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chapter three hey stephen
Sabrina feels like her brain is rattling in her skull as Green Day's Brain Stew reverberates around her cramped bedroom (along with the Mystic Arts, Kamar-Taj also practices the art of minimalism). Her head hangs off of the end of her bed, hair brushing the floor while her feet lay crossed and propped on top of her pillows. Wong does not follow her after her outburst in the library. He understands when he is wanted and when he is not. Her bedroom is the one place that she gets to herself in a place like Kamar-Taj. It's the one thing that is truly hers. She knows everything about it—how many steps it takes to get from her bed to her door, which floorboards she should avoid stepping on when she wanders in the night, the concise order of the few books that line the shelf above her bed, she knows where the best place to hide is, she knows how to close the closet doors just right.
The transition from Brain Stew to Hey Stephen is almost jarring, but Sabrina doesn't mind.
Taylor Swift stares down at her from where the poster hides behind the leaves of the small potted tree that she's taken the liberty of growing for the past three years. Taylor Swift has always provided her a sense of comfort that nobody else could. Taylor Swift always knew how Sabrina was feeling. (But even Taylor Swift can't be there for Sabrina forever—she's taken a hiatus and Sabrina doesn't know when she'll be back). They clutch their stuffed pig to their chest, the fur is matted and stained from the years that she had towed it behind her at Kamar-Taj. She holds it because it is hers and it will always be hers and nobody else's. Sabrina can't wait until they can get a place of their own—a place that they can call their own and nobody else's where everything in it will belong to her and only her. She can't wait to make her own choices—to go to the grocery store in the early morning and stay up late on the rooftops, to have the people she likes over and serve them tea and cookies. They can't wait until they're old enough to move far away from Kamar-Taj and leave their past behind them. Because these days, the past seems more of a gaping wound in her chest than anything else.
Nobody had ever asked Sabrina if this is what she wanted. Nobody had asked her if she wanted to sign her youth away to the Mystic Arts and spend her entire life inside the walls of Kamar-Taj. Nobody had ever asked Sabrina what she wanted. It had always been what it is. Some path she was set to walk down before she could choose. She had been taken in before she was even able to grasp the concept of free will. And the thing is, this isn't what Sabrina wants. Yes, she's bled at Kamar-Taj, but that does not make it her home—she doesn't think that she will ever feel at home in a place like Kamar-Taj.
Three short, terse knocks sound from the other side of her thin door. Sabrina knows enough to know that it is neither Wong nor Mordo who stands on the other side of the door. Frustrated, she lets out a long sigh and places her hands on the ground, and kicks her feet over so that she flips and her feet land neatly on the stone floor. She takes the five steps from the foot of her bed to the door and pulls it open with a soft creak to be greeted by Stephen patiently standing opposite her.
