by H. T. Night
“Czech Republic?” My mom laughed. “I just know I’m staying in Prague.”
“At the Mason Hotel?” I repeated.
“Yes, son. Do you want to know the phone number to the hotel?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I don’t know it off the top of my head,” my mom said, shaking her head.
“Text it to me when you recieve it.”
“Yes, sir,” my mom said, making a mock salute to me.
“I worry about you.”
“You shouldn’t. You really shouldn’t.”
I paused. “Let me ask you a question. Do you worry more or less for me, knowing I have so many special gifts?”
Without hesitation, my mom said, “More.”
I smiled at my mom and said, “I know you can become a dragon. I know you know how to teleport. And I also know you can do all the crazy stuff normal vampires can do. Knowing all this just makes me worry about you probably a thousand times more if you were a stay-at-home mom who was the president of the PTA. It’s simple ‘mo’ gifts, mo’ problems.’”
“I love you, son.”
“You better. I’m seriously all that I am because of your DNA and your decisions.”
“I did all I could to save you. I would never regret it.” My mom looked me firmly in the eyes.
I smiled. “Even if what happened caused me to become grotesquely, disfigured like Tammy.”
“Tammy is beautiful,” my mom said, rolling her eyes.
“If you say so,” I paused and looked at the creepy gargoyles one more time. “Enjoy whoever you have to kill in Prague,” I joked.
“Very funny, Anthony.”
“I thought so.”
I hugged my mom again and she kissed my cheek. I said goodbye and after she left, I took my bags to the office that was located to the right of the church directly across the parking lot.
I checked in with Robin so I could recieve my dorm room assignment. She was a sixty-something widow who lived on the grounds all the time, except holidays. She was happy to see me, but seemed more interested in some movie she was watching on Netflix.
“You’re rooming with Barry again,” Robin said, giving me a set of keys. “The bigger key is for your dorm and the smaller key is for the hallway bathroom. Just like last time.”
Barry was my best friend in this place. We had a lot in common. He was shorter than me by two inches and was built like a linebacker. He was a handsome fella who looked a tad like a Viking that wore sweats shorts. There hadn’t been too many girls for either one of us to be interested in at the Academy, so on the weekends, we would hit places in San Bernardino where the girls our age swarmed. But so far, we hadn’t had too much luck.
“Thanks, Robin.” I grabbed the keys and took my luggage up to my dorm room.
When I got to my room, Barry was taking a nap. I wasn’t about to wake him. He was a bear when he was awakened from a nap too soon.
I quietly unpacked a little. I changed into some comfortable shorts and tossed off my shirt. I lay awake for about an hour, looking up at my ceiling.
I also took a nap. I only slept for about an hour and woke up to Barry, who was listening to his music at a level that was both rude and unnecessary.
“What time is it, asshole?” I said, which was as cranky as I got.
“Six p.m., boy wonder. Get up, and let’s go grab some dinner.”
“I didn’t bring my car,” I said.
“What are we supposed to do?”
“Do you finally have a vehicle?” I asked.
“Of course I don’t,” Barry said. “You know I hate driving.”
“It’s time to get over that fear,” I said, laughing.
“Why didn’t you bring your car? How are we supposed to pick up babes down the mountain?”
“When have either of us ever picked up a babe? Down the mountain, no less?”
“So, we have no car?” he asked.
“Sorry. I totaled mine.”
“Damn.” Barry went over to his bed and lay on it looking disappointed. This would be our third time sharing a room and he was my number-one confidant in this place.
“My car was totaled a couple of days ago. I’m waiting till I get back home to deal with it.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Barry injected. “We don’t have a god-loving car between us?”
“Apparently, we’ll be taking the school shuttle on the weekly Saturday trip to the supermarket.” I laughed.
“You didn’t even bring snacks?” Barry laughed.
“Nope. They start feeding us first thing in the morning. We can also order a pizza any night that we’re hurting or want a change of pace.”
“So, you brought cash?” Barry asked.
“Yes, but not an insane amount. What about you? Why do I have to be the one to provide in this relationship?” I joked.
“I have a little bit. Bear Dog doesn’t go anywhere for two months without at least two bills in his pockets.”
“So, you only brought two hundred for six weeks?”
“It’s more like seven-and-a-half weeks till Thanksgiving break.”
“Last time we had a break, I brought a hundred bucks. I’m moving up in the world.”
I laughed at Barry. He was a character.
Chapter Six
Barry and I tried splitting the room in half as much as we could. But we weren’t weird about it or overly territorial.
On my side, I had a double bed. I had never had someone sleep on the other side of that bed. Barry slept in a single, which was odd, because he outweighed me by fifty pounds. The guy had muscular mass and was constantly falling out of his bed. It also appeared he might have put on up to twenty pounds since the last time I saw him, but I lived with women, so I wasn’t a body shamer.
I already knew I needed more towels, which I could grab at the office. So, I headed down there. It was a hot summer evening around 80 degrees. And still, there was that fog with the rotten-egg smell.
