It is 5:43 am and I have been awake for 2 1/2 hours.

Why have you been awake since 3:13 am Shiloh?

Because that’s when something happened.

One minute I was asleep and then the next something was happening. I don’t know how to explain it, but something was happening raising goose pimples, making my hair stand on end.

Andie lurched out of bed, covering their ears with their hands, yelping, “Do you hear that?” but I didn’t hear anything. Down the hall doors were crashing open, minnows shouting at each other, asking what was going on.

And listen in retrospect, ya girl has learned some shit in the last year. It was like second nature to duck down against the wall and peak up out the window at what was happening on campus, but all I could see was someone in a billowing professor’s robe sweeping around a building towards the fountain.

Poor Andie was in full panic mode, which is usually my job hahahaha.

I was already pulling on my boots and my leather jacket when there was a knock on my door.

“Andie? Are you okay?” I didn’t know who it was at first.

Andie had fallen off their bed and was clutching at their head, rocking and keening softly. I knelt instinctively beside them, but I had no idea what to do.

The banging intensified. “Let me in!”

Andie spluttered and their nose started bleeding, just a dark spot on the floorboards at first, but then more, like rain starting on dry concrete.

I lurched for the door.

That girl Marina was the one banging at it. Her nose was bleeding too and she was leaning against the door frame. The moment my door opened she was across the threshold, wobbling and stumbling like we were on a storm-tossed ship.

I didn’t have time to worry about that much though, because at that moment my phone started ringing and the caller ID said Rook.

I picked up immediately.

“There’s something wrong with Bass,” he said, and he was using his emergency voice, which was almost a relief in a perverse way. Emergency is where Rook and I really know each other.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Rook said. “He’s having some kind of seizure.”

“I’ll get Lana,” I said back and ran for the stairs, leaving Marina kneeling on the floor with Andie.

I ran, and I wasn’t the only one. By the time I made it to the fountain square there were people rushing by me in every direction. As I stood there trying to remember which building Lana’s office was, The Thing Happening suddenly stopped.

I can’t explain what it was that stopped really. The pit in my stomach, the dread, suddenly ceased. It sorta knocked me off my track for a moment, and I was just standing there in the fountain square, breathing hard, when Lily literally bashed into me on her way towards the lab building.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said in passing, and then saw it was me. She stopped, doubled back. “Shiloh?” she reached for my shoulders. I could feel myself blinking and shivering, weirdly frozen and she cupped my cheeks to force me to look up at her. “Shiloh, are you alright?”

I felt my head sorta lolling hahaha, it was a super weird feeling, and Lily shouted for help. And it was at that point that I realized I needed to get it together lmfao.

“Sorry,” I began. “I’m —”

And then behind Lily, the lab doors burst open. For a second I saw the flickering lights behind them and thought there was a fire, but as it came closer it became clear that it was a torch like the ones in the library basement, and it was being carried.

Five people poured out of the lab, and sprinted, coats flying, across the square. They were whooping and hollering, all shouting at once.

It was them, the five, Robert, Katharine, Rebecca, Theodore and Oscar.

In my panic I thought they were fleeing something, like they were running from something terrible and felt the kick of adrenaline — but slowly, I realized that the shouting was celebratory. Their shoes scuffed and clattered as they found us in the dark. The flickering torch lit their faces in increments, flashed off their teeth and eyes. Theodore crashed right into Lily, lifted her off her feet with the force of his embrace, spun her right around.

“Alright, alright,” Lily said. She was smiling. So was I, their enthusiasm was infectious. “What happened?”

They all started talking at once. They were all out of breath, completely incomprehensible. Rebecca started laughing.

Lily waved over their heads for quiet. “One at a time! Robert! What on earth happened?”

There was a breathless quiet, the torchlight casting strange shadows as we all turned to look at him. His glasses were lopsided on his nose, his hair windswept. He was beaming.

“We did it,” he said, chest heaving. “It worked.”

Now that means absolutely nothing to me obviously, but Lily’s expression went slack.

“What?” She put a hand to her forehead. “Are you certain?”

Katharine burst into laughter or maybe tears — in the shifting torchlight I couldn’t tell.

“We’re certain,” Robert said. “We’re absolutely certain.”

Lily stood there with glassy eyes, staring into the middle distance for a long moment. Her hand drifted from her forehead to the collar of her bathrobe.

“Shiloh,” she finally said. “Go find Lana — Professor Sorely.”

