Chapter 4

Stuck With the New Kid

Catherine

I lightly touched down in the Dragons classroom, elegant and graceful. Emily, on the other hand, was shuddering and gasping for breath, like she was experiencing some kind of seizure.
“W-what j-just happened?” she stuttered.
I glanced at her. “We transported. Duh. Gosh, did that seriously scare you? I suppose you’d never done it before...” I trailed off. “Are you okay?” Emily sat on the classroom floor with a thud.
Emily shuddered. “J-just fine,” she replied, taking a deep breath. “Although I would prefer not to do that again.”
She stood up, messed with her blond hair, and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. It was almost endearing.
“Eh, don’t worry, I usually don’t transport to my classes. It’s a lot harder than you would think.”

Ah, well, things could be worse, I thought as I walked to my seat. She could have done something totally embarrassing, like puking. I shuddered at that thought. I would never have been able to live that down.

I watched Emily walk up to the teacher. I almost ran up there and pulled her back. We had a substitute, and Mr. Hupfen at that. That freak show would reduce Emily to hysterics by the end of the class, I was sure. But she was up there before I could stop her. I saw her begin to ask a question, but the substitute took one look at her and pointed her to the empty seat at my desk. Great, I thought.

“Class!” he announced in a heavy accent that nobody could ever place. “Take out your books!”

Emily shot me a pleading glance that I understood to say, Can I share?

I sighed and moved my book to the center of the table. Mr. Hupfen turned from the board, saw Emily with my book, and exclaimed with power a drill sergeant would be proud of, “You there! Where’s your book?”

“M-me?” Emily quavered. “I-I don’t have one....”

“No excuses!” he roared.

“Mr. Hupfen?” I interrupted. “She’s new, and she hasn’t gotten any books yet.”

The teacher turned to me as if he had forgotten Emily was there. “Ah, Catherine. I see. Well that’s a perfectly acceptable excuse. Let us begin the lesson.” He turned to the board and began to write.

Emily turned to me yet again, this time with an incredulous look on her face. “What--?” she choked out.

“I’m the star student. I’m sure Mr. Dracon left a note about me,” I replied.

“So... you like dragons, then?” she whispered.
“I love dragons. I know everything there is to know about them. Everyone in my family has a diploma in Dragons, and I’m on my way to getting one. Should be easy,” I answered.
Mr. Hupfen turned again. “Detention, Miss Rhodes. No talking,” he declared. Emily spluttered and looked at me as if to say, What the heck did I do? I shrugged. I could see where she was coming from, as she was probably the only person in the class that hadn’t actually been talking.

Mr. Hupfen then announced to the class, “We’ll be reviewing three chapters today. Turn to chapter two. Read here,” he said, holding up his book and pointing, “Now here. And here. No, Miss Rhodes, here. Detention.”

I snorted as Emily looked confused and terrified.

Mr. Hupfen continued, “Now turn the page. No, wait, skip lesson three, I don’t like it. Now, turn the page and read here.” He paused for just a moment, and then continued as if everyone had read the page already. We were all used to it, since Mr. Hupfen had been substituting all week, but Emily looked like she was close to hysterics.

Mr. Hupfen then had us finish the next chapter. Poor Emily gained three more detentions in the process. When the substitute finally finished his scattered lesson, he announced, “Now, class, pop quiz on chapter three.”

Emily burst out in a shrill voice, “Mr. Hupfen, you didn’t teach us that lesson!”

I felt sorry for the kid when Mr. Hupfen retorted, “Well, whose fault is that?” and gave her three more detentions.

Regardless of Emily’s argument, we took the quiz. Everyone but Emily aced it. In fact, Emily completely failed it. For that, she was given yet another detention. When the bell rang and Emily and I walked out, she was nearly sobbing. I was right about her ending in hysterics, I thought.

“Catherine! What did I do?” she asked in a strangled voice. “I-- just got-- nine detentions.”

“Oh, Mr. Hupfen gives everyone detentions, don’t worry. Anyways, Mr. Dracon will be back on Monday.” I replied. I then grabbed her wrist and transported us again.

We touched down in Wizards, and Emily was gasping like a fish out of water. “Catherine! I told you-- I didn’t want-- to do that again!” She bleated feebly when she found her voice. “And I thought you said that you didn’t usually do that!”

“Hey, we needed to get to class, and I didn’t feel like walking!” I smiled, knowing I sounded lazy.

I led her to a seat next to mine to recuperate, and went up to talk to the tall black woman in deep blue robes in the front of the room, Mrs. Osborne.

“Mrs. Osborne? This is Emily Rhodes,” I began. “She’s new, and a little bit confused right now.”

Mrs. Osborne looked up from some papers on her desk. “Ah, yes. And I see you sat her in the empty seat. Thank you, Catherine. If you could help her throughout the lesson, I would appreciate it.”

