***

"I THOUGHT THAT YOU DIED," Atlas deadpans, looking down at Meredith with mild interest as she suddenly sits up, her eyes wild, her hair sticking out from her ponytail in wild tufts. After eating her seventh slice of meat-lovers pizza, she'd had fallen to the floor, facedown, snoring loudly. She hasn't moved in the past twenty minutes.

The four of us are sitting in Silas's basement the day after I almost died, some shitty old horror movie playing on the TV, three boxes of Villa pizza (despite whatever Atlas tells you, getting it from anywhere else would be blasphemy) resting on the coffee table in front of us.

"I would never die before getting an eighth slice of pizza," Meredith responds, her voice dead-serious, reaching towards a box. Her face falls as she only finds crusts. "Oh, fuck you guys. Who ate all of it? And who left all of their crusts? Your bloodline is weak."

"Um, you," I remind her, handing her the unopened box of cheese. "Here."

"Oh, right." Meredith takes the box and grabs a slice of pizza from it. "Cheese isn't the ideal pizza state, but all pizza is good pizza. Thank you for supporting me and my endeavors."

I grab a slice for myself, then flop back onto the couch. "I'm the backbone of this family. Where would you guys be without me?"

Atlas, who hates me, offers, "Probably better off."

"Atlas, shut up," Silas, who's nice, defends me.

"Dead," I finish for Atlas, because he seemed to have forgotten the last (and most important) word of his sentence.

"Anyways," Meredith leans her elbows onto the couch so that she can look at me, her eyes alight with a particularly morbid curiosity about the story of how I got to looking like a hotter version of Frankenstein. "Cain, you said that you'd tell us what happened when we got refreshments. And, well, I'm onto my eighth slice of pizza and fourth Capri Sun. I'm waiting. So is all of America. Do you know how unpatriotic it would be to leave us hanging any longer? This is practically treason."

After what had happened in the woods, I'd woken up around eleven at night in the backseat of Atlas's car with no memories of the past twenty-four hours. He'd explained what had happened from his perspective; I told him about my weird-ass dream. We'd talked it over and decided was the best plan of action was lying about what happened and saying we'd been out taking a hike and I'd tripped and hit my head on a rock.

The scar I'd gotten in my dream had still burned on my cheek; it'd left blood dripping down my shirt. It was very, very real and, as Atlas put it, made me "look like hell." The only rational explanation we could come up for it was that, since he'd been dragging me through the woods, he must have accidentally cut me on a rock without realizing he'd done it, and I'd felt the pain in my sleep so I'd dreamed up something about it.

Unsatisfied with this explanation and thinking it was something much more ominous, he'd then went on a rant about how sci-fi protagonists always fucked everything up by telling the world about their supernatural shit (but that we should tell Silas and Meredith, because not letting their friends in on their secrets always made their lives a billion times harder because they had to balance saving the world with not telling their friends that they're fucking saving the world), because if there was one thing you could trust Atlas with, it was his nerdiness. I'd had to remind him that it wasn't a sci-fi novel, and that we could never be sci-fi protagonists, because, you know, I'm gay and I'm Chinese and I'm Jewish and Atlas is half black and we both have acne (like any normal teenager) and the literary world likes to pretend people like us don't exist.

After we'd made a quick pit-stop to satisfy Atlas's cravings (he's been addicted to M&M McFlurry's ever since we were little, similar to the way I've been addicted to heroin), he'd driven me to the emergency room.

Eventually, my dad and Rachel had showed up with Atlas's mom (Eva Villa, also known as my dad's best friend and quite literal partner-in-crime) in tow. I'd been called back shortly after, and the doctor'd given me stitches.

I'd fallen asleep on the way home, and I had another weird dream, one I didn't remember when I woke up.

Silas uses my shoulder to hold himself up as he leans towards me to examine my stitches, his thumb gently running over them, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. "Did you accidentally stab yourself again?"

I can't believe this. You accidentally stab yourself one time and the next thing you know, you're branded for life. "That was one time."

"Shut up and let the boy talk," Meredith whines as she throws an empty Capri Sun pouch at Silas.

Silas grins, catching the pouch and crushing it. "Hey, that's not fair. I have no Capri Sun ammo."

"Shut up, both of you," I order. "Shit's about to get real."

"What happened?" Meredith eagerly asks.

"If you would let me speak, I'd have the chance to tell you," I say, which manages to quiet her.

