by Chloe Garner
Valerie sighed, looking at the wand in her hand.
“So if you can figure out how to defend from a cast like that, it might save my mom’s life?” Valerie asked.
“I think the odds are exceedingly slim that she would be in one of these fights,” Mr. Tannis said. “But I do think that you will have helped save someone’s life. Potentially Mr. MacMillan’s father.”
Shack.
“All right,” Valerie said. “Are you sure I can’t hurt you?”
“I am much stronger and much better-trained than you are,” Mr. Tannis said. “And even if that weren’t true, this room is warded to within an inch of its life. Damaging magic is extremely muted unless I put a hole in the wards for a purpose. We do too many dangerous things for it to be otherwise.”
Valerie nodded, looking around the room.
So many boxes and bins and bags to choose from.
Where to start?
The rules were too specific.
She’d been working for an hour, going through all of Mr. Tannis’ stuff to try to find something that would do what he asked her to do, but it wasn’t the same. Many of the ingredients called to her, but for other things.
What was nice was that she could at least tell that that box of metal ball bearings was only interesting because she wanted to build an alarm system that would trip if someone tried to cast across it.
Mr. Tannis had eventually gone around his desk and started grading papers, only glancing up at her from time to time. She felt like apologizing, but at the same time she refused to apologize for not attacking him and trying to cook his organs.
Seriously.
She sat down cross-legged on the floor and closed her eyes, waiting for something to occur to her.
Was there something that she knew that she could use to cue her ability? Or was she simply not able to hurt things? She wouldn’t have minded if it was true, though the neurotoxin the first day belied it.
And a bomb.
She still remembered how to build the bomb. Knew where the ingredients were, on the wall.
A bomb.
Now that was an interesting thought.
All she had to do was get it to go off inside his chest, and to be heat rather than explosion.
Could she do that?
She stood, going to get the things that she’d used in the first bomb and sitting down at a desk to consider it.
If she replaced a couple of the ingredients with a specific configuration and a placement order ritual…
There was a language, deep in the back of her throat, one that was pressing to get out even as she put together the order in her head for the rest of the cast.
Her hands were already working, preparing ingredients and placing them, feeling the way the power built up around them. She pushed them around with the wand, getting them into straight lines and sometimes letting the wand touch more than one ingredient at a time to let the power between them neutralize.
What a useful tool.
The words just came all on their own, though they weren’t proper words, so much as sounds.
Angry ones.
It matched up well with the magic of the cast, actually, and the intent.
Mr. Tannis was watching her with interest, but when she spared a moment to look at him, he nodded encouragement.
She kept working.
The entire cast took about twenty minutes to complete, and then she held up the wand like a lightning rod, drawing the energy of the cast up and off of the desk. She slowly stood, sensing that she would be more powerful on her feet, and she pointed the wand at Mr. Tannis.
“Go,” she said simply.
He grabbed his chest and his eyes went wide.
“Mr. Tannis,” she said, dropping the wand and running over to him.
He held up a hand and shook his head, coughing and leaning out over his desk.
“That was marvelously done, Miss Blake,” he said. “I am uninjured, though my pride may be a bit stung. The odds of that being the exact cast that the Superiors used is infinitesimal, but it is exactly what I need to work against for defense magic. I wasn’t able to come up with a way to do it, and you have. Now I can defend. We’ll start again on Monday. You’ll be doing that cast a lot, as I work, so get used to it.”
Valerie went quickly back to the desk, scuttling the cast and picking up the wand.
“May I keep this?” she asked.
“Some of your teachers will consider it cheating,” he said. “But I’d like you to practice with it whenever you get opportunity. It will make your casting better, here.”
Valerie really wasn’t interested in making her attacks stronger, but she did like the wand, so she stuck it into the side pocket of her backpack and hefted the pack up onto her shoulder. He raised a hand and straightened - finally.
“Enjoy your weekend. I understand you have company coming.”
She smiled.
“I do.”
He nodded.
“Be careful. But have a good time.”
She gave him a tight smile and left, going downstairs and to her dorm room, where Sasha was writing a paper.
With pen and paper.
How strange.
“What time does the bus come this afternoon?” Sasha asked.
“Should be in the next thirty minutes or so,” Valerie answered. “I’m going to go take a shower and then wait in the cafeteria. Want to come with?”
Sasha grinned.
“Am I invited?” she asked.
“Of course,” Valerie answered, then stopped. “You know that there’s no way I would have survived all of this without you, right? I mean, just none.”
“That’s not true,” Sasha answered, looking back at her paper. “You’re really strong and really smart. You would have been fine.”
“Um, no,” Valerie said. “I would have gone nuts and burned the entire place down. You should be there to meet Hanson, because my two closest friend should know each other.”
“Is Ethan going to be there?” Sasha asked, still looking hard at her paper, though the pen had stopped moving.
“No,” Valerie said. “I mean, I’m sure he’ll be around this weekend, and stuff, but I didn’t ask him to come to the cafeteria to meet Hanson.”
