The torture of mathematical equations lasted all morning.

Mira’s schedule consisted of a horrifying conga line of Math, Accounting, Physics, and Economics all back to back and all of them, to varying degrees, required the use of math to find the answers. To her disappointment—and frustration—it was hellish for her brain to comprehend. Sleep pulled her away from most of the review during those classes, but the worst offender had been Physics. She had no friends in that class to keep her awake or remind her of the answers. Early on in the period, and the school year, Mira quickly became well acquainted with Miss Tarpy’s ruler, which cracked down on her desk far more times than she could count.

Humiliation ran deep in her bones throughout the rest of Physics. Not only because of the threat of sleep pulling at her every ten minutes, but in the fog of that exhaustion, Mira neglected to hear her name called for attendance at the start of the period.

So much for rising early, she thought bitterly as the ruler tapped in quick raps along her desk. What she would have given for just a few extra moments of sleep.

The hell that constituted Physics ended a few minutes later, relieving Mira of her hangout session with Miss Tarpy’s ruler, allowing her to seamlessly transition into Economics. She floated through the halls, weaving and bobbing to avoid the shuffling elbows of her peers. How was Magic faring in these halls, she wondered. Hopefully his five minute buffer allowed him to avoid this hell. Mira didn’t consider herself particularly claustrophobic, but even she found herself breathless and a little unnerved by how easily packed the halls were.

Economics gave her significantly less issues. Mira had been watching her father fight the current of supply and demand from the time she was able to walk. She’d even helped him price out which ingredients would be worth their while buying while they were abroad in the capital or in the northern towns. That stuff was easy.

Or at least, it would have been, if she had access to her knowledge behind the brain fog. She relied on Thalia’s presence to keep her company and keep her awake. Against her better judgment, Mira asked Thalia for an answer or two during the class discussion that resulted in a disappointed shake of Mister Lowry’s head.

“Thanks,” Mira mumbled, glancing at Thalia as she scribbled furiously in her notebook.

“Not my fault, Mira,” Thalia replied. “Not my fault you asked me for an answer on a topic I know nothing about. I was out sick for that unit last year—I’m still shocked I passed that section on the final.”

“Maybe this year will be your redemption arc?”

“Doubtful.”

Mira gave a small hopeless shrug of her shoulders, resigned to pretending her way through the rest of class. It was all she could do to keep herself distracted and busy before lunch, since her stomach acted like a constant alarm, grumbling every few minutes. Her appetite, though, was the least of her concerns, despite the pain that rippled through her gut. Mira was itching to get to lunch, not only for the food, but to check in with her brother who she hadn’t seen all day.

She could only hope he was faring well. Magic didn’t feel like the kind of kid who would skip his classes, but anything was possible with him.

Only when she was saved by the piercing bell did she wish Thalia a hasty farewell, gather her books in one fell swoop, and shove her way through the doorway before she could be pestered about her sleeping habits by Mister Lowry.

Her trip down the staircase felt a lot like being herded. There was little room, leaving her pressed against the arms and shoulders of her peer. Through that, conversation flowed endlessly around her.

“You should watch your step,” said a girl behind her. “School is haunted this year.”

“I didn’t think the ghost had it in him to show,” taunted another.

A boy beside her, jostled by another student, rammed her into the handrail. Mira felt the tingling sensation of her funny bone radiating up her arm, down through to her fingers. She cursed under her breath, making the final trek to the landing, waving to Janie who was on the way up.

The lunch room was far more crowded than she anticipated. Seniors, identifiable by the purple lanyards they received at the end of last year, huddled in groups with some of the juniors, their mint green lanyards standing out more in the harsh light of the room. A few sophomores were scoping out tables, yellow cords dangling from their neck while a handful of freshmen were standing around awkwardly, fiddling with straps of orange.

One girl, a junior, waved at Mira from her seat. Mira didn’t know the girl, didn’t recognize her from anywhere in the building. She wasn’t even sure if the girl was addressing the right person, but she very quickly waved back, a small wiggling motion with her fingers before approaching the table her brother had found.

Spotting him wasn’t hard. Magic was the only one at the round table, his sweatshirt the same shade of gray as the table. Two paper bags lay discarded in the center of it, one slowly tipping until it landed with a small thud. He had his elbows propped, fists clasped together against his mouth which Mira knew was a bad sign. Even his hood was up—a blatant breach of school policy—the shape of his headphones molded to the fabrics. She didn’t want to think it was a means of hiding them, but the suspicion only grew when a sophomore yanked the back of his chair and he flinched, bowing his head deeper.

“Need me to do anything about that?” Mira asked, pulling up a seat.

Magic said nothing. It was then she realized he had his eyes closed, his knuckles far too white.

She clicked her nails on the table and he jumped. Mira did too and she snagged onto his hoodie sleeve to keep his attention. “It’s me, Mags. Turn your headphones on.”

