Fantastic Schools: Volume 2

by Nuttall, Christopher G.

  “Great,” he said with his usual open smile. “Yours?”

  “Good,” she said, smiling, but not too much, she hoped.

  “Awesome,” he said, then glanced back the way he was headed, at a group of his friends. “See ya ‘round,” he said to her over his shoulder, then proceeded to receive a not-so-platonic hug from a girl who looked like a frog, but a cute frog.

  “Dammit,” she muttered.

  Rav hit her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Don’t stare,” he said.

  “What?” she said.

  A loud belch came from behind, as did a greeting:

  “Hey, Rika.” She flinched, not at the belch, but at the slightly too-loud-voice that was too close to her sensitive ears.

  “Hey, Dan,” she said, and hugged her black-clad friend. He patted her back lightly with scaly hands, then tossed his long, curly black hair over one shoulder as he leaned in to fist-bump Rav.

  “So you’re a prefect this year?” Dan asked.

  “That’s right! Congratulations!” Rav said, knowing very well that she wasn’t thrilled.

  “Yeah, um… yeah,” Ulrykah said.

  “Well, we can’t have any fun with you this year!” Dan said and laughed.

  “Oh no, I’ll miss out on your naked tree-hugging adventures,” Ulrykah joked.

  “It’s a traditional form of worship that goes back centuries,” Dan chided.

  “Back to when being unclothed in public supposedly wasn’t weird?” Ulrykah said.

  “Yeah, basically,” he agreed.

  “Well, regardless of tree-snuggling, I actually do think being a prefect is going to suck,” she said. Rav patted her on the head.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”

  “You guys are so not helpful!”

  “Nope!” Dan said with a dragonish grin.

  “Oh, and I’m about to be even less helpful. To you, that is,” Rav said, checking the time on his phone. “I’ve got to go finish setting up for the activities fair before orientation. Meet you guys for lunch?”

  “Twelve-ish?” Ulrykah asked. “I should be out of my prefects’ meeting by then.”

  “Sure,” he said, and then he was off, leaving Ulrykah and Dan to entertain themselves until it was time for the dean’s speech. As usual, Dan had plenty of stories to tell. This one started out as an overview of druidic dragon worship that somehow wound its way to drama among the members of the alternate-history club. This gave Ulrykah a nice distraction from her concerns as the hall filled with students. She couldn’t help but glance into a gilded full-length mirror as he spoke to try to catch a glimpse of James and that girl with the too-large eyes and too wide-smile. She could barely see them, between the ever-shifting clusters of other students, but they didn’t appear to be holding hands—maybe they weren’t officially attached? James certainly hadn’t seemed to mind her rubbing his back while hugging him… Ulrykah shuddered and chased that unpleasant memory away. The mirror now showed only the growing throng awaiting the orientation assembly, including herself: short, skinny, pale and freckled with bushy red hair and a small pointed nose.

  Still a fox, she thought, just not the hot type.

  “…which of course is why nothing happened between Avina and Daryl,” Dan was saying when she had fully tuned back in.

  “Yeah, I’d think a hydra in your chosen make-out spot would be a mood killer,” she said.

  “Problem is, by the time they got back from the forest and got caught—actually by Stephanie, the senior prefect! Catching young lovers: something to look forward to,” he teased. “So yeah, by the time the profs went to hunt it down, it was gone. I wonder if they found it over the summer.”

  “I would hope so. The last thing this school needs is a roaming hydra.”

  Walking through the common room on the girls’ side of her dormitory that night, Rika made a mental list of everything she wanted to write on her actual list when she returned to her room. She found that list making was an effective way to keep track of her responsibilities and to distract herself from thoughts of cute yet possibly unavailable boys.

  “Oh no, here comes the prefect!” Teresa, also a sophomore, said from behind her phone. She was curled up on the couch in tacky patterned leggings, looking like an Aztec puffer fish, if fish spent too much time being unproductive on couches.

