I meet El for lunch just outside the dining hall.

“How did Thaumaturgy go?” she asks me, trying to sound casual but not quite pulling it off.

I shrug. “You know,” I hedge. “About the same as usual.”

El narrows her eyes at me, but doesn't press any further. She knows that if anything really bad happened, I'd tell her, and that otherwise it was just the regular shit show it usually is and that I'd rather not spend the entire lunch break dissecting exactly where I went wrong.

We head into the dining hall and slide into the lunch line. Some kids, especially the younger ones, bring lunches from home, but since St. Bosco's is a private school for the wizardly inclined, the quality of the school food is pretty good.

It's pizza today, and I grab three slices of the veggie and two of the ham and pineapple. There is a choice of fruit salad or a house salad past the pizzas and I grab a bowl of each, plus a carton of milk and a glass of water. It's an effort to get to a table without spilling anything on my tray, but somehow I manage it. El sits across from me, two pieces of pepperoni and a house salad the only things on her tray, and she watches me with an expression of mild disgust as I inhale the first three slices of my pizza.

“It won't kill you to breathe in between bites, you know,” she says.

“Breathing slows me down,” I reply, or at least I try to, but it comes out as garbled mush through my full mouth.

“Have you cast any spells since breakfast?” she asks, eyeing me suspiciously. I shake my head no, pause, then make a so-so sign with my hand. I hadn't managed to get the invisibility spell down all the way, but I supposed I had burned off a little magic in my attempts.

“Well, you must have been letting off waves of magic inadvertantly if you're already so hungry,” she says with conviction, starting on her own salad.

El has a theory that I'm always so thin, and so hungry, because I'm always burning through my magic at a higher rate than most people, and it takes a lot of energy to keep that up. Maybe she's right, but I didn't always get a lot to eat in foster care, and I still managed to freeze the entire boy's bathroom in middle school into a solid block of ice once, so it isn't as though the strength of my magic suffers if I don’t eat as much.

“I've had four classes with Felix Roth so far,” I tell her.

“Yikes,” El sympathizes. “That's like your worst nightmare.”

“My worst nightmare is showing up to Meditation class and realizing I'm naked,” I correct her. Then I pause and think about it for a moment, and amend, “but yeah, Felix is there in the dream mocking me, so I guess you're pretty much right.”

“Well, you have Magic in the Media next, right? I highly doubt Felix will be taking that class too, so you'll at least have a break from him for the next fifty minutes.”

“Yeah, he's probably taking Advanced Council Politics or something,” I say bitterly. Felix Roth's parents aren't members of the Council themselves, but they’re powerful backers of it thanks in part to their wealthy socio-economic status. Felix's political career in the magical world was practically mapped out for him, whereas my future couldn't have been more uncertain if I was using a Magic 8 Ball to make all my decisions for me.

“I've only got second and third periods with him so far, and I'm already sick of his stupid, pretentious face. I don't know how you're going to survive the rest of year.”

“Gee, thanks El, that makes me feel so much better. You always seem to know just what to say.”

She flicks a crouton at me, which I fail to dodge.

                                                                *   *   *

Magic in the Media starts off strong, and gives me hope that I'll have at least one other class apart from Astrology to look forward to. The teacher, Mrs. Johnson, assigns us homework right away, but it isn't due until the end of the week and sounds almost fun: compare magic systems from any two books, movies, or video games, and then discuss what, if anything, they have in common with real magic. If this class continues to be an excuse to watch Lord of the Rings and read Brandon Sanderson novels, then I could really get behind this.

It was already better than last year, when I had chosen to take Household Magic as my elective, thinking that perhaps I could learn a few really simple cleaning or mending spells which wouldn't be hard to master and could make my daily life that much easier.

I had been horribly wrong, and it turned out a spell for darning socks was just as hard for me as turning invisible, which was so humiliating that I switched over to art only a month into the year.

It sucked, because there are other electives that sound really interesting—Botanical Magic, Healing, Wards and Defense—but I’m stuck with the mundane crap that you can find at any mundane high school because I just can't control my magic.

