I was really beginning to hate wizards.

It wasn’t the culture. There wasn’t really much of a culture difference to speak of, aside from a consistent impression of wealth and soft upbringings. Avalon and the rest of the Rainbow Nations were supposedly very well off, with the average means of their lower class easily exceeding our Mundane middle class. 

They weren’t particularly out of place either, not like how they were typically depicted in fiction. I hadn’t seen a single broomstick or pointy hat in the two years since Emergence Day. The revelation of magic in our world was hardly disappointing, but it still felt like a sort of betrayal that they were somehow more advanced than us technologically. Hell, most of the exchange students had phones.

No, my problem with wizards wasn’t their culture, or where they came from, or what they looked like. My grudge was sourced, plain and simple, in how they acted. There was an entitlement to nearly everything the exchange students did. I saw it in the way they looked down their noses at the normal students of Haden High, in the brief, incredulous hesitation before accepting an introductory handshake. I saw it in the way Augustus Karalis made the varsity basketball team after the old forward had to take a medical leave for “self-inflicted” burns.

And I saw it in the way his sister Julia cornered me after school, flanked on both sides by her legion of bandwagon cronies. I had no doubt that she was waiting for me in particular. Most seniors were either running out the door as soon as the bell rang or were headed to extracurriculars by this time; it was likely I was the only student within earshot of the senior lockers.

“Emily Browman,” Julia said, with what she undoubtedly thought was a sweet smile. Something about hearing my name on her lips saw my hands curl into fists, unbidden.

She was staring me down, and it took every ounce of will I had to not meet her gaze. I hated giving her that little victory, petty as it was, but there were too many unknowns when magic was involved. Instead, I fixed my eyes at a point beyond her, towards the freedom thwarted by her impromptu blockade. As if she could track my line of sight, she flicked a length of her long, brown hair over her shoulder, the movement briefly eclipsing my stoic ignoring.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice even. Even if one wrote off Julia’s meteoric rise in popularity as a simple result of her status as a wizard, there had been too many other incidents for me to be willing to let my guard down.

Julia’s eyes narrowed, though her smile didn’t waver. “Interestingly worded. What can you do for me?” She held up one immaculately manicured hand, counting things off on her fingers. “Near top of the class academically, brief stints on a variety of varsity and junior varsity athletics, a record without even a hint of disciplinary actions-”

“And how do you know what’s on my record?” I asked archly.

She gave me a thoroughly unimpressed look, and I felt heat rise in my cheeks. To her left and right, where her flock spanned the full width of the hallway, a chorus of giggling started.

I wondered if the wizard girl realized how bizarre the scene was, from a modern standpoint. Situations like these were common in fiction, in children’s shows and teen dramas, but bullying wasn’t nearly so ostentatious in the real world. Besides, what were they really going to do? The presence of the crowd of giggling suckups didn’t add any danger to the situation beyond what Julia represented on her own.

“Your father runs the free clinic here in town, I heard,” Julia went on. “A lot of people think very highly of him. And yet, even more than a philanthropic doctor, the name I keep hearing is Rose. Rose Browman, decorated detective in the HPD, beloved member of the community-”

“Don’t you dare,” I hissed. I was no longer even the slightest bit curious as to what her game was. “Don’t you dare cross that line.”

Some of the students in Julia’s group looked taken aback by the acid in my tone, but if Julia was surprised, she didn’t show it. The shitty smirk on her face never flickered, the malevolent gleam in her eye never dimmed.

She knew what she was doing.

“What happened to your mother, Emily?”

I took a deep breath, though I couldn’t keep a tremor out of the exhale.

“You know what happened to her,” I said quietly, sliding my backpack off my shoulders and letting it fall to the ground. “Last warning.”

This wasn’t something I was willing to just stand and take, magic or no magic. It at least helped explain some of the strange incidents that marked Julia’s path through Haden High. Four suspensions, two expulsions, and an arrest, each occurring with Julia as the supposed “victim”. Anti-wizard sentiment was nowhere near as widespread in Haden’s youth as it was in its adult population. It was absurd to think that, of the cultural exchange’s four visiting wizards, every instance of hostility would just happen to be directed toward the group’s only girl, and an almost unnaturally beautiful girl at that.

