“What?” El exclaims so loudly that I have to pull the handheld phone away from my ear. “You mean there really are people out there who want to use you like some kind of... of super weapon?”

“I guess so,” I reply, throwing myself down onto my bed and staring up at the cobwebby ceiling. I hadn't heeded Ms. Cross's advice skipped dinner entirely, my stomach too twisted in knots to eat; but now I'm regretting it. My stomach growls loudly, and I wonder if Mrs. Pendle might still have left something out for me in the kitchen before heading home for the night anyways. “Have you heard about the Magician's Rebellion Front?”

“The Magician's Revolution Front, and yes, of course I have. Everyone has, including you, though you probably don't pay much attention to it when it comes up in conversation since you don't have to listen to parents who are constantly bickering about politics at home.”

I can hear the sound of bickering going on in the background as El speaks as a matter of fact, though whether it's between her parents or her siblings, it's impossible to tell.

“So your parents talk about them then? Are they really... is this something I should be really worried about, or what?”

“Well...” El says, and she hesitates. “They certainly don't sound like the good guys, though from what I've seen on the news they certainly think they are. Then again, I don't think the Council are good guys either, so I don't give a fig if they both go and blow each other up.”

“Yeah, but I don't want to get caught in the middle of any blowing up,” I point out.

“For what it's worth, I think Ms. Cross is wrong. I don't think your only two choices are run away to Mexico or stay in high school indefinitely. What it sounds like to me is that she's just trying to keep you hidden, you know? Ship you off to another country where the bad guys can't get to you, or keep you at school where she can keep an eye on you all the time. I'm sure she means well, but you can't live your life like that forever.”

No, I can't.

“There's got to be another option,” she says, and I can practically hear the cogs turning in her mind from here. “At the rate you're going now, it could be another ten years before you get a handle on your magic, and despite the fact that I think you'd go crazy before spending another decade at St. Bosco's, I highly doubt that either the Council or the MRF will just sit around twiddling their thumbs for that long to see how you turn out. There's got to be something that you can do that can help you figure out your magic before anything goes to hell.”

“That's what Mexico is supposed to do,” I groan. “The woman there, the healer, she might be able to teach me how to control my magic without a wand. Ms. Cross thinks I might have to give up using a wand entirely.”

“I mean, that's probably your best shot, but it'll mean going all alone to a remote part of a country you've never been to where you can hardly speak the language, and you'll have to say goodbye to everyone you've ever know. Plus it doesn't really solve the problem of the Council and the MRF, does it?”

“If it stops me from being a ticking time bomb of magical energy, I think it does.”

“Okay, yes, it solves the problem of the Council being afraid that you'll implode the school or something. But the way I see it, if you learn to harness your magic and wield it properly without a wand, then you've just been turned into a ridiculously powerful magician. You're Superman, and we're all the puny, non-bullet proof humans. And that's what the Council is really afraid of. Of you being able to challenge them. And it sounds like that's why the MRF wants you so bad. Either way it's a boon to them. If you remain the way you are now, you're like a berserker in a Viking army. You can't really control your magic, but whatever you end up doing, it's big. All they'd need to do is point you in the right direction and tell you to just let loose, and something devastating would be bound to happen sooner or later.”

“But I wouldn't do anything they told me to, I don't want to start a civil war and take over the mundane world!” I protest.

“And if you do learn to control your magic,” El continues as if I hadn't said anything, “Then you'll have a hundred times the raw magical power of any other living magician, and the ability to wield it with unstoppable precision. Either way, you're a war machine that the MRF would love to get its collective hands on.”

“You're assuming I'd willingly fight for them if they did get their collective hands on me. Which I wouldn't.”

“You say that now, but they probably have excellent brainwashing techniques. I mean, look at how effective the brainwashing techniques the Council uses are.”

“The Council doesn't brainwash people.”

“Then why do people like Felix Roth's family worship the ground they walk on, when they are obviously a symbol of the rampant classism and corruption in the magical community, and are little more than an oligarchy thinly disguised as a democracy oppressing the proletariat in order to continue flourishing at our expense?”

“Holy crap, El, are you about to go full anarchist on me?”

“Sorry, sorry. I wrote a whole essay on the topic last year for American Magician Government and I still get worked up about it. No, the MRF are a dangerous group of rebels who are prepared to use violence to get what they want, and what they want is only good for themselves. They're pretty much just like the Council when it comes down to it, looking out for their own good under the guise of the public interest. The Reform movement is the only thing might be able to make serious changes, and without getting innocent people hurt in the process.”

“So to sum up, you think something has to be done, but that staying at St. Bosco's after graduation or going to Mexico aren't the right choices?”

“Yes, essentially.”

“Well then, what's the right choice? I mean, I don't want to do either of those, but what other options do I have?”

El is quiet for a long moment, long enough that I start to think that maybe the line went dead. “I'll have to think about it,” she finally says. “I don't know yet, but there has to be something else. She said you don't have to give her an answer right away?”

“It sounds like I don't have to make a choice until the end of the year.”

“I'll see what I can come up with in the meantime. I'm positive I'll think of something. Try not to worry about it too much for now, okay? The MRF won't come near you while you're still in school, and the Council won't either.”

“Great, so I've got nine months before the executioner's axe falls.”

“It won't, not if I have anything to do with it.”

“Thanks, El.”

“Of course, Adam.”

I hang up, but don't return the phone to the cradle. It's a landline, without a job I can't afford either a cellphone or a data plan. And now it's beginning to look like those simple luxuries—having a job, a phone, getting my license and just being a real adult—are somehow getting further and further out of my reach.

Finding out that there was a real world of magic hidden beneath the mundane world I had grown up in had been incredible at first. It was mind blowing and made me feel more special than I ever had in my life; that I, plain old Adam Wolfe, actually am a part of something so fantastic. But now, I actually found myself envying the loser future I'd thought was in store for me before Ms. Cross found me.

Graduate high school. Get some menial job making minimum wage. Rent an apartment; buy a used car; die a quiet, unassuming death.

I had exchanged the menial for magic, and the mediocrity for becoming the center of a political divide that grew worse every day, one that put having any future at all at risk.

If I was lucky, the Council might get to me first, take my magic, and I would go back to the mundane world, never accomplish anything worthwhile, and live my life as a nobody.

But now that I knew that there was something more out there, even if it was something that resented and feared me, I knew I would never, ever be able to go back.