Jeffrey almost forgot to pass through and pick up his tray for lunch.

But then not seeing Gel anywhere upon noodle-looping the courtyard, he sighed and resolved to throw a few food items together (not really noticing what) before storming to the same table where they’d met.

Still catching no sign of her, he craned his neck, his pulse rising as he willed her to appear.

He began to poke at his plated pile and sip from the side of his milk box.

“You’re ready,” came Gel’s voice from behind, sounding extra flat. She might as well have spoken from within his eager mind.

He spun like an awkward jack-in-the-box to see her circle the table and take her place across from him.

Practiced words like anxious puppy yelps swarmed to all be spoken, but he held them. He knew this was her time, not his. She was here to break him free and change his life . . . to teach him, ever so graciously, how to really be himself.

Gel wore either the same black shirt and dark jeans from the other day, or an identical set. Her eyes looked as forceful and uncompromising as ever, though perhaps a little less frantic, the way a spider might seem calmer (given emotions) once its fly had gotten itself sufficiently trapped to give up all robotic final squirms and glitches.

Once more, he noticed she’d brought no food.

“It happened again today, this morning, didn’t it?” she asked in a low voice, almost a whisper.

“Yes. In science. It was Sarah Heelay. Do you know her? I saw some really good things that…”

“But yesterday,” she cut him off, “that was the big one. First, tell me about that.”

“Oh...” He attempted to readjust, unsure now how to begin. “Well, I was in a place, or seeing a place. I knew it had something to do with Finnel.”

“And did you see the Mad Doctor there?” she whispered, then added (much louder), “Did you see the hidden doorway, OR BEHIND IT?”

“No,” Jeffrey stop-started again, carefully. “I don’t know about that. I came to a place that reminded me of his office. And I got there through a different hallway or something. The hallway walls had all these symbols like math in another language.” He felt his face flush with blood and heat. His words sounded so pitiful and childish in his own ears as he heard them trickle out, failing to even approach describing the magnificence he’d beheld in that transcendent hallway.

“It’s ok,” Gel rasped, her tone dropping and evening out. “We’ll get to that, but not yet. First, you have a lot to learn. I’ll just say the language you saw was a code, something more complex than DNA. The Mad Doctor uses it to keep his secrets hidden. As for the doorway . . . well, I just got excited to think maybe you’d stumbled onto it without realizing.”

The two sat quietly. Jeffrey couldn’t tell if the moment was comfortable or not. Chatter and the shuffling sounds of everyone else rising from tables and taking their roles in activities commencing all around was really only faint background noise.

“The reason I’m here talking with you,” continued Gel, “is not to teach you how to see beneath the surface. Your ability is there, even if you try to fight or run from it. I’m here to show you what to do with those things you see. That’s what matters. Like yesterday, with Mangelo and the cabin and dog, think of how many different outcomes there could have been. Mangelo and Rick were attacking us, basically. But all I had to do was mention the picture on the wall, and threaten to reveal Rick’s reason for leaving his last school, and they both fled, terrified.”

“But that was all we saw, right?” Jeffrey wondered aloud. “I mean, I didn’t even see the thing with Ricky. What else could you have said?”

“We don’t choose what we see,” she emphasized. “But we can stay and . . . and rest in the vision. Or, we can choose to return and do something with it, if that makes sense.”

“Do something like tell the person what we see of their future?” he gulped, the notion of helping Sarah (even a little) to reach her destiny pinging like a coiled spring back to his excited mind.

“No!” she protested. “We don’t tell the future. And we’re not here for them.” She motioned in the general direction of the majority still leaving their tables. “What we have . . . our ability . . . is for a much higher purpose than impressing people.”

Jeffrey was one hundred percent certain Gel knew exactly who he wanted to impress. His heart sank, though her next words addressed his very thoughts and downward inner sway.

