The Dueling Club meets after school on Fridays in the gym, and as president it's my job to make sure all the mats and things get put away properly at the end of practices.

It's past five when I finally get the last mat stacked in the supplies closet. Janelle Thomas hit me hard with a hex that took my breath away, reminding me forcefully of my early childhood before I grew out of my asthma. My chest and throat still felt tight as I worked, and it took me longer than usual to get it all put away.

All the other club members are gone when I finish, and I know I'm almost alone in the building by now.

Therefore I'm taken by surprise when I hear a commotion coming from one of the classrooms as I start to head to the front of the school.

I stop, listening, trying to figure out what direction it's coming from. I backtrack a little until I come to an empty classroom whose door is slightly ajar. I don't push it open; I just sidle up to it and peer through the crack. I can only see about half of the classroom that way, but it's enough.

Mr. Donovan and Adam Wolfe stand in the middle of the classroom, all the chairs cleared out of the way. Adam is leaning over with his hands on his knees, panting hard. He's obviously just finished attempting some spell judging by the way the room reeks of magic; and Mr. Donovan's hair is standing on end as if electrified.

“Not bad, Adam, that wasn't bad at all,” Mr. Donovan is saying.

“It didn't work,” Adam snarls, his teeth clenched so hard I can see the muscles straining in his jaw.

“But you were close, did you feel that? Your focus is getting much better.”

“There's too much to focus on!” Adam complains, standing up straight and rubbing his forehead as if trying to massage away a headache. “I can get some of it—like, I can grab a piece of my magic and funnel it through the wand; but there's just too much. Once I get going, all the rest of it starts coming at once and I can't stop it, and it... it's like it bunches up before it can get through the wand, it all backs up and then just explodes out of me all at once, and I can't control it at all when that happens.”

“I know, I know,” Mr. Donovan reassures him. “Most magicians have been channeling only small parts of their magic through their wands for so long, they can't access the same amount of power that you do naturally even if they want to. Wands are made and used to limit magic, to control it and to keep it from manifesting without the magician's intent. But you're not broken, Adam. There isn't anything wrong with you. You are what every single magician alive today once was, before they were given wands and words to shape their magic. You posses magic in its raw state, but that doesn't make it wrong or bad. You have to stop thinking like that. What is magic, at its essence?”

“Emotion,” Adam says, unwillingly.

“And therefore it's inseparably linked with every emotion the caster experiences. Your own feelings about your magic are poisoning it, making it more difficult for you to exert control over it. You have to change your relationship with your power before you start seeing any real difference.”

“Well that's not too easy for me right now, since I have the Council threatening to take it away from me completely on one side; and the MRF wanting to use it like some kind of super weapon on the other. It doesn't matter if I think it's the wrong kind of magic or not, not if everyone else does.”

“It does matter, Adam. Your relationship with your magic makes all the difference in the world. All right—all right, let's just put a pin in this conversation and move on for now. We'll try something else. I want you to try the same spell, but without your wand this time. It will be harder for you to direct it and to control the strength, so those are the things I want you to be concentrating the hardest on.”

Adam squares his shoulders and stands with his feet slightly apart to steady himself. He raises one hand, his arm outstretched and his hand open, palm out and fingers spread, facing something out of my view on the other side of the room. His face starts to turn red with effort, and I can feel the tingling on my skin as his magic leaks out through his every pore, filling the room and the hallway I stand in.

“Good job Adam, keep it up!” Mr. Donovan says, cheering him on. I don't know what spell it is because I can't see, and because he doesn't speak any incantations. I don't know why; he's fine at using the incantations themselves. He can almost always shape a spell using them, and it seems dangerous to allow him to form the spell using only his emotions and thoughts. That's how he ends up causing so many problems, by letting his unfiltered thoughts cast spells without using spell words as an artificial block. The wand doesn't work, but neither does this method. And if this style of wandless, wordless spell casting is the one he's going to master, I know that the Council won't like that at all.

Then something goes wrong.

There's a crack, a moment where Adam and Mr. Donovan's expressions twist in alarm, and they both duck as flying shards of something, maybe a ceramic mug, are blasted in a hundred different directions.

I recoil reflexively, even though I'm not in risk of being hit where I'm standing. I half lean against the door, unable to see anything anymore. But I can still hear.

“God damn it!” Adam shouts, and I hear the sound of a fist colliding with something. A desk, I guess.

“It's fine Adam, it's okay. You just lost control of the amount of energy you were putting into the spell. You overloaded it and the cup couldn't withstand the pressure. It was a simple mistake, and I think that if we try it again—”

“I don't want to try it again. I'm done today, I'm sorry. I have homework I need to do.”

I can hear the way Adam's voice cracks.

“Adam—” Mr. Donovan says, but then Adam breaks down and starts to cry, loud angry gasps.

I leave then, heading back down the hall as quietly as I can. I'm in the parking lot and then in my car before the thought strikes me. I start the car, and music blasts ear-achingly loud from the speakers as they come to life. I turn the volume all the way down. I need to think.