The comic book costs $1.25, which is most of my allowance for the week.

  I hold it in the store for eleven minutes before buying it, reading the same panels over and over, checking for damage to the spine and corners. The clerk watches me with the particular expression adults get when they're deciding whether a kid is going to steal something. I'm not going to steal it. Stealing is dumb - you get caught, you lose access to the store. Even at nine years old, I understand this.

  The Amazing Spider-Man #252. The cover shows Spider-Man in his black costume - "The rumors are true!" - which I know isn't actually a costume but a symbiote, an alien that bonded with him and had to be rejected because it was changing who he was. I like that storyline. I like that the power came with a cost, that Peter Parker had to choose between capability and identity. And Venom is awesome.

  Mom is waiting outside. She doesn't come into the comic shop anymore because the owner plays music she doesn't like and the aisles are too narrow and she says it smells like "boy." She's not wrong. It does smell like boy - like dust and old paper and the particular staleness of spaces where sunlight doesn't reach.

  "Did you find what you wanted?" she asks when I emerge, bag in hand.

  "Yes."

  "Just the one?"

  "Just the one."

  She doesn't ask why I spent eleven minutes selecting a single comic book. She's learned not to ask those questions because the answers take longer than she wants to hear and involve details she doesn't find interesting. I appreciate this about her. She has adapted to me in ways that other adults don't bother to.

  The walk home takes fourteen minutes. I've timed it. Our apartment is on the fourth floor of a building that was probably nice in the 1970s and has been declining steadily since. The elevator works most days. Today it does not, which means stairs, which means I count them: sixty-seven steps from lobby to our door, including the landing turns.

  I do not have to count them. I know how many there are. But counting them feels correct, and when things feel correct, the tightness in my chest loosens slightly, and I can breathe normally instead of in that shallow way that makes Mom look at me with concern.

  Our apartment is small and very clean. I admire the lack of mess as I walk in, because I am keeping the space "practical". Mess means things are in the wrong places. Things in the wrong places means I can't find them when I need them. Not being able to find things when I need them means--

  I stop that train of thought before it reaches the station. Dr. Hendricks says I should notice when I'm "catastrophizing" and redirect. I'm not sure I'm catastrophizing. I'm just following the logic to its conclusion. But I redirect anyway, because Dr. Hendricks has been helpful, and when people are helpful you should listen to them even when you're not sure they're right.

  I sit on my bed and open the comic book carefully, supporting the spine so it doesn't crease. The story picks up from the previous issue: Peter Parker has returned from the Secret Wars, and he has a new black costume. It's almost impossible to understand without the previous comics. But I'll get to them, eventually. The most recent ones started over from #1 again, which is annoying, but I counted at the library on the library computer and it's actually #450, which I like. I'll catch up eventually.

  I read slowly. I like to look at the panels, to notice how the artists use shadow and lines, to track the visual storytelling separate from the dialogue. Comics are two things at once, not a book, not pictures, and that interests me. I have to combine the text and the image in my brain. It's a good kind of pressure.

  When I finish, I place the comic in a long white box with the others, organized by title and issue number. I have forty-three comics now. Most of them are Spider-Man, but there are some X-Men, some Batman, a few odd issues of things I picked up because the covers looked interesting. Each one is in a plastic sleeve with a cardboard backing. This is how you preserve them. This is how you keep them from degrading.

  And I am going to sell lemonade or maybe brownies or help people tie their shoes and earn enough money that I can buy the Maximum Carnage paperback next.

  Mom works two jobs. I know this is because of me - because the doctors cost money, because the medication costs money, because the special school costs money. The special school is actually just regular school with a counselor I see twice a week, but it costs more than regular school because the counselor has to file reports and attend meetings and do whatever else counselors do.

  I'm not stupid. The tests say I'm intelligent, "gifted" even, which is a word that sounds like it should mean something good but usually means "difficult in ways we don't want to specify." I understand that my brain works differently than other brains, that the things I need to feel okay are not the things other kids need, that this difference has costs.

