by D. R. Perry
"What?" I blinked because this didn't make any sense to me. Dangerous?
"Peep?" Ember swooped down off the counter and peered up at Faith, Seth mimicking her expression almost perfectly. They both looked almost as baffled as I felt. I guess attraction in the critter world was way less complicated.
"I don't know much about Alex. Maybe he's okay. But some people get downright nasty if they feel rejected." Her small smile was surprisingly gentle. "I'm not gonna stand here and tell you I'm worried about you getting hurt. You can take care of yourself in a fight. But subtlety isn't your thing, and there are other ways people harm each other. I'm not trying to be a bitch here, just give you a heads up."
"Thanks, Faith." I nodded. "I'll try talking to Alex alone."
"Maybe find out more about him first. Ask around before you decide." She looked down at the sink. "I did that before making things official with Hal."
"If there's time." I shook my head. "It might be hard finding any."
"Our friends keep watching you. They're worried for you over your thing." She looked up at one of the solar lights and then at my hands. "Exam stress. If you want to talk to Alex and need me to head them off, let me know."
"Thanks." I packed up my bathroom stuff. "Have a good swim, Faith. Thanks for straightening my crown instead of knocking it off."
"You've done that much for me already." She waved. "See you tomorrow."
That conversation had gone better than I ever would've dreamed. Taking advice from Faith Fairbanks was something I would have flat-out laughed at in the first week of school even if Izzy had predicted it, but now she was looking out for me. Who'd have thought?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Just when I thought my night would end on a high note, I walked into my room to find Grace on her bed sobbing. Ember swooped down, landing on her headboard. I brought a box of tissues and sat at the foot of her bed, reaching out to take her hand. She let me, only just barely squeezing back. Lune lay beside her, lifting his head briefly to acknowledge my presence. He pressed his chin against her shoulder, keeping it there even as it shook with sobs.
I didn't say anything, just sat there. It had to be rough on her, the prospect of holiday break. The postcard on the bed beside her spoke volumes with only a sentence. Her aunt had written Stay at school. Grace didn't have much to celebrate from the little she’d mentioned of life back in Quebec, and she couldn’t even go there. In situations like that, when the people around you seemed to have everything you didn’t, words didn’t always help.
I sat with her for maybe half an hour before she finally calmed down enough to sit up. Her pillowcase was totally soaked. Probably the pillow under it was too, and she only had one of those, school-issued. Everyone else had brought extras, their favorite and most comforting pillows, throws, and blankets from home. Even Logan, whose parents were neglectful at best. And Faith, who dealt with daily abuse back in New York.
Grace had brought nothing but her familiar and a wardrobe of threadbare clothes. Did her life lack that much comfort, or had she brought so little because she worried it was too shabby for prep school? She never said a word about it or did anything to direct attention to the things she lacked.
I’d noticed it, and had done almost nothing all semester besides lending her a dress. Had I stopped caring? Why? How?
You're an extramagus, that's why. Destined to stop caring about everyone else.
I decided to subvert the inside voice with kindness.
As Grace reached for the box of tissues to blow her nose and dry her eyes, I went to my bed and picked up an extra pillow, then opened the dresser to get a spare pillowcase. I changed the one I'd been using for the clean one, then swapped it with the tear-stained pillow, which I set at the foot of Grace's bed. A small gesture, but better that than nothing.
Grace didn't glance behind her, oblivious to my actions. She wasn’t thanking me. That didn't matter. Given the state she was in, manners weren't important. Not everyone who needed help was in a position to be polite, but that didn't somehow make them unworthy.
She picked up her bathroom bag and a change of pajamas. If it weren't for the fact that Faith was having her weekly swim, I'd have worried about leaving her alone in there. She looked out for me, and she'd do the same for Grace. We'd all become friends somehow, despite our extremely different backgrounds.
Lune went after her, turning his head to look up at me before hopping out the door. His ears were up, nose twitching. He cared, too.
Since Grace typically showered at night, I had time, so I got out my contraband communication orb for the first time in two weeks. We hadn't planned on communicating tonight, so I hoped that at least one of my friends from town answered.
After a moment, Cadence's voice greeted me.
"Aliyah, what's up? I thought you'd be studying for exams."
"I was, but there's a problem." I closed my eyes, feeling the sting of threatening tears.
"Not another fire? Or—oh, no." She leaned in, whispering. "You didn't go solar, did you?"
"No, nothing like that." I shook my head. "It's not me. It's Grace, my roommate."
"Oh, no!" Cadence gasped. "Is she okay? Did she get hurt playing Bishop's Row or something?"
"I wish." I told Cadence that Grace’s aunt wasn’t letting her come home, then I described the scene I’d found in my room tonight.
"Why not invite her to stay with you over the break?" Cadence asked. Her solution to practically everything was adding more people. "I mean, I know your parents would probably have room for her to stay for that amount of time."
"That's a good idea, but I wonder whether she'll take me up on it? Grace has a lot of pride, which is great for some stuff but not so much in this situation."
"Do you think it will hurt to ask?" She chuckled. "Something like that happened at Gallows Hill and asking made all the difference, even though the offer got turned down. Sometimes people just want to feel welcome."
