UnTwisted

by Elise Allen

  Sara pushed through the crowd to get to him. His head was craned back, and Sara saw the tears in his eyes. She slipped her hand in his and squeezed.

  “You really do look like him,” Sara said.

  Galric didn’t answer, but he squeezed her hand back.

  Then a bell rang, and Sara looked around. For the first time, she took in the vast expanse of her new school. It had seemed big enough from up above, but now it was truly immense…though maybe it had just stretched taller, like Loriah had said it would. Standing in the middle of the K as they were, the pastel-swirled walls rose high in front of them and to either side, and Sara could now see where the smaller buildings had been magically squished together, because doors and windows sat in odd locations, and the entire structure seemed to droop in places, as if it were made of ice cream that had sat too long in the sun.

  “Look!” Flissa said, pointing up to the sky.

  Sara thought Flissa would be pointing out the bell; it was so loud it had to be enormous and very close…but Sara didn’t see it at all. She still heard its peals, and with every chime, something else erupted into the sky: rainbow fireworks, a loud drumroll, a fuchsia flame….

  “It’s the magical signatures of every Mage who helped build the school,” Flissa said.

  The last chime was accompanied by the loud caw of an eagle. When their echoes faded, everyone in the courtyard cheered.

  Then a female voice rang out, as loud as the bell chimes had been, but again, even though Sara looked everywhere, she couldn’t find the source.

  “It is my honor to welcome you all to Maldevon Academy,” the voice said. “I am Amala, your head of school.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. Most people sounded impressed, but after the conversation about her this morning, Sara listened closely and could hear several disapproving clucks, groans, and even a couple boos.

  “Mom and Dad were right,” Sara whispered to Flissa. “Not everyone’s happy about her.”

  “If we see anyone specific, we should probably find out their names so we can let them know,” Flissa whispered back.

  Sara understood that was what their parents had asked, but she didn’t want to spend her first day of school ratting people out. Besides, groaning and booing weren’t the same thing as actually causing trouble. “Do you know where she is?” Sara whispered, changing the subject.

  Flissa shook her head. “Wherever she is, she’s projecting her voice with magic. Smell.”

  Sara took a deep breath. “Oranges.”

  “But no orange trees around,” Flissa noted. “It has to be her magical signature.”

  “Some of you may know me,” Amala said. “Some lent your assistance in the Battle for Unification.”

  Raucous hoots and hollers rose up from the crowd. A knot of boys reached out to Galric and thumped him joyfully on the back. He was surprised but grinned and bumped fists with them. Across the courtyard, a young elephant raised its trunk and trumpeted. Boys and girls all through the crowd threw their fists in the air and whooped, and several people turned to one another and did the same handshake Krystal had done with Galric. Sara watched the pair closest to her, trying to memorize how it went.

  “Today, however, is a new day,” Amala’s voice continued. “Today we are the same. We are not simply Untwisteds and lifelong Kaloonians, not Mages and Genpos. We are…one Kaloon!”

  Sara heard a single, clear chime, followed almost immediately by a BOOM so loud it made everyone jump. Sara looked up to the sky; she thought it was more fireworks, but she saw nothing.

  Then the stench hit her. A blinding mix of sulfur, manure, and vomit. Her eyes watered, and her stomach lurched.

  “Ugh!” Loriah winced and squeezed her nose shut, then quickly removed her hand. “Argh, that’s even worse! I can taste it!”

  Flissa bent over double. “I can’t breathe…It’s horrible.”

  Sara herself held a hand to her throat and tried to keep from retching.

  All around them, everyone in the courtyard was groaning, coughing, or crying out.

  Everyone except Galric, who had spent years working in the royal manure pits. He looked down at Flissa, Sara, and Loriah like they were nuts.

  “Oh, come on. I mean, it’s bad, but it’s not that bad.”

  “A stink spell,” Amala’s voice rang out, more matter-of-fact than annoyed. “It’ll take more than that to disrupt opening day.”