Atlas and I go on to explain how we went on a little hike while Silas and Meredith were still at the bonfire, how he saw a moth and obsessively chased it until it disappeared into thin air. Neither of us can find the words to describe the way that the world felt, but we try. I relive my eerie dream. Atlas paints himself as a hero in his retelling of what happened after I passed out.

Once we've finished, Meredith nearly chokes on her pizza, and, once I'm finished making a joke about how that won't be the only thing she chokes on tonight, and she's finished mentally decapitating me, she articulates her particularly complicated emotions about the situation. "Holy shit. Are you for real? And, like, a hundred percent sure that you weren't high?"

"Well," I reply, "I was completely sober, and yeah, Atlas was kind of drunk, — he's a fucking lightweight — but we both saw the exact same thing, so that wouldn't explain it."

Silas is looking from me to Atlas back to me back to Atlas. I can see in his eyes that he believes us, or, at least, that he believes that we believe in what we're saying. But I don't think he thinks that what truly happened in the woods lines up with our story. "Can you take us to see this part of the woods? You know, so that we can see it for ourselves."

Atlas's eyes light up in a wild panic. "No. No. No. Abso-fucking-lutely not."

"Why not?" I ask him. "I think it's a good idea. Maybe they can make some sense out of it that we couldn't."

"Yeah, I think it's a good idea, too." Meredith nods, finishing off her pizza slice. "I wanna go."

"No," Atlas repeats as if he's a child saying his first word, his voice more persistent this time. "I — I — I thought that I was going to lose Cain. I don't want to risk losing any of you."

"You won't," Silas assures him. "We'll be careful."

"Yes," Atlas nods. "You'll be extra careful by not going."

"That's it, we're going. Come on — " Meredith is interrupted halfway through her sentence by her phone vibrating on the floor in front of her. She frowns at it, then picks it up. "Yeah?" she listens for a moment, her expression panicked. Then, she tells us that she'll be right back and races off to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, still on the phone.

Silas stares at the door. "I hope everything's okay."

"I'm sure it is," I reassure him. And then, because I'm me, I can't help but make a joke about it. "Somebody probably just called to formally ask her for nudes, and she rushed off to send them in peace. Hopefully my girl knows her angles."

Atlas ignores what I say and adds, "She'd tell us if something was wrong."

Also because I'm me, I can't help but point something out. "Remember that time she had pneumonia, missed a week of school and nearly died, and told us all that she was skipping because she wanted to get caught up on The Walking Dead?"

"To be fair, she really was watching The Walking Dead," Silas adds. "Just, you know... While being so sick that she could have died."

"So it was only a white lie," I reply, grabbing another Capri Sun. "No biggie."

"Says you, the man made of white lies," Atlas arches his eyebrows at me in a very judgmental way.

"Shut up," I say. "Nobody cares about your opinion."

"I care," Silas offers in a small voice.

Suddenly, the bathroom door swings open. Meredith falls out, her face red, her eyes shiny. "I — I have to go," she whispers, her voice cracking like she's trying hard not to cry. "I'm sorry. Bye, guys."

With that, she runs up the stairs leading to Silas's living room. She gracefully trips three steps to the top, but catches herself.

The three of us look at each other. Then, Silas says, "I'll go see what's up, you guys stay here," and runs after her.

"I wonder what happened." Atlas tugs his feet up onto the couch, his knees tucked under his chin.

"They probably found the body," I offer, trying to lighten the mood. Not because I'm insensitive about the pain that Meredith seems to have, but because I want to cheer Atlas up. I don't like seeing my friends upset.

Atlas looks at me, and, although I don't know what he's thinking, his stare makes me feel uncomfortably anxious and bare. He finally breaks the silence by simply saying my name in a disappointed tone of voice.

"What?" I ask.

He shakes his head, pushing his glasses back into their proper place with his index finger. "I don't know. Hopefully, Silas was able to catch her before she left."

"Yeah, hopefully," I nod, biting my thumb. Whenever I'm bored, or anxious, or trying to refrain myself from doing something stupid, that just kind of happens. It's a bad habit. I have a scar from doing it so much.

Atlas grabs both of my hands in his to keep me from hurting myself. "Don't worry. Whatever happened, she can handle it. She'll be fine. Besides, it was probably just something stupid. Maybe Richard died."

