by L. A. Banks
“Morning, everybody,” Sarah said quickly, receiving a round of good mornings in return. Her uncle Jose just gave her the thumbs-up, his mouth was so full. But she made it a point to keep her back to the boys at the far end of the room, where her brother was sitting, suddenly remembering the zit.
There was an open seat, as always, next to Tami, and after helping herself to pancakes and fruit, she slid into it. Anybody with any sense avoided Tami’s morning snipes. Tami had clearly gotten her ex-vampire mother’s aversion to morning and could be crazy-wicked verbally if you got on her nerves. If very slightly provoked, she’d also fight and go round for round, pound for pound at the drop of a hat. This morning, Sarah truly wished she could sit anywhere but next to Tami, who was no doubt going to start in on the whole zit issue. However, if she elected not to sit by Tami, that would start a whole hot mess.
But somehow, because her aunt Inez was blind to any flaw in anyone she loved, despite being a great psychic, and because her normally sarcastic uncle Jack hadn’t said a word about it, nor had her lovable uncle Mike—not to mention Val had been so cool about it—the Everest-sized thing protruding from her forehead had momentarily slipped her mind.
That is until Tami brought her back to harsh reality.
“No progress, I see,” she muttered, spearing a sausage.
“I tried the compress,” Sarah whispered through her teeth, keeping her head down low close to her plate. “It didn’t work.”
“Understatement. I think it made it worse.”
Allie put her hand on Sarah’s back and stared at her with big gray eyes. “It’s okay, Sarah. Nobody will notice.” Her red curls accidentally spilled over her shoulder and into the syrup on her plate. “Oh…no…” High-strung and beginning to spark at the fingertips, Allie unsuccessfully tried to rescue her hair.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Sarah said quickly, pressing down Allie’s silverware, which was beginning to levitate. She caught her friend’s juice glass before the electromagnetic charge around it toppled it and created a mess.
The static outburst was common enough that nobody at the table paid them any attention. But at school, something like this would be a disaster.
Sarah let out a sigh as she quickly grabbed both of Allie’s hands, feeling the charge ripple up her arms. She looked down at the delicate tea-and-milk hued fingers that held hers tightly and then glanced at Allie’s parents, wondering how Aunt Heather, a Scottish Druid stoneworker, and Uncle Dan, a Tactical Guardian, two relatively serene individuals, had wound up with a kid who sparked at the least provocation.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Allie said, dripping syrup onto her pink robe.
“It’s okay. We’re all just nervous about going to school this morning—day one jitters,” Sarah said, feeling the charge beginning to wane.
It had taken everything in her parents’ powers to get Allie to calm down enough while taking the school placement tests that she could be put in the tactical division. It was a real coup, and it had the side benefit of being the talent division that had all the good-looking jocks. T-Rexes. That was where the true athletes were, the guys who could do the heavy lifting with just magnetic force alone, but poor Allie was far from a kinetic athlete, and the girl was a nervous wreck.
“Look at my hair,” Allie wailed softly. “There’s not enough time this morning to get it back to how I had it. I got up extra early this morning so I—”
“That’s what you get for lying to Sarah about that volcano on her face,” Tami muttered over a sip of coffee, but then her head flew back as her mother yanked her ponytail.
“Ow! Mom!”
“Ease up,” her mom said, flashing fang. “Leave the poor girl alone.”
Tami stuck out her tongue at her mother’s back, while Sarah grabbed a napkin and tried to dab syrup out of Allie’s hair.
“I’ll help you blow dry it after you wash it again—don’t panic,” Hyacinth said, her wide blue eyes focused on Sarah’s forehead. Hyacinth’s voice was as soothing as her hypnotic stare. Her gentle smile, framed by her pretty heart-shaped face and long, onyx hair, seemed to summon calm if anyone just looked at her. “Listen…we have to all stick together, especially when we get to the Academy.” Then she leaned in closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Especially with everything that’s going on.”