He blinked at her as though she were speaking a foreign tongue. Surprisingly, he frowned, reached into his hood, and clicked something.

“Can you hear me now?” she asked, watching the expression on his face flicker from concentrated to alert, eyes moving rapidly from one side of the cafeteria to the other.

“Yeah,” he said. Magic rubbed at his eyes, pushing up his glasses as he reached for one of the paper bags. “I kind of liked the quiet, though.”

“Define ‘kind of,’ Mags.”

Magic unwrapped a sandwich, spilling out the rest of the bag’s contents. “It was nice at first. I like turning them off between classes because then it’s just me and myself. Which is nice, for a while. Until it sucks.”

“I imagine you were enjoying the silence when I got here? Is that why you looked so annoyed at me?”

“A little. I was just starting to get back into liking it after the …” He motioned to the back of his chair, pulling on the plastic. “That.”

“Do you want me to do anything about it?” she asked. Mira tried to rein in her nerves. It was the first day. She didn’t want to bring out the punches, but if it needed to be done, so be it.

“No. Leave it alone.”

She had a feeling the conversation wouldn’t go anywhere after that. Lightly dropping the sandwich from the paper bag between her hands, Mira surveyed the contents on the inside of her lunch, which wasn’t much, before speaking again. “How are your classes so far?”

Her brother gave a vague shrug of his shoulders, tearing into his lunch after a first, smaller bite had apparently told him that the food was good enough to devour. Mira didn’t think much of the school’s sandwiches—basic ham and cheese with waterstalk leaves—other than find them passably “edible.” Magic clearly didn’t share the same opinion; he was nearly halfway through and hadn’t even answered her question yet.

She placed a hand between his face and the food in his hands and he paused, shifting only his eyes to look at her, like a child being scolded.

“Eat like that,” Mira warned, “and you’ll choke. Not sure about you, but I really don’t want to have to do compressions. And I don’t think you want that, either.”

Magic nodded, pupils wide with fear.

Good. At least he learned. “Tell me about your classes.”

“Philosophy is boring. We didn’t do anything in class aside from talk about the basics of morals and ethics. The teacher seems cool, though. I might like it later. But the other classes? I don’t know. Health didn’t even feel like a real class because it ended so quickly, and I hate Prehistory. Like, I really hate it, Mira; my mom could teach me better—and she has.

“And,” he went on, gnawing on the last parts of his sandwich, reaching for a container of jyan berry juice, “as if the morning couldn’t get worse, my entire Chemistry class is filled with idiots. The teacher kept asking review questions and not a single person could answer him.”

“Did you?” Mira asked between bites of food.

Magic paused, swallowing as he drummed along the bread of his sandwich. “N-not really, no. He tried to ask me for the answers—apparently I have a talent for speaking them under my breath loud enough for people to hear—but I … I couldn’t say any of them. I wrote him a note with the answers on it when I left for my five minutes. He didn’t seem to mind.”

Mira blinked. Something didn’t sound right. When they went through his schedule, she didn’t remember Magic telling her “Chemistry” was a part of it. Only that he had a Science class. “Wait. What class was this again?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Chem,” he said. “It was Chemistry—Stars, do you listen when I talk?”

“I did, but that’s a Grade 10 requirement, Mags.”

“And?”

“And, you’re a freshman. You never told me you were in Chemistry.”

Magic took a final bite out of his sandwich. “I’m ahead in Math and Science, remember? I’m a year ahead in those two subjects.”

Mira nibbled on her lip. “Which Math are you in?”

“Algebra II,” he said, twisting open the top of the juice bottle. “That’s my next class. I expect it to be easy, since it’ll be review—it’ll be the stuff I used to help you out with a few years ago. But I’m not looking forward to waiting for everyone else. I hate being behind in a class where I’m supposed to be ahead.”

“I’d slow your roll a little, Magic. You’re sharing a room with sophomores who won’t be pleased to be shown up by a freshman. A freshman, I might add, who they’ve never seen before.”

Magic’s forehead crinkled, the crease between his brows screaming with judgment. As though he couldn’t understand why she would say something like that. He took a final sip of the juice, closed the top, set it down. “I’m not making myself stupid to coddle their egos. I don’t get it. I’m not going to school to please them. Why do I have to be stupid in the two subjects I enjoy? Why can’t I be smart like I’m supposed to be, Mira? Weren’t you the one who said I had the better brain between us?”

“First of all,” Mira said, gnawing on a granola bar, “I never said you had the ‘better brain.’ I said that you had a better sense for numbers and spatial awareness than me. Second, I don’t want a bunch of self-conscious sophomores ganging up on you in class just to feel bigger.”