I stepped into the office and noticed a young woman standing by herself. She was wearing burgundy glasses and had long, sandy-blonde hair. Her greenish-blue eyes looked large behind her lenses, due to the fact that she must have been farsighted. She had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. She looked at me and gave me a gentle smile that lit up the room. I smiled back and tried to look confident. Hopefully, she was a new recruit.
It appeared that no one was helping her at the moment. Robin was in the back doing something. I wasn’t usually forward, but this was my final year here at our little secret alchemy school. I was curious, and well, I thought she was stunningly beautiful. Sometimes, I did foolish things in the presence of gorgeous women, so I would try to keep that in check.
“Hi,” I said. So far, so good.
The girl looked at me from behind her glasses and seemed surprised that I had spoken to her. “Excuse me,” she said with a bit of uncertainty.
“I was saying hello,” I explained.
“Oh, hello.” She turned her head to shake my hand. I noticed two unusual things about this young woman. She was wearing an unusual necklace that had a pendant made from dark rock. Then, I noticed an odd thing in her hair. It looked like a Frito. The corn chip. There was one single Frito just planted on top of her head, mixed in with some strands of hair. It was so out of place that it seemed comical.
This was arguably the prettiest girl I had ever seen, but why the hell was there a Frito camped out on her skull?
I couldn’t look at it.
My swagger that I’d had when I’d first walked up to her was now gone. It was hiding behind the fact I was embarrassed that this beautiful woman had food in her hair, and that she had no clue. In an odd way, it made me feel like I had a better shot with her.
“Are you signing up?”
“Yes, this will be my first term,” she answered.
I smiled bigger than I had wanted to. I was a little embarrassed, so I tried to calm down.
“My freshman year was toug
h. But I was able to get by,” I said, playing it cool for a multitude of reasons.
“Yeah, I heard the hardest part is making it past the first month.”
“It was for me,” I said, smiling. “Were you top of the class in science at your...” I paused. I didn’t want to assume how old she was.
“College? Yes. Yes, you could say that,” she said, clearly hiding some details.
“Have you graduated?” I asked.
“Yes, last year. Physics. Cal State Fullerton.”
“Wow, I tried advanced physics when I attempted going to a normal high school for a while, and that class kicked my ass.” I quickly noticed that she was turned off by my physics statement. “But the type of ass-kicking you love,” I said, interjecting as fast as I could.
“You love getting your ass kicked?”
“I haven’t minded it.”
“Does it happen often?”
I laughed, “No.” I decided this wasn’t the time to share my boxing stories with the girl I just met.
“So, how did the guy from the tough side of the tracks get here?” she joked.
I started this line of questioning and now, I was regretting it. “I am top of my class?” I said, trying to save this conversation.
“Lucky for you, I didn’t start when you were a freshman.” She winked. And my heart melted.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Eighteen.”
“You’re just a baby.”
“A baby?” I was confused. She looked to be a teenager herself.
She looked amused.
“How—” I stopped myself from asking her age.
“I’m twenty-three,” she answered confidently.
“Oh, okay.” I tried not to act surprised. The fact that she had a Frito in her hair had really thrown me for a loop. She did have a beautifully crafted necklace that seemed to have been made of unusual material. So, I decided that was a great place to go with more questioning. “Nice necklace,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you. It’s extremely important to me.”
I nodded my head and asked the next logical question, avoiding any mention of the Frito. “What material is it made out of?”
“Lava stone from a South American volcano.”
“Fancy,” I said, smiling. “Sure beats the necklace I gave my mom that was made of colored noodles for Mother’s Day when I was seven.”
“Oddly enough,” she smiled, “my mother is the one who gave this necklace to me.”
“That’s sweet,” I said. I thought about my mom. We stopped giving each other cutesy gifts a long time ago. Our gift to one another has been a steady diet of keeping each other alive. “What have you been doing since college?” I asked, pushing the conversation further to trying to learn more about my new, extremely pretty friend.
“Trying to figure out my life,” she replied.
“Oh, okay.” I smiled at her.
I paused and looked at her and realized how smart she must be and it turned me on. Even with the fact that she had a random corn chip in her wavy blonde locks, I was incredibly impressed and I wanted to know everything about her.
But first...
I snagged the Frito from the top of her head as fast as I could. My hand was a blur. I was going to do a dissolve molecular change technique. Last semester, Barry and I had gotten down where we could disintegrate organic objects in our hands. Something you see Criss Angel do on the streets of Las Vegas. I was focusing on my hand, making the Frito dissolve as fast as I could. But, this young woman wasn’t going to make it easy on me.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Just a leaf.”
“A leaf? Show me.”
Crap, I had already made the Frito disappear. I needed to perform an alchemic move that I hadn’t mastered yet. Creating an organic object in my hand. I was praying there were enough molecules in the air from that damn Frito that could turn into a leaf. This could go amazingly wrong and for all I knew, I could create nothing, and she would think I was a weirdo grabbing her hair. Worse yet, I could turn the Frito into a bonsai tree and now, we were dealing with a whole other set of problems.
