First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. in 2018

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018

Published in this ebook edition in 2018

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Mike Van Waes 2018

Cover and inside illustrations © Jamie Littler

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Mike Van Waes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008249120

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008249137

Version: 2018-04-17

To Madison, Jack and Evie – it’s a big life; try not to let the little things bug you.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: The End

Chapter 1: The Lab Rats

Chapter 2: The Exposure

Chapter 3: The Awakening

Chapter 4: The Bad Decision

Chapter 5: The Closet Case

Chapter 6: The Infestation

Chapter 7: The Origin

Chapter 8: The Fleeing Family

Chapter 9: The Evolution

Chapter 10: The Treatment Plan

Chapter 11: The Side Effects

Chapter 12: The Homecoming

Chapter 13: The Level-Up

Chapter 14: The Extraction

Chapter 15: The Burning Sensation

Chapter 16: The Sound and Fury

Chapter 17: The Rising

Chapter 18: The Panic Attack

Chapter 19: The Recovery

Chapter 20: The Results May Vary

Epilogue: The Viral Factor

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

I’m not going to start at the beginning because that would be my birth and it’s probably gross and boring and I don’t actually remember it. And I’ll also save you the full “origin story” of my superhuman ability to be freaked out. The “previously on” version is that I woke up one night two years ago and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I started dry-heaving and sweating and crying and shaking. I was so convinced I was dying that my parents rushed me to the ER. When the doctor saw me, she literally laughed in my face. “It was just a panic attack.” As if that made it feel any less like a near-death experience. With the scribble of a pen and a rip off a prescription pad, she assured me it would most likely be a one-time thing. But those sounds are something I’ve been very used to hearing ever since.

And I still wake up in a panic some nights. Except now I’m in a different home. Or homes, really, because the divorce ended with two of them. And even though that went down a few months ago, it’s just one more trigger for the panic to pull. Once I start to worry, it’s only a matter of time. And so many things make me worry. It can start with a comment or an irritation or even a noise or a smell, and then I’m off. I can’t stop it. “You’re too young to be so stressed out,” is what my parents would say. But any twelve-year-old can tell you that grown-ups don’t have a monopoly on grown-up feelings. That is, if any twelve-year-old were willing to talk about it. That was one of my problems. Maybe my biggest problem.

But that was before the “incident” in Old Wayford. Before the end of life as I knew it.

And that ending actually begins with my name.

“Are you Steve?” came a surprisingly pleasant voice.

It was the first day at my new school, I was sitting in the principal’s office, waiting to be shown around, and I was trying to decide which seat I should get used to just in case I wound up being sent to the office as much as I did at my last school. It’s bad enough being new, but I was also transferring mid-semester, which is kind of like walking into the middle of a movie and not knowing any of the setup. My leg was bouncing uncontrollably, a clear sign that I was anxious about being dragged around by some random kid who would have to pretend to be nice to me all day.

I was predicting that I’d be completely abandoned by third period.

But then I heard my name called.

I looked up to see a smile.

A real smile. Not a “grown-ups are making me do this” smile.

“I’m Suzie. Suzie Minkle. Welcome to New Old Wayford Middle School!”

My face flushed and my throat closed up before I could even croak out a mumbled, “Slim Pickings.”

She cocked her head curiously, which made her dark, natural curls bounce like they were alive and excited to be there. Then she laughed, but not at my expense. “I guess you have a point. It’s not like there are a lot of schools to go to in town.”

I blinked at her as if trying to clear floaters from my eyes. Suzie was one of only a handful of black kids I’d seen walking into this school, but if she felt the slightest bit like an outsider, I couldn’t tell. She was wearing a Twenty One Pilots T-shirt under a blue mesh cover-up with yoga trousers and red Doc Martens. The whole look gave her a cool, relaxed vibe that made her seem at ease in ways I didn’t know existed. And man did she smell nice. I had no idea what it was, but whatever soap or perfume or shampoo she used, it was literally a breath of fresh air. “No. It’s my name. S-S-Slim,” I stuttered as I followed her into the hall.

And believe it or not, she smiled when I said that. “Slim – that’s a cool name. Mine sounds like an annoying neighbour on a sitcom, but that’s okay. I’m used to it.”

Despite my trouble talking like a human, Suzie made me feel like I belonged. Which is something I never felt at my last school – or anywhere else, really. The funny thing about Suzie is that she genuinely wants to be friends with everyone. “My dads own a yoga and wellness centre in town, so I think it’s important to be centred and mindful, don’t you?” I liked the sound of those soothing words strung together, even if I didn’t understand what she meant. So I nodded. I wanted to agree because I wanted her to keep smiling. Normally I’d find it strange for someone to seem so obviously, outwardly happy. I’d overanalyse what it means and what she’s hiding and wonder if she’s making fun of me. But somehow Suzie made it work. I guess happiness can be a genuine thing. Imagine that.

Instead of going straight to homeroom, Suzie gave me a tour of the whole school so I would know my way around. And as we walked the halls or popped our heads into the library, cafeteria and gym, she greeted everyone we saw by telling them, “This is Slim. He’s new and interesting.” I’d never seen anything like it before: everyone liked her. I liked her. In fact, I pretty much instantly “like-liked” her. There’s no point in pretending I didn’t because you’ll figure it out, and even if you didn’t, my sister Lucy would tell you. She’s a total blabbermouth; she’ll do anything to get a little attention.

But at the time, walking the halls in New Old Wayford Middle School, with Suzie Minkle treating me like a normal human being, it felt like maybe I wouldn’t have to be the freak at this school. Maybe I wouldn’t have any meltdowns. I even made it through most of my classes and a whole lunch period without any issues. And I got to sit next to Suzie in algebra! By the time I headed for my last two classes of the day, I thought maybe, just maybe, there was an upside to the divorce, the two homes, the change of schools, the whole life ruined for ever thing.

“Mr Pickings,” said Mrs Bowers in an exasperated manner that made me realise she’d been saying my name repeatedly. Why do teachers always think using your last name will make them sound more intimidating? It never does, especially in the raspy monotone Mrs Bowers uses that makes her seem so bored even her glasses lose the will to stay on her nose. Upon hearing my last name, the whole class snickered. And I felt the cold shudder of familiar insecurities running up my spine. The same thing happened at my last school. Otis Miller would hide behind his book to my right, stick his finger up his nose, and pretend to flick boogers at me while whispering, “Picky Pickings,” as if it were actually clever.

I had been so relieved when his family moved across town and he got transferred out of my school. But one disgusting sniffle behind me was all it took to remind me where he had been transferred to.

Like a slow-motion reveal in a horror movie, I turned round to see Otis Miller and his lanky limbs folded into a desk right behind me. “Picky Pickings!” he said with a wicked smile and a finger up his nose.

I instantly felt a rush of blood heating my cheeks as I turned to face the front. “Mr Pickings,” continued Mrs Bowers, “since you missed homeroom this morning, would you please stand up and introduce yourself now? Tell us something we should know about you.” I should have seen it coming. Despite multiple periods of glorious anonymity, there was no way to make it through an entire first day at a new school without some sadistic teacher torturing me with unnecessary personal introductions.

My legs wobbled as I forced myself to stand. Everyone was staring at me. Dismissive. Expectant. Judgemental. A paper crumpled. Another loud, gross sniffle from Otis followed. Then whispers. And snickers. And a couple of subdued laughs. I was frozen. Tunnel vision set in and the room felt uneven. I didn’t want anyone to know anything about me. That was the whole point of today. I wanted to be no one. I wanted to not exist. But I couldn’t and I did. I had to at least say my name. Just as I managed to prise my dry mouth open, something hit me. Literally. A wet, sticky glob was stuck to the back of my neck.

I spun and saw that Otis looked almost as shocked as I did that he’d actually flung his actual booger and that it was actually stuck to my actual neck. He clearly didn’t mean to take it that far and I didn’t know how to respond now that he did. Normally his disgusting sniffling was enough to get under my skin. But this time, his booger-snot was on my skin.

I wiped it with my hand, but then it got stuck there and I tried to flick it back at him, but it just got stuck to my finger instead. Mrs Bowers was yelling something unintelligible. In my panic, I started to flail around like I was trying to get away from my own hand. I felt a full-blown panic attack coming on. Who knows what noxious germs are in Otis Miller’s boogers?! So, I did the only thing I could think to do: I wiped it on Heather Hu. She was sitting in front of me and I thought it would come right off on her perfectly curated hair.

