Dear Mum and Dad,

Okay, it’s been over a week and I’m still alive. Do not Storm the Gates.

This place is fine actually. Weird, but fine. I’ve made a few friends and one of the girls is throwing a kind of getting-to-know-you party in a few days, so that should be fun. There’s actually only one magical class that my year level even take, so it’s not even like I’m just constantly surrounded by weird classes. Most of the others are pretty much what you’d get at home, although I have to use a translator to take some of them since I don’t speak Ido.

The really weird thing about the classes is the scheduling. This place doesn’t do anything so sensible as stick to an eight-to-three-thirty schedule; oh no, that would make too much sense. Instead, they’re just scheduled randomly throughout the day, and I guess it’s our responsibility to make sure we have an eight-hour gap in there somewhere for sleep? Ridiculous. Although I’m not complaining too hard because we’re only a couple of days in and I can already see some benefits to this; I scheduled everything so I’d have about an hour between as many classes as possible and I think it’s going to work out better than just having a huge gap at the end of the day like at home. There’s nothing I want to do here that takes any longer than an hour, and ‘I need to get ready for next class’ is a great way to get out of social situations.

And if anything that takes ages pops up, well; that’s what weekends are for, I guess. Although on my current schedule I’m sleeping in the afternoon so my breakfast is when the cafeteria is serving dinner food, but whatever. The international nature of the school means there’s a wide variety of food at any time anyway; they have fish soup for breakfast. Who eats fish soup for breakfast?! Several Asian countries, apparently!

Jesus, you’d think I’d have more to write about, wouldn’t you? Uh… let’s see. I got an unexpected bonus to my stipend here. I won’t go into the details except to say that my lawyer is a genius, but money’s not going to be a problem while I’m here. If you were planning on sending any, there’s no need. Oh, and tell Chelsea and Melissa that I’m going to use this six months to find out where the magic school is located in the world. See if Chelsea can beat THAT.

You’ll want to know about my classes, I guess. You’ll be gratified to know that I chose sensibly, on the basis that slacking off this semester will make next year at home way harder. I dropped Japanese but I’m sure I can catch up. Mr Cooper is our maths teacher but I haven’t had a class with him yet. Classes are really short, and so far there hasn’t been a huge amount of homework, but it’s only been a couple of days so I don’t know if that means anything? It’s all basic, ‘list the different categories of spells’, ‘what is the definition of a living organism’ type stuff. I assume they’ll make us do real work later.

And no, the curse hasn’t acted up any more since it got out of my control and attacked Matt. My lawyer thinks we have nothing to worry about at all re: the court case, by the way.

I’m missing you guys like crazy. I wish they had real internet here so we could video chat or something. Have they set a date for the trial yet? I want to know when I’ll get to see you again.

With love,

Kayden

I read over the letter again. It’d do – no mention of anything that’d make them want to pull me out of school. Light on details, perhaps, but it had all the information that my parents would want to know. I sealed it in an envelope and brushed aside the curtains on my bed.

“Hey, Max?”

Max turned in his seat at the desk he’d set up in the main part of the room. “Mm?”

“You know you have a desk of your own behind your bed, right?”

“My apologies – is me being here bothering you?”

“No, not at all. You just confuse the hell out of me. Someone could nick the stuff you leave out there.”

“Only you and Kylie have access to this room, and if you are truly that desperate for a hardcopy of On The Nature Of Qi And Magical Flow: A Collection Of Essays In Their Original Latin, then I will gladly buy you a copy for your birthday.”

“You speak Latin?”

“Very poorly, I am afraid.”

“Then how are you reading that?”

“Extremely slowly.”

“Why?!”

At that point, Kylie slumped into the room, tossed her table carelessly onto her bed, and threw herself down after it. “I think I’ll quit French,” she announced.

“You’ve had one lesson.”

“Yeah, and it sucked. Max, what are you doing?”

“Homework.”

“I thought you were reading about Latin magic or something,” I said.

“I am reading about theories on magical flow through the body. The essays just happen to be in Latin. For Instruktanto Miratova’s assignment.”

“‘List and briefly describe the different categories of spells’?” Kylie asked. “Oh god, are we going to need Latin for that?”

“Well, no. That part should only take a few minutes. But she specifies to use the Cardinal system, the modern classification system, so I want to compare it to the old Liona and Xu systems and expand on its ‘grey areas’. It seemed neater to open with a paragraph or two about general energy channelling theories before moving into the pros and cons of each system, and ending with the specific categories of Cardinal classification.”

Kylie and I exchanged a look.

