I
opened my desk drawer to search for a bar of wax to seal the letter I had just
finished.
“Anyone
home?”
“Oh
hey, Angelica,” I said, looking up to find one of my new friends standing in
the doorway. “How’s it going?”
She
came in and threw herself across the end of my bed. “I can’t believe we’ve been
here for a week already,” she said, rolling over to stare up at the ceiling.
“Weird, isn’t it?”
“Very
weird,” I agreed. “Want to see something cool?”
She
bounced off the bed to come watch what I was doing. I held the stick of wax out
over the envelope and rubbed the tips of my fingers together over it. “Heat,” I
murmured, and was rewarded when a gentle glow emanated from between my fingers.
The wax immediately started dripping. Once a small pool of it formed on the
envelope I separated my fingers, and the heat source disappeared. I grabbed the
triskelion seal my mother had given me and pressed it into the wax before it
could cool.
“Sweet.”
Angelica grinned. “Is that difficult?”
“Not
at all,” I said. “You just have to be careful not to burn yourself. Want to
try?”
“Yeah!
What do I do?”
I
got out a fresh sheet of paper and handed her the wax. “Mostly you just have to
concentrate,” I said. “You rub your fingers together like you’re striking a
match and think about heat. Just don’t think about fire, or you might actually
produce some.” I chuckled, thinking about the first time Kara had tried this
trick about a year ago.
“What
are you guys doing?” Nicola leaned around the doorframe, her eyes large.
“Magic,”
I said with a smile. “Come on in.”
“Heat,” Angelica said, and immediately
yelped as the paper caught fire. “Ah! No heat! Uh, cool!”
I
shook my head and passed my hand calmly over the disaster. I breathed in as I
did so, and my ears popped as the air feeding the fire rushed away from it. The
flame dwindled until all that was left was the blackened sheet of paper. And a
nice singe mark on my desk.
“Oops,”
Angelica said. But her dark eyes danced. “Guess Nicola distracted me.” She
glanced at the subject in question.
“I’m
sorry!” she said, raising her poetry notebook over her face. “I didn’t mean to
mess you up.”
I
sighed. “She’s just baiting you. Don’t worry about it.” Angelica raised an
eyebrow at me, but I gave her an innocent shrug. I was right, wasn’t I?
“Did
you hurt yourself?” Nicola said.
“I’m
fine.” Angelica waved her off when the other girl tried to look at her hands.
I
tried to think of a good spell for erasing the burn marring my desk, but
nothing came to mind. “You just need to practice Listening some more,” I said.
“Once you’ve got that down, casting spells is much easier.”
Angelica
pulled a face at me. “It’s not like I totally failed,” she said.
“You
almost burned Dana’s room down,” Nicola pointed out.
“Nah,”
I said. “I doubt any of us has enough power for that yet.”
“And
if I did, I’d use it on a certain other house mate’s room,” Angelica said with
a smirk.
I
felt a pang of guilt for laughing, but not much of one. September had been
giving all of us the cold shoulder ever since our first day of classes. And
she’d also been throwing glares around like spears meant to kill. I probably
would’ve felt more guilty about Angelica’s quip if isn’t wasn’t for the fact
that Miss Fashionista’s glares were all too often aimed at me more than anyone
else. As if I had personally
victimized her. But when she even rejected Echo’s efforts at friendship I
stopped feeling sorry for her. She could pout in her corner for as long as she
wanted.
“Hey…
do you smell something burning?” Nicola said suddenly.
Angelica
laughed. “What? Are you serious? I just – ”
“Not
that,” I interrupted. Nicola was right. Something strangely acrid filled the
air. I was about to expand my senses a bit further when the floor jumped
beneath my feet. I staggered. Nicola fell over backwards with a shriek. The
framed pictures of my family crashed off the mantelpiece onto the floor. And
Angelica treated us to a few curse words I’d only ever seen in print.
The
tremor came to an end as suddenly as it had started. The three of us waited in
frozen silence for something else to happen. When nothing followed, I let out
the breath we’d all obviously been holding.
“What
was that?” Nicola asked as Angelica
helped her to her feet. She grabbed her notebook and leafed through it as
though checking to make sure it was intact. I looked at my fractured picture
frames mournfully.
“Not
sure,” I said. “We should probably go downstairs and make sure everyone else is
okay though.”
“Maybe
it was an earthquake,” Angelica said as we made our way down the stairs. A few
paintings had been knocked askew and the chandelier in the hallway was dangling
precariously atilt. We skirted around its potential crash zone and almost
collided with Echo on the second floor landing.
“Hey,
are you all right?” I said, catching her by the shoulders. Her hair looked a
bit like she’d stuck her finger in an electric socket and there was a black
smudge across one of her cheeks.
“Huh?”
She blinked at me for a moment. “What’d you say?”
