Hawthorn Academy: Year One

by D. R. Perry

  "I don't understand." I opened my eyes, sniffling. The tears hadn’t come yet.

  "That's a blessing and a curse, Aliyah. May it prove to be more the former than the latter."

  "Speaking of blessings and curses, Bubbe, what we do about the dragonet? No matter what happens, at least one of the guys is going to suffer."

  "Any sentient being knows suffering is inevitable, but any healer knows one thing more—suffering ends. I'm proud of you for offering them help. Bring them by sometime this weekend, and we'll see what we can do."

  "Thanks, Bubbe. I love you." And there went the waterworks. Tears rolled down my face, dropping to the table, onto my arm, into my egg cream, even on Ember.

  "Peep." She rubbed her cheek against mine, not caring that she got all wet.

  "I love you too, Bissell."

  She said no more that night, but it was more than enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I made my way up the back stairs in the dark. I didn't need light to see. I had used that staircase for sixteen years, practically learned to walk on it. But as I ascended, a pale golden light banished some darkness in front of me. I glowed.

  "Go away." I tried shutting off the solar magic, but it was no use. No matter how much I wanted to wish away being an extramagus, the powers I didn't want wouldn't leave me alone.

  I stood on the top step, my hand on the doorknob, unable to open the door and enter the apartment. It wasn’t that I didn't want to be in there. All I wanted was to go home, and it was right there for me on the other side of the door. All I had to do was turn and push.

  But did I have the right? I wasn’t the person I had been when I left for Hawthorn Academy. Was this why Noah spent so much time there and seemed so reluctant to leave school? Had he changed too?

  No. He was just like Dad, except for being a gay teenager. He even looked like our father when he didn’t have time to straighten his hair. My brother was a Morgenstern through and through, down to the serpent familiar, even if he wasn’t happy about it.

  But I was different. I resembled evil Uncle Richard more than my mother, despite what my family had said my whole life. Were they lying? Did Mom see the brother she’d never mentioned in my face every day? Was I the reason she seemed so tired all the time?

  The glow persisted, even growing stronger. I wished I'd never have to see it again, so I closed my eyes and focused, telling it to get lost, scram, beat it, make like a tree and leave. When I opened my eyes, it was still there, like a rotten smell under the sink even after you took the garbage out.

  "Just go already!" I didn't know if I spoke to the solar magic or myself at this point, but that time, it worked. The glow vanished.

  I almost fell into the apartment as the door was pulled open. Ember stretched her wings out behind me, steadying me.

  "Go where?" My father stood blinking into the darkness. "We just got home. Did you want to get some ice cream?"

  "Nowhere, Dad. Sorry." I shrugged, stepping through the door and into the space between the kitchen and the dining room. "Sorry."

  "Did you get in a fight with your friends?" Dad lifted his glasses, peering closely at me. "Are you okay?"

  "No, but school was a whole week of stress."

  "Do you need a hug?"

  I couldn't say another word or I'd burst into tears, so I flung my arms around my father instead. He hugged back, lifting me off the ground even though I was almost exactly his height. Or maybe a tiny bit taller. This was exactly what I needed.

  I couldn’t possibly think him even secretly disappointed in me, let alone afraid I'd turn out like his criminal brother-in-law, not after a hug like that.

  "Don't forget me."

  Mom stood behind Dad, her arms outstretched. He pulled her in for a group hug. I got exactly the same feeling from Mom—that she loved me. Both my parents did, and while I wasn't wrong to question it, I probably wouldn’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.

  While I moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer, I thanked them for the pizza and told them I'd been to visit Bubbe and that I was tired. I didn't have to feign a yawn as I said good night and headed up the back stairs.

  I lucked out in the parental department.

  It wasn’t until I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and got my pajamafied self into bed that I realized almost none of my school friends shared that luck. But that was a concern for tomorrow. For now, I needed sleep.

  I woke to Ember peeping in my face. It wasn’t loud, more chirpy and social. She was probably lonely after being at Hawthorn Academy for a whole week, playing with other familiars.

