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[Transcript]

        “So... Mina, huh?” June Summers said, ambling behind the quiet student on their way back to the library. “That’s a very pretty name.”

        The girl that she had rescued shot a look of unconvinced suspicion back at June. She’d been sullen and silent since June had broken down the door of the supply closet, despite how relieved she’d seemed at first when June had set her free. She’d rushed into June’s arms like a girl half her age, not caring that she was a stranger, grateful and tearful and frightened, only letting go when June’s first hesitant questions snapped her back into self-consciousness.

        June blinked under the scrutiny of the girl’s skeptical glare and did her best to smile sweetly back. It was hard to seem harmless after battering a door off of its hinges, June considered with a silent mental sigh, and her fumbling attempt to hide Forge’s haunted metal pipe behind her back had only added to its menace as a weapon.

        “...Don’t make fun of me,” Mina muttered at last.

        “Huh?! I’m not!” Agent Summers sputtered in reply. “It really is a pretty name!”

        “...It doesn’t suit me, then,” Mina sulked beneath her breath.

        June’s expression softened, and she cocked a sympathetic eyebrow. Ahh, teens. She remembered all the wild highs and lows of self-esteem that she’d endured before her twenties, back when all her definitions of herself were someone else’s.

        “I think it suits you perfectly,” June replied with a smile, drifting into Mina’s downcast vision to insist.

        Mina took one startled glance at June, discovered her proximity, and had to look away to hide the instant burning in her cheeks. Are you really gonna blush about some weird lady’s consolation compliment? Mina scolded herself in her thoughts, mocking her own racing heartbeat in a voice like hers and Mary Rose’s mixed together. This is why everybody picks on you, you know. They see the way you stare at them and turn red when they talk to you. Mina couldn’t control it, even though she wanted to. She was blooming wrong, filling with butterflies for the girls in her class instead of the boys they’d all started to gossip about. Sooner or later, everybody was going to notice. Sooner or later, all her worst fears would come true, and they’d all discover why they’d never liked her—why they’d already begun to treat her like the clinging pest she was inside in her mind’s cocoon.

        “I’m June,” said June. She pointed to herself to indicate that she, in fact, was June.

        “Your name suits... the month,” Mina replied in a flustered daze. “For now.” She blinked hard, as if her own words had boomeranged back to smack her in the face.

        “It’s got its year-round perks,” June grinned. “You should hear the poems the boys write me in winter. The chance to juxtapose the seasons catches agonizing similes like flypaper.” 

        “...Boys write you poems?”

        “Life on the road inspires wistful written ultimatums. Rhyme schemes emerge.” June squinted, realizing that she was humble-bragging to an eighth grader. “But enough about ME. Those other girls were giving you a hard time, huh?”

        “...Are you a criminal?” asked Mina, ignoring her question. Talking to adults about her problems was a dead end every time. Her parents would worry and make her a tattletale, calling the school to complain. Miss Pleezdoo would listen and nod and ask Mina to take home a pamphlet. Some shady drifter couldn’t help her when they couldn’t. Mina had heard the “life on the run” in June’s “life on the road,” and noted her reluctance to elaborate on the lecherous seductions she’d alluded to. She probably stole drugs from lonely widowers or something; her looks could surely con, if looks could kill.

        “What?? Who, me??” June squawked, well aware of her own misdemeanor rap sheet. “Do I look like a criminal to you?”

        Mina stared at her and slowly nodded.

        “Hey. Okay. Fair. Listen, Mina, I know I might have a scary biker chick vibe or whatever, but the slightly spiky leather jacket is, like, bright colors on a caterpillar. I need it ’cause I’m not poisonous. It’s to make bad guys and gals think twice before they mess with me, a very sweet and innocent young lady.” It actually had the opposite effect on purpose, but that admission contained too much nuance for the argument and audience at hand.

        “...A lot of colorful caterpillars are poisonous,” Mina mumbled. 

        “What’s that?” June asked, tilting her head.

        “...Nothing.”