  For a second the smell of oranges intensified, mixing with the vomit/manure/sulfur in a stench so hideous Sara thought she might pass out, but immediately after that a beautiful breeze washed through the courtyard, whisking away the horrible odor and replacing it with the clean, fresh smell of the ocean on a summer day. As everyone took deep, grateful breaths, Amala’s voice chuckled.

  “You might not see me, but trust that I can see you.” She waited a moment to let that sink in, then raised her voice in celebration once again. “As I was saying, we are one Kaloon, and together we celebrate this first day of classes!”

  One person cheered, and in an instant it rippled through the crowd until they were all whooping out loud. Sara hooted and hollered, completely swept up in the crowd’s delight. She loved it; it made her feel connected to everyone there, like they were all part of something bigger than any one of them.

  When the noise died down, Amala spoke again. “You will now get your schedules, and soon after that the bell will ring. When you hear this sound”—the bell rang out a high, chirping peal—“you’ll have five minutes to get to class. When it rings like this”—a low, resounding bass BONG echoed through the courtyard—“then classes begin.”

  Sara heard loud flapping, and the largest flock of birds she had ever seen soared up from the other side of the building and blanketed the sky.

  “May Maldevon smile on us all!” Amala’s voice cried.

  The birds swooped down toward the courtyard, and as they got closer Sara realized they weren’t birds at all. “They’re scrolls,” she said. “With wings.”

  One of them dove right down to Sara, then flitted impatiently in front of her face.

  “Gotta be our schedules, right?” Galric asked, wincing away from a scroll flapping in front of him.

  Loriah snatched the one nearest to her. “Cool,” she said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Sara pulled her scroll from the air. The second she touched it, the wings disappeared. Sara ripped off the scroll’s wax seal and rolled it open. “Sara” was written at the top in delicate calligraphy. She thrilled at the sight.

  “So?” Galric said. “Are we in the same classes?”

  They huddled together and compared.

  “This is dumb,” Loriah said. “We barely have anything together.”

  It was true. All four of them were never in the same class, and Sara only had two classes in common with Galric, none with Loriah, and one with Flissa.

  “Maybe it’s a mistake,” Flissa said. “The school can’t possibly expect everyone to be with entirely new people. Maybe if we say something, or talk to Amala…”

  “Then we’d be setting a bad example, right?” Sara said. “And it’s probably not a mistake. Remember the stink spell? It’s like Mom and Dad said, not everyone’s happy about the whole everyone-going-to-school-together thing. So maybe it’s good that we’re all mixed up. Maybe everyone’s all mixed up, and if we complain about it, we’re part of the problem.”

  It was a noble argument, and it was absolutely true, but Sara was also excited to tackle the school day on her own. Sure, she’d messed up a couple of times already, but those were little mistakes. The rest of the day she’d be flawless.

  Krystal bounded over. “What’ve you got?” she asked Galric.

  She put her hands on his arm so she could lean over and look at his scroll. Sara felt her shoulders tighten.

  “Second block together. And third…and fourth…and seventh!” Krystal cried. “Cool!”

  “Yeah, it is,” Galric said. “Oh, I don’t think I intro
duced you to my friends. This is Loriah, Flissa, and Sara.”

  Sara chose to ignore the fact that she and Krystal hadn’t exactly hit it off in their first conversation. Instead she smiled. “Really great to officially meet you, Krystal,” she said.

  And just to show that there were no hard feelings, she held out her hands, pressed together like she was ready to do the same handshake she’d seen Krystal, Galric, and the other boys do.

  “Uh-oh,” Loriah said, rolling her eyes. Galric blanched a little, and Krystal looked at Sara’s hands like they were dead fish.

  “What are you doing?” Krystal asked.

  “What do you mean?” Sara said. “It’s the handshake thing. I was watching, and I think I’ve got it.”

  Loriah gently pushed Sara’s hands down. “Just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “What?” Sara asked. “What am I doing wrong? I saw it; this is how it starts.”

  “It’s just…” Galric said, “that was the signal we used in the battle. When we were running messages and things. So we knew who was on our side.”

  “Okay, well…I was on your side,” Sara said.