If she was using something, her connections or her magic or both, to gain access to students’ private records, and then antagonizing them with sensitive information she’d managed to glean...Well, that didn’t paint a pretty picture as to what was about to happen.

Not that it would change my response in the slightest.

Julia looked me up and down, as if weighing her next words carefully. When she held her silence for a long enough period, I took that as a sign that the bullshit had run its course. The gathered onlookers seemed to collectively flinch away as I picked up my backpack with one violent swipe and shouldered it with a wide swing. 

Julia spoke as I strode past her, quietly enough I wasn’t certain any of the others could hear. 

“What’s your issue, Browman?” she asked, and I could see no malice in her expression, only lazy, idle curiosity.

“My issue?”

“You weren’t one of the top dogs when I showed up,” she went on. I raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged one shoulder. “No offense, I guess. You probably could be, if you wanted. You’re just not interested in playing the game. I can respect that.”

This wasn’t what I expected.

“I didn’t take anything from you. I’ve left your little group alone. So why’re you trying to mess with mine? Why do I hear you’ve gone to the principal to complain about me?”

I frowned. Those visits were supposed to be confidential, and I’d made sure that none of Julia’s little clique had been around when I’d gone to speak to Principal Arden.

“In my experience,” she went on, sweeping an errant lock of hair behind her ear, “the ones who try the hardest to do right, especially unbidden, are the ones who’ve already done the most wrong. What have you done, Emily Browman? What are you trying to make amends for?”

There was something sinister in the cadence of her words. As much as I hated to admit it, she didn’t talk like an ignorant bully. The tone of her words drew me in, like she’d ensnared me with her skill as an orator alone.

She leaned in, suddenly, her lips close to my ear as she practically breathed the words:

“Tell me.”

What was there to say? Rhetorical skill aside, it wasn’t like some impromptu interrogation, some social ambush would see me opening up to the member of the wizard exchange program I liked the least. She pulled away, watching me expectantly.

“My mother died because of me. I killed her.”

The girls around me froze, and a flicker of shock passed over Julia’s face. I was silent for a moment before realizing with creeping horror that the words had come from my own mouth. My jaw dropped, opening and closing without making sound as I stood transfixed by Julia’s large blue eyes.

Helpless tears started to my eyes as I realized what had just happened, what Julia had just done. The force behind her words, the strange draw that occurred in the moment of their utterance...It hadn’t been persuasion.

It was magic. 

My fellow students weren’t giggling anymore, and more than a few of them looked distinctly uncomfortable. Julia, on the other hand, had a sneer curling her pretty face, the civil mask finally peeling away to reveal the sadistic cruelty beneath.

I could barely process it, though. I was still reeling from the forced revelation. My face grew hot, the tears flowing down my cheeks stinging cold in sharp contrast as they caught the air. I felt disconnected from the situation, far from the hallway in front of the chemistry classroom. Somewhere distant, somewhere darker, the heat and cold on my face calling up memories that I had long since locked away.

Hot blood, cold flesh.

Julia stepped close again, her arms encircling me and drawing me into a hug as she spoke in my ear once more. “Let it go, Emily,” she said, her voice a sibilant whisper. “You can become one of mine. You don’t have to feel guilty or responsible anymore. Come with me, Emily.”

I felt the last four words resonate in my mind, felt them echo inside me as if I was empty and they were the only things capable of filling that void. I wanted to believe. I wanted to-

I let out a wordless shriek as I shoved Julia away from me, feeling the odd compulsion drop away as she stumbled backwards. She replaced the surprised expression on her face almost immediately, recovering her balance with ease as she watched me with cold eyes and a twisted smile.

“God, I didn’t know she was so unstable,” she said, her voice affecting an airy, concerned quality. “Someone should do something about this, I don’t think it’s safe for us to be around her.”

