Chapter 24: Scream?!
Several days later.
Rango and Emma walked through the manicured grounds of Wogenville High School, the morning sun filtering through a canopy of old oak trees, dappling the brick pathways in gold and green.
The admissions counselor — a trim, enthusiastic woman in a navy blazer with the school crest on the pocket — walked beside them, gesturing as she talked, her pitch polished to a shine from what was clearly years of practice.
"Our education model follows the seamless K-through-12 structure," she explained, leading them along a path that wound past a gleaming athletic complex and toward the main academic buildings. "Elementary through high school, all under one roof. No jarring transitions. Once a student enters the Wogenville system, we guide them all the way through."
She ticked off points on her fingers as they walked. "University acceptance rate: one hundred percent. In the last five years alone, we've placed students at Harvard, Yale, Duke, UCLA, UPenn, MIT — the full range. Top tier, across the board."
A beat. She let that one breathe.
"Beyond academics, we invest heavily in athletics and the arts. Thirty-three varsity sports teams — football, soccer, tennis, volleyball, swimming, track, you name it. Dance programs. Music. Drama. We believe in developing the whole student, not just the student on paper."
She gestured toward a bulletin board near one of the buildings, covered in colorful flyers. "And we run a robust cultural travel program. Thanksgiving trips, Christmas breaks, spring adventures — all structured, all supervised, all designed to give students real-world experience outside the classroom."
They rounded a corner into a small, sunlit park — a pocket of green in the middle of campus, with benches and a small pond and birds that actually sang like they were trying to be picturesque.
The counselor glanced at Rango and Emma, reading their expressions with practiced ease. Then, after a brief pause — the kind that suggested she was choosing her next words with care — she added:
"I should mention, for transparency: due to the school's history and demographics, the student body at Wogenville skews predominantly white and Asian. Students of color make up a relatively small percentage of the enrollment. That said, we are deeply committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse environment, and we take that seriously."
Rango nodded, keeping his expression neutral and polite. He understood exactly what she was saying underneath the careful phrasing.
There aren't many Black kids here. Your niece will be safe.
It was a mildly uncomfortable way to put it — borderline racist, if he was being honest with himself. But he also wasn't naive enough to pretend the concern wasn't legitimate. Not in this city. Not in this country.
So he filed it away and moved on.
He looked down at Emma, who was taking in the campus around her — the green, the quiet, the birdsong, the way the light came through the trees in long, lazy shafts.
"Emma," he said. "What do you think? You like it here?"
Emma looked around for a moment longer. Then she turned back to him, and smiled — small, sincere, easy.
"Uncle, if you think it's good, then it's good."
"Done," Rango said, immediately. "This is the one."
The enrollment process, as it turned out, went smoother than expected.
Finding a school had taken up most of the past few days. And in New York, money alone didn't get you into a good school — not the really good ones, anyway. The real currency was the recommendation letter. The right name behind your application. The right signature.
So Rango had gone back to the Curator.
When he explained what it was for — education, for Emma, his niece — Carl McPhee hadn't even hesitated. He'd sat down, written the letter, signed it, stamped it, and handed it over with the kind of quiet generosity that made Rango feel slightly guilty every time he thought about it.
You're too good to me, he'd thought, watching the Curator hand over the envelope. How am I ever supposed to quit this job?
With McPhee's name attached, the paperwork moved like it was on rails. Ten minutes. In and out. Done.
In the corridor near the school entrance, after the counselor had excused herself and Emma had been led toward her first classroom, Rango lingered for a moment — hands in his pockets, watching the flow of kids and parents moving through the front hall.
He crouched down, catching Emma's eye just before she disappeared around the corner, and beckoned her back.
"Hey. Come here for a second."
Emma walked back, tilted her head curiously.
Rango looked around — making sure no one was paying attention — and then leaned in close, dropping his voice to something quiet and serious.
"Emma, listen to me. I'm going to tell you something, and I want you to remember it. Okay?"
She nodded, wide-eyed, giving him her full attention.
