image [https://i.postimg.cc/Gh4sWncL/08.png]

I decided I was going to skip the rest of the school day, no matter that it was what got me into this whole mess to begin with. Never let it be said that I am not stubborn.

There were two main problems with that plan, the first being the logistics. The lunch bell had rung with eerily dramatic timing after Roslyn questioned whether I knew the Price I had paid for the spell to become Chanel, which cut off the only ready source I could think of for pepper to shove up my nose. Honestly, probably a good thing, because the second problem was effectiveness. Faking being sick had worked Monday, on Mom, but while I had yet to meet the school nurse, I had to imagine they would be a tougher sell on my snotty theatrics.

The entire walk to Algebra, I was frantically tossing ideas back and forth in my head while attempting to cram an entire sandwich down my throat in the space of the walk from one classroom to the next. If I hadn’t had a bottle of juice to chug as a chaser, I don’t think I could have managed it. I could force myself to throw up, but if I didn’t do it in front of someone, I imagined someone would probably question the convenience of my purported nausea just in time for the latter half of the final day of the school week. Could I fake a period? Did girls even get out of school for that? And oh God, I needed to figure out everything about that immediately before that became an actual concern. I couldn’t think of any way to fake a fever, hives, or anything similar, and even had I been willing to resort to thaumaturgy and paying whatever horrific Price required to actually induce them (which I, emphatically, was not), there was no way I could pull together an apparatus for it that might actually work while dodging around the constant ebb and flow of bodies and bags and everything in between through the hallways.

I was so tunnel-visioned, I would have missed the turn into Algebra if Haven hadn’t taken pity on me. He grabbed my book bag, spun me around, and pointed at the door for the class. I took a step forward, my gut churning with the thought of enduring the rest of the school day with the invisible guillotine of the second Price I had unwittingly paid hanging over my head.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out my gut was churning from more than just worry, and I hurled the contents of my stomach all over the floor in the doorway to the classroom. Needless to say, the repugnant panoply of the very much so not digested yet chunks of my sandwich, accompanied by what might have been the remnants of my store brand oats and seasoned in orange juice and my stomach acid was enough to get me sent to the nurse.

I had just accidentally forced myself to hurl by eating too much, too quickly, I realized. I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me,” the teacher (who I would only later learn was Mr. Paulson) bemoaned as I coughed and hacked, having fallen to my knees. It was a minor, thankfully non-magical miracle that I hadn’t dropped my tablet into the horrendous slop. People all around were exclaiming in disgust or laughing at me, leaving me horribly embarrassed as the tall, older white man scooped up the little metal trash can next to his desk, marched over, and flailed it in my direction while covering his mouth and nose with his free hand. “Take this and get to the nurse’s office.”

“And you,” he tacked on as I weakly took the can and spat some of the bile still caught in my mouth into the plastic lined metal. He was looking over my shoulder, and until that moment, it hadn’t really registered that someone was holding back my hair. “Go to the office and tell them we need a janitor five minutes ago.”

“Yes sir,” Haven said, revealing he was the person holding my hair. I shakily tried to stand, and he hauled me up onto my feet on a thankfully clean patch of linoleum. “For attendance, sir, I’m Haven Atteberry, and this is… Chanel Scrivens.”

“Yes, yes, we’ll sort that all out later,” Mr. Paulson told him, sounding less than impressed that Haven was more worried about attendance than getting someone to clean up the vomit. “Now go!”

Before I could marshal myself enough to ask via my tablet where the nurse’s office even was, Haven’s hand on my arm gently but firmly pulled me along as he left towards the office.

“The nurse is on the way,” he told me. “I’ll show you.”

I spit the last of the lingering bile into the can I was holding, and without free hands to use my tablet, I could only give Haven my best ‘I am confused’ expression and hope he understood.

Fortunately, utter confusion was a relatively straightforward emotion to convey. He let go of my arm and took the bucket. “What? Wondering why I would help you?”

[Why were you following] I had begun to type, only to pause, precluded by his question.

Haven glanced at my tablet, thinking I was done, and scoffed. “A sophomore can take Algebra too.”

