“Where did you get the bleach?” he asks.
“I bought it on my way home from school. Don’t worry. Everyone was following Tana. No one even noticed me going into the shop.”
“Not even the clerk?”
“I used a self-checkout. And cash.”
He pats my arm. “Good girl.”
I had considered our family’s situation, even in the midst of my afternoon anger. The peroxide was an impulse, one I hadn’t even been sure I would use, but I didn’t want some report of my buying it to reach my mother’s ears before I got the chance. In general, President Sigourna’s children are off-limits to the media unless we’re in the company of one or both of our parents. They aren’t allowed to ask about our academic records or take pictures of us on our way to and from school, but that doesn’t mean no one tries. Luckily for me, the few dirtbags that ignore this restriction always hone in on Tana. She’s more interesting. I’ve been branded “the shy one.”
In that respect, there are benefits to being the common child.
“So what was it this time?” Dad asks. “What made you do something so drastic?”
The question chafes. He knows I reacted to something else, that I didn’t simply choose to lop off nearly two feet of hair after careful deliberation. I’m not about to tell him that one of my magic tutors got under my skin. That would only encourage him to think they’re making headway with me. So, I blame my usual scapegoat.
“I’m tired of being Tana’s less-accomplished shadow. I’m not her, and I don’t want to be her, and I don’t even want to look like her. All right?”
His brows shoot up as I speak, but he maintains his composure otherwise. “You’re sisters, Jen. You’re going to look like each other whether you like it or not.”
He’s not helping. My restraints explode.
“You don’t get it! It’s not just about looks! It’s everything! She’s good at everything, and then everyone looks at me and wonders what’s wrong with me!”
“It’s not Tana’s fault she’s good at things. Would you have her pretend to be bad, just to make you feel better?”
“No! I just want to do my own things, to have my own interests instead of everyone expecting me to excel where she does!”
His expression shutters. Tana excels in things he values: academics, magic, social skills. As his child, I’m supposed to value all of that as well. But I don’t. It’s yet another one of my failures.
“What are your interests, then?” he finally asks.
My breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh of air. I slump against the car door in defeat. “I don’t even know.” I don’t, either. My whole life I’ve been exposed to the pursuits my parents value, but I’ve always been the odd one out in all of them, never excelling, never even interested.
We arrive at the restaurant. The driver crosses around to open the door. I straighten in my seat and fix my expression to something neutral, in case there are photographers out on the sidewalk.
My dad climbs out first, but as he steps to the curb I grab the cuff of his sleeve. He looks down at me in alarm.
“I want to quit magic,” I tell him.
From beyond the door, a camera flashes. He schools away his momentary surprise and fakes a smile. “We’ll talk about it when you’re eighteen.”
“That’s only two months away. What does it matter if I quit now?”
He shifts his hand to clasp mine, fluidly assisting me from the car as though that was his original intent in pausing there.
“You’re not quitting,” he whispers in my ear as a dozen more flashes explode in my periphery. “Now smile and pretend to be happy.”
He has to know that both those commands are impossible for me to obey. Somehow I manage not to scowl, but at the moment, the only point of happiness I have in my life is the fiery bowl of curry I’m about to eat.
Chapter Four
We live in the presidential residence on Monument Hill, overlooking the city. A whole complex of government buildings are scattered across the sides and the back of the hill, facing the ocean on the horizon, but the front is covered in lawn and gardens, with one major focal point: the Eternity Gate. Older than time itself, so the legends say, it stands like a beacon, a stone arch weathered with age, patterns of a dead and forgotten language etched deep into its surface.
The legends claim that the Eternity Gate can connect to the realm of the gods. More contemporary theories suggest that it once opened a portal from another world. My opinion? It’s a decorative hunk of stonework. Aside from the legend of the goddess Anjeni, there is no record of it ever having opened to anything at all.
Even so, it’s my favorite haunt.
In my younger years I obsessed over the tales, collections from centuries ago. My namesake shaped our world; she changed everything. Helenia wouldn’t exist without her, if the stories are true. Plenty of scholars argue that they aren’t, that Anjeni is a figment or an allegory, that Etricos was a genius general who united the tribes on his own merits.
I took those arguments as personal attacks when I was younger, as though, when people said the goddess Anjeni didn’t exist they were saying that I didn’t exist either. The very day my family moved into the president’s house on Monument Hill, I begged my dad to take us into the National Archives, to see the remnants and relics from that time in hopes of finding definitive proof.
There was none. They have Etricos’s sword and pieces of his armor. They have fragments of his handwriting in some tattered letters to his wife, Tora. Nothing much more has survived the generations. A fire in the archives two hundred years after his time destroyed records and battle accounts from that era, and the legends we know now all cropped up afterwards, when people tried to recreate what had been lost to the blaze.
In short, the naysaying scholars are probably right. The goddess Anjeni is a romanticized myth. The Eternity Gate is the only relic left that she might have ever touched, and it’s more likely proof that the whole set of tales is rubbish.
I run my fingers over the Eternity Gate’s weather-worn stones, relishing the cold of night that still possesses them. The sun will warm the arch soon enough, but I like it best in these early morning hours when the world is mostly silent.
