In the bathroom mirror the next morning, I gave myself a quick scan. This was it. 11th grade at a new school. Not that I really cared about school anymore, but it felt like a fresh start. Maybe here, I could at least try to be normal. Then the worries struck like a tidal wave. Would I need to come out? Would staying in the closet only make things more uncomfortable? Maybe I needed to be brave and own it this time. 

It was weird that a dream could inspire such courage in me. I'd had plenty of dreams where I was the hero of my own fairy tale, but when I closed my eyes and saw Hunter's cute little squinty eyes, his lips pressed tight into a smile, I felt invincible. But I also felt pain, a sting like a thorn nestling deep into my heart. It made my stomach queasy. 

I wish he hadn't have been a dream.

But it made sense that such a perfect boy--perfect for me, at least--was only a dream. 

Dad was already waiting for me in the car by the time I got downstairs. On the ride to school, dad kept glancing at me like a finicky meerkat. Watching me chew my thumbnail to bits with my eyes fixed outside the window, he must've thought I looked like a mess of nerves.  He patted my shoulder and gave me a reassuring smile, so I quirked the corner of my lips at him. 

"You worried, buddy?" dad asked me.

I wondered what to say: "Hey, dad, do you think I should come out my first day at this new school? You know, maybe show up on a big pride float shaped like a unicorn, covered in rainbow balloons, with guys in white thongs and angel wings dancing on it?" 

I smiled to myself thinking of that.  

"What's that smile for?" dad asked, cheering up at the sight of me temporarily rising from my pit of despair.

"Do you think I should tell everyone I'm gay?" 

Dad got quiet. I knew me being gay was awkward for him to talk about because he couldn't relate.  in high school, he had been a semi-jocky comic book nerd who spent his weekends with his straight guy friends plotting how to lose their virginity. Nothing like me. He shot me another easy smile, but I could tell he was faking it. "I think you need to do what's right for you, Ry. I can't tell you how to be you."

Shit answer. Thanks. Sometimes, I wished he'd just be honest. I pressed my lips together and went back to looking out the window. 

This was going to fucking suck. 

Out in front of Misthaven High, a traffic circle looped around an island with a few benches, an old sycamore, and a raised American flag. Across the street from the circle stood a gravel parking lot for students and faculty. Dad pulled up behind a Scion inching its way around the loop.

Once he had an opening, dad stopped the car near the curb around the circle. "Hey kiddo," he said, "I love you."

I didn't hear him at first because I was too busy watching other students get out of their parents' cars, climb up a short flight of steps, and head to a concourse in front of the school. Overhead, the clouds covered the sky like a slate-colored cotton roof, foretelling stormy weather. Nothing new for Misthaven. But how would I know? Theoretically, I'd never been here before. 

It was all just so . . . strange.

When his words finally sunk in, I turned and said, "Love you, too, dad." I opened the car door and followed the students to the concourse. Walking through the entrance, I wasn't surprised when nearly every eye in the hallways homed in on me. Normally, my shyness would've had me cowering under all those scrutinizing eyes, but I didn't want to be like that anymore, so I marched forward up some rubber-treaded steps like all the nosy kids weren't even there. 

The high school was only three buildings adjoined through a series of glass walkways, but it felt bigger because there were so few students. I left the first building and walked across a skywalk, up a flight of stairs, and into a busy locker area near a few classrooms. Unlike my old high school, each student only got a half locker. I'd landed a bottom locker, so I reached back into my backpack, pulled out my locker combination, ducked down, and started spinning it in.

I opened my locker and stood there for a minute, one hand open, trying to produce a light ball. Nothing. How could I be so stupid? Of course I couldn't make a light ball. Magic wasn't real and the Institute and everything that had happened there had all been a dream. 

After storing my backpack, I slid a schedule out of my back pocket, glanced at it, and hurried to homeroom. I could've never predicted that when I walked in, sitting three seats back in the first row, was Hunter, mouth hanging open, gawking at me. I stared back like we were on two speeding trains heading for a collision. 

Before the bell rang, before the middle-aged home room teacher even looked up from her compact, where she was applying some pink lipstick, Hunter shot to his feet, snatched up my arm, and rushed us outside into a bathroom some ways down the hall. There, we stood perfectly still, not sure what to make of one another. 

"Ryan?" he said.

"Hunt?"

"Do you remember me?"

"Yes."

"What's our favorite way to, uh . . . kiss?"

"Upside down. You said it reminded you of that old Spiderman movie."

As if I'd flashed on a green light, he grabbed my face and we kissed and kissed and kissed, like someone was about to drop an atomic bomb and wipe us all out. 

Still holding my face in his hands, Hunter pulled away and asked, "What're you doing here? What's going on?"

I put my hands over his. "I have no clue. I just woke up here."

"Do you remember everything? Like, the Institute and Gaspar and that cintamani thing and everything?"

"Yeah. But it's weird. It feels like all that was all a dream."

"Then how do we know each other?"

The bell finally rang.

I shook my head. "I don't know."

He grabbed me and kissed me again, and I squeezed him so tight I felt him sigh through his nose. In the hallway outside, a girl's voice rang out over the intercom, but her words were muffled nonsense from inside the bathroom. While she talked about ordinary things, like football practice and PTA meetings and school lunch programs, Hunter and I held each other like we were afraid the minute we let go, we'd wake up out of this dream and lose each other forever.

But if this was real, if Hunter was really standing in front of me, and he remembered everything like I did, than who was that man who looked like my dad? What we were doing in Misthaven?

Hunter grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the bathroom with him, and, with my hand still firmly gripped in his, charged through the hallways toward the entrance. A gawky red-haired hall monitor with braces strapped to headgear tried to block the door and spattered out, "You guys need to head to class." 

All five feet, ten inches of Hunter shoved the boy out of the way. "Get the fuck out of our way." 

Hunter pushed open the door, then he burst into a sprint and we ran as the hall monitor came outside after us. "Hey!" the hall monitor yelled. "Hey!" But we were long gone, rushing through the concourse, down the stairs, across the traffic circle and into the tree line behind the parking lot, running through the woods until we were certain the hall monitor and the school and everything was far behind us. Then Hunter threw his arms around me and we hugged again. I touched his face, rubbed my thumb on his cheek, so he grabbed my hand and kissed it and buried his face in my chest.

"Ryan, I'm so fucking happy to see you!" He pulled away. "What the hell's going on? Why are all our memories so weird?"

"I don't know, Hunt." I started pacing. "So, this is Misthaven, right? Like, Institute Misthaven?"

"Yep."

"Where's the Institute?"

"Still here, across the lake. It even sends kids to the high school for extracurriculars."

"Have you tried talking to any of them?"

"Once, but they were too afraid to say anything."

"Have you gone by the Institute?"

"Yeah, but it's all locked up."

"How long have you been here?"

"I," Hunter paused and brought his eyebrows together, like he was confused. "I'm not sure. Mom packed up after she divorced dad, and we moved out here."

"Magic," I said. "Can you do magic?"

"Nope. First thing I tried."

"Miss Alwina?"

"I still work over there, but she didn't know me when I first showed up."

"So, maybe we dreamt the whole thing up?"

"We had the exact same dream?"

I chewed my lip. Something strange was going on. Here we were, caught between two sets of memories, both seemingly real. Misthaven was definitely still the small town outside the Institute, the one Melchior insisted the Institute had full control of, but at the same time, it was like we'd never been extracted. Like Gaspar and the Mara and the Sandman and the Cintamani had never happened. 

It looked like I wouldn't be getting used to a new school after all.

That was a welcome relief.