Everything’s going to plan, Naya dared herself to think. Now she was at school, she knew exactly where to go in order to avoid Ryan, Beatrice and their entourage of “cool kids” at the main entrance to the school.
Ugh—it was like walking through a pack of lions to walk through the front doors of her school, with them scratching every part of a person’s soul, shredding any self-respect a normal human being might cling to.
That morning, Naya walked through the teachers’ parking lot instead, near the courtyard. That way, the only obstacle she had to pass was the principal's office. Fortunately, that door was always locked and forbidden to students.
Naya knew her way in through the teachers’ entrance. Okay, no—to be clear, she knew the principal’s assistant, Miss Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the kindest person in the school, and she’d let her in.
Poor Elizabeth. Because she was the kindest person in school, most of the students took her for a fool, pulling pranks on her at every opportunity.
But Naya had always been there for Elizabeth. She’d earned her extracurricular hours by working as a liaison between the students and the principal. It was a job nobody really understood, and therefore nobody else had applied for it. As it turned out, though, the position was perfect for Naya—because, since the principal’s office was always empty, with an exception of those regular pranksters, it had given Naya the opportunity to get to know Elizabeth.
As a result, every time Naya needed some help now, Elizabeth was always there to provide the impossible.
On this morning, the impossible was just opening the door to the teachers’ entrance—and only a text message was needed.
“I'm outside. Pls open.”
Naya hit “send” and the door instantly buzzed open.
Elizabeth was waiting on the other side to usher Naya inside, avoiding the eyes of any other teachers.
"Today’s the blood test,” Elizabeth reminded Naya softly, “so, be careful."
Elizabeth was looking around nervously, making sure no one was around with more diligence than she normally would.
"Oh no!” Naya hurried towards the door leading to the hallway. “Why is it early this year?” Then she glanced at the clock as they passed it. “Never mind—I have to hurry!"
The nurse’s office was right next to the principal's office, and Naya knew that if the ATTP testing was occurring earlier than scheduled, she’d wind up in front of a line of ninth graders as they waited to get tested…
…a line that would include Ryan, Beatrice, and the rest of popular mean kids who’d been at that party a year ago.
Elizabeth let Naya through the doorway, and she became basically a gazelle around the hallways—darting so quickly and agilely that she wondered to herself why she’d never applied for the track team before.
Suddenly, a voice interrupted Naya’s thoughts.
"Hi, Naya. Running for something, or away from it?"
That pretentious, high-pitched voice could only belong to Beatrice. It was still a mystery to Naya how Beatrice’s voice hadn't broken a window around this place yet.
Naya staggered to a halt as she came face to face with Beatrice. She shot the popular girl a despicable look and opened her mouth to shoot off a sarcastic answer…
…and then he came to join them.
Ryan.
"Ohhh! Who do we have here? Pad girl, ladies and gentlemen!"
Something inside Naya was suddenly freezing cold. She could feel it—the sense that a bad vibe was in the air.
Naya, be clever and brave, she thought to herself—her internal voice speaking with a confidence that she herself didn’t possess at that moment.
"Baby, the gift please."
Beatrice spoke as if she’d actually been expecting Naya—and then reached to take something out of her backpack. Naya couldn’t see what it was—her eyes were too cloudy from tension. She wanted to keep running, but her legs were suddenly not responding to what her brain was demanding of them.
Naya peered at what Beatrice was holding. It looked like a plastic bag, so whatever Beatrice was holding, it had to be small.
So, it shouldn't be that bad, right?
"Oh, little pad girl—where do you think we could display this?"
Ryan suddenly pointed behind him—and Naya froze.
He was pointing at Brook and Sebastian, the other members of the football team. They’d just come around the corner displaying a massive, four-feet-tall poster of Naya—a blown-up photo of her in the pool, and that floating pad in the water next to her.
As Naya looked at the poster, horrified, Ryan took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the plastic bag Beatrice had been holding. He slapped the contents onto Naya’s back.
Inside was a maxi-pad, just like the one from the pool a year ago, with red ink on it.
The plastic bag, Naya immediately realized, was to protect Beatrice from the instant superglue that covered the pad.
She clawed for the pad stuck to her back, but Naya quickly realized that Ryan had accidentally glued part of her ponytail to it – so even as her fingers found the offensive item, she realized that ripping it off wasn’t an option.
Naya’s cheeks burned red with fury. She hadn’t thought anything could be worse than what had happened a year ago, but to mark the anniversary, Beatrice and her sadistic friends had found an even more humiliating way to make a spectacle of her.
Suddenly, Naya felt a burning in her hands—one like nothing she’d never felt before.
Her fingers started moving, independent of Naya’s control, as if her fingers themselves knew what they were doing.
It was getting harder and harder to control them. It was as if the strange sensation flooding Naya was feeding on all the loud laughs and mean comments directed at her by the other kids. Her eyes were suddenly filled with rage as she stared at that huge, humiliating poster.