I can't help but feel that it’s unfair, so insanely unfair that I find out I'm special, that I am magical and that there is a wonderful secret world of magic that I get to be whisked away to... only to find that I still don't fit in, that my magic is broken and wrong and useless at best; and actively dangerous at worst.

                                                                * * *

Meditation is the last class of the day. It's one of the few classes that you only have to take until you're considered proficient in it, so by senior year, most students have dropped it and take on a second elective. A few, like El, chose to continue to take it, simply for practice or because they enjoy how relaxing it can be. That means that the few seniors who remain are mixed in with the remaining junior class.

In junior and senior year, Meditation is sixth period, and everyone who is still taking it has it together. This means that I get to sit cross legged on the gym floor next to El, but also that Felix is only about fifteen feet away from me. Apparently he, like El, has chosen to keep Meditation on his schedule, even though he probably could have dropped it in 9th grade.

The teacher tells us to scatter and begin, so he can wander around the little clumps of students and offer corrections and advice individually. I take a spot in a far corner of the gym, and the rest of the entire class, except El, subtly gravitates to the other end of the huge room, as far away from me as possible.

Meditation is everything I'm not good at about magic. The goal of the class is to let out a stream of formless magic through your wand, increasing and decreasing the flow on command to demonstrate control over intensity. It's this control that makes the difference between lighting a match, and starting a forest fire. Since I have little to no control over how much magic I put into a spell, and since I can hardly channel even a trickle through my wand, the past three years of Meditation classes alternated between me standing like an idiot with a pathetically sparking wand, and blasting a hole through the bleachers.

Today, fortunately, seems to be a “standing there like an idiot with a pathetically sparking wand” day, which is embarrassing but loads better than blowing holes through bleachers.

Everyone else has their eyes closed and are letting waves of unstructured magic flow through their bodies, down their arms and out their wands until the air is filled with the gentle tingle of loose magic that feels like tiny electric shocks when it brushes against your bare skin. I stand in my corner with my wand clenched in my fist, the tip of it crackling and spitting so it looks like I’m holding a Fourth of July sparkler.

The teacher eventually wanders over in my direction, but only after making two full rounds among the rest of the class, until he can't pretend to avoid me any longer.

“Mr. Wolfe,” Mr. Wong says with a sigh, looking like a defeated warrior as he approaches. “What is the problem today?”

“I don't know,” I say, my face red from equal parts effort and shame. “I just can't...” I give another futile push, and there is a sharp crack and a bright white burst of light from my wand. It doesn't actually do anything, but everyone in the room jumps, heads swiveling to look in my direction to see if they need to start taking cover.

Mr. Wong stops shielding his head with his arms when it's clear he hasn't been blown to bits. “You're trying to force it, Mr. Wolfe. Magic shouldn't be forced, it needs too be led, guided gently, cajoled. You're not pushing a boulder up a hill, you're letting a stream flow down a hill. Do you understand?”

“No,” I say honestly. Not even a little bit.

“Well... just keep working on it,” he advises, and he moves on, back to the crowd of teenagers on the other side of the room.

“He doesn't even bother trying to teach you anymore, does he?” El comments disapprovingly.

I shrug, letting my wand hand fall to my side. “I can't blame him. After this long, I'm pretty sure I'm not ever going to get it.”

“How are sessions with Mr. Donovan going?” she asks.

I glance over at Mr. Wong's retreating back. We're not supposed to talk during Meditation class, instead focusing completely and utterly on the flow of our magic; but apparently since I'm a hopeless case and El is only taking the class because she wants to, he doesn't feel the need to make sure we're working hard rather than chit chatting.

“Better, sort of,” I say. “When it's just me and him, I can almost get it right. But the minute I'm in class and there are other people watching me, I just freak out and lose control.”

“But that's good though!” El replies cheerfully, slapping me on the back so hard I almost lose my balance. “That's just like having stage fright or something. If you can just figure out how to control it alone, then you'll be fine! Then you'll just have to work on getting over your fear of public magicking!”

