Hide and Seek

by Sarah Mlynowski

  “No, a puppephant!” said Anemone.

  Mr. Lan cleared his throat. “Elinor. Flux back, please.”

  Nory did. Pop! She was a girl again.

  “Well. That was not uninteresting,” Mr. Lan said.

  Nory was frustrated at having gone wonky. She wanted to choose when she fluxed into unusual animals and when she didn’t. But she was also a bit proud of her puppephant. She had never done that particular upside-down creature before. It seemed full of possibility. Plus, her Fluxer friends were beaming at her. Well, except for Bax. Bax wasn’t a beamer.

  “But it was not a puppy,” continued Mr. Lan.

  “It was better than a puppy!” cried Mitali.

  “I want you to work on puppy and puppy only,” Mr. Lan told Nory. “At Sage, if I ask for puppy, I expect puppy. Is that clear?”

  Nory nodded glumly. Coach, her fluxing tutor, would have asked her to do puppephant again, right away. He would have wanted to help her learn how to do it at will.

  “Also, your shirt is untucked,” Mr. Lan pointed out. “And there is something sticky on the side of your mouth. At Sage, we pay attention to personal hygiene.”

  Mitali smiled at Nory sympathetically, which helped a little. But mainly Nory felt like a deflated balloon.

  “Moving on.” Mr. Lan focused on Bax. “Bax Kapoor, is it? Puppy, please.”

  “I can’t,” said Bax.

  “I’m sorry?” Mr. Lan replied.

  “You and me both,” said Bax.

  Mr. Lan frowned. “You are a Fluxer,” he stated.

  “I guess.”

  “Then flux. Flux into whatever you can manage!”

  With a sigh, Bax fluxed into a player piano and played a jaunty trill. The Sage kids oohed and aahed.

  Mr. Lan did not. “Good heavens, flux back.”

  “He can’t,” Nory said.

  Player-Piano-Bax played a dramatic succession of chords to underscore her words, dum dum DUM.

  “He has to go to the nurse,” Nory went on to explain. “Nurse Riley. He came from Dunwiddle with us?”

  Player-Piano-Bax played the opening melody of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” bouncing on his wooden piano legs.

  “Enough!” said Mr. Lan to Player-Piano-Bax. He raised his voice. “Go get Nurse Riley!”

  Sigh.

  Earlier in the day, hanging out with Mitali, Nory had thought she had a chance of fitting in at Sage Academy. Perhaps. Maybe.

  Now it didn’t look likely at all.

  Elliott got stuck in the same class as Lacey and Rune. He and the thirty Dunwiddle Flares were divided into two groups, joining up with two Sage flaring classes. Elliott’s group went straight to Flare Studies, while the other class went to science.

  The Flare Studies building was surrounded by a moat, for fire protection. Inside, there were the usual fire extinguishers everywhere, but the classroom was also completely lined in a rubbery fire-protectant material. Fancy!

  The teacher, Dr. Vogel, was a round lady with her hair scraped back in a tight bun. She wore a pantsuit and large tortoiseshell glasses, and she seemed dismayed to see the sixteen Dunwiddle kids.

  “Here at Sage we pride ourselves on having very small groups of students,” she said to Ms. Fujita. She didn’t even lower her voice. “I don’t think we are meeting that part of our mission if I double my class size.”

  “Dr. Horace said you’re to take them,” said Ms. Fujita. She gave a little squeak, turned into a leopard, and bounded off.

  Dr. Vogel sighed and clapped her hands for the students’ attention. “Dunwiddle Flares!” she exclaimed sharply.

  What? Oh, no.

  “It seems no one told you that the tie is mandatory,” said Dr. Vogel. She evil-eyed Lacey until Lacey gulped, fished her tie out of her pocket, and put it on. It was a clip-on, at least.

  Then Dr. Vogel pursed her lips and blew a thin stream of fire out of her mouth, as if she were whistling.

  “Today we’re going to practice fire breathing,” she said. “It may be new to a number of you.”

  Elliott’s dad was a Flare, so Elliott had seen a good amount of flaring, but his dad didn’t do anything very difficult. There was fancy flaring on TV, of course, but it was different seeing the teacher breathing fire, live.

