Snyder chuckles. "That's very thoughtful of you, Mr. Johnson, but - hm. You know, actually, why don't you point these things out to me, let's do that. Just to be on the safe side."

He turns out of the office and starts walking. He reminds himself that even if Snyder doesn't believe him this time, he probably will next time, or at least eventually, and Karen's here for four years so he'd better play nice. He reminds himself that he could totally murder Snyder so the fact he hasn't proves that he doesn't want to, even if it kind of feels like he wants to. 

He goes looking for insects and reptiles.

There actually don't seem to be any insects of reptiles in this school right now.

Well, that's even scarier but he does not expect Snyder to see it that way.

Snyder is, in fact, very unimpressed.

"Mr. Johnson, allow me to impart a piece of wisdom to you. Students lie."

"Anyway. Thank you for your concern, but school will continued as planned."

Nod.

Karen swings by the hospital after school. 

Paging Alex. Laura's conscious now, but she got hit pretty hard, they didn't want me to talk to her for very long. She says someone came up behind her in the dressing room and clubbed her on the head. Assailant called her a failure, she screamed, assailant hit her again, and that's all she remembers. She thinks he was male and much bigger than her, but she didn't get a good look at the guy.

Yikes. I'm at Michael's doing research -- I'm very sure that there's something up and I want to know what as soon as we can figure it out. You're welcome to come with or run down leads elsewhere. I'll see you at the talent show tonight if I don't see you sooner.

I think I'm gonna see if I can track down anyone else who's seen weird stuff today. I'll see you at the show.

I can give you some names to start - he sends over all the kids who saw things that apparently weren't there later in the day.

Thanks. I'll follow up with them.

She heads back to the school and hangs around interviewing people for about an hour before Snyder intercepts her. 

     "Shouldn't you be preparing, Teller?"

"Oh, I'm all ready. I'm juggling, it's not a super complicated act."

     "Juggling? Are you insane? Cody Cookman is juggling, we can't have two jugglers."

"We can't?"

     He makes an exasperated sound and hands her a book of - Shakespeare plays, apparently. "Select something from here and perform it."

"You - you know that plays have multiple parts, right?"

     He gives her a warning look.

" - um, I mean, obviously you know that plays have multiple parts. I will just, uh, select something from this book and, uh, read it, and just, uh, modulate my voice enough that people know that I'm playing six different characters."

      "Oh no, no reading. You'll memorize it."

" - what, in the next thirty minutes?"

     "You're good at memorization."

"No I'm not!"

     "Teller," he says, in what she's pretty sure is a warning tone. "Make it happen, or you get detention for the next week."

Paaaaging Alex. Do you think you could do me a really stupid favor.

I bet I can. 

Snyder has come down with temporary insanity and forbidden me from juggling anything. I have to, uh, memorize a scene from this collection of plays. I assume he doesn't want a whole play. The flaw in this plan is that the show is in half an hour and I am a human person with normal human memorization powers and also I haven't read any Shakespeare and don't know which scenes I should even be looking at.

I can probably avoid detention if I give you the script and you telepathically feed me lines or something? I might die of embarrassment but these are the dangers we brave, I guess.

Absolutely. Is Marc Antony's speech in Julius Caesar in there? That's a fun one. 

I dunno, probably. Man, I hope I can even, like, hear things and say things at the same time - ugh -

I can lend you my eyes and have the book in front of me, then it's just like reading. Snyder's an asshole. If he gets eaten by wild dogs I won't even feel shitty about it all week.

Oh, yeah that sounds good. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you, this is really dumb but thanks.

He heads out to the talent show half an hour later having found no signs of what it is they're dealing with. Michael has a sore throat and is miserable about it - "is this what it's like for humans all the time?"

"Only when they get colds, presumably"

- and hellmouths are not documented to cause outbreaks of insects, amphibians or hallucinations. It makes even less sense if he assumes that the attack on the girl in the locker room is related. 

 A stoplight is out and the cop directing traffic is waving his gun around lazily - moron - and Alex has to stop to make sure he's not a vampire. He's not. Just had it confused with a road flare, somehow.

He gets to the show five minutes after it starts. The ventriloquism act is very compelling.

Karen finds him in the audience and hands him the book, then heads backstage again to quietly freak out about the fact that she's going to die of embarrassment in like twenty minutes. There's a girl who's ruined her makeup and can't seem to fix it, so for a while she gets distracted calming her down, which sort of helps but also sort of doesn't.

He flips through the book looking for friends, Romans, countrymen, and then snaps it shut when Snyder suddenly looks straight at him. It's fine, he'll go to the bathroom for Karen's act. 

Cáno?

Yeah?

Can you bring in some more people on figuring out what's going on?

Do we have more than the hallucination bugs and the attack on the girl?