Monument Hill pitches down at a precarious angle, the Eternity Gate perched near the top and the city sprawled out in the valley below. Only a black wrought-iron fence separates the green hillside from the street at the base of it. Traffic there is restricted, thankfully. From further beyond, the faint sounds of engines and horns punctuate the morning air.
Sunrise through the Gate always soothes my harrowed soul. I have school still to navigate and a magic tutor’s confidence to destroy. My new look is going to garner me more attention than I want. In this moment at the Gate, though, none of that matters.
My soul drinks in the sight until the sun’s rays begin to warm the stones beneath my fingers. I steel myself to leave, to orient myself toward the academy. Unfortunately, I don’t hear the footsteps behind me until it’s too late.
A pair of hands shoves me through the arch. With a yelp I pitch forward, tumbling down the hillside as Tana’s triumphant voice calls out a jeer after me.
“Off you go on your spiritual journey, Goddess Anjeni!”
That hill, as I’ve said, is steep. I cry out in panic as my shoulder jars into the soft lawn, but my self-preservation instincts kick in. I know from experience that I won’t be able to stop my momentum until I hit the bottom. Tana has pulled this trick a dozen or more times over the years we’ve lived here. It’s a wonder I’ve never broken my neck.
“Tana!” I screech when I finally sprawl out at the base of the hill, my uniform grass-stained and several bruises starting on my skin.
She only favors me with a nasty laugh and darts away again, the brat. She could have killed me.
And no one would believe a word of it.
Gradually I cobble together my wits, allowing time for my racing heart to slow and my breath to resume its
steady rhythm. My joints ache as I sit up from the lawn, but nothing seems to be broken.
Getting back up the hill is a chore on its own. I could follow the fence along the base, but my wounded pride won’t allow for the heightened chance that someone might see me in such a disheveled state. I have to change uniforms, bind up a scrape on my elbow, and still somehow make it to school on time.
Tana has already left when I trudge in from the garden. My mother, sipping her breakfast tea, takes one look at me and slams the cup down on its saucer.
“What on earth?”
“Tana pushed me down the hill,” I report, bitterness in my voice.
“Tana left ten minutes ago,” Mom argues, following behind me.
Of course. Her precious baby would never harm a hair on anyone’s head. Especially not right before she leaves for school.
“Fine, then, I fell. I’m going to change and then I’ll get out of your way.”
“Be more careful, Jen,” she calls up the stairs after me. “You might have broken your neck.”
Tana might have broken my neck, I long to say, but I hold my tongue. Short of catching my sister in the act, no one would believe her capable of any malicious pranks. She’s a perfect angel in the eyes of the world.
I bind my battered arm and my wounded pride both. Much as I might want revenge against my little sister, with my luck, she’d end up dead at the bottom of the hill, and I’d be off to prison for pre-meditated murder.
Keeping my school tardiness record in mind, Mom sends me in her car instead of on foot. I feel the stares upon me the moment I step out onto the curb. I tip my nose in the air and ignore them all. The bell rings, signifying how close I might have come to missing my first hour. I saunter into class without a word, eager for the day to be over before it’s really even begun.
By lunchtime, I loathe Tana more than I knew was humanly possible.
“She tried to do something with it herself first, the poor thing. You should have seen the state her hair was in, but luckily our mom’s stylist came to the rescue.”
That’s what she’s telling all her friends, as though my stint with hair shears and peroxide was an optimistic fool’s attempt at fashion rather than an outright act of rebellion. My haircut is fashionable, you see, and Tana can’t handle anyone complimenting me on it.
Throttling her in the middle of school would cause a public relations disaster for my parents.
“It looks good on you though, Jen,” one of my classmates tells me after hearing Tana’s account. He spoils the compliment by adding, “Tana would look good with that haircut.”
“Tana doesn’t have the nerve to cut off her hair,” I say, my voice a thorn of ice. It doesn’t matter if I drive him away. Boys never talk to me except as a way of getting closer to my sister.
When I show up for magic supplementals after regular classes, Miss Corlan observes me with thinning lips. “I see we’ve made a little change.” A note of triumph tinges her voice, as though this is the outcome she was aiming for all along. “Now, how else will you distinguish yourself from your sister?”
She produces from beneath the table a fat, white candle.
I produce my lighter from my pocket and flick it open with an expert wrist.
“No, Jen.” From behind me, the Dean of Magic confiscates the lighter right out of my hand.
“Hey!”
“You know the rules. You can have it back after class.”
Across the room, in the advanced section, Tana smirks at me. I plop down at my remedial table and perch my chin on one palm.
Miss Corlan starts into the most rudimentary of explanations. “The first fundamental of magic is that—”
“‘—it flows like a river,’” I interrupt. I’ve heard the recitation hundreds of times, every time they produce that stupid candle, in fact. “‘The energy gathers from a source beyond sight and, like water in its riverbed, courses to its destination. You are the riverbed, Jen.’ Only I’m not, Miss Corlan, or if I am, this riverbed is as dry as a bleached bone.”
“You know the first fundamental,” she allows.
