There were only ten days left until the next school year began. Micah couldn’t sit still.
His room and workstation were clean, his knives honed, flowers watered, his new clothes and uniform hung on coat hangers in his closet. His books had arrived and his haircut—
He ran a hand through the stubble at the back of his skull.
So satisfying.
He had checked everything off his list. Almost.
You still need to buy that novel for your Grammar course, to check the mail, and ask about your library card.
Grammar novel, mail, library card. Grammar novel, mail, library card.
He repeated the short list to himself like a mantra, but he was putting off his chores.
Anne, Ryan, and Lisa were supposed to be back by today.
He had helped Mason move into his new room a week back. Second years got new rooms. Grade skippers stayed where they were, which was fine. They had windows.
The new students had moved into their old rooms. The school grounds buzzed like a kicked ant hive. New teachers, staff, and over two hundred new students and their parents moved about.
Micah sat in the middle of it all on a wall in the courtyard and kept an eye out for his friends.
The hydrangeas smelled lovely behind him. A layer of wind warded off the bees. He wore a pale yellow ring on a cord around his neck that almost seemed to vibrate as he did, leaning left and right to peer through the crowds. His chain necklace swayed with the motion. It felt cool when it brushed against his skin.
Grammar novel, mail, library card. Grammar novel, mail— Is that!?
He shot up, but no, the guy wearing a muscle shirt wasn’t Ryan. Oh.
Stupid. He would have his luggage on him anyway. It couldn’t have been him.
Not that Ryan was the person he most looked forward to seeing again.
From where he sat, Micah could see the Guild wall, cafeteria, entrance building, and a slice of the pathway in between the gym and girls dorms. A large area to keep track of, but his eyes kept wandering to that slice. Until it paid off.
A glimpse of dark hair and sunflowers. Micah leaped off the fence. The pink ring on the cord around his neck slapped against his chin, and he raced through the crowd toward the girls’ dorm.
The traffic flowing from building to building slowed him down. He had to halt, slip through gaps, and jog wide arcs around slowpokes—parents, mostly.
In-between the passersby, he saw them. Shala was back, too! They looked like they were struggling with their luggage, but Micah could help with that.
Another group passed him, he waited and sped up. Anne had shorter hair now, and they were both taller and had tans. Had they gotten sunburnt out on the sea? He could have helped with that, too.
Next summer, he told himself.
The building cut them off from view. Micah turned the corner and froze.
They weren’t walking slow. They were strolling. And they weren’t carrying a piece of luggage between them. They were holding hands.
Before the entrance to the girls’ dorm, Shala hesitated, but Anne kept walking. Their arms stretched as far as they could go and he pulled her to a halt. She stumbled, turned, and tugged at his arm. Shala stepped up and kissed her on the cheek. They talked. Playing with each others’ fingers. Smiling.
Micah turned and walked the other way.
“We got the last delivery this morning,” the clerk said. “You would have to check in tomorrow.”
His key wouldn’t fit in the mailbox. Micah turned it upside-down, tried again, and started to go through the rest.
Saga leaned on the counter of the post office like she lived here, but at the woman’s response, her expression fell. She patted the wood and leaned away with a sigh. “Okay then. Thanks anyway!”
He tried his mail key for the third time, turning it right-side-up again. It fit this time. Somehow. Why?
Stupid piece of shit.
He wrenched the door open and found three pitiful pieces of paper inside. Two slips and a letter. The slips were advertisements, not notices that he had received a package. The letter … he flipped the envelope. It was from Ryan’s parents!
“See you tomorrow, then!”
“Yeah, tomorrow!” The bell over the door dinged as Saga left.
Micah tore into the envelope. He should have read them in chronological order, but he liked to start with the newest first and then jump back to the beginning. Just in case.
A page without a date lay on top, a single unformatted paragraph on it. He recognized David’s hasty scrawl, but the words didn’t make any sense.
Ryan had gotten into a fight. He wasn’t well— Did he mean like, physically well? It didn’t say. And David didn’t sound happy with him, with Micah.
I don’t know what is going on up there, but you promised me you would keep him safe. I want you to keep your promises, Micah.
I did!
He had! Ryan was safe. He’d run off on his own during the exam, yeah, but his parents knew about that. He had been there when Ryan had told them. In the kitchen?
Why would Ryan get into a bar fight? Why had he been alone?
Micah locked his mailbox and rushed outside, looking left and right, but Saga was gone. He could have asked if she had seen him.
Ryan wouldn’t be in his old room, but he didn’t know which path to the school he would take, or if his boat had been delayed.
Micah had to find him. He would keep his promises.