"If you ever see someone here being bullied — someone being treated badly by the other kids — don't join in. Obviously. But also don't just stand there and watch. That's just as bad." He held up a finger. "Instead, find a way to be kind to that person. Not in a big, obvious way. Just... a little. Something small. Something that lets them know someone sees them. Okay?"
Emma nodded again, more firmly this time.
Rango paused. Then his expression shifted — just slightly, into something more careful. More urgent.
"And the most important thing." He looked her in the eye, dead serious. "If that person — the one who's being bullied — ever tells you not to come to school the next day..." He let that sit for a beat. "You don't come. No questions asked. And you do not look through their backpack. Understand?"
Emma blinked. Studied his face for a moment — like she was trying to figure out why he was saying this, and what it meant that he felt the need to.
Then she nodded. Slowly. Carefully.
"I understand, Uncle."
Rango watched her go — disappearing around the corner, small backpack bouncing with each step — and stood there for a moment after she was gone, hands still in his pockets.
The words he'd just said weren't casual. They weren't just parenting advice.
In America, school shootings weren't abstract news stories. They were a pattern. A recurring, predictable, horrifying pattern, and the reason they kept happening came down to something frighteningly simple: the Second Amendment meant that almost every household in the country had a gun. Kids grew up around them. Kids knew where they were. And kids who had been pushed past their breaking point — kids who had been bullied, isolated, humiliated, ignored — could, and sometimes did, bring one to school.
Rango had seen enough of the world to know that the warning signs were almost always there, if someone bothered to look. And the single most important sign — the one that mattered most — was when the bullied kid told someone not to come.
He'd grown up in this country. He knew the landscape.
He shrugged, shook it off, and turned toward the school gate. He'd done what he could. The rest was up to the world, and Emma, and whatever came next.
Outside, near the school entrance, the morning drop-off was still in full swing — parents, kids, backpacks, the usual controlled chaos of a weekday morning.
Rango was about to head for his car when he noticed a scene playing out near the gate.
A woman — young, maybe mid-twenties, blonde hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail, wearing a oversized college sweatshirt — was crouched in front of a boy, holding his shoulders, her face a masterpiece of earnest, slightly desperate emotion.
"Cody," she was saying, with the kind of intensity that suggested she'd been building to this speech for the entire drive over. "I know I'm just your aunt. I know I'm still in college. I know that adopting you was — okay, partly — because my therapist said it would help with the emotional void after my dog died." She squeezed his shoulders. "But believe me. No one on this planet loves you more than I do. No one."
The boy — Cody, apparently, maybe nine or ten, with the kind of flat, unimpressed expression that only kids who had heard this speech before could pull off — gently but firmly pried her hands off his shoulders.
"Yeah, okay, Aunt Cindy," he said, in a tone that conveyed this happens every morning and I have places to be. He patted her arm once, like he was the adult in this situation, and turned to walk toward the school.
Cindy straightened up, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand. "Hey! I just poured my heart out! Don't you have anything you want to say to me?"
Cody paused. Turned halfway back. Looked at her — specifically, looked at her midsection — and then raised one hand and pointed.
"Your period's coming soon," he said, matter-of-factly. "Give it about..." He tilted his head slightly, like he was doing math. "Three, two, one—"
"Oh."
Cindy's hand flew to her abdomen. Her eyes went wide — not with pain, exactly, but with the specific, dawning realization of someone who had just been told something she hadn't known yet and immediately knew, with absolute certainty, was true.
It wasn't the first time Cody had done something like this. The precognition — or whatever it was — had shown up before, in small ways, in moments that didn't quite fit the normal rules of how kids worked. Each time, it felt impossible. Each time, it turned out to be exactly right.
Cindy shuffled backward toward her car, still holding her stomach, staring at her nephew with wide, bewildered eyes.
And that's when Rango stepped into her path.
