Upside-Down Magic

by Emily Jenkins

  Nory was a bitten for only a minute, but during that minute she got a lot done. She chewed up one of Ms. Starr’s paperbacks and knocked over the sunflowers on her desk. She ran three times around the classroom and then decided to build another beaver lodge. It was only when Bitten-Nory tried to gnaw on Ms. Starr’s chair leg that the metal taste snapped her back to her Nory self.

  She was under her teacher’s desk.

  Please let this be a bad dream, she thought.

  “What the zum-zum was that?” a voice asked.

  “Whatever it was, it wasn’t normal,” a second voice replied.

  “It had teeth like a beaver.”

  “It was too small to be a beaver.”

  “The back end was all fluffy and black.”

  “We didn’t see it long enough to tell.”

  “Now we know what’s wrong with her, that’s for sure.”

  And then Ms. Starr’s voice: “Class, let this be a chance for us to learn the first lesson of Upside-Down Magic. There is nothing wrong with any of you. We will not use that word to describe ourselves.”

  “Wonky, then.”

  “We won’t use wonky, either. It’s not polite or kind. Instead, we will say different, or upside down,” said Ms. Starr.

  Nory climbed out from under the desk. A cluster of faces looked down at her. Some were concerned. Others were just curious.

  “I’m all right,” she said. She was hot with shame. “Sorry.”

  “Do you need to go to the nurse?” asked Ms. Starr.

  “Oh, no,” said Nory. “That just happens sometimes. It’s fine.”

  “Well, we’re all here to figure out how to manage our particular kinds of magic in every situation, even times of stress,” said Ms. Starr. “And the first day of school is stressful for all of us. Even me! Nory, you’ve just done a lovely job showing us what kind of magic you have, which is how I want to start the day anyway.”

  She gestured for all the kids to return to their seats. Nory took the desk beside Elliott.

  Ms. Starr went to the front of the room and hopped up to sit on her desk. “I’m very happy to be here! I just finished my teacher training in UDM, and I’m looking forward to working with you this year. Do you know this is the first UDM class Dunwiddle has offered? Isn’t that exciting?”

  She swung her feet, and her bright yellow sneakers swished through the air. “As for you guys, you’re here because someone thinks you should be. Because someone called you wonky, or broken. Or worse.”

  “Nothing like a positive message to start the day,” Elliott whispered to Nory.

  “But guess what?” Ms. Starr’s face broke into a grin. “I’ve been called wonky and different, too! And I speak from experience when I say: There are ways to make the most of your magic, whether it’s typical or not. I am here to help you get in touch with your nature, to understand your emotions, and to develop skills. With these ideas in mind, I’d like to invite each of you to show us your magic.”

  Her manner was joyful, as if they were sharing a secret. A good secret.

  She turned to the blond boy with the thuggish eyebrows, although perhaps his eyebrows weren’t quite so thuggish after all. His eyes were round and earnest, and a tuft of hair stuck up from the top of his head. He actually looked nice, if nervous.

  “Sebastian?” Ms. Starr said. “Would you like to go first? Say something about yourself and then share your magic.”

  Sebastian stood. His chair scraped the floor. “My name is Sebastian. I’m a kind of Flicker,” he said. “Only I can’t turn invisible. And I can’t turn other things invisible, either.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  “I see sound waves. They’re invisible to most people.”

  “Are there sound waves coming from me?” Ms. Starr asked.

  “If there weren’t, you’d be dead.” Sebastian looked startled when some of the kids laughed. “Why is that funny?” he asked. “Sound waves are very important. When you talk or breathe, or when your heart beats? Sound waves. They’re zooming all over the room.” He waved his hands wildly. “Zoom! They overlap a lot. It’s pretty complex.”

  “What’s the point?” asked the other boy in the front row. Nory thought he sounded rude. Also, he wore a T-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it, and Nory imagined him picking out that shirt on purpose, so that people would know right away what kind of boy he was. The kind to wear a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt.

  “Seeing sound waves,” he went on. “What good does it do you?”

  “They’re all around us,” said Sebastian.

  “And?”

  “I see other invisible things, too.”

  “Whatever,” said the boy.