I hugged the tablet to my chest, eyes on the floor. It was a cold comfort compared to Dani’s triceratops.

“You keep doing that,” he said. When I shot him another confused look, he added, “Acting like a girl. A real one.”

I shoved him and quickened my pace to a jog, choking down a sob as I clutched my tablet. It was a very cold comfort indeed. The halls were emptying rapidly as the bell neared, making my progress that much quicker. I rounded the bend of the last hallway before the office, and now that I was looking for it, I spied the little white square emblazoned with a red cross. I glanced back—I don’t know why—and ducked in.

The nurse, a petite south Indian lady with long black hair, looked up from her computer when I entered, the machine sat upon an archaic desk with a contrastingly new ‘Ms. Patel’ sign of etched brass at the edge.

“Hello, si—”

The bell screamed in the hall, the shrill dissonance making my teeth hurt.

The nurse let out a little huff, standing up from her archaic desk with its contrastingly new ‘Ms. Patel’ sign of etched brass. “Take two. Feeling sick?”

I unlocked my tablet and pulled up the TTS app to start typing an answer, but as I opened a new entry, she probed, “Uh. Hello? I asked if you’re feeling sick?”

I backed out of the new entry, switching to my already written, explanatory TTS statements. “Hi, my name is Chanel Scrivens. I can’t speak, so I use my tablet to do it for me.”

“Oh. Oh!” Ms. Patel gave me an awkward, apologetic smile. “Sorry, you were, uh— typing something, I guess?”

I opened the new entry again and started to type that I had hurled, felt sick, and needed to go home. Except I couldn’t. My heart thundering in my chest, I could only watch helplessly as my hands acted on their own, typing something else instead and hitting the button to have my tablet lilt, “I hurled. Ate my lunch too quickly, I think. I feel fine now, but Mr. Paulson wanted me to go to the nurse’s office.”

Ms. Patel gently frowned, gestured for me to come in, and shut the door behind me. “Let’s give you a look over just to be safe. You’re looking a little pale.”

On shaky, numb feet that were blessedly still under my control, I shambled over to the bed she indicated as she tugged over a piece of medical equipment attached to a pole on wheels. I could barely think straight as she started running tests, my teeth aching and mind racing as I tried to figure out what was going on. It was thaumaturgical, that much had to be the case, but who had done it? Roslyn was upset when I left, but I couldn’t imagine the kooky woman taking control of my body like that. There were other thaumaturges, but why would they care about me, and why would they make me tell…

“Hm, temp’s fine, but your heart rate and blood pressure are up. Were you doing anything strenuous?”

The truth. I tried to shake my head no, but I couldn’t. I nodded yes. I had jogged here, but it didn’t matter that it wasn’t the reason for my raised heart rate and blood pressure. She had asked me a question, and when I tried to lie, I told the truth.

“Well, I’d say you’re fine to go back to class then,” Ms. Patel said as she started freeing me from the equipment. “But if you feel worse, then come on back, okay?”

I picked up my tablet from where I had set it on the bed next to me and left as quickly and normally as I could muster, afraid of what I might admit if I broke down and was questioned. I opened the door to find Haven just about to knock, his face pinching when he saw me.

“I’m s—” he started to say, only to pause when he saw the expression on my face. “Whoa, what happened?”

“Oh, do you need the nurse too?” Ms. Patel said from behind me, drawing his attention over my shoulder.

“No, I— I’m h— her classmate, I was just letting the office know about the vomit…”

“Well, the two of you can go back to class together then. She’s good to go.”

Haven looked dubious at that pronouncement, but he stepped aside to let me out, accepted the hall passes the nurse offered him, then hurried to catch up as I trudged back down the hall.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” he asked, tone edging into accusation. “What happened in there?”

I almost lied. Even though he knew about thaumaturgy, I didn’t want to tell him of all people about my suspicion. But lying would have just made me tell the truth anyway. I bit my lip, unsure what to do.

He sighed. “Look, I was— I wanted to say I’m sorry. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of this, but… I’m sorry, okay?”

Neither of us said—or typed—a word as we walked the rest of the way back to Algebra. Haven didn’t seem to know what to say after his apology, and I was afraid of what might come out of me.

