Grey went off to Earth and Metal for Beginners, Finn went off to Air and Sound for Beginners, Emily went off to Hand-to-Hand Combat, and Aurora was headed to Healing. On her way there, Aurora couldn’t help but continue to wonder why she was placed in a healing class, but she figured she’d find that out when she got there. Her healing class was with the school nurse, so the classroom was near the nurse’s office. It was in the hall next to Registration and Enrollment and it was in a classroom on the first floor. Aurora made her way into the classroom, a bit nervous, seeing as it was technically her first day of a new class at a new school. She didn’t know what to expect, so she walked in and just sat down in a seat near the front of the room. This room’s layout was much like the one for History of Elements, rows upon rows of chairs and tables, plus a table at the front of the room as a desk. There was a projector and a screen at the front of the room as well.

A tall blonde-haired woman with blue eyes walked into the room. She was wearing a white blouse and a white skirt with a pair of black pumps. She had a smaller looking folder with her that she placed on her desk while the other students, all in water uniforms, filed into the classroom. There weren’t that many students in the class, maybe somewhere between ten and fifteen students. The woman addressed herself as Nurse Elize Rayne. After writing her name on the whiteboard, she pulled out some boxes and set them on her desk. She told new students to come and grab a notebook and some pens. Aurora got up and went to the front of the room, but only grabbed a notebook, seeing as she still had enough pens from her last class. Aurora returned to her seat and Nurse Rayne began passing out a packet that she had. It was a syllabus telling them what they were going to be doing this year. Nurse Rayne then began class with telling them to read the syllabus on their own and then she delved into the history of the use of water as a healing element. She went on to explain that that was the reason that Aurora and the rest of the students were there, to learn how to use their power to heal.

Nurse Rayne and the rest of the staff at the Academy had been watching a select group of people for some time. They watched as each of the people used their power in some way and decided it was best to bring them to the Academy. Now this select group was among them and Nurse Rayne and the rest of the Academy staff could continue to watch them grow and help them understand what it was they were meant to do.

The rest of class went on and Aurora’s notes were nothing more than pictures instead of words. It was almost as if she used pictures to communicate in her writing instead of using words. Aurora tried her best to listen to the lecture, but she was still confused as to her purpose in this class. Nurse Rayne said they were there to heal, but she wasn’t even sure she could heal with her power. She understood she controlled water, but she never understood it as a healing element. She always understood it as the element that could create a flood or drain all the water of a given source. If the nurse said that the water element could heal as well, then Aurora was willing to go along with this class. As Nurse Rayne dismissed her class, she kept her eye on Aurora as she walked out of the room, making mental notes and observations.

Meanwhile, the girls went to their next classes before lunch. Emily went to Gymnastics, Finn to Astronomy, Aurora to Swimming, and Grey to Earth Science. Aurora was looking forward to Swimming. She quickly made her way to Haring Hall and the pool. When she got there, a woman with black hair and brown eyes was standing by the pool, waiting for her class. Aurora was the first one there, so the woman gave her a packet and a key with a locker assignment attached to it and told her to go get ready for class. Aurora walked off to the locker room and got ready to swim.

Finn was walking to Astronomy, but she got a little turned around on the way there. Her sense of direction wasn’t the best, but she was trying! She knew if she didn’t hurry, she would be late for sure. She knew where the room was, having scoped it out on their exploration trip, but she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Being in the middle of her musings, she didn’t notice when she bumped into a boy wearing a white shirt and black pants. He had short brown hair and brown eyes and he was wearing the standard boys air uniform.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to bump into you. I’m just trying to make my way to my astronomy class, but I think I got a little turned around….” Finn said in a flustered manner.

“I think I’m going to the same class, so we can walk there together if you want. I’m Reed Skylark. It’s nice to meet you.”

“My name is Finley Luna, but you can call me Finn or Finny. It’s nice to meet you too.” She smiled, having met another friend.

They walked to the hall where their astronomy class was being held and were just a couple minutes shy of being late. The teacher, Mr. Edwin Stella, walked in after them and walked down to his desk at the front of the room. The room was much like the other lecture rooms, but the chairs were more on a slant and there were no desks. There was a projector and a white space on the ceiling meant to project star charts and other space objects. Mr. Stella then went and got a box out of a cabinet and Finn began to see a recurring theme. She got up and walked up to the front of the room and peered into the box and took out a notebook, then went back to her seat next to Reed. If Mr. Stella was surprised, he didn’t show it. He just put the box back in the cabinet and opened his folder he brought with him. He grabbed the pile of papers in the folder and began dispersing them throughout the room. It was another syllabus and the third one Finn had gotten today. She was looking forward to a lecture lesson, but the white ceiling began projecting a movie about the solar system, so all the students reclined in their chairs to watch. They watched the movie for the entire class period and then were dismissed.