I tinkered with my fingers and hand and prayed for an alchemic miracle. I held my breath and then opened my fingers and there laid the most beautiful golden oak leaf. It was bigger than what I wanted, but it would do.
“That’s weird,” she said. “It was just there the whole time?” She was embarrassed. “That gigantic leaf was in my hair the whole time we were talking?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, quickly moving things along. “May I ask your name?”
“My name is Kat, short for Katherine. Seriously, that leaf was just sitting on my head?”
I was starting to think showing her the Frito would have been better. “My name is Anthony.” I was trying to move the conversation past the Frito leaf. I threw the leaf in the trash and I saw Kat have the urge to pick it up. But she didn’t.
After a moment, she said, “Okay, Anthony.” She said my name as if she knew who I was, which was weird. “I have a question for you. Why do they make us sleep here on campus?”
“You’ll understand once you get started,” I answered. “There are things that you’ll learn that you’ll practice at all times of the day and night and even on weekends. They want you here when you have your breakthrough.”
“My breakthrough?” Kat asked.
“Even physics major graduates from Cal State Fullerton have breakthroughs,” I said, smiling. “I don’t know about your physics department, but I hear the baseball team is awesome.”
“Cal State Fullerton has a fine physics department.” She paused. “How do you know when you’ve had it?”
“The breakthrough?”
“Yes.” She was determined to know the answer.
“Oh, you’ll know. For starters, you learn to do some cool Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon type of moves. You will suddenly be able to manipulate your surroundings to suit you.”
“How so?” Kat asked with her eyes widening into a beautiful glow.
“That’s why you’re here. To learn it on your own terms. Each alchemist is different.”
“Sounds cool.” Kat smiled at me.
I grinned. “It is.”
“So, that’s it?” she asked. “We learn how to fight and air dance?”
“Alchemy is so much more. Everything around us in nature can help us. We learn to use a variety of ways to have just as much power as our immortal and supernatural enemies.”
“So, you have had your breakthrough?” She was determined to find answers.
“It took a while, but on my 23rd week, I had my first one. Once you have one, they start coming in droves.”
“Sounds exhilarating,” Kat said.
“It is.” I couldn’t tell if she was sincerely excited or if she was being sarcastic. “So, where are you staying on campus?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” She handed me a map of the Academy. I looked down at the campus map and it appeared that Robin had put a nice big X on her map.
I saw that her dorm was across the way from mine. “We are practically dorm mates,” I said.
“Really,” she said awkwardly.
“So, you have already talked to Robin?” I asked. “What are you waiting for?”
She looked embarrassed. “I was actually done.”
“Oh...” She had stayed to talk to me. Now, I was feeling confident.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “You don’t have bags.”
“I checked in a few hours ago. I came up here to ask for some extra towels.”
“Finally!” Robin returned. She looked at me with a look that said, ‘Spill it.’
“I need some towels, please,” I said.
“After you and Barry pulled your little stunt last year, we can only give out four at a time this year.”
I looked at Kat, and now, I was embarrassed.
Kat seemed amused. “What stunt was this?”
“Well, Barry—”
“Barry?” Kat repeated.
“Oh, if you start to know this one, you will soon find out who Barry is.” Robin snickered. “He’s this one’s partner in crime.”
“Okay, you and Barry did what with towels?” Kat asked, laughing.
“We used every towel we could get our hands on to try to smother a fire.”
“Why was there a fire?” Robin asked, adding to the story.
“I had created a fire potion for my Potions I final and needed to try it out. Barry and I felt the snow was the best place, but things got out of hand in a hurry,” I said, grinning sheepishly at Robin. I knew she had never been amused by our little stunt.
“Why towels?” Kat asked.
“We started a fire in the snow in front of the church. How else would you try to put out a fire in snow?” I asked both ladies. “We thought we should smother it. We weren’t exactly thinking clearly. It took a while for us to start the fire. We were cold and delusional from being out in the frigid night air so long.”
“You must have been,” Robin said. “He and his buddy came in here and took every towel and tried to smother that darn snow fire they started.”
“Hey, we kept the fire under control with the towels,” I reminded Robin.
“Until the firefighters came,” she added.
“It was actually just one firefighter,” I said. “He had five volunteers with him. They put the fire out in no time.”
I noticed the cute, flirty face that Kat had been showing me had now turned into a confused, almost disgusted look.
“Thanks, Robin.” I took my four towels and walked out of the office. I waited for Kat because I didn’t want her to have the wrong idea about me. I wasn’t some crazy arsonist who was mentally unstable.
Kat walked out. She didn’t have any bags.
“Where are your bags?”
“In my car,” she said.
“I’ll help you bring them up to your room.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll bring them up myself.”
I sighed. “I think you have the wrong idea about me.”
“I don’t think I do,” she responded.
“No, I’m pretty sure after what Robin said, it might sound like I—”
“Those types of experiences enrich our lives.” Katherine gave me a big beautiful, reassuring smile.