“Later,” Sarah murmured, and then she motioned subtly toward the adult end of the table. Just great, Hyacinth had picked up on stuff floating around in the ether, but the girl obviously didn’t have the good sense not to try to talk about it around Ascended Masters!
“Yeah,” Tami said in a sullen tone and then gave Hyacinth a look to shut her up. “It’s bad enough that they’ve already separated us,” she pressed on more loudly and off topic, as a cover for Hyacinth’s carelessness. “You’re going to the clairvoyant division, and me, Donnie and Sarah will be with the slow kids in Blends. All we need is a static outburst by a kid from our compound at the lunchroom table.”
“C’mon,” Sarah said, giving Tami a look. “She said she was sorry.” Sarah threw an arm over Allie’s shoulders as she glared at Hyacinth, warning her to play along.
“Thanks, Sarah,” Allie said, lifting her chin. “But at least we’ll all be rooming together.” She looked around the table at her other girls. “OMG, what if you’re wrong and they actually do change their minds and split me and Hyacinth up after all? That would be horrible. Tragic!”
“They won’t split us up. We won’t let them.” Hyacinth grabbed one of Allie’s hands. “Stop obsessing. Let’s go fix your hair, okay?”
“They so get on my last nerve,” Tami grumbled under her breath as Hyacinth and Allie took their plates and left the table. “I can’t stand that much sugar in the morning. The sweetness is sickening,” she said with a shudder, and then took another sip of her black coffee.
“Give ‘em a break,” Sarah said, picking at her food. “You know how they are…they’re really not that bad and—”
“They’re sickening,” Tami said with a frustrated snort.
“And they are our compound sisters,” Sarah said, giving Tami the eye.
“Do we have to be responsible for them at the Academy? Please tell me no.”
“Yes,” Sarah said flatly. She glanced at Allie’s parents and then at Hyacinth’s, and then leaned in toward Tami, dropping her voice low. “Do you want to be the one to tell Uncle Dan and Aunt Heather how you dissed Allie at school because her powers were coming in wobbly? Or could you actually look in Aunt Jasmine’s face and break her heart by telling her you didn’t have Hyacinth’s back because she got picked to be in the hot clairvoyant talent division? It’s not her fault she made it into the Clavs. Uncle Bobby would be crushed. It’s not ‘Cinth’s fault that her mom is the best dragon painter in the world and can make tapestries of dragons she’s painted come to life or her dad is a wizard. So she got picked to be in one of the most talented groups—don’t hate.”
“I’m not hating,” Tami said with a scowl. “It’s just hard enough to fit in somewhere new without adding a klutz and a goody-goody nerd to the equation.”
“Or a best friend with a gigantic zit.” Sarah looked at Tami hard.
“Well, now that you mention it—call me shallow… but I love you anyway.”
“Just great.”
“I’m just joking.” Tami shook her head and wolfed down her breakfast, now smiling.
Sarah sat back and stabbed her pancakes with a fork. Arguing with Tami when she dug in her heels on a subject was futile.
Voices drifted around her as she ate, snippets of conversation in a textured collage of sound. Aunt Krissy was at the far end of the table twirling a long blond lock around her finger, fretting about how Donnie was going to make out in school, while Donnie’s dad remained calm and just ate. Obviously Uncle JL didn’t want to discuss it. The old Ninja Tactical just calmly sipped his green tea and asked his wife to keep her voice down. Aunt Tara was clearly pissed at Uncle Jack again. She must ha
ve figured out that he’d snuck booze into his coffee. The slight hint of fang was a dead giveaway during their tense but quiet exchange. No wonder Tami was in such a foul mood—who wanted to deal with their parents bickering at the breakfast table?
Aunt Juanita’s voice sounded worried beneath the din of the boys’ rowdy banter halfway across the room. It was hardly more than a whisper and was all but drowned out by Al, Miguel, Val and Donnie’s raucous conversation.