Meanwhile, while that was going on, Emily was dressed in her red gymnasts leotard and already her teacher, Ms. Nadia Tate, was working her and her class hard. Upon arriving in the gym, Ms. Tate, a black-haired woman of average height was already passing out packets that looked like a syllabus to Emily and a key with a locker assignment attached to it. She went to the locker room, changed, pulled her hair up into a bun, and walked back out onto the floor. As she was waiting for Ms. Tate to begin her lesson, a slender boy with dark, short, spiky brown hair and brown eyes, wearing the air elemental uniform walked up to her.

“Hey, I think I’ve seen you somewhere before. My name is Jacob Morales, but you can call me Jake. What’s your name?” The boy asked her, speaking with a slight Spanish accent, living up to the origins of his last name.

“Is that some cheesy pick-up line that you’re using to get me to go out with you? In the event that it is, the answer is no, I will not go out with you, we just met. My name is Emily Rhodes, you may call me Emily. If you’re trying to go out with me, I don’t really date. Also, I’m sure you don’t know me from anywhere because I’m new here.”

“I thought I saw your face in a picture that my mom showed to me once, but maybe it wasn’t you. It was of a woman with red hair with two girls. One had red hair and one had strawberry blonde. I don’t really know why my mom had the photo, but now that I look, the red-haired girl looks familiar to me. I know I must sound crazy or something, but I think you’re the girl from the photo, even though I must say you look cuter now than in that picture.”

Emily looked at him for a moment, not even phased by the fact that he called her cute minutes into their first meeting.

“That is me in that photo, it’s me, my mom, and my little sister, but why does your mom have a picture of us?”

“I don’t know, all I know is that she told me that your mom and her are best friends and they still keep in touch, so she must have sent her that picture to show her what her life looks like now. Look, about the whole “going out” thing, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way, but you are cute. Since our moms are best friends, I was thinking we could be friends, if that’s possible.”

“That’s not really helping your case any, Morales. I already told you, I don’t really date, but friends sounds nice. Friends I can do. Oh, and for the record, don’t call me cute, it’s not doing you any favors.”

As they were talking, Ms. Tate was waiting to begin. She gave them both a look that said ‘don’t do that again,’ but otherwise let it go since it was the first day of class. After that, class went by as scheduled, and suddenly it was lunch time. Emily noted that once class began, time flew quickly by and Morales had quickly ceased hitting on her for the time being. She walked back to her locker, changed back into her uniform, gathered her things from her locker, and began making her way to Sendry Hall. A hand soon gripped her bicep, forcing her to slow down and stop. She turned to see who had grabbed her and she saw one Jake Morales.

“Hello Morales. What do you want?”

“You can call me Jake,” he said, chuckling, then continued, “I just wanted to see if you maybe wanted to have lunch with me.”

“I told you I don’t date, that sounds like a date to me.”

“It’s not, it’s just two friends having lunch together. Friends do that.”

“I know they do, but not every female has a male friend to do that with. Besides, I usually eat lunch with my roommates.”

“Oh, well then, maybe some other time then.”

She thought for a moment, praying to no certain god that she would regret this decision, and spoke up again with a rather surprising offer.

“You could eat lunch with us, if you wanted to.”

He let go of her and contemplated her offer. After thinking about it for a few minutes, he smiled and spoke.

“Sure, I’d like that.”

“Alright then, well, let’s make our way to Sendry then. They should be waiting for me, well, us, there. I’ll introduce you then.”

“Sounds good.”

They walked to Sendry Hall and walked into the cafe. She saw the blonde head of Finn, the silver head of Grey, and the black head of Aurora already in line getting their food. Emily and Jake did the same, each grabbing a red and a white plate, respectively. They each put food on their plates, thanking whomever that there wasn’t just one menu item today. Some days, there was only one menu item and if you didn’t like it, then too bad, you didn’t eat, but the days where there were choices was great. Emily grabbed a turkey sandwich, some packets of mayonnaise, a salad, a packet of salad dressing, and filled her mug with hot water for her Chamomile tea. She waited for Jake to finish getting his food and then they made their way over to the girls’ table. Finn, Grey, and Aurora saw him walk over with Emily and sit down. They looked at Emily as if to say ‘who is he?’ and as if reading minds, she began to speak.

“Finn, Grey, Aurora, this is Jacob Morales, but he prefers Jake. He’s an air type. Jake, this is Finn, she’s also an air type,” she pointed to Finn, the blonde, then continued, “this is Grey, she’s an earth type,” she pointed again at Grey, who shyly waved, “and, this is Aurora, she’s a water type.”

