The shuttle hummed like a tired bee as it pulled away from the Northbridge loop. I sank back into the vinyl seat and hugged my brand new backpack to my chest.

  It smelled like new leather and fresh ink. Expensive, in that low-key way where even something without a logo clearly cost more than our rent.

  Patrick—Ms. Cho’s assistant, minus the gem?toned winged lizard this time—had pressed it into my hands just before I stepped on the shuttle.

  “Textbooks,” he’d said, like he was giving me a box of kittens instead of a portable brick. “You don’t have to read everything tonight, obviously. Just…get familiar. Schedule’s in the front pocket.”

  The pack had nearly dragged my arm out of its socket. Now, on the shuttle, it felt like a weighted blanket. Or an anchor. Or a very polite reminder that my life had just tilted on a new axis and there was homework on the other side.

  I shifted it a little, listening to the thud of hardcovers settling against each other. Something with a cloth spine and onion?skin pages; something that had that glossy, chemical smell of science texts; something that pinged faintly of dust and age under the new?book sharpness. If I leaned in, I could almost pick out layers: paper, glue, a hint of Patrick’s citrusy soap from where his fingers had brushed the strap.

  Out the window, the school driveway fell away—trees, iron gate, the tasteful stone sign with NORTHBRIDGE ACADEMY etched in a font that definitely had a Latin pedigree. Then we were back in real traffic, flanked by delivery trucks and people late for shifts.

  Highlights of the day scrolled through my head like a badly edited trailer.

  Placement tests. Math not trying to kill me for once. Logic puzzles that had been…fun, in a way I probably wasn’t going to advertise.

  Vinh with his knife and his almost-smiles and the way he read a book like he could also list every exit without looking up.

  The twins, all sunshine and synchronized sentences and Olympic?Trial-photo shock.

  Theo, grinning with his tie askew, pressure rolling off him in waves softer than Ms. Cho’s but same species. The way Sera and Shara had gone pink and bright around him like sunflowers tracking light. The way it had kind of…slid off me, without me even knowing to look.

  I pressed my cheek briefly against the backpack’s curve, cool leather grounding my skin.

  What should I even tell Sketch?

  “Hey, my new school has pool?deity twins, good pizza, and at least two people who radiate weaponized charisma”?

  Or: “Remember the kids with swords from the alley? Yeah, I met one.”

  Or: “They gave me a backpack that smells like money and assigned reading that probably involves monster anatomy between the lines”?

  I huffed out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. The only other person on the shuttle old enough to appreciate sarcasm was the driver, and he was humming along with the radio, oblivious.

  There was a line somewhere between “sharing” and “breaking some kind of secret monster?school rule,” and I couldn’t see it clearly yet. Ms. Cho hadn’t said I couldn’t talk about Northbridge, exactly. The entire country knew it existed. But the other part? The Unusual Incident Reports part? The thing in the alley and the bleach-scrubbed pavement and the way Theo’s scars didn’t line up with any sport I’d ever heard of?

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  Yeah. Hard to imagine that being brochure copy.

  I shifted the backpack again, feeling the thin rectangle of paper crinkling in the front pocket—the schedule Patrick had mentioned. My classes. My new orbit. A piece of my future in 12?point font.

  Sketch was going to want to see that, at least. He’d probably color?code it, then draw caricatures of my hypothetical teachers in the margins. Maybe I should stick to the parts that sounded normal. Placement tests. Rich?kid campus. Scholarship?kid imposter syndrome. Omit the bit where some students at school could bend a person’s mood without trying.

  For now.

  The shuttle hit a pothole; the backpack bounced, then settled heavier against me, straps creaking softly. I held on a little tighter.

  Tonight, those books would be spread out on our kitchen table, lemon cleaner fighting with new-paper smell. Mom would run a dishcloth along the table three times before trusting it under a single textbook. She’d look at the course titles and see my future.

  Sketch would see adventure. Sci-fi canon fodder. Margins to fill.

  The backpack dug a ridge into my forearms. Curiosity finally won.

  I eased it onto the empty seat beside me and unzipped the main compartment just enough to peek. A neat row of spines stared back—BIOLOGY, 9TH ED., something that looked like a world history brick, an English anthology thick enough to stun a cow. All new. All crisp. All very Mom-appropriate.

  Tucked behind them was a smooth parcel wrapped in plain butcher paper and tied with thin string, like something out of an old?timey post office. I felt the edges of books with a finger. The shapes underneath were textbook-sized, just…thinner. Less “approved for statewide curriculum,” more “special issue.”

  Across the top, in tidy block letters, someone had written:

  YOUR EYES ONLY.

  My fingers tightened on the string. Of course Ms. Cho couldn’t just hand a girl a normal backpack. There had to be a secret parcel like we were in a spy movie.

  Every part of me wanted to rip it open right there, let the paper fall in satisfying curls to the shuttle floor, see what counted as “eyes only” at monster prep school.

  I made myself stop.

  The driver could see me in the mirror. The littles in the front row were busy arguing about who would win in a fight, a T. rex or a dragon, but still. This didn’t feel like public?transit reading.

  I slid the bundle back into place, and closed the bag carefully.

  Okay. New plan.

  Regular textbooks? Those I could plunk on the kitchen table tonight. Let Mom run her hand over the embossed titles and see “opportunity” and “college prep” and not “secret monster electives.” She deserved that.

  The butcher?paper packet? That was for later. For my room, door closed, curtains half?drawn. For after I’d texted Sketch that I’d survived Day One and bribed him over with the promise of “classified materials.”

  He already knew about the alley. About the strawberry?rot stink and the tendrils and the way the cops had written it up like a weird weather report. He knew about Ms. Cho and her pressure?thing, and how whatever “powers” she was so sure I had weren’t exactly cooperating yet.

  This? This had to be the missing piece. The teacher’s edition to the weirdness.

  Whatever was in that bundle, Sketch was going to die over it.

  The shuttle dropped me at my door, and rumbled off toward its next stop. Our block looked exactly the way it always did—triplexes lined up like tired teeth on my side, Sketch’s dark-brick house two doors down and across the street, the faint highway roar under everything.

  For a second, I let myself pretend I was just coming home from my old school. Yeah right, door to door service, a leather backpack strap digging into my shoulder, so normal.

  The middle-floor porch creaked under my feet. I fished out my keys, expecting the usual: quiet apartment, sticky note on the table with Mom’s shift times and a “Left lasagna, heat 20 min. Love you.”

  The door swung open before my key hit the lock.