Not on purpose — not exactly. He'd been walking toward the parking lot, and she'd been shuffling in the same direction, and they'd nearly collided. But Rango saw her coming and sidestepped smoothly, and Cindy looked up at him with the slightly dazed expression of someone who had just been emotionally and biologically blindsided.
"You okay?" he asked, keeping his tone light.
"I — yeah. Sorry. I didn't see you." She blinked, seemed to shake something off, and then registered him properly — tall, good-looking, friendly expression, clearly a parent or guardian of some kind. "Who are you?"
Rango smiled — warm, easy, the kind of smile that put people at ease without trying too hard — and extended his hand.
"Rango. I'm just dropping off my niece. Same as you, looks like."
"Oh!" Cindy took his hand and shook it, some of the fog clearing from her expression. A small, slightly embarrassed laugh escaped her. "Sorry, I'm — yeah. Cindy. You can call me Cindy." She glanced back toward the school gate, where Cody had already disappeared inside. "Mine's my nephew, actually. It's... a long story."
"Isn't it always?" Rango said, with a knowing half-smile.
Something in that landed, because Cindy's expression shifted — from embarrassed to something warmer, more open. The look of someone who had just found a person who might actually get it.
"It really is," she said, and then, like a dam breaking, the words started coming. Fast. Enthusiastic. The kind of flood that happened when someone had been holding it in and suddenly found an ear willing to listen.
"So my sister — Cody's mom — she passed away last year, and I was the closest family, and I wasn't even planning on adopting anyone, I was barely keeping myself together, but then they called and said there was no one else and I just —" She waved a hand. "— I couldn't say no, you know? And now it's me and Cody and it's this whole adjustment period and he's so weird sometimes, like what just happened back there, he does that all the time —"
Rango listened. Nodded in the right places. Smiled when it was appropriate. Let her talk.
And while he did, a quiet thread of recognition was running through the back of his mind.
He'd noticed this woman the moment he'd left the house that morning. Not because of how she looked — though she was attractive, in an unpolished, slightly chaotic way — but because of something else. Something familiar. A shape he recognized, the way you recognized the outline of a movie you'd seen years ago but couldn't quite place the title of.
The aunt. The nephew. The precognition.
Rango had watched a lot of movies over the years — Hollywood, indie, horror, action, all of it. He couldn't always remember the names or the plot details of the smaller ones. The obscure stuff. The ones that had come and gone without making a huge splash.
But this? This combination — the young aunt, the weird kid, the psychic flashes? He'd seen this before. He was almost certain of it.
And then Cindy said something that locked it in.
"— and the worst part is, next week I have to leave him with the school overnight, because there's this sleep study they're running at this old castle outside the city, and it's worth a ton of credits, and I literally cannot graduate without it —"
"Wait."
Rango held up a hand. Gently, but firmly enough to pause the flood.
Cindy blinked. "What?"
"You just said — an old castle. Overnight. Next week. A sleep study?"
"Yeah?" She nodded, looking slightly confused by his sudden focus. "It's this program the university is running. Some kind of research thing. They're using this renovated estate out in the suburbs — it's supposed to be historic, like Civil War era or something. Why?"
Rango didn't answer immediately. He just looked at her for a moment — studied her face, the way she'd described it, the details, the shape of the story — and something clicked into place in his head with a quiet, decisive snap.
An old castle. A kid with psychic abilities. A young guardian who's in over her head.
He knew this movie.
A slow, meaningful smile spread across his face — the kind that said he knew something she didn't, and was enjoying the knowledge.
"You know what," he said, casually, glancing at his watch and then back at Cindy, "it's still pretty early. Kids won't be out for hours. If you're not in a rush..." He gestured vaguely toward the street. "There's a decent bar a few blocks from here. Want to grab a drink? My treat."
Cindy blinked. Looked at him. Looked at the school. Looked back at him.
"I — sure?" she said, a little surprised, but not unhappy about it. "Yeah, actually. That sounds... really nice, honestly."
"Great." Rango fell into step beside her, hands in his pockets, expression perfectly pleasant.
And said nothing at all about what he'd just figured out.