“I guess not.”
“So people train their dogs and cats not to do that. That’s how it’s supposed to be with magic, too.”
“Magic is like a house pet?”
“Father says you have to discipline it. The key to strong magic is to never get emotional. Stay in control. Like a dog trainer.”
“Yeah, but Ms. Starr wants us to feel our feelings,” Elliott pointed out. “And she wants us to understand our magic, not control it.”
“I know,” Nory said. “But I don’t think she’s right. Father says magic is supposed to be kept in a crate. Just like you’d do with a puppy you want to train. And when you let the puppy out, you keep it on a leash, right?”
“Yeah,” Elliott said.
“But I don’t think Ms. Starr believes in crates or leashes,” Nory said. “And that’s a problem.”
“If magic is a puppy,” said Elliott slowly, “Ms. Starr wants us to love the puppy instead of being its master.”
“Yes,” said Nory. “She wants us to understand the puppy and connect with the puppy, so we don’t need a crate or a leash.”
“But that won’t work for our magic,” Elliott pointed out. “If you and I want to be normal, we have to think like your father and control it, don’t we?” He furrowed his brow. “I have to squash down the freeze power and only do flare.”
“And I have to squash down the different animals,” said Nory, “and just do regular ones.”
“Yeah.”
For a moment, they were silent. Nory pulled a pencil out of her backpack. “Okay, so let’s think about control. Say you want to light this pencil on fire without freezing it afterward. How can you turn off your freezing and only do fire? Can you banish the freezing part of yourself?”
“Maybe?”
“What if you told the freezing part that it’s a bad puppy? Tell it that it’s a bad, bad puppy, and if it comes out of its crate, it’ll get in big trouble. Try!”
Elliott took a breath. He stared hard at the pencil. It flared briefly, then went out.
“It didn’t freeze!” yelled Nory. “It didn’t freeze!”
“But it went out,” said Elliott glumly. “I need it to stay lit.”
“It’s progress!” exclaimed Nory. “The bad puppy idea worked!”
“Okay, your turn.”
Nory worked on black kitten. Kitten, kitten, only kitten, she thought. No beaver, no dragon, no anything. That part of my magic is like a bad puppy. A very naughty puppy that has to stay in its crate.
Her vision blurred and there she was. A kitten. A lovely kitten, perfectly shaped—until—
Oh drat.
Nory felt her body change. Her head grew big. Her tail grew thick. She had her kitten body, but she had the head and tail of—a goat. A small goat. But definitely a goat. She was a koat!
“Nory!” Elliott shouted. “Change back! Start over!”
I really should, Girl-Nory thought. I should change back and start over and—
But oooh, first I will just eat those vegetable plants, Koat-Nory interrupted. Yes. Yum, yum, tomato plants! Yum, yum, squash plant. And what’s that? Laundry on the clothesline? Yum, yum! Socks! Koat-Nory didn’t understand socks, but she was happy to fill her koat tummy with them.
“Nory! Stop! Can you even hear me?” Elliott was yelling.
Delicious socks. I wonder if there are shoes around? Koat-Nory thought. Ooh, look, flowers! Those might be good to eat, too. She opened her mouth to eat some flowers—only to see them freeze solid.
Ugh.
Cold!
The shock of the frozen flower in her mouth made her turn back into Girl-Nory.
“Oh, Elliott!” she wailed. “Why can’t I do it? Why can’t I get something right just once?”
“You’re not the only one who messed up,” Elliott said. “I meant to freeze a single flower, just to make you stop. But look. I froze them all. As soon as I got scared, I lost control and ruined everything.”
Nory looked at Margo’s flowers—or what used to be her flowers. They were all flower-shaped icicles now.
And the vegetables were eaten. And the socks.
Nory sighed. “We need a lot more practice,” she said.
“And your aunt,” Elliott noted glumly, “needs new rosebushes.”