“Jeez,
what happened in there?” Angelica said. I turned to find her pointing at
Poppy’s room. Or rather, what was left of Poppy’s mangled door and the now
billowing clouds of smoke issuing from the depths of Poppy’s room. My eyes
widened.
“Echo…”
I said slowly. “What happened?”
She
shook her head and pointed at one of her ears. “I can’t understand you,” she
said a little too loudly.
Angelica
glanced between me and Nicola. “One of you should probably go see if Little
Miss Stuck Up is okay. I’m going in there.” And before we could protest, she
plunged into the smoking room of our Head Witch in Charge.
“Great,”
I muttered. “My first week of school and already things are blowing up. Literally.”
Nicola
touched my shoulder. “Angelica might need your help,” she said. “Echo and I
will find September and get one of the Deans.”
I
nodded, a little grateful not to be responsible for September. I had a feeling
that most of campus had probably heard whatever had happened too, so help was
probably already on the way. Even so… I held my sleeve over my mouth as I
walked into the smoke after Angelica.
Once
inside, the source of the smoke became evident. Poppy lay groaning on the floor
next to a large cauldron gushing steam. Angelica was trying to open a window and
speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. She was probably cursing some more, but I
didn’t know much Spanish and didn’t want to assume.
I
glanced around the room. Most of Poppy’s belongings looked like they’d been
forcibly thrown away from the cauldron by the same force that had shaken the
house. I rifled through the wreckage of her bed and found an intact blanket.
Hoping I wasn’t making a mistake, I tossed it over the cauldron and
concentrated as hard as I could on what clean air smelled like.
I
felt a swooping sensation in my stomach and then a wave of dizziness came over
me so hard I was sitting down before I realized it. The cauldron made a
sputtering noise. The blanket over it puffed up like a bullfrog’s throat, and
then it slowly deflated with a dying hiss of steam. My dizziness disappeared
with it.
“You
okay?”
I
heard clear admiration in Angelica’s voice as she offered me a hand up, but I
was still trying to make sense of what I’d just done. Once I was steady on my
feet, I realized how dangerous that spell had been. I could have pulled the
smoke into my lungs or even caused a real explosion…
“I’m…
fine,” I said. I glanced down at the sooty blanket covering the cauldron. “Can
you make sure the fire underneath is out?”
“It’s
out,” Poppy said in a raw voice that sounded like she had inhaled a good deal of the smoke. She sat up, rubbing her
forehead with a dirty hand.
“Um,
can we ask what happened?” I said.
“You
can ask,” Poppy replied. She coughed spasmodically, and didn’t look at us. She
still seemed to be trying to get her bearings. “Spell went wrong. Not much more
to say about it.” She picked up an empty vial near her feet. “Maybe the milk I
added was sour.”
Angelica
and I looked at each other. This girl
was supposed to be in charge of us?
“Or
maybe it was the words? No, I’m sure I said it perfectly…” She trailed off in a
fit of more coughing.
We
helped her downstairs to the kitchen, but I wasn’t sure if she was even aware
of her surroundings. She kept muttering to herself and then coughing and trying
to mutter through her coughing. Luckily, Dean Dobronravov and a trio of women I
vaguely remembered from orientation as being the campus counselors showed up.
They diagnosed Poppy with shock and a possible concussion and had her bundled
onto a stretcher before I could blink. Dean Dobronravov assured us that she’d
be fine, but she might be in the campus hospital for a few days for
observation. She then had us recount as much of what had happened in the last
twenty minutes as we could. By the time we got to the part where I stopped
Poppy’s magic, our other house mates had filed into the kitchen to listen too.
“That’s
very interesting, Dana,” the dean said. She gave me an uncomfortably appraising
look and I had to stop myself from fidgeting. I still wasn’t quite sure what I
had actually done. “But if something like this ever happens in the future, you
should wait for a faculty member to come help you.”
“Right,”
I said. “I’m sorry. I just did it without thinking. I know I should have
waited.”
“That’s
all right, Dana. Just remember for the future.” She looked around the room at
all of us, her dark gaze serious. “Do you think you girls can survive without a
Head Witch for awhile? The upper classes are arriving tomorrow and it may be
difficult to find someone willing to fill in for Poppy on her first day back to
campus.”
Echo
nodded for all of us. She’d combed her hair and her hearing seemed to be normal
again. “We’ll be okay, Miss Dobronravov!” she said with a reassuring smile.
“Yeah,”
Angelica added. “We’ve got Dana to look out for us!”
I
saw September scowl and fought the heat rising in my cheeks.
The
dean frowned, but nodded. “Okay, girls. Well, Bethenny is the Head Witch in
Charge of Hare House next door to you, so you can always go to her if you have
a problem here. Please leave Poppy’s room alone for now. Someone will stop by
in the morning to clean it up.”
We
watched her leave in silence. But the sound of the front door closing seemed to
spark Echo into life again. She jumped up from the kitchen table and started
throwing cabinet doors open.