I grit my teeth and started for her, but stopped short as two of the closest girls stepped in my way.

“Leave her alone, you lunatic,” said one of them. The other remained silent, but both their expressions were simultaneously resolute and frightened.

My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t stop the tears. They were leaking from some dark corner of my mind, bottled up for too long to cease their overdue flow.

Without any other recourse, I turned and ran past the crowd, down the hallway, and off the school grounds.

**************************

I didn’t stop running until my lungs were screaming for me to stop. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, blocking out my shame from the tears that had long since dried from my face, my anxiety over the potential consequences for however Julia was going to spin the altercation, and my guilt over memories I wouldn’t- couldn’t- face. I pushed it all down and away, soaking in the physical sensation of pushing my body to its limit.

When my heartrate had relaxed to a normal level, I finally took stock of my surroundings. I was downtown, just down the street from Egelhart’s Supply, where Jay and I did summer work for his dad. Julia was lucky that my best friend hadn’t been there to see her pull what she had. Or I’d been unlucky. It felt more like the latter, in hindsight.

Just a few blocks further east, past the few mom-and-pop shops that still managed to stay in business after the industrial boom, would see me at the beginning of the forest on the edge of town. A bitter smile twisted my face.

When in doubt, let your feet choose the path. That’ll rarely lead you wrong.

The words floated into my mind, from the same dark corner I’d just pushed all my negative thoughts. They were right, but I didn’t engage with them, instead just letting them float away as I continued forward. I hadn’t been thinking about where I was going, my flight from the school had been so panic-driven, but my feet knew the way. They knew where to take me to find solace.

I paced onward, crossing my arms tight to my chest in an attempt to ward away the chill. My hoodie was still hung up in my locker, and I was regretting my hasty departure more with each step. I jogged across the street where the sidewalk on my side was still cordoned off, in front of the alleyway of Ingram's Bakery. The newspaper had announced it a gas explosion, but the nearly eight foot deep, jagged crevice in the alley’s stone brick remained blocked off, and I hadn’t yet seen anyone attempting to repair the damage.

I kept my pace when I reached the other side of the street, finding it hard to justify going back to walking when the chill was beginning to set me shivering. As per usual, a good jog was a surefire panacea for getting my head back in the right place. When not desperately sprinting full-tilt, I could usually keep a good clip for upwards of two miles before I began to feel winded, so the short jog to the well-worn dirt trail at the city’s edge was far more therapeutic than it was challenging. I stopped at the head of the trail, breathing slowly through my nose. A short distance into the forest, just out of sight from the road but etched into my memory, there was a fork in the trail.

It was where we all usually met after school, on the days when my friends weren’t busy with the student council, when my younger brother wasn’t too distracted by being a normal pubescent boy. Normally, we’d march up to the fork in the road, heading left while any present youngsters took the right hand path. Briefly separated, taking different paths to the same destination.

I walked forward to the fork, staring off into the forest where the left path led to our obstacle course. Jay’s father had regular access to construction equipment, and usually saved the lumber that ended up being too warped or cracked to be sold. The summer of our freshman year saw Jay and I out here in this forest, working with his father to dig the ground away, anchoring logs and beams in the earth and attaching hand-holds, nets, ropes, and ziplines. It was a point of pride, how it all turned out. We trained our agility, balance, and our arm and upper-body strength just about every day, always taking different routes, searching for new paths to progress.

That was what we were all about. Improving for the sake of it. Bettering ourselves for no other reason than the desire to leave a weaker version of ourselves in the past.

I took the right hand path all the same. It didn’t feel right to run the course alone. Even ignoring the potential dangers involved with getting myself hurt, out of sight and earshot of the nearest person who might help, I felt like it violated the spirit of our group, to be out here running the course without my friends.

The path I was on was significantly easier to traverse. Another strange twinge of the mind, walking the path this way. Normally, I’d only walk this path in the opposite direction, heading home in the evenings. It had been a day of oddities, but I was arriving at a place of comfort and familiarity, hopefully enough to beat back the misery of the day. A journey that would take the better part of an hour on the left path took barely fifteen minutes on the right side. Still, I was seriously considering pulling my arms into the body of my shirt when the stained cedar wood of the clubhouse appeared from between the trees.

