by D. R. Perry
"Just here to brush my teeth, much like my sister, who's hogging the bathroom."
"I'll be out of your way in a sec." I tapped the toothbrush against the sink to get the water off, put it away, then wash my hands and got out of his way. "Good night, Noah."
"Good night, Aliyah."
I headed into my room, closing the door behind me and treading carefully to avoid bumping my head on the ceiling. I hoped I remembered it was low in the morning so I didn't have to spend all of Thanksgiving Day with a bump on the head. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I didn't get a goose egg. I got dressed and helped my parents. Bubbe came up with the baked goods she’d finished in the downstairs oven. She also let Doris come upstairs to share the holiday with the rest of us, which was good because I didn't want to think of her all alone for the day. After that, it was time for the walk down to Essex Street to meet my friends, but they were already at the intersection with Hawthorne Street. Dylan, Hal, and Grace knew the way. They'd all been here before.
It was time for dinner.
In Salem and most of the rest of New England, that meant it was one in the afternoon. Some people around here had it as early as noon. Why did we have Thanksgiving dinner that early? Because why shouldn't we eat all day instead of having a tiny lunch and then feasting? This was just the way it was done here.
I was well aware that in other parts of the country, folks didn't bring out the turkey until actual dinner time, like five, six, or seven o'clock. An internet friend from Florida had told me they did it even later, like eight, which boggled my mind. Who wanted to wait that long for the main event? I certainly didn't. Even if I moved away from New England, I'd still be cooking turkey on the last Thursday of November so it was done in time for lunch, even though it's dinner. And it'd still be kosher.
“What’s up with all the separate plates?” Grace asked.
“It’s kosher, right, Aliyah?” Hal tilted his head.
“Right.” I nodded.
“Thought that was all about not eating pork and shrimp.” She shrugged.
“No, they also don’t mix the meat with the milk.” Dylan pointed at a cream pie on the dessert table, which was on the other side of the room from the one we had dinner at. “We don’t want that on the same plate with turkey, or with the same forks and stuff.”
“How did you know?” I blinked.
“Dad’s chummy with the guy who runs the kosher deli down the street from our apartment.” Dylan chuckled. “I paid attention.”
The best way to know whether a dish was successful was by how quiet your guests were during the meal. It was dead silent in there. Nobody talked until they got second helpings. Even our familiars were quiet. They had their own meals of scraps selected by Bubbe.
“What’s that?” Asked Lee.
“Cranberry sauce, the jellied kind,” I answered.
“It’s a travesty.” Noah snorted. “Try the homestyle stuff. I made it. And have some sweet potato pancakes with it. Bubbe makes those.”
“The turkey is amazing.” Hal grinned. “Who made it?”
“My husband, the gourmet chef.” Mom smiled. “He grew all the herbs he rubbed on it himself.”
“I’m not a gourmet.” Dad chuckled, dropping her a wink. “You are. Whose idea was it to make cinnamon corn? That’s what I call fancy.”
“I like the potatoes best.” Grace spooned another helping of them onto her plate. “How do you get them creamy like this without butter or milk?”
“Coconut milk.” I got myself a helping of beets and sweet potatoes. “Non-dairy milk is super versatile.”
It was hard to believe it, but after getting the dinner plates and utensils in the dishwasher, we all had room for dessert. I helped Noah move the sweet stuff to the table, along with the dairy plates and utensils.
“What’s this one?” Lee pointed at the casserole Noah cut into. “Almost looks like a dinner dish.”
“Noodle kugel.” I laughed. “And of course, he’s already attacking it. Noah ate almost an entire pan of that after school let out last spring.”
“It’s the best comfort food ever. It’s got raisins in it.” He hefted his full plate. “Who doesn’t like raisins?”
“Me.” Dylan wrinkled his nose. “What’s that bread? Does it have chocolate in it?”
“That’s my babka.” Bubbe nodded. “Yes, it does. Try some! And the rugelach. It’s raspberry.” She put some of each on a plate and handed it to him.