  I try to minimize the costs where I can. I do my homework without being asked. I keep my room clean. I don't complain about the things I don't like - I do not like when people don't wash their hands, I do not like when my skin touches itself like in my armpit or my legs and privates because that is where the sweat shows up, I do not like when it is too warm because then I get sweaty - because complaining doesn't change anything and makes Mom's face do that thing where she looks tired in a way that isn't about sleep.

  And I don't like sweat not because it feels bad, but because it contains germs and smells, which will make me sick. I don't like sweating.

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to Dr. Hendricks. His office is in a building downtown, twenty-three minutes by bus if traffic is normal. The waiting room has magazines that are never current and toys that are for younger children than me. I don't play with the toys. I read the magazines even though they're old, because reading is better than sitting with nothing to do.

  Dr. Hendricks has a beard that he strokes when he's thinking. He asks me questions about how I'm feeling, which is hard to answer because feelings don't come with labels attached. I know the words - anxious, sad, angry, happy - and I know how it feels in my body and brain, and I can even match them together. But it all feels painted in a magic color. Bright yellow is what the art books say is the color of 'noticing' and 'hazard' and 'fear'. I think I am bright yellow.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "How was school this week, Trent?"

  "Fine."

  "Can you tell me more about that?"

  "I went to classes. I did the work. I ate lunch."

  He waits. He's good at waiting. I've learned that he'll keep waiting until I say more, so I try to find more to say.

  "There was a test in math. I got all the answers right."

  "That's good. How did that feel?"

  "It felt good. I was glad I got all the answers right, because if I get good grades I can go to a good school."

  He writes something in his notebook. I don't know what he writes. I've never asked. It seems private, even though it's about me.

  "Any difficulties this week? Any moments when the anxiety felt particularly strong?"

  I consider the question. There were moments - there are always moments - but I'm not sure which ones qualify as "particularly strong". The tightness is almost always there, like a hand resting on my chest. Sometimes it presses harder. Sometimes it lifts slightly. But it never fully goes away.

  "Wednesday," I say finally. "In the cafeteria. Someone spilled milk near my tray."

  "What happened?"

  "I moved to a different table."

  "And how did you feel about having to move?"

  The question is complicated. I felt - relief, primarily, at being away from the spill. But also something else, something harder to name. Embarrassment, maybe, at being the kid who has to move because of spilled milk. Frustration at the randomness of it, the way other people's carelessness creates problems I have to solve.

  "I felt like it shouldn't have been necessary," I say. "If people were more careful, I wouldn't have had to move."

  Dr. Hendricks nods slowly. "Do you think that's a reasonable expectation? That other people should be more careful?"

  I think about this. "No," I admit. "People aren't careful. That's just how they are. Expecting them to change is--" I search for the word. "It is... I can't... make people do things. Even when I really want to."

  "So what can you do instead?"

  "Adapt. Have plans. Sit where spills are less likely to reach me."

  He smiles slightly. "That sounds like good problem-solving, Trent."

  It doesn't feel like good problem-solving. It feels like constant management, like carrying a weight that other people don't have to carry. But I don't say that, because saying it won't change anything, and Dr. Hendricks has already helped as much as he can help.

  High school is larger than middle school, which means more variables, which means more opportunities for things to go wrong. I develop systems. Lots of medication stabilizes it. Things with names ending in -ine, SSRIs, that form the scaffold. It prevents the uncontrollable, alien thoughts from abducting me. The invasive ones that arrive as if there is a second, more frightened person hiding in my brain. But, outside of that - behaviors. Stable behaviors.

  I arrive early to claim the same seat in each class today as I did every day before that - third row, aisle seat, near the door but not so near that I'll be jostled by people entering. I eat lunch in the library, where food isn't technically allowed but Mrs. Patterson pretends not to see if you're quiet and don't make a mess. I carry hand sanitizer in my backpack, the small travel-sized bottles, and use it after touching doorknobs, shared supplies, other people's papers. The day drifts by with all the laziness of a seagull.

