She follows the rest of the class out, only remembering her things on sheer autopilot. Several classmates ask what that was about.

"I wanted people to pay attention to me."

They stare at her. She  immediately launches into an unrelated running commentary about her weekend plans. She's talking louder than necessary and basically only making it to the lunch room because that's where the crowd is headed.. 

She has a packed lunch so she can squeeze into a crowded table and insert herself into the conversation. The consumption of lunch is going to be slow. and she keeps trying to talk with her mouth full.

They're not all looking at her and it burns. There's barely room for anything else in her head. She shouldn't scream, but maybe if she screams loud enough they'll pay attention and it will stop hurting and she'll be able to think.

A kid finishes lunch and puts on a pair of noise cancelling headphones and closes his eyes.

her last nerve  S N A P S. All she can think about is the kid brazenly ignoring her. If they're going to ignore her she'll make them all pay attention.

She screams in the kid's face and before he can react grabs a bottle of hot sauce and squeezes it as hard as she can manage directly in his face.

(fortunately for both parties in this interaction the hot sauce was only mild hot sauce and there was no permanent damage done)

The floodgates thus opened she starts grabbing every object on the table within reach and hurling it into the crowd.

After a minute the football coach manages to get to her and start carrying her off to the office, but not before the table is thoroughly trashed. 

She screams at the top of her lungs all the way down the hall. This hurts of course but the pain is nothing beside the pain of being ignored. (Everyone in the hallway is looking at her but they could be paying more attention to her, right?)

The vice-principal scolds her. The principal scolds her. The secretary gets her mom on the phone and her mom scolds her.

"You don't understand, they were ignoring me. I had to make them stop."

(some tiny part of her brain knows she's not really making any sense, but it's drowned out)

Eventually they sit her down in a side room to wait to be picked up and lock the door.

She screams at them to come back in. She bangs on the door until her knuckles bleed but it's sold enough would that she cannot (yet) break it.
After a little while she gives up. Obviously they've all forgotten she exists. Probably everyone has forgotten she exists. Probably nobody would notice or care if she was dead.

After a little while longer Meghan's mom comes in to find her sitting on the floor, with bloody knuckles, staring into space. Anger instantly melts into concern and she kneels down to hug her daughter.

"Meghan, sweetie, what's wrong? What's going on?"

It takes her a little while to react. Her mom is here? Her mom knows she exists?

"You have to tell them I exist. You have to tell them to pay attention to me."

"Meghan...."

"Please, you have to. I need it. Please. "

"Come on sweetie. Let's go. Actually I think we should go to urgent care. To look at your hands if nothing else. Did you hit your head too?"

She collects Meghan's bags which were delivered to the office by the janitor and are only slightly coated in food residue from the trashed table.

"No. But I can tell them I did if that will get them to pay attention to me."

"...It's their job to pay attention to you so they can help you. But you have to tell them what's actually wrong okay?"

"Well I need them to pay attention to me. They're not paying enough attention to me. That's what's wrong."

By now they've made it out to the car. They climb into the back seat and Meghan's mom fusses over the seatbelts and tells the car to drive to the nearest clinic.

"...Why are you harping on this? This isn't like you. Are you sure you didn't hit your head?"

"Yes I'm sure. Only my hands. Because they locked me in and ignored me." pause for half a beat as she actually manages to consider the rest of the question, briefly , "I don't know why. I just...I need it so bad it hurts."

Shoulder squeeze. "I'm here. I'm not going to ignore you."

"It's not enough though..." She's glancing out the window "They'e not paying attention to me..."

"Well, you don't have to pay attention to them either do you? I'm right here." More shouldersqueeze. 

"But I know they're there. I know they're not paying attention to me." She's trying to refocus on her mom though. Fuck those guys. They're missing out anyway.

Eventually the car pulls up to to the dropoff area in front of the clinic and then goes off to the parkcade. They go inside and talk to the nurse on duty.

The nurse listens to the explanation of what happened (delivered via Meghan's rambling attempt at an explanation punctuated by frequent 'Are you listening to me?' and asks if Meghan can bend and straighten the fingers (she can) and asks about other symptoms and family history.