"Yeah, you're right." I nodded. "Thanks, Cadence. I have to go. Somebody's coming."
"Okay, talk to you later."
The orb went dark, which was a good thing because I heard voices in the hall. It wasn’t the door opening yet, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure who was out there.
Regardless of the mysterious talker's identity, it was time to stow the orb back in my suitcase, zip it up, and tuck it under my bed. Once that was done, I trotted to the door and put my ear against it.
"Mark this one. One of these girls is staying." It wasn’t a voice I recognized, but low pitched and probably male.
"Okay. Anybody else on this floor?" The second voice was raspy and slightly higher pitched.
"The kid from the UK. We're already keeping the Hawkins brat's room open, so it doesn't matter whether his roommate is staying here or in China. We'll keep the lights on in there at any rate."
I blinked, wondering who at the school would dare refer to Hal Hawkins as a brat. He was the furthest thing from that, first of all. Second of all, talking like that about a space magus' son in a pocket realm he maintained was sort of a bad idea.
"I know the boss wouldn't be happy if he heard that, so why did you say it?" The second voice asked my unspoken question.
"He knows how some of us feel. Kid takes too much after his mother, and nobody trusts that bitch except the people in her school of misfits. Be glad you don't have to work there. Place gives me the creeps. Named after executions and all."
He was talking about Gallows Hill. So, Hal's mother worked there in some capacity or other, since she was definitely too old to attend as a student. I knew next to nothing about her, just that she and Headmaster Hawkins were divorced, and what Cadence had said about a vampire from Rhode Island. The only one who knew more was Hal, and he didn't talk about her.
Hal Hawkins seemed stressed and tired. He'd been peaky and listless lately, and hadn't been to the infirmary. It worried me, but he wasn’t alone. Logan was just as stressed. He’d ripped his cuticles more times than I could
count in the last week, so we'd been trying to take it easy as a group. I hoped we'd all get some relief after exams, but my gut told me that was unlikely. The same part of my intuition that said Grace was in serious trouble emotionally.
I wished we could figure all this out. Just sit down and talk, be teenagers. But when you were magical, the world expected more from you. More restrictions, more requirements. Our powers weren't even all that big yet, but our responsibilities were enormous. It was impossible to just live life as an extrahuman unless you planned to try going without powers. Or maybe lived on an island in the middle of the ocean.
When Grace returned, I took Cadence's advice and invited her to stay with us. She said she was too tired, she'd think about it later, and we'd talk sometime this week.
But Thursday and Friday went by. I stayed in school all weekend studying, and still Grace kept silent on the matter. She practically clung to Dylan, who was there for her. But she was silent every time I saw her, no matter what company she kept.
I cornered Faith in the bathroom on Sunday morning and point-blank asked her if Grace had talked to her.
"Just a bit, on Wednesday after my swim." She sighed. "It was pretty obvious she'd been crying that night, but she wouldn't say a word about what was wrong. Didn't she tell you?"
"No. I don't even think she's talked to Dylan." I took a deep breath. "This is bad, Faith. I don't know what to do."
"I'll get Hal on it. He's got a way with this sort of thing."
I saw Hal manage to approach Grace exactly once. She avoided him for the rest of the day unless she already had someone with her. That wasn't normal for her, and it wasn’t even within the realm of academic stress. That initial hunch about her family might have had merit, then.
I tried putting myself in her shoes. Tried to imagine what it would be like if my parents were dead and gone was nearly impossible, not because I had no imagination at all, and not because I lacked empathy. Maybe it was too enormous to contemplate. I tried thinking about what it would be like to lose Noah instead.
Tears sprang to my eyes. Even though we weren't on the best terms this year, I couldn't handle that. I wasn’t sure when Grace became an orphan, only that it must have happened before she came to school. My intuition told me it was years ago, but recently enough that she remembered her parents and how different her life was with them in it.
See where kindness gets you? Closer to your inevitable insanity.
This time, I silenced the voice with action. Doing nothing wasn’t an option anymore.
Grace was in crisis, in a medical emergency. Emotional states weren't considered medical by some, but they called it mental health for a reason. So, I went to Nurse Smith on Sunday night before exams.
"So, you're telling me your roommate has been crying, avoiding people she normally hangs out with, and won't talk about it? And it's been going on for how long?"
Nurse Smith had his notepad and vial of magical water out again. Of course. As annoying as it was, I couldn't blame him. He was probably used to students lying about all kinds of things to do with their health that would interfere with their medical care, and it was his job to make sure we were healthy enough to be in school.
"Since Wednesday."
"I see." He jotted something down. "Why are you coming to me now?"
"I went to the rest of our friends, trying to help her together. She just kept brushing us off, though. You're her last hope."
"Students are always under extra stress during exam time, and when that coincides with holidays, it only gets worse. I've seen stuff like this before. I think I can help her, but let's lay off until after the exams. I'll be keeping an eye on her from a distance, but if you see anything you think I need to know, find me immediately."
"What are you going to do?"