I’m not exactly sure what happened after that. There was a lot of squealing and stampeding. I heard more than one person yell “Booger!” But I was paralysed with panic on the cold, cracked floor tiles. There were a lot of squeaking shoes and crashing chairs, a lot of screams and shouts that all melded together into one overwhelming ROAR. I clenched my eyes tight, but when I opened them again, the whole class was blurry. They were one giant, roaring MONSTER. I curled up into the smallest ball I could be, willing myself to be anywhere but there.

Next thing I knew, I got my wish. Mrs Bowers was dragging me by the ear to the principal’s office. The panic had faded enough that I could sort of breathe again. “You’ve made quite a first impression, Mr Pickings,” she proclaimed, as if I somehow started this. “And it’s not a good one.”

“He flicked a booger at me. What did you want me to do?” I asked, as if there couldn’t possibly be a more rational response to a wet booger hitting my neck than a total and utter meltdown.

“Get a tissue,” was her exhausted response, punctuated by shoving her glasses back onto her nose and slamming the office door behind me.

I took a seat in the lumpy chair I had started the day in and tried to calm down as I waited for the familiar soft shuffle of Nurse Nellie’s feet coming down the hallway to deliver a child-size Xanax. But then I remembered – Nurse Nellie is in my old school and I’m on a medication vacation. I don’t even know if my parents told this school about my issues or gave them my emergency prescription. They haven’t been on top of things lately. And there wasn’t even a receptionist at the front desk at the moment. The principal’s door was closed. And I was left sitting there all alone.

Just me and my thoughts.

I thought of Suzie, thankful that she wasn’t in that class to witness my meltdown. But then I realised that she knows everyone and will totally hear about it anyway. Some of the kids probably even caught it on their phones. I’ll be a meme before the last bell, I thought. It will almost certainly haunt my existence right into high school. I’ll be known for ever as “Picky Pickings” and taunted for sport!

My heart was racing. My thoughts were totally spiralling away from me. A therapist once tried to teach me how to reframe my thoughts while deep breathing, but I had my own unique take on that exercise. I slumped over in my own lap, squeezing my head between my knees, inhaling and exhaling and trying to focus. Trying to regain control of my own brain.

A thought spiral. One push down that slippery slope and my brain will just spin faster and faster until I feel totally out of control. I’m getting better at slowing myself down now, but back then, I thought it would never end. It was like falling into a bottomless pit. I was a mess. I was furious. I was mortified. I was really sad. I had a chance to be normal – or at least to seem normal – and I’d blown it. I’d totally blown it. It took less than a day for my new life in my new school to become just like my old life in my old school.

At some point, a grumpy, wrinkled receptionist who smelled of butterscotch and air freshener came back from the copy room and found me slouched down and dejected. “The new kid is back already,” she announced to Principal Waters, who opened his door, smoothed out his jarringly plaid trousers, straightened his jarringly plaid matching tie, and took me into his office to give me a pep talk about fresh starts and adjusting to a new school and giving myself a chance.

But I had zoned out and couldn’t focus on anything he said. I had entered my standard post-panic recovery period. I felt numb and couldn’t manage much more than to nod and mumble back a perfunctory “Yes,” and “Okay,” and “I will.” I’ve learned that adults need to feel like they’re being heard even when they have no idea what they’re talking about. It makes them feel good and it earns you some peace and quiet a lot faster.

“I’ve seen your file and I just don’t want you to have the same problems you had in your previous school, Steven,” said Principal Waters, leaning forward on his desk. “Do you prefer Steven or Steve? Or even Stevie? I’ve always liked Stevie. But I’m a big fan of Fleetwood Mac.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but he clearly expected an answer, so I opened my mouth and told him way more than anyone needs to know: “My family used to call me Stevie because it’s cute to do that when you’re a little blob of nothing and no one takes you seriously. But eventually I formed a personality and I guess it wasn’t cute any more. So, they started calling me Slim – as in ‘Slim Pickings’. I think they meant it as a term of endearment, but I think they also thought it was funny. It doesn’t bother me, except when it does. But I’m easily bothered. And I don’t know, I guess if you were looking for something that wouldn’t bother me, it would be slim pickings, so they call me Slim Pickings. It’s really not even that clever. But it’s my name now – so I guess you can call me that too.”

And Principal Waters stared at me slack-jawed for a moment. Like a lot of people I try to talk to, he had no idea how to respond to me. I think we were both happy that my dad burst in at that moment. “Hey, Slim,” he said with an air of wariness and disappointment I’ve grown accustomed to. He had on a suit, so I knew he must have been on his way to (or pulled out of) an important meeting.

He’d barely introduced himself to the principal when my mom rushed in, all frantic and full of questions. “Slim? What happened? What’s the problem? What … are you doing here?!” She skidded to a stop when she realised Dad was already here. “Dale, it’s my day,” she continued as she pulled out her phone to double-check her schedule. Mom is the queen of checklists and schedules, even though she’s been all over the place lately.

Dad rubbed the stress stubble that seems to have become a permanent fixture on his face and replied, “Does it matter any more? I got pulled out of work for this.”

Mom couldn’t help but correct him: “We both did.”

Principal Waters sent me back outside to the lumpy chair and shut the door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I could see Mom and Dad having a serious conversation with him through his frosted window. It actually looked a lot more like couples therapy than anything else, and it was making me feel anxious again. So when the grumpy receptionist wasn’t looking, I slipped outside so I could breathe.

That worked – for about thirty seconds.

“Way to go, Booger Boy,” said Lucy as she walked up to me and shoved her phone in my face. My life literally flashed before my eyes. Or the most recent episode did. My meltdown had, in fact, gone viral before the last bell. “My new friend Maya sent this to me,” she explained. “Luckily it was after she introduced me to the whole soccer team and I got invited to their sleepover this weekend. Otherwise it would be super embarrassing for me,” she added. Because of course she had already made new friends.

Lucy’s technically my little sister, but it’s weird to call her “little” since she’s almost as tall as I am. “Younger” is more accurate. She’s only ten, but according to that horribly awkward sex education class in my old school where sweaty Mr Felcher stuttered his way through a lesson on puberty, boys hit their growth spurts later than girls.

Most comparisons between us tend to fall in her favour. Lucy’s strong where I’m scrawny, she’s focused where I’m distracted, and she has an effortless sort of poise about her while I have an effortless sort of dork about me. To paraphrase Dad when he didn’t know I was listening, “She’s got her poop together.” Except he didn’t say “poop”.

BRRRRING! The last bell rang and kids were purged from the school like vomit, which is what I felt like, considering everyone was still laughing at me. “Hey, Bestie!” shrieked a girl I quickly deduced was Lucy’s new best friend, Maya Rodriguez, which seemed impossible since they just met today. Maya raved on and on, “I love your jeans, and your bag, and you have to send me a link to those cleats you got so we can all get the same ones for the team. The sleepover this weekend will be so much fun!” As if I needed a reminder that Lucy did not have the same problems as me.

“One day and you’re already insta-famous.” I turned to see Suzie laughing at my video, and cringed out of deathly embarrassment. “Don’t worry, Slim,” she told me in that soothing voice of hers. “Last year I went viral after sitting on a chocolate pudding cup in white trousers. I was ‘Suzie Skidmark’ for weeks. But the news cycle moved on. Your fifteen minutes of fame will be over fast.”

And that’s when I realised she actually wasn’t laughing at me. She was just smiling at me. Like I wasn’t a total freak. She pulled out one of those organic, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, sugar-free, all-natural snack bars and took a bite like everything was totally cool and completely normal. I didn’t know what to say but I desperately wanted to say something so that she’d stick around. My mouth made words that sounded like, “IS THAT GOOD?”

I kind of shouted it really loud and fast and probably turned bright red. “I, um … I like snack bars too,” was my totally smooth follow-up. My mind spun like a buffering laptop as I registered her signature scent. When I snapped out of it, I realised she was in the middle of telling me, “… and they’re made with whole, natural ingredients, which my dads say are much better than all those chemically processed snacks. They’re thinking of selling them in the wellness centre, which means I could eat as many as I want! Not that I would because it’s all about balance, right?”

I think I nodded my head. “I only like all-natural ingredients. I really, really hate any chemically processed products!” I said-shouted. I didn’t care that I didn’t even know what I was talking about. I was talking to a girl. And not just any girl – Suzie Minkle with those bright eyes and a smile that maybe I helped put there.

“Ha!” My sister laughed loud enough for Suzie to hear. “Xanax, Ritalin, Zoloft, Lexapro,” she said, naming the entire alien galaxy of chemical wonder-drugs I’ve ingested over the past couple of years. “Not to mention the Twizzlers I know you have stashed in your room. That’s like straight high-fructose corn syrup,” she added.

