Molly woke up on the floor leaning against her bed with the sun shining through her window. Her back hurt, she ached all over, her eyes were strained, and her arm was heavy from swinging her bag all night long. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, pull the sheets over her, and pass out again to regain the night of sleep she had lost, but instead, she got herself up on twinging legs and made her way over to her phone on the ground.

She bent over to pick it up and nearly toppled over from exhaustion. It had lost half its charge, and it was already 7:20 am. She had no time to plug it in. She had to get dressed and get down to breakfast now. She knew that Kren would be waiting for her to say goodbye, if he wasn’t waiting for her already.

She quickly opened a text message to him and typed that she would be there soon, then threw her phone on the bed, scurried to her dresser and tore open a drawer. She tugged on a pair of purple jean shorts and a white blossomed blouse before putting on her socks and shoes. She would have to find a way to make money while she was here and get herself sandals or something more convenient that were easier to slip on.

Snatching up her phone, she saw that only five minutes had passed, so she grabbed her key and foraged in her bag for her folded-up schedule. When she found it, she made a mental reminder to put it on her desk. She then headed out the door.

Her first stop was the restroom. She ran to one of the showers in the gender neutral one, ignoring the vigilplunk on one of the stalls, but all the showers were in use. She’d hoped to use her key and obtain a brush from the extendable drawer since she didn’t have her own.

Knowing it would be useless to run into another bathroom since the likelihood of finding the showers occupied was the same, she ran to the mirror in front of the long white marble vanity holding the black sinks and ran her hands through her messy brown curls. She tried to ignore the dark circles under her eyes and her wide grimacing mouth.

Then she went back out of the bathroom and down the hall.

Her phone vibrated. She pulled it out.

KREN: waiting…

Molly realized that she hadn’t gone pee…. Her bladder was practically sloshing, needing a release, but she decided to hold it.

Why was everything going wrong on the first day?

Afraid to meet anyone’s eyes, she ignored everyone in her hall and headed forward and down the stairwell. Many other students were coming out of their halls to head down the stairs too, clogging it.

MOLLY: almost there

When she finally reached the bottom step, she immediately noticed Kren with a paper cup in his hand. His eyes widened when he saw her, and he brought the cup to his mouth for a sip.

“What took you?” Kren asked, pulling out his phone to check the time. It was 7:43.

When Molly didn’t answer because she was still trying to catch her breath, he seemed to notice her exhausted face and grabbed her unsteady hand as if to check her pulse. “What happened?”

She drew her hand away and let it rest on her chest, trying to calm her beating heart. “Those blue—things snuck in my room and bothered me all night.”

His eyebrows raised. “Spirit sprites?”

He knew about them? Of course, he did. He had gone to this school.

“I don’t know. They kept trying to put their fingers into my skin.”

“Into soul,” Kren corrected. He put his phone into his brown pants pocket and then his sizeable finger to his chin. “Didn’t think… Normally not bother students. Only steal. But with empty vessel… maybe see toy.”

“They see me as a toy!?” Molly was angry now. “They steal? Why don’t the teachers do anything about them? I saw that some students can’t even see them!”

“They’re nuisance. Teach things not always seen, which will learn from spirit teacher. You need to learn glue spell and banishing. I don’t have time to teach you.”

Molly wanted to cry. A part of her had been hoping that Kren would at least have some way to help her. “But I need—“

She was interrupted by a teacher approaching them.

“Mr. Kren, is this who you were telling me about? The student who brought you all the way back to Lockdrest for a day?”

Molly couldn’t tell if the teacher was male or female. They looked like some kind of creature whose head was twice as large as any human’s. The creature had large green eyes and stringy flint-grey hair that lay in clumps around their head.

“Murs. Eddl, yes. Molly.” Kren said with a smile and a slight bow. “Molly, Divinations One teacher. Made sure first class.”

“Excellent!” Murs. Eddl said, clapping their hands. “I wonder if you will be as fun as Kren. We used to go to school together. Just don’t go randomly giving people concoctions like he did. Still good at transformation drinks in a whole new way though, as I noticed last night. Best sleep I’ve had in years.” They winked at Kren.

Kren smiled awkwardly and slurped from his paper cup.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, then! Safe travels back, Kren. Hope the teethers of our lives meet again.” Murs. Eddl gave a small wave and smiled in Molly’s direction with their perfect teeth before heading toward the downstairs.

“What is…”

“Rude to ask,” Kren stopped her. “No matter. Goes by Murs. When child came here from far away.”