  “Yeah, hide all the fun,” Ulrykah said in her best “I’m way too cool to take this seriously” voice, pretending she didn’t notice that Morgan, the other sophomore prefect was also sitting in the lounge in plain sight.

  “There’s a problem you’ll never have,” said Teresa.

  Ulrykah wished there were some way she could respond as if she were in on the joke, a way to make “Yeah, my social life is super boring!” sound funny, but no inspiration came. Neither did support from any of the other girls, who either chuckled or pretended they didn’t hear Teresa.

  Ulrykah resorted to slightly nodding and softly saying, “Okay then,” before heading straight past Teresa to her room.

  Morgan put down her book and followed.

  “Um, Rika?”

  Ulrykah switched on the light. Morgan was okay. Not the type to participate in petty spats, even to defend someone, unfortunately, but she was usually too focused on her schoolwork to involved herself with anything dramatic. She reminded Ulrykah of your basic everyday shorthaired cat, just not catty.

  “What’s up?” Ulrykah asked.

  “Not much. I just did something really dumb—I made plans for Friday, totally forgetting I was scheduled for night shift. I thought my shift was Thursday, and I was stressing because I wanted to study for financial wizardry Thursday night.”

  “And?” Ulrykah asked, already knowing where this was going, but not minding particularly.

  “And now it turns out I can! Only I can’t go out Friday, unless… Would you mind please switching shifts with me? I’ll take your Tuesday night. Please?”

  Ulrykah wished so badly she had plans for Friday, but as it stood, her only reason to say no was the hope that she might acquire some, which was unlikely. And it wouldn’t hurt to show Morgan that she was a nice person, just in case Morgan held any bad feelings toward her for edging her out of the top place in bio-alchemy last semester.

  “Sure, it’s no problem.”

  “Thank you so much! I’ll talk to Stephanie about changing the schedule.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ulrykah said.

  “Okay, so…” Morgan’s voice trailed off into a not unexpected prolonged and awkward silence. Ulrykah had hoped when she and Morgan met last year that they would have developed a closer friendship, both having grown up in middle-class neighborhoods, going to normal public schools, and restricting their magical study to evenings and weekends, unlike most of the students at Pender, who hadn’t had to hide their abilities at their magical private schools. But the sad truth was that, after their initial conversation about how great it was to finally be among their magical peers, to let down their guards, and show a spark of magical talent, Morgan and Ulrykah had found each other deathly boring.

  “Night,” Ulrykah said, saving Morgan the effort of having to make awkward conversation about nothing in particular just to show appreciation.

  “See ya!” Morgan said happily, and fairly skipped out of Ulrykah’s room—and Morgan wasn’t the skipping type.

  Probably meeting up with a guy… at least she’ll know where to go with him to avoid my rounds.

  Ulrykah looked up from her books and out the window across the lawn to the wall of tall narrow oaks that hid the school from the nearby highway and town. The leaves had turned from green to almost unnaturally bright oranges and reds overnight, as the temperature plummeted upon Professor Belosevic’s return. Her roommate Michelle (curly-haired otter, to Ulrykah) was somewhere else, as usual, and the room was comfortably quiet and dim, lit only by the afternoon sun and the soft glow of her laptop. It was much too warm inside to stay focused and too pretty outside to stay inside, so U
lrykah left her unfinished essay, bundled up and zipped out of the building.

  The air was brisk, not bitterly cold; she was sure a walk would help clear her mind fog, so she headed down across the gently sloping lawn to the stables. Once upon a time, students would have boarded horses for travel here, but now only those few students with equestrian hobbies did. Most of the horses belonged to the school and functioned as teaching aides for the animal science and pre-veterinary programs—although technically, some of the horses were not actually properly referred to as horses.

  Ulrykah stepped up onto the fence railing and waved at a chestnut pegasus who went by the name Bruno. He bobbed his head in acknowledgement as he placidly chewed a mouthful of grass. Even though he was eating, he had never seemed to mind her interruptions in the past, so she launched right in to telling him her troubles.

  “It’s only been three days, and I’m already feeling stressed,” she said. “It must be nice being a pegasus. You don’t have to worry about tests or grades or mean girls.”

