Mum wasn't home. She would've greeted me at the door if she was. Slowly I crept into the kitchen, grabbing a half-empty bag of chips and an apple off the counter. She'd be angry about my poor diet later, but I was hungry and this option was the fastest. I carried my collection up the stairs, then up the ladder hatch into the small attic space I called my bedroom. It was cozy up here, not enough headroom to stand fully, but enough floor space for my bed and all the other necessities. Also there was carpet up here, for some unknown reason.

It wasn't like our house was tiny. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, and I used to sleep in one of those when I was young, my mother in the other. I moved all my belongings up here a few years ago, and I don't think I'll ever move them back.

The first floor was basically just a kitchen and living room battling for dominance. We'd had a dining room once, but mum converted it into a combination art studio and office. She said she liked the big windows that faced the dense woods behind our house. It was never an art studio and office at the same time. She'd learned pretty quickly that it wasn't a great idea to file taxes while the table was covered in oil paints and reference photos.

The handy thing about my attic is that it's got the most privacy. The ladder is collapsible, and when I pull it up it closes the trap door. From there I can jam just about anything into it and effectively lock it into place. It's not exactly the warmest place, but heat rises, so I don't freeze, and I like sleeping a little cold. I'd tried a heating spell exactly once and nearly set the roof on fire.

I wouldn't have to worry too much about the cold for a couple months. Spring had sprung and days were slowly growing longer and warmer.

Dropping my food nearby, I crawled over to peer out the three small windows at the head of my mattress. They faced the house next door, newly occupied by Max's family, and I'm surprised for a moment at how unobservant I am. New curtains lined the windows, trinkets decorating the sill. Someone's set up a goalie net outside, although it seems to be at war with a collection of kids toys half-buried in the snow.

I stared for a moment longer, waiting for movement, perhaps, before pulling the book from my bag and settling on my bed, bag of chips within reach. Despite my lack of distractions now, it's still hard to get through the same paragraph I'd been struggling through at lunch. My mind kept flitting back to Max and Roman saying my name, and actually walking home with someone. I'd been hoping mum would be home so I could tell her.

Downstairs, the front door opened and slammed shut, and I knew it wasn't her. I had enough sense about me to check that the trap door is firmly closed, then returned to my reading. The sharks look for blood, I remind myself, don't put any in the water.

It was some hours later that I resurfaced, no new knowledge on magic gained from the many chapters read. I tried not to be bitter. This book had been better than a lot of the others – full of the history of the concept of magic. A lot of chapters were historical reference and theoretical explanations which were fascinating to read about, but, ultimately, it said the same thing as all the others: Magic isn't real.

At one point, a few years ago, I had been introduced to the 'New Age/Metaphysical' section at the tiny used book store in town. Just like every other section it was so crammed full of books, one could only marvel at the fact that the stacks hadn't toppled, or that the bookshelves hadn't collapsed in on themselves. It was a fair wager that the friction of walking too fast would someday set the whole squat building aflame.

The section wasn't the biggest, and it was mixed in with religious texts and mythologies, but I was still excited at the prospect of finally getting answers. I saved every penny I could and bought ten of the most promising looking books I could find. That had been an exercise in futility. Mostly the tomes waxed poetic about the benefits of being part of a coven, or which moon phases were best for praying, or what spice would rid your soul of negative energy.

It felt cheap. You could maybe have a better chance at true love if you burned this candle, on this night, with these conditions and a very specific leaf, but you have to do these ten steps beforehand and the spell is a poorly written rhyming couplet. There's no way to tell if this works, and if it doesn't then you've done something terribly wrong and now it's time to cleanse everything.

I read through all ten books in a week and was left with a torturous feeling of despair in the bottom of my stomach. This magic wasn't the same as mine. These spells might have been based on old pagan or druidic rituals, and maybe they did work for people who had previous knowledge on druidic connections to nature, but they had been oddly twisted until they only held the barest whisper of magic.

My magic was instinctual – no potions or moon phases or poems. Just a gut feeling and the flash of a foreign and ancient word across my mind. Nothing in these books came close to my experiences. After that disappointment I moved on to reference and language books. I thought if I could figure out the language my mind was using for the spells, then maybe I could find books in that language to research.

Of course, my brain used some weird amalgamation of ancient Welsh, mild Norse, and some weird third language that used a lot of 's's.

The door to one of the bedrooms closed and a part of me relaxed a little. Maybe I'd get lucky and mum would come up to say goodnight now. It wasn't very likely, though. She always got quieter in the evenings, as if she, too, were trying not to feed the sharks.