“Are you sure that they’re going to be okay, together?” Sasha asked. Valerie raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on, not you, too,” she said. “Hanson is just my friend. Seriously. Nothing more.”
Sasha shrugged.
“Ethan has a temper.”
“I’ve yet to see it,” Valerie answered, getting out her shower caddy and towel. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Sasha nodded.
“He likes you a lot,” she said.
“Is that a problem?” Valerie asked, and Sasha looked over at her quickly.
“No. I just… I’m jealous of the way he looks at you.”
“Do you have a crush on Ethan?” Valerie asked, feeling wretched that she had missed it.
“No,” Sasha said. Too quickly. She was lying.
“Really?” Valerie pressed. Sasha laughed, looking away for a moment and then back at Valerie.
“No. Not Ethan. I just wish any boy would look at me like that. Like the whole room goes fuzzy when you walk in.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Valerie said. “Wow are you a romantic.”
“He does,” Sasha protested, blushing.
Valerie grinned.
“Then we’re going to have to find you a boy,” she said.
“Have you had boyfriends before?” Sasha asked.
“You haven’t?” Valerie countered, and Sasha shook her head.
“I didn’t stay in the same place very much, in the last five or six years. I had my friends at school, but I didn’t do anything outside of school because I was traveling with my mom. Before that, I thought boys were icky.”
“Most of them still are,” Valerie said. “Seriously. Shower, and then we’re going to talk.”
> She hurried down the hallway, checking her watch, and showered quickly, going back to the room to find something to wear.
She was ridiculously excited to see Hanson, but at the same time, she didn’t know how to feel.
She really wasn’t the same person who had left a couple months ago.
She was.
She was.
But she knew about things that she never would have even imagined, and her mom was in danger, and her dad was alive…
She just wanted it to be simple, to be able to spend time with her friend the way they always had, to laugh and talk and tease.
Him actually coming made her more poignantly aware of how much she had missed him.
“So,” Valerie said as she and Sasha started down the hallway toward the cafeteria. “Boys. What are you looking for, exactly? You want a do-for-me boyfriend, or someone who adores you and pays a lot of attention to you, or are you looking for a long-term relationship?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “I mean, neither of the first two. I want someone to talk to, who makes me laugh, who’s… you know. Who’s my person.”
“You want a soulmate,” Valerie said, and Sasha looked away, embarrassed.
“I hate to break it to you, but I haven’t seen much quality material around school,” Valerie said. “I mean, everyone’s just too competitive and obsessed with their own magic.”
“You and Ethan get along,” Sasha said and Valerie nodded, smiling involuntarily again.
“He isn’t like them. He doesn’t care about all of this so much. I mean, he knows it’s important, but it isn’t worth being a jerk over.”
“They aren’t all jerks,” Sasha said. “I mean, they are to you, but…”
She stopped and Valerie frowned.
“Your boyfriend doesn’t have to like me,” Valerie said. “I mean, it’d be more fun if he did, but you shouldn’t blow someone off because he doesn’t like me.”
Sasha laughed, rubbing her cheeks with her palms for a moment. Valerie wasn’t sure if the girl had been crying.
“It’s not like anyone has ever expressed any interest,” the redhead said. “I don’t think I’d turn anyone down.”
“Would too,” Valerie muttered. “You have standards. Don’t sacrifice those just because you want a guy.”
“Sometimes I’m not sure,” Sasha said as the turned into the cafeteria.
“I’m serious,” Valerie said. “Guys aren’t worth it, okay? I mean, if what you’re looking for is someone to give you back rubs and convince you that you’re awesome when you’re having a bad day, you can get just about any boyfriend you want. But if you want a serious boyfriend… I’ve seen girls get hooked up with a guy just because he was hot and he winked at them, and they end up wasting years of their lives trying to keep him from being exactly what he liked about himself.”
“We’re sixteen,” Sasha said. “You sound like a sitcom.”
Valerie snorted.
“The girls I hung out with started dating in the sixth grade,” she said. “And all boys were idiots in middle school.”
Sasha laughed.
They heard the front doors open and the sound of Lady Harrington’s voice as she greeted the visitors, and Valerie stood straight. Hanson rounded the corner into the cafeteria a minute later, and her feet were moving.
She hit him in the chest at speed, and he stumbled back two steps, laughing and wrapping her up tight.
“I forgot how hard you hit,” he said.
“I forgot how big you are,” she answered, grinning. “Come meet Sasha.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and she walked him over to where Sasha was sitting, staring with big eyes.
Hanson’s dad was military. He traveled a lot, and he was the kind of guy that everyone stopped talking when he walked in the room because he kind of filled the entire doorway.
Hanson took after him in a lot of ways.
Valerie grinned wider.
“Sasha, this is Hanson. Hanson, this is my roommate and savior Sasha.”
“You’ve been taking care of Val?” Hanson asked, offering his hand to shake hers. “She needs it. Nobody knows it better than I do.”
“Um,” Sasha said. Hanson grinned, then hugged Valerie again.