  Next, Dr. Vogel gave each student a device that looked like a magnifying glass, but without any glass in it. She called them “circlometers.”

  “We’re developing fire-breathing strength as a way to help your overall flame intensity,” she said. “Though most of our flare magic comes from our hands, fire breathing increases our overall flaring strength. It’s a helpful warm-up exercise. Breathe fire and you flare better, even if your fire breaths are small.”

  Elliott had never breathed fire. In fact, he hardly ever flared, period. When his magic first came in, his flames had always fizzled quickly, and ice had come out instead.

  He hadn’t even tried to flare since September, when Ms. Starr had convinced him to focus on his ice power, since it was so much stronger than his fire power.

  Elliott closed his eyes and tried to feel his inner flame.

  It was there—feeble, but there—only as soon as he sensed it, his ice magic took over and froze it. His “iciness” seemed to pool most strongly in his wrists, so he rotated them in both directions, trying to shake free any possible blockage.

  “How’s it going, Ice Boy?” Rune taunted.

  “Aw, don’t be mean,” said Lacey. “We shouldn’t pick on people who are incredibly awkward and bad at school.”

  Just because I used to be friends with you at ordinary school doesn’t mean I care what you think now, thought Elliott. I don’t care. I’m glad to be a Freezer and my parents support me and I won’t let you Sparkies spoil my day.

  He told himself all that, but his hands still trembled.

  Dr. Vogel asked everyone to try blowing a very small, very short puff of flame through the circle of their circlometers.

  Poof! Most of the Sage Flares blew puffs.

  Poof! Some of the Dunwiddle Flares blew puffs.

  Poof! Rune blew a puff.

  Piff! Lacey blew, but no puff came out.

  Ha!

  Dr. Vogel loomed over Elliott. “Elliott? Why are you not poofing your puff? I do not require that you succeed, but I do require that you try.”

  The room went quiet. Everyone stopped trying to poof puffs and stared at Elliott.

  “He has super-weak fire,” explained Rune.

  “Yeah, he can only make, like, the weakest little sad spark,” added Lacey. “We all feel very sorry for him, all the time.”

  “Elliott’s got the upside-down magic problem,” Rune whispered. “He’s not even allowed to be in our regular classes, back home.”

  Elliott could hear murmurings of the Sage Flares as they absorbed that info and passed it along.

  “Try, Elliott!” insisted Dr. Vogel. “Ignore the titterings of your fellow students. Their manners are atrocious.”

  The teacher had taken his side! Elliott glanced at Lacey. Her hands were in her lap and she was looking at them very intently.

  He looked for the fire inside. He found nothing, so he brought nothing up to his throat. He breathed in, as the teacher had instructed, and—

  Preeff! His breath covered the circlometer with tiny, beautiful shapes of frost and then completely iced it over. Elliott dropped it on the desk, and the ice shattered. Shards fell on the floor and on his desk.

  Suddenly, all the Sage Flares and most of the Dunwiddle Flares were standing around Elliott. Staring. Pointing.

  “What did he do?”

  “He iced it.”

  “I never heard of anyone icing anything.”

  “Well, he iced it anyway.”

  “That’s super weird.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Elliott, are you okay?”

  “Maybe he should go to the nurse.”

  “Do you want someone to take you to the nurse, Elliott?”

>   A lot of the kids were being nice, actually, even if they did think he must be sick.

  Dr. Vogel patted Elliott on the shoulder and said, “Thank you for trying. Please continue to try every single exercise I give. Do you understand?”

  “Okay,” said Elliott. He just wanted to go home. Home to his parents, who saved his best ice objects in the freezer. Home to his baby brother, who ran to him the minute he got home from school, every single day.

  “You say, I understand, Dr. Vogel,” the teacher corrected him.

  “I understand, Dr. Vogel,” said Elliott.

  After the puppephant and the player piano, and after taking Bax to see Nurse Riley, Nory had felt miserable. She stayed miserable for an entire hour, but now she was determined to look on the bright side.

  Everything would be fine!

  It would be great!