Naya felt like she was about to explode; every cell in her body was sending her different, contradictory messages. Only her hands were focused. Slowly, Naya closed her fingers into fists. As soon as her thumb touched her knuckles, the banner Brook and Sebastian were holding turned into dust—right there in front of her.
Like it was burning to ashes, except without heat or light, the poster crinkled into crumbling black dust, left floating down the hallway.
Suddenly, there was silence.
Every student gathered around them—the ones who’d been hooting and hollering earlier were shocked into stunned silence. Nobody knew what had just happened.
Ryan, after a few silent seconds, tried to recover from the situation—as if laughter would solve the mystery.
“Ha!” he laughed, jokingly: "Well done, bro! You fired up that explosive after all!"
Naya was barely focused on what Ryan was saying, but she was aware that Sebastian had made some explosives in science class but had never had the courage to blow any of them up in a prank. Although they’d never been used—and Ryan knew that—he was still giving Sebastian credit for what had happened, because what other explanation was there?
But there was another explanation—only Naya didn’t know what it was.
She was still standing there, frozen with panic. Somehow, she knew that it wasn't Sebastian’s old experiment that had crumbled that poster into dust. It was as if her anger had burned it to a crisp.
But how? Mental powers? Did those even exist?
Am I psychic? Naya asked herself.
Too many questions rumbled around her head, all spinning together in less than a quarter of a second.
"What in the nation's name is this?"
A sharp, angry, familiar voice rang out. With only that one yell, the principal made everybody tremble as he came striding out of the teachers’ area—the doorway Naya herself had just snuck through.
Everybody froze as the principal took in the scene, his eyes instantly judging everybody standing there.
His gaze fell on Ryan and Naya, seeing the tension between them.
"W
e were just joking around, right, guys?"
Ryan draped his arm over Naya's shoulders—ostensibly in friendship, but really so the pad hanging from her ponytail couldn’t be seen. He gave her a passive-aggressive squeeze—an unspoken demand to play along or face something worse in the near future.
Naya was still off-kilter after what had happened, but she murmured: "Yeah, we were just having fun." She didn’t sound especially convincing, and she rolled her eyes at Ryan as the football player hugged her.
“You all have classes to be in, or the ATTP to take—so hop to it!”
The principal’s snarl was enough to rouse to action the crowd that had gathered—and he sped them even faster by warning, “Anybody misses that test, they’ll be in detention for a year!”
As the crowd dissipated, Naya came back to reality. The moment the principal was out of sight, she wrenched Ryan’s arm off her shoulder as if it was rancid, and hissed angrily into his ear: "Touch me again and next thing blowing up will be you!"
On any other day, Naya wouldn’t dare utter such words, but suddenly she felt powerful… Powerful, but also confused.
She’d never felt anything similar to what had swept over her just moments earlier. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. Part of her desired to ignore and rationalize it.
There’s time to process this later, Naya, she told herself. You’ve got a maxi-pad stuck to your back at the moment!
With the principal off stalking the hallways, Naya ducked back through the doorway to the teachers’ area and found Miss Elizabeth at her desk. The principal’s assistant looked up at her as she approached, shocked. She’d clearly seen what had just happened in the hallway.
“Naya! I’m glad you came to me for help.”
Miss Elizabeth took Naya into an empty office and helped remove the maxi-pad with solvent she had in her bag. It didn’t have a brand name on it, and was in a small green glass vial. Miss Elizabeth always carried weird things in that big bag of hers. Naya was happy for it, as the concoctions were mysteriously helpful to every situation.
Even with the solvent, it still took time. Finally, Miss Elizabeth handed Naya a slip of paper once the pad came off. "This is a hall pass, Naya. It’s already signed by the principal—he likes to do them in bulk, so I won’t keep annoying him every time a student requests one.” Miss Elizabeth pointed to the paper. “With this, your first-period teacher won't be able to punish you for skipping class."
Miss Elizabeth completed the signed form—adding some lame excuse for why Naya had missed class.
Elizabeth was so nice. She really cared about Naya, and it was truly rewarding for her to have someone she could trust at school.
What had happened with the poster?
What’s going on with me?
4
Later that day, Naya met her parents at the hospital, just like they’d demanded.
It was annoying for her. Naya didn’t see the point. The blood tests always confirmed she was always fine, without a trace of anything. I guess with her mom as a doctor, she was always paranoid about her health. No matter how much she complained, it always ended the same way, with her blood being drawn sickeningly from her arm while she tried not to watch.
“Hello, my sunshine!” Naya’s dad immediately hugged her like a teddy bear without leaving any space for air.
“How was your day, sweetheart?” clamored her mother sitting behind a white table with two big modern computer screens that could barely overshadow all her diplomas covering the back wall.
Sigh…
“Perfect!” A forced smile twitched her lips. “You know… As always”
Today, she didn’t feel fine. In fact, this time she wasn’t even hesitant about submitting to her parents’ test. Something strange had happened to her that morning, and even though she felt perfectly normal by the time she went to meet her parents, during the confrontation with Beatrice and Ryan she’d felt anything but fine. In fact, she’d felt extremely out of place—like her body wasn’t even the same one she was used to.