“Okay, so apparently there are protocols for these visits, and I’m supposed to be here in time for dinner, which means we’ve got like thirty minutes for the tour and for me to figure out where to put my stuff.”
“Where is it?” Sasha asked. “I’ll get it.”
“No chance,” Hanson said with another easy grin. “It’s up in the front hall, and I think it would squish you.”
“You brought sportsball stuff, didn’t you?” Valerie asked.
“It’s a boarding school,” he said. “I brought gear for everything.”
“You’re here for two days,” Valerie said. “And I don’t play anything.”
“So?” he asked. “You’ve also been known to sleep until two on Saturday. I bet I could get a pick-up game of just about anything around here, couldn’t I?”
Valerie actually had no idea, so she looked over at Sasha.
“Um,” Sasha said.
“Ethan will know,” Valerie said. “He said he plays basketball. I bet he plays soccer, too.”
“I brought a tennis racket and my baseball mitt,” Hanson said.
“Hopelessly optimistic,” Valerie said.
What did kids do on the weekends? She’d been too busy studying to even try to find out.
“And like six changes of clothes,” he said.
They got to the front hall where a set of bags was sitting, and he picked up two of them.
“Where am I headed?” he asked.
“Out,” Valerie said. “Did they not tell you anything more than that?”
“I know that I’m assigned to visitor cottage B,” he said. “Is that enough?”
“I can show you were that is,” Sasha said quickly. “It’s a way from the upperclass cottages. I don’t know if they’ve shut down the pool yet.”
“There’s a pool here?” Valerie asked. Sasha glanced at her.
“Three,” she said.
Valerie tipped her head back and groaned.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” she asked as Hanson laughed.
“It was in the campus map,” Sasha said. “I told you that you needed to look at it.”
“Why?” Valerie asked. “I wasn’t planning on getting lost.”
Hanson snorted again and glanced at Sasha.
“Told you she needs someone looking out for her.”
Sasha laughed.
Giggled, actually.
For crying out loud.
They walked across a lawn that crunched underfoot with the beginnings of falling leaves, and Valerie found herself looking around at the property that surrounded Survival School for the first time.
There were some guys, over there, playing Ultimate Frisbee, and a trio of girls sitting on a plaid blanket, talking.
“It’s pretty here,” Hanson said.
“No kidding,” Valerie answered. “I’ve been cooped up in my room this whole time.”
“Well, glad I came to show the place to you,” Hanson said. “I really want to catch up, and I’ve got a birthday present for you in my bag, but there’s only about an hour of light left…”
“You can run and play with them,” Valerie said. “Just don’t get gross for dinner, okay?”
Sasha pointed at the cottages - adorable, white square buildings down in a cove right up against the treeline with, yes, a small pool in the middle of them - and Hanson jogged off to go get his bags put down. Valerie stopped to wait for him.
“He’s so hot,” Sasha said. “You never said he was hot.”
Valerie wrinkled her nose.
She still had the image of him in her head as the kid who couldn’t sneak up on a frog to save his life, but… okay. If she squinted right she could see it.
“Told you, we’re just f
riends,” she said. “He’s been my best friend since before I can remember. The idea of him being sexy is just…” She shuddered, and Sasha laughed, taking a step sideways.
“And he’s so nice,” Sasha said.
“You know, that’s how people are supposed to be,” Valerie said, though she had to admit that he had always been a relief from the high-amplitude cattiness that was possible with her friends from school. Her friends from her real school.
There was a pitting sensation in her stomach, but she pressed through it and moved on.
“I know,” Sasha said. “It’s just… You know, I had this idea of what school was going to be like, and sitting and studying with friends and talking about magic with people, actually having everyone around me know what it was so that I was allowed, and…”
“Like one full-time sleepover,” Valerie said, and Sasha nodded.
“Yeah. My brothers talk about Light School sometimes, and how rough it can be… Boys don’t really talk about it though, do they?”
“Nope.”
“I thought the girls would be different,” Sasha said. Valerie laughed.
“And they are.”
Sasha nodded.
“They’re so much worse,” she whispered, and Valerie grinned.
Hanson was jogging back up the hill toward them.
“I’m missing two basketball practices to be here,” he said. “So I have to put in a good show of getting a workout.”
She motioned.
“Be my guest.”
She and Sasha followed along behind as Hanson ran over and introduced himself into the game without hesitation.
There was a guy sitting on the sidelines as Hanson arrived, and the two of them both joined to keep the teams even.
Valerie only vaguely understood the rules of Ultimate, but the guys played hard and it was fun to watch.
It felt very much like being back at home, actually.
She was never going home again, she realized. Her mom was out of hiding, and that was all that that place had ever been.
Grief.
It came at her suddenly, and she sat down, trying not to let Sasha see it.
“He’s bigger than anyone in the freshman year,” Sasha said.
Valerie had actually noticed that - that the magic users tended to be on the petite side, save Shack.
“Shack isn’t that much shorter than Hanson,” Valerie said. “But Hanson is a freak of nature. I call him that, actually. There are a couple of guys at our school who are taller, but… No, he’s one of the biggest guys around, even at a big school.”