Academy of Magic Collection

by Angelique S Anderson et al.

  “You don’t have to live way up on that hill with them, Halsey,” Max said, moving back to my side. “My parents said the offer still stands to stay with us.”

  “As much as I wish I could, you know I can’t.” I glanced at him.

  “You really believe putting your aunt and uncle on your application to The Citadel is going to help anything?”

  “Better than putting orphan who lives with her best friend’s parents because her next of kin are superstitious nutwhacks,” I answered.

  “I’m sure even The Citadel would understand about your parents getting sick. The wasting hit a lot of people.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they would too, so long as I’m living with my aunt and uncle,” I nodded at him. “The last thing I want to do is have to answer questions about why I live with a guy my age and his family instead of my perfectly alive relatives. You know the system. The Citadel doesn’t want people who can’t fit their mold.”

  Max shook his head in resignation. “Which is exactly why it baffles me that you’re so hell-bent on going there.”

  The street was starting to get busier with people rolling up the gates to their shops. Mr. Burke, the supermarket owner, opened the doors and let his two new, enormous dogs come through to the sidewalk.

  “Heel, Draco—Heel Fate,” he said, tying his red apron. Both huge, black dogs stopped in place and sat like statues.

  “Are they on duty yet?” Max called to Mr. Burke, who smiled.

  “Not yet, go ahead. Relax!” Mr. Burke said to the dogs, who immediately started wagging their tails and leaning into Max when he approached, which nearly knocked him over. I took a few steps forward, and both dogs dropped to their bellies, putting their heads on their front paws.

  “Whoa…” I said, surprised.

  “Wow, they like you I guess. Come on, they’re big babies.” Max motioned me over. “Aren’t you a big baby, Fate? Yes, you are…” he cooed to the dog in front of him, which earned him a tongue bath.

  “Ewww…” I laughed, kneeling to pet Draco’s thick scruff. He moved to a sitting position and buried his head under my chin. “Aww,” I said, resting my cheek on the top of his furry head.

  “They’re good pups—brother and sister,” Mr. Burke said with a nod to me. “They know what you’re all about before you even get through the door—Feral or otherwise,” he added. “Had some hooligans come in yesterday afternoon and these two turned them right around.”

  “You keep the trouble out,” Max said. “Don’t you keep the trouble out, you smart girl?” he cooed again, this time fishing a few treats he’d brought from his pocket and slipping one to each dog. “I’ll see you after school then,” he said to Fate with a final head rub.

  “We’ve got a truck today, so don’t be late.” Mr. Burke winked at Max.

  “No, sir. See you then.”

  Mr. Burke nodded, then turned to the dogs. “On guard!” he said, and both of them dutifully leapt inside, posting themselves again like statues on the cushions flanking the register.

  “Wow,” I said, marveling at how well they listened. “When did those guys arrive?”

  “Beginning of the week,” Max answered. “They’ve neutralized a lot of the tension in the place already, believe it or not. Everyone loves them. That is, except for people who have intentions other than picking up their grocery order.”

  “I bet.”

  “Weird how they dropped to the ground like that. I haven’t seen them do that before with anyone, not even Mrs. Burke, who slips each of them pieces of steak when the old man takes one of them out back to go to the bathroom.” He laughed as we walked.

  I shrugged. “Well, they’re definitely well behaved. You save up enough credits yet to fix your car?”

  “Almost,” Max answered. “This summer should do it.”

  “You’re really not going to apply to The Citadel?”

  Max sighed. “Halls…come on.”

  “You could get in if you tried. I know you could. You have the grades, you run track, you’re their model student—more than me even because you have both parents.”

  “I don’t know. Ask me later. We have other problems right now,” he said as we approached the front steps of Portland Prep, which were mostly obscured by the swarm of flies known as Brian Dunwin and his band of degenerates. One by one, each of them lifted their eyes to us, stupid grins peeled across their faces, and they started walking toward us.

