's down, the girl in the front row thought.

Must've been the storm last night, another one of my classmates filled me in.

Hopefully we'll be late enough to miss first period.

We took a lumbering turn, accelerating with a guttural grind of gears and wheels. I slammed backward, startled by the sudden break in inertia. Andy braced himself against the seats around us, standing despite the turbulence.

The bus descended the hill down Ninth toward the old industrial section at the edge of town. After passing the community center and a gas station with only a single working pump, we reached a quarter-mile stretch of street lined with boarded up ranch-style houses painted every shade of pale blue and vomit green imaginable. A rat crept out from beneath the fraying, bleached yellow shingles of one, scampering into the gutter like a cockroach crawling between teeth.

"Jay," Andy growled, pulling my attention back to him. A dark glint flickered in his eyes, and even for him, something about it didn't seem right.

A chill crept over me, and sweat slicked my palms. I wiped them on the worn fabric of my black, ripped jeans.

"The answers," Andy said, his voice stern and focused.

There was nothing going on in his mind. The sudden and total lack of thoughts radiating off him made my blood run cold.

"Oh, right, sorry. I was distracted." I shook myself, trying to regain my focus. "I'm not going to give them to you, so you might as well go back and sit down." I grinned, showing off my perfectly straight teeth.

Andy still wore a retainer at night. He'd worn braces all through ninth and tenth grade, something he was self conscious of. Being new in town, I shouldn't have known that, but there were a lot of things I knew that I shouldn't. Almost all of them, I wished I didn't.

"What's wrong?" I asked, raising my eyebrows and feigning concern. "Thoughts stuck between your crooked teeth?" I ran my tongue over my upper front row of pearly whites, stopping when I got to my right canine and biting down.

Andy crossed his arms over his chest. "Move," he said. "This seat's reserved."

"For who?"

"Only seniors ride in the back of the bus."

"Funny, last time I checked, I was a senior," I replied.

"Locals only." Andy sneered. "Last I checked, you aren't from around here, are you?"

I was the new kid at Sycamore Falls High. Sure, I'd been here for two months since classes started in September, but new students were hard to come by. It was a small town—one people moved from, not to—and I could see why. I planned to be the hell out of here the moment I graduated.

I pushed both hands back through my dark hair, holding eye contact as I rose to my feet. "Fine," I said. "Enjoy your throne, your highness."

After giving him a discourteous bow, I put one earphone back in and scooted out from the seat. Andy glared at me, puffing out his chest. As I stepped into the aisle, the bus driver decided it would be an opportune time to come to a screeching halt at a stop sign. I flew forward, accidentally slamming right into Andy.

"Excuse me," I muttered, but he wasn't paying attention. Instead, his focus turned to the open windows.

A cool breath of air leaked between the split panes. Chills rippled across my skin, and the idea that I should close the windows crept into the back of my mind. I wasn't sure if the thought was coming from me or the other students. Maybe it came from everywhere—our collective thoughts condensing to one.

Like creeping tendrils of hands reaching in from outside, something tugged everyone's attention, simultaneously freezing us in place. The thoughts that had been swarming through my mind faded to a dull drone, focused on one thing—the building standing at the corner of the intersection.

The tense pressure of silence made me feel like I was about to vomit. I gripped the edges of the seats around me, clawing my nails into the green plastic until my knuckles turned white.

Finally, the bus lurched forward, lumbering past the old Renson Factory. Faded graffiti covered the brick walls in unintelligible scrolls of paint. An image that resembled a deformed gear turned over the word "Demon."

Shadows watched from the yellowed, murky windows. Any moment, I expected a pair of eyes to peer out from within the dark, black holes of shattered glass.

My lungs burned as I held my breath like I was driving through a graveyard. My mom instilled the superstition around cemeteries to my brother and me when we were kids, but I wasn't sure why I felt the need to apply it to this place too.

When I finally inhaled, my mind buzzed with an unnatural sensation of anger, like something outside was pulling at me and clouding out my rational thoughts. My hands involuntarily curled in fists as my jaw clenched.

Suddenly, someone shoved me in the chest, and I stumbled back.

"Watch where you're fucking going," Andy growled.

I narrowed my eyes at him, the argument we'd been in a distant, hazy memory as the uncontrollable rage pulsed through my mind.

His emotions and thoughts crashed like a wave over me. He wanted me to grovel. Our classmates were around us watching like a hoard of hungry demons, and they admired him. The idea that they might think less of him—the captain of the football team—if he let some loser walk over him terrified him.

"Get the fuck out of my way," Andy snarled.

"No," I said.

The bus took another sudden stop, and this time, it was his face that accidentally collided with my fist, which may or may not have been raised, ready, and flying forward at exactly the same time.