  "Don't worry, girl, we'll see another dragonet today."

  She flapped her wings, letting out a trilling sound I’d never heard her make before.

  "I'll have to ask Bubbe what that means." I sat up, stretching before cautiously making my way out of the bed. The last thing I wanted was a goose egg from the low ceiling to start my day.

  Once I’d showered, brushed my teeth, and gotten dressed, I headed downstairs. My laundry was in a basket at the foot of it, so I picked that up and turned back around, putting it on my bed to be folded later. No, I didn't expect my parents to do laundry chores for me, especially not while I slept in. I was just glad they paid the bills.

  Down in the kitchen, Dad made pancakes. With blueberries. Ember fluttered down to the counter and started prancing around, peeping and making an epic fuss until Dad reached out and tossed a blueberry in her direction.

  Ember had to swoop off the counter and dive in order to catch the fruit before it hit the floor. When she came up, she held the little blueberry in her mouth, facing the shiny glass front of the stove. She must have liked how she looked holding it or something.

  I headed to the dining room and set the table except for the plates, which I kept stacked where Dad could reach them. Mom came out of her office to carry each plate to the table once he'd laden it with cakes. I got syrup, cinnamon, butter, and cream out of the kitchen. Once we were seated and half the pancakes were gone, Mom asked about my plans for the day.

  "My friends Dylan and Logan are coming from Hawthorn. Logan's coming first, before lunch. Dylan can't make it until later because he works in the café."

  "Oh." Mom’s smile was unexpected. "I used to work there."

  "Really?" I tried not to blink or otherwise seem more than casually curious. I'd have never thought she’d been a work-study student, not with the kind of money the Hopewells came from. I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd said that last week.

  "Yes. It's how I met your father. I served him coffee."

  "You mean, you spilled on me." He chuckled.

  "Well, at least it was iced."

  "Doesn't matter. You were still hot."

  "Mom! Dad!" I had grown out of thinking boys were icky, but somehow the idea of sex put me off, especially when it involved my parents. "Eww!"

  "Aliyah." My mother tilted her head, arching an eyebrow with an expression I recognized as faux-serious. "You and Noah didn't spring fully formed from your father's brow and calf like Athena and Dionysus."

  "Still." I shook my head, my expression sobering. I couldn't help it at the mention of my brother, but the rest of the family had no clue about the issues between Noah and me yet.

  My parents finished their breakfast with faint grins on their faces. The two of them were still very much in love, although it was a mystery to me how anyone ended up together. Every remotely romantic interaction I’d had was more awkward than a turtle on its back. Maybe someday I'd figure it out. Or maybe not. Izzy didn't seem concerned about it. I wished it didn't bother me.

  The doorbell rang as we were rinsing dishes. Mom and Dad finished up, letting me answer it. I opened the door to find Izzy and Cadence. They came in, and we sat on the living room sofa. I sank against the cushions, relieved to be with my most familiar and best friends.

  "We're going out." My father poked his head in through from the kitchen. "Bubbe has some critters that need exe
rcise, the kind you walk on a leash, so we're taking a stroll around town. See you girls later!"

  We all said goodbye. Cadence grabbed the remote, flipping through channels on the television absently. She usually had to occupy part of her attention with something while trying to focus. I was used to that, although it drove other people up the wall. By other people, I meant all of Izzy's siblings. They didn't have much patience.

  "So, what's this big thing that came up?" Cadence didn't look at me, but I knew she was asking because she cared. "The one you wouldn't even talk about over the you-know-what?"

  "Remember the explosion in lab I told you about?" They nodded. "Well, it's worse than just property damage because I realized I can do this."

  I held out my hand and called up that awful solar magic. Cadence dropped the remote. She leaned over and picked it up again but stared the entire time at the globe of light in my hand. Izzy smacked her face with her palm.

  "No way." The mermaid's lips were dry, her voice a parched whisper. She cleared her throat. "No freaking way."

  "Yes, way." Izzy held a card in her hand, plucked from the bag slung across her body. "Yes, freaking way."

