Sticks & Stones

by Emily Jenkins

  “What game?” asked Nory.

  “Tigerball. Professional league. Friday. First game of the season!”

  “I’m watching it,” mumbled Bax.

  Nory didn’t know much about tigerball. She had played soccer in ordinary school, before she’d moved in with Aunt Margo. But back when she lived with her father and brother and sister, only her older brother, Hawthorn, ever watched sports.

  She did know that tigerball was a team sport, and that high-level Fluxers played it with huge balls of yarn—in tiger form. Kittenball was the kid version.

  Mr. Vitomin high-fived Bax. Bax winced.

  “Best sport in the world, yeah, son?” Mr. Vitomin said. “Who’s your team?”

  “San Antonio Stripeys.”

  “Nah, the Stripeys never take it. It’s gonna be the Pouncers all the way this year.” Coach rubbed his hands together. “Now, show me what you two can do.”

  “As Fluxers?” Nory asked.

  “Of course!”

  “But, Mr. Vitomin—”

  “Coach,” he corrected.

  Nory swallowed. “But, Coach Vitomin—”

  “Just Coach. Say it with me: Coach.”

  “Coach?” Nory said.

  “Yes?”

  “Didn’t Ms. Starr tell you about us? Our magic’s upside down.”

  Coach waved his hand dismissively. “She might have given me your files. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. You’re fifth graders, so we’ll start with kittens. And I’m tooting my own horn here, but I’m a darn good feline Fluxer. Darn good. Do you know how many different house cats I have in my repertoire?”

  Nory tried to catch Bax’s eye.

  “Go on, guess,” Coach urged.

  “Six?” Nory said.

  “Nineteen!” Coach banged on the table and grinned. “Persian, Maine Coon, Siamese, Munchkin, domestic shorthair in twelve colors, Bengal, Burmese, and American Curl.”

  “Wow,” Nory said. But she was thinking, We can’t start with kittens. Bax doesn’t do kittens. Bax does rocks. Or rather, just one rock, same rock, every time. Does Coach not understand?

  Coach drew himself up. “Want to see my house cats? All righty, then!”

  The air shimmered. Coach Vitomin’s muscles bunched and twitched, and … zwoop! He went through all nineteen breeds of cat, finishing with the black cat that most people learned as a beginner animal.

  Then he shifted back to his natural form.

  Nory clapped.

  Bax did not.

  “Now you, Nory,” Coach announced. “Let’s see your kitten.”

  Nory could do a kitten. A black, beginner kitten, like most fifth-grade Fluxers could. Yes, her magic was upside down, and yes, she often made mixed-up animals like the koat. She could usually hold her kitten shape, though. Usually. She could also keep hold of her human mind while she did it. It had taken a lot of practice, but earlier in the school year, she’d learned.

  But it didn’t take much for Nory to mess up. She’d add in a goat and become a koat. Or she’d add in a beaver and become a bitten. Or a dragon, and become a dritten.

  Now she did what Coach asked. She concentrated. Her heart beat faster. Pop! Pop! Pop! Her body stretched and shrank.

  Hurrah! She was Kitten-Nory. So far, so good. She swished her tail. She hopped up on the table and licked her paw.

  “Very nice,” Coach said. He walked around her, examining her from every angle. “You have better whiskers than a lot of first-year Fluxers. And you can hear me? You’ve got the human mind?”

  Nory nodded.

  “Well, what’s gone wonky, then? Why are you in the upside-down magic class?”

  Kitten-Nory looked at him reproachfully. Coach shouldn’t say wonky. He should say unusual.

  “You don’t want to know,” said Bax, sullen.

  “Oh, but I do,” said Coach. “I’m the tutor! Go on, let’s see it, Nory!”

  Nory nodded. Then huge, violet dragon wings sprouted from the middle of her spine, and sharp claws curved from her kitten paws. She was a dritten.

  She roared, and Coach jumped. She flapped her great wings and flew into the air, circling twice around the small office.

  Then she hit the ceiling fan and crashed into the counter. She sent seaweed snacks, bags of nuts, and explosions of protein powder flying across the room.

  Oops.