  Chapter Two

  “Since when do they show up before third period?” I asked Max under my breath.

  “Internship fair today, remember?” he answered. I swore under my breath, totally having forgotten about internship selections with my focus being on my Citadel application.

  “Oh, right…” I groaned.

  “Did you forget? Halls, not to be an ass, but you can’t count on the Citadel.” Max’s voice had an edge in it now, but I wasn’t sure if that was because of his impatience with me, or the imminent harassment we were about to endure from Brian and his band of merry idiots.

  Brian got to his feet as we approached while his minions spread out on either side of him, blocking the doors.

  We stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Get out of the way, Brian,” Max said, trying to sound intimidating.

  Brian laughed and pushed a dirty hand over his buzzed hair and took another step toward us. “Or you’ll do what, Barrett?”

  Max sighed, apparently not having prepared a rebuttal.

  “Come on, let’s just go,” I said, pulling Max’s elbow.

  “Yeah, go on, Max. Balls here can’t be late for her before school quickie with Warren.” Brian’s gaggle of delinquents squawked and laughed, and when I turned back to them, they acted out their ignorant sound effects with obscene pantomimes.

  Max took a few purposeful steps toward Brian, but I gripped his arm. They wouldn’t hesitate to beat him half to death if he tried to stand up for me. I, on the other hand, had an idea.

  “It’s OK,” I said to Max, taking a few steps toward Brian, forcing myself to paste a sweet smile on my face and maintain eye contact with him, which was about impossible. “Brian, if only you wouldn’t make it so hard to get close to you…surrounding yourself with all these guys,” I said, slow and wide-eyed, then took a few more steps toward him. “It’s a little intimidating for a girl to let you know how she really feels.”

  “Halsey,” Max said. I ignored him, hoping he would just trust me.

  Brian’s mouth twitched as he came down another step. “Is that so…”

  I nodded. “What could I possibly want with Mr. Warren when you’re right here?”

  He took one more step, his legs just far enough apart for me to whip the end of my walking stick into his crotch as hard as I could. He dropped like an invisible piano had landed on him, and his fledglings all groaned and doubled over in various degrees of sympathy pain. Max’s eyes were wide when I turned back to him, his mouth frozen in a reaction that was equal parts ghost pain, shock, and uncontrollable laughter. We walked past Brian, who was writhing on the ground, and made our way up the steps into the school.

  “Halls!” Max finally said, not sure which expression to wear—shock, hilarity, or pain. “OK, you know they’re going to come after you. That’s bad.”

  “I’ll get a Sweeper droid to escort me home,” I said casually, but in reality, my heart was pounding so hard I was surprised Max couldn’t hear it.

  “I don’t even know if they’ll wait that long.” Max pulled me toward a janitor’s closet since people were starting to raise eyebrows at my walking stick. “Just put that in here for now,” he said, opening the door. “I’ll make sure Marvin doesn’t get rid of it.” Marvin was the day custodian, and fortunately, he had no great love for Brian or his buddies. “We need to go to Mr. Glenn.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not going to do anything.”

  “No, not if we don’t tell him.”

  “Max, I can’t deal with this right now. I didn’t prepare anything for
the internship selections. I don’t even know who’s here.”

  He rolled his eyes, then scanned the hall in both directions. “All right, look, just don’t go anywhere alone today, OK? Not to the bathroom or anything. Somehow that bag of dicks has friends who are girls too, you know? He’ll try to set you up when he thinks no one will be watching.”

  “You’re giving him too much credit, Max.” I tried to laugh, but I hadn’t actually thought of that, so the casualness I was going for fell flat. “He’s not that smart, remember?”

  “He doesn’t have to be smart. He just has to find some people who don’t like you, and that’s not going to be too hard.”

  “Gee, thanks, best friend.”

  “Halsey, come on. You know these paint sniffers are half a braincell from being confused about how to eat their own lunch,” Max said as we stopped by my locker and grabbed my planner for the internship selections. I laughed. “I’m serious,” he added. “They think you walk around like you’re better than they are.”