“Hey,
Echo, whatcha doing?” Angelica said.
Echo
pulled out a hand mixer and a huge bowl. “We need cupcakes!” she announced.
“Who wants to help me?”
“Ooh,
I will,” Nicola said, getting up as well. “Can we make chocolate ones with
strawberry frosting? Those are my favorite.”
“Sure!”
Echo was now pulling ingredients out of the pantry willy-nilly. The sack of
flour tipped over and spilled across the counter.
“Hey,
look out now!” Angelica said. She leapt up to save the flour and no doubt
instruct the other two. She had proved her cooking prowess to us already, after
all.
September
and I were now the only two left at the table. I had zero talent for baking,
but couldn’t seem to think of a really good reason to leave the kitchen. For
September’s part, she was still glowering at me and seemed little inclined to
stop.
I
sighed and held my hands out in a gesture of surrender. “Look, whatever I did
to you, I’m sorry,” I said in what I hoped was a conciliatory tone. “Isn’t
there some way we can move past this and be friends?”
If
anything, her scowl deepened. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said in a
low voice.
The
other girls were now arguing over how many eggs to use in their batter. I
glanced at them before turning back to September.
“No,
I really don’t,” I said, letting my genuine confusion show for once. “Will you
please explain it? I’d like for us all to get along.”
She
huffed, but actually unfolded her arms and gave me a studied look. I tried not to
fidget but whatever she saw in my face didn’t seem to satisfy her. A little
smirk twisted her red lips.
“I
see. You’re so used to getting your own way by now that you just expect
everyone to fall in line and worship the ground you walk upon. Well, count me
out. I know just as much as you do about witchcraft so you can keep your stupid
anecdotes to yourself.” She cast a disparaging glance at the other girls. “And
I don’t want mindless sheep as friends either. I’ll make mine elsewhere,
thanks.”
She
stood up to leave.
“Hey
wait!” I said. September gave me a cool look, but she waited. “Say anything you
want about me. Gods know it isn’t true, but it’s not like I expect you to
listen to reason now if you haven’t all week. Just don’t take out whatever this
is on them, okay?” I folded my arms
tight against my stomach and glared at her. “It’s not fair for you to judge
them just because you have some ridiculous problem with me. They’re all really
good people, and the first friends I’ve ever had who accepted me, no questions
asked. They’d probably accept you too if you’d just come down off your damn
high horse.”
“Woo
hoo! You tell her, Dana!”
I
whirled around to find Angelica fist pumping with a chocolate-spattered
spatula. Echo looked like she had tears in her eyes, and Nicola was doing her
best to hide behind Echo, although I could still see her smiling.
September
just stared at us. After a moment, her eye twitched. And then she stalked out
of the room and stomped up the stairs before slamming the door to her room
shut. A resounding crash told us that the precariously dangling chandelier in
the stairwell had finally let go.
“I
guess I should go clean that up,” I mumbled.
“No,
I’ll do it,” Nicola said at once. “I’m just gonna ruin these cupcakes if I try
to help anymore anyway.” She shot me a grin and disappeared up the stairs.
Echo
threw herself at me in a wild hug that I was completely unprepared for. I
patted her awkwardly on the back while she cried into my sweater. I looked up
at Angelica for help but she was lounging against the kitchen counter wearing a
smug look.
“Why
are you crying?” I said, trying to pry the petite blonde off of me. She finally
let go, and looked up at me. For a moment, I hated that she looked pretty even
when she was crying, but then she spoke and it was rendered impossible to hate
her for even a second.
“I’m
crying because I can’t decide what to feel,” she sniffled. “I’m so happy that
we’re friends, but I’m so sad that September isn’t. I’ve never lived with girls
before. This is so confusing…!” She buried her face in her hands.
“Well…”
I glanced at Angelica again, but she shrugged and started pouring the cupcake
batter into a muffin pan. “Well, yeah. It is confusing.” I sat down and uttered
a little laugh. “It’s really
confusing. You guys are the first friends I’ve ever had. And I don’t get why you like me or why September hates me
so much.”
My
thoughts all seemed to collide and implode at once. Suddenly all I could think
about was how hungry I was. “Man, that chocolate smells good. When do you think
those cupcakes will be ready?”
Echo
peeked at me from between her fingers. “Huh?”
“Cupcakes.
Gods. I’m starving!” I said. My stomach felt like an empty pit a hundred miles
deep.
Echo
lowered her hands and peered intently at me. I blinked at her, and she blinked
back.
The
next thing I knew, we were both giggling like maniacs.
Angelica
rolled her eyes at us. “Don’t know why I’m friends with any of you,” she said.
“You’re all crazy.” She slid the muffin tin into the oven and glanced at the
clock on the wall. “Twenty minutes until cupcakes if you really need to know.”
Echo
threw herself in a flying hug at Angelica this time, and I wiped tears from my
eyes.
-----
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