"I'm going to send this to information the doctor and see what he thinks. Go sit down please and we'll be with you shortly.

(this universe has reasonably funded if not extravagantly funded healthcare systems and staffs properly because sometimes people just get stolen by evil pocket dimensions in the middle of their shift, it won't be an unreasonably long wait)

Meghan's mom leads her daughter into the waiting area and tries to keep her busy talking.

This is not completely successful and the unfortunates sitting next to them will be poked at, and badgered at intervals.

After a short while the nurse calls them in to a side room.

She reluctantly leaves off badgering the lady next to them who is handling this remarkably gracefully considering and also does not deserve this and follows her mom into the room.

The doctor inspects the fingers more closely and pronounces them fairly scraped and somewhat bruised but almost certainly not broken..

"I can give you band-aids for the worst scrapes while you're here."

"Can I have colourful ones, so people will pay attention to them?"

"Sure. We have neon green."

She can provide the neon green bandages.

"With regard to the psychiatric symptoms. You are 18, yes?"

"Yes, my birthday was two months ago. I'm an adult now so people should listen to me."

The doctor looks at them seriously

"Now, this is just speculation but given the very sudden onset you have described, and the unusual nature of the symptoms, it is possible that this is an esper awakening. I want to emphasize that unusual psychiatric symptoms can occur and of course the overall statistical likelyhood of this is quite low -

"I'm an esper! That's cool. I'm gonna be so cool and famous and I'm gonna kill all the dungeons and everyone's going to pay attention to me."

"Sweetie, I agree that would be very cool " and much better than a plan old psychiatric emergency "but we don't know for sure yet. We won't know until the week is out."

"It may in some cases be possible to determine sooner, if there is an eye colour change, as that may become obvious at some point during the week, though I remind you that many espers don't have such changes and in some cases they are subtle enough to be difficult to observe without looking closely. Other changes may be noticeable during the process, most commonly reduction of any scarring but the eye colour is the one people are most likely to notice if it happens."

"I don't have any real scars. I could show you if you like. I do have a dog allergy. I think that gets fixed."

"That will be unnecessary, thank you. Allergies do get fixed but it's not predictable at what point and it's not recommended to use that as a test."

"Also you know your father is very allergic so you shouldn't expose yourself to things that will trigger him."

"Well, dogs definitely like to pay attention to people..."

"What do you recommend, is there anything else you can do for us or do we just have to go home and wait it out?"

"I can offer you some prescription sleeping pills since the...active nature of the symptoms seems likely to interfere with sleep. Other then that - don't leave her alone - that's a general recommendation for suspected awakenings and seems particularly important in this case, if you don't have at least one other person living with you I recommend calling somebody so you can sleep in shifts - go to the ER if worse symptoms, especially suicidal thoughts or behaviour develop,  or if she can't get any sleep even with the medication, and call your GP in a week if symptoms don't resolve."

"I'm married and we have other relatives in town we can call."

She nods "Make sure you call backup if you feel overwhelmed."

"Please call everyone."

"Well, we will see. Thank you for your time doctor."

"That's my job."

She types up and signs the prescription.

And they can leave.

(the people in the waiting room eye them as they go)

"Bye future adoring fans!"

They're looking at her (it's not enough), her mom is holding her hand (it's not enough), she's going to be famous someday (someday isn't RIGHT NOW). She has to focus on those things (even though it's not enough) because otherwise she will die (and nobody will care).

After picking up the meds at the pharmacy (with some amount of fuss) they pile back into the car

"I want to use the car horn!"

"Absolutely not. Look, just...don't pay attention to them either, all right?"

" It's like a really bad itch and I gotta scratch it. Or else my brain will like...implode.." She's alternatively clinging to her mom and waving out the window A few passersby wave back. "It's not...it's not enough but..."

Hugs.

"I'm sorry sweetie. I'm here and your dad will be here and we'll get some of your aunts and uncles to come by. We'll find a way to get through this. I'll call your dad on speaker when we get home."

"You're so old fashioned about that. The car drives itself. You can be on the phone."

"Blame your grandmother and old habits for that one."

"Okay I will."

A little while latter Meghan's dad is raised on speakerphone and agrees to come home early from work so that Meghan's mom can nap and then sit with her for the night.