“Yeah,” I agree, doubtfully. “You're probably right.”

But I know it won't be that easy.

                                                                * * *

I wait with El in the parking lot until her mom picks her and her siblings up. El has her license, but the Fuentes only have the one car so her mom still has to drop them off and pick them up every day.

I watch the minivan drive away while a tide of students flows past me, all heading to their own cars, or to the bus that only picks up St. Bosco's kids.

I watch Felix Roth getting into one of his friend's convertible, the top rolled down to take advantage of the warm weather, his hair blown back from his angular face as they speed off out of the parking lot and down the road.

A whole year ahead of me, five out of six classes. Five hours a day in which to humiliate myself in front of Felix Roth, and only reinforce his belief that I don't belong in the world of magic.

When I head back inside the main hall, Ms. Cross is waiting for me.

“Ah, Adam, I was hoping to find you,” the headmistress says, smiling at me. “Come to my office.”

I follow Ms. Cross up the central staircase, and in the direction of her familiar office.

Ms. Cross is really the principle of St. Bosco's, but back in the 1800s the position had been called “headmaster” or “headmistress”, and the school has continued to hold onto the title even while the rest of America moved on.

Once in her office, she sits in her big leather armchair behind her desk and motions for me to take the chair across from her. I do, and grab a handful of the starbursts she keeps in a bowl at the edge of her desk.

“How was your first day of senior year?” she asks conversationally.

I shrug, chewing on a starburst, keeping all of the yellows and the pinks and discarding the rest back into the bowl. “It was okay, I guess.”

“Do you like your classes so far? Your teachers?” She's watching me carefully, and I know she's reading into my every answer, and the things that I say with my expressions and body language, not just my words.

“I think I'm going to like Astrology, and Magic in Media. Contemporary Magical History seems alright, and English Lit will probably be hard, but I can get by I guess.”

I know that Ms. Cross notices that I left out Thaumaturgy and Meditation, but by now she is fully aware of my feelings on those particular subjects.

“I've instructed your Contemporary Magical History teacher to leave you out of the subject,” she says, and I feel a flush across my cheeks.

Of course, I'm as contemporary as magical history gets, and my mere existence is so bound up in politics and the magical society that I should have realized that the subject of me, and what I mean to the magical world, might come up.

“Oh... uh, thanks,” I reply, awkwardly.

Ms. Cross leans back in her chair and folds her hands on her desk, inspecting me intently. “You've made good progress since the beginning of the summer, Adam. You've come very far working with Mr. Donovan, and you have improved a thousandfold since you first came to St. Bosco's. I know that what you have been attempting to do here hasn't been easy, but I couldn't be more proud of your progress and your determination.”

I look down at the pink and yellow candies in my hands, unable to meet her eyes.

Ms. Cross was the one who found me. The one who had heard on the evening news about the sixteen-year-old boy arrested for the disappearance of his most recent foster father. I don't know exactly what it was that made her think I might be special, that I might have magic, but she did, and she came to see me in holding.

I just wanted him to go away, I remember telling the strange woman with stormy eyes and severe bun, confused and afraid and only guilty of wishing someone out of existence. I just told him to go away, and... he did.

My then-foster father had miraculously reappeared just a day later. He was confused and had no memory of the last few weeks, but was alive and well. It was determined that he had had some kind of emotional break down and had skipped town, wandering back when he had returned to his normal state of mind. I was released, and then, with a swiftness that was probably due to magic, I found myself in Ms. Cross's custody.

She had taken me away, brought me to St. Bosco's, and explained that what I could do was magic, and that it was vitally important that I learn to control it before anything else terrible happened.

“I was able to pull your foster father back into existence,” she had told me seriously, “but that is only because I am remarkably powerful. If you had, say, blown him up or set him on fire, he would have been dead and gone, and no amount of magic could have gotten him back.”

It’s a matter of safety, of mine and others', that I learn to harness my magic as soon as possible.