A sudden pain stabbed Molly’s lower stomach. She thought it was a spirit sprite again for a moment, but then realized her bladder was still full. “I need to go to the bathroom. I didn’t—I—there was no time.”

Kren nodded and pointed to the restrooms by the stairs before the cafeteria. She rushed to it, trying not to make a scene.

But then she ran into someone hard.

The boy stopped, grabbed her shoulders before she could fall over, and stared into her with brown hate-filled eyes.

She stepped away, expecting him to yell at her while her stomach cramped again.

“Namu! Apologize, and let’s move on. It is already your fault we’re late,” his companion behind him yelled.

The boy named Namu, who looked older than Molly, did not apologize but gave her a sneer then turned and walked away.

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Why were there such rude people here? First the boy on the plane and now him?

She didn’t watch him and his friend walk away. She instead barged her way into the girls’ restroom and one of the stalls. Then she screamed when she sat down and looked up. She had picked a stall with a vigilplunk resting on top of it.

It did not turn to face her as her pee turned to soft trickles and still didn’t look at her as she lifted herself off the seat and slowly pulled up her pants. It wasn’t until she exited the stall that she turned and saw it was now staring at her with its lopsided mouth hanging lazily as if about to fall asleep.

Breathing heavily, she went to the sink to begin washing her hands.

She heard a toilet flush and then a shriek as a stall banged open, and a girl jumped out with her hands up.

It was the stall furthest away from the vigilplunk. But the vigilplunk was tense now and baring its teeth until it saw the girl breathing heavier than Molly had been just moments before. The girl tried to relax her hands at her sides but could not and darted backward from the stall into a sink.

It took Molly a moment to realize it was Rem.

“Hey, Rem. Are you okay?” Molly asked, still running her hands under the warm water.

Rem turned and looked at her with wide blue eyes. Her face dropped in fear, but she did not speak. Molly found herself wanting to see her thin lips smile like she had the day before. Her skin was pale, as if she had seen a ghost.

“Man, you scared me!” another girl said after a flush that made Rem who was beginning to wash her hands flinch again.

This girl walked out of the stall with her blue onesie pants flowing at her sides. She had light brown hair in tight braids that matched her golden-brown skin. Her thin pink lips turned up in a smile. She fixed her princess hazel eyes on Molly, which made Molly realize that she had been staring while someone had been coming out of a bathroom stall for the second time in a row….

Molly turned away from this other girl, mortified, trying not to grimace at herself as she turned the water off and went to dry her hands. Her first day could not be going any worse.

Before she knew it, the girl she had been staring at for too long was drying her hands right alongside her. Had Molly been drying her hands for too long? Had this girl noticed?

“You look new.” the girl smiled. “What’s your name? I’m Ova.”

Molly gulped and hoped the girl hadn’t heard it. Rem was still washing her hands. She was either cleaning every inch of her skin or waiting for Molly and this other girl to leave. “I’m Molly. Yes. I’m new.” She didn’t want to be rude and exclude Rem, especially if she was having as hard of a time as Molly was, so she called out to her.

But before Molly could say anything else to Rem, two other girls came into the room talking loudly. They were arguing.

“No. No. No. Don’t blame it all on her. You saw her doing it. Why wouldn’t you—”

“I thought she was joking,” the other girl interrupted with a shake of her head.

“Even if she was joking, I would have never let someone put any kind of concoction they made near your hair!”

Molly saw that one of the girls had a strand of hair in her black locks that was different than the rest. It was green and seemed greasy like she had dunked it into a bowl of melted butter.

“I worked on it all morning and all night. I can’t fix it!”

“Ask a teacher,” the girl with her hair nicely done up and no dark circles under her eyes said.

“No! You ask a teacher what to do!” The girl with the green strand had her hands clenched into fists. Her face was turning red.

“Why would I do that? It’s not my hair.”

The girl who was close to tears now, took a step toward the other girl and grabbed the straps of her tank top to yell in her face, “Because it’s your f—"

The vigilplunk growled, fell off the top of the bathroom stall, and started hopping its body toward the girls with its sharp teeth chomping.

Molly gasped, body shaking, and took a step to run out, but Ova grabbed her arm, stopping her.

The two girls screamed and scrambled out of the bathroom. For some reason, Rem seemed more at ease now than she had moments before, even though she was pressed against a wall. She had a small smile on her face.

The vigilplunk’s body stopped hopping for a moment. Its eyes darted around as it munched on nothing a few times before it hopped around and made its way back to the bottom of the stall.

Ova went over, picked it up, its pink hair completely covering both of her hands. It seemed to melt a little in her grasp. She lifted it and set it back in place on the top of the stall.