The next day passed with math, geography, poetry, group trust exercises, and interpretive dance. They also had music and gym. Everyone but Sebastian enjoyed music. When they were invited to experiment with various instruments like flutes and violins, Sebastian covered his eyes and screamed. “Are you people trying to blind me? Do you know what the sound waves on badly played musical instruments look like? Sharp! They’re like knives to the eyeballs!” He had to go sit in the hall.
Gym was also a risky endeavor. Marigold shrank two basketballs, and Elliott froze one. Bax turned into a rock when Willa passed him the ball.
Back in Ms. Starr’s class, they practiced the headstands again. Lots and lots of headstands.
This time, Bax tried lying over a chair with his head upside down instead of doing the headstand. He remained human for most of the session, which made Ms. Starr very happy. Pepper was finally able to go upside down in the center of the room, not against the wall. Marigold’s headstand was good, but she hit her leg on the hot radiator when she came down. There was a large burn across the bare skin of her ankle, and she held on to it, crying.
“Let me help,” said Elliott. He grabbed an eraser from a nearby desk and froze it solid. Then he handed it to Marigold.
She pressed it to the burn. “Wow,” she said, looking at him as if he were a hero. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Elliott told her. “As in, really. Please don’t talk about it outside this classroom.”
When the school bell rang at three o’clock, Ms. Starr called Nory and Elliott to her desk. “Here,” she said, handing them each a piece of paper. Her voice sagged a bit, Nory thought.
Your evaluation is approved, the papers read. Your test will be a week from Friday. Come to the gymnasium thirty minutes before school starts—and remember: Luck comes in many different forms. It was signed by Principal Gonzalez.
* * *
That afternoon, they practiced at Elliott’s house.
Mr. Cohen had big hair like Elliott. He worked from home as a guitar teacher. He was a Flicker, and from what Nory could tell, he mainly used his talent to make Elliott’s baby brother laugh by making toys disappear and reappear.
“Nory, Elliott’s told us about your magic. Sounds like you’re a real dynamo.” Mr. Cohen grinned. “You sprayed those Sparkie kids, huh? Give me five!”
Nory smiled shyly and touched her palm to his. Her heart both stretched and shrank. Why couldn’t her own father high-five her magic?
“We’re going to my room, Dad,” Elliott said. “We have homework.”
“Let me show Nory your ices first,” Mr. Cohen said, explaining to Nory, “I keep a photo album. I take pictures of as many as I can.”
“She doesn’t care, Dad,” Elliott said. “Nobody cares.” He pulled Nory past his father and upstairs. “I’ve asked him to stop taking pictures of every little freeze, but he won’t.” He raised his voice. “Obviously he hates me, or he wouldn’t try to embarrass me every minute of my life.”
From downstairs, Elliott’s dad laughed. “I adore you, kiddo!” he called. “And come on, the frozen TV remote was cool!”
“No, it was just frozen,” Elliott grumbled. “Which meant it was broken.”
He and Nory settled on the floor in his room. Elliott lined up a row of candles to practice on, and also a row of Popsicle sticks.
Then they got to work.
It did not go well.
Elliott froze one candle after another.
Nory turned into another koat and ate the candles.
Elliott froze some Popsicle sticks.
Nory turned into a dritten and blew fire at Elliott’s bedspread.
Elliott froze the bedspread and put the
fire out, leaving an icy scorch mark in its place.
Nory turned back into a human. She groaned and put her head in her hands.
“It was an ugly bedspread anyway,” Elliott said.
They both laughed, but they knew they were in trouble.
* * *
At school the next morning, Nory opened her desk and found a book inside: The Box of Normal by Eugenia Throckmorton.
Who had put it there? Ms. Starr?
Unlikely. Normal was one of her least favorite words.
But no one else knew that Nory and Elliott were trying to switch classes. They had decided not to discuss it with the others. They didn’t want their classmates to feel bad.
Nory flipped through the thin, crinkly pages. She gobbled up the words.
Elliott arrived and slid into his seat just as Ms. Starr called the class to attention. Nory hid her book in her lap and kept reading.