        “Look, this guy can vouch for me! I’m nice, Peter, right?” June shook Peter Puckett by the shoulder. He’d been following them like a forgotten party member in an RPG while wondering if fixing closet doors was his responsibility.

        “Oh! Uh. Yeah. You’re, uh. She’s super nice.”

        “...Hey, if you say it like that, she’s gonna think I threatened it from you,” June sighed. She glanced back at her metal pipe, which she’d absentmindedly allowed to return to its perch on her shoulder, and sheepishly stowed it in its sheath inside her jacket.

        “I’ve only known her for an hour but I couldn’t imagine a trespasser I’d trust more if I tried,” Peter said, nodding in agreement with himself. Even red flags were attractive if you twirled them like a confident performer on parade.

        “The POINT is that I’m really very nice once you get to know me,” an exasperated June said, “and since I’m nice now, too, when we’re still strangers, that means I’m pretty much, like, always nice.”

        “...Okay,” Mina said. “So?”

        “So we might as well be friends!”

        “...Why?”

        “Well... because you seem like you could use one! That’s why I, y’know, tracked you down and stuff.”

        “...Isn’t that a weird reason to follow me around?” Mina said, frowning back at Agent Summers. “I’m not some clueless kid. I know you’re hiding something. I don’t have any money, you know.”

        “Hey, you and me both, buddy!” June forced a chuckle through her best cheerful facade. “We probably have more than that in common. The stuff I’m hiding might be stuff you’re hiding, too! You, uh, never know until you open up, y’know?” Boy, had she flubbed everything today. Her specialty was hunting grudges, not helping nascent spectrals like this poor, sad, frightened kid. June was starting to wish that she’d gone straight to the Burgers after catching her staring at shades, and starting to wonder if she might actually be worse with children than Shrike (who she had witnessed throw an orphan off a cliff, a training method Shrike had called “distrust falls”). After the ominous whispers she’d heard from the closet, however, and the crushing grip she’d felt upon the door, upon this whole unsettling school, June was not going to stray from Mina’s side without a fight until she knew that she was safe. “So if you wanted to talk about anything scary that you’re dealing with, don’t hold back just ’cause you think I can’t relate. Weird stuff is pretty normal for me. Super normal, even... and our normal’s pretty similar, I’d bet!”

        “...There’s nothing normal about me,” Mina quietly insisted. They were close to the library now; the sunset hung on the horizon for dear life. Soon this brief excursion from her harrowing routine would reach its close, and Mina would be in the dark, alone again, with every nightmare daylight had dispelled.

        June smiled.

        “Different is more normal than you’d think,” she said. She’d caught herself in Mina’s mirror: the shining eyes of a young girl starving for any escape from her monstrous mundane. “In fact, I think we might be different in the same exact way, Mina.”

        The light in June’s gaze caught Peter’s eye once more. He wondered if she’d already been set free from the past she’d left behind... or if June had come here to save herself.

        “...No. We’re not,” Mina mumbled in a whisper, glancing between Peter and June. On their faces was a story she had seen on television, read in books, and seen beginning all around her in her classmates. That wasn’t her fairytale. She had far more in common with the villains of those stories: a wicked, spiteful spinster-in-the-making, a witch kept in the shadows at the far-flung edge of happily ever after. “You don’t know anything about me. I... I don’t know you. Please just—” Mina’s voice faltered as she spoke. She couldn’t say it. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d just leave me alone.”

        June’s smile faded, then slowly returned. They had come to a stop at the shadowy doors of the library.

        “You said the magic words, Mina,” she grinned. “I can’t stay away from stuff that’s bad for me! It’s just a bonus if it lets me do some good for girls like you.”

        Mina’s eyes went wide and shone with the first glowing embers of hope. Maybe it was better if she told a total stranger. Maybe when she’d asked her if she’d ever seen a ghost, it meant that June had seen what no one else could. The way she fell into herself. Her vivid visions of her every flaw and fear. Maybe June could tell, somehow, that she was being haunted by—

        The doors of the middle school’s library creaked open, and a large and looming figure slowly drifted from the dust and dark within.