Young Writers Society

Dear Moms,

Honestly, school isn't quite living up to my expectations. When you guys told me that they had secretly submitted an application to the best high school in the worlds for learning magic, I was thrilled, of course. A chance at getting into Oakwood Prep? All of the greatest minds of this generation were taught there when they were kids! It's a nerd like me's dream come true. I didn't think I'd have a chance in Hell in getting in, of course; You guys know that grades hover in the B's even with all of the extra time I put in. But I have to say, there was this crazy hope buried somewhere deep in my head that maybe, just maybe, I had a shot.

Well, suffice it to say that now I'm here, I'm not quite so elated. Only three days in and already I feel like the biggest screwup in the school. Now it feels like my priorities are less on becoming a world-famous mage and more on survival. It's not just that I miss you guys, either. Sure, my arrival was just as grand as I'd hoped: All the freshmen were flown in on the back of this dragon who chatted to us and told lame jokes all the way there. And god, the flight... I've never been up so high before. Everything was just specks, cold and small and miles below us. Entire villages passed by in seconds, whisked away in the blisteringly cold winds that buffeted us. But once I arrived, I was swiftly disillusioned. Oakwood is a school, after all, and nothing really goes well for me at school.

So I was walking up to the floating amphitheater where we were supposed to have orientation meeting and this group of older students came up behind me. I didn't really think much of it until I got hit in the back of the head with a huge pile of slush. I fell down and gasped, but it came out as a kind of nasty squawk. And that was when I realized: that stupid snowball had a spell in it. So, that was actually all I could do for a minute. I was just laying there with my face covered in snow, squawking like a baby wyvern while everyone laughed. My face was burning with shame, and the stench from the hex filled my nostrils with rotten eggs. Finally, the charm wore off, but the assholes who hit me were still cackling.

Being the idiot I am, I marched up and snarled, "Listen, jerkwads. I'm just trying to get to orientation. I don't want any trouble. But you throw another enchanted snowball at me and we're going to have a problem."

The sprite in front cackled. "Oh yeah, lumpy? What're you gonna do, wave your application at us?"

That's when I realized. They hadn't chosen me just because I was a convenient target. These upperclassmen were fucking racist. I should have known, to be honest. These guys could've picked on any one of us freshmen, but no. They chose the one demon. "Just leave me alone."

Suddenly, the whole group shifted subtly to block my path. The sprite continued, "You know who we are? We're the best mages in the damn school. And we don't appreciate nosy little demons who get in the way."

"But I wasn't in the way!" I objected. "I was walking ahead of you before you hit me!"

"I dunno," he drawled, "I have an awful lot of connections in this school, you little amphibian, and I bet they'd find it in them to take my side... With a little persuasion."

I bristled, and, against my better judgement, I snapped. "First, I'm a reptile, not an amphibian. Second, my Moms are some pretty successful lawyers, and bribery will get you nowhere with them. And third, I think I finally figured out why you hate me. You're just some stuck-up bullying daddy's boy, aren't you? You don't have a thing to offer the world, so you go after anyone different from yourself because it's the only way you can find to make yourself feel good. Well, you know what? I've got an orientation to go to, so bye, you pathetic little shit."

It was only as his furious shadow loomed over mine that I realized my mistake.

Three hours later in the emergency ward, I'm writing this letter to you. I don't really have anything better to do right now, as my leg is broken (among other things) and the medic says that I can't possibly attend class for at least a few days. My only happiness in this stupid room comes from the bed next to me, where the sprite lies unconscious, covered head to toe with bandages and burns.

I hope you're all doing well! Your injured son,

Fallstreak the Harrassed

Iro thought he'd been sleeping, but the next thing he knew he was getting slapped in the face. Iro jolted up, looking around the dark canvas tent. He listened carefully, only to hear crickets in the night and . . . mumbling.

"I told you . . ." Iro turned to the groaning Marasheni that lay beside him, her eyes fully shut but hands flailing this way and that. "It's too cold! Go away!" She continued to gripe.

"What's too cold?" Iro asked, amusingly.

"It!" Was the grumbled reply. "Go back to th- tree!" Mar ordered, her head tossing to the side. Iro chuckeled.

"What tree?"

"Ugh. Youh-don't know anythang."

"I should have known you didn't need to be awake to insult me." Iro said.

"Why hurmphe-ga-awaay?" Mar asked him.

"Because I don't want to." Iro played along.

"Don't st-ah-art with the trowing again!" Mar said.

"I didn't throw anything." Iro defended.

"Ugh, yogu-moron. Go away."

"Why should I leave?" Iro asked.

"It's too c-hold. Are-fum-leee." Mar's face took on a pouty look in the dim light.

"Well I don't know where you've been living, but I'm about to be broiled."

"Stop iht!"

"Stop what?"

