The principal pressed her hands into her forehead. "Jenny, I need you to explain what happened."

  Natalie slowly shook her head, doing her best to stay still despite the oppressive feeling of the room. This was the fourth or fifth time now that she'd been in there alone, and it wasn't getting easier. "I dunno what you mean."

  "For heaven's sake, Jenny! You've got a giant bandage taped to your face!" The old woman sat back in her chair, studying Natalie intently. "I'm worried about you."

  "I'm okay."

  She got to her feet and walked around the desk to sit in the chair next to Natalie. Despite her best effort, Natalie recoiled a little and inched away. She frowned. "...Jenny, anything you say to me will be totally confidential. Do you know what that means?"

  "That you'll keep it secret."

  "Yes. No matter what, unless you tell me otherwise, I won't share a word. It's my job to take care of every student in these halls, and you're one of my students." She leaned forward a little, and Natalie shrunk away even further. The principal frowned. "Is someone hurting you, Jenny?"

  "No," she said quickly. "This was just an accident."

  "Do you remember the last conversation we had?"

  Natalie already had an answer ready for that. "Nothing happened to anyone though. Just me. So it's okay, right?"

  "...That's not really the point here, Jenny."

  "I'm okay, and no one else got hurt, so can't I just go back to class?" It wasn't exactly the truth, but it wasn't really a lie either. No other students got hurt, and Natalie couldn't imagine the principal cared about… them.

  "If you're okay, then take off the bandage."

  She faltered. She'd been too afraid to look underneath it alone, nevermind in front of the principal. "I don't think I'm supposed to yet," she said, playing for time.

  "How long ago did this happen?"

  "Friday night?"

  "Have you changed it or taken it off since then?"

  "...No."

  The principal shook her head. "You need to check it and make sure it's clean. If you don't, it could become infected."

  "I think it's okay."

  Natalie had actually looked up information on that online, and — with a bit of help from some spell details posted online — cleaned the area herself with a bit of magic. It was a combination of temperature manipulation and using Movement magic to scrape off dirt and gunk, and it seemed to work really well. It was extremely nerve-wracking, since she could slip up and cut herself, but it meant she could clean up without actually removing the bandage. She could even clean herself without actually taking a shower, if she really wanted to, but it sounded like way too much effort to do all the time. Besides, showers and baths felt really nice.

  "I'm sorry, but I insist. If you won't take it off, I'll have to call the school nurse, and then it'll become a formal inquiry into how you were injured." She sighed. "I think we want to avoid that, right?"

  Natalie nodded. Very slowly, she reached up to the bandages adorning her face. There wasn't any way around it, as much as she'd hoped otherwise. She'd known that they'd probably make her take them off, but she'd kept a vague hope she could keep hiding it right up until that moment.

  With a faint gasp of pain, she pulled the tape off and let the bandage fall away.

  The principal gasped in turn. "Oh my God…" she murmured. "Jenny, what happened? Who did this to you?"

  "I told you, it was an accident."

  The old woman shook her head. "No one's going to believe that. Do you know what this looks like?"

  Natalie shook her head. The principal reached into her desk and pulled out a hand mirror, holding it up, but she averted her eyes. She was still afraid to look.

  "It's better to know than to avoid it forever, Jenny. You'll have to see it sooner or later, unless you've got a few thousand dollars sitting around for laser surgery, and even with treatment it'll never disappear entirely." The old woman's harsh voice softened. "It looks clean though, if that makes you feel better. I think you'll be okay."

  Slowly, Natalie lifted her eyes back up to the mirror. There she sat, and Natalie was shocked at how different she looked. She rarely looked at herself even before all of this. In her mind, she was still a little kid back in Rallsburg, straight from a picture she'd taken of her with her dad. Short-haired, round-faced, the cute little kid everyone wanted tagging along on their team because she was loud-mouthed and always excited and driven to win. She'd known who she was back then.

  The girl in the mirror was so much older, even just two years later. She'd grown a lot, for one. Her hair covered up a lot of her face like a curtain as it tumbled down to her chest. But besides that, Natalie could see it in her own expression. She looked exhausted and worried, like it were permanently etched into her face between slightly drooping eyes and a tight-lipped mouth. She didn't like anything about how she looked anymore, and that was before her gaze even made it to her left cheek.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  The scar glared at back at her — a harsh thick dark line at the edge of her left ear, spun outward in a dizzying spiral, ending when it reached the edge of her eye socket. It was the mark she'd seen on the other members of the gang, though theirs had been rougher and less clean. Hers was almost elegant, in a way — or maybe that was just her imagination. To her surprise, it wasn't as frightening as she'd expected.

  It was a record. For the first time, Natalie felt like she understood the obsession everyone else seemed to have with scars. She'd been through something horrific, but she'd survived. They hadn't beaten her. She'd made it home. The scar didn't mean she wanted what had happened to her. It didn't mean she was a crazy thrillseeker. All it meant was a reminder. It was in the past.

  Don't let it define you.

  She hadn't understood what Cinza had meant at the time, but now she thought she did. It was always going to be a part of her. She'd never forget, but she didn't have to let that scar be the only thing people saw. Her friends had shown her that.

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

  "Man, you gotta drag me out to the library on a Sunday?" Mitch groaned loudly as he walked up.

  Kelsey smacked him on the head. "He said it's an emergency, didn't he? Code red or whatever?"

