The morning bus smelled like wet backpacks and someone's grape gummies. Stephen took the seat behind the wheel well where the vibration made everything in his chest feel like it had a purr. He balanced his red notebook on his knees and kept his thumbs light on the edges so the cover wouldn't crease.
Outside, lawns still wore a silver fuzz of dew. Inside, Tyler from two rows back tried to flip a pencil between his fingers and lost it to the aisle. Someone laughed. Someone else said, "Gross, is that grape?" in a way that made grape sound like a hate crime.
Stephen looked out the window and practiced breathing like a normal person. Four in. Four hold. Four out. He'd written it as a rule, but rules were only useful if you remembered them when the world got loud.
Rule One: Act normal.
Rule Six: Listen on purpose.
Rule Eight: Be a kid when you can.
The bus hit a pothole and the notebook jumped. His hand shot out to catch it and stopped half an inch before he touched it; then he placed it back in his lap like it was made of sugar glass.
'Gentle hands,' he told himself, and tried the words on like gloves. 'Gentle hands, gentle hands.'
_ _ ♛ _ _
Middle school was a building that hadn't decided what it wanted to be when it grew up. The hallways were too narrow for the number of elbows. The lockers had personalities, most of them mean. Posters peeled in the corners: [BE KIND], [PICTURE DAY THURSDAY], [FALL FUNDRAISER — SELL COOKIES, WIN PRIZES!]. He made a mental map in three breaths and then pretended he hadn't.
Homeroom started with roll call and the soft click of a pen that Stephen could hear across the room like it was next to his ear. He anchored himself by counting things he could see: one wobbly fan, two dusty globe plants, three high windows where thin sun spilled in like gold thread.
Mr. Callahan wrote the date on the board. Chalk dust fell and glittered. The sound had a burr to it, like a zipper. Stephen's knuckles tensed without permission. He made them smooth.
"Introduce yourself," Mr. Callahan said. "Name, one thing you like."
The answers were the same answers everywhere. "Skateboarding." "Video games." "My dog." When it was Stephen's turn, he said, "Drawing," because it was true and because it sounded harmless.
A girl with bubblegum-pink shoelaces leaned over later. "Do you draw like, people or like… dragons?"
"Things I see," Stephen said, and didn't add: and things I remember from a world that isn't this one.
Her grin showed a toothpaste-commercial number of teeth. "You should draw Mr. Callahan if he was a dragon."
Stephen imagined Mr. Callahan as a nervous bearded wyvern that loved pop quizzes. The image snuck a smile onto his face and felt like a small win.
He was halfway through sketching the fan when something in his skull whispered the thought that wouldn't quit.
'Did I always know?'
His pencil slowed. The whisper kept talking. Not words so much as a shape—years of little misfits jammed into a neat line: Nolan never sweating. Nolan never winded. Nolan catching the falling casserole dish with two fingers and a laugh when Debbie bumped his elbow last Thanksgiving. The cape-shaped shadow on the back of the closet he never opened.
'I always knew,' he thought, and then, because the thought stung, he wrote in the margin: Rule Nine: Treat everything like it's made of glass. He underlined everything twice.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Between classes, the hall squeezed him into currents. A seventh grader with a backpack the size of a compact car cut him off with an apology shaped like a shrug. The vending machine groaned and delivered a bag of chips like it resented the labor. Stephen bought a chocolate milk and held it so gently it didn't even whisper.
By lunch, his body felt like it belonged to him again. He sat at the end of a table where he could see the exit and the soft rectangle of sky through the cafeteria doors. He peeled his orange in spirals, slow and exact, and the peel came off in one long strip that looked like a dragon too.
Two boys argued about whether aliens were real. A third had a theory that squirrels were government cameras. [Group Chat — "Spicy Nuggets"]: u see the new Omni-Man clip?; fake, someone wrote, because someone always did.
He scrolled past it without letting his eyes grab on. His thumb wanted to stop. His stomach didn't. He set his phone face down like that made a moral difference.
He reached for his milk with "gentle hands" in his head and stopped, because the straw would crumple if he pushed too hard. He moved his finger pad, not his finger muscle. The straw slid in. A tiny victory trophy.
"Nice peel," Pink Shoelaces said, appearing on his right like she'd blinked there. "Dragon?"
"Wyvern," Stephen said before he could help it. "No front legs."
"Oh my God, you're that kid." She sounded delighted. "I'm Priya."
"Stephen."
"Welcome to the 6th grade, Stephen Wyvern." She saluted him with a carrot stick and drifted back to her friends, leaving a wake of celery strings and the faint smell of ranch.
He added a micro-rule under Rule Nine: Straws: finger pad only.
_ _ ♛ _ _
P.E. did not start like a movie. No inspirational whistle, no slow-motion montage. Coach Henderson wore a sunbaked cap and an expression like he'd seen every possible thing a 6th grader's body could do wrong and was resigned to seeing it again.
"Warm-up lap!" he called. "If you stop to tie a shoe you're running another one!"
The field was a rectangle of scrubby grass with white lines pretending to be straight. The sun had shrugged off the last cloud and decided to be someone today. Heat climbed Stephen's arms like it had hands.
When he crossed the outfield, he slowed. The warmth didn't just sit on his skin; it pooled. It soaked. It felt like what cocoa tastes like. He closed his eyes to listen to it better.
'This is real,' he thought. 'This part is real.'
Something hissed through the air like a breath sucked between teeth.