“You see something good about someone,” she stated. “Ok, it could mean that, yes, the person likely has a good life ahead of them. I’m only saying it’s not our place or responsibility to make anything happen. We see. We don’t direct. Our awareness shows us the ultimate, real nature of everything. It uncovers and unravels all that holds this surface world together.” She motioned once more toward the crowd the exact same way. “Now, as for what happened yesterday with Mangelo and Rick, all that needed to be said was said. We were protected. They were warned. I’m here to teach you priorities like that so you can know what to do or say based on what you see. Of course, we could have stayed and seen whatever the cabin-and-dog vision might have gone on to reveal. I just knew it was time to return to the conversation and tell them what I did.”

Jeffrey’s eyes glazed over, and not because he wasn’t paying attention. The idea that he could choose to let himself go on seeing things his special way, or to cut short his ability and decide how to apply or communicate his insights, made him want to skip or leap for joy. He’d always felt that the seeing controlled him, and never the other way around. To actually have some say in his own power equation made him so glad (although perhaps just Jeffrey 1) to have taken just those few small steps which Gel and destiny had tag-teamed together to strong-arm him into . . . just the (basic, eventual) letting go and allowing . . . the leaning in (at last), and not away.

“Now, enough talk,” she all but ordered. “Tell me what you see.”

Put on the spot, he found himself suddenly on stage, spotlit, with no idea what his act was supposed to even be.

Drawing his gaze gently away from her, he saw nothing but the usual bright, lively stretch of lunchtime playing out before them. He glanced from a group of younger guys trading fancy-looking dance moves on a basketball court to a pair he knew from homeroom and english, Dom Eoki and Wurtz (short for Wurlitzer) Grandolf. He watched as Dom and Wurtz walked slowly side by side away from the courtyard. “I don’t see anything, but…”

“You do. It’s there. Relax. You don’t have to try.”

He wished for a pad to take notes. Giving Gel a quick glance, he wondered if there might be a way for him to download her whole demeanor. She sat with her hands so neatly folded, the wind only barely brushing the edges of her short hair slightly to one side. He could not ignore how patient she was being, sitting so calmly and explaining everything however many times and ways it would take before he could finally grasp the basics of what she already knew so well.

He resisted an urge to fold and crawl away like an earthworm flushed out after a flood seeking to return unseen to its dark dank home of soil.

“What do you see?” she repeated, essentially clutching him, piercing a hook through, and casting him out across a lake.

“I see…” His eyes returned to Dom and Wurtz, now halfway across the big soccer field.

He wanted to focus on Wurtz, the tallest guy in school, who loomed high enough above to crush the smaller Dom into the ground should Wurtz ever topple over sideways.

Yet when Jeffrey looked at Dom, he couldn’t help but envision a long expanse of dark wooden floor, polished smooth, with a raised area down at the farthest end. Above the floor, on white, almost transparent walls, hung signs of stunning calligraphy. He guessed the beautiful characters to be Japanese (he thought he’d heard Dom mention his father being from Japan). At the other end of the great room, a small table housed what appeared to be a tiny grey tray with a thin squiggle of white smoke rising steadily above.

Jeffrey waited, taking in the room, scoping for anything that might be worth reporting back to Gel. But nothing came. Nothing happened or changed. Only the barely flickering shape of the arcing smoke line gave any hint of movement. Otherwise, he could have been convinced he was seeing a frozen image rather than events occurring somewhere subject to time.

Though he did think of Gel sitting quiet and motionless, ready for him to call out whatever this room might show or mean, the room itself somehow brought its own sense of peace and ease, quelling any embarrassment he might feel for inconveniencing her, his mentor, by making her wait.

His breathing slowed to an even tide.

Maybe nothing happening didn’t have to be so bad.

“You see the dojo Dom dreams about,” said Gel, her words delivering Jeffrey partway back to their table.

“What’s a dojo?”

“Martial arts school. But why didn’t you tell me what you saw?”

“I didn’t know what I was seeing it for. I mean, not yet,” he muttered. “I was waiting for it to become a message or something. Something about Dom.”

