“Why were you late?” I ask, struggling to keep up with her. My legs are longer but I walk with a naturally slow pace, while El is like one of those wind up toys who move so fast their little plastic feet are just a blur.

El rolls her eyes. “Noemi had to change her outfit about a hundred times. First she came down with the waistband of her skirt rolled up so that it was practically a miniskirt, a la Sailor Moon. Mom just about had a fit, and sent her back up to fix it. Then she came down with her bow tie around her neck and off to the side like a bow on a cat or something. After mom finally talked her out of that, she decided it was too warm to wear her long sleeves and had to go back up to change again. Then just as we were finally about to leave the house, she decided that the tie looked better with the short sleeve shirt and ran back in. It's a freaking miracle we got here at all.”

I decide not to remind El that she had done much the same thing daily back in sophomore year when I had first met her.

Most of the students are here by now, but we manage to elbow our way up to one of the tables and grab a couple of plates.

I had known it would be a mistake to abandon my spot under the tree, and I was right because a gaggle of ten-year-olds has already rushed in to fill the void. They don't last long however, and are soon chased off by some pushy sophomores who aren't above abusing their status as upperclassmen. It isn't worth the aggressive ritual of dominance displays that would be required to win the spot back, so El and I just find some space at the end of one of the less crowded picnic tables.

“Are you excited to start classes?” she asks me through a mouthful of icing. She just licked the cinnamon roll clean, like some kind of animal.

“Yeah, I am,” I say, and for once, I mean it. I had been deeply disappointed when I first came to St. Bosco's two years before, only to find out that magic schools aren't nearly as fun in real life as they are in books and movies. Especially for me, with my unusual... circumstances.

But this year, my private tutor, Mr. Donovan, promised he’ll let me try casting some serious spells, instead of focusing on how to properly hold my wand and drilling spell words for hours and hours without actually casting anything.

“Oh yeah, you're not in Magic Kindergarten anymore this year, are you?” El cackles.

“I wasn't in Magic Kindergarten, I was just observing Magic Kindergarten,” I protest, flushing. “I was observing how young children naturally acclimatize themselves to channeling their magic through a wand,” I add even louder, over her blatant laughter.

“Sure, and learn your colors and numbers, and how to spell your name and what sound the doggy makes,” she snorts.

I miss El like crazy whenever she's not around, but I can never remember why when she's actually here with me.

I decide to try ignoring her—not that that ever works—and look back out towards the parking lot. The lot is filled with cars, and it's hard to see the road. El shoves a buttered muffin into my hands—she's also constantly harping on about my weight—and I take a distracted bite out of it.

“Oh, look who's finally here,” El says with a sarcastic bite, the same moment I myself see the car appear from behind the wall of trees that keeps St. Bosco's partially sheltered from the road.

It's a sleek black car, something expensive and foreign that probably makes all the other cars feel inadequate. It vanishes behind a silver minivan to park and I just wait and watch.

Felix Roth and his parents finally appear and start heading towards the courtyard, as cool as you like.

Felix Roth wears his school uniform like he should be modeling it in a magazine. Like El, he's chosen to keep his tie this year, and he's wearing the navy sweater vest with the St. Bosco's crest on the breast despite the heat of the day. He looks more like a business man in the grey and navy school colors than a student. He's slender where I'm just skinny—probably because I'm several inches taller. That's what I tell myself, anyway. I might have broader shoulders than him if we were standing back to back, but you'd never have guessed it to look at us. His hair is slightly longer than I've seen it before, light brown and curly. His nose is straight as an arrow—it wouldn't have looked out of place on the bust of a Roman emperor—and his cheek bones are sharp enough to carve the bust with. He has his mother’s freckles, which might have made him look boyish if it weren't countered by that dickhead expression he's always wearing.

Felix is one of the people who, if you ask, will tell you I'm the worst magician in the world. And he likes to remind me of this loudly, and often. And anybody else who'll listen. He'd have it published in the school newspaper if he could.

