CHAPTER 20

In Which Evan Attracts More Attention

ANGIE. FIRST PERIOD.

Angie hustled up the stairs to the third floor and around the curving hall to her Pre-Enchanting class. She pushed through the doorway with less than a minute to spare, judging by how agitated she felt as a result of her Timely Appointments charm.

For a split second, she was greeted with the susurration of a room in which a small number of distinct conversations were taking place, but then those conversations cut off and silence enveloped the room as Angie stepped inside.

As people often do, the twelve other people in the four-tiered amphitheater-style classroom glanced toward the door, and thus her, as she opened it. In Angie’s experience it was not uncommon for her to get a longer look than most kids, what with her whole life being a steaming pot of simmering gossip. Usually, everyone still looked away after a few seconds, and after a bit the upperclassfolks did, but now, for a seeming eternity, Mst Silberfuchs and the other freshmen in the room studied her silently, and the weight of that attention stopped her in her tracks.

Finally, Ardath Osterly said, “Cutting it close, hmm, McMillan?”

Angie replied, “Sorry I didn’t make it to class soon enough for you, Osterly,” and strode the few meters over to the same workdesk she’d been at the day before—the one closest to the door on the ground level, which gave her a view of everyone in the room, except the non-existent people behind her. Her charm induced agitation proved accurate as always: the bell rang just as she was placing her bag on the floor next to her seat.

Mst. Silberfuchs gave Ardath a Look, then gave Angie a pleasant smile. “No need to apologize, Mst. McMillan, you were on time. Okay everyone, you’re all actually here today. I’m going to do roll call so I can start learning everyone’s names.”

She did roll call, then said, “It’s time we got started.

“As it is customary among a subset of Persephone High students to skip the first day,” Mst Silberfuchs continued, “It is customary for me to again start the day with the safety lesson, one I’m going to be repeating periodically throughout the semester. You will think I’m repeating it ad nauseum, and yet I promise you that at some point this year, at least one student in a magic course in this high school will, if they’re lucky, merely,” and here she paused for a long moment, looking around the room at the students, “Shatter every pane of glass in the room they’re in, including all screens, eyeglass lenses, and drinking glasses. Don’t be that person, Circe.”

“What?” Circe popped up from where she was slumped behind her text book, probably using it to shield her use of her phone. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Pay attention today, Circe. Do Not Do Magic Near Operating Uninsulated Electronics,” Mst. Silberfuchs continued, staccato, emphasizing each word with a sharp delivery and a hair-width extra pause after each. “Do not try to enchant your phone. Do not activate sigils of enchantment with your phone turned on and in your pocket, unless you have securely contained it in a casting case. Do not attempt to refine reagents with a radio playing on the same desk as your circle. Do not attempt to scry using the screen of your Pear Information Pad. Do not attempt to brew potions on an electric range! Do not attempt to cast a spell, any spell, in the same room as an operating computer, unless it is thoroughly insulated! Do not, for the love of all the spirits, try to record video of a summoning ritual! If you need to cast a spell or conduct a ritual of any significant power near other people, get them to turn their phones off first, or you all could end up with crab claws instead of hands. I saw that once. And you don’t want to pay for getting that fixed.”

Angie suppressed a sigh at the necessity of this, and to distract herself from her annoyance, glanced around at her fellow eleven students, now that people besides the freshmen were here. The two in the top row were almost definitely juniors, while four were, Angie was pretty sure, sophomores, none of whom had been there the day before. The last five were the other freshmen who had been there the day before. Persephone offered their magic classes in a sort of rotating schedule, so the juniors just may not have gotten a chance to get in before this.

Mst. Silberfuchs continued. “This is all because the electromagnetic fields generated by active electronics, as the media does quite a poor job explaining, can interfere with the manner in which aether reacts to words, gestures, and geometries of power. They can twist directed aether off course, causing a wide variety of uncontrolled mystic occurrences. A skilled mage can largely work around this sort of interference, but none of you are skilled mages.” She gave Angie a look here. Angie frowned right back.

“Now, as I said yesterday, I want everyone to turn off their phones, notebooks, data pads, and all other electronics immediately upon entering this magical laboratory that we are using for a classroom, so that you start building the habit of never mixing the two. Circe.”

“Um,” Circe said, looking up. “Right.” And she fiddled with something behind her book and then shifted around to put whatever it was away in her bag.