"She's staying on campus over the break, so I'll help her then. We'll have privacy and time with no class or sports obligations. As far as what we'll do, that's confidential. But Miss Morgenstern, thank you for coming to me. You don't know how much I appreciate this."
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I nodded and left. I couldn't find it in myself to smile, not with the situation as grave as it was. But I was somewhat relieved.
The day of exams came. Like so many other rites of passage, the reality of taking the test felt like a tipping point. Let me explain this better.
Gallows Hill was the name of Cadence's school, but also an actual hill in Salem. Back when we were kids in pigtails, all the children in town would sled down it. There was a drop-off at the top, where the sled hung for a heart-stopping moment before tilting to hurtle down. Sitting in the room with the pencil, the blue book, and the Scantron sheet was like that suspended moment.
The rest was a wild ride, full of graphite stains on my hands, paper cuts, and gasping in disbelief as I realized I knew more than I thought I did. When I walked out of the room and down the hall toward the gym to reunite with Ember, I thought maybe I had done better than the C- I expected.
I sat in the gym, cuddling my dragonet and waiting for my classmates to come through the door as they finished. Alex was the first to enter after me, his basilisk Aceso rearing her head up and flicking her tongue out as she glided across the polished wood toward him.
He sauntered over once she had twined up his arm and took a seat beside me. I tried to remember what Faith had said that night in the bathroom and realized I hadn't asked around about Alex. So much had been on my mind since then, beyond the brain fry that came with cramming and spilling all that information back out onto the page afterward.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. Alex just stayed nearby, letting Ember and Aceso play. I got the impression that he was okay with just being there and not saying a word. Whether that came from being bonded to a reptilian familiar was beyond me. Dragonets were warm-blooded like birds.
I hadn’t paid attention to him all semester, not outside of Gym, anyway, so maybe that was typical for Alex. He might be one of those folks who liked quiet companionship or simple things. It seemed odd for a jock, but then again, I was odd for a magus. Who was I to judge?
When the rest of the first years entered the gym, they did it as a group. I caught Faith looking in my direction, her eyes narrowing. Maybe she was trying to figure out if I'd had my chat with Alex. She didn’t approach to ask. Hal wasn’t looking great, so Faith stayed with him.
Logan made a beeline toward his familiar, oblivious to everything and everyone else. That was how he was after any test, and this exam had been three times as long as any other. It looked like Logan was going into extreme introvert mode, only comfortable interacting with Doris. He didn't ask about boarding her, even when I moved down the bleachers. He noticed me there but only waved without smiling. It seemed he was bringing her to Las Vegas after all.
Once we were released from the academic wing, it was time to go home. My bags were already packed and downstairs in the lobby, waiting. The semester was over, finally. Grace had never told me she wasn’t staying with me, but that conversation with Nurse Smith meant she’d be well taken care of on campus. I'd have a little peace at home with my family until January.
Maybe I'd earned that much.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Interlude
A Christmas Misery
Grace
Oh, yeah, I was miserable. Don't worry, that was only a little south of normal for me. My life in Québec wasn't the greatest, hadn't been since my parents passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning. Even magical folk get done in by the most mundane and stupid accidents, so replace the batteries in your alarms yearly, kids. And don't run kerosene heat without good ventilation. The more you know…
Anyway, I figured I was tired of being my internally melancholy self in the claustrophobic yet hallowed halls of Hawthorn Academy. It always felt weird in there, like there was too much room and not enough all at the same time. Too much light, also.
Since I’d moved in with my aunt on her farm, I’d anticipated and
dreaded wide-open spaces at the same time. That might have had something to do with Lune, my moon hare, finding me that same year, after I turned eleven. He didn't much like being out in the open, so the prospect of going to Hawthorn Academy with its wooden campus between worlds had appealed to both of us.
It had lived up to its expectations and then some. The first few weeks were pretty good, despite the fact that my roommate Aliyah Morgenstern nearly burned down the cafeteria and the lab on the first day of class. It felt exciting, though. And it was such a relief, having a friend who wasn't totally normal. It helped that she was uncommonly honest and kind, even though it turned out she was an extramagus. Normal people kind of freaked me out, so Aliyah being weird helped me relax.
I keep getting off the topic, don't I? Which was that dreaded holiday nobody can escape.
Christmas.
I hated it. If you guessed that the reason for this had something to do with my parents’ untimely demise, here's some good news. You win. The bad news is you get nothing because everything about me had something to do with being an orphan. How could it not?
There was this idea, especially in extrahuman circles, that losing your parents made you special somehow, but all I wanted was to be just like everyone else. What I wouldn't have given to have my mom back, even if it meant she'd tell me to put on a little makeup and smile more. Or my dad, even if he'd give my boyfriend seven levels of grief just to be sure he treated me decently. But all I had was this hole in my life.
Anyway, Hawthorn Academy went big at Christmas, and I couldn't go home or otherwise escape the halls decked with holly, the faculty and staff getting jolly, or any of that other crap. My aunt's farm wasn't really my home, and I never counted on it feeling that way. Yeah, I know. I sounded awfully grouchy for a Canadian, but we weren’t all sunshine and roses, and if you thought so, you're the one with unrealistic expectations.