And while waiting and after a trip to the bathroom which shall be elided out of kindness to both the readers and the author, Meghan's mom sits on the couch with her daughter and brings up wikipedia. 

(Megan squirms in an agitated manner against her which slows the process)

"Let's see what wikipedia has about backlash, it won't be a lot of detail but - if that's what this is maybe it'll help..."

She leans over to look at the phone.

"...You'll have to read it to me. I can't. I can't focus on it. There's not enough room in my head. There's only barely any room in my head around...that. It's like...a whirlpool and I have to keep trying to get out or it'll drown me."

More hugs. She's very worried and unhappy to see her daughter so miserable.

"Hmm...well it says medication doesn't really help much with the symptoms, hopefully the pills will still help you sleep if you need it.. They aren't really trying to treat the problem directly. I'm not sure what you'd even try to treat this...sort of feeling. Maye a mood stabilize. But anyway..."

"Well I think my mood is stably BAD right now."

"Hopefully it won't matter." sigh, "Also it says that with psychological symptoms it's sometimes possible to sort of..bend them, or shift them Into a different shape. Maybe there's something less...exhausting." For everyone really.

"Maybe. But..if I fuck with it...it might drown me. When they left me alone. I thought I would drown. Because I didn't have anywhere to go. I felt like I was alone forever and everyone forgot I existed. Please don't leave me alone. Please don't forget about me."

Clinging "You can hate me if you want. I don't care. Just as long as you don't ignore me."

Well the phone can go away for now.

"I love you. I'm here for you. Even if it's exhausting. We're going to take the week off, so we'll be around. We both have the leave for it." They talked about this on the phone earlier but maybe it will help to be reminded. She can say this several times and hug her daughter until her husband comes home.

He's not a huggy person but he can apply hugs. And cook Meghan's favourite for dinner while his wife naps. Meghan attempts to assist with this but mostly ends up slowing the process down due to mutual distraction.

Dinner is likewise a distracted affair. They give up telling her not to talk with her mouth full after she almost chokes trying to swallow too fast.

afterwards they try to find some way to keep busy. She doesn't want to watch a movie, or more to the point doesn't want anyone else to watch the movie, and her focus and patience for turn taking are badly disrupted. They end up playing several rounds of War.

And then Meghan's dad goes to bed and Meghan and her mom adjourn to Meghan's room.

She tries to settle down but she can't relax into sleep even with her mom's presence and reassurances. After an hour of this she gives up and agrees to take a pill. Shortly thereafter she finally drifts off after a period of less and less coherent mumbling

Even then her sleep is very fitful and she wakes crying and calling out several times and gives up early in the morning when the pill starts to wear off.

A while later Meghan's dad wakes up and Meghan's mom goes to get some sleep. 

At some point thereafter Meghan remembers that her phone is in her bag and fishes it out. It turns out that though the idea of posting to social media is very appealing she lacks the patience to actually execute it. It's simply not immediate enough in practice. An argument with her dad ensues, ending in him eventually agreeing to make (1) post to twitter on her behalf updating people on Current Happenings, and take (1) picture for comparison purposes (later they will be glad of this decision). He firmly declines the suggestion that the picture should be in underwear. (Later they will also be glad of that decision).

Later several relatives filter in having been alerted via text or email overnight. Meghan attempts to hold court, aggressively interrupting side conversations, and bringing up some topics that she will later be embarrassed at having mentioned. 

Eventually someone suggests she could play the piano for them. She eagerly agrees but has difficultly focusing due to constantly watching the audience. She does manage to play some short pieces but eventually gets frustrated and starts banging on the keys as loud as possible instead, in spite of the discomfort this causes to her injured fingers. At that point it is declared to be lunch time.

The next couple of days pass in more or less the same fashion as the first.

On the evening of the third day Meghan is brushing her teeth (which takes about four times longer than usual due to frequent interruptions) when she makes a startled noise.

Meghan's mom was of course on hand to supervise and provide company and immediately responds "What is it sweetie?"

"My eyes look different! Look!"

She squints carefully and turns Meghan's head into the light. It's hard to see but after a moment it's apparent what she means, Meghan's eyes previously a pretty standard blue now contain a hint of teal.

