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Ms. Yasmeen waited until I was finished, leaning back against her desk with her arms crossed over her chest and eyeing me with her eyebrows raised as I spoke my piece.
“Is that really what you want, Megan?” she asked quietly, surprising me by using my first name. “To leave the magical core of yourself in darkness and never shine a light on it at all? To live your life as a Norm with no knowledge of your heritage? Because you can choose that if you wish—though I do not recommend it.”
“No!” I exclaimed, surprising myself. “But I think it’s clear I don’t have a magical core—no matter what my heritage is!”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said coolly.
“I couldn’t even light a candle with magic,” I said, frowning. “What other evidence do you need?”
“I would wager that before this morning, you had no notion that lighting a candle with magic was even possible. You thought magic was a fairy tale—a foolish myth. Am I right?” she demanded.
“Well…yes.” I nodded uncertainly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that every other student in your class was able to do it and I couldn’t—and all of them are younger than I am.”
“Some of the greatest practitioners of our art are late in coming to their power,” she said mysteriously. “Don’t give up on yourself so easily, Miss Latimer. Keep coming to class and keep taking notes. Even if the incantations we practice here do not work for you right away, they may stand you in good stead in the future.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. It seemed like a waste of both time and effort—like trying to get blood out of a stone. If I didn’t have magic in me, it wasn’t like I could somehow create it. It struck me that magical power was a little bit like having perfect pitch—either you had it or you didn’t and you couldn’t somehow learn it, no matter how hard you tried.
But Ms. Yasmeen’s eyes were burning into me and somehow I couldn’t tell her no.
“All right,” I mumbled at last. “I…I’d better go. I’ll be late for my last class.”
“I will see you tomorrow then,” she said nodding. “Blessed Be.”
“Blessed Be,” I muttered, feeling like a fraud, and then I fled.
13
Running down the hallway, I fumbled in my bag and came up with my crumpled schedule again. Because I had a late lunch period, I had finished almost all my classes for the day. There was only one left but I couldn’t read it because the ink was smudged. I was, however, able to make out the room number—it was located in the hallway between the North and East towers, almost exactly across the campus—or rather, castle—from the Elementary Casting classroom.
I had spent too much time talking to Ms. Yasmeen and I hurried down the corridors as fast as I could. Even so, I heard the second bell chime and knew I was late before I finally skidded to a stop in front of the plain wooden door.
Great—I didn’t even know what class it was and I was late for it. Trying to be quiet, I eased open the door and stepped into the classroom—only to find that all eyes were on me.
“Now is probably a good time, class, to let you know that I will not tolerate tardiness,” the teacher—a plump woman in her forties with black hair pulled back into a neat ponytail—proclaimed. She was wearing a hairnet and an apron and glaring at me as though I had just offered her a mortal insult.
I thought about trying to excuse myself by saying that I had been talking to my last period teacher but I sensed that wasn’t going to fly here. Instead, I ducked my head and murmured, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t,” the teacher remarked crisply. “And to be sure it doesn’t, you will be staying after class to clean everyone’s dirty dishes and pans.”
“Dirty dishes and pans?” My head jerked up and I looked around, realizing that a row of ovens lined one side of the classroom and instead of desks there were tables, all fitted out with mixing bowls and baking pans, as well as other baking paraphernalia.
What in the world? I wondered, looking around. What kind of class was this?
“Please take a seat,” the teacher said, pointing to an empty chair at one of the tables in the back. “And for those of you who were on time, thank you for coming and welcome to Home Economics.”
14
Home Ec. I can’t believe that bitchy secretary actually put me in Home Ec! How dare she stick me in this stupid class when there are a million other more important things I could be taking?
Chemistry, for instance. Or even that History of Local Magic class that Ms. Yasmeen had recommended. Anything but Home Ec which would look abysmal on my college applications and made me feel like a girl whose only ambition was to grow up, settle down behind a white picket fence, and pump out 2.5 kids.