Last summer when we went to the fair, all of us told Meredith that it wasn't worth it to try and win a goldfish. It would probably die on the ride home, and she'd be completely devastated and probably convicted of fish homicide. Despite our warnings, however, she tried anyways, and she won one. The first goldfish the game attendant tried to give her was an already dead one, and Meredith promptly bursted into tears. While Silas tried to comfort her, Atlas and I made fun of her and basked in our I-told-you-so glory. However, the attendant felt so bad that he got her a new one, one that she named Richard. (I like to call him her little dick.) He somehow managed to survive the drive home, and even today, good ol' Richard is still kicking, although I'm certain that the only things keeping him alive is fishy life support and spite.

His death would be a traumatizing event for all of us. We've been through a lot with the little guy.

"I'm not worrying," I reply. "I'm just bored."

Atlas looks offended. "I'm not that boring."

"Yeah, you kinda are."

He rolls his eyes, slowly falling back onto the couch until he's lying down, his legs stretched over mine. "Whatever, asshole."

"Love you too, douche-bag."

I can't help myself. I bite my thumb so hard I bleed.

"Cain!" Atlas snaps, grabbing my hand to look at it. "Go get a bandaid."

"Fine, Mom." I stick my tongue out at him, then get to my feet, jogging up the stairs and heading into Silas's kitchen.

His little sisters, Ella and Emily, who only have a year between them (I don't even know which one's older) and are practically impossible to tell apart, sit there, playing with a mix of Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels, plastic dinosaur toys, and what appear to be machine guns made out of paper. "Hey, Cain," the sisters say in unison.

"'Sup, little dudes?" I reply, affectionately ruffling their hair with my left hand, which is the one that isn't actively bleeding.

"We're sending our Barbies off to war," Ella solemnly says.

Considering how often I'm over here, and how often I get hurt, I could find the medicine cabinet in the dark. I pull it open and root around until I find a pack of bandaids, grabbing one out and wrapping it around my thumb. The cut wasn't even that bad, just a small pinprick of blood like a vampire bite.

"Ooh, how exciting," I tell the girls, leaning down until I'm at eye-height with the counter. "What's the war over?"

"This Barbie — her name's Tiffany — killed this Barbie's father — her name's Jessie — and now they're both the presidents of these two countries and they're at war with each other. Tiffany's Ella's Barbie and Jessie's mine," Emily explains. "They ride into battle on war dinosaurs. Look, we gave them tattoos so that they look like real soldiers!"

Looking out the window, I see Meredith's car pulling out of her driveway: she lives next-door to the Darling's. Silas stands in his front yard, watching her drive away. With a sad look in her direction, he turns and heads inside.

"Very cool. I like the details on their tattoos, it's very realistic." I nod. "Have fun at war, girls."

"Bye, Cain!" they both say.

I meet Silas at the front door. "Your sisters are sending their Barbies off to war. Also, what happened? Is Mer okay?"

"Oh, that's normal. They do it a lot. Sometimes they have me help out as the neutral third-party; I'm Switzerland in their game. My parents say it's good for them." Silas looks frayed. He takes a lot of responsibility to make sure that everybody else is okay, and he tends to put other people's happiness ahead of his own. "I don't know. She refused to tell me anything."

"Don't take it so personaly, man. She doesn't like to talk about that kind of stuff." I pat him on the shoulder to comfort him. There, there. "I'm sure that if things get really bad, she'll come to us. The best thing we can do is give her space, all right?"

Silas nods, but doesn't seem convinced. "Right."

"Come on." I grab him by the elbow and drag him down the stairs. "Let's go drown our sorrows in Capri Suns and whatever the hell that Satanic shit going down in the woods was."

That gets a smile out of him.

I hear Emily and Ella burst out in a fit of giggles in the kitchen, and one of them yells, "Ooh! You said a no-no word!"

"Two no-no words!" the other sister replies.

Once we get back to the basement, I sit on Atlas's lap, because if you're friends with me, that's just how your life starts working. "Atlas. Atlas. Atlas. Hey, Atlas."

Atlas sighs. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to tell you how much I love you," I jokingly reply, because his annoyance makes me laugh. "For real, though, what do you think it was?"

Atlas dejectedly looks off into the distance as if the curtained window will give him answers. "Honestly? I have no idea. I think the most reasonable explanation would be that we were both drugged or something, but that doesn't seem right. If we were drugged, we wouldn't have experienced the same things. And it wouldn't explain your cut."

"And I didn't feel high," I say, all smart.

"You have plenty experience in that area, I know," Atlas points out.

"You make me sound like I'm a heroin addict," I roll my eyes.

"Technically, Cain, the school guidance counselor has checked your locker for heroin on multiple occaisions. I wouldn't be surprised if you were a closeted addict," Silas, who typically doesn't attack me like this, pipes in.