  Embarrassed, she popped back into Girl-Nory again. She was sprawled on the floor, covered with almonds.

  “Sorry,” she said in a small voice.

  “That was fantastic!” cried Coach, helping Nory up. “Ever think about kittenball? With fluxing powers like yours, you’ll have a tiger by early high school, I bet! Good for college applications! And that creature you fluxed into: I wonder if it counts as a kitten, what with the wings and the claws and everything.”

  “It’s a dritten,” said Nory. “Dragon-kitten.”

  “Outstanding,” Coach murmured. “And it could be fair play on the kittenball field.” He rested his hand on his chin. “You had the kitten body. You had all four paws. I’ll have to look at the rule books.”

  Nory glowed. Her own father hadn’t wanted her at his magic academy. But here was Coach, who knew tons about magic, saying he thought her powers were special. Could she really become a tiger by high school? Or maybe even a dragon-tiger—a driger?

  Coach was the best tutor ever.

  * * *

  Coach was the worst tutor ever. He didn’t like Bax. Bax could tell.

  Well, fine. Bax didn’t like Coach, either. Kittenball? Nineteen house cats? Pomegranate juice and ginger tea?!

  He wasn’t going to be able to help Bax.

  He didn’t even know Bax’s name.

  He was going to be tutoring Nory all the time, when Nory barely needed help. Her wonky magic wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Bax’s was.

  Coach loomed over Bax now. Bax backed away.

  “Let’s see your kitten, Box! Don’t be shy. Kitten, and whatever you’ve got after that!”

  Bax stared at the floor.

  “Son, wake up!” Coach said. “Show me your kitten.”

  Bax looked at the floor some more.

  “You can do a kitten, can’t you?” Coach asked.

  Bax shook his head.

  “How about a partial kitten? Can you give yourself a tail, say? Some fifth graders start out with just the tail.”

  “No.”

  Coach sighed. “Fine. Whatever you do, just show me.”

  Bax chewed the inside of his cheek. If he turned into a rock, he wouldn’t be able to turn himself back. Then he’d have to take the Burtlebox again. He’d had a dose already this morning, not more than two hours ago.

  “I’m here to help, for sardine’s sake,” said Coach. “Don’t you want help with your upside-down magic?”

  Bax did, actually. He hated turning into a rock! He disappeared. He had no way of knowing what happened while he was in rock form.

  Where did he go, the part of him that made him Bax?

  So yes, Bax wanted help. But he didn’t think Coach would even know where to start.

  “All students can get better at fluxing, but only if they try,” Coach said. “Are you willing to try, son?”

  “I’m not your son,” Bax snapped.

  Coach ran his hand over his bald head. He was silent for a full minute. Then he turned to Nory and said to her: “Listen up. Monday is the start of after-school sports, including the beginner kittenball club. In the club, you won’t compete, but you’ll learn the sport, meet new people, and have a lot of fun. Mondays and Wednesdays. What do you say?”

  “I say okay.” Nory grinned widely.

  Bax just stood there.

  He didn’t flux into a rock. Yet even so, he’d managed to disappear.

  Elliott showed up to walk with Nory to school the next morning, Friday, just like normal.

  “Where were you yesterday?” Nory asked.

  “At school, just like you,” Elliott said. “Der. Hey, h
ow’d your first tutoring session go? Is Mr. Vitomin any good?”

  “I’m talking about yesterday morning,” pressed Nory. “I waited for you for six thousand hours.”

  “For our tutoring session, Willa and I went swimming. Isn’t that cool?”

  “Yes. But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “We used the high school pool,” Elliott continued. “Our tutor’s trying a technique called aquamerge. We have to connect with the water element, since we’re Flares and water’s the opposite of fire. Willa made it rain in the pool.”

  “Elliott.”

  “Guess what? I think it’s meatball day in the cafeteria,” said Elliott. “Meatball day is my favorite.”

  Fine. He wasn’t going to tell her.

  When they arrived at school, Elliott stepped through the heavy front doors first—“Whoa!” His feet did a crazy dance and he dropped to the floor on his bum. “Ow!”

  Nory slipped next. Bam! Ouch!