----------------------------------------

I sat through Algebra and Creative Writing in a fog. I just couldn’t get my mind off of what had happened. The Price for becoming Chanel was I told the truth whenever I tried to tell a lie; it was the only explanation I could conceive. It explained not only what had happened in the nurse’s office but also what had happened that morning with Dani. When she had asked why I was scared, I had only intended to tell her that becoming Chanel permanently was a big commitment, but I had admitted Dad’s thoughts about gay people scared me and that I thought I might be damned for feeling the way I do. I had spilled the beans about way more than I meant to, and all because I had tried to give her a half truth!

The bell ringing for the end of class partially roused me from my latest stupor, and Ms. Rose called out over the noise of the class packing their things, “Homework over the weekend! Write a short story on a topic of your choice. Length is flexible, but you’ll be reading excerpts Monday, so put in effort!”

Most of the class groaned at that, and when I started towards the door, the broad shouldered teacher flagged me down. “My apologies, it’s only just occurring that I didn’t think to ask if that talking program on your tablet has any limits I need to be aware of. Do you think it will work for reading excerpts?”

I opened my tablet to type a reply and noticed at the top that I had an email notification. Roslyn? Nobody else had my email that I knew of. Ignoring it for the moment, I took a second to type up and run, “As far as I know,” in TTS.

“Excellent. And Chanel? Please try to pay a bit more attention in our next class, yes?”

She didn’t sound too mad, but I winced all the same, not having realized I was so obvious. She left it alone at that, and suitably chastised, I started towards the gym for my last class of the day, PE. While I was walking, I opened the email.

> [Since I can’t count on you to not work thaumaturgy left and right, come to my classroom for lunch from now until I decide you’re not a danger to yourself anymore.

>

> I’ve attached a version of my magic detection spell, which has a minor, and most importantly specified, Price. I am sharing this only as a teaching tool and only because I don’t know what Price you paid for the ‘Chanel spell,’ otherwise I would give you a retooled version of that with the Price specified to what you already paid… Again, this is a teaching tool. Got it?

>

> Study this and know it inside and out by Monday. Be prepared with ideas for how you could adjust the specified Price and how the thaumaturgy works in connection with it.]

She was still upset with me, that much was obvious, but to my surprise, I realized I was upset with her. All afternoon, I’d been berating myself and freaking out about paying another Price… and she could have given me code with a specified Price all along?! Looking back, I realized she had alluded to being able to specify a Price at the end of lunch. I had just been too horrified to notice at the time. What had she been thinking?! She had basically given me a loaded gun and told me not to fire it!

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That email had lit a fire in me, clearing away my distracted thoughts and giving way to an important question, and one I was frankly frustrated with myself for not thinking to ask sooner: Should I continue learning Thaumaturgy from Roslyn? At first, it had been a matter of survival. I was stuck in a time loop, and she had been the only person apparently unaffected, the only person with answers… Answers she had only hinted at, forcing me to suss out for myself. Then the code to become me, the real me, I had been too tunnel-visioned. I could only see it in hindsight, damage now done.

Come to think of it, the whole reason I had started learning thaumaturgy was because of the time loop. Had she had a hand in making it happen? I had been fooling around with the coding app, which had been preinstalled. But if memory served, it had been preinstalled on everyone’s tablets; in fact, one or two of my classmates from Roslyn’s class had mentioned experimenting with it in their introductory ‘what are you excited about learning’ presentations yesterday. Still, to be thorough, I pulled up the app store and searched for The Coder to check what its reviews were. I blinked when I saw it had a lot of them. Four and a half stars average, a solid mix of reviews with most tending towards four, five, or one stars. A quick glance through the comments didn’t look suspicious? It seemed to be a completely normal application.

Nothing conclusive, so that was still a ‘maybe.’ But between the evidence the app wasn’t some secret thaumaturgical tool and the way Roslyn had acted the first day we met, it at least seemed more plausible than not that Roslyn had not intentionally steered me towards thaumaturgy. I would have to verify later, but for now, I took a measure of solace in that.

