by Zandra Pope
She went to the door and checked the hall for arsonists. I trailed her. The hall was empty. Of course.
“Mr. Rust will be expecting you.”
The long walk to Mr. Rust’s office gave me plenty of time to feel sorry for myself. The slip of yellow paper confirmed my growing hatred for this place. I didn’t belong here.
Normally, if I did something wrong, I owned it. I admitted to feeding eight Reeses Peanut Butter Cups to the school mascot, which lead to his untimely death. I didn’t know that hellhounds couldn’t eat peanut butter cups.
I admitted that I spoofed my Ancient Verses teacher’s email and sent out a very creative piece of writing about her chin hair. I did not get extra credit — not even for computer class. Spoofing an email isn’t exactly easy.
I admitted that I faked endometriosis, mono, and a staph infection to get out of P.E. For what it’s worth, it’s not spelled “staff” infection. That’s the slip-up that got me busted. I’m not the greatest speller and it’s not the best idea to rely on spell check. I should have asked Ava to proof-read the note before I turned it in.
The only thing I got A’s in was bra size. Ava was the opposite. She had straight A’s and double D’s. Identical twins were supposed to have the same cup size. Life wasn’t fair.
I stopped in the doorway of 118. I hated 118. You’d think a magical school would have a more creative way of dealing with discipline issues — like a dungeon. Not that I’m complaining. I’d be spending a heck of a lot of time in the dungeon if Illysian had one.
“What’s it this time, Greta?” asked Mrs. Potts, the assistant to the dean. She was like the teapot in Beauty and the Beast. Her name totally fit her. She was short and overweight with a kind face and gray hair curled into a tight perm that made her seem way more high strung than she was — which was to say, not at all. She was like a wonderfully kind grandmother.
I handed her the yellow slip. She saw “fire” written on it and her eyebrows shot up into her hairline. She looked at me with pity.
I hated pity. “I didn’t do it.”
“Of course not, Love,” she said. It didn’t matter if she believed me or not. She wasn’t the one I had to worry about. She was just the gatekeeper.
“Go on in,” she said with a sigh.
I opened the interior door that led to Mr. Rust. He was a lot like his name, too, a mottled, creaky old man whose greatest accomplishment in life was giving teenagers detention. I hated him.
“Greta,” he croaked. His mouth was wide and his eyes buggy like a toad’s.
“Hello, Mr. Rust.” I flopped down, uninvited, into one of the black pleather arm chairs across from him.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said that every time, like a recording. Maybe he was a robot like the animatronic guys in Disney World. The pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride were freakishly real. They even had leg hair. I wouldn’t put it past Disney to make Deans of Disciplines for high schools.
“Well, Mr. Rust,” I said slouching and folding my hand across my belly. “I walked into Spanish class to discuss my failing grade with Señora. She wasn’t open to my appeal.”
“So you lit the trash can on fire?” finished Mr. Rust, who had almost no eyebrow hair. It’s weird the things you notice when you’re under interrogation.
“No sir. I lit nothing on fire. The trash or otherwise.”
“Are you suggesting that Señora Mendez lit her own trash can on fire?” he sounded bored.
I sighed. “No sir. I am not. I am merely stating that I do not know how her classroom came to be lit on fire.”
“An act of God, perhaps?”
Now he was mocking me.
“Sir, who can know the mind of God?” I had always found that quoting Scripture had a positive effect on interrogators. Mr. Rust, however, had sparred with me before.
“Miss Verity, we are non-sectarian and therefore take no stance on the matter of the mind of God, whether or not it exists. However, Señora Mendez’s mind is clear to me. She believes you set the fire.”
“That’s not possible,” I said. I was on the cusp of admitting everything to him. I teetered on the edge of the deep chasm my lie had dug wanting nothing more than to swan dive over the edge, but one more look at Mr. Rust’s froggy face changed my mind. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction. I covered by adding, “I would have had a second to do it.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that you have quick reflexes and powerful magic.”