Suzie’s smile faded a bit, but didn’t disappear. “You don’t have to pretend to be into the things that I’m into. I like Twizzlers too,” she said. But then Suzie spotted her bus and ran towards it, shouting, “See you tomorrow!” And just like that, the really nice smell was gone too.

I was left alone with Lucy and her smug-satisfied grin.

Mom and Dad came outside, which reminded me that at least I’d be spared the indignity of the bus ride home. I could see that they’d agreed to try to get along for a minute and to focus on me. They had that “we’re sorry” look on their faces, like somehow my freak-out was all their fault. “How are you feeling, Slim? Any withdrawal symptoms?” asked Mom in that mom-way they must teach at the hospital before they let new parents bring a baby home. “Any brain shivers? Or are they zaps? It just sounds awful either way.”

Luckily I wasn’t feeling them this time around. “So far this medication vacation is a first-class getaway. I’m especially enjoying the bottomless margaritas and long walks on the beach,” was the totally sarcastic response my brain formulated, but my mouth could only spit out, “I’m fine.”

“Your episode in class suggests otherwise,” corrected Dad.

He was right. Everything was lousy right now, but not because my brain was revolting from a lack of prescription drugs.

“Are you good now? Do you need a Xanax?” asked Mom, rifling through her bag to no avail. “Oh, I must have left them at the site.”

Dad scoffed. “The ‘site,’ Leslie? Really? You mean our house?”

Mom sighed. “Yes. Our house. Except it’s not ours any more. We sold it. And the new owners hired me to renovate it. That’s my job, Dale. That’s how I provide for our kids.”

“And I don’t?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you implied.”

“Look, I just need to know if you can take them now or not? It won’t be safe for them to hang out at the site … the old house … with the fumigation crew.”

The fact that they were fumigating only after we moved out didn’t seem fair. Why was it okay for us to live with pests but not some strangers? But then again, maybe that was the point. Maybe our pest-filled life needed to be aired out of the house before the next family could move in. Hopefully, they’d have better luck in it than we did. Or maybe they’d end up just like us. Who knows? Who cares?

Lucy and I slipped into Dad’s Jeep to get away from the bickering, and as she shut the door she couldn’t help but tell me, “You’ve taken so many pills, it’s no wonder you’ve become one yourself.” I was tempted to argue, but I knew she had a point. I’d been on five different medications since that first episode. A couple of them helped for a little while, but they all had different effects – and side effects. Some gave me headaches, some dry skin, some left me unable to sleep, and one even made my symptoms a little worse. Go figure. The doctors always said it would be a process of trial and error, but really it felt more like a trail of errors.

“Fine, I’ll call the therapist,” Dad told Mom as he climbed into the front seat. “I’ll fix everything,” he muttered to himself as he slammed the car door shut.

After they broke up this past summer, Dad spent a month in a motel before he moved into a “temporary” two-bedroom apartment. He furnished it with his half of our old life. For whatever reason, he got the old bedroom dresser, the living-room sofa, and a coffee table that we’d kept in the basement. Mom got all the lamps. Why? I have no idea. And the fact that Dad’s apartment had only two bedrooms meant Lucy and I had to share a room when we stayed with him, which I’m pretty sure qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

Things were a little better on Mom’s end, where she had us set up in a new model home in the housing development she’s been putting together in a swankier part of Old Wayford. As if anywhere in Connecticut needs new housing developments – especially ones where all the houses look exactly the same. It was really nice and much roomier than Dad’s apartment, but it didn’t feel like home. Except for a few of the lamps, Mom kept nothing from the old place. And potential new buyers were coming through all the time, so we could barely put anything up to make it look like we even lived there. At that point, I felt like just another decorative design accessory. And I couldn’t help but wonder if things would have been different if I had been less of a problem the past two years.

“This is never going to work,” I said out loud, but mostly to myself.

“Great. So then it will be just like it was before,” added Lucy.

Outside, the buses were pulling away and Mom forced a smile and waved goodbye to us in that way parents smile when they think they’re somehow fooling you that everything is totally fine. I should know. I’ve perfected that face myself.

Dad shifted the car into gear and flipped on the radio. “Just in time for rush-hour traffic. I’m gonna be late for my focus group,” he said. “So now you get to come to work with me, which will be super fun for everyone!”

His sarcasm was met with silence. If by “super fun” he meant feeling like a lab rat in a poorly designed experiment called “life”, then he was totally on point. I just wish I knew then how literal that comparison was about to become.

I used to think that mad science only happens in movies.

But then I went to Clarity Labs.

Clarity Labs was a sprawling building. All cold, clinical, clean lines and sanitised spaces. Imagine an Apple store crossed with a crime show morgue on serious steroids. Everything was shiny. Everything was either metal or glass. And every section seemed to be on lockdown. Dad had to swipe us in with his security card every time we turned a corner. Everyone who worked there seemed to have one of two modes: forced smiles or serious scowls. Both options made me uneasy. I trailed after Lucy, who rushed after Dad down the echo chamber hallways until he suddenly disappeared into a conference room without us. The door shut with a CLICK behind him, leaving me and Lucy to wonder what the heck just happened.

Dad must have realised this a moment later when he popped his head back out, pointing at an uncomfortable-looking metal bench. “Wait here. Do your homework. And keep an eye on her,” he said, motioning to my totally annoyed sister as if I had any control over what she does. It might have been an honest mistake, but at least this time, I was nominally in charge. Usually it worked the other way, since I was the mess and she was the one who had her poop together.

We slumped onto the bench in the hall, which was exactly as cold and uncomfortable as it looked. For a moment, I could hear Dad talking to whoever was inside that room. “Hello, and welcome to Clarity Labs. I’m Dale Pickings, Vice President of Marketing, and I’m excited to talk to you today about Personal Vex—” Until, CLICK, the door shut and locked again.

In an attempt to fulfil my duties as a responsible older brother, I pulled out my algebra homework and tried to do as I was told. But Lucy immediately started playing Candy Crush on her phone at full volume. Every chirp, chime and musical victory was amplified by the metal sound chamber we were trapped in. “Could you hit the mute button, please?” I asked as nicely as I could manage despite the candy-coloured music sending my nerves into overdrive.

This was met with a scoff from Lucy and the telltale celebratory music of a level-up. “Seriously, don’t you have homework to do?” I asked, attempting to control the annoyance in my voice.

She just smirked and rolled her eyes and said, “That’s what study hall is for.” I tried to focus on my homework again, but her Candy Crush was crushing my concentration. I could tell from the stupid smile on Lucy’s face that her goal was no longer to level-up in the game, but just to level-up my irritation. I hated that it was working, but I was determined to not let her win.

I slammed my book shut and closed my eyes. I leaned back against the wall behind me and did … nothing. The thing about Lucy is that she wants attention. And I knew the best way to annoy her was to totally ignore her.

And it worked. Lucy shifted so she was facing me, hoping the game noise would make me react. And although I was screaming on the inside, I refused to let her get a rise out of me. This was the sort of standoff we had at least once a day. I usually lost because … well, because I’m me. But this time I was distracted because I realised if I concentrated, I could hear Dad through the wall. “Clarity Labs is now refocusing our brand to appeal to the parents of the modern Millennial market. Chemicals are out of favour and natural remedies are trending.” I hadn’t heard him say that before. It made me think of Suzie. I pressed my ear to the wall.

But now that I wasn’t actively agitated by her game, Lucy was getting restless. She tends to do that when no one is paying attention to her. When Dad stopped talking, I opened my eyes again – and Lucy was gone. It had only been a minute, but she’d lost her patience and taken off down the hall. The only thing that kept me calm was the fact that you can’t get anywhere in this building without a security card. She couldn’t actually leave this hallway.

So I was stunned when I saw her swipe a card at the security pad beside the first set of doors. She paused for a moment to flip me off before disappearing. She must have stolen Dad’s security card! This wasn’t the first time she’d taken something (or “borrowed”, as she puts it) without asking. It’d been happening more and more since we moved. If something was missing, I knew who took it, and I knew it would take for ever to get it back. I gave up asking a long time ago. Usually I would just ransack her room to find it. But this was a whole new level of “borrowing”. This could get us both in real trouble.

I knew I had to act quickly if I didn’t want Dad to find out. I looked around for help, but there was no one in the hall. My leg was shaking and my nerves were frayed and I just couldn’t be alone. Without thinking, I launched myself at the door before it shut.