My patience wears thin. “I know all of the fundamentals. I know all of the intermediates, and all of the superlatives. Tana wanders around the house reading them at the top of her lungs while she tries to memorize them. I’m stuck in remedial because I have no sparks to light a candle. And why we equate something that starts fires to flowing water, I’ll never understand. Give it up, Miss Corlan. I’m a lost cause.”
She tempers her instinctive irritation into a pleasant smile. “If you know all of the fundamentals, it’s simply a matter of practice.”
I lean closer, my voice a low whisper. “I think the dean must not like you very much. He usually assigns me to tutors he wants to get rid of.”
All’s fair in love and war, and this is definitely war.
“I asked for the assignment,” she replies with a smirk.
Of course she did, the insufferable over-achiever. I ramp up my innocent curiosity. “You’re the one looking for an excuse to quit? How can I help?”
“Why do you resist so much? Jen, if you would just put in a little effort—”
“Don’t give me that garbage.”
Yet, she persists. “I’ve seen your tests. You never even try.”
“What’s the point? I have no magic.”
“You do. I’ve seen those tests too. Why do you fight so much against it?”
I cut off all my hair yesterday because of her. I’m determined not to let her get the best of me today. With practiced calm I look her straight in the eyes and say, enunciating every single word, “I don’t need it.”
And I fully believe my words. Magic is a frivolous pursuit in a world of technology. It’s an ego-stroke, a means of elevating one’s self above others. I don’t need it. No one does. It’s gratuitous and divisive, and at this point, I want nothing to do with it.
That afternoon, after I go home, Miss Corlan asks the dean to switch her assignment. The following day, I’m met with the more-than-welcome sight of a new tutor to break.
Chapter Five
The weeks pass at a snail’s pace. Dad has said I can quit magic when I turn eighteen, and I intend to hold him to it.
(He didn’t really say it, of course, but he said we could discuss it, and if I pretend the decision is already made, I’m that much closer to success.)
In this respect at least the Dean of Magic is my ally. He can’t wait for me to be gone and has finally awarded my recalcitrance with self-study at the remedial table. Miss Corlan has shifted her tutelage to Tana’s benefit. Every so often, I catch her peeking in my direction as though to assess whether her change of favor gets under my skin.
What a paltry woman. All of the magic tutors favor Tana over me. It’s nothing new.
The week of my birthday arrives. I’m almost giddy with anticipation. After years of abject failure I can finally quit. My parents will fight me on it, but eighteen has its privileges. I’ll be legal to live on my own, to drop out of school all together and get a full-time job. That goes against the path they envision for me—and that I envision for myself, truth be told—but if they want me to cooperate, they’ll have to return the courtesy.
I’m so close to freedom that I can practically taste it.
The Dean of Magic knows it’s on the horizon too. He sets me in a corner with a stack of workbooks, but he leaves a fat non-magical history book on the top of the pile.
I love history. My childhood obsession with the goddess Anjeni led to that more general love. I can’t count how many times the dean has caught me reading history books instead of my magic manuals. I consider his indulgence now as a sign of solidarity with my cause.
Tana glances suspiciously my direction throughout the lesson, as though it’s any of her business what I’m reading. If the wonder-child dares to say anything, I’ll chastise her for neglecting her own studies.
Life is good.
The night before my birthday—my Bir
thday Eve—that walk home is the sweetest, most liberating experience. I fiddle with the lighter in my pocket as I go. Tana, up ahead with a group of friends, keeps looking back over her shoulder as though she suspects I’m going to slink away into the falling shadows.
Starting tomorrow, I won’t even have to carry the stupid lighter anymore. There will be no more candle tests, no more pointless hours wasted trying to create a spark of energy, no more scrawling rude pictures on theory exams.
“You’re such a quitter,” Tana mutters as we pass through the door into the house.
She knows I’m at the end of my road too. Is she worried she won’t shine as bright without a dud of a sister beside her?
That’s her issue. I refuse to lose any sleep over it.
And then all my joyful anticipation crashes in shambles around me.
“I enrolled both of you in summer classes today,” my mother announces over dinner. “The Dean of Magic called to say his spots were filling up, so I went ahead.”
I can’t believe my ears. Did she not get the memo? “I’m not going to magic classes over the summer. I’m not going back ever again. I’m eighteen.”
“You’re not eighteen yet.” Dad lifts his wine glass to take a sip, as if he’s weighing in on the most insignificant of subjects.
My indignation swells. “I might as well be! It’s literally hours away!”
“Jen, keep your temper,” says my mother from the other end of the table. Across from me, Tana smirks, a spectator to my humiliation.
I suppress my emotions in favor of deathly calm. “Keep my temper? You enrolled me, against my will, for classes that I am old enough to refuse to attend.”
“As long as you live under our roof, you abide by our rules,” Mom says.
I shove away from the table, my chair scraping across the tile floor. “Then maybe I won’t live under your roof anymore.” I don’t ask to be excused. Right now, they don’t deserve that courtesy.
Dad mops his napkin across his mouth with every intention of coming after me in my retreat, but he’s not quick enough. I’m up the stairs before he even reaches the threshold from the dining room.
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