Polarized

Halifax Aura Correctional Facilities

The principal was a tall and serious-looking man. His clothes were neatly ironed and not a single hair of his lay out of place. Skye braced for an angry lecture from him that never came. Instead he remained eerily calm. The nameplate sitting atop the principal's desk was engraved with a name: Mr Avery.

"Do you know why you're here?" The man whom Skye assumed to be Mr Avery asked.

At that moment Skye felt like curling up in a hole and dissapearing. "Because I have an ice aura?"

Mr Avery shook his head. "No, it's not because you have an ice aura. It's because you failed to control it. Aura-havers are responsible for holding back their auras, because if they don't, somebody can get hurt. You put your class in danger because you failed to restrain your curse, which is why you are here. Do you now understand what you did?"

Skye nodded. "Yes, I understand."

"Good," Mr Avery said flatly. "So can you tell me why none of the staff at Springs High School knew you had an ice curse beforehand?"

Skye shrugged. "I don't know why, but I forgot to bring it up. I'm sorry."

Mr Avery gestured towards a chair. "Please take a seat while I call your parents. You're not in trouble, I just need to inform them of what had happened so we could work out a solution together."

The principal talked on the phone, but Skye couldn't hear the other end of the conversation. She didn't want to hear. What if Mom and Dad are mad at me? Skye worried. It's not like I wanted to cause an accident. No, it was out of my control, and I wish I had never started it.

But on the other hand, Skye thought, they have every right to be mad at me. I deserve it. I iced the classroom, I put people in danger, I broke Mom and Dad's trust. They sent me here because they trusted me, and I betrayed them. I'm the worst, really.

Mr Avery hung up the phone and announced the good news: that Skye wasn't going to get expelled or face legal consequences. Skye didn't care if she got expelled or not, in fact, she almost wished for it because Springs was that mind-numbingly painful. But she wouldn't want to let her family down after all they had done for her, so every day, at that dreaded school, Skye sat through her lessons. Every day, she endured the gossip and the stares. Every day, she endured the rude teachers and her failing grades, pretending they didn't bother her as much as they did, all because Skye would never forgive herself for being a dissapointment to her family. But here she was, at the principal's office, the delinquent.

But at least the damage Skye's ice curse caused was light. At least nobody got hurt. At least she wasn't a monster. Not yet.

And then the next thing the principal said took any bit of hope Skye had left in her, crumpled it up, and burned it to smithereens: "Your appointment at Halifax Aura Correctional Facilities at Thunderport is scheduled for Wednesday at ten."

Skye may have looked calm, but inside her mind she was screaming. While on call, Mr Avery had mentioned over and over how he didn't want to punish Skye unfairly, how he cared for all of his students and one of them being cursed won't change a thing, and how he's looking for a practical way to prevent further incidents all while taking her well-being into account... only to send her to a literal torture center out of all things. What. The. Hell.

***

Wednesday came a week after the incident. Skye took the bus with her family to Thunderport, one of two major cities in Cloudgate. (The other one was Skypoint) At Thunderport, the Eversons checked into a large office building, and inside it was a vast room full of chairs facing a platform. Skye occupied a seat at the end of a row, with her mom, dad, and brother sitting on the chairs to the left. On Skye's right-hand side was a door with a sign. The room was crowded and noisy, and Skye's senses were overwhelmed, but she still had some important things which she wanted to say: