ɢᴏ ꜰᴏʀ ɪᴛ, ᴀᴜɢᴜꜱᴛᴜꜱ!

skepticism

I gulp and nervously walk up to the huge brambles blocking our path. I look back at the others. Bria is smiling hopefully, her hands clasped together, Gavin is giving me a thumbs up, Angmar is.. looking at a bug? And Matt... he looks regretful. What's that all about?

I turn back to the obstacle in front of me, pulling one of the glyphs Luz gave me from my collar. "Which one is this?" I whisper to myself, staring down at the small yet (hopefully) powerful slip of paper. 

"Fireball!" I yell, making a big spell circle in front of me and hoping to the Titan that I'm holding a fire glyph. 

Tapping the glyph, I shut my eyes and hold out my hands. As I peek open my eyes, I see that a huge fireball has cleared a path through the brambles. My teammates cheer and rush through. 

"I knew it was a good idea to bring you!" exclaims Bria, grabbing my shoulders and turning me around. For some reason, the contact feels oddly empty, nothing like when Matt touched my shoulder even briefly. 

It's strange, considering I have a crush on Bria.

I do, right? There's no other way to explain how I've been acting, it felt like more than just nerves..

I brush it aside, about to turn around and follow the others through the brambles, when Matt walks up to me, all traces of regret gone. He looks skeptical, which is fair. The fireball wasn't really my magic. I just hope he doesn't know that.

"I don't know what's goin' on, but I've got my eyes on you," he says, walking away from me backwards.

He spins around a split second after making his statement, and I swear I could catch a strange redness on his face before he did. Something's weird about him, though that's not saying much, considering we're talking about Mattholomule. 

I take a breath, make a mental note to think about this more later (great, even more of your time consumed with thinking about Mattholomule. Not that I think about him!), and march through the gaping hole in the thorned vines.