“Remember,” her voice seemed to gleam, “what we see is not for them. We see . . . to see. We see to act, and not to…” A near unnoticeable pause might have suggested she was searching for the right word. “...and not to guide.”

“Oh, ok,” he said, still taking in the amazing dojo, wondering about the ancient-looking writings on the walls.

Through the walls, he also glimpsed hints of hidden shadows moving far, far in the distance.

He then watched Dom approach the dojo floor, wearing what looked like every karate uniform Jeffrey had ever seen . . . white from neck to ankles, with a slightly faded black belt double-wrapped around the waist.

Dom bowed, glided toward the center of the polished wood underfoot, and dropped into a deep open stance, the sound of his heel hitting the floor as sudden and booming as a crashing tree.

As Dom in Jeffrey’s vision executed what must be some preset pattern of moves, shouting at the top of his lungs every now and then at the delivery of a particularly spectacular punch or kick, Jeffrey heard Gel begin to speak again.

“Look at his movement.” Her voice may or may not have echoed. “How would you describe it?”

“Like a…” he began, then stopped, choosing to actually pay attention instead of spouting off some quick answer. For with each precise shift and pivot . . . every practiced block or strike . . . Dom had the look of a wild animal following its well-honed instinctive nature in either bringing down cunning prey or deftly escaping fiercest predators. “...like he’s completely part of where he is,” Jeffrey heard himself conclude, as impressed with his own words as he might usually be incensed.

He remembered having often seen the way Dom would move through the school like water flowing along in waves, or fire flickering effortlessly out into flames (perhaps especially impressive when compared with the lumbering Wurtz).

Jeffrey next recalled how he’d felt the day before when gazing out at the sky and down at the ant trail.

He knew the essence of what Gel was about to say before (or as) she said it.

“This is what you’re running from,” her voice announced. “You have to come back to everything you really are. Back to everything you’re part of. It’s the whole world happening around you, Jeffrey. Now, look at Wurtz.”

Without deciding to, or understanding how, Jeffrey left the tranquil, awe-inspiring dojo of Dom’s dreams, and returned to Dom and Wurtz strolling now near the farthest edge of the field.

It seemed funny how Dom’s head stayed perfectly level beneath the top bar of the fence at the perimeter, where Wurtz lurched over and under the bar like a skittish olympic swimmer sent to represent a country with no pools, lakes, rivers, or ocean access.

You couldn’t say Jeffrey “zoomed in” on Wurtz, since using his ability to harness and sharpen his focus wasn’t anything like turning the dial of a periscope. He more just noticed, more and more, the particulars of Wurtz’s completely inefficient strides (highlighted, of course, by those of the utterly streamlined Dom). Already zany proportions stretched with each step to silly funhouse mirror extremes. Both limbs and torso accordioned in and out in a floppy rhythm all of their own, which seemed to set the tone for (or be set by) the sly-dog smile plastered hard across Wurtz’s old-world face.

“What do you see?” came Gel’s voice, again from somewhere else.

“Now it’s…” Jeffrey considered how he might describe the foggy night scene that had overtaken his internal view. “I see a pier and the ocean lit by the moon, with little lines of moonlight moving in patches across the water. It’s kind of scary. Like, I see all these old-looking wooden crates and shacks, all boarded up, like they’re abandoned. And it’s hazy, everywhere. I don’t know what to…”

“Good,” assured Gel. “And what do you think about what you see?”

“It’s bad,” he blurted without thinking.

“Why?”

As his point of view came to rest upon the rough front edge of the nearest empty shack, he shuddered, the skin of his neck and back tingling as if tickled by a cave’s worth of bats all flittering past. “It’s like there’s something behind everything. Something scary.”

“Yes,” she responded, and he had no idea how he knew she also nodded.