"I see it. I wonder how much they'll change..you should have a few days left..."

"I'm really gonna be an esper. It's really happening." She's happy and excited and incredibly relieved. After three days of this her reserves of energy and resilience are wearing thin but knowing there's a definite end in sight gives  her new energy.

"I want to take a picture RIGHT NOW. We should take LOTS of pictures. Because it's COOL. I bet I get green eyes. Because I think green eyes are cool."

She smiles. She is also incredibly relived, even if the idea of her baby girl walking into a dungeon is kind of upsetting.. They can cross that bridge when they come to it though. It might be that whatever power she ends up with isn't even good for that. Espers do lots of things that aren't walking into dungeons.

"We can take more comparison pictures for posterity. I've heard that espers always like the changes to their appearance, so whatever you end up with, I'm sure you will be happy with it."

"Yeah. I'm gonna be like hot and stuff so the boys will want to look at me and the girls will be mad they can't be as a hot as me. Unless they're lesbians. The lesbians will also want to look at me. I'm not gay but I think they should look at me anyway. Also if the lesbians are espers I might make out with them anyway. For guiding." She squints into the mirror, is that stupid bump on her nose different" Maybe? Hard to tell.

She hadn't really wanted to consider that aspect when applied to her (barely legally adult) daughter. But saying so will not be productive.

"Finish brushing your teeth and you can tell your father and take pictures before bed."

"Okay. Everyone should get to see pictures of me."

She actually falls asleep somewhat more readily that night, though still with the aid of a pill. Her sleep is still very disturbed but she's a little quicker to fall back asleep after.

By the next morning the changing eye colour is more readily apparent and is duly admired by today's assembly of relatives.

"Does this mean you'll buy me a car?"

"The fuck do you need a car for Danny? You live a block away from a subway station and work two blocks away from a subway station."

"I think it would be cool to have a really nice car."

"You cannot just ask people to buy you a car."

"In any case there's no guarantee of having the kind of power that makes the really big bucks, you know that."

"I bet I'll be cool enough to make lots of money. I can buy you a car with both our names on it That would be cool, right?"

"How about you think about spending money when you have the money. Also when you're thinking straight."

The next few days are increasingly strained as everyone gets more and more tired of this. Meghan becomes increasingly cranky and prone to yelling at people and in one case pinching one of her cousins hard enough to leave a bruise because he looked away while she was talking to him.

As the following Friday wears on and the symptoms don't show signs of easing she gets more and more frustrated and alternates between crying and yelling.

Her mom is doing her best to apply comfort, but her best isn't very good at this point. She's pretty tired too.

It's shortly before dinnertime when she finally draws a sharp breath in.

"Oh...it's, it's easing off." she shivers a bit.

Hugs.

"You made it. Everything's going to be all right."

"Everything's gonna be great!"

The sheer relief of feeling the pressure finally begin to release is enough to give her a bit of a second wind. She manages more coherent conversation then she was managing for most of the day.

(and gradually, gradually the frantic desperation begins to fade)

By dinner she's drooping again, as she is finally afforded the space to notice her exhaustion. As the backlash eases down this actually results in her conversational efforts slowing down instead of just becoming less coherent.

It's obvious when it ends entirely, she lets out a deep sigh, stops trying to have a conversation, and methodically finishes the rest of her food

It really is like coming awake, after a week trapped in a nightmare, reality comes back into focus.

But she's too tired to deal with that right now. She goes to bed, for the first time in a week without a pill or anyone else in the room.

Roughly fourteen hours later she wakes up.

And is almost immediately overwhelmed by a wave of mortification as her behaviour over the last week comes back into her awareness, and she's able to consider it with a clear head.

She cries quietly for a while.

And then remembers that even espers have to deal with basic things. Like going to the bathroom.She does that, and then takes a long shower.And then gets distracted looking at her reflection in the full length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. She was reasonable looking before in her opinion, but now she's way more then that. Also she actually has muscle tone in her upper body (she had some in her legs already but her arms were pretty noodly). 