It opened its mouth into a big yawn once it was settled and closed its eyes.

“Want to be friends?” Ova said, turning around and looking directly at Molly. She took something out of her pants pocket and started rubbing it between her hands. Ova stopped what she was doing and held it out to show her, also revealing an axe tattoo on her right forearm. Molly wondered what it meant, but saw Ova was holding out an amber rock. “It calms me. Same with this.” Ova grabbed at the gold band that adorned her left bicep.

“That’s nice,” Molly said, forcing a smile. “The most I have is a…” she stopped herself. She wanted to say an app, but then she knew she would have to explain the magickal one she used all the time with the sounds. She still didn’t know if that was acceptable or not here. “My… phone.”

“Oh! Would you like to exchange numbers? Why don’t you give me your phone and I’ll put my number in it? You can text me later when you have time. What classes do you have?”

Molly handed her phone over as they walked out of the bathroom. Rem dodged around them to get outside ahead of them and met someone who seemed to be waiting for her. It was Koz.

“You, okay?” he asked Rem before holding something out for her. It looked like it was his phone. She smiled at him as she nodded twice before grabbing the phone from him. He took a second phone out of his pocket before they both walked away.

He hadn’t seen Molly wave.

“Here you go.”

Molly had to shake her head again to bring herself back to attention. She felt her cheeks burning red. Here was someone willing to talk to her, someone actually nice, and she was ignoring her and worried about getting the attention of someone else.

“What classes do you have again?” Ova asked after Molly finally took her phone back.

Molly took the paper out of her pocket to name them off.

“We have our first class together! Divinations One and then later Spirit Magick One at 1:30!” Ova exclaimed. “We’ll have to meet up later since it’s 8 o’clock now. You’ll have to tell me all about yourself. Do you want to head…”

Molly wondered why Ova was trailing off but then saw Kren approaching them, looking quite stern.

“Yes. That sounds great,” Molly sputtered as Ova stood there frozen and confused. When Ova realized that Kren seemed to know Molly, Ova gave her a nervous smile and left.

“Made friend?”

“I…maybe,” Molly said, her voice trembling with nerves. She had probably ruined it. She had been thrown off by everything this morning and with not knowing what to do. This was a whole new setting for her. This was a whole new place. She didn’t know how she was supposed to act. How she was supposed to react. What she was supposed to say. She was over-tired and frightened by how terrifying and rude some people were here. She couldn’t believe she had gone into the stall with the vigilplunk. She hated that there were spiritual creatures here that thought she was a toy and were apparently supposed to teach students a lesson.

She was falling into insanity. She missed her friends. She missed normality. She missed knowing the right or wrong thing to do or what at least was close to acceptable.

“You need food,” Kren insisted. “Then class.”

His hand wrapped around her arm to pull her through the students, most of whom were heading to the stairs that led to their classes, then into the cafeteria where he nodded in the direction of the food lines.

She went to the long smooth counter with the color of sand and reached for a plain bagel on display with many others. She shoved it into her mouth, then turned to see that Kren had gone. Panic filled her once more, making the bagel sour in her mouth until she saw him. He was getting a second drink.

When she went over to him, he handed the drink to her. “Calm nerves,” he said.

She took a sip of it. It quenched her dry mouth. Then the little sparks of anxiety on the outer layer of her skin went out, even though the world was spinning inside her. It wasn’t as effective as Kren’s drink that he had made in his home.

“After classes. When have time, you need to see Koz.” He pointed to the pocket where she kept her phone. “He will explain.”

“Explain what?” Molly asked, taking another bite of her bagel. She didn’t think that he had seen or known who had shown Molly around yesterday. But maybe he had. Or maybe he knew him. “Do you know him?”

“Personally, no. But know from teachers he is knowledgeable. With trends,” Kren spat. Then he sighed. “You will find Koz. This is where we say goodbye.. You will be okay.”

“Where are you going to go?” Molly asked. She didn’t know how she felt about him leaving her here. Apparently, by Ova’s reaction, mini-trolls might make it harder for her to make friends. She wasn’t really helping herself as far as that went, but for some reason, he was a comfort. She didn’t feel judged by him. She knew he only wanted to help her. He had taught her that she could do old magick, something she had never thought was possible. He knew what she was, recognized it, and cared, when her parents hadn’t. She had never felt that from anyone before. And not only that but he was a bridge to her old world. Her old life. With him gone she would have only this. She would only have herself, which made her uncomfortable.

“To look for Trennly,” Kren said. “You will be okay.”