  "We've only called a code red twice before," said Steven. "Both of those were pretty serious."

  As they rounded the corner of the stacks, Natalie was still staring determinedly at a space on the bookshelf behind Quinn. Since they came from her side, none of them could see the bandage yet.

  "So what's going on?" Mitch asked as he slid onto the chair next to Quinn. "You two get in a fiiiiiiiiiioly shit."

  "What?" Kelsey asked, coming around to their side of the table. Once glance at Natalie and her mouth fell open too. "Jenny, what happened?"

  Natalie shook her head, still unwilling to answer. To her relief, Quinn spoke up. "She got hurt. Huddle up. Steven, make sure no one's nearby."

  Steven nodded and went out to check. Kelsey and Mitch gathered in close, sitting three across from her. As soon as Steven returned, he took the last spot on the opposite side.

  "Where's Tyler?" Quinn asked.

  "He's got some church thing with his parents all day," said Mitch.

  "Okay." Quinn glanced at Natalie. "So you guys obviously noticed something happened."

  "No shit," said Mitch. "Jenny ditched school Friday and apparently got her face beat in? That's definitely something." He glanced at her apologetically. "Are you okay?"

  Natalie nodded. "It doesn't hurt much."

  "Yeah but… are you okay?"

  She was surprised. Mitch wasn't usually the sensitive type. "I think so," she lied.

  "This is the biggest code red we've ever had," Quinn added. "I mean this is serious, really serious. So when we tell you this, it's not a joke. We're not just having fun."

  "Dude, I take everything you say seriously."

  Steven rolled his eyes. "Mitch, stop talking."

  "What's going on? What's a code red?" asked Kelsey.

  "Something the whole group's gotta deal with together. A threat to one of our members." Quinn glanced at Mitch. "Last time it was Steven's older brother."

  "Your brother?"

  "He's an asshole and wanted Steven to help him with a drug thing," answered Mitch. "We blackmailed him."

  "Wow."

  "When we've got a code red," Quinn went on, "everything is one hundred percent confidential. Anything we have to do is totally secret for life. Not a word to anyone outside the group." He nodded at Kelsey. "Since we've got two new members, I thought you should know how serious we take this."

  "No kiddin'," said Kelsey. "I get it. Totally secret. I swear on my life. Hope to die and yeah."

  "Okay." Quinn glanced at Natalie. "Do you want to tell them, or me?"

  Natalie shook her head. "I can tell them."

  "Is this about you being in witness protection?" asked Steven.

  "I'm not in witness protection." Natalie took a deep breath. "Me and Lily are hiding from everyone, including the government. Because we can do magic."

  Before any of them could express doubt, she held out her hand in the center of the table, palm up. A flicker of candlelight appeared in midair above it. She watched their reactions. Despite everything, there was always a little trickle of fear in her mind that the day would come when someone found out her secret and reacted like the people of Rallsburg did. That they'd call her a monster and try to kill her.

  Steven frowned, almost like he doubted what he was seeing. Mitch just looked surprised. Kelsey was excited, and the first to speak up. "Badass! What else can you do?"

  Natalie smiled. She'd really hoped Kelsey would like it. Leaving the fireball in midair, she had it rapidly change colors, before flying it in circles around her head a few times. It returned to the center of the table and vanished in a puff of smoke that she conjured up deliberately. A moment later, just as Kelsey opened her mouth to say something else, Natalie picked a book at random off the shelf behind her and floated it onto the table, where it landed with a thump.

  "Whoah," Steven murmured.

  "There's a lot of other stuff too," Natalie added. If nothing else, she still felt a bit of joy from magic every time she used it.

  "So that's how you flipped Bill on the first day of school," said Kelsey. "Can you like, make yourself super strong?"

  "Yeah."

  "Awesome."

  "Big deal," grumbled Mitch. "I can flip him over too."

  "What's the code red part of this?" Steven asked, glancing at Quinn.

  "If anyone finds out who she is or what she can do, she's done for," he explained.

  "I can't always control it," Natalie muttered. "Sometimes it just gets out."

  "So we gotta help cover for her. And before you ask, no, you can't learn how to do it," he added. "It doesn't work like that."

  "Aww," said Kelsey, her face falling.

  A cat peeked his head around the corner of the stacks to their little alcove, looking at Natalie. The same cat she'd befriended at the school, in fact. She was surprised he'd wandered this far away from his home. He meowed once and jerked his head to the side before wandering away again.

  "Someone's coming," she hissed.

  "...You can talk to cats?" Mitch asked sarcastically.

  "Yes."

  Sure enough, the library cart rolled past a moment later, pushed by one of the employees. The young man pushing it didn't give them a second glance, just put a book on the shelf before moving on. As soon as he was out of earshot.

  "The principal's already suspicious," Quinn continued in a lower voice. "Jenny's probably gonna get called into the office on Monday since she left school early and burned a desk."

  "That was my desk by the way," Kelsey added. "You left a big mark all over my armrest."

  "Sorry?"

  She laughed. "Nah, it's not a big deal. They'll probably just throw it out."

  "It's our job from here out to help cover for Jenny with the principal and the teachers, whenever anything happens," said Quinn. "So tomorrow, you guys are gonna have to be ready. When Jenny gets called in, we gotta have a story ready to go, and a signal."