I got myself some too, plus small slices of apple and pumpkin pie. Grace got rugelach and apple pie. Lee tried a little of everything, although he went back for more babka.
Every year, I was amazed at how much baking Bubbe managed to do. My grandma made all the cookies, the challah, and that decadent babka in the kitchen downstairs. She made more this year than on any other because we'd never had this many guests.
After everyone rested, we sat watching a rerun of the Macy's Day parade in the living room. Halfway through that, Izzy and Cadence came by to join us. We chatted about the floats, wondering how they used to make them without magic back before the Reveal.
It was almost too cold this year to take a walk outside. We had to, though. My friends from Hawthorn needed to head back eventually. We needed the exercise too after all that food, so we sat, planning our route to include a pass by the wharf.
Bubbe had care packages for our foray outside, baggies of rugelach and babka slices, with a thermos each full of hot cocoa. For Lee, Dylan, and Grace, she’d also packed up a second dinner and dessert, so they'd have more for later if they wanted it. We headed down the stairs and out of the building together. Noah even came along.
The streets were quiet, nearly deserted, the polar opposite of Halloween the month before. It'd be a bleak and lonely scene without company, so that was one reason to be thankful for my friends and family this year. The world was a magically beautiful place, and company only enhanced it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"I can't believe this." Faith blinked, her hand at her chest in a gesture I'd come to recognize as her expression of shock.
"I honestly think nobody can." Bailey turned her nose up in the air, snorting at Faith. "You're just going to make us lose games. I have no idea why they put you on the team, even though you're in reserves."
"How dare you." I planted my feet, placing my hands on my hips and looking Bailey right in the eye. "After the first day of Gym, you barely made any effort. Faith busted her ass, and now you're criticizing her. And you used to call yourself her friend! Don't try to deny it, just shut up and go away."
Bailey stood there, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish that had accidentally jumped out of the bowl in the face of my anger, which made sense. I practically spontaneously combusted my first day here. I'd since managed to lengthen my fuse, but it was shorter when someone else got attacked.
"Whoa, Aliyah." Logan put his hand on my shoulder, reminding me of the way Noah used to help me chill out. "Tone it back a little, okay?" He gave it one more pat, then broke contact.
I guessed what he was thinking; I might have conjured solar magic in front of everybody, but the verbal outburst had helped me blow off steam and avoid an extramagus accident. It was nice to know my friends cared, though. Logan wasn’t the only one supporting Faith or my defense of her.
Grace and Hal flanked me, both staring daggers at Bailey. Behind us, I heard Faith gasp like she'd taken her first breath after swimming several laps underwater. She couldn’t possibly be surprised we took her side, so there must have been something else going on.
Sure enough, Coach Pickman strode past Bailey, stepping between us, her presence cutting through the tension like a hot knife through butter. Our anger didn't break as much as dissipate, which was a good thing because even though I had my solar magic under control, fire was another story. It was harder to curb in general.
"Enough." Coach Pickman brandished her whistle in my general direction. "Supporting your teammates is fine.
" She glanced at Bailey. "Giving your classmates grief is not. Fighting in here is unacceptable. No more of this in my gym, or you're all doing laps for the rest of the year."
Bailey spun on her heel, flouncing away from us. Good thing she did, because Faith couldn't take any more high emotion, not even the positive kind. She dashed toward the girl’s locker room, her breath hitching. Seth jumped up from the cozy pile of familiars on the bleachers and followed her, his little paws tapping on the floor.
I turned to go after her, but Grace stopped me.
"Let me. You need to calm down." She turned around and took off across the court, following Faith. "I'll send Lune if we need you." The moon hare hopped after her.
Coach Pickman barked orders at Logan and Bailey, directing them to go get our equipment. Alex sauntered away from the team list, grinning. He had good reason because he was on it, although Dylan was playing Reverse Point. He headed our way and I was about to wave, but there was a tug at my sleeve.
"Shouldn't I go after her too?" Hal asked me. But someone else answered.
