“Well, it’s not like we have the usual sort of teams that play against other schools,” Muirin replied with a smirk. “That’s partly because we’re kind of too isolated to play any other private schools, and I think the public school over in Radial doesn’t want to play against us. Doctor Ambrosius is serious about being fit and about encouraging competition though, so we play against ourselves.”
Spirit could well imagine why the Radial public school wouldn’t want to play against a school like Oakhurst. Oakhurst even taught fencing! There’d been four people in white outfits and disturbingly android-looking masks fighting in there when they’d passed the door. It was the first time Spirit had ever seen a fencer in person.
In between bits of explanation, Addie and Muirin filled her in on most of the rules. Except in the worst winter weather, uniforms were mandatory during school hours except for sports. For sports you either wore the special gear—like fencing stuff, or riding stuff—or sweats in Oakhurst colors. For most classes, skirts and blazer were required for girls, but there were several different styles and colors of skirts—including the plaid-with-pleats that Addie was wearing—and if you were doing something where you might end up rolling around on the floor or getting dirty, you wore trousers. On any day you were studying Grammery, you wore trousers.
“And that’s at least two days a week, so the Dress Code doesn’t suck as much as it could,” Muirin said. “They hate you wearing makeup, though.”
“That isn’t true,” Addie said. “Light makeup is okay. They just don’t want you Gothing out during school hours. Now. Breakfast is seven to eight, lunch is noon to one, dinner is six to seven. You can have food in your room, but not junk food, of course.”
“They check,” said Muirin mournfully. “You can kiss any idea of privacy you ever had good-bye, so if you used to keep a diary? Don’t. The only thing they let you get away with is soda, but they ration it. You can have all the bottled tea and juice and water and health drinks you want, but they only let you have seven cans of soda a week.”
Seven cans a week? Spirit made a face. She had the feeling she was going to go through serious Diet Pepsi withdrawal.
“Well, popcorn,” Adelaide amended. “You can have popcorn.”
“Lights out at eleven,” Muirin said, taking over from Addie. You weren’t supposed to be outside the dorm after ten, but the way that Muirin said “supposed to” made Spirit pretty sure that there were ways around that. Like, if you wanted to meet a boy.
No more than two people (besides you) in a dorm room except by special arrangement. “We’re supposed to use the lounges for more than two, so people in their rooms can study,” Addie said. “Otherwise, there might be too much noise. But the lounges are really nice.”
And apparently there was a lot to study—magic stuff (Grammery, Spirit tried to remember they called it here) along with the regular high school courses. And everyone was supposed to have at least one sport they did regularly.
“Don’t you have time for any fun?” she asked, feeling desperate.
Adelaide and Muirin exchanged amused looks. “You’ll get used to it,” said Adelaide, as they reached the dining room. People were already filing in the now-open doors. “Oh, is that the guy you came in with?”
With a feeling of relief, Spirit saw Loch standing with a tall, broad-shouldered guy who practically looked like two of him. Loch spotted her at the same time and lifted a hand.
“Yeah—” she began, when Muirin interrupted.
“Oh good, he’s with Burke! We can all sit together and you can introduce us.” She grinned. “He’s cute. And new. We can keep him to ourselves.”
So Spirit found herself sitting between the tall guy—whose name was Burke Hallows, and who was brown-haired, brown-eyed, and cute in a Boy Scout way—and Muirin, feeling just a bit intimidated. There hadn’t been more than a handful of times in her whole life that she’d sat at a table with a white linen tablecloth, white linen napkins, porcelain plates, and real silverware made of real silver. And never had she had as many kinds of silverware as there were here. Her folks’ idea of a restaurant generally involved a buffet.
Burke saw her confusion. “You work from the outside in,” he said, kindly. “Don’t worry too much about it.”
Spirit said, frustrated, “Only rich people eat like this. . . .”
