I will return reviews for this.
Unity
Chapter One: On The Train
As Vera Noble stepped onto the train platform, she realized that she’d barely spoken to her mother all summer. A stupid thing to realize now of all times, right before she was about to leave Fort James for nine months, and if anything she should have known it all along. She had spent the entire summer cooking up excuses to get out of the house, but she’d spared little thought to the flipside of her efforts: that when this moment came, she would have nothing to say to Kathleen Noble.
Mother and daughter stood two feet apart and didn’t look at one another. The silence hung between them like a heavy curtain. Kathleen was steadying Vera’s large trunk and Vera was clinging to the handle of her smaller suitcase, and she was trying to think of how to bid goodbye to her mother. It should be as simple as a hug and “I’ll miss you,” but the thought of lying made Vera uncomfortable. Perhaps it meant she was a bad person, or a bad daughter, but she’d never really conceived of Kathleen Noble as a mother before. More like a stranger with which she shared the house for three months of the year. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she told herself firmly. Better that they didn’t speak to each other at all than if they argued.
Vera was starting to sweat, and not just from the sweltering mid-August heat. Why did it take so much effort just to say goodbye? She stared across the train tracks at the fading advertisements posted on the opposite wall, as if hoping that the models’ insipid smiles would give her inspiration. Or at least a dose of courage.
“Vera.” Vera jumped—it seemed Kathleen had taken the initiative. She tried to suppress a relieved sigh.
“Yeah, Mom?” She didn’t look at Kathleen directly.
“Are you sure about this?” Kathleen’s voice was hesitant, quavering. “I mean…”
“Sure about what?” Vera said, although she knew exactly what her mother was talking about. She became immersed in a dried-up glob of blue gum next to her shoe.
“You know! Attending that school…” When Kathleen looked at Vera, her expression was critical. “You don’t have to go there, you know. You could be starting at Fort James High this year, with Jane and Alice’s kids.”
Rage and a flicker of disquiet rose inside Vera. She hated when her mother brought up this topic, because it hit closer to Vera’s heart than she’d admit. Kathleen didn’t think that Vera belonged at the Institute. Sometimes, Vera didn’t think so either. She, who had yet to pick a guild while her friends had all settled into place years ago.
But to hell if she was going to show any weakness in front of Kathleen. She faced her mother and drew herself to her full height, which was exactly the same as Kathleen’s. But otherwise they couldn’t be more different. Kathleen was rail-thin and visited tanning parlors so often her skin had been burnt a shade bordering orange; Vera, by contrast, was chubby and pasty. Kathleen had dyed her hair platinum blond and styled it differently every other week; Vera was content to keep her dark strands lank and chin-length. Judging by the pictures she’d seen of her father, she thought she looked more like him than Kathleen, and that made her happy.
Kathleen was the one who fit it better with the residents with Fort James—almost all of her friends looked just like her. The kind of parents who went shopping and visited beauty parlors with their daughters. Her low-cut tunic top and jeans were stylish and brand new, and elicited less odd looks than Vera’s black blazer and knee-length pleated gray skirt. Not only was her uniform rather heavy for the weather (Vera did not want to think about the itchy band of skin under her collar), but few people in Fort James sent their children to boarding schools.
Then again, few people in Fort James could perform magic.
“Mom,” Vera said. “I’ve been going to the Institute for three years already, it’s not like I’m not gonna suddenly change my mind right now.”
“You starting high school ought to be a big deal,” Kathleen said, giving Vera a baleful look. Vera folded her arms and glared into the heat shimmering in waves off the rusty tracks. Her armpits itched beneath her blazer and blouse. “We could have gone to buy school outfits together, I could have told you everything you needed to know about Fort James High and being a Jaguar…normal things, you know. But this year it’s just like any other year, you’ll leave for that place and you won’t see me again until next summer and you’ll give me the same silent treatment you’ve given me all this summer—”
“Mom, it’s cause I have nothing to say to you!” cried Vera, her frustration bubbling. “When you try to ask me about all those things, clothes and shopping and boys and movies, I don’t care, I don’t have those things at the Institute. You never ask me about my classes or anything—you know, the stuff I care about!”
Kathleen’s lips pressed into a thin red line. “So you’d rather be one of them than a normal girl.”
Vera’s insides went cold but she refused to capitulate. Never, never show weakness to Kathleen Noble. She said, her voice thin, “Quit calling it ‘that place.’ It’s the Carmichael Institute for the Study of Magic.”