"Erg. Iro!"

"What is it Mar?' Iro said, laughing. He bent down beside her and poked gently at her shoulder.

"You!" She said. clear as day. Iro bolted back for a moment, scared she had woken up, but all was set right as Mar said. "You throw another enchanted snowball at me and we're going to have a problem!" Iro threw his head back and laughed, he probably woke up half the camp while doing it, but Mar stayed in her dreaming state.

"What did you do!" She said. "Now my shirt is ruined! Youh-idyot Iro! Now the chair will find me."

"What?" Iro couldn't stop laughing. "What chair?"

"Theh-one that's goin' to ruhn-you over, and I'll laugh."

"I'll be sure to look out then." Iro said, pursing his lips together to keep from giggling. "Sorry I ruined your shirt." He added.

"If youh-whhere sorry it'd still beh-blue." Mar mumbled.

"But I am sorry Mar."

"Go get run over." She said, turning over to the other side of the tent. Iro laughed again, lying his head back onto the pillow.

Spat.

Pat Watterson clenched his jaw as another wad of snow hit the back of his dress jacket. It stuck for a moment before it started melting into the fabric, sending icy fingers down his back. He clenched a fist around his car keys, but knew better than to speed up his pace. That hadn’t gone well before. He set his gaze firmly on the ground before him and kept walking.

The wind smelled of the pine that lined the ice-slicked road, and the sun was obscured by a gray curtain of snow clouds. His dress shoes crunched in the gravel. It was so calm and quiet that he could almost forget that there was a young girl following him, and had been for the past half hour. By now, his jacket was soaked, his shoes were ruined, and his body was clutched by spasms of shivering whenever the breeze picked up.

Spat.

This time, the snow hit Pat in the back of the neck, and melted straight between his shoulder blades. He inhaled sharply, unable to resist the jump in discomfort. The girl laughed- the first sound since she had tried to talk to him after his car broke down. He had ignored her then, but his anger prevented her from ignoring her now. He whipped around, lips curling.

“You throw another enchanted snowball at me and we’re going to have a problem.”

The girl’s gray eyes first widened with surprise that he had acknowledged her, then tightened with glee.

“Oh, excellent,” she chirped. “As if there aren’t enough problems in the world.”

Her fingers twisted, and Pat felt his heart sink when he saw the snowball floating above her palm. She watched it pensively, auburn hair hanging in soft curls about her face.

“Actually, that’s what I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Problems of the world. Or, more specifically, the ones you’ve caused.” She glanced up, her face open and bright. “A shame that your car had to break down in the middle of snowy nowhere for this chat to happen, but hey. Maybe it was fate.”

She grinned cheerfully, and he knew full well that none of this was fate. His stomach twisted just looking at her. She had magical being written all over.

Her feet were bare, for one. And she wore a bright yellow sundress- a flimsy, flowy one, obviously meant for summer. She didn’t seem to mind the sharp rocks poking into her heels, nor was there any indication that the biting cold bothered her. She couldn’t have been more than 14 years old, but there was an ominous air to her, like she was much more than she appeared, more powerful than you’d think, underestimated- as if she was the very snowstorm brewing in the sky above.

There was also the tattoo, which was always a dead give-away.

Pat finally pulled his frightened gaze to her eyes- those gray, glassy eyes- and asked what he’d been thinking for the past mile of walking.

“Who are you?”

“Me?” She blinked innocently. “Oh, I’m just little ol’ Robin. I’m nothing.” She gave a small bow and locked him with a deadly gaze. “According to your kind, that is.”

Darkness had flooded her expression, but as soon as it had came, it was gone.

“But I know who you are!” she said cheerfully. “You’re Pat Watterson, the Esteemed Councilman. The one who passed the Magical Being Restriction Act.”

Pat’s chest constricted, and he had to take small breaths to keep the rising panic down in his chest. So that’s what this was about. Of course.

He struggled to keep his expression neutral, but he knew that he had paled, that his shoulders were tense. He said nothing.

Robin tilted her head, her smile smug. She had a gap between her front teeth.

Pat grit his teeth and stared into her eyes. “Yes.”

“Knew it!” she exclaimed, tilting back onto her heels. “Well, Mr. Pat, I happen to be a magical creature myself.” She glanced down at the still-spinning snowball in her hand, at her bare feet, and grinned. “Shocking, I know.”

The man eyed the tattoo on her wrist. “Get to the point.”

Robin twirled a lock of hair around her index finger. “Impatient, huh? But fine, here you go: I want you to get rid of it.”

Pat blinked in confusion. “What?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “The Act, dummy.”

“But-”

Robin silenced him by swiftly stepping forward and pressing a finger to his lips. Pat recoiled. Her skin was so cold that it burned.

