Chapter 15: My Favorite Day

Tuesday used to be my favorite day. I don’t really remember why, but when I was a little girl, my foster parents would always make a big deal out of the weekend. “Hump day“ was my foster father’s go-to dad joke—super original. And nobody likes Mondays. But Tuesday always felt like the rush was over. On the weekend, you have to do all these things because you didn’t get to do them during the week. Then on Monday, everyone’s miserable. But Tuesday is just...a day. It’s not the day before Friday, it’s not hump day, it’s not a weekend day or a Monday. It’s the only baseline normal day. So I guess I love Tuesday because I hate all the other days.

Monica wasn’t at school. They told me she’d been taken to the hospital, screaming about how someone had cut her arm open, screaming that she could see her bones. They’d dragged her out of the school while she caterwauled. Some people said they were actually taking her to a mental facility. I didn’t know about all that, seems like they wouldn’t have been told.

I didn’t know when she’d be back.

It was just an illusion, right?

I’m not an idiot. I know about trauma. As I sat there in my seat, eating what was left of my garlic bread once it had cooled and become less garlic-bread-ish and more like a brick, I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that I had probably just ruined someone’s life forever. And in my darkest moments, I knew she wasn’t the reason my own life was so dark.

It feels like I have flashes of maturity. You hear about people having a “senior moment,” and yeah, sure, everyone gets forgetful. But I feel like sometimes I can recognize the results of my actions and feel real empathy. I can respect people who are trying hard. And then there are all the other times, when my hormones are pumping through my blood and I want to either go hide or, apparently, perform very dark magic. It was sobering to realize that I probably qualified as a black witch now. If we were playing some sort of game, I only had two skills in my repertoire: I can make you go mad and scream about seeing your bones, or I can literally freeze you to death, probably. I have no idea how hard that is.

Until I learned for sure what my new limits were, I wouldn’t be using pyromancy. I’d promised.

So on Tuesday I got weird looks when I walked into school. Weird looks that said, She went into the bathroom, followed by the bully, and then said bully got put in the ambulance. Weird looks that said, I don’t know what it’s about, but her pig came to school yesterday, too. There’s something going on with her, and I don’t like these vibes.

Except for Toby. Toby had always liked my vibes. I really don’t know why. I sit there and think dark thoughts about how everything is broken and stupid, and Toby sits there and thinks no thoughts because he’s high. Or if he’s not, he’s regurgitating something he read verbatim as if it’s an original thought. Like, “I had this cool dream, man. Some dudes built a horse and hid inside it to conquer a city. Sick, right? But then the main dude got stabbed in the foot and he died. Weird.”

I just had this dark cloud over me. As Tuesdays go, it wasn’t the best Tuesday.

And then I went home.

There are two ways to read a book, I think. You can read when you’re already feeling something and put how you’re feeling into the book. Or you can read when you’re doing okay and get extra feelings out of the book. I couldn’t read today. I think you’re supposed to do the second one to really enjoy a good book. I turned the TV on, and a crackle of static bit me, and then the screen died.

‘Mom’ was asleep in her room this time, thank goodness. ‘Dad’ wasn’t even home. Which is why, when Elsie came to the front door, I was able to open it before she even knocked and rendezvous with her on the front lawn, out of earshot of any little tattletales.

“So,” Elsie said. She still didn’t sound as happy or friendly as she had when I first met her. I’d have to work back up to that. That sucked. That made me sad. “You kept the page for pyromancy.”

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I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I was guilty about it, but I didn’t feel good about anything that had happened Monday.

“I suppose you’re a pyromancer now,” Elsie said.

“I’m not going to use fire,” I told her. “I figure freezing doesn’t have the risk of chain reactions.”

She nodded, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “That’s surprisingly forward-thinking of you.” She paused. “That was mean of me. I’m sorry. It is an excellent idea. And it also means you can double as an air conditioner.”

Elsie was usually a lot more fun.

Not this time.

Along the way home, I thought back to my most recent lesson: what I did, and why it was so bad.

I had taken my own most traumatic memory, made someone else relive it, and then manipulated the visuals to make it even worse than it had been in real life.

Take your worst memory, dial it up to 11, and make someone else experience it.

That, on top of the fact that I had apparently dumped a fire hose worth of power into the teacup that was my high school bully’s soul. Which could have a lot of effects, but would apparently almost certainly make what I did stick.

Which I didn’t understand the implications of.

And to hear Elsie explain it, Elsie didn’t understand why I didn’t. Most people learned to measure the amount of magic they were using before they could do anything with it.

I was going to have to learn that crucial part of the process backward.

Why is this my life? I wondered.

I was walking my bike now.

Like I said, every direction from school, to anywhere, is uphill. And today, I didn’t have any money left. Toby had commented that it ought to be a great incentive for finding a job. He’d also spotted me a packet of pickle chips to tide me over until I got home.

I chewed them absently as I focused on my magic.

Elsie had been right about being an air conditioner.

As I walked, a trail of ice crystals stood out like an unseasonable frost on the ground behind her.

I was freezing, but I was starting to get the hang of the frost magic which, in basic terms, was simply to pull the “fire“—metaphorically speaking, but that was in fact the mental image that worked—out of things, and then not do anything with it.

“The cold kinda bothers me anyway,” I warbled. My hoodie was not making a dent in the frigid pall I carried with me, an aura of doom and winter chill. But I was learning, so it was okay. And I wouldn’t be sweaty either, so, minor plus

What I couldn’t do was the Frozone stuff—no handfuls of ice for me. Just the chill of the grave.

I might have been playing up the gothic aspects a bit.

As I walked under a sweet gum tree the branches crackled and the leaves fell in a soft, quiet flutter of dead plant matter.

I could see my power, now, though it might have just been my aura vision—the faintest of deep blue hues, washing the summer colors cooler even as my spell stripped the fire from the air around me.

My fingers were blotchy with the cold. Little scars stood out purplish-blue against white.

Colder.

The culvert I walked past creaked, but I couldn’t see any visual change. Disappointing.

I’d been working on shoving the cold through line of sight, but no dice. There was no…package, to deliver. I’d have to somehow on-board the fire on the other end.

I probably needed another conceptual model.

That also meant no fire for me. I hadn’t done very well so far but I meant it when I promised not to burn down the city. If I can’t put out fires by glaring at them, I don’t deserve to start them.

Still, I hadn’t quite hit the goal I’d set myself.

I focused, stopping in my tracks and watching as my vision colored deeper and deeper blue, saturation falling until it was black and white and blue—and me.

Colder.

The air itself seemed to thin and sharpen. My own breath plumed in front of my face, a white ghost in the blue-tinged twilight.

I spat.

It tinkled on the sidewalk.

Flawless.