Ravi didn’t pick up when I called, so I slid into his direct messages on Twitter and asked him the same questions.

I knew where Will lived, and I went there directly.

Some agreed. Some cried. Some told me to fuck right off. Some swore they’d do whatever they could to help.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, I knew something now. I could see things. I could use photography to make other people see things. That was my ability. My magic.

Solomon sat in on every meeting, but he rarely spoke a word. In some cases I figured it helped, having him there. A big strong guy, in case they felt like getting angry over what I was saying to them. In others I felt like it hurt me more than it helped—set them on edge, made them scared, silent.

I wish I could say that I had this conversation thirty times, once for each boy on the team. But lots of them never responded to my calls, or the hundred different forms of digital messages I sent their way.

Blair looked me dead in the eyes and shrugged and said, “Bros before hos.” What I saw behind those eyes gave me the shivers, and they didn’t go away for a long, long time.

Sheffield had broken him. Snapped something important. The boy he had been was gone.

That’s what Mr. Barrett almost did to Solomon, I thought, and the shivers deepened. Something broke in my best friend, but something survived too. Something stronger.

On my way out of his house, however, I saw Blair’s little sister sitting on the front lawn smashing toys together. Four, maybe five years old. She smiled at me when I came down the walk, but then she got distracted.

By a glowing blue fairy, the size of a sparrow, flying slowly through the air. The little girl laughed and reached for it, but it didn’t stop, so she yelled, and it turned and did a slow figure-eight in the air before continuing on its way. That seemed to satisfy her, and she returned her attention to the toys in front of her.

I stopped, watched it go, turned to look at the little girl and tried to keep the shock off my face. “You saw that?” I asked.

She shrugged, like, Duh.

Shivers overtook me. A cold day had just gotten a lot colder.

What if Solomon’s monsters weren’t in his head—hadn’t infected me as I followed him down the rabbit hole of his trauma? What if what I was seeing was just a different reality, no more or less valid than the one without monsters?

Children know that monsters are real. We forget, when we get older. When we decide we are grown-ups. We block out the monsters. Turn our backs on all that magic.

But maybe not everyone does. Maybe some people never leave that reality behind.