"If there's anything that I'm not, it's closeted, Whether that closet is about my gayness or the fact that I'm definitely probably not a heroin addict," I reply, putting emphasis on the word probably. "I'm obviously a cocaine addict. The nerve of some people."

"That's a fair point," Silas nods, seeming to consider this.

I look back up at Atlas, who looks troubled. "You don't like not having an explanation, do you?" I ask him.

"No." Atlas shakes his head. "I don't. I just wish there was something that made sense, you know? The world is made of science. It's all supposed to make sense. But this doesn't."

I sigh. "Does anything ever really make sense? I mean, not to shit on science, I'd die for my homie Bill Nye, but it's all just theories, isn't it? There's no possible way that anything could be a hundred percent proven."

He looks at me as if he has something he really wants to say, but doesn't know how to say it. All he ends up saying is: "It is a hundred percent proven that you're a total douchebag."

"Shut up, you love me."

"I love you and your douchebaggery," Atlas corrects me.

"You know what we should do?" Silas interrupts our bickering, and both of our heads snap in his direction.

"What?" we both ask, a second off from being in unison.

"We should go check out the woods. I mean, I know that Meredith isn't here, and she'd be totally bummed about not going with us, but we can always go back with her again. And, you know, if it is some weird scientific phenomenon, it might disappear after a day or two. We might not get another chance to see it," Silas suggests, leaning towards us. His eyes are shining, turning to a dark shade of gold.

"No," Atlas, the killjoy of the group, says. "No, we aren't going."

"Yes, we are!" I jump from the couch, and Atlas groans in pain as my weight shifts on his lap in the process. "Two against three. You're witnessing democracy in the flesh, baby!"

"This is America. We may be a democracy, but we've still got our electoral college. I'm the electoral college, and I say that we aren't going, so screw what the popular vote says," Atlas replies, defiantly tilting his chin. "Because democracy isn't about the people, it's about the people with the power."

        I laugh. "Shut the fuck up, Trump. Nobody asked you. Go back to your golf course."

        Atlas curls into a ball, groaning, and refuses to move. However, with our combined forces, Silas and I manage to roll him off the couch and to the stairs. It's mostly Silas. I'm very out of shape.

"Get up, dumbass," I instruct, poking Atlas's side with my foot. "If you don't move, we're just going to go without you, and then there'll be nobody there to protect us."

Uttering the world's longest sigh, Atlas gets to his feet. He stares at both of us for a good five minutes, then pushes his glasses back up onto his nose, declares his hatred for us and the electoral college, and marches up the stairs. Silas and I follow after him. We slip our shoes and jackets on, and, as we head out the door, Silas calls over his shoulder to his parents, telling them that we were going for a walk and he'd be back before it got dark.

We take Silas's car and drive to the site where the bonfire had been, heading out to the woods from there. The air is colder than it was when I first headed over to Silas's house earlier that morning, and I shiver as we walk. Atlas walks in the lead, still grumbling on about how bad of an idea this is; I walk in the middle, telling him to shut up and let the rest of us enjoy our lives; Silas trails behind the two of us, as quiet as always. In response to my pleas, Atlas throws a ball of muddy fallen leaves at me. That's how the electoral college feels about the general public.

"Here," about about twenty minutes of hiking, Atlas proclaims, standing still and gesturing towards a slightly ominous looking boulder. "This is where I saw the moth."

"No, it was a little further down." I don't remember the exact location, to be honest. I just like being right. "Somewhere in those bushes."

"No, it was right here." Atlas insists. "I vividly remember it."

I shake my head. "I vividly remember you nearly killing yourself trying to push through those bushes to follow it."

"Yes, but the boulder's where it started."

"Guys, why don't we compromise?" Silas, always the peacemaker, suggests. "We can make a trail in the middle of the boulder and the bushes and see where it leads us."

Atlas sighs. "Fine."

"After you," I tell him, gesturing ahead of me.

He glares at me, his look conveying his thoughts perfectly despite his silence: Are you fucking kidding me?

"After me," I suggest as a compromise, and I plunge through the brambles. Which I think is unfair, considering that he wasn't the one that nearly died because of this thing, but whatever.

We walk for hours with no luck. Wherever the moth disappearing act had taken place, we're unable to find it again. Maybe we look too hard, or maybe we don't look hard enough. Whatever the case, it simply doesn't work out. When the sun starts to set, we call it quits.

Atlas is the only one that seems happy. He leads us back to Silas's car, skipping the whole way. "We avoided certain death," he sings, "we avoided certain death!"