  “Why? Because I applied to The Citadel?” I asked, hearing the edge in my own voice now.

  “Uh, yeah,” Max looked at me dumbfounded. “That’s exactly why, Halls.”

  “They could apply too if they’d stop wasting their time sitting around huffing primer from the body shop, or whatever else they do when they’re not making every second of being at this school a hell on earth.”

  “Yeah, well that’s not going to happen,” Max added as the first bell rang. “Just watch out today—don’t go anywhere alone. I’ll catch up with you in the gym for the internship selections.”

  I nodded to him and closed my locker, then headed to my homeroom where we’d all soon be sent down to pick out the career paths we qualified for based on our grades. If only they’d have the results of The Citadel applications too, I could finally get out of the limbo I’d been in for months now.

  I walked into Mr. Warren’s class and immediately felt a stab of embarrassment as I remembered Brian’s stupid comment earlier about a quickie before school.

  Sure, Mr. Warren was attractive in that new, young professor kind of way with the tweed jacket and open collar Oxford, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to me to be attracted to him. He just kind of blended in with everyone else, even though he’d gone to The Citadel. Everyone in The Grind was just getting through each day doing the same thing over and over. Seeing the same people and having the same conversations. I felt like there was something more to the world though…at least, that there could be. The only way I was going to find out was by getting into The Citadel and training for a career that could take me somewhere else.

  “Halsey?” Mr. Warren said, startling me out of my thoughts.

  “Uh, sorry, yes?”

  “The rest of the class is leaving for the Internship fair,” he said, though it sounded more like a question—an, are you going to join them or what, question.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Anything happen this morning you want to discuss?” Mr. Warren asked, taking a seat on the corner of his desk and putting his clipboard under his arm.

  “No, everything is fine,” I answered, trying to inch my way toward the door.

  “Nothing involving Brian Dunwin?” he pressed, giving me a knowing look. I froze for a second wondering how the news had reached him already, but then again, this was a high school.

  “Oh, that was nothing. I handled it,” I said, giving him a quick grin and rushing through the door. “See you later, Mr. Warren!”

  I darted down the hall and caught up to the others in my homeroom before he could reply. The last thing I wanted to discuss with him was what Brian could have said that provoked me to aim for the bleachers with my walking stick.

  We shuffled into the gym, which was already about ten degrees warmer than it had been in the hallways thanks to the droves of humanity making their way to the tables and kiosks set up around the perimeter. Representatives from all the businesses in The Grind were there, everything from Mr. Burke’s supermarket—his kiosk manned by his son—to the health clinic and local veterinarians.

  Depending on our grades, we could get apprenticeships at the clinic or in a vet office, but that’s as far as we could ever go without going through The Citadel for an Authorized license to actually practice as a doctor at either place. In my lifetime, I'd never known anyone actually from The Grind who ever got into The Citadel. Everyone in a position that required an Authorization had been born and raised behind that wall already.

  I pushed the thought to the back of my head as I made my way through the crowd. There was a first time for everything, right? I could become a psychologist and help people solve their problems. I could help them hold on and fight through them. Problems were just puzzles, that was all, and I could still get into The Citadel.

  But if I didn't...

  I had no idea what I wanted to do if I didn't, and I had approximately one hour to not only figure it out, but to make a good enough impression on the business owners that they would consider picking me over someone else. Someone who probably had brought them a résumé and cover letter, and who had worn their best outfit today instead of a ratty pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt. This was a disaster.

  I scanned the gym for Max but didn't see him in the sea of faces. I did see Brian Dunwin, however, and his flea infested entourage, so I quickly maneuvered into the current of people streaming around the perimeter on the opposite side of the gym. Brian stopped at Mr. Burke's supermarket kiosk, and I chuckled to myself. Let Draco and Fate get one whiff of him, and we'd see just how long that internship would last.