The door closed behind me with an audible CLICK that echoed down the halls of the actual labs of Clarity Labs like a warning. I was suddenly terrified that I would get caught. I had zero excuses ready. No one would buy that I just got lost. And I started to worry what sort of punishment would be handed out to underage trespassers. One side of the hallway was lined with heavy metal doors with little glass windows in them. The other side was broken up by glass-walled rooms where lab technicians went about their business on all sorts of sophisticated equipment. Even though no one seemed to notice (or care) that I was there, I crouched down out of sight anyway. I crept down the hall as slowly and soundlessly as possible until I was right under a sign reading, “Authorised Personnel Only Beyond This Point”. The big, bold, red and black letters were so aggressive I was afraid to step past it. Instead, I leaned forward and whispered urgently, “Lucy?!” Her name bounced down the echo chamber of a hallway, but I didn’t hear a response. Annoyed, I took a deep breath and stepped forward, breaking the invisible line where it was okay to be authorised or not, knowing full well this was a bad idea – an awful idea, actually – but also knowing, too, a far worse idea would be letting Lucy get in trouble the only time Dad ever told me to keep an eye on her.

But then a click-clacking of heels coming closer stopped me dead in my tracks. With the echoes, I couldn’t tell if it was coming from ahead of me or from behind. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Click-clack, click-clack. A closet. I spied a closet. I rattled the handle, but it buzzed to let me know it would remain locked without a security card. Click-clack, click-clack. I backed up into a nearby doorframe and froze. Trying to be invisible, but fully knowing I was so about to be busted.

And then … just when I was sure I was about to be headed to jail or reform school, a hand reached out and grabbed me and yanked me into the room on the other side of the door. I nearly screamed but Lucy clamped a hand over my mouth and gently closed the door until it was open just a crack so she could keep an eye out.

We both listened as the click-clacking came closer, and I peeked over her shoulder as a power-suited executive and an older man in a rumpled white lab coat came into view. “Ms Salt … Ms Salt, a moment please!” I’d later find out that this was Dr Hugo Zanker, the lead research scientist at Clarity Labs. He was an unpredictable man with perpetually bloodshot eyes and a twitchy demeanour. “We need to start human trials!” he said with a desperate gleam in his eye.

The power suit turned sharply. It was Pauline Salt, CEO of Clarity Labs. I recognised her from her portrait in the front lobby. Her dark, angular face contrasted sharply with a pristinely tailored suit that was the same colour as her last name. “Dr Zanker, the future of Clarity Labs depends on me to make all the right decisions at all the right times. If we rush towards human trials, the FDA might start questioning the origin of Project PVZ.”

“But the rats are inconclusive,” Dr Zanker pleaded. “How will I know if I’ve made the proper alterations to the formula without human—”

Ms Salt silenced him with a finger. Zanker was desperate to argue, but Ms Salt was having none of it. Everything about her just screamed, This discussion is over. But instead, she didn’t even have to raise her voice. She just straightened her suit and spoke with the authority of a press release. “PVZ is an ‘all-natural’ anti-anxiety treatment intended to temporarily absorb and dispose of irritations to create calmer, consistent consumers for Clarity Labs. One purpose. One formula. No previous version. End of product description.”

“But …” continued Dr Zanker, to no avail.

“Plausible deniability is our friend, Dr Zanker,” said Pauline Salt, just before she leaned forward and added in a conspiratorial tone, “You and I both know that if the FDA starts poking around, we won’t survive Plum Island.”

Pauline Salt then turned and click-clacked away while Dr Zanker shuffled back the way they had come, arguing with himself as he went.

Lucy let the door click shut and we both exhaled a sigh of relief.

“You’re gonna get us in so much trouble,” I said. “We really shouldn’t be here.” I grabbed for her arm, thinking we’d sneak our way back to the safety of that horrible metal bench. But she dodged and turned to explore the room we’d wandered into.

“No one made you come after me.”

“No one made you … be stupid,” was the best my frazzled brain could offer. She looked at me like “good one” and kept going. I didn’t know what else to do but follow her.

The room was filled with dozens of cages that housed dozens of lab rats. In front of each cage hung different digital readings and handwritten charts.

“Animal testing is so messed up,” she spun round to tell me. “If Dad wouldn’t lose his job, I’d totally set them all free right now.”

“I don’t know. The little guys look okay to me.” And they did. No visible wounds. No extra limbs. No unidentifiable growths.

“Whoa, what’s up with this one?” she said, pointing at one of the rats. It was freaking out. Shaking and squeaking and scurrying around in its cage like it was bothered by something that wasn’t there.

We peered in and looked more closely at the rat. At first I thought that maybe it was just a little hyper, but then it started to seem like it was swatting at the air, like there was a bug in the cage that no one could see. Lucy stepped back and looked at the rest of the rats, suddenly realising … “A lot of them are acting that way.”

And she was right. About half the rats in the place looked like they were going crazy.

I picked up the handwritten chart hanging off the first rat’s cage. “Personal Vexation Zoners. PVZ.” Then I looked up at Lucy. “PVZ is what they were just talking about in the hall!” I dropped the chart and backed away. “Oh, this can’t be good. We really need to get out of here.”

“Stop freaking out, Slim. You didn’t have to follow me. If you’re so eager to get out of here,” Lucy said as she shoved me towards the door, “then get out!”

And I tried to resist, but something in her just cracked. She pushed and pushed and pushed until she yanked the door open and pushed me out the same way she’d just pulled me in. I tumbled out into the hallway and crashed right into Dr Zanker. I remember everything as if it all happened in super slo-mo. Dr Zanker wasn’t watching where he was going. He was in a hurry and certainly didn’t expect a kid to crash into him in the middle of the hallway. He was wearing a surgical mask and carrying a small nasal spray bottle. I slammed into him in mid-stride, knocking the bottle out of his hands. He fumbled for it, but he only slapped it up into the air even higher. I fell in a flop to the floor, and a moment later, the bottle hit the cold, hard tiles too. Right in front of me. Close enough that I could read the label – Personal Vexation Zoners (PVZ). Close enough that when it cracked open I got a big whiff of it right in the face.

I immediately panicked. Instead of covering my mouth, I gasped for air. Not smart. By the time I sat up, the PVZ bottle was empty and I’d inhaled it all.

“What did you just do!” shouted Dr Zanker as he snatched up the broken bottle.

I leaped to my feet and wiped my face as if that would somehow get rid of the evidence. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was about to take off, make a run for it, when a fire alarm rang out. The hall quickly flooded with lab technicians and employees. As Dr Zanker scrambled to collect the broken pieces of his PVZ bottle, Lucy came out of nowhere, grabbed my arm, and ushered me into the crowd.

Before I could really process what had happened, we’d gone back through the main door between the labs we should never have gone into in the first place and the hallway we should have been waiting in this whole time. Up ahead, Dad guided his focus group towards the lobby. “Just remain calm,” he said, “like PVZ will make you. Eventually. When it’s approved for mass consumption.” One of the focus group members gave him a dirty glare, so he shouted to the whole group, “And don’t worry, you’ll still get your free vouchers!”

I headed towards him, but Lucy stopped me before he could see where we had come from. We saw Dad look at the empty bench, realise we weren’t there, and then spin around to scan for us. Lucy pushed us behind a rather large lab tech, and by the time Dad had done a full 360, we were back sitting on the bench as if we’d never left.

“Oh, where … I just …” Dad stammered, confused. “Never mind. We need to evacuate.” As he guided us both towards the lobby, I saw Lucy slip his security card back in his pocket. She was so much sneakier than I ever imagined. The fire alarm kept blaring and that’s when I put it together.

“Did you pull—” But I was cut off by Lucy’s elbow in my rib cage. Dad took one look at me and asked his standard, “Hey, are you okay?” He saw me look accusingly at Lucy and asked the even more standard, “What’s going on?”

I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but despite how much we drive each other crazy, we must have some instinctive sibling bond that sparks in times of crisis. Without even hesitating, we both said, “Nothing!” as if it had to be the truth. Dad wasn’t convinced, but there was no time for cross-examinations. We had just made it to the lobby exit when Pauline Salt popped up out of nowhere, like a jump scare in a horror movie. “The focus group was cut short, Dale. This whole day is now void,” she said, completely oblivious to the concerned people trying to get to safety all around her. “You’ll have to redo it. We go to the board next week. No mistakes. No excuses.”

Dad stared at her like a chastised child. “But … it’s a fire alarm.”

“No. Excuses,” she reiterated. And then Pauline Salt click-clacked away, against the tide of the crowd, back towards the labs as if the fire better be afraid of her.

