Breaking Magic

Chapter Two: Felix

     I have five out of six classes with Adam Wolfe.

     Out of seven classes, if you count my zero period speech and debate class, which I have with Eleanor Fuentes, who is nearly as bad as Wolfe.

     But the point is, he's every where I turn this year. I hear Ms. Perry say his name in Astrology, and it's an effort not to turn in my seat to look at him. Glare at him. Something like that. He's a damn distraction in any class where we need to use magic, but thankfully Astrology is mostly spell-free.

     So is Contemporary Magical History which I have with him next, but after that is Incantations. 

     By the time I get to the third floor class room and see him fidgeting in a seat at the very back of the class, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else in the world, I'm beginning to wonder if I've made some sort of moral infraction and this is my karmic retribution. You can ignore Wolfe in nearly any other class, but being in Incantations with him is an actual safety liability. Last year when we were practicing levitation spells, Claire Devon and Will Mallory ended up going home early after being hit with the desks that Wolfe sent hurtling across the room, instead of the paper airplanes we were supposed to be working with.

     He appeared to feel pretty shitty about it happening afterwards, but being sorry didn't heal Claire Devon's broken collarbone any faster. I made a mental note to always try to stand next to the door, so I can duck out the moment Wolfe starts to lose control, which he inevitably will.

     I take a seat at the front of the class, next to my friends Martin and Terry. Martin is on my left but Terry's directly behind me, so as I sit sideways in my chair to talk to him I can see Wolfe over his shoulder.

     "So I crashed my dad's car right like a week ago," Terry is saying, scowling at Martin who sniggers at the news.

     "Shit, and he only even let you start driving it this year, didn't he? The fuck did you do?" Martin asks.

     "It wasn't even my fault. I was driving around with Jason—fucking Jason Ballard, the asshole—and he saw some girls and thought it would be a good idea to putting a damn attention charm on us and the car."

     "Well, he needs all the help he can get," snorts Martin.

     The class is nearly full and due to start in just a few minutes, but all the seats around Wolfe are empty. They'll be the last the fill up, I know. It's not that Wolfe is unpopular or anything.

     Well, it's not like he's hated, at least.

     Well, it's not like he's hated by everyone. About half of the school, me included, think he's a danger to the entire magical world, and has no business putting the rest of us at risk by attending St. Bosco's. But plenty of people seem to like him well enough, or at least tolerate him. He's rarely completely without friends or acquaintances in classes, even if it's just out of pity. But that's only when there's no risk to life and limb involved, and in Incantations, only Eleanor Fuentes is brave enough to willingly sit within cursing range.

     His hair, not quite black, is getting long to the point of being shaggy. It keeps falling into his eyes, and I'm struck by the irritating urge to tell him to get a damn haircut.

     He does this thing where he gnaws on his bottom lip when he's nervous or uncomfortable, and right now it looks like he's in risk of biting it clean off. I've actually seen him make himself bleed before, the idiot.

     He's thin too, even more so than he is most of the school year. He's always skinny to the point of looking nearly skeletal at the beginning of the school year. Fuentes practically force feeds him whenever she's around him, and while he's always a long way off from being fattened up, he usually finally reaches a point where he looks almost healthy by early November.