The person with upside-down abilities who wishes to pass as normal should use a technique I call “the box of normal,” Eugenia Throckmorton had written.
The book explained that there was a history of Flares, like Elliott, who were Freezers as well. Very often the freezing overwhelmed the flare talent. The book also gave examples of unusual Fluxers. In one case there was a boy who shifted into large carnivores from the day he turned ten. When he was fifteen, he was doing extinct animals: velociraptors and tyrannosaurs. Luckily, the “box of normal” skill helped him limit himself to bears. In another case, a girl suffered from turning into insect after insect, never by choice. She had once been trapped as a fly for a whole week. Yet again, the “box of normal” helped. Using that skill, the girl learned to turn herself into a ladybug—and to switch back to a girl at any time.
Nory couldn’t find anything about Fluxers like Bax, who turned into objects.
It didn’t mention Fierces, either, or people who shrank things or made indoor rainstorms.
Then there was a long and probably boring section on licensing and legal stuff, so Nory jumped ahead to the instructions.
Throckmorton wrote that to do normal magic you should “box in” the tiny regular part of your wonky talent. The rest of your talent is an unruly jungle, she wrote. Deep inside the jungle, you build a safe place to go. The safe place is the box, your box of normal.
Nory thought her box of normal was the black kitten. She could hold black kitten longer than she could hold any other form. She had a normal skunk, too. She could do that for a little while, at least.
Elliott’s box of normal was the way he could heat marshmallows and light matches.
Maybe there was a box of normal for Andres, too. He could fly. He just couldn’t come down.
But was there a box of normal for people like Bax, Pepper, Marigold, and Willa?
Nory worried that there wasn’t. The thought made her sad. But not so sad that she stopped reading.
* * *
By lunchtime, Nory felt like a changed person.
“Come with me now,” she said to Elliott. They didn’t go to the cafeteria. Instead, they hid in the supply closet. “We’ve been going about it all wrong!” she explained.
“We have?” Elliott said.
“Yes, but now I know what to do.” Nory explained about Throckmorton’s book and the box of normal. “I’ve been building my box of normal all morning, and I want to see if it works. I’m going to do kitten, okay?”
“I don’t want to be in a small space with you when you flux,” said Elliott.
“Please?”
“You might burn me with dragon fire.”
“You’ll be fine. You have ice power!”
“You might skunk spray me or chew my shoes.”
“Elliott! Please. This could help us both!”
Elliott rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. But if anything goes upside down, I’m going to leave the closet and lock you inside.”
“Nothing’s going to go upside down, and you want to know why?” Nory grinned. “Because I’ve got a box of normal!”
“Huh?”
“I’ve been building a safe place inside my brain all morning.”
She closed her eyes. In her mind, she saw a box, and inside the box was the part of her magic that let her make ordinary animals. Ordinary animals with human minds.
It was a small box. A tiny box, really. The jungle of her magic was enormous, it seemed.
No matter. She was safe inside her tiny box. Safe and sound and kitten, kitten, kitten …
Her vision blurred and her body shifted.
Kitten!
“You did it!” Elliott exclaimed. “Now just stay that way, okay? No funny business.” He reached down and patted her kitten head. “You look awesome. Nice job on the fluffy ears, and you have good long whiskers.”
Kitten-Nory purred. She knew that the boy who was petting her was Elliott. She knew they were friends. She understood what he was saying. Box of normal!
Kitten-Nory walked around the supply closet in the dim light. She thought about her regular Nory life. She stayed completely kitten-shaped.
Then, because she decided to, she popped back into her own Nory body. She looked at Elliott with wonder.
“That was great!” Elliott said. “Oh my gosh. Nory! I timed it on my phone, and you were a kitten for a whole ten minutes!”
“I did it,” Nory said. She felt tired and proud. “And if I can, you can, too.”
* * *
At the end of the day, Nory pushed through the crowded hall to drink from the water fountain. It was invisible again, but by now she knew where it was. When she finished, she looked up to see Pepper beside her.