  After all, she had friends at Sage. The monkey gymnasium would be cool, once she learned monkey fluxing. She was making Father happy.

  Oh, and the campus was pretty.

  Yes, the campus sure was pretty.

  She would focus her thoughts on that pretty campus.

  At lunchtime, she filled out school paperwork with Father. Then she scurried to the cafeteria to sit down with the UDM kids, but they were mostly packing up. She scarfed her milk and pasta, then dashed off to more classes.

  The school day finally ended, and Nory and Bax hurried to the Alderwood Lounge to meet the others.

  The lounge had several couches, velvet curtains (zamboozle, this school was obsessed with velvet!), some vending machines, a few red beanbags, and a foosball table. Elliott and Sebastian sat on a couch, sharing a bag of Wild Potato Hots and drinking apple juice. Marigold was bigging up the beanbags so they were ridiculously large and comfy-looking. Andres bobbed on the ceiling.

  “How are you doing?” Nory asked everyone as she and Bax plopped into the bigged-up beanbags. “Did you love the rest of your day?”

  She wanted them to love it. After all, she was determined to love it.

  “The campus is pretty,” Marigold said.

  “Yes!” cried Nory. “Exactly!”

  “And big!” Andres said. “So big. So much walking outside.”

  “Who held your leash?” Elliott asked. “Or did you have to wear your brickpack all day?” He tilted up his head to better see Andres.

  “Tip held it,” Andres said. “He didn’t mind.”

  “Did I tell you they put me with Sebastian and the Flickers?” Marigold asked.

  “No way,” Nory said.

  “That class has less students, so that’s where they decided to put me. It was fine,” Marigold reported. “We spent most of class playing checkers. Everyone got a board, and they were supposed to make either all the red squares or all the black squares invisible. I just practiced shrinking the whole board and bigging it up again. The teacher didn’t seem to care as long as I didn’t get in the way. And Sebastian—” She burst out laughing. “Sebastian, tell them what happened at Invisible Diving!”

  “You went to the pool?” Nory asked.

  “Yes!” Marigold said. “In Flicker gym. Sebastian and I had to go even though we can’t make ourselves invisible. We all had to wear green bathing suits.”

  “Isn’t the pool pretty?” Nory asked. “So very pretty.”

  “Tell them what happened, Sebastian!” Marigold said.

  “Well,” Sebastian said, adjusting his aviator goggles, “I could see the divers. When they’re invisible. And one of them—”

  “The tall redhead! Miller! With the bushy eyebrows!” Marigold added.

  “He, ah, relieved himself in the pool.”

  “You saw him peeing underwater?” Andres asked. “But peeing’s not a sound.”

  “Urination is actually a very intense sound,” Sebastian answered. “Bright yellow. I could see it from all the way at the back of the diving board line.”

  “Did you say anything to him?” Nory asked.

  “I just announced to the Flickers that I could see the sounds of urination. And farts. I added the farts in so as not to be obvious.”

  “Miller turned bright red!” Marigold said.

  “How was your day, Elliott?” Nory knew he’d had the worst luck of all of them, being stuck with the Sparkies.

  Elliott sighed. “The magic lessons were tough,” he admitted. “Lacey made fun of me and made sure everyone knew my magic was wonky.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nory said. “Lacey’s the worst. But what about last night? Did you have fun, sleeping in the dorms?”

  “I was a little homesick,” said Andres.

  “I was homesick, too,” said Pepper, plopping down on a huge beanbag. “And I don’t think the Fuzzies were that happy to have me around today. We went to the rare animals room, which had a rhino and a black unicorn and some dragons.”

  “Wow!” said Marigold.

  “The unicorn started shrieking when I walked in, so I had to wait outside. Then we went to the skunk garden, and guess what? They made me stay outside again. They were afraid of all the skunks spraying at once and stinking up the campus. Did any of you get to see it? Apparently, they use it for eighth-grade exams—you flunk if you get sprayed.”

  They all shook their heads.

  “The teacher said I should probably just hang out in the library tomorrow,” Pepper said, sighing.

  “I was forced to turn into a piano and spent most of the day with Nurse Riley,” Bax said.