The old barn had been near collapse when Jay found it. It had taken some convincing to get both of our fathers to pitch in to buy the acre or so that the barn stood on, but mine was probably just happy to see me taking an interest in something again. It had been pretty close to when-

A powerful shudder ran through me. I shook my head vigorously, an angry huff of breath fogging the air in front of me. The run-in with Julia had called things to the surface that had been conveniently buried for a while, and I was getting the feeling that it would take another couple of days before I’d get my equilibrium back.

Fucking wizards.

I took the time to appreciate the change our hard work and summer job money had managed to render in the state of the barn. The sun-faded wood had been stained a dark chocolate brown in the places where it was still serviceable, and cut out and replaced with new cedar panels where it wasn’t. Support beams on the inside had been mostly rotten, but Jay’s father had helped with getting the roof and the loft area back to code. Over the years, we’d all worked together to use the existing stalls as a framework for separate rooms, and with the space offered by the loft included, we had five rooms, one for each member of our little club, except for Tyler and my shared room. A gas generator in a small shack outside gave us enough power to run lights, a few mini-fridges, a projector and a T.V. We frequented thrift shops and kept an eye out for curbside donations, and before long we had the entire central area piled high with couches, chairs, futons, and an avalanche of cushions. Above the sliding barn door that we’d sealed shut after our renovations hung a home-made, hand-painted sign that read, “The Tryhard Club”.

A home away from home.

I could see the lights on in the loft floor, and made a mental note to talk to Tyler about it. My brother had a sort of perpetual hurry about him, and wasn’t the most mindful when it came to what he called, “the little things”. He didn’t have to buy the gas for the generator, though.

I always found it almost magical, the way the worries and grievances and stresses of the outside world fell away when I closed the door behind me. With the way the world was steadily going totally insane in the wake of E-Day, I still hung on to that quieting effect, that slight dramatization of the Mundane. This was our magic. Not even wizards could break the spell that the Tryhard Club had woven over their sanctuary.

I heard a rattling sound from the loft, and a smile quirked my lips. A raccoon or two might do something to damage the effect. We’d had troubles with pests once or twice, though it had been nearly six months since the last invasion. I jogged over to the ladder, not wanting to give the critters any more time to tear apart pillows or chew through cords than they’d already had.

An errant sound rang out again as I climbed, like the crinkling of some plastic food packaging, and I cursed inwardly. It was coming from the room I shared with Tyler, one of two rooms in the barn with a mini-fridge, and the only space that held non-perishable foods. I thought I’d done a reasonable job sealing all the most fragrant of the junk food, but I’d apparently underestimated the noses of my woodland adversaries. 

As I clambered up onto the three-foot-wide walkway that ran in front of my room and towards the small storage area we’d tucked away out of sight on the loft, I quieted my approach, hoping to get a glimpse of our furry invaders before they scuttled out of whatever hole they’d entered through. I needed to see how they were getting in, or I’d have no hope of keeping them out.

I slid the wooden door to my room open, the heavy wooden panel moving silently on well-maintained rollers. The first thing that caught my eye was the extent of the mess. What had to have been nearly every cookie container, every bag of candy, every package of deli meat we’d had hidden away for after-school snacking was scattered around the floor, on the desk where I kept my training plans, on or under the futon that Tyler and I occasionally shared when we slept over after a long training session or particularly late-running party. It would have been impressive for a raccoon to have so successfully rooted out every available speck of food, but I was beginning to realize that I didn’t have a scavenging animal on my hands.

First off, every bit of snackage, though haphazardly spread across the room, was opened normally. No bags of chips torn apart, no tray of cookies spilled out onto the floor. Some of the food had even been resealed. Secondly, there was an opened can of soda on the floor near my desk chair. That would be truly difficult, even for a well-trained raccoon. Last of all, I could make out a foot-shaped imprint in the goose down blanket that had been left piled up on the futon, near the wardrobe we used for backup changes of clothing. If I listened closely, I could just barely make out the continued rustling of someone trying to find room to stay still and quiet.