  The other students think I'm weird. I know this because they tell me, sometimes directly and sometimes through the elaborate social signaling that teenagers use to communicate disdain. I'm not bothered by their opinion in the way they expect me to be bothered. Their opinion doesn't change anything material about my life. It's just information, and information is only useful if you can act on it.

  This is strategic. Invisibility is protection. The kids who get targeted are the ones who stand out - too smart, too dumb, too loud, too weird in visible ways. I am weird in invisible ways, and I work hard to keep it that way.

  The lunch bell rings. Library time.

  I've branched out: Daredevil, Punisher, Batman, the X-Men in all their complicated permutations. I start reading critically, noticing patterns. The villains always lose. Not because they're less powerful or less intelligent, but because they make mistakes - predictable mistakes, structural mistakes, the same mistakes over and over. It begins to get boring. Today, I am returning some books that I found in the school library. The Sandman trade paperbacks are the big ones. The Sandman is more interesting.

  But then it goes into this sort of historical fiction fantasy thing and it loses my attention. Miracleman, now that's a comic.

  Kid Miracleman. Now that's a villain.

  The rest of them... disappoint me. They monologue when they should act. They execute minions for failure, creating enemies who know their secrets. They let ego override strategy. They build elaborate deathtraps instead of just shooting people. They announce their plans in detail to heroes who will inevitably escape. They are, in aggregate, stupid in ways that have nothing to do with intelligence.

  I look around in the library, waiting for someone to approach me. They don't, so I pull one of my books out from my binder in my backpack. I don't have "fun" a lot, but I do get engaged in things. And it's engaging, it's an instructive list, a taxonomy of not what to do. To put myself in Venom's shoes and imagine all the ways I would not have blundered his plans. Except Venom right now is an edgy antihero, and not interesting. And Carnage is too unstable to even inhabit in my brain. Let's think about Magneto, instead. I open my pages and think about Magneto.

  I'm not planning to be a villain. I'm not planning anything, really, except to get through high school and then college and then whatever comes after that.

  The letter from Columbia arrives on a Tuesday in April.

  Mom cries when I open it. Not sad tears - happy tears, which I understand intellectually but have never felt in quite the same way. I've watched good movies. But never anything that makes me happy cry, only sad cry, which is fine and right. Art is communication between the artists - director, writer(s), cast and crew - and me. And nothing has really given me that sense of horrendous satisfaction that I think would cause a happy cry.

  "I'm so proud of you," she says, hugging me in the way she's learned to do - briefly, with warning, not too tight. "My son, going to Columbia. Your father would have--"

  "Thank you," I reply. "I'll try to do well."

  "You'll do great," she says, with a certainty I don't share but appreciate.

  Columbia is in New York. This is important for several reasons. First, New York is where things happen - finance, law, media, the machinery of American power. Second, New York is far enough from home that I'll have to build new systems from scratch, which is frightening but also necessary. You can't grow if you never leave the container you started in.

  Third - and this is the reason I don't say out loud - New York is where the stories are. The comics I read are mostly set in New York. Spider-Man swings between Manhattan skyscrapers. Daredevil guards Hell's Kitchen. The Fantastic Four have their tower, the Avengers their mansion. New York is the center of the fictional universe I've been studying for years.

  Not that I expect to encounter the real superheroes on a day-to-day basis. This is the real world, and I don't expect to do anything interesting enough to capture the attention of Captain Steel or Albedo. But the real world and the fictional world share geography, and there's something appealing about walking streets I've seen rendered in four-color ink.

  I pack my comics carefully. All 847 of them, organized by title and issue number, each one sleeved and backed. They fill seven long boxes, which fill most of my allotted trunk space. Mom doesn't comment on this. She talks about other things, instead. I try not to tune her out. "I love you too, Mom," I say as I finish putting the last box up. "I'll call you when I get there."

  And then the bus doors shut. And it lurches into motion.

  The bus to New York takes four hours and twenty-seven minutes. I count the mile markers, but not because I want to.