Argenia

The Big Day

“Ugh, that lesson was suck-ish,” Emily groans.

“It wasn’t that bad,” laughs Hannah, “I found it quite interesting.”

I roll my eyes as Emily dramatically flings herself against her locker.

“I feel like I’ve wasted half my life!” she cries, falling to the floor. “What about you, Cass?”

I think for a moment, causing my friends to start laughing. “What?” I ask. “I haven’t even starting speaking.”

“Exactly!” they both cry.

“You think about everything way too much,” Hannah adds.

“Well, sorry,” I laugh. “Anyways, I thought the lesson was a bit same-old, I mean we’ve heard the story about the Bloods heaps, but it was still interesting about the girl Mrs Anderson said disappeared.”

“What? Do you think you’re gonna be a pure blood?” Emily asked. “You remember I wanted to be a pure GoldBlood, and that didn’t turn out happening.”

She sighed. Emily has a flare for the dramatic, and had always dreamed of being the most powerful blood, a pure GoldBlood. She was sad when she turned out to be half BronzeBlood as well.

“Anyways, I can’t wait until this afternoon!”

“Oh my Blood, me too! I can’t wait to prepare you!” Hannah exclaimed. It’s my 16th tomorrow, and they are pretty excited to see what I’ll become.

“Let’s go eat, okay?” I say, and we head down to the cafeteria.

“Okay, so it is going to be pretty painful, as you know from Blood Ed.”

Emily sits on my bed, her long blonde hair flowing freely from its previous confines of her traditional hair tie. “I mean, when I went through the change, I was pulsing light like a disco.”

She laughs, then goes back to serious. “But it really hurt, so you need to remember that and brace yourself.”

I think about that for a minute. “Alright, so how long did it take to stabilise?”

She tries to remember. Her birthday was in January, so her change was quite a while ago. “It took a few hours for me, but some peoples changes take up to 3 days. You never know.”

My mom calls from downstairs. “Honey, dinner’s ready!”

“I better be heading home,” Emily says. “Enjoy dinner and call me after your change!”

She hugs me and heads downstairs with me. “See you another day, Mrs G!” She heads out the door and I go into the kitchen.

“Hey Mom,” I say as she puts the plates down. “Wow, you made chicken?”

She looks up and smiles. “Of course, I wanted to make your favourite meal as a special treat for your birthday!”

She gestures for me to sit down, and I do so. As we eat, she gushes about how excited she is that I am going to go through the change, and she wonders if I’ll be a Argenia and Crysos, like her, or a Argenia and Aeris, like my father, bless his soul.

I hungrily eat the chicken, cooked perfectly as always. My mom hugs me and says she’ll look after me if my change gets too painful or lasts a long time. “Mine only lasted 3 hours, so I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she reassures me.

As I prepare for bed, I wonder what my power will be. Will it be light, like Ashleigh? Invisibility, like Mrs Anderson? Raised intelligence, like Mom? Or maybe something else entirely. I slip under the covers and turn off my lamp. “Good luck,” I whisper to myself.