Burke shrugged. “You aren’t the only one here who’s not rich,” he replied. “We’re supposed to get used to this, though. Doctor Ambrosius expects us to be movers and shakers out there.” He waved his hand vaguely as if to indicate the world outside the walls. “Just relax, nobody’s grading you on eating. It’s probably the only thing they don’t grade us on,” he added in an undertone, and Spirit wondered if she’d been meant to hear that.
It was hard to relax when people in uniforms were serving you. She felt awkward and uncomfortable, and very out of place. It didn’t help her feel any better that Loch was casual and comfortable, asking questions, even making jokes. Still, it was hard not to notice that the food, like the snacks in the plane, was light-years beyond any school cafeteria or even family-night-out restaurant food she’d ever had. It was all so fancy, though, that she found the meal exhausting. Nothing was familiar: the lettuce in the salad wasn’t regular lettuce and tasted odd, the mashed potatoes weren’t exactly mashed potatoes, she had no idea what kind of roast bird she’d been served—except that it wasn’t either turkey or chicken—and even dessert had looked like chocolate pudding but turned out not to be.
She would have been perfectly ready to go back to her room and just collapse after that, but the other four insisted she come along to the lounge to get acquainted. They were like a wave that washed her along with them, where she sat in a big comfortable chair next to a fireplace and listened to the others talk. A bunch of the other kids from the dining room had followed them to introduce themselves and find out who they were, but names and faces were kind of a blur. There was Seth Morris—who Muirin seemed to know well—and Nick and Marc and Andrew and Troy. Everyone’s names and faces seemed to run together—she couldn’t for the life of her remember whether Camilla or Jenny had the short curly hair, and if it was Claire or Kristi who had the long braids and carried the sketchbook. She just curled up in the chair and listened to Muirin and Loch and Burke talk. Now that she wasn’t running interference between Muirin and Spirit, Addie didn’t talk much, but she listened so intently you felt as if she was saying more than she did.
Loch wanted to know what sorts of magic they all did, and Muirin demonstrated again, this time with a larger illusion, a copy of herself that she made do some gymnastic flips. Addie poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the sideboard and made a fountain in it. One of the other boys took the glass when she was done—Spirit wasn’t sure whether it was Nick or Troy—and the clear glass turned opaque and sort of grayish brown.
“Transmutation,” Muirin said, and he grinned and tossed it at her.
Some of the others had kinds of magic that you couldn’t show off easily or safely—one of the girls said she was learning Transformation, which apparently wasn’t the same as Transmutation, and one of the other boys said he was a Fire Witch. Burke just shrugged.
“Combat magic,” he said, with the smallest of grimaces. “Give me a weapon and I can use it right away; give me a couple weeks with it, and I’m an expert. Takes me about two months to get pretty good at about any martial art. Already got a black belt in three. Right now I’m learning sword stuff.”
Spirit’s jaw dropped. “That’s—amazing!” she blurted.
Burke snorted dismissively, but his smile was kind. “Yeah, but it’s not like I can compete at it. It’d be cheating. It’s the magic doing it, not me.”
Muirin laughed up at him. “You and your ethics!” she said mockingly. “No one would ever know!”
“I’d know,” Burke said stubbornly. “And it’d be cheating people who worked for years and years out of the reward they earned.”
Muirin made
a face when she saw Addie, Loch, Spirit, and a couple of the other kids nodding in agreement with him. “Doctor Ambrosius says that it’s no different than a genius competing with ordinary people in college, or in business,” she answered, sounding certain of her ground. “Really, why should it be? For that matter, we’ll be using our magic to compete with them in things like business. So how is that any different?”
Burke set his jaw. He seemed to struggle for a moment for words, then said, “It just is.”
“I’m not all that impressed with Doctor Ambrosius anyway,” Spirit said softly, and winced a little when half a dozen people turned to stare at her, including all four of her new friends. Then she decided to stand her ground. “I’m not,” she repeated more firmly. “Especially not if he says things like that.” She held Loch’s gaze and spoke directly to him. “I think he could have showed us that magic was real today without attacking us and hurting me. That’s just bullying, and just because he owns this school and has magic powers, it doesn’t make it less like bullying. And how about all of you? Don’t you think you should have been allowed a choice in whether you came here or not? Was that fair?”