  "We currently service the entire Eastern Seaboard, as well as selected overseas markets," a familiar voice said, and I looked around for the source. It was coming from the direction of a large, red kiosk tent with Chinese characters on either side of a dragon. In the middle, the words Wu Fong Pharmaceuticals were printed in block letters. Who were Wu Fong Pharmaceuticals?

  The voice I heard belonged to a young man with slicked back, dark hair. He was familiar, but I didn't know why as I studied his expensive looking suit.

  "So it's just, like, selling drugs, but legally?" Lauren Stover, one of the brainwashed girls in Brian's group of friends giggled at her own question. It was the kind of condescending giggle that only mean, usually stupid girls employed when they wanted to make it seem like they were just passing judgement on an answer they already knew, rather than reveal they actually just had the IQ of a gum wrapper. I rolled my eyes.

  "Well, sales is a position within Wu Fong Pharma, if that's something you'd be interested in. Do you like to travel?" the man asked, then casually met my eyes. For the briefest second, his seemed to widen in recognition of me, and the ghost of a grin passed over his lips.

  A gasp caught in my throat when it dawned on me that he was the guy from the woods, somehow cleaned up…and here.

  Chapter Three

  I looked away abruptly and lost myself in the crowd again, ducking behind a wall of shuffling students. My heart started pounding in my ears, and I was sucking in gulps of air. Fight or flight... I thought, and this was definitely flight. What was a guy from Wu Fong Pharmaceuticals doing in the woods trying to sell me those little, colored vials?

  Out of nowhere, the thought was knocked out of my head when I crashed full force into someone and nearly fell backward. The person grabbed my arms and pulled me in.

  "Whoa! Halls…” Max chuckled, his arms tight around me. He glanced down at my hands, which were pressed flat against his chest, then cleared his throat and let me go.

  "Uh, sorry about that. I was...um, can we go?" I said, feeling like my mind was already several steps ahead of me.

  "Go where? Did you already turn in all your internship requests?" he asked.

  "Shit. No. OK, then let's go this way," I said, pulling his forearm in the opposite direction of the Wu Fong forest guy.

  "Halls, what's wrong with you?" Max looked back toward where we'd come from. "Was it Lauren? Did Brian sen
d her after you?"

  "No," I said. "She didn't see me. Just come this way."

  "Stop! Halsey, the body shop is over there and—hey, will you wait?"

  "Just come on!" I shouted back to him, letting go of his arm eventually to weave through the people coming into the gym. It felt like trying to swim upstream as I bumped into one person after another until I finally got through the doors and into the open foyer. Flight accomplished... Now, it was time for fear.

  My whole body started shaking and my knees felt weak. In fact, my muscles felt rubbery and my head was spinning.

  "Halsey!" My name sounded muffled as the room turned upside-down, and the next thing I knew I was sitting on a bench with my face pressed against the side of the water fountain. "Here, drink this," Max said, handing me a cold soda. He held it to my mouth, and I took a sip, which actually helped a lot. He held the frigid can to my cheek, and that brought me the rest of the way back. I took the can from him and moved it over my face.

  "What just happened?" I asked, then took another long drink, not even minding the burn it caused going down my throat.

  “You almost face-planted. Did Brian try something?"

  "No, it wasn't him."

  "What then? You look like you saw a ghost."

  "I kind of did."

  Max narrowed his eyes at me, then sighed impatiently. "I'm going to shake it out of you in a second if you don't spill it already," he said, but then his hardline expression softened as he rose to drop some coins in the vending machine a few feet away. "Here, eat these—the salt will help," he said, returning with the bag of pretzels that he'd just opened. "How did you bonk just running out of the gym?" He grinned.

  I pushed a few pretzels into my mouth and chewed. Max was right, the salt did help everything inside me feel a little less like it was floating around in zero gravity. After another drink of the soda, I took a deep breath and finally felt back to normal again.