And that was when I finally remembered I was supposed to be doing something.

“We need help,” I squeaked. “Bass is —”

But I was interrupted because that’s when Lana found us.

“He’s okay,” she assured me, putting a hand on my shoulder. I jumped so bad ha. At her shoulder was Endymion, who I haven’t actually seen since arriving on the island come to think of it. “Rook is helping him, your roommate and their cousin to the infirmary. Are you alright?”

I nodded mutely.

“Good,” she said. “Then you should go back to bed.”

I absolutely did not want to go back to bed. I glanced up at the five again. They were still smiling, chests heaving, all leaning against each other as if they couldn’t bear not to be touching. They were still in their uniforms and teacher robes, as if they hadn’t ever gone to bed.

“Now,” Lana said, surveying them all. “All of you accompany me to my office. I’d like an explanation from the top.” She glanced up at Endymion, and evidently communicated something to him which I didn’t hear because he subtly turned to block me from following them.

“Come,” he said in his low, sort of whispery voice. “Lets get you back to bed.”

I wasn’t the only one he brought back to bed either. There were lots of us out of bed, coming to see what was going on. He collected us all, reassured us in his low even voice. Endymion doesn’t really give off go ahead and argue with me vibes so we obediently followed him back to our buildings.

And now I’m back in my dorm room, all alone. Andie, Marina, and Bass are all in the infirmary building. The run starts in like an hour and I still haven’t slept.

Bass, Andie and Marina are all totally fine.

All three of them were already at lunch when the rest of us joined from our lecture — which, by the way, was not lead by Robert, but by some other grad student, a skinny awkward archivist who was clearly neither willing nor prepared to be there. We all sat there, wondering what the fuck happened last night, while this poor guy tried to explain to us that studying at Saint Niveus could lead to professions such as, tending the archives, or recording global supernatural events, or studying rifts, or tracking chosen ones, blah blah blah

We all just wanted to hear what happened happened last night.

Bass was the most cheerful to explain what happened to him, obviously, because Bass is always happy to talk to people, but he didn’t really have that much for us. “I don’t know how to explain it,” he said at lunch, as the whole table leaned closer to listen. “I mean I wasn’t even awake really, it just felt really weird. Like I was underwater, being dragged along by a current.”

“Was it magic?” asked Ichabod.

“Was it a cryptid?” Wayne added enthusiastically.

“I dunno,” Bass said. “It’s all a little fuzzy to be honest.”

Andie sat silently at the end of the table, picking at their food and not speaking to anyone.

None of the professors have told us anything that happened.

“What do you want, an official statement?” Charles asked when Rook brought it up after lunch. He laughed. “This is a magic school,” he said. “You were warned this place was dangerous, weren’t you?” And when we were visibly unsatisfied with that answer, he rolled his eyes. “Something like this happens every few months,” he said. “And someday, if you make it that far, it’ll be your projects waking up the whole island. Don’t let it keep you up at night.”

Great. Thanks Charlie, you’re a real help.

I’m sorta worried about Andie. They’ve been asleep almost all day. I had to drag them down to dinner.

As for Robert and his band of geniuses, no one’s seen them since I saw them in the middle of last night. Which, by the way, is a claim to fame I did NOT need, people have been clamoring around me asking for details since Bass practically announced at lunch that I’d seen them.

At dinner Marina squeezed into the bench between Bass and I and said — demanded, really — “What did you see?”

Everyone around us perked up and shifted towards me, the vultures, so I tried to shrug off her question — it’s not like I really saw much of anything. But Marina wouldn’t let it go.

“Yeah, but Endymion brought you back to Minnow house, right, so you must have seen Sorely,” she said. She had me there.

So I described to the table about Robert, Katharine and all the rest, how they came running out of the library in full celebration, and how Lily responded in wide-eyed, disbelieving wonder.

“So they succeeded in their research?” Bass asked. “Does anyone know what they’re studying?”

“No idea,” I said, glad to be at the end of it.

“No one does,” Andie croaked. They were sitting across from us and had barely spoken all day. “It’s top secret. They’re working under Professor Ellesburg and Masma Kev themselves.”

(Professor Ellesburg is Lily. No idea who Masma Kev is, but they’re a professor? I think?)

Ichabod, who’d been listening in, said, “Damn, what must they be up to that it’s a huge secret even in this place?”

But see, I was down in the basement of the library the other night. I saw the cluttered, chaotic workspace down there. I imagine there’s more secrets on this island than open truths.