He was so incredibly wrong on that point. Regardless, I knew I would fail this meeting just like everything else I did here, so I surrendered.
“Can we get this over with? Will you just give me my punishment, sir?”
Mr. Rust’s wide, toady lips curled into a sneering smile. “No punishment, Greta. A warning. You are on probation. Given your grades and your proclivity for — mayhem — you are on probation. Your next incident will end in my pulling your name from contention.”
“Wait? What? Contention?”
“For the Golden Wand Award.”
I nearly fell over. I hadn’t entered the Golden Wand, an award usually granted to a deserving enchanter or enchantress who did a ton of volunteer work, saved animals, and crap like that.
“I see that this award means a lot to you.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice.
I played it off. “Oh, the Golden Wand. Of course. I was just worried you were going to say something else.”
“About expulsion, perhaps?”
I laughed nervously. “I’m not doing that poorly.”
He templed his fingers under his broad and flabby chin. “You’re closer to that edge than you think. I suggest you leave my office before you find yourself expelled in the next moment.”
“Thank you, sir,” I slipped out of his office and went straight to find my meddling sister, Ava. I was sure she was at the bottom of this new wrinkle in my quest to go unnoticed.
8
“How could you?” I was furious. “The Golden Wand? Are you kidding?”
Ava and I were standing in the middle of the courtyard. It was just before lunch and I had just been to see Mr. Rust.
“Be thankful, Greta. You’d never do anything ambitious if it weren’t for me.”
Lowering my voice so that only she could hear, I said, “That I’m here at all is incredibly ambitious. Or did you forget?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ava spoke in an older sister tone. She was only a few minutes older than me, but she thought that made her older and wiser — and taller, prettier, most likely to succeed, smarter, and more powerful.
“Don’t be —,” my voice was shrill. I checked myself, cleared my throat, and brought my voice down a few octaves. “You did something that will bring attention to me.”
“So?”
“I don’t need attention. I need to be invisible.”
“No one needs to be invisible.”
“I do.”
Ava huffed. “It’s stupid. You’re spending your life skulking around in the shadows. You might as well be a ghost. Live a little.”
“If I’m discovered, I’ll be expelled. And so will you.”
“They’re not going to expel either of us. They’ll understand you just haven’t gotten your magic yet.”
Ava didn’t understand what it felt like to put up a front. I had to lie day in and day out. To her, it was a game. For me, it was different. It was a constant tug of war between who I was and who I wanted to be — who needed to become. A constant reminder of what I was lacking. I was tied to her until I got my powers. I was on her leash, dependent on her to cover me.
It was cute, even fun, when we were little. As we got older, it became a chore. Now, it was just one of many things I had to endure. I didn’t talk to her about my deepest fear, that I was a Void. I had to be. I didn’t know how I couldn’t be. Not after seven years of waiting.
“Look,” said Ava. “If you’re that twisted up about it, I’ll withd
raw your nomination. No big deal.”
I shook my head. “That’s not going to fix anything. That will draw even more attention to me.”
“You don’t make any sense,” she yelled. “Either you want the nomination or you don’t. You complain about everything I do. If I don’t do anything, you’re mad at me for not trying hard enough. If I do something, like nominate you for an award because I think you’re freaking awesome, you get pissed at me and bitch and moan about attention. Make up your mind.”
I yelled back at her. “I’m not the problem, here. You don’t understand what it feels like to be me.”
“You’re wrong. I didn’t have any magic for the first ten years of my life. I remember. You’re the clueless one. You don’t understand how hard I work to keep you happy. To answer all your conditions and demands.” Ava’s voice went into a high, mocking falsetto. “Give me magic. Not too much. Keep me hidden. Why don’t boys notice me? You’re a living, breathing contradiction.”
“You’re cruel and heartless.”
“You’re stupid and selfish.”
“You’re manipulative.”