“Of course, Mrs. Osborne,” I replied.

I walked back to my seat. As I sat down, Emily punched my arm. I barely felt it, but she must have thought it was a pretty hard punch. “Don’t ever transport me again,” she muttered.

Mrs. Osborne looked up and cleared her throat. “Class, let us begin the lesson,” she announced. She noticed Emily slumped over her desk and walked over. She stood in front of the desk and said, “Miss Rhodes, for a spell to function, you need discipline. And I discipline my students quite sternly. Sit up. We can discuss this in detention on Saturday.”

Emily moved nervously in her seat. “I’ve already got nine detentions for this Saturday, Mrs. Osborne. I apologize.”

The teacher’s stern expression changed swiftly to one of utter astonishment. “Dear girl, how did you manage to receive nine detentions on your first day?”

I decided to help Emily out. “Mrs. Osborne, we just came from Mr. Hupfen’s class. He doesn’t like her too much.”

Mrs. Osborne instantly looked sympathetic. “Oh, Emily. Forget the detentions he gave you, they won’t count. And for the trouble you’ve been through, forget the detention I just gave you. Nobody should go through that on their first day here at Candlewick,” she fussed. Emily’s weary smile assured me that she felt better about the day.

The class went by quite uneventfully afterwards, and Emily followed Willy out the door when the bell rang. I stretched as I stood up, and transported myself to my next class.

When I arrived out in the open field, I jogged over to the dragon dwelling, which was pretty much a really big field with a large barn near the mountain for the dragons. Dragon Field Work was my favorite class. Where else in the school could you actually work with dragons? Mr. Hupfen let us have free reign in this class, too. He just stayed holed up in the little building at the end of the field doing who-knows-what.

I walked over to my hatchling dragon, Serengeti. His scales were a greenish brown, and although he wasn’t the prettiest thing, he was the largest, strongest, and smartest dragon in the class. The dragon had bonded with me, too. All those who have bonded with a dragon have a tattoo that our dragons burned onto us. It doesn’t hurt when we receive it because it’s a magical fire that the dragon can only breathe out once. Thus, a dragon can only ever bond to one human.

As soon as Serengeti saw me, his eyes lit up and he started to shake all over with excitement. I smiled at his enthusiasm. He had almost doubled in size since last month, and would be big enough to ride in a couple of months. Just the prospect of soaring through the clouds with him gave me shivers. I led Serengeti out of the barn so he could run around and stretch his wings.

I rubbed Serengeti under the chin, and then turned around to try to find his brush. I walked over to the supplies rack, where I found my friend Lysander. He was a tall dark-skinned boy in his fourth year. He’d been my friend since last year, when I had admired his stunning ice-blue frost dragon, Annarie.

“Hey, Zander,” I said.

Lysander glanced over. “Oh, hey, Cat. You came later than usual, I was just wondering where you were.”

I sighed. “There’s actually a story behind it. It started when I sat down in Mythology this morning. We were listening to Mrs. Mason review yesterday’s quiz--”

“Oh yeah! She gave it to my class too. And I got a high C!”

“Nice!” I congratulated him. We high-fived, and then I continued. “Okay, where was I... oh, right! Anyway, this short blond girl burst in and asked if it was Mythology. So she had woken up late, I guess. She was new, so Mrs. Mason gave her the dorm assignment. Guess what dorm she got.”

Lysander winced in sympathy. “Yours? Sucks for you....”

“I know, right? She’s not too bad, I guess, just... I don’t know... so... naive. She grew up in an outsider town, one of those places that refuses to have anything to do with the rest of the world. She doesn’t know anything about magic.”

“I take it she’s not a wizard, then?”

“Nope. A fairy, of all things. She doesn’t even know what percentage fairy blood, because she’s an orphan. Poor kid. But she grew up with a fairy graduate, because the woman who runs the “orphanage” she lived in was in Fairies. She keeps going on about some kind of journal, too, whatever that may be.”

“Could it be some kind of text book?”

“The Fairy kids have textbooks?”

“Huh. Good point. Have you ever seen one? What would they even need one for?” he asked.

“Exactly. Anyways, she’s in Pirates right now, and--”

Lysander cut me off. “She’s in Fairies... and she’s taking Pirates?”

“Yup. She’s a little... overenthusiastic when it comes to academics. So I imagine that Willy will be telling the story at lunch while she flips out,” I laughed. “But the poor kid doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into, taking all these classes. I feel kind of bad. She’s easy to like, kind of an endearing little sister, but she’s a total nerd. She’ll drop a few classes by the end of the year, just wait!”

“No doubt,” he replied. “I better get back to Annarie, she wants to fly.”

“All right, I’m sure Serengeti wants to stretch his wings.”