"Are you kidding?" Alex put a hand on his shoulder. "You're the headmaster's son, but you're still a boy, and that's the girl’s locker room. Besides, you look like you need to sit down."
That was how I ended up sitting on the bleachers with Hal Hawkins, trying to banish this sense of unease instead of celebrating the fact that almost all of our friends had made it onto the team. The only one who didn't was Logan, and he told me before tryouts that he'd prefer cheering us on anyway.
"Are you guys okay?" Alex Onassis sat down between us. Maybe he meant well, but it’d be hard answering when he wasn’t in on my secret, so I let Hal speak first.
"I'll be all right." He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his thighs. "I knew I'd make the list because Coach said so at tryouts, but none of us had any idea Faith would get into the reserves. I guess that included Bailey."
"Yeah, I was surprised too." Alex grinned at me. "I didn't think I'd make it on the team either."
"How come?" One of the best ways to avoid talking about yourself was to ask your conversational partner a question. And boy howdy, did I want to avoid talking about magic.
"Lee is just so fast. His wood magic may not let him conjure very powerful orbs at this point, but I figured that would be more valuable on the team than my garden-variety average-speed poison."
"Average is exactly what Bishop's Row needs, though, right?" I shrugged.
"No, you're confusing average with balance." Alex's eyes lit up as he talked about the sport. I guess he was the closest thing we had to a jock. "Which I guess I have, but you've got more power. The best Bishop's Row players have mundane reflexes, balance, and conjuring swiftness, plus magical power, control, and speed in equal measure. By those standards, you're all that and a bag of chips. I always wondered why you didn't volunteer to play reverse point during tryouts in the first place."
"Um." I wasn’t sure what to say, but Hal came to my rescue.
"She lacks control sometimes." Hal winced. "Sorry, Aliyah, but surely you remember the first day of school?"
"Oh, yeah, right." Alex directed another question at me. "Is that why it always feels like you're holding back in here? At Gym I mean? The only thing you go all out with athletically is plain old mundane running."
"You could be reserved just like me, Alex." I let snark be my guide. "All you have to do is nearly burn down a cafeteria. Once." I snorted. "And have people blame you for lab fires you didn’t set. After that, you're too nervous to cut loose with much of anything, magically speaking."
"I've always wondered about that." He scratched his head. "Did you really get into it with Charity Fairbanks? Weren't you afraid?"
"Definitely." I nodded. "She's a scary person, and Noah told me all about her last year. But it would've been worse to just let her have her way."
I was about to launch into an explanation of how I wasn’t the only person who’d ever stood up to Charity—after all, Alex was sitting right next to Hal, who'd done more than his fair share of confronting the mean girl—but Coach Pickman blew her whistle.
Grace went off to her next class, Faith returned from the locker room, and it was time to do all our Gym exercises. Bailey grumbled about practically everything, probably because she was still sour about not making the team. Logan kept on keeping on. He smiled, laughed with Hal, and helped us improve. The easy set of his shoulders told me he wasn’t stressed about this, that making the team might have been harder for him in a way. He hated being the center of attention, after all.
I didn't much like it either, but it was nearly impossible to avoid at that point my academic career at Hawthorn Academy. I hoped I could handle myself both on and off the court since it felt like everyone's eyes were on me, even though they'd had two entire months for that before our team assignments.
Alex, in particular, watched me like a hawk. When he wasn’t looking, his basilisk was. I wondered why. Maybe he had some strategy in mind for Bishop’s Row, but exams took up all of my time, so I didn’t get the chance to find out about it until much later.
The exams were all on paper. There were no lab practicals on midterms for the first years. I breathed a sigh of relief as Professor Luciano explained this in homeroom. Exam anxiety was something I went through, and the last thing I wanted was to get involved in another lab incident. I felt like I wasn’t ready to be tested on what we’d learned in there anyway. From the looks on my classmates’ faces, almost everyone agreed.