Aurora gave a small wave, not quite sure what to make of this boy. Neither did Finn, she was looking at him, trying to figure out if he was an alright person just by looking into his eyes. Finn determined that he seemed nice, but beyond that, she didn’t really know too much else. The rest of the lunch was spent in quiet conversation, about how Finn had met a boy, and how the rest of their classes were going. They talked more about this boy that Finn met and how his name was Reed Skylark and that he was an air type.

“You met Reed?” Jake asked Finn.

“Yeah, why?” Finn asked, a bit confused.

“He’s my roommate. He’s a good guy.”

Finn nodded and by then lunch had ended, so Jake and the girls cleaned up their plates and made their way out of Sendry Hall. They all had one more class to attend before the school day was over, so everyone headed their separate ways. Finn went to Flying, Grey to Gardening, Aurora to Water and Ice for Beginners, and Emily to Hand-to-Hand Combat. Emily began walking toward the gym again where her class was being held and noticed someone was following her. She could tell by the footfalls that were suspiciously close to her. She was able to sense an air type signature and immediately just thought it was Finn, so she thought nothing of it, but when she didn’t hear the person say anything, she got more suspicious. She thought of all the people who could control air and came up with four people that she knew or had heard of: Finn, Kari, Jake, and Reed. She turned around in a self-defense position, the strands of hair hanging down in her face softly brushing her forehead.

“Woah, whoa, I didn’t mean to startle you, Emily. I was just walking to your class with you.”

Emily stood down, knowing the person who had come up behind her.

“Morales, don’t scare me like that. I could’ve struck out at you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Why are you walking with me to my class?”

“Where are you headed?”

“Why are you answering my question with a question? I’m going to my hand-to-hand combat class. Where are you headed?”

“I have the same class.”

“Are you following me or something?”

“No, I’m not. Can we just get to class?”

“Fine, I’m sorry that I accused you of following me.”

“It’s alright, I knew how that looked. I’m really sorry I startled you.”

He began walking ahead of her and she ran to keep up with him.

“Jake, I’m sorry. I know you weren’t following me. You were just going to class, the same as me. You startled me by coming up behind me and surprised me. I just lashed out due to my instincts. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right, it won’t.”

He walked ahead of her, off to the gym.

“Jake—”

She tried to get him to wait again, but it was no use, he was already too far ahead of her. She ran to catch up with him, but also believed that if he didn’t want to be caught, he wouldn’t be. Now, she had two things to focus on: getting to class on time and figuring out a way to get Jake to forgive her and to make it up to him, but first she had to forgive herself for what she did to him. She drove him, a friend, away because of her baseless accusations. She didn’t know what to do, she had never done something like this before, but she had to try. She made it to the gym and went to her locker and grabbed her clothes to change into. She went into the adjacent bathroom and changed into a sleeveless, red turtleneck, black exercise pants, and black combat boots. She left her hair up in its bun and went out into the main gym area. She saw Jake and looked his way but felt uncharacteristically hurt when he didn’t look back at her. She didn’t really feel a lot of hurt in her life, and if she did, it was mostly from her sister and both of them got over whatever it was pretty quickly. Her sister was pretty much, for all intents and purposes, her best friend. She knew she had to find a way to make this right, and she had to figure something out fast. Class was pretty much a blur to her, between figuring something out with Jake and going through the drills Mr. Charles “Chuck” Blake had just showed them, it just went by so fast and soon it was over.

And then, she saw it, her godsend. After everyone had filed out of the gym, including Mr. Blake, Jake had stayed behind. She walked up to him, partially scared that he wouldn’t want to talk to her, and partially scared because she had just decided to wing this conversation, if she could call it one, with him.

“Jake, can we talk, please?”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Everything, anything, what happened earlier, whatever you want to talk about.”

“Emily, you accused me of following you.”

“Yes, and I apologized, something I’m not really good at. I’m not good at a lot of things, but you don’t need me to ramble on. I just want you to know that I’m sorry for what I did and for what I said. I’m not good with my feelings, I’m not good with romance or anything like that, and there I go rambling to a friend who I’m not even sure is my friend anymore, and I am so far out of character, because I’m usually this stoic, hot-headed girl that can become not-so-stoic in a heartbeat. You are the first friend that I’ve made in a long time…” she paused as he threw a punch her way. She ducked and continued, “…you are the first friend I’ve made in a long time and our moms are best friends. That’s why I thought we could be friends, but if you’re going to be like this, then maybe friends is off the table. Maybe I was wrong, maybe we can’t be friends.”