As I watched her go, I spotted Dr Zanker frantically searching the crowd. We made eye contact, and he lit up like I was the dessert tray after a fancy meal. “Slim!” Dad shouted after me, reminding me that I was once again two steps behind them. I ran to catch up, slipping through the door just as it was shutting. The last thing I saw through the closing gap was Dr Zanker standing there, still watching me, as a creepy, giddy smile slid across his face.

We parked in the driveway of the model home after a long ride in total silence. Dad seemed to be preoccupied with work. And considering how Pauline Salt had chewed him out, I didn’t blame him. Lucy kept quiet in the back seat, not even using her phone. I was pretty sure she was just trying to keep a low profile to prevent me from abruptly ratting her out about sneaking into the labs.

But any hope of remaining calm and quiet was shot when I went inside. Mom took one look at me and rained down questions I didn’t have the energy to answer: “Are you okay? You look pale. Are you sick? What did Dad do with you? Did he give you candy? Is it a tummy ache? You know sugar doesn’t help your anxiety. Did you at least do your homework? Why are you looking at me like that? What happened?”

Thankfully, Dad was totally in the mood to answer that last question. “What happened, Leslie, is that you screwed up our schedules – AGAIN.”

Lucy had already run upstairs to avoid getting roped into the drama. But I couldn’t pull myself away. It was like watching a car crash you’re powerless to stop.

“I didn’t ‘screw up’ our schedules, Dale; you just never bother to listen to anyone.”

Dad scoffed. “Oh, I hear you. Trying to control everything and everyone as usual.” And from there came a familiar litany of complaints – the missed opportunities, the forgotten anniversaries, the lack of empathy, the time we got stuck at that gas station on the way to Big Moose Lake. (Dad locked the keys inside the car!) I knew exactly how the rest would go and that it wouldn’t stop until one of them said something mean enough to end it. I didn’t need to stick around to witness that part. So, I trudged up the stairs after Lucy and shut the door to my model room in my model home right above my not-so-model parents, who I could still hear shouting.

“Fire alarm?! After what Slim already went through today? Did you WANT him to have another episode?”

“Slim was fine! He is fine! Well, mostly. And anyway, my focus group today was for a new treatment that could end up helping him when it’s released.”

“Oh God, you sound just like that sociopathic boss of yours,” Mom shot back. “We agreed to this ‘medication vacation’,” she continued. “And I’m looking for a new therapist, since he won’t actually talk to the one we’re wasting money on. I just haven’t found the—”

“TIME?” Dad scoffed again. “All those years and God forbid I missed one of your imaginary deadlines for mowing the lawn or replacing the Brita filter, but you can’t hit a deadline on helping our son?”

No matter what the fight started about, it always included what to do about me.

I always seemed to be the problem.

I lifted the bottom edges of a life-size Spider-Man poster (one of the few personal touches I was allowed to add to our model life), revealing an almost unnoticeable little door in the wall. It was built to be a storage cubby, but it’s got a little light inside and over the past few weeks, I’d filled it with blankets and comics and a good-size candy stash. It’s my “safe space”. No one knew about it. I crawled in, shut the door, put a pillow over my face, and screamed my frustrations into it. When I was done, I felt a little better. I opened an X-Men comic, grabbed some Twizzlers, and gnawed down three at a time until my parents’ shouting faded away and I heard Dad slam the door and leave.

Everything got very still and very quiet after that. I almost felt like I could breathe again, but as soon as I realised that, I began to feel guilty. Like I was happy my parents weren’t together. And that’s how I would feel if it really were my fault. I got a sinking feeling in my gut, and it wasn’t from the candy. My thought spiral was picking up speed again, so I started doing the mental exercises my therapist gave me to reframe my negative thoughts. I told myself that I’m okay. That everything is going to be okay. Then I got specific. I remembered Pauline Salt saying PVZ is for anxiety issues. So I thought to myself, Maybe I’m starting to calm down because the PVZ is actually working. It was a long shot, but I doubled down on it with, Maybe I’ll go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow and be cured of whatever is really wrong with me. And then I glanced at the mutant heroes in the glossy pages of my comic book and really went for it with the ridiculous, Or maybe I’ll even wake up and discover this exposure to PVZ has given me some sort of superpower! A moment later, reality set in and I started to worry about the far more likely scenario that the PVZ would give me hives or brain zaps or make me grow hair on my eyeballs.

It turned out I wasn’t totally wrong. It did give me something. Or some things, to be precise. But they definitely weren’t superpowers. And they definitely weren’t a cure.

The sound was the worst. Every morning. The BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP of my alarm clock ruined my day before I was even awake. Every morning I’d rip my eyes open, annoyed, and swear to destroy it. And every morning I’d totally lose the energy to do so as soon as it was off.

That morning was no different. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. I shot up in bed and swatted the clock, silencing it by knocking it onto the floor. Then I sneezed really hard – a giant “ACHOO!” that blew my head back onto the pillow, where I was determined to grab a few more minutes of shut-eye anyway.

But before I could even get comfortable, it started again – BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Without opening my eyes, I lunged for the clock, falling halfway off my bed in the process. I managed to find it and hit the snooze button – but nothing happened. Really annoyed now, I yanked the power cord out, but still, somehow, the BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP kept going. Confused, I gave up on sleeping more and opened my eyes instead.

And there it was. I didn’t know WHAT it was. But it was there at the foot of my bed – a furry little potato sack with two arms, beady little eyes and massive ears that twitched around like satellite dishes. Its big, gaping, froglike mouth was spewing out this horrendous sound – BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

I fell out of bed, hitting my head on my nightstand when I tried to scramble away. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, desperate for this to be a bad dream, but the little purple creature just sat there, looking up at me with innocent eyes, almost smiling as it rhythmically droned on BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. It was awful. I covered my ears, but the little creature seemed pleased that I did that. As if it had accomplished a goal.

I jumped back up on my bed, grabbed the pillows closest to me, and threw them at it as hard as I could. But the creature seemed oblivious. It hopped up on my desk, happy as can be, and began to explore what seemed like a whole new world. It walked over my keyboard. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. It paused and stomped again. CLICK. It smiled.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK came out of its mouth as “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!” came out of mine. It hopped off the desk and approached the foot of my bed. I panicked and scrambled across the bed to grab my Wolverine gloves off a shelf. SNIKT! The plastic claws popped out with the pre-programmed sound effect.

SNIKT! SNIKT! SNIKT! SNIKT! the creature said, hopping up on my bed as if I’d asked it to follow me. I jumped off the other side, swiping my claws at it, but it just kept coming closer, seemingly excited by the sound of it alone. My foot got tangled in the dirty laundry on the floor and I fell with a THUD.

THUD THUD THUD THUD it said, smiling, as it stepped closer.

“Get back. Get away. STAY AWAY!” I shouted, swatting the air in its general direction.

THUD THUD THUD THUD. It was almost on me. I clenched up and did the only reasonable thing left.

“MOM!” I yelled. What else was I supposed to do?

She came rushing into the room. “What is all the racket up …” and then she stopped short, her eyes wide in horror at what she saw. “I don’t believe this,” she said, stomping in like she was ready to take charge and shut the creature up. “Slim, I’ve told you a hundred times that the floor is not a laundry basket.” And she walked right past the noisy, potato-sack-looking creature and picked up the clothes I had just tripped over.

I must have been in shock because I couldn’t really form another word. I just pointed with a confused and freaked-out look on my face. In response, the creature opened its mouth. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. “We need to keep this place neat for clients so I can actually afford these clothes you toss on the floor,” she continued, talking right over the noise as if she couldn’t hear anything.

She must have seen the colour drain from my face because she sat me down on the edge of my bed and felt my forehead. “Honey, you look pale. Are you sick? You’re sweating. Do you have chills? It’s not a fever. Did you sleep okay?” Mom never seemed to run out of things to ask me, even though I never have enough answers for her. Especially while staring at an incredibly loud and furry monster that seemed to not exist to her at all. “I really hope you aren’t coming down with something,” she continued. “Is this about yesterday? Are you still worked up over it? Or are you just angling for a mental health day here?” I didn’t feel sick, but I did feel super annoyed at the onslaught of questions when the only relevant question anyone should be asking was, “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!” And then, without warning, I sneezed again.

“Maybe it’s just allergies. Do you think it’s allergies? You don’t usually have allergies, but sometimes they develop,” she pointed out. And as she kept talking, I saw something else develop.