Sarah cast her aunt a discreet sidelong glance. It was odd how Aunt Juanita looked like a younger version of Aunt Tara, although there was no blood relationship. Both women were almond-hued and curvaceous, but Tami’s mom was of Native American extraction, with darker eyes and hair, whereas Miguel’s mom was Latina, with long auburn hair. Uncle Jose, Miguel’s dad, looked like her own father’s younger brother, but again, like everyone in the house, they weren’t related by blood, just by battle. Uncle Jose was leaning toward her dad, and Sarah strained to listen.
“The perimeter here and at the school is secure? You’re positive?”
Sarah watched her father’s expression as a little silver flickered around the edges of his irises before he answered.
“Would I let my kids go if it wasn’t?” Her father sat back and stared at Uncle Jose hard. “Marlene added extra spiritual lines of defense in both places, awright?”
Uncle Jose held up his hands in front of his chest and kept his voice low. “If you like it, I love it, hombre.”
“I don’t like it,” her father said, cutting a glance at her mother, “but I don’t have a choice.”
“We’ve been over this already, Carlos,” her mother said in a quiet but firm tone.
The back of Sarah’s chair bumped suddenly and broke into her eavesdropping. As she spun around quickly, she saw her brother coming from the buffet with a fresh stack of pancakes and bacon.
“I was gonna ask you how you were doing, but I see your third eye is trying to pop out of your forehead. Damn, that’s a beaut,” Al said laughing, and then jumped back as she tried to elbow him. He sloshed his milk, but shot a tactical charge at it before it could hit the ground, returning it to his cup. “I got skills, sis, so you’ve gotta do better than that.”
Sarah was out of her chair with the intention of shoving him hard, but her father snapped his head up from his conversation, eyes beginning to turn silver.
“I’m not in the mood this morning, Al. Leave your sister alone.”
It wasn’t a comment, it was a command, and it rolled across the table and paralyzed her brother like a rush of instant thunder.
“She pushed me!” Al argued, trying to save face.
“I did not!” Sarah yelled. “He’s always got something smart to say—I can’t stand him!”
Sarah watched her father take a very slow sip of his coffee, fangs beginning to lengthen.
“What did I say?” her father asked slowly, dropping each word with perfect diction. His silver gaze was fixed on Al. No one spoke, no one moved, all conversation had ceased. The general had spoken. “I swear to you, if I have to get up…”
Her mother let out a huff of breath and tossed her napkin onto the table. “All of you kids need to hurry up and finish eating, then get ready for your first day at the Academy, so stop horsing around.”
Just like a hard, clean rain, the tension was broken, and uncles and aunts began eating again. Damn, Sarah thought. Her mother had averted a potential confrontation that she’d so wanted to see. Would it have been so bad to have Al get vamp-snatched by the scruff of his neck? But, no, her mom always had to save her dumb brother’s hide!
Al walked away with some of his dignity still intact, and Sarah stuck her tongue out at him as she cleared away her plate.
“He’s stupid, you know that,” Tami said a few minutes later, as they scraped their dishes and put them in the dishwasher.
“He’s no different than the hundreds of other kids who are going to see Mount Everest on my forehead this morning,” Sarah said, dejected. “I gotta go get dressed.”
Once breakfast was behind her, it felt like it had taken forever to get away from everybody and reach her room. Once inside, she did something she rarely did. She locked the door. She didn’t want to deal with Tami bursting in with more sarcastic comments, or Allie’s fretting or Hyacinth’s too cheery view of the world. This morning sucked. Her position at the Academy sucked.
Sarah snatched the letter off her dresser and reread it, hoping the contents had changed since her last reading.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rivera,
Per our conversation two days ago, this letter is to confirm that your daughter, Sarah Rivera, will be placed in the Blends talent division at the start of the school year. Again, I apologize that it was necessary to test Sarah three separate times. We certainly never expected to receive three completely different yet inconclusive results. Since she has demonstrated such an unusual mixture of talents, we feel that the Blends division is the right place for her at this time.
We will also be happy to continue to watch her development throughout the school year and will be more than willing to retest her at a later date. We expect that, given her parentage, Sarah will quickly place in one of the more refined talents division—perhaps the Specials, along with your son, Alejandro.