My heartbeat quickening, I slid the door shut, locked it from the inside, and positioned myself squarely in front of the oaken wardrobe.

“Go ahead and come out,” I said, trying to get my voice to reflect a level of confidence I wasn’t sure I had. I normally wouldn’t want to face off with someone who’d cross the line to burglary, but I was a bit closer to the edge myself, considering the events of the day.

To my surprise, the answer was almost immediate, rather timid, and distinctly female. Young-sounding, too.

“O-okay. I’m coming out now, I don’t want any trouble.”

Odd stance for a trespasser and a thief. I had my arms crossed as the door to the wardrobe creaked open, revealing an exceptionally filthy girl around my brother’s age. Her face was bright red and her eyes attempted to look anywhere but mine. She seemed to give up after a moment, considering that most of the other places in the room that her gaze could settle displayed evidence of her transgression, but I still waited to speak until she’d given me her attention.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice hard. She wore a skirt that ended just above her knees, with full-length leggings beneath, a long-sleeved blouse, and a scarf that had been pulled away from her mouth, assumedly so she could shovel down snacks. Most of it was, or had been, brightly colored, the exact coloration obscured by mud and grime.

“Cheri,” came the response. She did seem oddly meek, all things considered.

“What are you doing here, Cheri?”

Cheri pulled her scarf back up to her mouth, muffling her words slightly, and her eyes fell back to the floor as she answered. “Ran away from home.”

I sighed, shaking my head. That made this sort of complicated, but it at least took the dangerous edge off of what was going on. Just a kid in over her head, underestimating the chill of autumn in her focus on rebellion. I cast my eyes about the room, taking a quick inventory of the pilfered snacks.

“Well, you’ve gone through about a hundred and fifty dollars of snacks, by yourself. You must have been hungry.”

“I hadn’t eaten in three days,” the girl admitted sheepishly, still muttering from behind the scarf. “Is that a lot of money?”

I frowned. “Well, obviously, it’s a lot. Do you not-”

I trailed off as I caught a glimpse of the girl’s hair, concealed slightly by the darkness in the wardrobe. If my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, it was a rainbow. And not just striped, either. Every strand of hair was a different color, and it shimmered like an aurora as Cheri cocked her head to one side, confused by why I’d stopped speaking.

I felt an illogical kind of anger building up in my gut. Anger at the world, anger at Julia, anger at myself and my weakness. This wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things, but it was far too much in the wake of the day I’d had.

“You’re a wizard,” I said quietly. I wasn’t asking, either. It made a lot of sense. She apparently didn’t know how our money worked, she made it inside the clubhouse when all the doors were locked, and she’d somehow known I was coming despite the quiet of my approach. And if any of it left me with some small doubt, that hair sealed the deal. No one could possibly dye their hair in that fashion, one strand at a time. If it wasn’t some sort of magic dying process, it was probably some wizard genetic trait.

I’d had enough of this. They went wherever they wanted. They took whatever they wanted. They devoured our attention, our adoration, our time, our food. They had more power than a normal human could muster in half their lifetime, and they had been raised under the assumption that it was fine to use it on us. To control and subjugate us. We were just tools to them, just resources.

The girl’s large, violet eyes widened as I took a step closer. “You’re...angry,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry, I’ll replace what I took, if you give me-”

I lunged, and she leapt. I’d been expecting her to try to dart out to either side, to use her small size and possible advantage in speed to slip past me on her way out of the wardrobe. Call me naive, but I hadn’t expected her to jump over me.

Cheri sailed through the air, moving smoothly and slowly. It was apparent, just watching the gentle arc she traced, that she was using magic to fly. She landed on the ground by the door, turning to look back at me with a rueful expression. Her eyes, violet a moment before, shone a vivid emerald green as she offered me a sad smile.

I was really beginning to hate wizards.