Muirin laughed sharply. “Since when is life fair?”
“The only people that say that are people who don’t want it to be.” It was Spirit’s turn to set her chin stubbornly. “And I don’t think that because we can do things, it always means we should.”
Muirin rolled her eyes, but Addie smiled, Burke beamed at her with approval, and Loch winked at her. She immediately felt better.
“I suppose you’ll all tell me we should all rush out to save the world or something,” Muirin said, and wiggled her fingers. “Buh-bye! You do that, kids. I’ll be over here, trying to pass algebra.”
“Of course not, goofus,” Burke retorted good-naturedly. “Weren’t you listening to Spirit? Just because we can do something, that doesn’t mean we should.” He rubbed the back of his head broodingly. “Besides, all that would happen to me if I went out and became Captain America or something is that the Army’d probably grab me and try to figure out how to make more guys like me. Which isn’t going to happen, but I’d never see the light of day again.”
“I knew you weren’t as dumb as you look, Burkesey,” Muirin replied, mollified. “Hey. Did anyone hear anything more about whether we’re having a Halloween dance or not?”
In a lot of ways, the change of subject was a tremendous relief. Spirit didn’t particularly like thinking about this magical power she was supposed to have. It made her feel as if everything in the world was just a thin skin stretched over a reality that was too scary to contemplate for very long.
The discussion of a Halloween dance—Halloween was a little less than two months from now—occupied everyone until one of the older students showed up to tell them the lounges were closing. He wore an armband with a badge on it that Burke said made him something called a “proctor.” You could become a proctor once you were eighteen, and they did a lot of stuff that had to do with running the school, and when they were wearing their armbands you had to do what they said the same as if they were one of the teachers.
In the hallway outside the Refectory—Spirit had finally remembered what it was called—they split up, boys going one way, girls going the other. Apparently the lounges closed half an hour before you had to be back in your room—she didn’t have a wristwatch, and she wondered if she could get one here—so there were a lot of kids drifting back to their rooms. Addie and Muirin had rooms on the second floor, so they took the stairs to the second floor, leaving Spirit to make her way back to her room on her own.
“It’ll be the one without a nameplate on it,” Muirin told her helpfully. “Just keep opening doors until you find it.”
“Check your computer,” Addie added. “Your class schedule will be on it.”
Spirit nodded, and walked off down the hall. One of the other girls from the lounge—Camilla, Spirit remembered, the girl who said her power was Transformation—was on the first floor, too.
She said she’d lived at Oakhurst for three years, and that it was a lot nicer than the place she’d come from. “You grow up in a Florida trailer park sharing a beat-up doublewide with half a dozen sproggs and your Mom and your no-account brother and his girlfriend and their brats, and a place like this is going to look damned good to you, even if they are a little touched in the head,” Camilla said, setting her jaw. “Didn’t help none that they was—were always trying to beat the Devil out of me either.” She smiled a little sadly.
“I’m sorry,” Spirit said. What else could she say?
“Not that I’m not sorry they’ve passed,” Camilla said. “But I was sure as heck glad that Oakhurst came along before I ended up going on the county. And here you are,” she added, pushing open the door. “You’ll have a nameplate on it by tomorrow, and then you won’t get lost anymore. Mine’s right down the hall. Camilla Patterson, if you need anything. Don’t worry too much about the demerits—they go easy on you the first week.”
“Thanks,” Spirit said. She pushed open her door and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
Following Adelaide’s advice, the first thing she did was check her computer. A tap on the spacebar cleared the screen-saver—it was the school coat of arms again, only now it was rotating—and sure enough, the e-mail icon was blinking. She sat down in her chair and clicked on it. It prompted her for her password, and she had a moment of panic before she remembered what Muirin had said, and typed in her birthdate: 070895.