  “Right,” Krystal said. “But you weren’t out there. You and your sister stayed in the palace. Protected.”

  Flissa stepped up next to Sara. “Because that’s what was required of us,” she said icily. “And if you’d like to talk about being out there, perhaps Sara and I could tell you about our time battling carnivorous plants and dragons and Dark Mages in the Twists.”

  “Ooooh, nice one,” Loriah said. Then she looked at Krystal. “What do you say to that?”

  Sara was mortified. She knew Flissa was standing up for her, but that was the last thing she wanted. She wanted to handle this on her own and make it better, not offend Krystal more than she already was.

  “Flissa, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m sure Krystal knows all about the Twists. It’s obvious she’s from there.”

  Galric winced and Krystal’s jaw dropped open.

  “Ouch,” Loriah said.

  Sara looked at all of them in disbelief. “What?! What now?”

  “It’s obvious I’m from the Twists?” Krystal said. “Really? What makes it so obvious?”

  Sara blushed. She didn’t want to say it, but now she felt like she had no choice. “I don’t know…your hair,” she said miserably. “And you have that tattoo on your hand. And all the piercings.”

  “Your ears are pierced,” Krystal shot back.

  Sara desperately wished some Twist magic would open a carnivorous hole in the ground and swallow her. She didn’t think it was possible to blush harder, but she did. “Yes, but just once in each ear. You…” She shook her head and tried to start again. “Look, I’m sorry, obviously I’m wrong, it’s just…your look is like what we saw in the Twists, and not like what we saw when we went around Kaloon.”

  Sara was dying. Everything she said only made it worse, and Krystal wouldn’t stop glaring at her. It was like she was daring Sara to keep talking.

  “Maybe you were seeing the wrong people when you went around Kaloon,” Krystal finally said. Then she turned to Galric. “I’ll see you in class.”

  Krystal disappeared into the crowd just as the bell rang its high-pitched peal. Loriah gave Sara a friendly nudge as the two of them, Galric, and Flissa joined the flow of students moving into the building.

  “You weren’t wrong,” Loriah said. “She’s totally a Wisher.”

  “A Wisher?”

  “Someone from Kaloon who wishes they’d lived in the Twists, so they dress up like they had,” Loriah said. “They think Untwisteds are cool and badass. Which, I mean, yeah, we are, but you’d have to be an idiot to want that.”

  “I don’t understand,” Flissa said. “If she wants people to think she’s from the Twists, why did she get so upset with Sara?”

  “’Cause Sara’s a princess,” Galric said. “It’s different.”

  “But that’s hardly fair,” Flissa said. “It was a simple misunderstanding. It isn’t right to—”

  “Forget it,” Sara said sharply. “Let’s just get to class. I don’t want to be late.”

  Quickening her gait, she trotted up the steps to the main entrance of the school, right at the center of the K. Sara took a big breath of still-orange-tinged air and tried desperately to recapture her earlier feeling of elation.

  It didn’t work. Her stomach had a strange knot in it that hadn’t been there before, and it wouldn’t smooth out.

  That was okay, though; the day had just started. There was lots of time to make everything better. Apparently there were new rules since Kaloonification, and Sara just had to be a little more careful while she learned them, that’s all. It wouldn’t take her long. In the meantime, she’d make sure she looked exactly how she’d felt this morning: excited and ready for anything.

  She took one last deep breath, then she painted on a smile and pushed through the doors of Maldevon Academy.

  Flissa was angry. As worried as she’d been about Sara finding new friends and leaving her behind, it was even worse to see her so completely deflated when all she’d tried to do was be nice.

  She tried to catch up with her sister, but Sara had disappeared into the crowd.

  “Sara?” she called as she ran up the main stairs and into the building. “Sara?”

  “She probably went to class,” Loriah said. She’d kept pace with Flissa and was right next to her.

  “Hey!” Galric said as he jogged to catch up to them. He’d lagged behind because students kept stopping him to shout hello and exchange fist bumps and special handshakes. Krystal apparently wasn’t the only person who thought he was a war hero. “Is Sara okay?” he asked. “I thought Krystal was kind of hard on her.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Loriah said. “Sara’s a big girl. Have you checked out this place, though? It’s wild.”