  Marigold was several feet in front of them, and she went down, too. Hard. “Marbles!” she said. “Why are there marbles everywhere?”

  Hordes of kids poured into the building, and nearly everyone hit the floor. Limbs flailed. There were yelps of pain and surprise. It was chaos.

  Nory scooched to a safe place against the wall. She drew her knees close and picked up one of the marbles.

  Oh. It wasn’t a marble, actually. It wasn’t made out of glass. It was gray and cool in her hand. A rock.

  The hall was really noisy now. Kids in kitten shape batted the stones around the floor. Kids in human shape got up and fell down again. Flyers launched themselves off the floor, but collided with one another and crashed back down.

  A sixth-grade girl yelled when a stone rolled off the top of her locker and bonked her on the head. A seventh-grade boy shrieked when his friend dropped a handful of rocks down the back of his pants.

  “Enough!” Principal Gonzalez boomed, appearing out of nowhere. The principal was a Flicker. He could do that sort of thing. “Students, get yourselves under control. Fluxers, take human form! Flyers, feet on the ground immediately. Everyone stop moving. I’ve called the janitor, and she’s on her way.”

  Nory peered through the forest of bodies. Principal Gonzalez tugged at his tie.

  “It seems that our Pennies for Potions have been magicked into stones, the whole enormous jar of them,” he said. “Eighth graders, if this is a prank, it’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t us!” called an eighth-grade girl.

  The principal studied the eighth graders and nodded to himself. “I need to check the other halls. You all stay where you are until we get the stones cleared up. We don’t want any injuries.”

  Then he vanished.

  Quietly, and then louder, people began to murmur.

  “We had a thousand pennies at least! Who’s going to give our pennies back?”

  “It’s got to be an upside-down magic thing.”

  “The Pennies for Potions jar must have exploded,” someone said.

  “Do you think those wonko kids can explode things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can they turn pennies into stones?”

  “My mom says they’re dangerous.”

  “It’s not their fault—they were born that way.”

  “It’s their fault if they turn our charity money to stone!”

  Next to Nory, Marigold pulled herself up on the water fountain. She got slowly to her feet, but her foot slipped again on a rock. Her elbow jammed against the fountain handle. Swoosh! Water squirted in a huge spray—and the spray hit Lacey Clench smack in the face.

  Lacey Clench was the number-one meanie of the Sparkies. They were the Flare kids who gave the UDM kids such a hard time.

  Like most bullies, Lacey was scared and jealous and disappointed. It made her mean. She was also powerful. It wasn’t her Flare magic that was powerful. It was her personality. She believed in rules. She was a leader, full of big ideas.

  Lacey had flared Elliott’s bike tires, melting them to rubber goo. She had set Andres’s leash on fire, the leash that kept him from floating into the sky when he was outdoors. She had mocked Bax. She insulted Nory every chance she got.

  Lacey and her Sparkie friends, Rune and Zinnia, were bad news.

  Now Lacey was soaked in water from the fountain. “You wonko!” she yelled at Marigold. Her thin blond hair was pasted to her skull, and her large round glasses were splattered with droplets. She wailed and wrung out the bottom of her cardigan. “My sweater is ruined!”

  “I lost my footing on a rock,” said Marigold, touching her hearing aid as if Lacey’s yelling hurt her ear. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  Lacey yelled even louder. “YOU MUST NOT HAVE HEARD ME. YOU RUINED MY SWEATER!”

  “I can hear you just fine,” Marigold said quietly. “My hearing aid isn’t broken. Your manners are.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I apologized already.” Marigold’s voice shook, but she didn’t back down. “It was an accident. And you shouldn’t make fun of my hearing.”

  Nory was impressed. Marigold was brave.

  “I have a right to be upset,” snarled Lacey. She gestured at her wet sweater. “I can’t go through the school day like this.”

  “Don’t Flares keep extra clothes in their lockers in case something gets burned?” said Nory. “Just go change.”

  Lacey twisted her face into an ugly shape. “How about if you just go away.”

  “It’s only water.”

  “And you’re only an upside-down wonko who doesn’t know that wool isn’t supposed to get wet.” A new light came into Lacey’s eyes. “Omigosh, you did this, didn’t you?”