He and his parents sidle up to some of the others families who run in the same social circles as them, and Felix breaks away to talk to his friends. Some people, the Roths included, are going out of their way to avoid me, to put some physical as well as social distance between them and me. They don't trust me, or at least what I represent. Or I guess what I could do without meaning to. And especially what I could do if I meant to. What I might be capable of doing someday.

Felix seems to sense me staring at him, or maybe one of his friends notices and says something, because he half turns and glances in my direction. One eyebrow raises, disappearing into his curls, and his lip curls in a sneer of disdain. Then he looks away again, as if that's all the effort I'm worth to him.

“What a prick,” El snorts. “If he's in all my classes again this year, I'll drop out, I swear I will. He's insufferable. We all know he's the top in the class, he doesn't need to show off like such a tool all the time. One of these days he's going to annoy me so badly that I'll snap his wand in half.”

Felix's particular brand of showing off isn't quite as blatant as El seems to think, but it does get damn irritating after a while. Felix's magic is incredible to watch, and he doesn't pass up a chance to remind people of that. El probably could given him a run for his money for the top spot in our grade, if she ever bothered to do any homework. She’s stupidly good at magic, and every other subject. She picks things up almost immediately and has never gotten less than a hundred percent on a test since I've known her. She refuses to do a single piece of homework though, claiming it's a waste of time since she obviously already knows what she's doing. She's not wrong, but it means that despite her natural genius, she still only scrapes by with Cs and the occasional B in classes.

“What do grades matter?” she always says. “Grades aren't indicative of intelligence, or skill. If they can't tell I'm a magical marvel by my spell casting, then they’re too stupid for me to want to associate myself with.”

I hope she's right about that, because my grades are worse than hers.

By now it's almost ten o'clock—classes start an hour late on the first day, and the parents are leaving. The parents of the kindergartners linger a little longer, and several of the kids are crying. There aren't any preschools for magicians as far as I know, so it's the first time they've been left somewhere all day that isn't grandma's house for most of them. The lower grade teachers, kindergarten through sixth grade, come out to gather their students into orderly rows before leading them to class. The rest of us are trusted to find our own ways, since all of our schedules are divided into periods.

Mr. and Mrs. Fuentes come over and give a parting hug to both El and me.

El squirms and rolls her eyes. “I'll literally see you guys at three. It's not like I'm going to forget the warmth of your parental embraces in the space of five hours.”

They both ignore her, which is a skill they've grown exceptionally good at.

Mrs. Fuentes smooths down my hair and gives me a warm smile. “You be good, Adam. I hear you're really starting to get the hang of using verbal spells now. You just keep working hard, and it will keep getting easier.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Fuentes,” I say with a slightly forced smile in return. I'm afraid she's wrong, but it feels good to know she believes in me. They say their final goodbyes, make sure that Ryan is lining up behind the right teacher, and head back to their car.

“What's your schedule?” I ask El as we start walking towards the school building.

“Let's see... on a normal day I have Speech and Debate for zero period; Calculus for first period; then Astronomy on Mondays and Wednesdays; and Astrology on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Third period is Contemporary Magical History, then English Writing. After lunch I've got Thaumaturgy, and obviously sixth period is Meditation.”

“You're still taking Meditation?” I ask, pulling a face that’s an adequate physical representation of my loathing for Meditation class. “Your control is perfect though. Hell, you probably could have stopped taking it years ago.”

“I like Meditation. It's soothing.”

“For you, maybe,” I grumble. I hate Meditation even more than Thaumaturgy, which I loathe with every fiber of my being. “Well, it's better than last year at least. I have Astronomy and Astrology second period too, and Contemporary Magical History afterward with you as well. And we'll be in Meditation together so I guess that's one bright spot in my personal hell. I've got English Lit first period, and Thaumaturgy fourth. Oh, and Magic in the Media fifth period,” I add, brightening up. It’s an elective about looking at the ways magic is portrayed by non-magical people in books, movies, and on TV, and one of my only classes that doesn't fill me with academic dread.

“Are you going to learn how all the kids at Hogwarts learned how to spell since they never seem to take an English class?”