My sneeze had taken me by surprise, so I didn’t have time to cover it up. And right on the floor where it had sprayed, I saw the tiny, clear drops start to pull together into a translucent glob of goo, almost like a booger … but bigger … and it moved! It stretched and expanded and started to form a mosslike film on its surface that quickly turned into a bluish fur. Then a pair of eyes popped through, looking all around like it was fascinated at everything it saw.

“Slim, honey, just breathe. You don’t want a panic attack now,” Mom said, attempting to calm me down. “Remember what your therapist said about breathing through it?” I nodded, trying to breathe, hoping she was right. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the new little monster.

The fur ball with eyes rocked back and forth until POP – a pair of arms sprang from its sides, and it pressed its paws against the floor and pushed itself up, stretching its potato-sack body until it was standing on two little feet. It rubbed its head until a pair of pointy ears flicked out. And now this second furry little creature was looking up at me with the biggest, most curious eyes I’d ever seen – like it wanted to know all it could about every single thing it saw. A few crooked little teeth jutted out from its head as its furry face formed a mouth. When it opened, I was expecting another round of beeping noises, but that’s not what this one did at all; instead, it asked, “Am I an allergy?”

That was enough to send me skittering off the bed and on top of the noisy creature on the other side. I could feel it squish below me, like a deflating air mattress. It was a weird, unpleasant sensation, and when I rolled off, the noisy thing was flattened on the floor. I crab-crawled away as far as I could get from the creatures I had somehow sneezed into existence. As I tried to gain control of my breathing, the flattened one re-formed, seemingly unharmed, and started beeping again. I tried to get away but I was pinned against my dresser. My one-thousand-and-forty-seven piece Lego Batman set that took me three days to assemble fell off the top and shattered on the floor. I’d never get it back together again. Mom had thrown out the directions in the move. I wanted to scream. The noisy one’s satellite-like ears twitched in my direction. CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH it repeated like my Lego masterpiece would never stop breaking, while the other creature picked up my scattered Lego pieces, asking rapid-fire, “What are these? Why did you do that? Where are you going?”

I backed away from the mess and over towards Mom, who was visibly frustrated by my freak-out. “Slim, for heaven’s sake, what are you so upset about?” she asked.

“You don’t see them?!” I shouted.

She looked around and her eyes finally landed on the creatures. “Oh, I sure do,” she said. She walked right over to the creatures this time, bent down between them, and picked up some candy wrappers I forgot to hide. “Did you eat these before bed? What did you expect with all that sugar in your system? And what have I told you about leaving food in your room? It attracts pests! This is why I had to have the old house fumigated for the new owners!” she lectured, while the second little creature looked up at me and asked, “Am I a pest? Is she blind? Are you crazy?”

I looked back at Mom as she got to her classic, “I’m not a maid service, Slim.” Lucy popped her head in the room to check out the commotion. I had never been so happy to see her. Surely, she’d be able to see these little creatures and prove I wasn’t losing my mind.

But Lucy just looked at the mess and said, “He actually has a whole candy stash hidden in here.” She’s such a tattletale. Normally I would have snapped at her, but instead I sneezed.

“Lucy, go and get ready for school,” said Mom. Lucy stomped off down the hall as another voice entered the fray.

I turned in horror – yet another furry little creature had formed! This one had a huge trapdoor-like mouth, a pink hue and a smug look as it loudly started saying things as if it had a Twitter feed to my innermost thoughts. It pointed at me and screamed, “He’s lonely. He deletes his internet history!”

My response was a swift kick. The creature flew across the room and splatted against the wall like those goo-filled balls that stick where they splat until you pull them off or they peel off on their own. This furry little thing did just that, taking my life-size Spider-Man poster off the wall with it. The creature landed on the floor, unsplatted and unhurt, right in front of the previously hidden safe space cubbyhole. After it basically reinflated itself, it pointed and shouted, “He hides the candy in there!” as Mom picked the poster up off the floor.

But it didn’t focus on any point for very long. It was too obsessed with cataloguing all my subconscious concerns to even pause. “He’s ugly. He smells weird. He only has two Instagram followers!”

I began to hyperventilate. My face was flushed and the room was spinning a bit. “Why do you change colour?” asked the asking one.

Mom pinned the poster back on the wall and grabbed up the dirty laundry still on the floor, saying, “This room is a disaster.” She saw me breathing heavily and rushed over, sitting me on the bed. “It’s okay, Slim. You’re having a panic attack. Just breathe through it. Do you want me to get your Xanax?” I shook my head no because I knew what a panic attack was and this was not that. I would have preferred a panic attack to whatever this was.

“Just look at me, okay. Focus on me. Everything is fine,” she continued. “None of this is worth getting worked up over. Just breathe.”

I wanted to argue, but Mom was looking at me with her constant frenzied but exhausted concern.

I closed my eyes and breathed slowly and tried to calm my system, but when I opened my eyes, the creatures were still there and still making noises, asking questions and revealing all my worst thoughts about myself. I really wanted someone to see them too. I wanted to shout that there were monsters in the room. But I knew she wouldn’t understand. I knew I’d just get more of that look, and I knew behind it she was thinking, Why can’t you just be normal? So instead what came out was, “There are … there are … there are … more candy wrappers on the nightstand.” She exhaled and her shoulders slumped, and I lied some more. “I’m … okay. You’re right. It’s just a … panic attack.” It was easier that way.

“Okay. Good. You’re okay,” she said as if she were trying to believe it as hard as I was trying to convince her. And with a tired sigh, she got off the bed, still holding my dirty laundry, and picked up the candy wrappers. “It’s time to get ready for school.”

She kissed the top of my head, which I naturally shrank away from, and left me alone with my monsters. “He’s uncomfortable with physical displays of affection!” shouted the tattletale one, pointing at me.

“What’s affection? Can I have some? Why are you staring at us?” asked the curious one. I didn’t want to respond. I didn’t want to indulge them. Hallucinating was new to me. I didn’t want to make it any worse. BEEP CRASH THUD SNIKT added the noisy one, and I realised it was high time to get the heck out of my room.

“Should we come with you?” was the last question I heard as I hurried into the bathroom. I hopped in the shower and turned the hot water way up. Maybe somehow, I could wash away this waking nightmare. But no such luck. “What’s this do?” I could hear the curious one asking from the other side of the shower curtain as it flushed the toilet. Followed by the noisy one going FLUSH FLUSH FLUSH as if it were a symphony of porcelain thrones.

“He pees in it!” shouted the tattletale one. Then I could see its silhouette point in my direction as it added, “And in the shower!”

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, letting the water run hot enough to hurt a little. “It will all be okay,” I told myself. “They aren’t real. Just ignore them and they’ll go away.” I stood, head bowed, in the rushing water, trying to will these statements to be true. And when I opened my eyes again, their silhouettes were gone. I peeked out nervously from behind the shower curtain, but there were no monsters in the bathroom. I let out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God,” I said as I turned the water off and grabbed a towel. “I can’t handle a total psychotic break today.”

“What’s God?” came a voice above me. Startled, I slipped and fell out of the shower, onto the floor, pulling the curtain, curtain rod and the creatures that had crawled up onto it down on top of me. The curious one hopped over me into the tub and the other two followed. They squirted shampoo until the bottle was almost empty. It made a fart-like sound, which instantly set off the noisy one. As it blew raspberries at the top of its lungs, the curious one looked up at me and asked, “Are you God?”

But I didn’t have a chance to even try to answer. The tattletale one shouted, “He doesn’t know! Nobody does!” My face dropped as I realised these symptoms wouldn’t be going away any time soon. The tattletale’s round little ears twitched as if tuning into my thoughts like a stethoscope to a heartbeat and then it smiled and said, “Now he’s wondering if there even is a God – and why it hates him.”

I stood up with a heavy sigh of defeat, followed by another SIGH. But this one was from the noisy creature, inflating and deflating its bullfrog throat with the sound of my dismay. They all climbed out of the shower and onto the toilet to get closer to my face. The curious one wondered the exact same thing that I was wondering: “What are you going to do now?” And I surprised it and myself by knocking them all into the toilet, grabbing a plunger, and squishing them down into the bowl, as hard as I could. I slammed the lid, hit the handle and tried to flush them away for good.

I ran out of the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind me for good measure. My mother must have heard me moving because she yelled at me to hurry up. “Breakfast is getting cold!” I got back to my bedroom, got dressed and started gathering my things for school as if on autopilot. When my brain is overloaded and I feel like I’m about to fall apart, I resort to routines. I go through the motions of my normal daily activities as best I can until I start to feel myself even out again.