Mst. Silberfuchs sighed. “The rest of you too,” she said, eliciting several grumbles from the sophomores. All the other freshmen, including Angie, already had their phones off, or so it seemed. “I will be repeating the safety lecture every class period until no one needs a reminder to turn off their phone for three days in a row, and weekly after that.” More than one groan. “If you think that’s bad,” she continued, “We’re now going to cover the syllabus so that everyone who was unavoidably absent will have a good grasp of what we will be covering this class, the dates of major tests, and the due dates and basic requirements for your two term projects.”

Angie groaned, as did every other freshman. “Those who received this information yesterday,” Mst. Silberfuchs went on, “Are welcome to zone out, read, work on materials from other classes, use the necessary room for no more than the thirty minutes this took yesterday, or otherwise occupy themselves while I cover the syllabus with the rest of the class, as long as it is not with electronic devices.”

Good thing Angie wanted to start ripping apart the bullshit in their textbook. Figuratively. She pulled out her textbook, opened it to a section that was wrong, and started taking notes.

MEGAN. END OF FIRST PERIOD.

“Megan?” came a soft voice over the din that filled the choir room post-bell.

Megan took a deep breath and then straightened up from her bag. “Hi Beth,” she said with a small smile. “You feeling better? I’m sorry I didn’t message you last night.”

“It’s okay,” Beth said, smiling back more widely. “I really should have just messaged you. Katier told me to.”

Megan glanced at the girl in question, trudging forlornly and foot-draggingly toward the exit. Megan sighed. “I suppose I owe Katier thanks for helping you, but I’m still so… I can still hardly believe everyone kept it from me.” She frowned in Katier’s direction.

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“I know,” Beth said. “It’s awful. I’ve stopped talking to Lauren or Nish. Nisha.” Oh Beth, still using a nickname for someone she was mad at. A tall blonde girl Megan didn’t recognize walked up to Katier and said something, causing Katier to perk up and look surprised. “And I broke up with Tate over this in June, not that he knows its the real reason.”

“Oh goshes!” Megan said. “I didn’t realize!”

“You never read our texts,” Beth said. Most people would have sounded at least a little accusatory, but not Beth. “Well, he lied to me, Megan. What else was he lying about? I couldn’t keep dating him knowing what was going on.”

Megan nodded in understanding.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do though,” Beth continued, her voice even softer than normal. “At lunch or whatever. Will… will you be mad if I eat with Katier? She at least… she didn’t like it. She tried to do something about it. I don’t have anyone else…”

“You have me, Beth!” Megan said. “You can eat with us, you know that!”

“No no no,” Beth said so fast, shaking her head. “I can’t. Not while Angie and Evan are so raw. And not with Chris there. I, um. He’s very distracting, you know?” She got significantly pinker.

Megan felt an absolutely unhinged bolt of jealousy at Beth’s words. She beat the feeling into submission, but nonetheless she maybe didn’t want Beth eating with them after all. She didn’t think she let it affect her expression, but nonetheless Beth’s expression got more anxious and pinched, and she looked away. “Sorry Megan. I know you like him. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I don’t have any claim to him,” Megan said, feeling terrible. “And I have no right to demand you not feel what you feel about him.”

“Of course you have a claim to him,” Beth said. “You have a—”

“Ladies,” a girl’s voice said, “Do you mind if I interrupt?”

The slender, smiling blonde girl who’d just been talking to Katier now approached the two of them. She could have been Megan or Katie Kay’s cousin, and was, in fact, Katie Kay’s cousin, Megan abruptly realized. “Else!?” Megan cried, her surprise driving her various worries from her mind. “What on Earth are you doing here?”

Just a touch shorter than Beth, Else Geistler wore her ash blonde hair braided and wrapped around her head like a headband, leaving brow-length middle bangs free to cover her forehead, which Megan knew Else thought was too big. Not that she had admitted that to anyone else besides Megan, as far as Megan knew. She was killing it in a sea blue baby-doll t-shirt that said, “WHAT IF I SAY I’M NOT LIKE THE OTTERS” in block letters around a cute drawing of an otter, along with flame red skinny jeans.

Now, Else replied, “Living with cousin Katie and attending Persephoneee!” with mock enthusiasm covering obvious despair. “And let me tell you, it’s started out great!”

“Ah,” Megan said. “Um.”

“Katie’s really fun to be around when she’s having a breakdown over the unveiling of her various crimes,” Else said. “And of course there’s the fact that the awesome little friend group I thought I was going to be able to slide right into has totally exploded. Um.” She stopped at noticing Megan’s expression.

“Did you know, Else?” Megan said, suddenly less enthused about her appearance.