  Flissa had been so busy scanning the crowd of people and animals for Sara, she hadn’t even looked around. Now she did. They were in a massive spherical atrium—the center of the K. The same chaotic pastels that swirled through the outside of the building decorated the inside as well. A large fountain teeming with koi fish sat in the center of the room, with water bubbling out of a rigdilly statue in its middle. There were six arched passageways out of the room. Two of them led to the wings making up the backbone of the K, one to each leg, and two other archways led outside: one to the fields behind the building, and the other to the outdoor classrooms in the mouth of the K.

  The strange part was that none of the archways were regular curves. They were warped and wavy, and Flissa felt like she was looking at the whole room from underwater.

  “How do we know where to go?” Galric asked. Then he wheeled to the sound of his name and raised a hand to yet another person who called out to him as she passed. “Oh, hey!”

  Flissa ignored the Galric fan club and instead noticed several students staring down at their opened scrolls and flipping them over. She was sure the back of her scroll had been blank, but when she unrolled it and turned it over, a map to her first class appeared. She quickly held it out to Galric and Loriah.

  “Look—maps in magical ink,” Flissa said. “Sara must have found hers and left.”

  “Got it,” Loriah said, pointing to her map. “So you and I have History of Kaloon, right here.”

  “I’m at the fields for Athletics,” Galric said. “Catch up with you later!”

  Galric took off, then Flissa and Loriah walked through the fun-house archway that led to the top of the K’s stalk. Unlike the main atrium, this wasn’t a dome exactly, but nothing was square. There were no right angles anywhere. The marbled floor rose and fell in waves, and part of the ceiling must have been repurposed from another home’s facade because there was a front door, complete with a round, dangling knocker right in the middle.

  “So when did your folks say the magic’s supposed to settle?” Loriah asked as they trudged up a steep hill in the floor.

  “It s
houldn’t take too long,” said Flissa. “Maybe by the first holiday break?”

  The girls heard shouts and cheers behind them and turned to see a group of six older kids—boys and girls dressed in leggings and tunics—whiz down the rolling hall at breakneck speed. They all wore boots with wheels magicked onto them, and zoomed over the hills on their way to class. All the other students in the hall watched, most of them clapping and cheering, though Flissa noticed some people stood with their arms folded and rolled their eyes or sneered as the roller-booters sped by.

  Loriah grinned. “We should try it.”

  Flissa was nervous but excited. “With your magic or mine?”

  “Seriously? Unless you’re making the wheels to save your sister, my magic’ll be way stronger.”

  Flissa blushed. Sometimes Loriah knew her far too well.

  Loriah concentrated and pointed down at their feet. Flissa smelled the strong odor of lavender, then she rolled out of control down their hill and straight toward a clutch of well-dressed girls her own age.

  “Sorry! Coming through! Can’t stop!” she shouted. The girls jumped apart, all staring at her with either disdain, shock, or a mix of both. “Loriah!”

  An instant later, Loriah grabbed her hand and zipped her down the hall, curving around several other groups of students.

  “You get used to it quick!” Loriah shouted over the rush of air in their faces. “Come on, last door on the left!”

  She released Flissa’s hand and poured on speed, pumping her arms. Flissa followed. She had no idea what she was doing—she’d never been a vehicle before—but she forced herself not to think about it so her body could do what felt right. She thrust out her legs one at a time, pumped her arms, and in no time she was racing down the hall, easily shifting her weight to avoid every obstacle. She was so focused on Loriah, she didn’t look at anyone else, and only barely heard the voices that asked, “Princess Flissa?” with varying degrees of admiration or horror.

  Loriah hooted when Flissa finally overtook her. “Speed demon!”

  Flissa didn’t let up until she reached her classroom. Then she grabbed the doorjamb with her left hand, swung easily inside…and realized she had no idea how to stop. And unlike the halls, this classroom was cluttered with individual tables and desks, with only the smallest aisles between them—aisles already cluttered with people’s satchels and stacks of books.