  Nory felt depressed. First, Elliott had ditched her for his Flare friends.

  Then the girl she liked turned out to be Pepper the Fierce.

  Then she’d turned into a bitten in front of everyone.

  The skull-and-crossbones boy was mean.

  There wasn’t much of a bright side to this day.

  “Thank you, Sebastian,” Ms. Starr said. “I know it’s not easy to go first.” She turned to the skull-and-crossbones boy. “Bax? Would you like to go next?”

  “No.”

  Nory expected Ms. Starr to say that he had to, but instead she smiled sweetly. “No problem. I’ll come back to you later. How about you, Elliott?”

  Elliott stood. He shifted uneasily and patted down his big hair. “Flare,” he said.

  “Flare and … ?” Ms. Starr prompted.

  “Flare and Freezer,” said Elliott, his eyes down.

  “Would you show us, please?” Ms. Starr looked genuinely excited. “Here. I have a glass of water. Would you like to freeze it?”

  “I can do regular Flare stuff, too,” said Elliott. “Some of it, anyway.”

  “You can do that later,” said Ms. Starr. “Let’s start with freezing the water.”

  Elliott waved a hand. The water iced over right away. Then the ice shot down Ms. Starr’s hand and up her sweater.

  “Elliott, stop!” she cried.

  Elliott stopped before the ice reached her neck.

  He covered his hands with his face. “It’s really wonky! I’m sorry!”

  “We don’t say wonky,” Ms. Starr corrected. “Remember? We say different. Boys and girls, Elliott is an Upside-Down Flare. Thinking about opposites is a great place to start understanding unusual magic.”

  She said all this while taking off her frozen yellow sweater and pulling a spare cardigan out of a cupboard. “I came prepared,” she said cheerfully. “That’s one of the things we learned in UDM teacher training.”

  She put on the new cardigan. It was bright orange. “Thank you for sharing that with us, Elliott. Now, Andres, are you ready?”

  Everyone looked up.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious what my magic does,” Andres said gloomily. With a grunt, he pushed off the ceiling. His body drifted a foot toward the floor, then flew back to the ceiling as if he were being jerked by a yo-yo string. He bounced a few times before coming to a stop.

  The girl next to Nory raised her hand. She was light-skinned and wore her dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail. She was dressed in funky red-and-black-striped pants and big boots. In her ear, Nory spotted a hearing aid.

  “What happens if you go outside?” the girl asked Andres.

  “I’m on a leash. I’m sure you all saw my sister walking me to school.”

  “What would happen if she let go?” the girl persisted.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out,” Andres said.

  What an awful magic to have, Nory thought. At least when I turn into a bitten I can turn back.

  She had little time to feel sorry for him, though. Ms. Starr had moved on and Pepper was rising from her desk. She kept her eyes on the ground.

  “It’s fine, Pepper,” Ms. Starr said. “Really.”

  Pepper hunched her shoulders. She said something Nory couldn’t make out.
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  “A demonstration would be best,” Ms. Starr answered gently. “Do you need a volunteer? A Fluxer, perhaps, since your magic works on animals? I’ll get some kids from the seventh-grade class.”

  She picked up the phone, and less than a minute later, two seventh graders came in the room. A boy and a girl.

  Pepper sighed.

  “We’re all here for you, Pepper,” Ms. Starr encouraged. “Don’t worry.”

  “All right. Do either of you do crocodile?” Pepper asked.

  The seventh graders shook their heads. “That’s really advanced,” said the girl.

  “How about a bear?”

  “No large carnivores until the end of high school,” said the boy.

  “In fifth we mastered all different colors of kitten,” the girl volunteered.

  “I was hoping for something that wasn’t little and cute,” Pepper muttered. “The nicer the animal, the worse this makes me feel.”

  “Kittens are fine,” Ms. Starr said. “Let’s see.”

  As if she’d flipped a switch, both seventh graders transformed into teensy kittens: one orange and one calico.

  They were really good kittens, Nory thought, feeling a little jealous. Perfect whiskers, perfect stripes and spots. Not a touch of dragon anywhere.

  Moving slowly, Pepper knelt down to the kittens. She held out her hand the way a person does to cats when the person wants to say, I’m safe. See? Come sniff me!

