The new girl was all the buzz throughout the day. By the time lunch arrived, it seemed like everyone was talking about Fionna. I couldn’t blame people for being curious about her. She was beautiful, but not in an obvious way. She was interesting looking, that was for certain. I knew very little about her and didn’t have her in any of my classes between art and lunch. Still, when we all sat down to eat, everyone seemed to be looking around to see who she would sit with.
Fionna was offered a seat next to Starla at the table she’d been sitting at for most of the school year, with her two best friends and a few guys who played on the basketball team. Fionna looked a little out of place there, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. I tried not to stare at her. After all, it had made me super uncomfortable when I’d looked up in art class and saw her glassy eyes focused
The first day back to school after a long break is usually excruciating, but this Monday seemed to stretch on for weeks. By the time I got to drama class, the last period of the day, I felt like I’d already been in school long enough to have reached graduation.Fionna was not in any of my other classes, and when the bell rang for seventh period, and she hadn’t joined us, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I was so glad that she wouldn’t be in any of my classes other than art. The thought that she might have to change her schedule, like Ben had had to, came to mind, but I had to force it away for my own sanity’s sake. I could make it through one class a day with her, especially since she sat behind me, but any more than that, I might not be able to handle.Brice sat next to me, as usual. Starla was across the room. While Ms. Piper gave
Ms. Piper got up from her desk and rushed to the classroom door to look out. The entire school was black, as far as we could tell, like the electricity had all gone out. There was a row of windows in the classroom, but it was a dark wintry day, so not a lot of sunlight was filtering in. Without the buzz of the overhead lights and the computers we normally heard, it was a little eerie. I looked from Ms. Piper to Brice and then back again. He shrugged, but I could tell he wasn’t alarmed. The teacher, on the other hand, looked as if she didn’t know what to do, but she seemed to think that something was wrong.She stood there for almost a minute, which seemed to take a long time under the circumstances, before her cell phone rang. Ms. Piper pulled it out of her pocket and answered it, tentatively. “Hello?”Of course, all we could hear was he
I pushed the door to Ms. Grover’s classroom open slowly. An eerie blue glow was emanating around the barrier, like something out of a sci-fi movie. The energy was odd, even in the hallway right outside of the door, like something from a horror movie.Once the door was open, I could see what the problem was--sort of. It almost rubbed my eyes, it was so surreal. Everything I was looking at seemed like it couldn’t possibly be real.The room was full of electrical blue charges, fizzling and sizzling around in the air. In the middle of the room, Fionna Flamingo sat at a desk, her hair standing on end, like she’d touched one of those Tesla balls at the science museum. Around her, fifteen or so kids were floating in the air, many of them upside down, all of them with shocked expressions frozen on their faces. They drifted around her, floating u
I joined my pack in the hallway as other students began to cautiously come out of the other rooms into the hallway. Even with the lights on, it was obvious many of them were still scared. I could understand why they would be, the humans anyway. I remembered back in California when we used to do lock down drills for possible intruders in our school. We hadn’t had any of those here in Montana. I figured that was because there were enough mages and shifters present that a person would have to be out of their mind to try and infiltrate a school like this one. But it was scary, back then, when I thought I was human, and we had to cower in the corner of the classroom with the door locked and covered as administrators or sometimes the police walked around and tried to get in, just to see if it were possible. They would pretend to be shooters, trying to get in and kill all of us, and there have been enough situations like that recently that it seemed li
Mr. Short led us into his office. I could tell he was nervous. His hands were shaking a little, and tiny beads of sweat popped up on his forehead near his hairline. I took a seat across from him, and Ben sat down beside me. It took the principal a few moments to compose himself once he settled behind his desk. He folded his hands in front of him and took a few deep breaths.When he finally started talking, his voice was soft, and he took his time, like he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to say. His thoughts seemed rambling and disconnected at first, like he wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this but needed to get it out of his system or something.“I am not a magical person. I don’t have any magic. I don’t know how to do magic. Until I moved to Whispering Hollow, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as magic.
Ben did his best to keep me calm all the way home, trying to tell me that everything was going to be fine the next day and that Francis and Fionna Flamingo probably wouldn’t do anything too outrageous during their meeting with Mr. Short, the principal, but I wasn’t convinced. If my boyfriend was going to take that route, the soothing, “let’s not freak out about anything until we know for sure” route, he should’ve deployed that tactic from the get-go, not attempted to put it into place after he’d already said enough to get me to lose my shit.When we pulled into the driveway, I felt calmer, though. I had been doing some deep breathing exercises on the way home, and I felt like I was going to be able to handle whatever happened the next day. It helped to be at Grandma’s familiar house and to be able to feel the forest calling to me. I intended to go sit in the
When I opened my eyes again, it was growing dark outside. I knew that didn’t necessarily mean it was the middle of the night and I’d completely lost track of time since it tended to get dark so early these days, but my stomach was rumbling, and I needed to get back home not only to scrounch something up to eat but also because I was worried about Sam. The argument that had been going on between Sam and Starla when I left the house a couple of hours ago was fresh in my mind, despite the mediation I’d done and the fact that I’d spent most of my time thinking about how I could get Fionna on my side, rather than what to do about the warring non-newlyweds occupying one of my upstairs bedrooms.The kitchen was abandoned when I walked in, which was surprising to me. Normally, you can always find at least one shifter in the kitchen at any given time. I stayed quiet for a moment to try and d
I had just finished eating my dinner when I heard Sam’s heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. I braced myself for more of the ridiculousness I’d just gone through, but when I tossed the plastic container in the bin and turned to look at him, I could tell he was upset, not angry.“Sam?” I took a few steps closer to him. He slouched against the door jamb, half in the kitchen, half in the hallway. “What’s the matter?”“I don’t know.” I’ve never seen him so despondent. “I don’t know what to do, Harlow.”I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic to his situation, even though the last thing I wanted was to talk to him about Starla. “I’m sorry, Sam.” I meant it. I hated seeing him like this. When Sam is happy, his laugh