  Bruno swallowed his grass.

  “No, but we have our own pressures,” he said. “For instance, just two days ago, Phil got into some mushrooms and started flying. We had to keep him below the tree tops, and do you have any idea how hard it is to corral a tripping airborne horse?”

  “No, I-”

  “It’s near impossible! And he couldn’t understand WHY it was important no one see him! He kept going on about the mermaids, and why wouldn’t we let him swim with them. I’m still bruised where he kicked me. At least it was dark out.”

  “Aw, poor Bruno! And you were being such a good friend.”

  “Yeah, yeah. And the worst part is, he doesn’t actually remember eating any mushrooms. Could forgetting be a side effect? Sure. Or maybe they were just really small, and he didn’t see ‘em. So every bite I take, if it’s bitter, I’m freaking out, wondering, is that watercress, or am I about to expose us all to the normies and have to spend the rest of my days in a stable in Greenland?”

  “That’s a lot of pressure, just for a snack,” Ulrykah said.

  “And I’m so hungry, now that it’s cold!”

  “I could bring you some oatmeal, if you want.”

  “Oh, you’re a wingless angel!” Bruno said, stamping his hooves in excitement. “Plain, please—cinnamon doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Sure thing. And it’s no trouble—I’d rather walk around than try to think of what to say in that stupid essay.”

  “You always think of something eventually,” Bruno said.

  “Eventually,” Ulrykah echoed as she hopped off the fence, she noticed a tense beanpole of a boy in riding boots slowly approaching.

  Meerkat, she thought.

  He stuttered a little as he asked if she were a prefect, and then having confirmed that, if she knew where to find Professor Barlow’s office. She did indeed, and rattled off the directions: “Go in the front door of Price Hall, turn left, take the second staircase to the fourth floor, turn left three times, pass the Chiropterarium, then turn right and go up the stairs. His office is at the top.” She might not have known what to write in her essay or how to talk to the other girls, but helping someone shyer than she made her feel like a competent human.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure if she’d actually helped - the boy was staring at her, brows furrowed, bottom lip twitching like he wanted to say something but couldn’t decide if he should.

  “Would it help if I texted it to you?” Ulrykah asked.

  “Yeah!” he nodded eagerly. Bruno snorted.

  “I’m sorry, Bruno, I’ll go get your oatmeal in just a second!” Ulrykah handed her phone for the boy to type in his phone number and glanced over her shoulder at the pegasus.

  “No, it’s fine,” Bruno lied.

  “Seriously, one more second,” Ulrykah said, this time turning to look directly at him, but finding herself looking at James, who had apparently been standing right behind her.

  “Oh. Hi,” she said.

  “Hey, what’s up, Rika?”

  “Nothing, just uh, doing the prefect thing,” she said and held up one finger to ask for a moment to finish typing. Bruno rolled his eyes. James waited patiently.

  “And, sent,” Ulrykah said.

  “Got it. Thanks!” the lost freshman said.

  “No problem.”

  “Just one more thing-” the boy asked.

  Bruno let his head hang sullenly.

  “I heard there’s a statue in front of the door, and I’m pretty sure it’s a stupid rumor meant to scare freshmen, I mean, I’m sure it is, I was just wondering-”

  “No, the Medusa head statue outside Barlow’s office won’t turn you to stone.”

  “Okay,” he said with relief. “I was just checking. I mean, I figured that wasn’t true because, you know, liability. And the part about it turning to watch you as you walk by. That’s a little over the top.”

  “No, actually it does do that.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Barlow enchanted it to turn towards the nearest person. But if it bothers you, just say ‘mongoose’ and it’ll stop.”

  “It’s that easy? Hunh. Cool. Thanks. Just… one more question, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course,” Bruno grumbled.

  “Why does he have a Medusa head statue outside his office?”

  “I suspect it started out as a party trick, but he says it’s a ‘celebration of irony,’” Rika said.

  “Oh,” the boy said, clearly not comprehending.