“It’s not up for discussion, Mr. Pat.” Her eyes bore through him. “You need to get rid of the Magical Beings Restriction Act, or--”

He flinched when Robin suddenly shoved her phone at his face. It took him a few moments to focus on the bright screen and recognize the pictures as part of her camera reel. His heart dropped.

Robin smiled dryly. “These are your children, no? Sofia and Andrew, if I’m not mistaken.” She turned the phone back towards her and inspected it closely, ignoring Pat’s stricken expression. “Nice house you’ve got. Lovely kids.”

She turned the phone off and put it back in her pocket. Her gray eyes locked on his, and Pat knew that he had been right to fear her. “I’d keep an eye on them, though. I’ve heard that this year’s gonna have one hell of a winter.”

She grinned and clapped his shoulder. Pat winced and avoided her gaze. He wanted to slap her. How dare she threaten his family? But instead, he stood stiffly as she began to skip away, sundress fluttering in the icy winter breeze.

“Make the Act gone by next week, Pat!” she called cheerfully over her shoulder. “After that, the storms come.”

He watched her disappear into the white woods, his insides writhing. He shivered violently, then turned around. The sun had reappeared from behind the clouds, and the snowfall had mercifully stopped.

Pat started walking.

“Jared, I swear…” I said, furiously mashing buttons on my controller. He was winning the fight, and I don’t lose.

“Look,” he said, lying in the bed next to me. “If you wanna win this game, you gotta be good.” I reached over and pushed him slightly with one hand, the other still playing the controller. I kept my eyes on the screen, and he winced. I regretted it as soon as I did.

“Take it easy, man,” he said, keeping his hands on the controller and his eyes glued to the TV. “I don’t have much time left, and I really don’t want to you know… speed up the process.”

I pried my eyes away from the screen for just a second, and looked at him. He was wearing an old sweatshirt, one that had, at one point, been almost too small for him. He had thinned since then, wilted into himself like a dying flower. His narrow fingers were still quick and nimble on the buttons, but they were sickly, veiny, like a newly hatched baby bird. Whenever he wore hoodies, he always had the hood up.

In the brief moment I wasn’t looking at the screen, Jared had already pinned my character down, and started using his special attack on me. He threw snowball after snowball at my fighter, so quickly that I couldn’t get up, and certainly not attack.

“Jared, stop spamming! That’s practically cheating!” He ignored my plea, a wicked grin playing across his face. He was paler than he used to be, but his smile was still the same. Still warm, with a crooked tooth, but he was just more… absent.

“You throw another enchanted snowball at me and we’re going to have a problem.”

“You already have a problem, Ahmed. You’re losing.”

He was being unfair, and we both knew it. But I didn’t have the heart to force him to stop. He seemed happy, and I couldn’t take that away from him, not now. I as I was pummeled to a pulp, watched as my character’s life bar at the top of the screen slowly receded, until the big, bloody red letters spelled my defeat across the screen.

“Another round?” I offered, looking at him sitting on the bed. He was looking at the controller in his hands, fingering the buttons and joysticks. Still on his face was the remains of a smile, like he was remembering a fond memory.

“Do you think that’s what it’s like for all of us?” Jared asked, his gaze still on the controller.

“What do you mean?”

He exhaled in amusement, and closed his eyes. “You know, like a big life bar that no one can see, and slowly it just starts... going down?”

I stayed silent, no words to respond forming in my brain. Jared rubbed his face with his hand.

“And, ‘cause you can’t see it,” his voice cracked, “you never know when you’re gonna… you know,” he motioned at the screen, at the letters on the screen spelling out fatality. The smile was gone from his face.

I was still silent.

He dropped his arm and looked back at the controller in his hands, his fingers this time still. “I wonder… I wonder where my life is right now. I mean, at the end of, course. But I wonder… I wonder how close. I wanna know what it looks like”

I felt like an idiot. A mute idiot. Why couldn’t I say anything? What was I supposed to say? What could I say? Nothing could make it better, make it go away. All I could do is stare at him, the shrunken and deflated version of my best friend, sitting and trying to undertake his own mortality. He was 17, he didn’t deserve this.

“Ahmed?” He asked, this time looking at me.

“Yeah?”

He took in a breath, and gave me a grave expression. “If you could see it, your life bar, would you look?”

I stared at him, his sunken face, his pallid skin, the dark rings around his eyes. Even though he covered it, you could still see his bald head hidden underneath his hood.

“No, I don’t think I would look.”

Jared chuckled again, once more collapsing his gaze to his controller. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Jared hadn’t had the option. Jared had seen his life bar, handed to him by a doctor on a clipboard five months ago. His mother had seen it, his family had seen it, they all knew when it was game over for him.

On the screen, the ‘play again?’ button flashed.

Jared didn’t get another try. He got no extra life. It was already game over.

He looked back up at me.

“Wanna try again?” he asked.