“So?” Pepper asked. It was the first time she’d looked Nory in the eye since the skunkephant in the cafeteria.
“So what?”
“So how’s it going? With Elliott, and practicing for your test. Are you getting closer?”
“You know we’re trying to switch out of UDM?”
“Yeah. I heard you guys talking about it.”
“Does everyone know?”
“I don’t think so.”
Nory’s mind felt dull. Then the pieces of the puzzle came together. “The book. Did you leave it for me?”
“Well.” Pepper shrugged. “I thought it might work for you and Elliott. It definitely doesn’t work for me. I’ve got no normal to put in the box.”
Nory looked at Pepper and saw the small, friendly girl she’d first met—the girl Pepper was to her before Nory knew she was a Fierce.
Nory had liked that girl. A lot.
Poor Pepper, Nory thought. How lonely she must be. How awful to have a talent that pushes people away.
“It is working,” Nory said. “The box and all that, it’s made a huge difference. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Pepper said wistfully. “I don’t fit in anywhere. I don’t think I ever will. But maybe you can.”
The box of normal worked for Elliott, too. He tried it that afternoon at his house, with Nory looking on. He lit a candle. He lit two candles. He lit three.
“Elliott!” Nory said. “Three candles and no freezing. That was awesome!”
Elliott was clearly pleased. He blew the candles out with a poof of air.
He roasted a marshmallow perfectly, too.
“Mmm,” said Nory, taking a bite. “Delicious. Do you want some?”
He shook his head. “I don’t like marshmallows.”
“Really? What’s not to love?” Nory popped the rest of it in her mouth.
Elliott shrugged. “I’m more into ice cream. Go ahead and laugh. A Freezer who likes ice cream, haw. I’ve heard it before.”
“I wasn’t going to laugh.”
“Lacey thinks it’s hilarious.”
“Oh, come on. Everybody likes ice cream. That’s why it’s great to be a Freezer. Maybe one day you’ll be able to make it with just your hands!”
Elliott shook his head. “No, I won’t. Remember? If the box of normal keeps working, I won’t freeze anything ever again.�
�
Nory was silent for a minute. What Elliott had just said seemed kind of sad. But then again, he didn’t want to be a Freezer. He wanted to be a Flare. “No problem,” she told him, brightly. “Who needs to make ice cream? You can always buy it at the store.”
* * *
The next week, they practiced every chance they got. Day after day.
Nory became a puppy. The puppy did not sprout squid legs.
Nory became a skunk. The skunk did not grow an elephant trunk.
Elliott cooked eggs and marshmallows. Sometimes they were burnt or undercooked, but never ever did they freeze.
* * *
Andres was the second person to notice something was up, or at least the second person to say something out loud about it.
It happened Wednesday morning. They were doing a trust activity.
First, everyone had to choose a partner. Nory chose Elliott.
Then Ms. Starr gave each pair of students a large mixing bowl full of whipped cream. Hidden within the cream, she explained, were cherries. The same number in each bowl: more than five, fewer than twenty-five.
“The team who finds the most cherries wins,” Ms. Starr said. Her eyes danced. “But, there’s a catch.”
“Of course there is,” Bax grumbled. He’d been paired with Andres for a partner, which required him to grab Andres’s leash and haul him down from the ceiling, hand over hand. Then he handed Andres the bag of bricks. Even so, Andres still floated a foot off the floor, like a boy-shaped balloon.
“What’s the catch?” Willa asked. Her partner was Pepper, and Nory noticed that they were wearing striped shirts. These days, they often coordinated clothes.
“The catch is that you have to find the cherries using only your mouths!” Ms. Starr bounced on her toes. “Just your mouths. Not your hands.”
Everyone looked at her.
“Um, what about germs?” Marigold said.
“No one’s sick, are they?” Ms. Starr asked. She barreled on. “Great, then.”
“I am going to have problems with this,” Sebastian said. “The sound waves of slurping are absurdly bright. I will need sunglasses.”
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