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Ryan had forgotten how loud Hadica could be. The loudest noises in his parents’ house had been the stove and his little sister. In the wilderness … The wilderness was loud but in a different way.
He could get used to the dawn chorus of wild birds, the never-ending flow of the river, the high-pitched buzz of mosquitoes, and chirping crickets.
He had enjoyed the sounds of a hundred scouts bringing the camp to life around him, getting up to no good, and singing songs at the bonfire.
He could endure only so many stupid questions, awkward farewells, and words of encouragement from the teens and parents in the cramped dorm halls around him before he needed a break.
He’d dropped his luggage off in his new room, checked where the rest of his belongings were—storage—changed into something lighter, and ducked back out.
He felt enervated after the boat ride. He needed a run.
The Tower loomed overhead as he tied his shoes in the grass. Infinite argent rock rising into a clear blue sky. He drank in the breeze and remembered a sea of trees below him. He dreamt of flying.
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Best I can do for now. He ran. His roaming feet let him roam from idle thought to idle thought.
The first loot tent in the distance brought with it the smells and sounds of the climbing crowd like a cloud of music. It brought him back to the moment.
He noticed when Saga overtook him.
Her blond hair was tied back into a ponytail. She wore a thin grey hoodie, shorts, and a holster with a bottle and a knife. Her eyes looked just as absent as his.
Ryan sped up to jog past her again. It took her a second to notice him, and then another to notice what he was doing.
She didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, the gap between them stretched until she disappeared from the corner of his eye.
He frowned, unsure how to feel about that, but just before his thoughts moved on to other things, she tried to overtake him again.
Ryan rushed to meet her pace. She sped up, he sped up. They ran side by side.
Not for the first time. He could have enjoyed her silent company, but they hadn’t seen each other in months.
He slowed down as if he was running out of steam already, and Saga furrowed her brows.
Then he focused on the mana in his legs, an incomplete spell, and his Skill. As he had before during the sports festival, he pushed and pulled in a long stride.
He shot forward without breaking a sweat. When there was enough of a distance between them, he spun to run backward so he could give Saga a cocky smile.
She looked unimpressed. But she was catching up while he faced her, so he spun back around and sprinted to reclaim his lead.
She overtook him anyway.
All he saw was a tall blond ponytail. He almost thought it was someone else. Saga had conjured thick blue soles beneath her shoes that looked like resin and contracted and expanded with her every step, launching her forward.
Some type of condensed slime?
Ryan cursed and threw his arms into a sprint, but it wouldn’t be enough and he wasn’t that desperate to win.
Instead, when she spun to run backward for a few steps with a mimicry of his own cocky smile, he leaned his head back and gave her a defeated look.
Really?, it said.
Saga laughed.
“You cheated!”
“Did I?” Saga pressed a hand into her waist and smiled.
They both had to catch their breath. They had run three total laps. Ryan had steadily increased his tempo, but after Saga had taken the lead, she had never become more than a figure in the distance until the final stretch.
“You used magic, too,” she told him. “You should have learned a better spell by now.”
Ryan wanted to offer a rebuttal, but all he could do was nod and swallow. A summer of rock climbing, canoe rides, and learning survival crafting between weeks of lazing around at home had been about the bare minimum to keep him in shape.
Saga eyed him. “Need a drink?”
“Please.”
She tossed him her bottle, and he knocked it back, limiting himself to a small swig to be polite. He didn’t own one of those neat holsters. Their school was right there, he could get a drink in the locker room if he had to.
Before he could even thank her, Saga said, “Give me my water bottle back.”
He tossed it to her and wiped his mouth.
“And don’t,” she added.
“Don’t?”
“You know what I mean.”
Ryan hesitated. On a whim, he went along with the misunderstanding and gave her a sheepish smile. “That obvious?”
She looked away. “I’m not planning on sticking around here, Payne. I’m doing my two years and going back to my real life, my real friends. Back in Lighthouse.”
Her eyes stared into the distance and he knew she was following that same sense as the rest of them to find her way home.
Ryan nodded and made himself shrug as if to say, Had to give it a shot.
He tried to think of something to say. He could have asked about her dad, maybe, or mentioned the railroad, but they only ever talked about books, working out, and the Towers in passing. Saying anything else would have made it seem like he was still trying to flirt with her.
Instead, they gave each a nod and a smile, and Ryan gave her a head start. He glanced up at the sky and turned north, searching for something of his own.
When he stepped back into the shade of the school entrance, Micah called his name.
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“Ryan! You’re back!” Finally, Micah had found him. Some of his classmates had confirmed that they had spotted him around school. He knew coming back here for a second sweep had been the right decision. Ryan loved jogging.