Hal was the exception. He'd become quite good at labs because he approached them like a recipe using magical ingredients. All semester, he’d chatted about the things he’d learned to cook before starting here.
Making food had been a huge part of my upbringing, too. I just couldn't get my brain around the magic part because so much of my experience was mundanely based. Maybe if my family had used magical recipes, I'd have been more comfortable in there.
During the tests, our familiars were in the gym, hanging out and playing games with the coaches. That kept them from distracting us and had the added benefit of letting them blow off steam during an extremely stressful time for all of us. I raised my hand.
"Professor, will we be able to see how they're doing in there? I mean, if we finish early or something?"
"You will, in fact." His smile was kinder than I'd ever seen it. If Luciano had a soft spot, it was for critters. "But it won't matter whether you finish early. Coach Chen has agreed to record your familiars as they play. That way, you all get to see what they were up to once your exams are finished. You can even bring the recording home to show your parents if you'd like."
Logan swallowed audibly. I probably only heard it because he sat right behind me, but I knew who wouldn’t bring a video home. I wondered how he'd get away with leaving Doris here for almost a month. Mercats needed their magi when they lived on land. When I’d asked him that morning whether he'd board Doris with Bubbe again, he’d said he wasn't sure.
We spent every library session between Thanksgiving and winter break studying for exams. The Ashfords were super helpful with this, having set aside all of the first-year material and putting it in a temporary section just for us. The one drawback was, we couldn’t check any books out, but that was understandable. I could only imagine what it might have been like for folks in Charity's year if she'd been able to deprive people she didn't like of the means to study.
At dinnertime, we continued our practice of ordering to-go bags from Penelope and Sandy. Even with the differences in our coursework, it was beneficial for both Luciano's and DeBeer's students to study together. Because of this, Eston and Kitty joined in, along with Lee. Kitty was practically a genius, but Eston needed help with Extrahuman History, and she wanted to get him as many study buddies as possible.
Hal quizzed him on specific stuff, but the rest of us tried giving him a few general study tips. The person who helped most was Logan. He had tons of alternative study hacks. It seemed like water magi had more
trouble focusing than most. This was a problem for fire magi, too, but not in the same way. When Logan suggested wearing noise-canceling headphones without any music in them, Eston was amazed to find it a useful strategy.
In the first week of December, Alex started hanging around at dinner without studying, or at least he didn't seem to be. I don't know every learning style, though. Maybe just sitting nearby and listening to us discuss all the material helped him wrap his brain around it. Maybe learning by osmosis wasn’t a joke.
Dylan and Logan both sat closer to me while Alex was around. Gale and Doris even came over to hang with Ember during those times. I wasn’t sure why, and I didn't bother asking. It might make Logan feel awkward, and as far as Dylan went, I already had a big brother. I really didn't want to start feeling like he was a de facto sibling. The idea just bothered me.
Halfway through the last week of school, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth and otherwise getting ready for bed. Faith walked in for what I'd come to recognize as her weekly dip in the baths. She did laps and everything. This time she hung around at the counter, as though waiting for me to finish making my dentist happy with my mad toothbrushing skills.
"Do you like Alex?" She looked me in the eye indirectly, using the mirror as a buffer. I didn't blame her. This was an odd sort of conversation for me to have with anyone, let alone Faith.
"He's okay, I guess. A good athlete." I still couldn't put my finger on what it was about Alex that bothered me, so I repeated what I'd heard from other people. "But he's sort of like Switzerland. Totally neutral about everything, isn't he? Why do you ask?"
"I think he's into you."
"I had no idea." I blinked. "Thought he was just being friendly."
"You seem to notice just about every other social dynamic, Aliyah." She shook her head. "It's not a good idea to ignore stuff like this."
"It's not likely I'll end up with anyone anytime soon." Why was I thinking about Dylan and Grace all of a sudden? "I'm too busy for dating, anyway."
"Well, dating isn't too busy for you, it seems." She snorted. "It's dangerous to just ignore stuff like people having unrequited crushes on you."