We walked over to the dragons and led them out of the barn. I started to laugh when Serengeti shot past me and out into the field. From there, he stretched his wings and flapped them a little bit until he was off the ground. He flew a couple of large circles a few feet off the ground, and lightly touched down. I walked over and he happily puffed some smoke out of his nose.

“Aw, I missed you too, Serengeti! How’s my boy?” I cooed.

I grabbed the wire brush and big cloth from my belt and set to work cleaning his scales up. Serengeti loved being brushed, so he wiggled delightedly while I worked. I sternly ordered, “Serengeti, sit still so I can brush you!” Serengeti sat still, because he knew he would get brushed again if he did.

After I finished his grooming, I led Serengeti over to the dragon nook. The dragon nook was the place we let the dragons hang out while we cleaned their stalls. I shooed Serengeti in and walked back to the dwelling. I chatted amicably with Lysander while I cleaned, and time flew by. I grabbed Serengeti from the nook and led him into his stall. He was tired, and laid down in his nest right away.

“Bye, Serengeti! I’ll bring you a new friend later!” I whispered, thinking of Emily. I shut the door and locked it with a rune to keep Serengeti from doing anything stupid like I knew he would if something wasn’t containing him. As I walked out of the dwelling, the bell rang. I started to the cafeteria.

○○○

I immediately sat in my seat before anyone else would sit in the area. After putting my stuff down, I spotted Willy walking in, with Emily in tow. I was pleased to see that Emily wasn’t injured or maimed in any way from her last class, but she was terrified nonetheless.

I sighed. “What happened this time?” I asked Willy as soon as he sat down at the lunch table.

He laughed. “Let’s just say little miss fairy over there isn’t cut out for Pirates.”

I groaned. “What did she do?”

Willy chuckled for a moment and answered me, “Oh, just failed to do just about every simple thing we were assigned today.”

I looked at Emily. She had her head on the table and was obviously a mental wreck. I figured that she had never failed a subject before.

Jack walked over, took one look at Emily, and said, “What’s up with her?”

Emily sat up. She took a moment to compose herself and opened her eyes. She was about to reply to Jack, but she stopped, her jaw hanging open.

I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that she was confused. Jack’s hair was all spiked up, and it was a vivid shade of electric blue, with each tip a scorching red-orange. Along with the change of hair color, his eyes, instead of being the normal silvery-blue, were a bright, neon orange. This kind of thing happened whenever he messed up a really complicated spell, and since he had just come from Wizard Field Work, Willy and I weren’t all that surprised with the dramatic change in appearance. Emily, however, was a different story.

“Jack!” she exclaimed. “What happened?”

“What? Oh, that,” he trailed off as he realized Emily was looking at his hair. “Yeah, I channel my magic into my eye and hair color when it goes wrong. It’ll wear off by tomorrow.”

Emily stared at him, utterly confused.

“...I mean, when my spells go wrong, they change the color of my eyes and hair instead of exploding in my face,” he explained.
Emily sighed, exasperated. “I suppose I should be used to things like this happening by now,” she wearily stated to no one in particular.

I felt compelled to reply. “Actually, Emily, most people would have run out screaming by now. You’re doing great.”

Emily stared at me. “Really?”

“No, most people already know everything about Candlewick, and it doesn’t bother them in the slightest.” I took a breath. “Do you even know what sarcasm is?” I asked.

Willy snickered at that, but Emily just grimaced and pulled out her schedule. “So, after lunch, I have weapons, and then... Fairies! Yes!” she exclaimed, happy again.

Willy just rolled his eyes and started to scarf his lunch down. I rolled my eyes. That boy acted like he was never fed. I was still trying to figure out how he didn’t weigh hundreds of pounds. I turned back to my plate and started to eat my salad.

“So,” I said to break the silence, “it sounds like you’re pretty excited for Fairies, Emily.”

“Oh, yes! I’ve been waiting for it all day!” she exclaimed.

“Are you going to beginner Fairies today?” I questioned.

“Um,” she consulted her schedule. “It says I’m just viewing advanced Fairies today.”

All of a sudden, Willy looked up. “Wait, if you’re just viewing the class, that means it’s not your permanent class, which means they will have to put you into a different class later, which means there is a chance that you won’t be in one of my classes!” He paused for a breath, than continued, laughing breathlessly. “This is fantastic!”

I laughed too, but Emily didn’t look very happy about that comment. I sighed and started talking again. This process continued for the rest of lunch. When the bell rang, Emily jumped up. “Off to weapons!”

I rolled my eyes and waited for her to realize she had no idea where she was going.

“Hey Catherine, where is the weapons room?” came the question a few seconds later.

“It’s outside. Follow me.”

I feel like this one was kind of silly. I mean, really, we just weren't getting a good plot here.