And that meant going to school. Because school was normal. And even though I was seeing annoying little monsters, that didn’t mean I had to treat them like they were really there. I could ignore them. I had a lifetime of practice ignoring things that bother me. The chaos of bus rides and classes and students and teachers – the daily onslaught of external distractions would erase these delusions from my brain. Yeah, maybe I should have realised that my brain wasn’t necessarily operating at full capacity, and maybe I should have remembered I’m not actually very good at ignoring the things that bother me, and maybe I should have tried to stay home sick or something, but I wasn’t really in a rational, think-things-through headspace.

“He’s trying to get rid of us!” said the tattletale as all three sopping wet monsters sloshed back into my room. I supposed I never really believed I could just flush them away. I took the textbook I’d been busy shoving into my backpack and slammed it down on the closest one, squashing it over and over again.

“GET. OUT. OF. MY. HEAD!!!” I shouted in between slams.

“You just sneezed us out of your head!” replied the tattletale as it re-formed.

“Do you want us to get back in so we can get out again?” the curious one asked.

SLAM SLAM SLAM went the noisy one. I threw the book across the room in frustration and grabbed the purple furry noisemaker by its shoulders and tried to tear it apart. But it just stretched as wide as my arms could pull it and then it snapped back into shape like a rubber band as soon as I let it go.

“Slim! Let’s go. You’re going to miss your bus!” Mom shouted.

Seeing no other option, I threw my backpack on and hurried for the door – but the noisy one was blocking my way. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH FLUSH FLUSH FLUSH FLUSH SNIKT SNIKT SNIKT SIGH. It made a shampoo-fart noise when I stomped it into the floor.

“He’s freaked out,” told the tattletale as the noisy one re-formed with a slurping sound I hoped against hope it wouldn’t start to imitate. “He’s afraid we’re going with him.”

“Why would he be afraid of us?” asked the curious one as they all followed me out of the door. “What could go wrong?”

As soon as I set foot on the bus, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. The constant noise. The snotty faces. The weird smells. The bus was a travelling circus of potentially irritating things – and I was trapped in the centre ring. The door SWOOSHED shut behind me. The noisy one immediately started SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSHING in response. I watched helplessly as Mom pulled away in the other direction to go to her renovation site, our old house. What I wouldn’t have given then to be able to go back to it. Things were so much simpler there. But I had no choice but to face my fate.

“Where are we going? What is this thing? Why are you cringing?” asked the curious creature as the bus driver shot me an impatient look and jerked his thumb towards an empty seat at the front. Lucy was watching me with either disgust or concern. It’s hard to tell with her. But she had already taken a seat in the middle with her new soccer friends. I ducked into my seat, but with my three monsters stuffed in with me, it felt a lot more cramped than sitting alone usually does. “He has no friends,” said the tattletale. “He stepped in gum. He—”

I stuck my fingers in my ears and clenched my eyes shut and I stayed like that all the way to school. When I felt the bus lurch to a stop, I ran off it so fast I actually wondered if I could lose these hallucinations if I just kept moving. But when I dared to look back, there they were, bounding right after me. There was no escape. I came to a dead stop in the middle of the foot traffic herding towards the front door of the school. No one else noticed the three annoying monsters on the sidewalk. How could no one else see these things?!

Maybe I was finally, really going insane.

“Why aren’t you moving?” asked the curious one.

“He doesn’t like us,” responded the tattletale.

The curious one seemed shocked and hurt by this. It looked up at me with its big, wide eyes and asked, “Why don’t you like us?” It sounded so sincere I almost felt bad for it, like it was real. But, as if answering on my behalf, the noisy one went back to BEEP BEEP BEEPING as if it couldn’t not make noise and that was its natural default. I slumped my shoulders and dragged myself into school with everyone else.

Even under the most normal circumstances, school was a challenge. But normally when I had serious anxiety or a full-blown panic attack, the things that triggered it were just temporary – like the booger that Otis flicked on me. Eventually, I could get away. But that wasn’t the case with these furry figments of my imagination.

The noisy one mimicked every locker slam and bag zipping I heard, loudly and proudly.

The curious one bounced around in front of me asking questions without seeming to breathe. “What’s homework? Can I eat that? Why are they staring at you?” The kids in the hall were giving me strange looks as I unsuccessfully tried to swat and kick away the monsters no one else could see.

The tattletale had somehow tapped a whole vein of new secrets and it couldn’t spill them fast enough. “He wet the bed till he was seven. He’s wearing yesterday’s underwear. He hoards Twizzlers.”

Mortified to hear all my shortcomings catalogued at full volume, even though no one else could hear any of this, I swung my backpack off my shoulder, unzipped it, dumped my books out and snatched up the tattletale in one swift motion. Then I zipped it shut, which muffled the blabbermouth enough to make its monologue of my secrets almost bearable. Unfortunately, I did this right on the perfectly trendy shoes of Heather Hu and her clonelike horde, who looked at me like … well, like I was nuts. “Here we have a garden variety dork in its native environment,” said Heather as she recorded my behaviour on her phone like it was some sort of demented nature documentary. The trendoids who followed her were delighted. I was just annoyed.

And then it happened again. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t stop it. I sneezed on her. And I have to admit it felt kind of good. She squealed and cursed and stomped away only to be replaced a moment later by a red-furred, blue-horned creature with an “over it” expression plastered on its face. The snarky-looking monster gave me a long side-eye glance and then rolled its eyes away and said, “Not even worth it.”

BRRRRING! The bell rang, warning me that I had to get to class. Heather’s horde stepped over my books, which I gathered frantically in my other hand as the curious creature wondered, “What’s a dork? Am I a dork? Is dork a bad thing?”

As I stumbled down the hall, I could hear the tattletale trying to comment on the situation, but thankfully its monologue was muffled inside my backpack. BRRRRING! I was already late! I started running past all the other kids who were still walking calmly to class and I tripped over someone’s bag on the floor, face-planting and skidding across the cold tiles to the utter joy of everyone who saw it. I rolled over to find the noisy one climbing onto my chest. It opened its trapdoor mouth and … BRRRRING! I smacked it away, splatting it against a locker. But by the time I got up and gathered my scattered books and dignity, the noisemaker had already peeled free from the lockers and re-formed like an inflating balloon. BRRRRING! But this time it actually was the bell and I actually was late.

I hurried into homeroom while Mrs Bowers’s back was turned and made it to my seat without getting caught for being tardy. I reached into my backpack to get a pen and inadvertently released the tattletale. It scrambled out and joined the other creatures all around my desk. As Mrs Bowers started roll call, I took a deep, cleansing breath, and tried to calm down and focus. I was almost getting used to the chorus of random noises and annoying questions and personal revelations from the monsters when a spine-tingling SNIFFLE cut through the ruckus. I looked at the noisy one accusingly, but its ears were aimed behind me, excited to hear a new noise to mimic.

I turned to glare at Otis Miller, and was surprised to see that this time he looked genuinely sick. He even had a mini-pack of tissues on his desk. Otis looked at me sheepishly. “My mom said without a fever I’m not contagious and can’t stay at home.”

Before I could respond, Mrs Bowers yelled, “MR PICKINGS!” I spun round to face the front and shouted “HERE!” while instantly fearing the use of my last name would inspire someone in this room to start in with the nose-picking taunts again. But Otis was too down with his cold to bother. Instead, he let out another shiver-inducing SNIFFLE SNIFFLE SNEEZE from behind me. I could feel little droplets of stray spittle hit my neck and reflexively spun round again to say something, but I just responded with a massive sneeze of my own.

“I knew I was contagious!” blurted Otis as he raised his hand. “Can I go to the nurse?”

Mrs Bowers dismissed him and Otis fled the room without even offering me a tissue. Normally I would have freaked out, but today I had way bigger worries. I just wiped my neck with my sleeve as the curious creature wondered, “If he’s contagious, what am I?”

“You’re annoying,” said the tattletale. “We all are.”

“That’s an understatement,” commented the snarky one.

The curious one looked almost as if its feelings were hurt again.

I tried to focus on the announcements Mrs Bowers was reading out loud, but then I heard the SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF start again. I looked accusingly at the noisy one, but it was busy BEEP BEEP BEEPING. I cringed as I realised what had just happened. I turned round towards Otis’s empty desk, terrified of what I knew I’d see – another translucent glob of goo. This one had sprouted fur and arms and was stretching its body upward. It had a big, pink nose to go with its droopy, watery eyes and floppy ears. It sniffled and sneezed and wiped its nose in its own fur. For a moment it looked content, but then it sneezed and started the whole process over again. It was one sticky-looking, snot-hardened, green-furred, monster hallucination.