She dropped down and swung her leg out in a low roundhouse, trying to trip up his ankles and make him fall, but he also dropped down and caught her boot in his hands. He tugged it gently, making her lose her balance and fall. He caught her in his arms and pulled her into a hug. She immediately stiffened, having never really been hugged by another person other than her parents and sister. He felt her stiffen and wrapped her up tighter. She began to loosen when she figured out that he wasn’t going to let her go anytime soon.

“I’m sorry, Emily, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to act the way I did with you. I want to be friends with you, I really do. I got mad at you for accusing me of following you, which technically, I was, but only because I had the same class. You didn’t know until I told you and before that it looked like I was following you. Just promise me you won’t make any more accusations against me.”

“I won’t, unless I have proof of something. That’s a promise.”

“Great.” He smiled.

Then, he pulled her even closer and it appeared like he was going to make a non-friend move and kiss her. She immediately stiffened again and he felt her stiffen again. He pulled away, embarrassed that he even thought about kissing her now, especially after he had just said that he wanted to be friends with her.

“I-I’m sorry, Emily, I don’t know what came over me. We just had a talk about being friends and then like a jerk, I try and kiss you. I’m so embarrassed with myself right now. I didn’t mean for that to happen, I mean, well…never mind.”

She was a bit confused by his last statement, scared by the fact that he was going to kiss her, and secretly a bit saddened, but happy that he didn’t. He let go of her and she sat back on her feet. She looked at him for a few minutes before getting to her feet.

“I’m going to go change.”

He also got to his feet, still feeling embarrassed.

“Yeah, me too.”

They said no more to each other and went to their separate locker rooms to change back into their uniforms, even though it was the end of classes for the day. She changed as quickly as she could and walked out of the locker room. He walked out not too long after she did and they began to walk quietly back toward the dorms. They didn’t talk about what had just transpired on the way back to their rooms, and if it were up to Emily, they never would. Jake wanted to talk about it, but right now, he was just too embarrassed and didn’t know how to approach her about it after this. When they made their way to a crossroads, she headed toward Darwin Hall and he headed toward his residence hall.

Minutes later, she entered the dorm room and immediately went into her room to change out of her uniform. She changed into her corset top, left her skirt on, changed her socks to black tights, and changed her shoes to her black boots. She came back out into the living room and dropped down on the couch. Finn looked at her worriedly, while Grey and Aurora didn’t really know what to think. Emily made her way off the couch and went into the kitchen to make herself some tea. Finn followed her, worried about her behavior. While Emily was normally quiet and reserved, Finn could still tell there was something wrong.

“Emily, if you want to talk about anything, you can talk about it with me, if you want.”

Finn didn’t want to make Emily feel like she was obligated to talk to her about anything but wanted her to know she was there for her if she ever wanted to say something about anything. Finn began walking away when she heard quiet words being spoken. They were almost too quiet that she couldn’t hear them, but she managed to make out what was being said. Emily finished making her tea before speaking.

“I want to talk. I think this is something that I can’t bottle up, I need to get this out. Everyone else can hear this too.”

Finn nodded and they walked back to the living room, where they both sat back on the couch with Grey, Aurora being in her chair. Emily began telling them about what had happened not too long ago.

“After we left lunch and split up to go to our last classes, I saw Jake following me. Well, I accused him of following me, but it turns out he had the same class with me. We got into a sort of argument over it not too long after we agreed to be friends. I found out that my mom and his mom are best friends, but that’s beside my point. We sorted out our argument in class and then nearly got busted by our teacher for it. Class went by quickly and we both stayed behind to practice or something, I’m not sure why we really stayed behind. We kind of sparred with each other while still settling our argument, which I thought had been settled before we were nearly busted and then he grabbed me.”

The girls looked a bit shocked, Finn looking a bit angry, but Emily continued.

“Well, what happened was, I got down and tried to trip him up with a low roundhouse kick to his ankles, but he caught my boot and pulled me into him, catching me in a hug. We hugged and then he tried to kiss me. We didn’t kiss and he felt embarrassed about trying to kiss me when he just said that I was his friend. After that, we changed back into our uniforms and walked back to our dorm rooms. We haven’t talked about this yet, and to be frank, I really don’t want to. I think a part of him wanted to kiss me, but romance scares me. I’ve never experienced it before, and I don’t know how to handle something like that. Maybe there will be a time when I can handle it, but that time isn’t now.”

Emily took a sip of tea and tried to relax her body. She was only working herself up about this and she needed to relax. Finn hugged her while Grey and Aurora were only trying to process what she just said. In their opinion, she needed to deal with this on her own, only Emily could deal with this. Finn just kept hugging her, believing that everything would turn out alright.