  “Did what?”

  Lacey swept her hand through the air. “The rocks. You fluxed the Pennies for Potions into rocks, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Nory said. “That’s not even possible.”

  “Then maybe Marigold shrank them. Did you, Marigold?”

  “Then they would be tiny pennies,” Marigold pointed out, laughing in disbelief. “Not rocks.”

  Lacey stepped forward and pushed her. “Don’t laugh at me.”

  “Hey!” Marigold yelped.

  Lacey went to push her again, and Marigold’s hand flew up. She grabbed Lacey’s wrist, and the air shimmered around Marigold’s fingers.

  “Marigold! Stop!” cried Nory.

  Marigold jerked her hand away, but it was too late. Lacey was already shrinking.

  Smaller.

  Smaller.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Marigold cried. “I shrink things all the time by accident!”

  Lacey’s body shrank like a deflating balloon.

  Her arms became tiny spindles.

  Her head was the size of a cherry tomato.

  Her teeny-tiny cardigan was still wet.

  Finally, at three inches high, Lacey stopped shrinking.

  Some of the kids gasped. Others laughed.

  “You witch!” Lacey shrieked from down on the floor. Her voice was a squeak.

  “She looks like a doll,” a sixth grader said.

  “Too small for a doll,” another kid said.

  Tiny Lacey stomped her tiny foot. “I am not a doll. Zinnia! Pick me up!”

  Lacey’s friend Zinnia moved in, looking horrified. She lifted Lacey gently between her thumb and forefinger and put her in the outside pocket of her backpack, which she left unzipped.

  “Call my mother!” shouted Tiny Lacey. “Start a petition! Stop the upside-down magic! Call my father, too! Take me to the nurse! Take me to the principal! I want a dry sweater!”

  Zinnia carried the backpack carefully toward Nurse Riley’s office, followed by Rune. They walked on tiptoe to avoid the rocks.

  Lacey’s tiny voice could be heard for longer than Nory would have imagined. “Rune, get me a tissue! I want to dry off! Do you think we should call the newspaper? We’ll need photographs, of course. Zinnia, I’m hungry. I want a grape.
You’re going to have to slice it into tiny pieces.”

  Marigold moaned. “I feel terrible.”

  Nory patted her arm. “Don’t worry.”

  “You say that, but you’re worried!” Marigold wailed. “I see it on your face!”

  Nory tried to fix her features, but Marigold was right. Lacey Clench might be tiny, but she could still cause big trouble.

  Nory watched as Principal Gonzalez reappeared with a team of teachers and janitors. They were armed with brooms, dustpans, and vacuum cleaners. They cleared the central hall of stones and began on the smaller hallways. Students started moving again. People shouldered their book bags and headed to class.

  A girl’s loud voice rang out. “Look! There’s a huge rock in the middle of the hall!”

  Oh, no, thought Nory. Bax!

  She hurried over to where kids circled the rock. Elliott went with her.

  “It’s just our friend,” Elliott said, pushing through. “We’ll take care of him.”

  More kids swarmed around them.

  “He’s your friend?” someone said. “He’s a rock!”

  “He’s an unusual Fluxer,” said Nory. Her cheeks grew warm. “He’s normally a boy.”

  “Can he turn other stuff into rocks?”

  “No,” said Nory. “His magic doesn’t work like that.”

  “How do you know? Could he have turned the pennies into rocks? I bet that’s how it happened!”

  “That’s not how it works,” Nory insisted. “He fluxes his own body, like any other Fluxer.”

  But no one was listening to her. “I didn’t believe they were dangerous, but now I’m getting nervous,” someone said.

  “What does this kid look like when he’s human?” asked another. “We should know so we can stay away from him.”

  He said it in such a mean way that Nory felt like like crying.

  The crowd tightened around them: Nory, Elliott, and Rock-Bax. Nory wasn’t sure what to do. She hoped she wouldn’t accidentally flux. She hoped Elliott wouldn’t ice anything.

  “Nory, we need to get Bax out of here,” Elliott said in a low voice.

  But how?