  It was the sun reversed. In case you don’t know what that means, just wait. Izzy laid it on me.

  "This is some unclear, fake, sad, oppressive shit right here." She slapped the card down on the coffee table, then looked me straight in the eye. "Who's griefing you about being an extramagus?"

  "I already told you. Some upperclassman named Charity Fairbanks, even though she doesn’t know for sure." I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "And someone else who’s even worse."

  "Stop acting like this cryptic-ass card, Aliyah, and tell us the whole story."

  I didn't have to hide this from my friends like with my family. They weren’t related to Noah, and they didn't even like him that much, so I told them all of it, down to how he ignored me. I even mentioned the unspoken detail that had disturbed me for the entire week.

  "I was in the infirmary twice, and he didn't even visit."

  "Wow, what a jerk." Cadence shook her head. "I can't believe I almost set him up with my neighbor. Shelby dodged a bullet right there."

  "Mean people suck." Izzy frowned.

  "You guys want coffee?" I stood up, rubbing my hands against my legs where my elbows had pressed too hard on my thighs. "My folks will be back any minute, and I don't want them to know all of this."

  "Coffee sounds great." Izzy nodded, swiping her card off the table and tucking it back in her bag. "Should we go now?"

  "Okay, but we might go back again after Logan gets here."

  "Is that your non-Dylan classmate?" Cadence stood up, fluffing her hair. "Is he cute?"

  "You'll figure it out, Cadence." I stepped toward the door, grabbing my knapsack off the hook. "Oh, wait."

  My friends waited by the door as I left a brief note for my parents, telling them I'd be out. They did the same for me, and I didn't want them to worry. I also grabbed my phone off the charger, checking it first to see if Brianna from Walgreens had sent me a message. There was nothing, so I just brought it along.

  We headed down the stairs and out into the sunlit day. It was the best kind you could get in early autumn, where the light fell through just enough cloud cover to look dreamy and the breeze only just barely nipped. We headed around the corner and down Essex Street, taking our time. We all knew where we were going and how to get there since there was only one place extrahumans our age went for coffee.

  The Witch's Brew wasn't technically on Essex Street, or any other for that matter. Instead, the front door was in an alcove. We pushed through the door with its weathered wood and cauldron-shaped stained glass, stepping into a space steeped in the warm aroma of freshly ground coffee.

  This place didn't heal all the sore spots inflicted by my week at Hawthorn Academy, but it came close.

  We waited in the short line, then ordered beverages. The enormous ornate mural clock on the wall had the broomstick halfway between eleven and twelve, with the wand just a hair off noon. The hour and the nice weather were two reasons we took our drinks outside. The third, of course, was that we had to search for the door to my school to meet Logan on his way out.

  Essex Street was about as busy as it got on a day outside October. Most of the tourists walked with food or drinks instead of sitting inside, for one thing. That was probably why the tricycle-powered Polaroid cart almost ran us over, but it swerved out of the way just in time before screeching to a halt.

  "Not again." Izzy rolled her eyes.

  "Uh-oh." Cadence put one hand to her cheek.

  "Hi." I stepped in the way as the camera dude hopped off and jogged over. "We're okay but running a little late, so no time to talk, Azrael."

  "Are you sure?" He peered past me at Izzy with stars in his eyes. He didn't even notice Ember peeping curiously at him. She'd never met this fixture of Essex Street atmosphere yet.

  I mentioned before that Isabella Mendez isn't interested in boys, and probably not girls either. Azrael Ambersmith was the main reason I was sure this is true. He was a Goblin changeling, the youngest member of a family otherwise made up of magi and psychics, and he'd been crushing on Izzy since second grade. He was also almost as pretty as Logan, but in a shabbier steampunk sort of way.

  His name sounded like it came from the pages of an old pulp fantasy novel from the 1960s. Maybe it did, for all I knew. The Ambersmiths were the local magipsychic crafters, tinkers, and second-hand item dealers. Certainly, they'd read some of the books lining the walls of their storefront farther down the block.