“Kind of? But not really? I just knew I wasn’t supposed to talk about them. I was too scared of Katie’s reaction to try it. I’d never seen her so intense about anything as when she told me not to, and you know how intense she gets,” Else said. This was literally the most subdued Megan had ever seen the girl. She looked at Megan imploringly. “And really, I had no idea what was actually going on. Just what Kay told me. What if I really upset you? Katie said I would. I only saw you at parties, you know? I didn’t want to ruin people’s parties.” She paused. “I’m so sorry. I’m still not super clear what’s going on, actually. Katie’s ranting is hard to follow.”

A lot of excuses, but with Katie Kay as her cousin, Megan found herself unwilling to blame Else particularly. It’s not like she’d gone to Asphodel and known all the details, true or false, like everyone else did. She’d hardly been at every party. Hardly any, in fact, in the grand totality of middle school parties. She sighed. “That’s fair enough, Else. I don’t feel up to telling you right now.”

“Don’t have time anyway!” Else said in a practical tone of voice. “I got PE next and I need to run. I did just want to ask a quick question though, Megan. Um. So now… it’s—is it cool to talk to…”

“Yes,” Megan said. “It’s cool to talk to Angie and Ryan and Evan. By which I mean Evan, since I’m pretty sure he has PE next.”

Else looked relieved. “Oh,” she said, smiling. “Good! That’s great! Yeah, I don’t think he recognized me yesterday, but if I went another day without saying something to him it was going to get seriously awko taco, what with how we played sometimes when we were kids.”

“What lunch do you have, Else?” Beth said, a note of hope in her voice.

“Second! Please tell me you have that too, I ate outside by myself yesterday to avoid whatever was going on with Katie and the rest of you. I knew even less then than I do now.”

“Yes! We’ll eat together!” Beth said, smiling.

“Thank goodness! I asked Katier if she’d eat with me but she said if I wanted to talk to Evan and Megan that I’d better do that first. Um. Hi Megan.”

“You can eat with Katier if you want, Else,” Megan said, feeling tired. God forbid anyone do something she disapproved of. “You too, Beth, if you want.” Beth looked relieved, and Else looked thrilled.

“Cool! Um. Well, I’ll catch you guys later,” she said, grinning. “Seeee yaaaa!” She finger waved at them and then trotted off.

“We should go too,” Megan said.

Beth nodded, and they started off. After a bit, Beth asked, “Where you headed?”

“I’ve got World History,” Megan replied, not without glumness, as they started walking, exiting the choir room after a few moments. History was scary and depressing most of the time. So many demons.

“I’ve got Physical Science, with Kay,” Beth replied.

“Ugh. I’m sorry.”

Beth shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“We’ll deal with whatever Kay decides to do when she decides to do it,” Megan said quietly, and wanting to change the subject, continued, “Apart from Kay, how are you feeling, Beth? Better I hope?”

“I don’t know, kind of,” Beth said, not looking particularly like she felt good. Beth wore everything on her sleeve, which was helpful in that she was quite sensitive, too. “I was prepared for them all to tell me to fuck off. Especially Evan, after yesterday.”

Megan smiled a little bit and raised an eyebrow a touch. “Oh? Were you really?”

Beth drooped a little. “Kinda? I mean, I still would have died, but I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

“You wouldn’t have died, Beth,” Megan said.

“I know. I was just so scared. Katier kept telling me it didn’t make sense to think he hated me, because all he did was say how long I hadn’t talked to him. It was just so—” She shook her head. “Yeah. But then what Evan actually said this morning… I hadn’t ever thought about it in that way. I… I was so torn up after… you know. And you were so torn up. I wanted to support you, and I didn’t want to think about it, either, so I didn’t. I got pretty good at not thinking about it. I did such a good job I never thought about how… about our timing. How that must have felt from his perspective. I don’t know. Am I making sense?”

“Yeah,” Megan said. “I get you. I hadn’t really thought about that myself, until he pointed it out this morning. I was so caught up in how I was feeling, first about… you know… and then feeling like they must hate me and how awful it would be if I tried to talk to them and they rejected me… I just… it was always about me? How I was feeling? And I didn’t even think how it must have affected… we’re terrible people, aren’t we?”

“Chris said we were terrible people,” Beth said. “We can be better. We can.”

“I hope so,” Megan said, feeling dubious. “I can hardly believe they’re willing to give us another shot. Especially Evan.”

“Evan’s so nice,” Beth said. “He could have been way harsher with me.”

“He is…” Megan agreed.

They both fell silent until it was time for them to part ways.