The Paper Magician

She picked her way through the hallway lined with coat hooks and cubbies stuffed with books, crumpled homework, and lunch boxes. Class—or perhaps lunch—must have recently ended, for the hall filled with bodies. Ceony tried to evade them at first, but there were too many. They simply phased through her when she held her ground, reminding Ceony once more that she was the anomaly in this place. She and Fennel both.

The bulk of the students passed, followed by Mrs. Goodweather, Ceony’s algebra teacher, looking plumper and a bit younger than Ceony’s memory of her. Mrs. Goodweather swished by quickly in her tight purple skirt, and in her wake Ceony spied a group of boys, three standing and one on the floor with a book in his lap. He held a folded paper in his hands. The sight of his black hair made Ceony run to him.

“Em—” she began, but the chap on the floor was not Emery Thane in the slightest. He had shaggy black hair, yes, but his acne-pocked skin was too pale, his nose too pointed, and he wore a pair of finely wired glasses. Freckles like Ceony’s own speckled his hands, and his eyes were a light brown, not green.

Still, she recognized the half-folded item in his hands—a fortuity box. Or the beginning of one.

“Guess paper’s the only thing that’ll let you put your hands on it, eh?” asked one of the standing boys, and his companions sniggered. “Don’t you have anything better to do than take up space, Prit?”

Ceony rounded on the boys—she couldn’t stand bullies—ready to give them a piece of her mind in hopes that the vision would allow her to interact with them. As she opened her mouth for a retort, however, her words caught somewhere between palate and tongue and dribbled over her lips incoherently.

The boy doing the jibing had short ebony hair and bright green eyes.

Emery.

He looked different—much younger, and lankier as well. He must have come into his height at an early age, for he stood half a head taller than his comrades and could not have been a day older than seventeen. His face looked thinner, his jaw slacker, and Ceony spotted a distinct lack of maturity around his eyes. Eyes that held no sympathy. Eyes just “having fun,” as adolescent boys were bound to do.

“You deaf?” one of Emery’s friends asked, the one on the left with a square face and broad build. He nudged Prit with his foot. “Don’t you have anything better to do? We need this space for walking.”

Prit frowned, his eyes downcast. He tried to smooth the fortuity box against his book—an astronomy textbook—to make the next fold, but Emery wedged his toe between Prit’s legs and the book’s cover, then flipped the book over. It tumbled off Prit’s knee and onto the floor, closing on top of the fortuity box, ruining it. Not that it would have worked without the bonding, but still.

Emery and his companions laughed as Prit quietly gathered his book and stood. He turned his back on Emery just as the bullied had always been taught to do. Just ignore them, Ceony’s mother had always advised, but Ceony knew from experience that ignoring didn’t make pigs go away. The image of Mickel Philsdon surfaced in her mind, a broad-shouldered and stout boy who had called Ceony a walrus in the seventh grade, before Ceony had grown into her teeth. She had ignored him for two years, but the relentless torture had only gotten worse. It wasn’t until the first day of secondary school when Ceony rounded on Mickel and cut him a steaming piece of her mind that he stopped his torment. As far as Ceony was concerned, the only thing bullies understood was bullying, plain and simple. Mickel had avoided her after that.

“Stick up for yourself,” she found herself saying to Prit, who didn’t respond.

Emery shoved Prit in the shoulder, making the boy stumble. “A little faster, paper boy?”

Prit picked up his pace and disappeared into the crowded hallway.

Frowning, Ceony turned to Emery and said, “You used to be a real jerk, you know that?”

Emery reached down to where Prit had been sitting and snatched up a paper sack—Prit had left his lunch behind. He rifled through it, the friend on his right trying to peer around his arm to see what was inside.

“Dibs on the cookie,” Emery’s flunky said.

Emery grabbed a red apple and tossed the bag to his companion, then slid down to the floor, stretching his skinny legs in front of him. Rubbing the apple on his sleeve, Emery took a bite.

Leaning to one side, Emery reached beneath him and pulled a folded frog out from under his backside—more of Prit’s handiwork. He chuckled around a mouthful of apple and crumpled the frog in his hand. “What a barmpot,” he said, throwing the paper wad at a dark-skinned girl passing by. The girl gave him a sour look, but continued on her way without retaliation.