How dare that crazy old dragon mention that idiot in her letter!
If you have any questions at all, I am more than happy to set up a time to talk to you via PirateNet, or we can arrange an in-person meeting at the Academy. In the meantime, we humbly welcome Sarah and Alejandro to our institution, and look forward to shaping them into fine Guardians and more.
Sincerely,
Ms. Zehiradangra, Guidance Counselor
Dragon Pearl Oracle of the Highest Order
Nothing had changed. Same crappy letter. Sarah practically shook as she crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. Washed-up old broad. What did Ms. Z know anyway? Everyone knew the woman was half crazy—and yet she got to test kids and determine their fates. Where was the logic in that?
Sarah stomped back over to the mirror with a handful of her clothes to get dressed. She was already showered, and if she went back into the bathroom she’d be tempted to try to lance the huge zit, which would only leave a scar.
The whole talent division process grated her. Why did they have to have placement tests, anyway? Some people just didn’t test well, and she was one of them. Here in the compound all her aunts and uncles and both her parents were thrown together as family in one big pot. Nobody cared that Uncle Jack and Uncle Jose were noses—the best Olfactors and trackers around. Aunt Inez was a great seer, and she was married to Uncle Big Mike—Ayana’s stepdad, who could hear demons like a danged hunting dog. Who was gonna tell the big audio he couldn’t sit wherever he wanted at the breakfast table?
Uncle Dan and Uncle JL could practically levitate whole buildings, as veteran Tacticals… and then there were the family members with special talents. Aunt Jasmine could draw stuff on the walls and make it come alive. Aunt Krissy and her brother, Uncle Bobby, were white-lighters, wizards whose lineage went all the way back to Merlin’s time. Heck, her Aunt Valkyrie was a battlefield flier, and there were maybe only a handful of those left in the world now. Hyacinth’s grandparents were healers. But nobody was separating her family and saying those team members couldn’t work as a group. Compounds didn’t function according to talent divisions in the real world, so why did kids have to go through this at school? It wasn’t realistic, wasn’t practical. Not that her opinion mattered.
But someone had made up a stupid rule that every Guardian had to have a talent, an extra sensory ability that they were born with, and people with the basic skill-sets got split up into four groups at the Academy: Olfactors, Audios, Tacticals and Clairvoyants. Those who excelled at everything were dubbed Specials.
But she had the misfortune of falling into the dreaded category of kids whose talents hadn’t presented fully yet, despite puberty, despite age, despite parental l
ineage. In short, they were the duds. Weapons that didn’t fire, like a bum grenade. The division you got put in determined whether or not you were marked for success or had to endure teasing, possibly for your whole life. She would never forgive Ms. Z for this.
There was no getting around the fact that her dad had been so proud when he’d heard that Alejandro had been tapped for the Specials division. It had been written all over his face…followed by the worried look he gave her when he learned she’d tested into Blends. Sure, he’d given her a hug, the one that said she was still his baby girl, but that only made her feel worse.
Sarah struggled with getting her red sweater over the white blouse and tugged on her khaki skirt—her uniform for the next year until she moved up a level. She blew out a breath. Leave it to the headmistress, her grandmother Marlene, to color code the freakin’ uniforms by the chakra system. First years, the lowest level, got red. Great. Just great.
Sarah looked in the mirror and cringed. Oh no! Allie! What she saw wasn’t some new talent emerging—it was static cling, courtesy of Allie’s first-day nerves. Working frantically, she tried to ground herself and dispel it by touching her wooden dresser with one free hand. No luck. Every time she brushed her sweater down with the other hand, a blue haze of static crackled over it and made it emphasize her lack of curves in an even less flattering way. Even her red socks were crackling, and the laces of her sneakers were standing straight up in the air. When she felt her ponytail begin to lift off her neck, she almost screamed in frustration.
Her father’s bellow for them to hurry up made Sarah hug herself and close her eyes. At the light knock at the door she her let out a long sigh. She knew who was on the other side of the door and was so not ready to deal with that situation on top of everything else.