It was well past midnight anyway, after finishing my bag of chips, and I was exhausted. Today had been weird and there was no telling what tomorrow might bring.

The next morning I woke early. I hadn't eaten the apple the night before, and I took bites from it while I readied myself for the day. I tossed the core in the empty chip bag and pulled my jacket on, stuffing the trash in its pocket. From there it was all stealth; opening the trap door slowly, lowering the ladder, darting down stairs and out the door as quickly as I could manage. I regretted not saying good morning to mum, but it was hard to tell when she was actually around.

On the sidewalk I ducked my head, pulling my collar up to obscure my face as I passed Max's house. My mantra for the morning was 'Better this way.' It was only when I was a few blocks away that I realized it was all unnecessary. Max hadn't come out of his house. There was no frantic waving or bright and cheery greetings on my early morning walk, and I started to hope that maybe he'd finally caught on. Maybe he finally understood that hanging around me would cause irreparable damage to his social status.

I refused to give that little nugget of regret at the loss of his company any attention, even though I was almost nauseous from it. 'Better this way' I reminded myself as I entered the school and drifted towards my locker.

A hand slapped onto my shoulder, reminding me that Destiny was In A Mood.

“Hey, neighbor!” Max said, “Sorry I missed you this morning, apparently the soccer team has drills before school on Tuesdays. I'm fairly certain I've just experienced one of the layers of hell.”

I tried to glare at him, but it felt more like tired confusion than I'd planned. He was wearing training thermals, and his face was ruddy from the exertion and cold, his locks mostly restrained by a hair tie on the back of his head held a few particles of snow just starting to melt. I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and returned my focus to my locker, adamantly trying to ignore the tension seeping from my shoulders that was turning into a pleasant warmth.

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. 'Stay away from Julian, Max. He's a weirdo!'” His impression of Freya was eerily good. “All that nonsense all morning, and they still couldn't give me a solid reason why I shouldn't talk to you. It's not like you're diseased or contagious or something.”

I shrugged again. It really depended on your definition. I'd never ruled out severe mental health disorder, and it wasn't like it would've been the first one in my life. It honestly would've made a lot more sense if I was a bit mentally ill. Still, I thought the list of Julian-Negatives was pretty long and foreboding. It'd successfully alienated me from all my classmates before.

Max didn't seem to agree. “Like, one of the reasons was because you talk to yourself, right? Do you even talk? I haven't heard you talk. You even glared down a teacher who asked you a question.”

This was the second year I'd had Mrs. Fitz for English. She knew I wouldn't answer, but every few weeks she'd call on me anyway. Half the time I got sent to the office for insolence.

I stuffed my coat into the locker and re-shouldered my bag, lighter now that it had no massive text books in it. Normally I'd check to see if the coast was clear before emerging completely from the safety of my face's favorite hiding place, but Max's presence had already knocked my day (maybe even my entire week) drastically off course. So, when I was faced with Sam and James, of soccer field fame, I could only tense up and stare, mouth drawn closed tightly.

“Hey Max,” Sam said, gently punching his shoulder with what I had to assume was comradery rather than some brutish show of testosterone. It could've been either, really. “Good hustle out there. Don't forget we’ve got drills Thursday morning, too.”

Did people really say good hustle?

“Yeah, I got it. Put it in my phone this time and everything.”

I turned away. I was not part of this conversation, nor was it very likely I'd be invited to participate. Best to run before they noticed me and switched topics.

It's hard to ignore someone who is standing just outside a conversation, even if you don't like them and are trying to exclude them – hovering just on the edge of your vision like a large and unfortunate bug. It's infinitely harder, however, to ignore someone who walks face-first into your ruggedly chiseled chest.

To be fair, I hadn't realized I'd been surrounded, having been too distracted by the swift turn into bizarro-land my week had taken. I didn't dare look up, kept my eyes resolutely turned towards the ground, and away from whoever it was that I'd collided into. Hopefully they'd have the decency to just toss me into a dumpster instead of making this blatant infraction of the rules into a Whole Thing.

“Oh,” Roman said, somewhere very close to me, “Hey, Julian. You alright?”

Was the object of my affection asking me if I was alright? No, because he wasn't an object, he was a person. A real life person who was handsome and great at sports which I didn't really care much about except for when Roman played them because somehow he always managed to make it seem like art and – oh fuck – he was staring at me because I hadn't responded and I probably looked like a loon standing there just gawking at him.

There was probably some sort of trick, or lead in to a bad prank buried in his concern, so I snapped myself out of my Roman-Related-Trance and ducked around him.

Somewhere behind me Roman said “I didn't even do anything.” and Max responded, “Just give it time.” I didn't want to think about what that meant.