Page 74 of Big Little Spells

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MONDAY MORNING DAWNS FAR too early. After a brief power struggle with Emerson over the meaning of on time—me going with, you know, the actual time and her insisting we need to be early—we fly over to St. Cyprian High. Early.

A million memories assault me as Emerson drags me inside. I hated high school. I always thought it was the way everyone hates high school. Everyone I actually find interesting as an adult, that is. But as I walk into a ten-year-old nightmare, it really hits me how miserable I was here. I was a hormone-addled teenager, yes, mouthy and rebellious, but despite all the drama, the truth about high school me is that I was in deep despair.

What got me through was Ellowyn sharing that despair with me and helping turn it into private jokes so it felt like we won against the demons inside us and all around.

That and my sister’s unquenchable optimism. Oh, I would have said I hated it. I’m sure I did, back then. Sometimes I mocked it to her face. But she was a Warrior even then. She never cracked.

Deep down, that was what I loved most about her. That nothing and no one could really bring Emerson Wilde to her knees.

It occurs to me for the first time, then, that when she says she was her these past ten years, she means it. That she’s never been anything but herself. And maybe that means that I really was the one who let her down. I told myself I couldn’t bear losing her, but the reality is a little more complicated than that.

Because what I suspect I truly couldn’t bear is this. This, right next to me where she’s always been. The heart of her always so determined and bright and sure. I felt wrecked and misshapen and ruined by that night. How could she possibly still be her despite what happened to us—when she couldn’t even remember the real us—when I was such a mess?

That realization sits in me way too heavily as she tows me through the arched doors out front of the main building, with a hilarious claim to educational excellence etched above them when what it should say is Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

I always did.

We walk down hallways that are too glossy and new-looking, yet smell exactly the same. Everything looks smaller, and yet the glare of all that harsh industrial lighting makes me feel smaller. I don’t know if I’m seeing the actual hallway we’re walking down or my memories of then, but before I know it, Emerson is tugging me into a classroom.

It’s mostly full, so we can’t sit next to each other. The poor little teenagers look at us with avid interest as we split up. Emerson eagerly takes a seat in the front row, and I, obviously, slink over to one in the back corner.

And it takes me much too long to realize that the reedy person standing at the chalkboard in a bow tie is indeed the one and only Sage Osburn, who Georgie told us yesterday asked if he could be her beau. For once, I was not the only person who had to bite her own cheek to keep from responding to that with a rousing what the actual fuck. I swear the words hung over mine and Emerson’s heads as she shared that at the dinner table. Maybe even my parents’ too.

Is he three hundred years old? my father had barked at her.

Georgie had merely smiled at him. He’s age appropriate, Mr. Wilde. And very kind.

“Settle in, class,” Sage says. “Beltane is behind us, and we have a lot of ground to cover before Litha.”

That almost sounds mildly interesting, but as he begins to talk he makes it clear that nothing he’s going to say will rise to that low bar. I thought prom was bad, but at least there was some autonomy there. I could move around, hide in an alcove, dance. This is literally sitting in a plastic chair, listening to the most boring witch alive drone on about a test I don’t want to take.

I find it hard to believe Georgie is genuinely interested in this man who could make watching paint dry seem like a great way to spend the afternoon.

Emerson, needless to say, is fully engaged. She sits in that front row seat, furiously scribbling notes and always raising her hand. I try to focus. I really do. But when people drone on in a monotone with no variation, my mind drifts. I can’t help it. When I look down at my notes as class winds down, ten lifetimes later, I see I managed a page full of intricate doodles and one sentence:

Sacrifices can only be made by the pure of heart.

And, of course, a lot of sketches of a certain immortal witch that Rebekah of old wouldn’t have dared commit to pen and paper, no matter how she fancied herself infatuated with him.

I asked him what he gave up for immortality. Everything, he said. But that was not a pure sacrifice. It can’t have been, because immortality is not good. It’s raw, unbalanced power—corrupted power, at that.

The bell rings. It makes me want to curl into a ball and moan—clearly a trauma response.

“God, I hate this place,” I mutter to Emerson as we meet in the hallway. “I can’t do this every day for the next month.”

She sends me a swift look. “It isn’t so bad. It’s not like we have to do a full day. Just this class, and then, on Wednesdays, the evening practical. It’ll be good for us.” She checks her watch. “I’ve got time to walk back to town, if you’d like. We can go over the lesson.”

“I do not want to go over anything.” But I do want to walk the ick out of me.

We get out of the building with unseemly haste, then head down the hill toward town. The day is warm and pretty. There are flowers everywhere and trees in bloom, and a hint of a good old-fashioned Midwest thunderstorm to the west. I haven’t seen one in far too long.

Emerson is first to break the pleasant silence.

“Did you really...” She pauses, as if trying to find the right word. I see the determined glint in her eyes. “That is...” She clears her throat. “You made it quite clear you and Nicholas...”

I take my time smiling at her, Cheshire cat style. “Banged?”

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