“But I know Wurtz,” he began, part of him (likely Jeffrey 1) pushing to see behind the boards and other remnants, even as other parts locked him fast in place in terrible chains of creepy fear. “I mean, Wurtz isn’t scary at all.” His voice quivered in much more than a shiver. “I don’t think he has hidden secrets we should be afraid of, or anything like that.”

Instantly, Jeffrey was back with Gel at the table.

Lunch would be over soon.

“We don’t need to know the source of what you saw,” she explained, the forced forbearance in her voice causing him to sink down into his seat. “The reason behind the vision isn’t what matters. If you had to say something to Wurtz, or do anything because of what you saw when you looked at him, then those words or actions would be all you’d need to know. It’s what we do with what we see that’s important, not the reason behind it. Think about that.”

Failing to grasp her distinction, he fought not to show his confusion.

But then the realization she’d be fully aware he hadn’t understood smacked him like a fish across the face, leaving him with no options but to merely hope she might explain the difference between what we do with what we see and the reason behind it.

He continued to peer over at Dom and Wurtz, and marveled at how completely opposite the two friends were. “Maybe if I’m around Wurtz at some point,” he contemplated aloud, “and see something again like what I just saw, I’ll be able to say something good . . . something to get him away from whatever that dark and scary, hidden thing really is . . . to help set him free, I guess” That last phrase (set him free) sounded so corny as he heard it leave his lips he almost let Jeffrey 2 take full control for a spell to drag him sideways somewhere safe, alone, with just his screen and endless videos.

Almost…

Gel sighed, her frustration at last leaking through its tight confines. “That’s not what we’re here to do,” she insisted. “You might say something that works to expose the darkness, yes. Or something to keep yourself safe. But it’s never for the person involved in the vision, if there’s a person involved. It’s for you. It’s for the vision itself. It’s for the world the vision comes from and makes you part of. It’s for the world around you that you need to learn to let yourself reconnect with.”

For a moment, Jeffrey witnessed again one or more of the blank bell-shaped domes broken up by blackish volcano ground quaking with raw red heat and power. But this time, it was that shaking, shimmering space between the domes that drew his attention.

He detected winds able to lift a building storming in chaotic circles. Though instead of flinging or flapping him about like a flag as he expected them to, the winds only fixed him more firmly in place as he felt them swirl like rising tornadoes up through his feet, ankles, shins, knees, hips, and stomach.

Jeffrey 2 became an agitated balloon yanking up, back, around, and out in desperate tugs about as chaotic as Wurtz’s walk. But he knew for sure there was no way he’d be moved.

Was it silly for something like a hurricane in a vision to serve as his foundation, cementing him into both of the realities he saw?

He had now become Dom dropping to that deep, hard stance upon the wooden dojo floor, or gliding along with zero up-and-down tilt like a swift animal throughout the school.

This was the real power, Jeffrey knew . . . the true ability he shared with Gel, and their most right and natural way of being. He just must have lost or left behind at some point years ago this fundamental key to his own identity. Having long settled for being wrenched in every direction except for down and ahead, he’d never really known what was missing until this moment as he felt the ancient, world-restoring rush of its return.

He was himself again for the first time he could remember.

He actually was this person seated in this place (or these two places), ready.

His eyes returned to Gel, who hadn’t moved at all. And the sight of her caused his newfound sense of self to be both heightened and overwhelmed, like a candle being merged into a mighty, mounting flame.

Her eyes weren’t only fixed and strong . . . not merely piercing and intense . . . but dark and wild windows to the very wonders he’d watched and felt take hold. It was she, not he, who held their power and pathway to truth. He was but a boy caught up in anything shiny and vaguely new. She was the master of multiple worlds, able to exist and thrive in many at once.

And just as Jeffrey began to wonder if he might uncover anything about Gel in the same way he’d seen into the lives of Peck, Sarah, Dom, and Wurtz, the awful schoolbell crunched and distorted its way out through scores of unseen speakers.

Everyone began to head in.

Jeffrey stood.

But Gel stayed put for a moment, still staring at him as she had been all along.

Was she disappointed?