“You’re a jealous Void,” she hissed. Then she slapped her hands over her mouth.
Her words stopped me cold. I gasped and sputtered as though I had just been waterboarded.
“How could you?” I looked around. Had anyone heard her? To my relief, no one had noticed us screaming at each other. Never had I been so thankful for earbuds and iTunes.
I spun on my heel and stomped off.
“Greta, wait,” called Ava. “I didn’t mean it.”
I didn’t wait. I knew she meant it. She had been thinking it for a long time. My cheeks burned hot with anger and embarrassment. If she was going to be that way, I would go it alone. If that meant exposure, so be it. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I had feared, but then I remembered Mr. Rust and his threat. I was a step or two from being expelled already. If he found out I had been faking, he would make sure that this was the end for me. If I got expelled from Illysian, the whole magical world would know. I’d be blacklisted. I’d have to go live in seclusion in some place unmagical, like Detroit or South Bend.
I looked up and saw Jeremy. My heart sank. He was the last person I wanted to see.
He pulled up next to me, his expression grim. “Did you hear?”
Always ready for a bit of gossip I leaned in. “No. Tell me.”
“One of my suite mates just got expelled.”
“What happened?”
“Greg Hill. Gone.”
“What?” Greg was an outstanding student, a talented magical, and was on the fast-track toward a job in the Magical Tribunal — which was the most powerful governing body in the world.
Jeremey looked pleased to share gossip. “Yeah. He was a member of The Red Scare. Two security guys busted in, grabbed him, and dragged him out of the building.”
It was a huge stretch to think Greg was a member of the Red Scare. He was so — normal.
“Was there any proof?” I asked.
Jeremy scoffed. “He said the Red Scare had good reason to do what they were doing. He was happy the Freshman girl died.”
My stomach twisted. Happy she had died? “I can’t believe it.”
The dizziness that swept over me was so bad, I reached out to steady myself and grabbed hold of Jeremy’s muscular forearm. He was as solid as a steel wall, and just as cold.
He put his hand on my shoulder, a tender move. Very friendly. Key word being friendly. I had to remind myself that he liked Ava, not me.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Is he gone for good? Does he get a trial?”
Jeremy shrugged like he couldn’t be bothered to learn the details. “Who cares?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wanted to tell Jeremy that I cared because I could be next — both Ava and me.
“No one wants traitors or liars here, Greta,” Jeremy’s eyes flashed and his fists clenched. “This school was founded for a reason, to give magicals like us the best education possible. I did the school a favor by reporting Greg.”
“You reported him?” I raised my eyes to Jeremy’s face. His look was as hard as a calculus problem and just as hard for me to understand. The hatred bubbling there was unmasked. His good-guy, devil-may-care attitude was gone. What had happened to him to make him so cold and uncaring?
“But he was your roommate,” I protested.
Crossing his arms and leaning in to me with narrowed eyes he hissed, “You didn’t strike me as someone who would be sympathetic to a terrorist group.”
I pushed away from him, my mouth dry. “I’m not. I was there when she— ,” I couldn’t finish the thought. The Freshman girl’s death haunted me.
“Greta, you’re not like the other people here.”
At those words, I stopped breathing. Did he know my secret? I couldn’t look at him so I stared at the ground.
“You understand that magic is a gift and a tool. It isn’t a toy. The other girls use their magic to play dress up, but not you. You’re like me.”
He bent down and whispered in my ear. “Big changes are coming. Chose your side carefully, Greta. You’ll be doing yourself and your entire family a favor. There are people at Illysian pretending to be something they’re not. There may even be someone stealing magic, a non-magical passing herself off as a magical.”
Chills ran up and down my arms and prickled my scalp. Where had this rumor come from? Did someone know about me? Did he? Was he toying with me like a cat does a mouse? I forced myself to take a shaky breath, my attraction for him suddenly cold.