  Nory hated that her friends weren’t all happy. If they loved Sage, maybe Nory could love it, too. She needed to lift their spirits. She started to sing their new favorite song—“Don’t Eat Paste”—quietly at first. Then louder.

  Don’t eat paste

  But do eat butter

  Don’t borrow money

  But call your mother

  She was off-key—Nory was always off-key! But she sang loudly and was happy to see Pepper begin doing percussion, drumming on her shoulders and knees.

  Elliott joined in to harmonize on “borrow money,” and even Bax’s foot was tapping.

  You think there are rules

  But there are none none none

  You think there are rules

  But you’ve already won

  I won’t break (ake ake ake)

  Don’t mistake (ake ake ake)

  Now Bax was singing, too, and Marigold was clapping her hands.

  Nory had done it. She had cheered them up, and made herself feel hopeful in the process.

  Sage would be good, wouldn’t it? Mitali and puppy lessons and time with Hawthorn and Dalia.

  Don’t eat paste

  But do eat butter

  Don’t borrow money

  But call your mother!

  “Dunwiddle students!” a grown-up voice snapped.

  Nory looked up to see a stern-looking teacher glaring at them. “There are no loud voices allowed in the Alderwood Lounge! Study period is in session just across the hall!”

  No lounging in the lounge? Was he kidding?

  All the UDM kids sank into their seats.

  “We’ll be quieter,” Nory whispered as her heart deflated. “I promise.”

  The next morning, Nory ate two sunny-side-up eggs that Hawthorn cooked for her. She wondered what her friends were eating in the cafeteria.

  “Nory,” Father said as he turned to leave the house, briefcase in hand. “I heard about what happened in the Alderwood Lounge. Follow the rules, please.” Then he left.

  “What happened in the lounge?” Dalia asked.

  “Um … I sang?” Nory said. “With my friends.”

  “Yikes,” Hawthorn said, eyes wide. “What did you sing?”

  “ ‘Don’t Eat Paste.’ ”

  “Seriously? While study period was going on?”

  “It’s all the way down the hall!”

  “You’re only supposed to sing in the choir room,” Hawthorn warned her. “And in assembly, when it’s time for the alma mater.” He glanced at the clo
ck. “Oh. Speaking of, we better get going!”

  At assembly, Father lectured about classical music in the 1900s. He droned on and on and on.

  Nory’s eyes glazed over.

  Her back hurt.

  The lights were too bright.

  She squirmed in her seat.

  She accidentally elbowed Bax, who sat slumped over with his eyes closed, taking a nap.

  At least she wasn’t the only one who found this boring. Did her siblings really sit through this every morning?

  Nory searched for Dalia and found her three rows up on the right side, but couldn’t see her face. And Hawthorn? She twisted around to search for him. There he was! About ten rows back on the left side and—oh, wow, he was fully absorbed in the lecture. Weird!

  Nory felt a tap on her knee. The Fluxer next to her—Anemone—pointed at a nearby teacher.

  The teacher motioned Nory to sit forward in her seat and pay attention.

  Nory sat forward. She paid attention.

  “You have to apologize,” whispered Anemone.

  “Sorry,” Nory mouthed. The teacher gave a sharp nod and glanced away.

  Nory apologized again during first period, when she got in trouble for speaking without raising her hand.

  Then again during second period, when she spent too long in the bathroom.

  She wondered what she’d have to apologize for during third period.

  In fluxing class, after Mr. Lan had instructed them to turn into puppies, he commanded them all to sit.

  Sit.

  Stand.

  Sit.

  Lie down.

  Sit.

  Stand.

  Sit.

  Lie down.

  Mr. Lan drilled them again and again and again.

  But Puppy-Nory didn’t want to sit, stand, or lie down. Puppy-Nory wanted to fetch.

  Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! She would fetch that shiny red thing on the table!

  Puppy-Nory trotted over.

  Yes, she had it! She was biting it by the handle.

  Now where could she take it? Maybe outside? She could dig a hole and bury it.

  “Nory!” Mr. Lan snapped. “Put my coffee mug back on my desk immediately. And please remember your human mind. It appears you have lost it.”