He caught the sheen of sweat on his skin before he stepped into the shaded hallway, and he searched his features, his gait, his posture for any signs of harm.
He looked fine. He wasn’t limping or moving gingerly in any way. If he was sweating, he must have run for a while …?
“Yeah, sorry. Just got back. My legs were asleep from the boat ride.”
One less thing to worry about. David’s letter still haunted him. If Ryan was physically well, that could only mean—
Micah blinked and slipped a new, incomplete lens over his eyes. He still saw nature essences, but the world distorted another layer around people like water stains on paper.
A texture like worn stone covered Ryan then, as well as inverted scales of sweat that pooled shadows within them.
Another shadow hovered right behind him as if a spotlight were shining down on him while he was up against an invisible wall. Those shadows squiggled.
Finally, he wore a pulsing crown like the heat at the end of a road.
The wear of the stone and the scales were exhaustion, but the stone itself? People sometimes looked like paintings or statues when they felt bored or something similar.
The writhing shadow was awkwardness. The gloom that hung over all of the emotion essences though … unhappiness.
The crown was frustration.
A moment ago, Micah could have looked at him and guessed he wasn’t feeling any particular emotion at all, that he was just going about his day. His facade was neutral. Now, he saw the cracks. And those were still only the surface of his emotions.
“I have to get my stuff from storage,“ Ryan was saying in a casual tone.
Micah interrupted him, “What’s wrong?”
“Huh?”
He unfolded the letter from his pocket. “Your dad wrote to me. He said you got into a bar fight? He sounded upset.”
The emotion essences flickered and warped. For a moment, they darkened. Then his crown melted over Ryan, driving out the shadows, and distorting him like a bad window.
“That?” His hand fidgeted. He walked past Micah in an exhausted stride. “That was nothing. My parents already talked to me about that.”
Micah eyed the frustration radiating off his frame. Through the distortion, he still caught glimpses of something darker beneath.
“It doesn’t seem like nothing …? Why did you get into a bar fight?”
Ryan shrugged. “Some drunk asshole hassled me. So I broke his nose.”
Micah stared and rushed after him. “That’s not nothing! If you’re that angry—“
“I’m not angry,” he insisted as his anger essence began to boil.
“But your dad wrote—“
“Do you know how many bar fights my parents have gotten into?” he scoffed. “Seriously, Micah, can you drop this?”
He could see how far he was pushing him, but he had to make sure that Ryan would be okay, that he knew Micah was here for him. He eased up and spoke gently, “If there is something wrong, or if you need to talk—”
His anger essence reached a boiling peak—then dropped and flowed inward as if a plug had been pulled inside of him.
Ryan whirled on him and shouted as if trying to get the boiling liquid off. “There is nothing wrong with me, okay!? I’m normal just like everybody else!”
He glared at him. His eyes flickered down to the letter Micah still held, and Ryan tore it out of his hands. The paper fluttered and he merely glanced at the words before he began to tear them to shreds.
“You know, ever since I saved you from the Tower, Micah, you’ve been following me around like some sad lost puppy, and it’s honestly become fucking annoying.”
A pile of paper formed in his hands. Ryan tossed them like confetti and they went up in flames.
Micah flinched back from the sudden fire, but that wasn’t the worst of it, nor the words that he said—it was his anger.
As the flames died down, so did it. No hint of boiling essences. No hint of distortion. Ryan looked like a painting that had stepped out of its frame, superimposed onto the world and his perspective.
And like a painting, he looked as if he had no agency of his own. Not bored. Resigned. Like this had been a long time coming, or like Micah had been the cause of his anger all along, and he had never seen the signs.
He felt blind.
“Isn’t Anne supposed to be your girlfriend or something by now? Congrats on finally asking her out after leering at her all year. Turns out you do have a spine.” His voice turned cold. “Now you can stop humping my leg, go annoy her, and leave me the fuck alone.”
He had to say something. Ryan was leaving. So before he was gone for good, Micah screamed after him, “Low blow, Ryan. Low fucking blow!”
He sat in the grass. He watched the baking clouds. He tried to run a lap around the Tower and gave up. His mismatched legs hurt. He stared at the portal and left.
If he got his equipment, he could be beating up earth spirits in twenty minutes. They deserved it.
But as he walked back to his room, he saw them. Shala was also a grade skipper. They lived in the same building.
He was in the hallway with some other guys. Gian, Yasin, two new students Micah didn’t recognize. They were headed somewhere. All of them. Almost.
His left hand clamped down on Shala’s shoulder as he pulled him out of the group and spun him around. Right into his right hook.
The sound his fist made as it crunched into his cheek sounded more like a slap than a punch, but Shala went down. And Micah exhaled in relief.
So satisfying.