Lying Liars Who Don't Tell The Truth

Chapter Four

Five weeks later, on the morning of September the 1st, I woke up to the sound of Tom rampaging through the house because he couldn't find the new calculator he had bought for use in his advanced calculus class. By the time my eyes adjusted to the light around me, Naja was braiding her hair in the mirror above her dresser and Ansel was dressing himself in the plainest-looking blue jeans and grey tee-shirt I had ever seen.

Peter, as usual, had prepared a ginormous breakfast for the seven members of his household, and the fight for fresh waffles and not-cold toast commenced as it always did, the added stress and excitement of the first day of school contributing to a particularly colorful fight over the last bit of orange juice.

I perched myself on the arm of the living room couch and watched the chaos happily. Ignius emerged from the kitchen with two mugs held in front of him, carefully crossed through the war-torn dining room, and handed me one of the mugs. I smiled in genuine appreciation and brought the seaming coffee to my lips, thankful there was one other person in this house who appreciated caffeine as much as I did.

Ignius and I chatted quietly as we sipped our coffee, a tradition we had formed a few weeks ago, before Tom began corralling Naja, Ansel and I to the door so we could leave and arrive at the school a clean forty minutes before the first bell. Scott had left earlier for a morning soccer practice, leaving Tom the only eligible driver with a usable car.

The four of us piled into his tan vehicle and watched Ignius, Squid, Gallem and Peter wave goodbye to us as we pulled out of the driveway. Once on the road, there was some hearty debate about which radio station to have on during the nine-minute ride; Ansel, who sat in the passenger seat next to Tom, eventually won.

In the back seat, I noticed Naja picking relentlessly at her nails. Her gaze was distant and no part of her body was still; her leg was bobbing up and down and her head kept darting from side to side as if she were following an invisible fairy through the air. I knew Naja was nervous by design, and I felt a glimmer of compassion for her anxiousness. Over the remaining weeks of summer, Naja and I, to the shagrin of Ansel, had grown quite close and she confessed to me how dreadful it was to be the lone, 'normal' daughter in a home of extraordinarily talented sons. She cited Tom's near-perfect GPA and Scott's propensity for athletics as their own gifts. Naja, with good but not extraordinary grades and next-to no athletic talent, always seemed a little lost in the dust of her family.

Of course, this was only her assessment. When she told all of this to me on summer night in August, I actually laughed for quite a while, finding it rather amusing that someone like Naja could be jealous of Tom or Scott. Tom was, to the majority of the population, intolerable in anything other than very small doses and Scott, while outwardly charming and fairly symmetrical, was no deeper than a kitty pool.

Plus, they were non-Magickal.

Naja, to the ordinary eye of a Haven High student or teacher, probably appeared quite dull and uninspiring, but to anyone with any shred of finer knowledge she was absolutely remarkable in her kindness, understanding and wit. She was exceptionally easy to talk to, empathetic to the point of self-destruction and, in my own humble opinion, more visually appealing than both of her brothers combined.

Not that she believed any of this when I told her in August. I wanted to tell her again now, in the backseat of Tom's car, but shooting into passionate speech about all of the reasons I loved Naja in front of Tom and Ansel wouldn't do much for my hard-earned reputation among my new family members as a rude, self-obsessed Demon.

As first days of school go, my first day at Haven High was a welcome improvement from anything I experienced in Utah. The tiny, one-room school building I used to attend mostly taught religious studies including how to be afraid of your own body and how to feel guilty for perfectly normal human emotions. Haven High resembled what I always imagined normal high school would be like. The building was large and square, with tiled floors and endless rows of blue lockers. The rooms were small and uniform, with rows of desk-chair combos and whiteboards with lots of different-colored markers.