  The calico’s tail stood straight up. Her legs went rigid. She yowled a horrible, high-pitched yowl, then fled the room in a blur.

  The orange kitten cowered and hissed. He tried to escape by crawling up the wall, his tiny claws scrabbling at the white paint.

  Pepper was clearly the scariest animal these kittens could imagine.

  Ms. Starr cleared her throat. “All right. All right. Thank you for showing us your power, Pepper. Let them relax now.”

  “But I can’t,” said Pepper desperately. “I can’t turn it on or off. They just hate me.”

  “Hmm,” said Ms. Starr. “Pepper, would you mind going down the hall—way down the hall? Just until everyone calms down?”

  Twin spots of color appeared on Pepper’s cheeks as she slunk out of the room.

  Things worth doing are usually hard,” Ms. Starr said. “But so what? We’re not afraid of hard work, are we?”

  It had taken Ms. Starr and the seventh-grade teacher ten minutes to coax the orange kitten down from the top of the cupboard. The calico had fled down the hall and out the door, but had luckily been found underneath a radiator. Now things were back to normal. Pepper had returned, and slumped in her chair.

  “I’m here to work with you. With all of you,” Ms. Starr continued. She gave a short nod, as if that settled matters. “Marigold, you’re next.”

  The girl with the hearing aid stood up. “I’m Marigold, and my parents live three hours away,” she said. “I moved in with my grandparents so I could come to this program. My grandparents let me watch as much TV as I want, so that part’s good. But I miss my family.”

  Me, too, Nory thought.

  Marigold went on. “I’m not Upside-Down, exactly. I mean, not an opposite. I’m …”

  Whatever Marigold was, she couldn’t find the right words for it. Or else she didn’t want to say them out loud.

  “It’s okay. Just show us your magic,” Ms. Starr told her.

  “If you say so.” Marigold touched her chair. It began to shrink. Smaller and smaller until—oh! They couldn’t see it anymore.

  “I shrank my bed and now I have to sleep on an air mattress,” Marigold said. “And I shrank my grandpa’s car and now he has to use his bicycle. This year I hope I can learn how to make things big again. Or at least control the shrinkage.”

  “You’re kidding,” scoffed Bax, the rude boy who wouldn’t show his magic. “You shrink things, which basically ruins them, and you don’t know how to fix them?”

  Ms. Starr clapped her hands. “She doesn’t know how yet. That’s something we can work on, Marigold.”

  Marigold bit her lip and nodded. Then, since her chair was too small to see, she sat down on the floor.

  “Willa, you’re next,” said Ms. Starr.

  The girl who rose from her desk was like a blond white elf, made of pointy elbows and knees. Her hair was a pale shiny curtain and her mouth was full of braces. “I make it rain,” she said.

  “Willa is another Upside-Down Flare,” said Ms. Starr. “Elliott, isn’t that interesting?”

  “Can you light fires?” Elliott asked.

  Willa shook her head. “No.”

  “Let’s try to talk in positives,” said Ms. Starr. “You do rain, at present, and I’m sure you’ll do more as you develop. Do we need umbrellas?”

  Willa nodded.

  “Again, I am prepared!” Ms. Starr proclaimed. She strode to the group of yellow umbrellas leaning in the corner. Then she handed one to each student.

  “We’re ready, Willa!” she called out.

  Nory felt her depression lift a little. If Willa could make rain, that was important. She could help crops grow, bring plants to barren deserts. Help animals. A rain talent could be really useful. It might be very unusual, but no one could fairly call it wonky.

  She got her umbrella open just in time. Rain poured from the ceiling, drenching the room and running in small rivers from everyone’s umbrellas.

  “The floor’s wet,” said Elliott.

  “And the carpet,” said Marigold.

  “And all our papers,” said Bax. “And the books.”

  “It’s kind of awesome, though,” Nory murmured, admiring a raindrop on the toe of her sneaker.

  “Is it?” said Andres. “Really?” His umbrella was inverted and filled with rain. It had become heavy and was pulling his upper body down while his feet stayed on the ceiling. He was soaked.