  Plenty of people's trash got turned into treasures in their workshops and sold from one of their storefronts or this cart. Azrael's aunt had married the cobbler, too. Ambersmiths were all over the wi-fi-negating zone around Hawthorn Academy, and by all appearances, they made a decent living because of it. The Polaroid cart had plenty of customers once folks realized they couldn't reliably use their phones to take pictures here.

  "I'm meeting a friend from Hawthorn, Az." Out of the three of us, I had remained on the best terms with Azrael since the end of elementary school. That was why, whenever he came around, they left deflecting him to me. At least this time, I didn't feel like I had to lie.

  "Oooh, I know where the door is today! Just saw someone come out of it, in fact."

  "Thanks, Az." I grinned.

  "I'll just hop on the trike and lead the way." He jogged back to his ride, and I followed.

  "Whatever." Izzy followed too, staring at the cobblestones.

  "At least he's nice to look at, Iz."

  "I don't care about that stuff, Cadence." Izzy shook her head. "Flowers are pretty, too."

  "Well, think of him like a painting or statue or something, then."

  "Not helping."

  "Sorry." Cadence twirled a lock of her hair between her fingers. Suddenly, she stopped cold. "He didn't ever do...anything? Like, improper?"

  "No. I just don't want to date people." Izzy shrugged.

  "Okay. Because I was gonna say, if he did do anything—"

  "Thanks, Cadence." Izzy finally looked up. "You're a good friend."

  "Hey, what's with the cat?" I pointed.

  They looked in the direction I indicated and saw it too-a scruffy stray cat. Well, she was only scruffy because her long hair was all matted. Also, she seemed awfully underfed. I was about to call out to her, thinking maybe Bubbe could help. Even if she was mundane, food was food. But Azrael rang the bell on his handlebars and stopped his cart. He jerked his thumb at what was usually an old boarded up door. I knew better, of course.

  Az took one last long look at Izzy before ringing his bell again and taking off down the street. I looked around for the cat again but didn’t see her.

  Just then, the door opened and Logan walked out. He noticed us right away. We were super-hard to miss, standing right in his way like that. It only took him three steps to cross the distance. That was when I realized why I felt so awkward around hi
m.

  Logan Pierce looked at me the same way Azrael Ambersmith looked at Izzy.

  And I’d thought I was so slick, noticing Grace's crush on Dylan. Of course, Cadence saw it right away. I was surprised she didn’t whip out a wedding planner instead of just elbowing me in the ribs.

  Before my merfriend could say anything, I introduced Logan to everybody, then invited him down to visit Bubbe. It was a short enough walk to pass the time in conversation with basics about Logan's life outside of school. He had ready answers for questions like that, although I wondered how many were well-rehearsed and designed to please his parents.

  By the time we turned on Hawthorne Street, I realized the cat had come back. She trotted to keep up, but only because she was so worn out. I saw her stop before Izzy's house, dropping to the sidewalk too suddenly.

  "Just a sec, guys. Animal in trouble here."

  I turned back for the poor kitty. She was on her side, panting heavily, almost like a dog. Logan hovered, peering over my shoulder.

  "Peep?" Ember fluttered down, landing on the sidewalk. Once there, she sat back on her haunches, lifting her head straight up in the air and letting out a long, keening wail.

  "Easy, girl," I said to both critters. "I'm gonna help. See?"

  Bending down was easy, scooping the cat up too much so. She was very light, like the wind could have carried her away with ease. I got the impression of a dried-out husk, but she was cool to the touch, not hot like an animal fighting an illness.

  "Just around the corner and into a building, okay? Then you'll have a chance to get well."

  Izzy and Cadence knew better than to get in my way in situations like these. Logan, not so much, or maybe he was just as concerned about the unfortunate stray. At any rate, he followed closely. And for once, he didn’t stare at me. He only had eyes for the cat.

  I thought back to Familiar Studies and how he always played with the polydactyl. And then that the possum tried bonding with him twice. At that moment, I understood the shortcomings of that entire series of lessons. They don't do what they were designed for—helping magi without familiars meet suitable companions.