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Russo.
    Jalay beamed.
    “You posted the shop?”
    “Yeah. I did all the bathrooms on the first floor, but a freshman caught me upstairs. She screamed.”
    “Just like a bitch,” said Russo. He sat chuckling for a moment, thinking about how Jalay’s face must have looked when he was discovered. Usually, they just posted the shops on the walls in the hallway, but those never lasted long. Bathrooms made more sense, since teachers shied away from them in favor of the lavish facilities in the teachers’ lounge.
    “So how was jail?”
    “Been there, done that.” He waited to see whether Jalay would believe him or not, but he seemed more interested in the palette on his desk. It already had another shop of Deron on it. “But something weird happened.”
    “Yeah,” said Jalay, absorbed in his creation, “I remember the first time I got raped in the butt.”
    Mr. Lee cleared his throat enthusiastically.
    “Shut the fuck up,” said Russo, kicking the back of Jalay’s leg. “I’m serious.”
    “It couldn’t have been that bad. They don’t know who you are.”
    “They know.” He paused, thought back to Eric’s inquisitive eyes, and shuddered. There was something invasive about the way they stared into him. “I mean, the regular porkers didn’t know shit, but this one guy...”
    Jalay turned in his seat.
    “He was an agent . And he looked all fucked up like some kind of alien or one of those Japbots but with normal eyes.” The two orbs flashed in Russo’s mind. “He looked at me.”
    “Lovingly?”
    “No. He just kinda stared.”
    The sound of the door opening got Russo's attention. He looked over to see a girl with long hair and an emo veneer enter the room. She went straight for a desk at the front without a word to Mr. Lee.
    Russo continued, “He saw me.”
    “He saw you?”
    “That’s what I said. The fucker shopped me like it was nothing.” Russo turned back to Jalay. “He reconciled the real me.”
    Jalay dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. “Fuck you.”
    “He’s a Seer.” It even sounded like a real thing.
    “Then you should have shown him something.”
    Russo thought of his palette. They had taken it away when they put him in the cell; it was the first time his personal workspace had ever been in someone else’s hands. Pulling the dormant tablet from his backpack, he found foreign fingerprints lining the piano gloss around the edges. He used his shirt to smooth away the swirling dirt, returning it to the pristine condition it deserved. With a quick mental command, he opened a rectangular portal and brought up his start page.
    “You’re not viewing pornography are you, Mr. Rivera?” Mr. Lee’s question made the emo girl in the front row look up and cast a sideways glance at Russo.
    “Just studying for next period,” said Russo in a voice that wasn’t really his. Bringing up a search box, he started querying the network for cases of people who could undo veneers without having to touch the surface. Most of it was bunk, unverified accounts that he dismissed as easily as UFO sightings. There were some common threads, but no clear evidence that it wasn’t just propaganda, a way for the police to keep the citizens in line. After several minutes of futile searching, he pushed the palette away in disgust.
    “Nothing?”
    “No one is talking about Seers.” Russo touched his chin, picked at an invisible pimple. “What kind of magic does that?”
    “Which? The seeing through veneers or convincing people they don’t exist?”
    “Either,” he replied, shrugging. “Shit, both!” He turned to Jalay with wide eyes. “That means there’s something they’re not teaching us! Some other magic that makes this veneer bullshit look simple.”
    Jalay raised his hand, but Mr. Lee didn’t look up. “Mr. Lee, do they teach advanced magic in college?”
    “Ha,” he replied, “you think you’re going to college.”
    “What about me?” asked Russo.
    “Maybe if they leave the