“I don’t know what most of those words mean,” Kylie admitted, “but I was just gonna do dot points.”

“Alania Miratova would accept dot points,” Max admitted. “But if I can make the effort, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.” He slammed the book shut. “On an unrelated note, would you two be willing to come shopping with me?”

“You know you sound like a robot when you talk like that, right?” Kylie asked.

“Shopping for what?” I asked.

“Outfits for Magista’s party.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’m against the whole thing, but – ”

“Then we just don’t go,” Kylie shrugged.

“What? No! You have to go!”

“Why?”

“Not going would send completely the wrong message!”

“Is that message ‘I don’t want to do this weird mage politics thing’? Because that sounds like the right message. That’s why you’re rooming with us instead of them, right? We find some other polite excuse to refuse to go; problem solved.”

Max rubbed his temples. “There are limits. There are social costs one must pay for these things, you see?”

“No,” I cut in. “We don’t.”

“Don’t talk for me,” Kylie said. “I do see. I just don’t care. I’m not going to play their game, and if you don’t want to, you shouldn’t, either.”

Max looked trapped. I stepped in. “Jesus, Kylie, it’s just a party. If we must make the great and arduous sacrifice of taking a night off, dressing up and eating rich people food, I for one think that’s a sacrifice we should make for our dear friend.”

This did not have the mood lightening effect I was hoping for. Both Max and Kylie glared at me.

“I understand that for you, this school and these people are unimportant,” Max said acidly, “but I would appreciate it if you did not treat my entire future like a joke. Just because something does not matter to you doesn’t meant that it does not matter.”

“You know what doesn’t matter to me?” Kylie asked. “Playing barbie doll for some rich kid to impress his rich friends. It’s not ‘just a party’, Kayden, because if we go, Magista’s going to invite us to more, and Max is going to freak out every time, and we’ll spend this semester being chess pieces in some weird invisible game between other people. I get enough of that at home, and Max, you aren’t my mum.”

“I don’t want you involved in this sort of thing any more than you do!” Max snapped. “I don’t want me involved in these stupid clique games! But ‘Dorm Australia’ was your idea, remember? Do not act like I am imposing on you by attempting to advise you on something you got yourself into in the first place!”

“Oh, well, there’s some fine print! Having you room with us was supposed to help you get away from people you didn’t like, not pull us into the mess as well! Maybe you should’ve brought that up in advance rather than just expecting us to get trapped in your weird social circle and play along?”

“Brought what up in advance? You came up with the logic behind this arrangement! ‘Tell them you can’t room with them because you agreed to stay with us for now and help us’; how did you expect that to be taken? What statement were you trying to make? I understand that commonfolk do things differently, but do you honestly expect me to believe that you’re stupid as well as ignorant? I don’t – ”

“I’m sorry, what did you just call me?”

“I called you ignorant, and accused you of feigning stupidity to absolve yourself of blame for your own actions. Is that clear enough, or do I need to rephrase?”

“Well, yes, I suppose stupidity is something I’d have to fake, unlike the dude who’s basing his life on what a couple of high schoolers think of him. But you know what? This still doesn’t sound like my problem.”

“This was a mistake,” Max said. “Forming this dormitory was a mistake.” He picked up his tablet and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

I raised a brow at Kylie. “At least it’s only six months, right?”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pretend we’re the same just because we’re both cursed. You’ve been doing it ever since we met and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. You’re nice for an obnoxious twit, Kayden, but I really don’t have the patience to do that right now.”

“You don’t have the patience for someone to be the bare minimum of vaguely personable to you?” I asked.

“Oh god, you’re talking like him. It’s catching. Max was right; this dorm was a mistake.”

“I’m sorry, what? You guys have one little fight and suddenly, what, none of us can be friends any more?”

“It’s not about him. What makes you think we should be friends?”

“What?”

“Let me be clearer. Would you have ever even talked to me if it wasn’t for the thing on my face?”

“Well, we came here in the same van…”

“So we would’ve said hi to each other, sure. And then?”

“I don’t know.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a ‘no’, then. You didn’t know anything about me but you were convinced we were similar. The first thing you said to me when we were alone was ‘I’m like you’. But we’re not similar; we’re both just cursed. I came here because I’m not going to let my curse dictate my life. I’m not going to let your curse dictate my life, either.”

“If your curse can’t dictate your life, why did you save me?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped, closing her bedcurtains. I stared for a few seconds at the fabric, the forcefield preventing me from pushing it back, then snatched up my letter and stalked out to go and post it.

What the hell had just happened?