Twilit Mage

Chapter 12: Ready, Set

Mercury made her way to class with a very strange feeling in her gut.

She and Raoul didn't have their first class together, and she honestly wasn't sure she would survive it on her own. Everywhere she went people seemed to throw her glances, sticking their heads together and pointing and whispering. She swallowed and tried to ignore them. Straighten your back, her mother had told her. Look confident and they'll stop.

Well, her back was straightened, but it wouldn't work. People were whispering more than ever. Her body was tensing up and starting to cramp, and she wanted nothing more than to bolt out of here and hide in a spot where nobody would find her. Maybe she found a wardrobe that led her to Narnia. Or maybe she could open a passage to the Otherworld somehow and travel to the other side of the world...Australia sounded nice. She had always wanted to see wild kangaroos. And koalas, she could look for koalas. She wondered if kangaroos and koalas could travel the Otherworld too...Could animals get lost in there?

The spinning trail of thoughts calmed her down, just barely enough to brace herself and stumble into her first classroom, not before double-checking that she really was in the right place. Her gaze hurried over the rows of desks, the people sitting down behind them. Once again she was desperately searching for a free seat, a place where she wouldn't bother anyone...Why were there so many people in here? Why couldn't she see any free seats? What if there were none? No, there were some...but they were all next to people she didn't know. She couldn't sit there...

One by one everyone around her sat down, and she was the only one left standing when the door closed, and she suddenly found herself face to face with her English teacher.

Mercury shrank back. This was bad. She was making a bad impression, right in the very first class...she had to–

"Oh, are we a chair short?" the man asked curiously, letting his eyes roam over the rows of desks in front of him. "Strange, I could've sworn–"

"No!" Mercury blurted out quickly, stumbling towards the free seat in the very back corner of the classroom. "There's enough...I'm sorry!"

A few students giggled. Mercury's face burned with the heat of a thousand suns as she dived behind her desk and hid her face behind her textbook without noticing that she was holding it upside down.

"Alright, everyone seated?" the teacher said, striding up to the blackboard and unceremoniously throwing his bag on the desk, sitting down next to it without bothering with a chair. "Very good. Then we can get started, can we?"

He snapped his fingers, and behind him a piece of chalk took flight and scribbled across the blackboard as if led by an invisible hand, spelling out the name Damian Salvatore in a messy handwriting.

Mercury gaped. Some others gasped. The piece of chalk floated back down and rested among the others under the board.

Mr. Salvatore gave them an amused look, one eyebrow arching high and wrinkling his forehead. "Magic newbies among us, huh?" he said. "Before you get any ideas, no, magic is not allowed in the normal classes. I'm the only one in here who can do that. We don't want any of you cheating on tests, do we?"

Some students gave disappointed groans. Mr. Salvatore laughed. "Don't worry, you can try your hands on that in the afternoon. Some of you will have another class with me where I'll teach you stuff like this." He casually floated another piece of chalk that scribbled the word Welcome!

Mercury didn't remember much of the class afterwards. She vaguely remembered an introduction round, completely butchering her own introduction, mixing up the words, and finally disappearing behind her textbook for the rest of the class to hide from the suspicious stares. She didn't remember much of her other classes before lunch either. At least she had math with Raoul, who fell asleep on his desk the first five minutes in, and otherwise she did nothing but try to avoid as many people as possible and stay under the radar until it was finally time for lunch.

Feeling more drained than she had after yesterday's trip through the Otherworld, Mercury hurried to seek out Raoul, quickly hiding behind him as they lined up for lunch in the cafeteria. Nobody had tried to talk to her after breakfast. When they were forced to interact the others had been politely distant, keeping their conversation to a minimum as they tried to stay out of her way.

"You all right there, Mercy?" Raoul asked as they stood with their empty trays in hand, waiting for their turn. "You look pretty tired."

Mercury nodded and sighed. "People...too many people I don't know. It's scary. And then they all hate us..." She looked up at Raoul, who seemed perfectly relaxed. "How can you be so calm? You must be pretty amazing!"

"Me?" Raoul laughed sheepishly. "Nah, I just kinda don't care. What people think, I mean."

Mercury blinked at him. "You don't care that people think we're spies?"

"Okay, yeah, maybe a little." Raoul's smile faded momentarily, then it came back full force. "But hey, if you think about it it's pretty cool, right? People think we're some super-secret agents or something. They're gonna be so scared of us they're never gonna mess with us!"

Mercury gazed up at him in a mixture of confusion and awe. Raoul's optimism amazed her. She was constantly losing her mind, worrying, fretting about what people might think, and here he was, brushing off serious accusations with a stupid grin and a joke. She smiled. Raoul really was incredible. He looked like nothing in the world could ever scare him, calm and confident and ever-smiling, the complete opposite of her in every single way.

"Don't worry, Mercy," Raoul added as they moved ahead in line, got their shares of food, and made their way over to a free table at the very back. "They're not gonna keep saying that forever. I mean, that rumor's pretty dumb."

When he said it like that, Mercury couldn't help feeling like he was actually right.

"By the way," Raoul said around a mouthful of potato, "do we have any afternoon classes together?"

Mercury shrugged. "I'm not sure...What do you have later?"

"Hold on." Raoul gulped down the potato and dug through his pockets, pulling out his phone and opening a screenshot of his schedule. "Here, got any of those?"

Mercury looked at the list, then back at Raoul, then back at the list, then at her own schedule. Her eyes grew to the size of pancakes.

"This is..."

"Hmm?" Raoul had stopped eating. "What's wrong, Mercy?"

Without answering a word, Mercury dived under the table, rummaged through her bag, pulled out her phone, and opened her own schedule. "Look!"

Raoul looked back and forth between the two screens. His eyes grew wider and wider behind his glasses. He almost forgot to chew his food, then he swallowed it with a loud gulp and almost choked.

"Dude," he whispered. "Mercy, this is amazing!" He jumped to his feet and almost knocked over the table, eyes sparkling. "We got all our magic classes together!"

Mercury nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. Half of her still couldn't believe it. It was too incredible to be a coincidence. All their magic classes...all their afternoon classes together, every day...

Wait...Maybe it wasn't a coincidence. Maybe somebody had put them in all the same classes on purpose?

Whatever it was, she was definitely happy. Happy and grateful. Whoever had had the kindness to put her in the same classes as her only friend at this school, the only other Twilit Mage, she definitely hoped something good happened to them today.