I elbow El in the ribs. “Who wants to read a book about a wizard learning how to diagram the parts of a sentence and doing pre-calculus at a magical school?”

“Suspension of disbelief my ass,” El snorts.

We walk up the front steps, taking up the rear of the throng of students trying to squeeze through the bottleneck of the front doors. Eventually we make it inside, and everyone disperses in different directions, heading down hallways or up staircases towards their second period classes.

It's the Tuesday after Labor day, so the lesson is Astrology. We have to take all the same science classes ordinary, non-magical high schoolers do. The magical community isn't huge, and in America we get pretty spread out. I know that in smaller countries like England and in Europe there are entire neighborhoods and even small villages of just magicians living together, but here in the U.S., your nearest magician neighbor might not even be in the same zip code. Since we live in the same world as the mundanes, we have to learn the same things. You still need to know the basics of biology and chemistry, of U.S. government and history. We just supplement those classes with the magical version on alternating days or years.

Let me tell you, nothing fucks with your mind more than sitting down and learning the basics of physics on Monday, then learning how little things like “gravity” and “the conservation of matter” suddenly don't apply when magic gets involved on Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to Astrology though, which can't possibly be as bad as Physics of Magic.

A slow and painful death probably isn't as bad as Physics of Magic.

El and I are almost late when we finally make it to class, and there aren't any available seats next to each other. She heads to the front of the class, and while I would have naturally migrated to the back row, it's already full of the other slackers and underachievers. I see a seat next to Riley Funke, who I'm friendly with, and snag that instead.

“Hey, Adam,” he says with a smile. “How was your summer? Did you blow anything up?”

He's only joking, but I still feel my grin grow a little forced. “Not this year.”

There used to be a gazebo by the pond in back of the school. Since last June, there’s just a circular patch of scorched earth, and the fish in the pond immediately sink to the bottom in a panic whenever I come near.

“All right, everyone settle down!” the teacher barks. I recognize her as Ms. Perry, immediately identifiable by the white blonde sheet of pin straight hair that reaches the small of her back. No one listens, of course.

“Zip it!” Ms. Perry snaps with a flick of her wand, and silence seizes all of us, as if our vocal cords had just been snipped. A skilled magician can do that, can use a word or phrase of their own to cast a spell instead of relying on the old tried and true incantations they make us learn in school.

The spell isn't permanent, and we probably could have all shook its compulsion if we'd really fought against it, but we take the hint and turn our attention to the front of the room.

I see a mess of brown curls two seats in front of me, and recognize the back of Felix Roth's head. Great, yet another opportunity to humiliate myself by completely failing a fresh subject in front of him.

As the class goes on, however, my hopes start to rise. Ms. Perry is mostly just explaining the history of Astrology and going over what we're going to learn in the class. Memorizing star charts and the alignment of planets; interpreting the relations of celestial bodies; that was stuff I could do. I won't even need to cast any actual magic, which increases my chance of getting a decent grade in the class tenfold.

After her brief introduction, Ms. Perry passes out a sheet of paper with a series of constellations printed on it to everyone, with the instructions to label as many as we recognized and to draw in any more if we know them. She pauses just a moment at my desk, offering me a smile along with the worksheet.

“Glad you finally have you in my class, Mr. Wolfe,” she says.

“Uh, thanks,” I reply a little awkwardly. I’m still not used to people knowing me by name. I’m just glad her reaction was a positive one. My Political Science of the Magical World teacher last year had gone out of his way to ignore me completely, going so far as to skip my name in roll call. When the headmistress called him out for it, he claimed it was to avoid the “scene” that would surely arise when the other students heard my name. That might have been a decent excuse the year prior during my first year at St. Bosco's, but by then everyone pretty much knew me and the thrill of having a class with the mystery kid with broken magic who stood at the center of a worsening political divide had worn off.

Felix apparently overhears her say my name, because I can see his shoulders tense even from behind. I expect him to turn around and say something, but he doesn't. I'm almost disappointed.