“You’re not who I thought you were.” I forced myself to sound detached, unemotional. One thing was certain, Jeremy was dangerous and would not hesitate to out me — or Ava — if he found out our secret. “Thank you for your trust.”
“Don’t make me regret it.” He walked off leaving me to contemplate the seriousness of the situation. Lines were being drawn. Students were choosing sides. My own friends were choosing sides.
I realized with a sudden chill that Jeremy didn’t know it, but he hated Ava and me. For the first time the enormity of my non-magical status hit me. This wasn’t just about me wishing I had magic and pining over my non-existent powers. It wasn’t a game anymore.
9
If you’ve ever been to D.C., you’ve seen Illysian students. Maybe you’ve even seen me, but even if you did, you wouldn’t notice me. It wasn’t because I was cloaked or clouded with glamour. It was because I’m plain. I don’t look special because I’m not. I look like any other high school student cutting through The National Zoo.
Until you blink and I’m not there.
I disappear between Amazonia and the Andean Bears.
Blink. Gone. Into the Slip — which is what we call our version of Platform 9 3/4. You don’t need magic to go through the Slip. You just need permission. As a student at Illysian, I’m granted permission. No magic needed. Lucky for me.
Crossing through the Slip was easy. It was like walking on a moving sidewalk without the moving sidewalk. One moment I was at the zoo, the next I was emerging on to a vast, lush grassy lawn stretching as far as the eye could see — Illysian Academy’s lawn.
Buildings made of old stone work by master craftsmen lined a gravel path. Weeping willow trees lined the right side of the walkway, weeping water into a stream that followed the path.
I left the Slip regularly, unlike a lot of the magicals here. That afternoon, I was coming back with the best burgers known to mortal beings.
Ava was there to greet me, just like we planned. My twin sister lounged beneath a sycamore tree that was three hundred years old, if it was a day. Majestic branches reached into the sky and parted the clouds far overhead. Ava saw me and waved languidly, content to watch the furry bumblebees flit from clover to clover in the cool shade.
“We’re going to be late,” I yelled, pointing to my watch to drive my point home.
With a deep sigh, Ava climbed to her
feet and brushed off her white ankle-length jeans. She was the picture of perfection. She always was, always would be. Her shimmering auburn hair ended just past her shoulders, with so many highlights it defied the laws of nature. Her eyes defied the laws of nature, too. They changed with the light like molten sliver. As she stepped out of the shadow of the tree, they changed from silvery green to bright silver-gray.
“Did you get it?” she asked me with a grin.
I held up a grease-spotted brown paper bag. “Five Guys fries and burgers. We’ve got to eat while we walk. The line was nuts.”
She fell into step beside me, which wasn’t easy for her since she was six feet tall. She shortened her stride to match the longest stride my stubby legs could manage.
I ate a french fry as we hurried across the lawn to Enola Hall, the main building on campus. The stone structure was four stories tall and topped with a shining brass dome. It was the oldest building on campus. Windows as tall as me flooded the halls with natural light. This building housed the infirmary, administration and the Magical Law Department.
“I hate Magical Law,” I groaned, wiping my greasy lips on a scrunched napkin I fished out of the bottom of the bag.
Ava took a dainty bite and finished her burger in a way that made it look gourmet. “It’s not so bad. We can review notes later. Are there any fries left?”
I gave her lithe form a side-long glance. Where did she put them?
Of course, Ava thought Magical Law wasn’t that bad. The honest truth was she liked the class. She looked forward to the dry, clinical lectures given by the bombastic Mr. Dahlerst. It wasn’t so bad for her because she was brilliant, every teacher loved her, and she was super amazing.
No, I wasn’t jealous. Why would you think that? Just because my identical twin sister was a super model enchantress and I was — me? Perish the thought.
Our suite mates found us as we entered Enola Hall.
“Did you hear?” Hannah’s face was flushed, and she was breathless.
“Oh my gosh! The world has gone insane,” whispered Tabby.
