Still Falling FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
Steam rolled off the bus as it pulled away. Val hit the sidewalk and walked the last stretch toward Highschool A—cold biting through wet pavement smell and diesel exhaust. He matched the pace of other commuters and kept his face flat. The concealment he'd set at the apartment still ran under his skin, reflex more than thought. Whatever he'd carried out of last night stayed locked behind his ribs where no one could see it.
Not the Void. No falling through empty dark, no shock-cold rush on the way down.
Only pavement, a timetable, and a school day replaying in his head alone.
Hallways forked wrong twice before he found homeroom. He read his schedule again at a junction, heard a bell slice the corridor, and broke into a run. Late—back row, empty seat—he dropped into the chair and shrank into it. Day-one attention was poison; he had one pass at this and wouldn't burn it showing off.
The teacher looked up from the roll. "We have a new transfer—Valaciel."
"Will anyone show him around?"
Nobody volunteered. Grade ten had already sorted itself into closed rings. She tipped her chin at the boy in the next seat—sharp restless eyes, fingers drumming once on the desk before he rolled them and slumped into the back of his chair. Morris. "Fine. Yeah."
Val pulled on the new-kid mask and treated the errand as mutual inconvenience.
Morning blurred—period after period without clean edges. Val kept Morris in peripheral sight: a face from a dead timeline against someone who'd never shared a hallway with him before. Every answer, every nod, every pause—stranger protocol.
Morris cut across the cafeteria at lunch, shoulders still tight with annoyance but moving anyway. "This is where we sit," he said, and worked the table in a half-circle—names spilling, introductions half-done—
—when Alex barreled in and wrapped Val up hard enough to snag stares. "You're here!"
Loud, glad, primary-school simple. Val held the hug one beat that could pass for kids who'd grown up together. Alex bounced back, grin wide. "Why did you move?"
"My parents wanted a better school. I didn't really have a choice."
Truth for the world they all lived in. Morris kept rolling through the rim of the table, tagging faces Val had already met in a life he couldn't mention.
Morris flicked a thumb toward the boy beside him—open posture, easy grin, the kind of warmth that made a table feel less like a tribunal. "Joshua, this is Val."
"Hey."
"Hey." Val turned his face away before Joshua's voice could crack him open. A laugh slipped out at the wrong moment—thin, awkward—and the table filed him under shy transfer instead of boy coming apart. Alex's reunion stayed normal in Alex's eyes. Morris and Joshua had to stay strangers until he earned the right to know them twice. He wouldn't break that here.
At the group's edge, a girl held the cafeteria light wrong—blonde falling in controlled chaos, blue eyes ice-clear, features so soft the cafeteria light pooled on her. Dawn. She was new to him entirely; no thread of memory to pull. When he drifted close, she went still, focus sharpening—the air around him catching once on his mask. She never named what she felt; he never offered Aura. Interest, not threat—something from church country he couldn't unpack on day one. He kept walking; whatever that look meant could wait.
Trays clattered. The bell drowned conversation. Val left lunch hollow.
Afternoon meant two blocks in the room under the library. In the hall he caught gold hair in a knot of ninth graders—Ashley, unmistakable since primary. He closed distance before he spoke.
"Ashley?"
Her mouth fell open. "No way—is that you?"
The hug hit sibling-big—homecoming warmth, not a ghost from some other year. Liz clocked it and chirped, "Hi!" before she piled on too. Val worked the rest of Ashley's friends with the easy confidence of a tenth grader visiting kids a year behind who were just happy he remembered them. Their faces held no question about lives they had never lived.
Downstairs, Morris and Joshua were already in the under-library room. Val took the seat beside them and performed a boy who'd only met them hours ago.
The final bell released him. He walked to the bus stop, rode home, and let exhaustion stack in his limbs.