The Forces

Chapter One

On the last day before the start of classes, the day of our Sorting Ceremony, the teachers sat before us in a row, the older grades piled behind us, seated by talent, and our freshman class lined up alphabetically to stand on a pedestal to watch a thin wire prick into the tips of our index fingers and pull out a stream of colored blood (Jenna and I both winced). The blood had then slithered down a clear, narrow pipe and into a corked vial, where the determined color had then been declared by Frederick Linwood.

Alphabetically speaking, I had gone before my sister. I walked up to the pedestal, stuck out my left index finger, and cringed as the needle poked into my flesh. My blood left my veins and trickled down into the vial, settling into a bright silver.

I watched Linwood close his eyes, clear his throat, and announce carefully, "James Peter Ever," and then hesitate for a moment before saying, "Ice talent."

A few people clapped as I turned around to join the table full of ice talents, who were all silent. I glanced around in slow motion, watching people widen their eyes and turn to whisper to their friends. I kept hearing my name over and over again, hissing around the stone walls of the auditorium like an echo. I sat down far from the group at the end of the table and watched my sister stick out her finger for the wire. Her blood faded into a dark blue.

"Jenevieve Ophelia Ever," Linwood said quickly. "Water talent."

No one clapped at all this time. Nobody whispered, or watched Jenna sit down. There was a mutual unsettlement laid into the air like a fog, and it was though everybody interpreted our presence in the same uncertain way.

Jenna stumbled down off of the pedestal, staring straight ahead, and sat down across from my table with the group of water talents.

Our father was an ice talent and our mother was a water talent. We were now categorized as the same. We were boy-girl twins of the exact age that the orphaned twins from the story would've been. We had the same last name as the murdered married couple. I had the dead husband's first name. It was interpreted that we had finally revealed our existence to the public, which now confirmed the validity of the legend as well.

Jenna and I were not orphans from the silver garden at Laibertson, we were the cursed, blessed, impossible offspring of a mysterious couple who died horrifically and left behind nothing but questions. It seemed to me that our classmates were under the impression that Jenna and I had the answers.

Linwood would not allow news reporters into the academy, and nobody already saw the confidence to ask Jenna or I questions themselves.

My roommate Luke became a fire talent, which also sparked discussion in the Laibertson community because fire and ice talents are stereotyped with not getting along. However, I was a pretty intense ice talent and he was a pretty mellow fire talent, which was the only reason the dorm advisors let us stay roommates.

That, and no one else was willing to room with me.

It wasn't long before we realized that Jenna's ex-boyfriend from Acre Prep was now in attendance at Laibertson, too. He was a nature talent and in her biology class, and had admitted to being from the shadow district when they'd struck up a conversation about the past.

Jenna made friends quickly. I really only had Luke, who started to grow on me. We had Potions and Algebra and English together and found friendship within our mutual boredom.

Jenna was right, too. I did think that her roommate was cute.

Vera was a nature talent, the accidental daughter of a Romanian vampire and an air talent fashion designer from New York. She had grown up with her mother and become a gentle and intelligent wizard. She had grey-toned skin and lavender-colored hair that she dyed dark brown in an attempt to look less like her father. She didn't like to talk about him. The only reason I knew that she was half-vampire in the first place was because sometimes her violet eyes turned red when she got upset.

I liked to observe the people at Laibertson. Everyone was so much more colorful than the plaid-clad pre-pubescent blank bloods at Grey John's or Acre.

For example: Luke ate a burger for lunch everyday and would usually eat some of whatever I had, too. His hair was blonde and his eyes were brown and sometimes his gaze lingered on Jenna for too long.

Jenna looked older to me. She glowed more, talked more, laughed more, now that we weren't at Acre. I wondered if I looked older to her, too. She had hazel-brown hair tipped with gold streaks and ocean blue eyes. My hair was the color of her roots, but I'd always thought that our physical similarities ended there. I was much paler, my eyes were a dull grey, and my nose was straighter than hers. She pointed her wand at me now, something that she did often when she knew that my thoughts were elsewhere, and asked, "Where's your mind today, Jack?"

"Jack" as in Jack Frost. A perfectly hilarious nickname that she had given me once I'd been sorted as an ice talent. It didn't bother me, though I found it unclever -- any name was better than "James".

I smirked but didn't say anything. Her and Vera sat across the table with bowls of fruit and dip, and Luke sat next to me with a loaded baked potato and half of a bacon cheeseburger. He asked me through a gesture if I was going to eat my tater tots and then took a forkful of them to the mouth.

"Hey, Vera, do you have the math homework?" he mumbled. She shook her head.

Jenna slapped her palm to her forehead. "It's Friday! There's a football game tonight."

Luke played. He looked at her. "So?"

"We should go. It's fire against air, the theme is beach-wear," Jenna suggested.

It was a perfectly normal situation. I remember Jenna taking a sip of her glass full of punch and laughing at Luke flexing and demonstrating his throw. I remember Professor Casper snatching Dylan Williams by the shoulders after he froze Cayden Miller's feet to the ground. I remember a bowl of carrots flying into the air. But then, it was like time glitched for a moment. It was all suddenly happening in slow motion. And past it all, in the corner, under a crumbling stone pillar, stood a man with glowing red eyes, raising his wand slowly, staring straight back at me.