There were only two e-mails. One was pretty much the same orientation that Muirin and Adelaide had walked her through, with a reminder to read through the Oakhurst Code of Conduct for more information. The other was her class schedule. It looked pretty standard: Science and Math and English and History and Physical Education—and (of course, since this was apparently Hogwarts West) Grammery. Her schedule was organized like a calendar, so it took her a moment to make out that her classes didn’t start tomorrow, they started the day after. Tomorrow—tomorrow she was scheduled for just one thing.
Testing.
FOUR
Spirit was jolted awake by loud unfamiliar music—something bouncy and upbeat that sounded like the soundtrack of a movie she didn’t ever want to see. She thrashed upright in her bed and forced her eyes open, and the shock of seeing an unfamiliar room made her realize where she was. Oakhurst. Montana.
It took Spirit almost two minutes to discover where the music was coming from. Her laptop. By the time she managed to make it shut up (in the process discovering that the horrible movie music was the Oakhurst School Song) she was thoroughly awake. It was a few minutes after six. Spirit shuddered. She wondered what the penalties for missing breakfast were. She’d give anything for another hour of sleep in her nice warm bed. . . .
Suddenly she remembered that today wouldn’t be an introduction to her classes here at the Orphan Asylum, but some kind of mysterious “testing.” After her extremely unpleasant interview with Doctor Ambrosius yesterday, just the thought of that made her stomach knot. In just twenty-four hours, everything she knew about the world had been turned inside-out.
And worse than that.
When she’d walked out of Doctor Ambrosius’s office yesterday, she would have happily run away from Oakhurst. But there wasn’t anywhere for her to run to. She was fifteen years old, she was completely alone in the world, and she had nothing except what Oakhurst Academy was willing to give her: no money, no home, nobody willing to take her in.
Dad had always told her that it was smart to keep your options open and to know where your escape routes were. Mom had said a Smith & Wesson beat five aces. Phoenix had said she planned to grow up to be an Evil Overlord. Spirit took a deep breath. Right now she was out of options and escape routes, and Oakhurst was holding all the cards. All she could do was hang in there until she grew up. Or maybe until some other option presented itself. Maybe something would turn up.
She grabbed her robe off the back of
the closet door (plaid, flannel, quilted, in the school colors) and went into the bathroom to shower.
At least she didn’t need to guess what to wear to find out if you were a wizard. She remembered she had to wear a skirt, and by investigating her dresser drawers, she discovered she had a choice of nylons, tights in any of the three school colors, knee socks, or ankle socks. She decided on brown tights (since she couldn’t wear jeans) and another sweater and turtleneck combo. By the time she got out of here, Spirit thought darkly, she was going to be desperate to wear something in some other color. Bright green, or fire-engine red, or pink with purple polka-dots and orange stripes . . .
Despite the fact that getting ready was so easy, she was almost late for breakfast—she got lost on the way from her room to the Refectory—and the room was full by the time she got there. The servers were already going around to the tables, and Spirit hesitated in the doorway. Maybe she should just leave . . .
But Burke saw her and stood up, and Muirin waved enthusiastically, so Spirit hurried across the room toward them and slid into the empty seat between Loch and Burke. There was already a glass of orange juice by her plate.
“You get a choice of juice in the morning,” Loch said quietly, “but you weren’t here, and almost everybody likes orange juice, so—”
“It’s fine,” Spirit said quickly. She was relieved to see that Loch looked just as nervous as she felt.
“You don’t get a choice of breakfast,” Muirin said darkly. “It’s all healthy. Ugh. Unless you can prove you have a horrible allergy.”
“To bacon and eggs?” Burke asked, sounding amused. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“Well, what if you’re Jewish?” Addie said. “You couldn’t eat bacon then.”
“I guess you’d eat eggs and . . . eggs,” Burke said. “I know Troy’s allergic to peanuts, and the kitchen’s careful not to poison him. That doesn’t mean you’re going to talk them into letting you have your Froot Loops, Muir.”
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