  Willa turned the rain off. “Sorry,” she said. “It never ends well. I can only do it indoors, so it’s kinda worthless.”

  “Positives, remember?” said Ms. Starr. “Every day is an adventure, and Willa has a remarkable and unusual talent. We’ll get the janitor in here, and Andres, I’ll see if I can get you dry clothes.”

  She picked up the classroom phone and made a call. After she hung up, she said, “Problem solved. But let’s all bring in spare things to keep in our lockers, okay? The days will go smoother that way, with Willa and Marigold and Elliott among us. The Flare classrooms all have to do the same, you know—and they need burn ointment! So we should count ourselves lucky.”

  “I can totally light fires,” said Elliott. “You just didn’t give me a chance to show it.”

  Everyone closed their umbrellas and stood awkwardly around the wet desks.

  “It’s down to you, Bax,” said Ms. Starr, smiling at the one student who hadn’t yet shown his magic. “Are you ready to share?”

  “No,” Bax said.

  “Come on, Bax,” Ms. Starr said. She was firm but friendly. “We will all support you, and we will help you become your best self. The spirit of the UDM classroom is trust.”

  “I don’t think I should,” Bax insisted.

  “I disagree. We can start by talking. I know from your papers that you’re an unusual Fluxer, like Nory. Right?”

  “Um.”

  “Nory showed us a very interesting”—Ms. Starr gave Nory a smile—“what was it?”

  “A bitten,” said Nory. “A beaver-kitten.”

  “A lovely bitten,” said Ms. Starr. “And after that, I think we’re prepared to handle anything. So? Bax?”

  Bax cradled his head in his hands.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Ms. Starr said.

  “Fine,” he mumbled.

  Nory heard a whoosh as Bax turned into a tremendous chunk of rock. The floor shook as he crashed off his chair and onto the floor.

  “Whoa,” Willa said.

  “That was a great sound wave,” Sebastian added.

  “He’s a rock,” Nory said, astonished. S
he had never known a Fluxer to become a rock, a plant, or anything that wasn’t an animal. She couldn’t quite believe it.

  “He’s really something!” said Ms. Starr. She hopped off her desk and walked around Bax, admiring the thoroughness of his transformation. “Very good, Bax. All rock, no boy. How do you feel?”

  Bax just sat there.

  Ms. Starr laughed. “Okay, you’ve proved your point. Change back, please.”

  Bax just sat there.

  “Bax?” Ms. Starr shook him. “Fiddlesticks, I think he’s stuck.”

  It took four people to roll him down the hallway to the medical office. Nurse Riley was a pudgy ­gentleman who wore scrubs decorated with unicorns. He seemed surprised to see Bax, but confident. He promised to have him fixed up before lunch was over.

  Nory followed the rest of her classmates on the way to the cafeteria. This is Upside-Down Magic class, she thought. A Freezer, a Fierce, a girl who shrinks things, a girl who wets things, a boy who sees sound waves, two wonky Fluxers, and a Flyer who can’t come down from the ceiling.

  Nory took her hundredth deep breath of the day.

  She wanted to look on the bright side … but from where she was standing, she didn’t see much of one, at all.

  In the cafeteria, Nory and Elliott both got plates of mac and cheese. At the salad bar, Elliott got only cucumbers. Nory got only cherry tomatoes. He was a single-veggie guy and she was a single-veggie girl. Well, tomatoes were not really veggies—as Father liked to point out—but close enough. Plus they both had big hair. Nory smiled at that thought. Single veggies and big hair: two things, at least, that they had in common besides Upside-Down Magic.

  “Come sit with my Flare friends from ordinary school,” Elliott offered. Nory nodded and followed him to a table where two girls and a boy sat, already eating. The two girls had carrots and celery and broccoli next to their mac and cheese. The boy had a huge serving of mac and cheese and zero vegetables.

  “Hi, guys,” Elliott said, setting down his tray. “This is Nory. She just moved to town.” He gestured at the others. “Nory, this is Lacey, Zinnia, and Rune. We call ourselves the Sparkies.”

  The girl named Lacey looked familiar. Nory drew her eyebrows together and said, “This is going to sound weird, but do I know you?”