Gabriela Marquez was more a classmate than a friend. Until the latest Reckoning, I’d hung out mostly with other wyverns. But I’d always liked Gabriela. She’s the smartest person in our entire grade and embraces that. She’s not afraid to be herself, and I admire that kind of fearlessness. It’s very wyvern-ish.
I knew her address but had never been to her house before. Biking up to it, I slowed. It reminded me of her: small (she’s very short) and somewhat disheveled. Wind chimes filled the porch—metal pipe wind chimes, seashell wind chimes, one made entirely of glass teddy bears—and sculptures decorated the lawn…or at least I thought they were sculptures. One was made from bicycle parts and a painted garden hose. Another was a birdhouse made of bottle caps. I remembered Gabriela saying once that her mother is an artist, specializing in “found objects.”
I locked my bike up to the fence so her mother wouldn’t “find” it.
Picking my way among the sculptures, I made it up to the front door. I ducked underneath a chime made of forks and spoons and rang the doorbell. From inside came a woman’s voice,“¡Vaya a ver quien es, Tito!”and a minute later, a man in flannel and jeans opened the door.
“We aren’t buying, we aren’t donating, and we don’t do surveys,” he said. “Unless you’re a Girl Scout, in which case, thin mints are always welcome.”
This must be her father,I thought.
Maybe I should have called first.
“Thin mints are the best,” I agreed, “but I’m here to see Gabriela. I’m a friend of hers from school. My name’s Sky.” I didn’t say my last name; I didn’t know how Gabriela’s family felt about wyverns. Over the generations, wealthy wyverns have poured millions into public relations campaigns and politicians’ pockets to sway human opinion away from “grab your sword and hunt the dangerous dragons,” but there are still plenty of humans who aren’t fans. “Can you tell her I’m here?”
Definitely should have called first. If she wasn’t home, that shot my entire backup excuse.
“She’s doing homework,” he told me, but he called over his shoulder, “Gabriela! Friend for you!”
“Loser has no friends!” a boy’s voice called back.
Ah, yes, she had a brother.
“Be nice to your sister, or you’re doing her laundry!” A woman’s accented voice, her mother?
“Noooo!” came the howl. “Her socks…they’ll poison me! The stench, unbearable! Gahhh—I’m choking just thinking about it!”
“Don’t mind him,” Gabriela’s father said to me. “He’s at the age where he thinks insulting his sister is comic genius. He’ll outgrow it. Come on in.”
“Still waiting for my brothers to outgrow it,” I said, entering the house. It was very hard not to stare. I’d never seen so muchstuffstuffed into a living room before. Stacks of books were crammed up next to already-full bookshelves. Hockey sticks, baseball bats, and a variety of helmets overflowed one corner. The windowsill was packed with family photos. The coffee table was filled with snow globes and music boxes and vases of fake flowers.
“Go on up. Second door on the right. You can’t miss it.” He waved toward a narrow staircase that was cluttered with books and stacks of towels and folded laundry.
Picking my way carefully, I navigated between squished-together chairs and couches, stacks of books, and a pile of yarn. Somehow, I’d never expected a human home to be so full. It reminded me, in a way, of a dragon’s treasure vault, except instead of gold and jewels, their house was full of books and photos and clothes and dishes and life.
Other wyverns called humans poor because the vast majority didn’t have our gold. But Gabriela’s house felt full all the same.
I wondered if it had been a mistake to come. After all, we didn’t have that much in common, and I really didn’t know her that well. She’d come with me to the movies, but I’d only asked her because all my wyvern “friends” had ditched me after the last Reckoning.
Still not forgiving them.
Might never forgive them. Emma had been the first to block my phone number, and Emily had very deliberately ripped off her friendship bracelet (the one she’d worn since third grade—though, seriously, it was time because that thing was ratty). Carlos hadn’t bothered to do anything that dramatic, but he had been steadfastly refusing to make eye contact for weeks despite sitting next to me in English class. We used to like to mock our teacher (quietly, with eye rolls) for her insistence that all books are about death.
Anyway, just because I liked Gabriela didn’t mean she liked me, especially since I’d then ditched her at the movies. Maybe I should have picked another human to bother. Plenty of them had been friendly enough, at least before our family lost half our fortune.
Upstairs, the second door on the right was covered in clippings from newspapers and magazines: a deep-space photo of galaxies, a bumper sticker with a Gryffindor logo, and a poster of Wyverns Through the Ages.
It was the poster that gave me hope. I had that same poster, but mine had a heart drawn over Sir Francis Drake, because I’d had a crush on him when I was younger and unclear on the concept of “lived centuries ago.”
She opened the door. “Sky?”
Gabriela’s hair was knotted up on top of her head and secured with pencils. She wore plaid PJ bottoms and a T-shirt that said “Protect the Ellcrys,” whatever that meant, and she had headphones around her neck.
“Sorry for not calling first.”
“Come in.” She waved me inside.
Stepping between strewn clothes and piles of papers, I entered her room. On her bed, an orange cat fluffed its fur and hissed at me.