By that point, I had reached the hallway outside the gym, and I was forced to put aside my musing about Roslyn and thaumaturgy in lieu of a more mundane problem I had not anticipated: My gym clothes and shoes were in the boys’ locker room.

I bit my lip, considering. Could I enlist Haven to get them for me? The older boy was in the class along with Dani and me, but I took a quick glance around and didn’t see him anywhere. Was he still on his way, or had he already gone in?

“What are you wearing, Scervins?”

And of course, that was when Craig arrived to grace me with his presence. One problem wasn’t enough, it seemed. I turned to glare at the hateful boy and jerked back in alarm at the look of unholy glee on his face as his eyes raked over me. Repulsed as I was, it didn’t occur until it was too late that Craig knew me—knew Ervin—and that I needed to guide his elucidation.

“Oh man, this is rich!” Craig jeered with a stupid little ‘Ha!’ laugh. “You one of those tran-whatevers now?”

My blood ran cold, and people all around stopped to listen. Confused whispers, pointed fingers, and worst of all, unfocused eyes as people started elucidating, primed by Craig saying I was trans.

“Don’t tell me— You think you can use the girls’ locker room now because you’re wearing chick clothes and some fake tits?”

I was shaking, knuckles white around my tablet and teeth screaming. I needed to do something. I needed to do something, but I had no idea what to do. I was paralyzed, my breaths short, insufficient gasps for air as people began to gather around, crowding us in, crowding me. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

“I was wondering why you weren’t on the bus today! Too ashamed to—?”

Whatever atrocious thing that hateful monster had been about to utter, I never did find out because Jaeden Fitzwilliam, one of the gay kids from our bus, stepped between us and punched him square in the jaw. Craig stumbled back with the blow, his fists lifting into a facsimile of a boxing stance, but it did little good to prevent the follow up kick that was already on its way straight to his crotch. I could only stare in disbelief as Craig crumpled to the ground in a whimpering puddle of pain at Jaeden’s feet.

Shocked silence swept over the crowd that accumulated, and in that void of noise, Haven suddenly said loud and clear, “You are as pathetic as you are ignorant, Craig. Did you really think that Chanel was a boy just because she usually wears boy’s clothes? She’s obviously a girl. Can’t you tell the difference?”

I could have kissed him. More elucidation seemed to be sweeping over the crowd, and maybe it wouldn’t be enough, but it was better than Craig’s version (no matter how true it was) spreading uncontested. Confused whispering started to drown out Craig’s whimpering, and Jaeden stopped glaring down at their handiwork to toss me a perplexed look of their own.

“Y-Yeah!” I almost didn’t recognize Dani’s voice between the shrill pitch and stammer as she forced herself to speak. “C-C-Chanel’s always u-used the g-g-g– g-girls’ bathroom!”

Then, before anybody could do anything to the contrary, Dani scurried forward, hooked her arm through mine, and dragged me towards the girls’ locker room. As powerful and sweet a gesture as that was, it did run into the small problem that my gym clothes and sneakers were still in the boy’s locker room. With one arm securely in Dani’s grasp, I couldn’t explain the issue, and before I knew it, we passed through into the locker room.

On some level, I had expected the girls’ locker room to be more… more. But it was little more than a mirror inversion of the boy’s side. A long line of lockers paralleled by a series of squat benches, some shower stalls, more toilet stalls to replace the missing urinals, and, of course, it was girls using it all.

More than a few of my classmates had paused to stare, bewildered, as Dani burst in with me, and for a terrifying second, I thought the train wreck of a situation from the hallway was about to bleed over into here as well. None of them had heard any of what happened in the hall, meaning the elucidation was starting all over again. Except this time, Dani was clearly overwhelmed to the point of being nonverbal as she dragged me forward towards the lockers, and with my one arm still caught in her frankly a bit too tight grip, I still couldn’t do anything to try and guide the situation.

“What’re you—?” one of the girls, someone I vaguely recognized but couldn’t remember the name of, started to ask before being cut off by the door banging open again.

I nearly got whiplash, my neck snapped around so hard. “I cannot wait until I get out of this garbage town, I swear,” Jaeden Fitzwilliam said with an irate sigh as they stalked in, running a hand through the undercut of their shaggy hair. “Hey Chanel, you alright? I knew Stark was brain dead, but you’d think he’d, y’know, remember you from riding on the bus together our whole lives.”