“Even the name is horrible,” Kathleen said. “Like it’s an asylum, instead of a school… Vera, darling, I know that Fort James would be so much better for you! You’ve never had a chance to be a normal girl before, have you? I’m sorry, it was partly my fault, I didn’t do anything when the other kids teased you about your father…but can’t you see, you don’t have to follow in that dreadful man’s footsteps anymore! You can be a normal girl, don’t you want that?”
Every year, Kathleen gave some variant of this speech on the train station. Vera had rapidly grown tired of it and it was part of the reason why she hated saying goodbye to her mother. She wanted nothing more than to look forward to the coming semester at Carmichael Institute, but instead every time she left on the train to Upstate New York, she was hurting inside like she’d just finished throwing up. Watching her other friends interact, even the ones who’d grown up with a nonmagical parent, made her jealous; none of them had to worry about disappointing their parents with every day they spent at the Institute.
“I know if you tried hard you could probably make the cheer team, maybe not varsity but pom at least,” Kathleen continued, her watery blue eyes creasing in pain. “If you really tried to lost weight and improve your image instead of skulking in your room all day, you’d be the darling of Fort James High. You can’t imagine how long I’ve dreamed of going to football games to watch you cheer and scream the old fight song along with you—”
Vera had heard such laments from her mother before and should have just laughed them off—Kathleen was being unrealistic. Ridiculous, even. She should’ve known that Vera had no hope of being normal and popular ever since the Institute’s scouts had identified her magic talent at the age of eleven. Vera had viewed their arrival as salvation from her dull suburban life in Fort James, and—even more ridiculously—a sign of her father’s legacy. Kathleen treated that day as the end of the world. And then started pretending it hadn’t even happened; she continued to wax romantic about her daughter the potential cheerleader and prom queen with disturbing sincerity. Sometimes Vera pitied her mother so much that she wanted to tell Kathleen that sure, okay, she’d go to Fort James High with all the other girls in town. Anything to make her mother happy for once in her life.
But there was the Institute and Zed and Ville and Louisa waiting for her and what would they say if they discovered that she’d left them to become a cheerleader? There was the magic her father had passed to her, of which she was proud no matter how much Mom tried to make her ashamed of it. Even if she didn’t have a guild yet, even if she didn’t have a dream or goal the way most of her high-powered classmates did, at least she knew she belonged at Carmichael more than she did at Fort James.
“And by now you should have your first boyfriend, you’re fourteen,” Kathleen continued. “When I was fourteen I dated Alec King for a semester, oh, he was the sweetest boy but just so clueless…you should have a boyfriend and you should go to slumber parties with your friends, maybe join the Spanish Club so you can go on that trip to Macchu Pichu, I did in my junior year, oh it was divine, oh, Vera…”
Kathleen was almost sobbing. Vera’s stomach twisted. “Mom, please…”
All Kathleen wanted was to talk with her daughter about school. And Vera would’ve gladly talked if she thought Kathleen would appreciate it. Tell her all about the guilds, maybe even share her woes about being unable to find one that fit her. Tell her about the Intramural Magic Tournament that was held every year and how she’d advanced to the quarterfinals last year only to be eliminated by Colleen Nevermore from the Duchess-Sky guild. Tell her about creating illusory lakes and forests in Intermediate Practical Illusion Weaving. Tell her about…Zed.
But she couldn’t because Kathleen wouldn’t understand and didn’t want to hear those things. And Vera had long given up on explaining her world to her mother. Most norms who had little contact with magicians were content to pretend the magical world had nothing to do with them, and Kathleen Noble was no exception. Even if she had married a mage and produced a magical daughter.
“Why couldn’t you have been a Jaguar this year, Vera?” Kathleen whispered.
The train whistle sounded in the distance and was soon followed by the steady chug-chug of wheels on rails. Vera straightened, clutched her suitcase handle tightly, and said, “Because I’m a magician, Mom.”
They said nothing more, didn’t even look at each other, until the train arrived and Vera stepped aboard and stored her luggage and settled into a window seat. She rested her cheek on her palm and gazed out of the window at the station beyond. There was her mother standing on the platform, with a look of utter devastation on her face.
Vera turned away and didn’t look out of the window until the train started moving.
~*~
What I really want to know is how Harry-Potter-ish this is. There's always a risk of a story about a magic school ending up too Potter-tastic. It should become abundantly clear soon that this is not a Harry Potter knockoff, but I'm worried a little about this first scene.
Thanks in advance for reviews.
I know you’ve got a ton of reviews right now, all of which are way better than anything I could put together, but I’m going to bug you anyway, because that’s just what I do. XD