“Why does that happen?” asked the curious one, observing its new colleague.

“Because he’s easily annoyed,” chimed in the tattletale. “He’s also pissing off the teacher,” it added as Mrs Bowers gave me another stern look.

I slunk down in my seat, trying to ignore the sniffling one too. But that was hard to do. The noisy one had latched onto its sniffle sounds and they were sitting on either side of my chair back. It was SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF in one ear and SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF in the other. Like an echo chamber of grossness that prevented me from actually paying attention to whatever Mrs Bowers was going on about.

Science class afforded me a bit of a break since everyone was focused on a test and that meant they were unlikely to create any new annoyances. The room was quiet, at least to everyone else. Me, I was swarmed by monsters. And the relative silence amplified the sloshing, chomping, gulping sounds Mr Schwartz made while eating a messy tuna sandwich at his desk. Every swallow seemed to last for ever down his ostrich-like throat. And the noisy one’s exuberant mimicry of the sound caused me to shudder and gag.

“As if you sound any better when you eat,” noted the snarky one with a dismissive face. “Also, you’re totally failing your test,” it said without even bothering to look at the test I was too distracted to work on.

The curious one made its way over to the Evolution of Man poster. It looked at me, then the poster, then at me again, suddenly understanding something and wondering, “If that’s what you came from, then what did I come from?”

“Boogers!” shouted the tattletale. And, as if on cue, the sniffling one perked up and sneezed right in my face. I wiped it off, totally grossed out. But as I did, my annoyance suddenly morphed into remembrance.

“I got sprayed. With PVZ! They said it … absorbs irritation,” I said to myself, causing Mr Schwartz to SHUSH me from the front of the room, which got the noisy creature SHUSH SHUSH SHUSHING me too.

“Is that how we got here?” asked the curious one.

“He’s figuring it out right now,” said the tattletale.

And it was right. I ducked down closer to my desk, mind spinning, replaying the events in my mind, piecing together what little information I had. Everything that annoys me makes me sneeze. Then I hallucinate a creature that does that annoying thing. And this didn’t happen to me until I got sprayed. “It had to be the PVZ,” I reasoned to myself. Then I said PVZ again, but this time, I sounded it out. “The … peeves.” I sat up in my desk with a grand realisation. “They’re peeves! Real-life peeves!”

The creatures all nodded like this was news to them, but made total sense. They were furry little living embodiments of my personal peeves. Noisy Peeve – the purple one with the satellite ears and throat like a bullfrog; Asking Peeve – the blue one with massive eyes and perpetually perplexed expression; Telling Peeve – the pink fluffy one with a Muppet-like blabbermouth that spewed my actual thoughts and feelings; Snarky Peeve – the blue-horned red devil-looking thing with the bad attitude; and Sniffle Peeve – the sticky, crusty green one with the perpetually runny nose.

“I’m sneezing peeves,” I said out loud. “I’m—”

“Disturbing the class,” interjected Mr Schwartz, who was now looming over me as if he’d been trying to get my attention for far too long. The whole class was staring at me, snickering. And that’s when I realised I had been audibly mumbling like a madman. Mr Schwartz ended that with a definitive, “Stop it!”

As I made my way to social studies, I was still trying to wrap my head round the big revelation. I was seeing actual peeves. I had to call Dad. I had to let him know what the PVZ did to me! I stopped outside the classroom and pulled out my phone, which I knew was not allowed while classes were in session – but kids did it all the time. No one ever got in trouble. Seriously, no one – until, of course, I did. Principal Waters came round the corner and snatched it out of my hand as if this were his brand-new mission in life. “No phones, Steven. Or was it Steve?” he asked.

“Slim,” I corrected him. “And this is an emergency! I had an experimental anti-anxiety treatment blow up in my face and now I’m seeing …” I stopped myself because a well-worn “heard-it-all-and-doesn’t-buy-it” expression quickly crossed Principal Waters’s face. He never would have believed me if I had told him the truth. “I need to call my dad,” I said. “I’m … sick,” I added, with an unconvincing cough.

“Looks like a case of ‘new-kid-itis’ to me,” said Principal Waters as he turned me round and opened the door to social studies for me. “The only cure for that is to go back to class,” he concluded. “You can have your phone back after school.”

I watched him disappear down the hall and realised I’d just have to make it through the rest of the day on my own. Dad would take me back to Clarity Labs after school. They’d have a cure there. They had to, I figured. Because if they didn’t, I was pretty sure I’d really go crazy.

In the meantime, I’d been assigned to work with genetically gifted Chance Chandler on a project exploring the chapter on “Individual Development and Identity”.

“Do I develop? Do I have identity?” asked Asking Peeve as Ms Mayfarb walked around the room in her oversize cardigan and waist-length dreadlocks, spouting off her own questions to “help inspire” our projects.

“How do individuals grow and change? Why do they behave the way they do? What factors in society and politics and culture influence how people develop over time?” she asked as she pushed Chance’s feet off his desk and removed his baseball cap.

“Sorry, Ms Mayfarb. I just like having my thinking cap on,” he said with a flawless smile. And I swear half the class swooned. Even Ms Mayfarb softened and put the hat back on his head. Right before she looked at me and said, “Take notes from this one, Slim. He’s a charmer.”

And once she had moved on, Chance pushed his work my way and said, “She’s right. You should take the notes.” Then he reclined in his seat with another self-confident grin I couldn’t relate to and added, “I can tell from your expression that you’re more of the thinker type anyway.”

“More like an overthinker type,” snorted Snarky Peeve from below our pushed-together desks. And neither one of them were wrong. I was thinking so hard I had actually broken a sweat. How could I be expected to work with Noisy, Asking, Telling, Snarky and Sniffle Peeves on my case? And with no help from Chance, who was apparently so well liked he could get away with doing anything – and by anything, I mean he could get away with doing nothing. He might be popular, but he’s also lazy.

“Thanks, bro,” added Chance as he tipped his baseball cap over his eyes to nap. Good thing he did, or he would have got a sneeze in the face.

As I left social studies, I had roly-poly Lazy Peeve literally hanging off me. Three times the size of the other peeves with tiny ears and sleepy eyes, Lazy was like a gravelly-grey-coloured blob of extra-heavy deadweight. It couldn’t even be bothered to keep its own tongue in its mouth. It just lolled out of the corner from exhaustion as it forced me to drag it around. I’m not even sure how I made it to the gym with it clinging to my leg. I was just relieved to discover that we had a chilled-out student teacher sub for phys ed, who excitedly announced, “Wallyball!”

With six peeves swarming me, bugging me and hanging off me, I was getting desperate and Wallyball gave me an idea. Just in case you’ve never played, Wallyball is kind of like volleyball, except you play with a big beach ball that you can hit off the walls before you hit it over the net. It’s totally disorganised and totally out of control. At least, that’s how it was with this student teacher sub in charge. Everyone was already freaking out in the middle of the court, chasing after and swatting the ball.

It was exactly the opening I needed.

Once I was changed and got out of the locker room, I joined the other kids in the spare room next to the gym. I don’t even know what that space was supposed to be, but with its high ceilings and mats everywhere, it felt custom-made for Wallyball. I was finally able to shake Lazy Peeve off my leg as I ducked under the net strung across the middle of the room. The peeve lay down right on the floor, as if it’d already had the hardest day ever. And I was so frustrated that I kicked it as hard as I could. I wanted to send it splatting against the gym wall, but it was so much heavier than the other peeves that it just sort of flopped over onto its face.

“Why’d you do that?” asked Asking Peeve, but I was inspired. I ran around the court like a madman grabbing, throwing and kicking my peeves in any direction I could. I punted one over the net and watched it THWACK against a wall, I tossed another through the portable basketball hoop in the corner for a perfect SWOOSH and SPLAT on the floor, and then I kicked one right into a pile of mats that I was sure would bury it for ever. But no matter how hard I tried, my peeves would just peel free and reinflate themselves. Then they’d go right back to annoying me. By the end of the Wallyball game, they were all standing and I was exhausted.

We returned to the locker room as the period wound down. The rest of the guys dressed quickly and headed off to their next class. But I couldn’t peel myself off the bench. My mind was spinning. My inner monologue was going bonkers. And I was feeling desperate and defeated.

“This is crazy,” I said, which prompted Asking Peeve to wonder, “What is crazy?”

And Telling Peeve answered, “He thinks he is,” pointing right in my face.

“It’s not a good look on you,” cracked Snarky Peeve.

And that’s when I lost it. “I’M not crazy!” I screamed. “THIS

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