“Chanel?” the same girl began to complain. “What’re you talking about? What is he doing in here?”

“Oh for the love of— You too, Caroline?” Jaeden hopped up onto one of the benches and loudly announced, “Since she’s apparently not widely known, this is Chanel. Yes, she normally wears boy’s clothes. No, that does not make her a boy anymore than my choice in clothes has ever made me a boy. Anymore stupid questions, or can we all just get on with it? Because I, for one, would like to get through class and get onto my godforsaken weekend.”

They didn’t actually wait to answer any would-be questions, of course. With one last look that practically screamed ‘this conversation is over,’ they hopped off the bench with a huff and gave me a look of concern. “Alright, Chanel?”

Everyone else slowly resumed getting ready for class, and with my eyes carefully kept on the still fully clothed Jaeden, I gently tugged my arm from Dani’s blessedly slack grip, prompting her to finally start shaking her hands like mad with eyes shut tight. After a second, I managed to pull up the TTS app and press the buttons for, “Yes,” and, “No.”

“Huh,” Jaeden grunted, eyes a little wide. “I heard y’all’s tiff on the bus the other day, but I honestly thought Craig was just being, well, Craig. You can’t speak anymore then?”

“Yes,” my tablet lilted. “I can’t speak, so I use my tablet to do it for me.”

“Geez, sorry to hear that. Was wondering why Coach Cassell let you lug that around the other day.” They ran a hand through their hair and gestured awkwardly at the lockers. “Well listen, I’m glad I could help, but uh, I think we better get ready before Coach sends a rescue party, huh?”

Jaeden moved to their locker, leaving me to the lingering problem of what to do about my clothes and shoes. I couldn’t just go get them myself, not with how tenuous things were with the elucidation. For all I knew, that might solidify the impression that I was anything other than a girl. The thought occurred to go find Coach Cassell and tell him my clothes were in the boy’s locker room, but if he asked why they were there, I wouldn’t be able to lie.

Except maybe I didn’t need to, I realized. I would need to do everything just right, but if I did…

Before I started, I checked on Dani, who hadn’t quite stopped her jerky hand movements. I gave her a thumbs up and a questioning look, and she aimed a weak smile at my shoulder before giving me a single nod, which I interpreted as, ‘Getting better but not there yet.’ That resolved, I moved over to the lockers while keeping my eyes in safe places and made a show of pausing, confused, at an empty locker near Jaeden’s. I opened it up, peered inside, and threw my hands up in the air as if frustrated.

“Chanel?” Jaeden asked as they pulled an athletic shirt over their tight, strapless black tank. “What’s wrong?”

I swallowed as I pulled out my tablet to explain. This was the moment of truth. If I was wrong about what had happened with Dani yesterday… But I wasn’t. I didn’t lose control of myself as I typed and ran the TTS message, “My clothes and shoes aren’t here. Lock either.”

It took every ounce of control I had to not sigh with relief and throw a wrench into my plan. It seemed the Price for becoming Chanel was narrower than I had feared. I had been afraid I might not be able to omit things or tell half truths because yesterday I had spilled my guts when I tried to only tell Dani I was scared of making a big change. But that hadn’t been the issue; I had originally intended to lie, which had then compelled me to give the whole truth. I would need to tread carefully, but I could work within that limitation much better than being constricted from ever saying anything but the whole truth!

And just as I had hoped, telling Jaeden my things were missing so soon after the incident with Craig prompted them to think of a very particular reason why they were gone. “Oh for the love of— Someone stole your stuff?!”

I was very careful about responding to that, sitting down heavily on the bench and staring at the locker in question but not making any sort of affirmative gesture or grunt. I wasn’t lying; I was just sitting down.