  “Because it’s made of stone,” Ulrykah explained.

  “So why is it irony? Iron’s metal.”

  “Because-”

  Bruno whinnied and snorted.

  “-You know what, you should probably hurry to Barlow’s office hours before they end.”

  “Oh, right. Thanks!” he said and took off running across the field.

  “Look at you,” James said, “winning at being a prefect!”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I just like to be helpful when I can.”

  “Do you?” Bruno asked loudly.

  “That reminds me—I have a date with a microwave,” Ulrykah said, tilting her head toward Graeme Hall.

  “Wouldn’t want you to miss that,” James said. “But maybe we can talk more on Friday at the party.”

  “What party?”

  “The one at the grove.”

  “Oh, there’s a party on Friday. I can’t go… I’m on duty.”

  “That sucks. I guess someone has to be.”

  “Yep,” she said, and started walking toward the building, hoping he wouldn’t see how disappointed she was and think it had anything at all to do with him. James matched her stride.

  “So, how did you know how to turn off the Medusa head?”

  Ulrykah laughed.

  “I overheard Barlow say it at the holiday party last year. I was behind the food table, and he had it sitting right in the middle, and he was standing next to it watching it creep everyone out. But then after everyone got their food, it started staring at him, so he shut it off.”

  “Very stealthy—I’m impressed.”

  “Oh, well, you know. It helps being small,” Ulrykah said and tried not to smile or bounce too much or make any of the squeaking noises she tended to when she was excited.

  “So what are you up to?” he asked.

  “Distracting myself from paper-writing. It’s just too pretty out here to be inside. You?”

  “Just on my way back from a movie. Brad and I saw ‘Game Over.’”

  “Oh, that’s supposed to be scary, right?” was all Ulrykah could think to say while her brain repeated, He didn’t go with a girl!

  “Yeah, it’s a horror movie,” James said. “You don’t like them?”

  “I’m not really into the hacking and slashing and blood and… icky stuff.”

  “This one didn’t have a lot of that, at least not until the end. Mostly it was people having their minds taken over by an AI.”

 
“Sounds prophetic,” Ulrykah said, as movement caught her eye.

  “Ha yeah, maybe,” James said.

  “James,” she whispered. “Stand still a second.”

  “Uh, sure, why?”

  “Sh!” she said, and waited until the hoodied figure that had been walking the same direction about thirty feet to her right passed James. The hood prevented her from seeing much of his face, but the bit of profile she did catch was in full afternoon sunlight—and scaled. It wasn’t her imagination; he had smooth shiny scales, not skin. She grabbed James’s arm and started walking again, this time faster.

  “Rika, what is it?”

  “Okay,” she whispered, “in just a second I’m gonna ask you to turn and look over your right shoulder at the guy walking over there—not now!” she added as he instinctively started to turn his head. “We have to wait until we pass him so you can see his face ‘cause he’s wearing a hood.”

  James chuckled.

  “Okay, I’m game.”

  “All right, casual-glance-over-your-shoulder in three, two, one, now!”

  James glanced.

  “Holy shit!” he whispered, touching her arm. “That guy’s a lizard person!”

  “So I wasn’t imagining it!”

  “Definitely not,” James said.

  “That is so cool! I’ve never seen one in real life!”

  “Okay, we have to calm down before he realizes we’re being total spazzes,” James said.

  “Right.” Ulrykah breathed in a noseful of nippy air and blew it out slowly. James slowed their walking pace, as Ulrykah realized that somehow in their excitement, she’d ended up with her arm tucked around his—and even better, he didn’t seem to mind!

  As they neared Graeme Hall, the lizard guy veered off behind one of the dorms, and James and Ulrykah discussed their theories about his secretive people. Once inside, Ulrykah headed off to the dining hall for oatmeal. She was a little bummed that James hadn’t decided to accompany her, but she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to waste a meal swipe between actual mealtimes. There wasn’t much prepared food out, as the staff was cleaning up lunch and preparing for dinner, so she grabbed a take-out salad and some granola bars along with Bruno’s oatmeal.