She caught the roll of his eyes through the edges of his glasses frame. With one hand fidgeting around his lanyard, Magic pulled the strings to tighten the hood of his sweatshirt. “What does it matter?” His voice went small and he stared at the table as though it would answer his question. “They’re doing that already.”

Mira’s posture straightened. She dropped the food she was holding. Every part of her felt on edge. Magic shouldn’t be able to hear anyone but his teacher with the headphones on. Then again, he was able to hear Janie in the lobby when her scream cut through Mira’s microphone. She didn’t like this. Not a bit. “They said something to you?”

Magic tapped his nails against the table.

“What’d they say?” she pressed.

“What haven’t they said?”

“Did they stop?”

“Only when I did this.” He motioned to the hood pulled over his head. Magic spared a glance in her direction. She wasn’t expecting him to continue, but he took a breath and said, “They thought pulling on the earpieces was a fun thing to do behind the teacher’s back. So this stopped them.”

“Good,” Mira whispered, feeling the slightest bit glad. “Maybe that’ll deter them completely.”

“I want to go home …”

“I know. So do I. But you only have four more classes left. Final stretch, Mags.”

“Only to do the whole thing again and again all week? I don’t know how you’ve done this your whole life. Stars, it’s so tedious. And I’d do anything to not spend my mid-mornings with the bitch of a woman I have for Prehistory.”

Mira raised a brow. Magic had never made a habit of cursing people out—not like her. He had the language acquisition of a saint compared to her sailor vocabulary. For him to insult someone like that, Mira imagined Prehistory must have been horrific enough to put him at his wit’s end. “Who do you have for that class?”

“Old woman. Blonde hair with streaks of platinum down her part. Like she’s going gray but hasn’t fixed it yet.”

Ah.

Now it made sense.

Mira had Miss Stork her freshman year and distinctly remembered being told to stand outside the classroom for speaking out—despite her answer being right. On numerous occasions, she could recall being purposefully separated from her friends for little to no reason. Out of spite, she failed the first semester by dressing her correct answers incorrectly or making snarky commentary in the margins. Her father was called for a meeting alongside her and, despite his placating agreements to both faculty and staff, he snuck a few pleased smiles in her direction, impressed with her version of defiance.

That’s my fighter, he’d said as they left.

“I see,” Mira said. “Yeah. She’s not the best.”

“Like I said: she’s a bitch.”

“If it helps, I never liked her either.”

“She almost didn’t let me leave early.”

Mira nearly leapt out of her seat. “Fuck Stork. She isn’t allowed to do that, Mags, you’re medically required to.”

“I know.” Magic took his trash—she didn’t remember when he had finished his lunch, only that it was there and then it wasn’t—and scanned the room for a garbage can. Mira motioned for him to hand it over and he slid it across the table with surprising grace. She leaned over to toss it out as he spoke. “Stork told me she ‘wasn’t sure if she could make the exception’ when I first showed her the note at the beginning of the period. Scared the hell out of me. So I kept trying to show it to her throughout the period which didn’t work. Eventually, I just turned my headphones off and took a nap because it stressed me out. I woke up to her tapping my desk and waving me out of the room.”

Mira laughed. An unexpected feat. Her brother? Showing some spine? She’d always had Magic pinned as the quiet kid who didn’t stick his neck out to cause trouble or disrupt class. In fact, the word “rebellious” wasn’t on her list of words when it came to describing him. She lifted a hand, unconsciously reaching to clap him on the back; Mira realized her mistake halfway through the motion when Magic flinched and she moved her hand to hold onto his sweatshirt sleeve instead.

“Look at you! I’m getting the feeling I may be a bad influence on you after all. You’ve started absorbing some of my very colorful traits and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.”

He nudged her arm away. She could’ve sworn he’d smiled when he did. “Now you’re worried about being a bad influence on me? I thought you would’ve had that realization when we stole the vase from Collin’s store front window a few years back.”

“That wasn’t stealing. That was a consequence.”

“Which we never paid for.”

“True. But do you like the little vase for your sewing materials?”

Magic’s face flushed a vibrant pink. He turned away with a meek nod of his head.

“That’s what I thought. If Collin didn’t want his precious little vase stolen, he shouldn’t have slapped your hand away.”

“I guess it could be worse,” mumbled Magic. “I could be scaling tall buildings with no concern for my safety and I haven’t gotten there.”

“Yet,” Mira insisted.

“Let’s hope for both our sakes that I never do.”

She grinned at that and silently prayed for the opposite.

The lunchroom had settled now, less rambunctious from students scrambling for their lunches with a healthy volume of chatter—not loud enough for Mira to wish she had a pair of her brother’s headphones and not silent enough as it sometimes got for her to suddenly desire some action like a food fight. She took particular notice, though, of the eyes that wandered in her direction—particularly the sophomores and juniors—with perplexed eyebrows and half hanging mouths as though they couldn’t fathom the ideas of someone like Magic sitting within two feet of her. Some whispered to their friends, still keeping eye contact.