At some point she hears her dad going downstairs (it's Saturday, he slept in so she's awake in time for breakfast). She can actually hear his footsteps going all the way down the hall towards the kitchen (oh right, esper hearing is a thing. That's going to take getting used to). She kinda doesn't want to face anyone, but she can't really avoid her parents so, she gets dressed and goes downstairs.

He's making pancakes.

"Megs! Are you feeling better? D'you want some chocolate chips in yours?"

"...Yeah, I'm better. I was very tired is all. It was so hard to sleep...I'd love chocolate chips."

She hesitates, "...I'm so so so sorry for...all the yelling. And the stuff I said, and...I I'm gonna repay everyone. Somehow."

He flips the first couple of plain pancakes onto a plate and adds chocolate chips to batter for the next couple. Then he comes over and hugs her.

"You were being messed with in the head by magic. It's not your fault. And your mother and I weren't being particularly patient by the end either."

"I still owe a lot of people apologies. I hurt people. Not seriously but. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone seriously but I could have by accident cause I wasn't exactly thinking things through. I don't blame you for yelling. It didn't bother me at all at the time. Some of the time I was trying to rile people up. Because I didn't care if I was getting positive or negative attention. I just wanted to try to get as much attention as I could. But it was never enough so I just kept pushing and pushing."

she hesitates again, "I can feel something. The esper power. I'm scared to poke at it but I think there's a stealth thing. And something else I'm even less sure about. It's maybe useful for dungeons but...I don't know if it would be right to..inflict myself on random strangers. Like that."

He's gone back to finish making her pancakes

"Well, the awakening is, it's a lot of backlash, right? You don't have to let it get so bad, probably?. And every esper who is doing dungeons has backlash to deal with. You can ask people for advice. If you really want to do dungeons. Only if you want to though. Nobody can make you do that if you don't want to. You know that right? You could become a pilot or something.Your mother might be more comfortable with that."

"I want to to dungeons. If my power is good for it. And if I can figure out how not to be horrible to people while backlashed. Because if you have a power that's good for dungeons then, you should use it. People's lives depend on it."

She brings her father's plate over to the table with the butter and maple syrup (real maple syrup because this is Canada and we have standards). 

He brings her pancake loaded plate over to the table

"Well, if that's what you want to to do you should do it. Your mother will worry but she will cope. She knows you're an adult. As long as you finish high school first. We're sorting things out with the school. You won't be in trouble for what happened. There's policies. Because this sort of thing happens sometimes."

"I don't want to go back to school.I made a huge scene in front of everyone. Even if they don't punish me for it nobody's going to let me forget about it. Can I do remote learning for the rest of the year, please? I'll be behind anyway."

"We'll see what we can work out."

He hugs his daughter once more and they can eat breakfast in companionable mostly-quiet.

They arrange for her to do remote classes. She also arranges to attend a local esper mixer and find somebody a little bit compatible to do some basic power testing with. She figures out that she can not only hide herself but she can cover other people which has obvious uses in dealing with dungeon victims. She signs up with an agent and asks the agent to find her a more compatible professional partner to do further power testing and possibly to guide her after dungeons.

The person they eventually find for her is Jordan Monroe, nonbinary, about ten years older than her with a body dysmorphia backlash and a mostly-useless personal illusion power (it could theoretically be useful for acting but the backlash renders that unpleasant and is also dangerously feedback loopy as they will be inclined to try to use their power to ' pointlessly fix' their appearance). They can handle it in small amounts for guiding efficiency purposes however. They've been doing professional partnering long enough to have some experience with different esper powers and they provide some useful suggestions on the powers testing front. 

She therefore learns about the limits of her power, and about the secondary 'air running levitation' power. Which is expensive enough to be somewhat of an emergency measure especially given that it's somewhat feedback loopy given the amount of attention it could get. It's a pretty good emergency measure for the right kind of emergency though.

Two months after awakening she graduates formally. (She technically hasn't finished all the coursework but her marks are decent so they agree to let her attend the graduation ceremony anyway), She does so that her parents can take pictures as she crosses the stage. She escapes immediately afterwards to avoid dealing with her former classmates saying anything.

(She will manage to reconnect with a few of her high school friends some time later, after emotions have had time to die down a little)

And shortly thereafter Kuroko (the codename is something of a holdover from her anime obsession phase) begins running dungeons.