“C’mon, let’s go find Coach,” Jaeden said, heading for the exit to the gym. “This is getting ridiculous…”

JEM’s gymnasium, like the rest of the school, was no frills. What money Washington County had for facilities was mostly put towards the twin high schools in Hagerstown. The gym floor stretched across the wide room with the painted lines for basketball down the middle of the room and flanked on each side by sets of ancient, faded brown bleachers that could be collapsed into the walls to create more free space. The floor was lacquered, but even to my untrained eye, there were dozens of spots where the lacquer was thinning and would need touch ups soon. Like the lacquer, the painted purple and gold bands running parallel to the floor needed to be redone, but at least those were purely decorative instead of functional. And over everything, there were six baskets, one each on the ends of the floor, and two more on each side.

Coach Cassell was easy to spot, since he was taller even than the towering Haven. He was moving between groups of our classmates, organizing everyone into groups of four and handing out basketballs from a tarnished, mobile rack of them. Jaeden had no compunctions about interrupting his process, marching right up to him and saying, “Coach, Chanel’s gym stuff is missing from the locker room, lock and all.”

The hulking man didn’t look pleased about that, but whether that was because of the possibility my things had been stolen or because Jaeden had interrupted him, I couldn’t tell. He had seemed nice enough yesterday, but that wasn’t a lot to judge by.

“Chanel…?” He blinked several times when Jaeden indicated me, and I gave him an awkward little wave. “Oh. Scrivens, right? Still getting used to everyone’s names, sorry. Are you sure you didn’t take your things home Monday and forget to bring it back? We were out for several days, it’d be understandable.”

I very carefully chose to not answer that question, instead using TTS to say, “I never took my things home.”

Haven met my eyes, clearly having figured out the problem, but for the moment I had to give my attention to Coach Cassell. “Alright, sit today out, and we’ll figure things out after class.”

He resumed pairing up our classmates, and as Haven walked over, I turned to Jaeden and pressed the button for, “Thank you.”

“Hey, no problem. I’m just sorry you’re having such a craptacular day.” They returned the wave of the other gay kid from my old bus, Nico, as he exited the boys’ locker room. “See you around, yeah? And hey, I dig the new threads. You look nice.”

I think they didn’t see my blush until they turned to leave, and there was nothing I could do about it if they had. Haven’s eyebrow rose a hair, a crack in his otherwise impassive expression, which only served to make my blush worse.

“Your things are in the other locker room, right?” he asked. “If Coach doesn’t figure it out, then I’ll get them for you later.”

I pressed the button for, “Thank you.” Then, for good measure, I hit it several more times, hoping he would get the message. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

He looked away, uncomfortable. “I just… thought you could use some help.”

I pressed the, “Thank you,” one more time, insistent.

Haven grunted, eyes narrowing on the gym exit to the main hallway. I turned to look and saw a lady I vaguely recognized from the main office moving towards Coach Cassell with Craig following in her wake, murder in his eyes and a limp in his step. I couldn’t hear what she said to Coach over the sound of the people that had begun playing, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why Coach blew his whistle, its shrill shriek easily grabbing everyone’s attention.

“Fitzwilliam! Scrivens! You’re wanted in the office.”

“And each will answer for his sins on the Final Day…” Haven murmured, giving me a solemn look when I glanced his way. “Good luck.”

Luck… Oh, I was definitely going to need some of that. I was about to walk into a minefield. Ignoring for the moment that I didn’t want to get Jaeden in trouble after they had helped me, there were any number of things I might be asked given the nature of why Craig had been harassing me that I might not be able to answer without my Price coming back to bite me by forcing me to admit I had once been ‘Ervin’ or that thaumaturgy exists—maybe even things I hadn’t thought to worry about yet.

Jaeden passed the ball they had been holding to Nico and moved to join the secretary, head held high. Gulping, I slowly moved to follow, wracking my brain for solutions. Could I just not answer? Would that make things worse? I could play each question by ear, but that brought me back around to how to know which questions were safe to answer. I had been reasonably confident I knew what I was doing when I addressed the clothes situation, but I didn’t know anymore. Could I just not—? Ugh, I was asking the same questions!

“Follow me,” the secretary primly said, turning to lead the way back to the office, missing the nasty look Craig directed at Jaeden and me.

I needed a solution, and I was stuck going in… circles… Oh. Oh, that was potentially the worst idea I’d had all week.

... never let it be said that I am not stubborn.