Keep staring, she thought, sipping juice from a carton. And see where that gets you.

She scanned the lunchroom to survey her peers. Theater kids to their right. Some band players in the back. Jocks to the left.

And next to the jocks, the Peppers. Who were glaring at her.

Mira nearly choked, but she forced her eyes to meet theirs, keeping it there until, one by one, the gazes dropped, though some occasionally glanced up, their focus flickering between her and Magic.

Except for Callie, whose eyes were trained directly at Mira’s.

She felt her throat dry, heart throbbing within it. She wondered if Callie would work up the nerve to greet her like she used to. Acknowledge her in some way. Of course, deep in her bones Mira knew she wouldn’t. At least, not in front of the Peppers. As far as the other girls were concerned, Mira was dead to them. Callie wouldn’t risk that in their presence, which only made her heart beat harder. Not out of longing, but out of fear. What if Janie was right? What if Mira had misread Callies intentions, saw something that wasn’t there simply because she didn’t want to admit it to herself.

Everything muddled. It was hard to think. All of her thoughts kept coming back to Callie and they were nowhere near related to her plan for the school year.

Mira found herself staring at Callie’s hair. She’d braided that hair back when the two of them hung out every day, where there was no need for her to deny what she felt and knew in her chest to be true. What she would’ve given to close that distance again. To talk to her again without being given the cold shoulder.

To kiss her.

Something sharp poked her shoulder.

Mira jumped in her seat to find Magic continuously poking her with the pointed end of a pen, drawing marks into her sleeve. “Mira,” he whispered. “Earth to Mira. What are you looking at?”

She hesitated. “I … It’s not exactly much of a ‘what,’ I’d say it’s more of a ‘who,’ really.”

“Okay. Let me rephrase. Who are you looking at?”

“You see the long-haired blonde at the table left of the ones in front of us?”

“You mean the table with girls who look like they’d walk straight into a pole because they weren’t paying attention?”

“I—yeah, them. The girl closest to the left. With the white headband.”

“Yeah. What about her?”

Words jumped around in Mira’s head, unable to cross the boundary of her tongue.

She’s pretty. I liked her—I still like her.

The fluttering of a bird’s wings beat furiously against the base of her throat, threatening to free itself. She’d trusted Magic with this information before—he was the first person she told about her insanely hopeless crush on a girl who graduated two years ago and one she’d had on a boy the next year. He never laughed, didn’t call her stupid—like she expected him to. Magic listened. He asked questions.

So why was this so much harder to do?

“I asked her to help keep an eye out for you,” Mira finally said, shoving down the sensation beating in her chest. “I used to be in that social group a while ago and were friends because of that.”

“I take it they don’t talk to you as much anymore?” Magic asked. “Because of me?”

“Not just because of you, though I definitely didn’t win anyone over with that. They had their issues with me long before I left. It got worse when they thought shoving my friend Janie in a locker in Grade 9 was a fun thing to do. I gave one of the girls a black eye and I sprained another’s ankle.”

A flicker of shock passed over her brother’s face, replaced with a disapproving scowl. “I’m almost shocked you didn’t do more damage.”

“Oh, I did. I’m just not telling you all of it. One of the girls put gum all over Thalia’s hair, so I twisted her wrist in retaliation and she couldn’t play the last match of the senior tennis season.” Magic’s jaw dropped and she nudged him lightly. “Don’t catch flies,” she teased.

He muttered something under his breath, ending with what Mira could’ve sworn was, “You’re unbelievable.”

“That aside,” Mira went on, “Callie and I aren’t exactly on good terms. She’ll talk to me if we’re alone—I think—but that’s about it. We have Geography again together this year, so over the phone I promised I’d help her with that if she promised to help keep you safe.”

“How does that work? You can’t read maps.”

“No, but I take good notes. Anyway, lunch is gonna end soon. You have everything?”

“Who are you, my mother?”

Mira scooted her seat back, thrown off by the sudden shift in his tone. He’d gone from completely conversational to … irritated. A frayed end ready to snap off. Maybe it was first day stress, but Mira had prided herself on the ability to read Magic’s moods when he couldn’t express them himself. Now it was like staring at the words of a foreign book, incomprehensible, completely beyond her means. All Mira could do was stumble with a response before he swept his notebooks into his arms and stood. “You don’t have to check up on me. I’m not a child, Mira. I’ll meet you in the alleyway with Mabel after school.”

She said nothing when he slipped away from the table. Mira watched him effortlessly squeeze between chairs and lunch groups, padding across the room as silent and steady as a specter, shuffling his way around the corner and out the door.

Calculations ran constant laps in Mira’s head. She’d need to follow up.

And for the remainder of the period, Mira kept her eyes on Callie as she had before, determined to do exactly that.