However, Naya decided she wasn’t going to tell her parents anything about what happened. They’d just freak out, for sure. It was enough with this blood test every six months. Her parents were looking for signs of the same disease her father had. He had to get a shot every month. They’d never really explained what the disease was, but it never seemed to hurt him, as long as he got his shots, so Naya didn’t worry too much. Getting your blood drawn twice a year was worse than getting a monthly shot, anyways.
If Naya mentioned what had happened that morning, it would just put more pressure on the family. So, in her mind, it was settled. If her blood test came out fine again, then what had happened that morning could be written off—probably just a combination of anger and maybe a mild fever.
“Sit here, Naya.” Maryanne pointed at the swirling chair in front of her desk.
She knew the drill. It was always the same. A small amount of pain, a few laughs and then a trip to any candy store she wanted with her dad. There was no point why this time had to be different.
“Auuch!” She screamed at the first pinch of the hideous needle on her left arm.
“Breathe, Naya.” A soft caress passed through her cheeks and ended up holding the hand from her other arm. Her dad knew how to comfort her. “What do you want to talk about today, sweetie?”
He knew that her curiosity would take away the focus of how her warm blood was taken, dripping slowly into a translucent test tube.
“I know you have to take shots every month, but…” She paused, not knowing how to ask, or perhaps not wanting to know the answer got her upset, and with a deep breath she continued. “Is it that bad? I mean, what happens if you skip one? Is that why you are always testing my blood? Do you think I might have it?”
Both her parents shared a sweet look, as if Naya was a three-year-old asking why animals have fur.
“Honey, what your dad has, it's nothing you have to worry about.” Her mom tapped the tube which was half full by then. “There is no medical term for it.” Naya’s eyes opened up wide. If one of the best doctors in the country said a disease has no name, then it must have been something serious.
“It is something that my blood needs.” He gave his wife a funny look as they laughed.
Naya, still confused about their little inside joke, frowned angrily.
“My baby.” He smiled at her daughter. “It is like a vitamin I need to take to be healthy. It is not serious, but I must be cautious and follow my routine.”
“Or he gets grounded.” Maryanne stared at her husband with a cheeky smile. “That’s why we test you every six months. In case you have something, we already have a plan of action to help you get through it as well as your dad does it.”
“Thank you, my love,” Claude replied with pride in his eyes. “You don’t need to be afraid for the result, sweetie. We got you covered.”
“And it’s done!” Her mom pulled out the needle and pressed a piece of cotton with alcohol to the wound. “Now you can go with your dad. Have you chosen a place yet?”
“Today we go to the amazing ice cream place!” She jumped out of the chair, excited by the thought of having a delicious treat she deserved.
“The one with more than 30 flavors?” Her dad’s face lit up. They both were sugar enthusiasts. “And 50 different toppings!” Naya followed his excitement.
“Don’t go crazy about it!” Her mom warned them as they grabbed their things to leave her office. “I don’t want to hear any complaints of stomach ache from too much ice cream again!” She tried to force their memory to remember how last time ended with two days of sickness.
However, it was useless, they were already rambling about the toppings they hadn’t tried yet and what new “seasonal flavors” there must be as they left her mom’s office. Not without a kiss goodbye of course.
Walking through the hospital’s hallways, Naya encountered a familiar thing.
Could it be?
It was the same jacket she saw earlier in the morning. Right before the test was taken to kids at her school. It was a military uniform. A few military men guarding what seemed to be the entrance of the laboratory room.
Would they have the blood samples there? From the ATTP test? This was all too coincidental…
Her dad noticed her staring at that scene. “Are you okay, sunshine?”
Suddenly she snapped out of it and nodded as if nothing was happening. “Do you think my test results will be fine?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“Of course they will be! You are my strong and perfect little woman.” He placed one arm around Naya to give her a little kiss on her forehead. “Now let’s hurry because those ice creams won’t be eaten by themselves.”
The blood test would come back fine, right? Should she bring up what happened today? The strange anger, and the poster turning to dust?
It was too risky. Knowing her mom, Naya knew she’d probably end up with every colleague of Maryanne running a bunch of unnecessary additional tests on her. It just wasn’t worth it. Her parents wouldn't understand what had happened… They didn't even know that Naya was being bullied.
Naya knew both her parents had amazing jobs. Her mom was one of the best doctors in the country. Just last month, Maryanne was on the cover of an important medicine magazine. Meanwhile, her dad was one of the most honored and loved teachers at the big university. His research had helped many global organizations solve diverse problems, mostly revolving around hunger.
So, Naya’s parents were both really busy people, and bothering them with little issues was not an option for Naya. They had bigger things to worry about. It was better to deal with the bullying the way she had been—by avoiding people—and to leave the mysterious event of that morning to science. Naya was sure nothing was wrong.
It was time to eat ice cream and forget about the strange thing that happened and that would only lead to a big, horrible discussion about bullying that she didn’t want her parents to know about.
Probably.
The Mage-Blood Test: A YA Paranormal Romance (Arumrose Academy Book 1) Page 3