"Stephen!" Coach barked.
He turned.
A red rubber dodgeball was already there. His hand moved faster than his eyes. Palm—contact—grip—remember gentle hands—and then—
POP.
The ball imploded with a sound like someone slapping a watermelon. Red rubber kissed his fingers and became a sagging halo. Half the class stopped. Someone whooped. Someone else went, "Duuuuuude."
He was still holding the broken throat of the thing without squeezing. Every alarm in his head woke up at once. His cheeks went cold in the heat.
"Uh," he said, because all words had left to get a snack. "Sorry?"
Coach Henderson took off his cap, put it back on, considered a third option, and settled on scratching his jaw. "How hard were you trying to catch that, son?"
"I… wasn't?" Stephen said, honest in the worst possible way.
"Mhm." The coach's eyes said I don't get paid enough for this. "Alright. New ball. You—" he pointed at Stephen, then downgraded the point to a waggle, like pointing felt too aggressive now— "you go easy. Open hands. No death grips. Everybody else—eyes up."
Laughter broke the spell. The game kicked back on. A few kids sneaked glances at Stephen like he was a baby deer that might also be a land mine.
Priya passed him on her way to the back line and whispered, "Wyverns are so busted."
He smiled with only his mouth. Inside, he wrote Rule Ten as fast as he could think it.
If startled, freeze—don't grab.
The next throw came slow and obvious. He practiced open hands. He received the ball instead of catching it. Rubber against skin, the faint tack of dust, the sun at his back. He handed it off like a peace treaty and exhaled a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding until it came out as a shake.
[SchoolNet — "Hendo's P.E. Hall of Fame"]: kid popped the ball LMAO
[reply]: new record?
[reply]: his hands are like knives
[reply]: nooo he's the milk straw kid he's nice
He didn't check it, but the buzz in a pocket two fields away told him it existed anyway.
_ _ ♛ _ _
After school, the house looked smaller in a way that made Stephen like it more. He lined three grapes on the counter and told himself a story where each grape was a baby planet. He picked them up with gentle gravity and did not burst a single one.
Debbie chopped onions with a rhythm that made the whole kitchen smell like somebody about to cry. "How was day one?"
"People are loud," he said, which was true and sounded normal.
"Occupational hazard of being people." She slid onion into a pan and added olive oil; the sizzle was a soft applause. "You make any friends?"
"A wyvern," he said, and when she blinked, he added, "Priya. She likes dragons. She ordained me."
"High honor." Debbie tasted the sauce and made a face like it was almost good. "Also: your coach called. Something about 'ball durability.'"
Stephen's ears heated. "I went too fast."
"Mm." Debbie didn't look surprised. She didn't look worried either, which helped. "Next time, go slower."
"That's my whole plan," he said, and she ruffled his hair without nicking him with the knife, which was also a kind of superpower.
Mark clattered in later, taller than the doorway on principle. He pulled a bottle of water from the fridge like he'd just fought a minor war with algebra.
"How's sixth grade?" he asked, dropping into the chair across from Stephen and stretching until his spine made three satisfying pops.
"I popped a ball."
Mark froze, bottle halfway to his mouth. "With… like… hands?"
Stephen made a shape in the air. "Pop."
Mark blinked, then grinned slow. "Legend. Please never shake my hand."
"Deal," Stephen said, and meant it.
"Hey," Mark added, voice dropping into that casual-not-casual place he used when he cared. "You good?"
Stephen thought about the sun on his face and the way the ball had given up like a secret, about rules and glass and eggs and how the house's noises were a map he could walk even with his eyes shut.
"I'm learning gentle hands," he said.
"Cool," Mark said. "Teach me. I break everything that costs money."
"That's because you're a hurricane in jeans," Stephen said.
"Rude," Mark said, but happy. "True, but rude."
_ _ ♛ _ _
The world got quiet again after dishes. Nolan's footsteps crossed the hallway and paused in the way they always did outside Stephen's door—like a check mark drawn in air—and then kept going. The porch light clicked. Somewhere down the block, a bike chain protested being turned in reverse.
Stephen set an egg on his desk.
It was a smooth small moon in his palm. He lifted it, lowered it, turned it. He could feel—no, attend to—the way his fingers wanted to close too soon, too much. He narrated to himself like he was his own coach.
'Pad, not tip. Spread the load. Feel the shell push back. Stop there.'
He moved slower than slow. The egg didn't break. His shoulders dropped an inch like someone had taken a brick off each one.
He wrote in the red notebook:
Rule Eleven: Sun helps. Don't chase it at school.
Rule Twelve: Smile and shrug.(If people look at you too long.)
Rule Thirteen: Headphones when the world is too loud.
Rule Fourteen: Eggs = practice.
He added a small drawing of a wyvern in the margin with a tiny speech bubble: ['Gentle hands, kid.']
His phone buzzed. [Spicy Nuggets]: yo you see the dodgeball post?; that kid is you right?; pls teach me to open cafeteria milk without showering in it.
Stephen typed, ["Trade secret."] Then, because Rule Eight existed, he added, ["But I'll tell you if you sit with us tomorrow."]
He set the egg back in the carton like it was sleeping. He clicked off his lamp. He lay there in the dark and counted radiator breaths.
He was changing. The world was too. Both could be true. Both could be manageable.
'Be a kid when you can,' he reminded himself, and it answered back, warm as sunlight on closed eyes.
He slept.
_ _ ♛ _ _
End of Chapter 12