It rained on her way to Deborah’s house, but it did not really bother Samara. She had always loved the rain, which made Vancouver the perfect place to call home. Still she walked quickly from the train station with her umbrella projected proudly above her like a parachute, and she took her headphones out so she could enjoy the sound of the rain falling around her. The only thing that bothered her about the excess moisture was the effect it would have on her hair, which tended to go from kind of curly to medusa-like in the humidity. Sometimes she even wished people who stared directly at it would turn to stone and spare her a little embarrassment. Briefly she wondered if the lesson of the medusa myth was to warn people not to stare or comment on a woman’s bad hair. 

Wishful thinking probably. 

Adele, Deborah’s mother, a slender woman with auburn hair in her mid-forties, answered the door when she rang. She had a nice aura, kind, open, maternal, much like her daughter’s. 

“Hello Samara. Come on in.” She looked at Samara’s hair in surprise, and instead of turning into stone, she said, “Wow. Your hair is bigger than usual.”

“Thanks. I watered it on the way here.”

“I see. Deborah is in the TV room waiting for you.”

Samara shook out the umbrella and collapsed it before she stepped inside. 

“Excited for tomorrow?” Adele said. 

“Maybe a little.” Samara tried her best to maintain a neutral expression, but a huge grin ignored her attempt at coolness. 

Adele smiled. “Deborah had that same look.”

Samara hung her coat up and made her way through the familiar house. Almost every time she came to visit Deborah at her parent’s house Samara took a moment to savor the comfort and sense of contentment it offered. True, in a magazine the house would be considered unremarkable, maybe even cliché, with its landscape prints, worn leather furniture, old oak cabinets, and tacky china. But no photo could capture the warmth that would always evade any still, lifeless snapshot. It was not a house, it was home. It was a cliché, Samara knew, and it was the kind of platitude Adele would probably hang on one of the off-white walls. Nonetheless, it was accurate.

The chair she had stubbed her toe on while her and Deborah had been princesses fleeing from pirates sat quietly where it had for the last ten years. Drapes, last decade’s colors no doubt, ruffled in the slight breeze from the open window they framed. Samara smiled when she remembered hiding behind them for almost an hour while Deborah hunted for her. She glanced at the slightly discolored splotch of paint on the wall near the TV room. The two of them had been trying to make a new lap record when Samara lost control of the wheelchair and the two of them slammed into the wall, leaving a sizable dent. 

Deborah’s father was upset. According to the stopwatch he held they would have beaten their record if they had made the corner. 

“You’re late.” Deborah said when she walked into the room.

“No I’m not.” Samara took a moment to take in Deborah’s aura. Like it almost always was, it was a mix of bright and friendly colors.

“Oh.” She turned her green eyes away from her book and towards Samara. “I’ve been bad at keeping track of time since grad.” One controller rested on her lap and the other was on the chair beside her. Ambient symphonic music drifted from the speaker on a nearby shelf. Deborah rolled forwards a little and placed her book on the shelf beside the speaker. She switched off the speaker before she eased back to her original position.  

“You should get a job like I had to.” Samara said. “It helps you keep track of time if you want to or not.”

“I have a job.” Deborah said. “Sort of.”

“You edit weird fanfics.”

“I edit some weird fanfics, but other stuff too. It just so happens that people who write fanfics are willing to pay to have them edited. Don’t ask me why. Besides it’s good practice.”

“Does it pay well? Maybe I’ll try it. Working for Jake is getting old.”

“Not really. And you would suck at it. I’ve seen your papers remember.”

“Thanks for editing those by the way.” Samara said. 

“No problem.”

“So what are we playing today?”

Deborah handed her a controller. “I found this old racing game from like the nineties that’s supposed to be fun.”

“A racing game?” Samara sat down in her chair beside the Deborah. “Are we good at racing games?”

“You probably aren’t.”

“Bet I kick your ass.”

Five years of Sunday tradition began again when Deborah turned on the game system, and it was not long before the two of them were yelling wildly while their hovercrafts careened around corners to the steady thump of nineties hard rock/techno music. They were both bad at the game, as usual, but that was not the point. 

“Nervous about tomorrow?” Deborah said between races. 

“Not a bit.” Samara lied.

“Me neither.” Deborah lied back. 

They smiled at each other. 

“Any idea what we should expect?”

“Nope. My parents refuse to say anything except that I should enjoy the mystery.” Deborah said. “What about Jake? What does he say?”

“He says he doesn’t remember.”

Deborah snorted skeptically. “Yeah right. How could anyone forget going to magic school.”

“That’s basically what I said.”

The next race started and drew both of their attention. “Jake is with the Summer Court right?”

“I guess so. The only time I saw him use a sigil it was red.” Samara said. 

“I don’t get why he’s so weird about it all. Even my parents said Jake doesn’t talk about it with them either.”

“Tell me about it.”

They both crashed before the race finished. The game was proving to be a little too difficult for their limited video game skills, which happened fairly often. Not that Samara was complaining. She mostly came for the company anyway. If she went more than a week without seeing Deborah it felt like something important was missing from her life. 

Caught up in the game and conversation, time moved quickly for Samara, and when she checked her phone she was surprised to see that over an hour and a half had passed.

“I gotta go soon.” She said. 

“Concert?” 

“Yeah. It’s going to be awesome. Want to come?”

“I’d rather be rolled down a steep hill towards a piranha pit.” Deborah said.

Samara laughed. “Someday you’ll understand the beauty of heavy metal.”

“And enjoy being eaten by piranhas too no doubt.”

“What time are you picking me up tomorrow?”

“Dad said 9:30 or so.” Deborah said. 

Samara got up to leave, and as she did she noticed a change in Deborah’s aura. It looked like hesitation. 

“So, um, Dane called me today again, like five times.” She said without looking directly at her.

Samara took a deep breath. “Did you block his number?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Did you block his number?” Deborah said. 

“Only after the five hundredth time he called.”

“Good. He’s stupid.” Deborah said firmly. 

Samara smiled. Deborah was always so reserved with her insults. “I’m hoping to never see or hear from him again.” She said.

Deborah nodded. 

They parted company with a touch of reluctance, like they always did. Samara felt it and saw it in Deborah’s aura. It took several years for Samara to be able to control her ability to see other people’s auras. At first large groups overwhelmed her because everyone just disappeared into the chaos of the many colliding auras. The result was that she shied away from groups and preferred to spent time with individuals. Now she was able to filter out the auras of strangers and focus on individuals instead, which greatly expanded her social circles and helped her with her anxiety. When she asked Jake about it he seemed surprised, but he explained to her that sometimes the children of members of the Court were born with unusual abilities and that she should not fear it. Of course it also made it difficult to identify with normal people who had no idea such abilities even existed. But being a young woman who enjoyed meeting people and making friends, Samara refused to let these realities determine her limitations. 

As she hurried towards the train she speculated eagerly about who she would meet at the Academy, what they would be like, and what they would know. It was lucky she had a concert to go to or her mind would be a tangled tornado of conjecture, excitement, nervousness that would keep her awake long into the night.