The entire school was atwitter for days after the Parents' day incident. Rose heard students in every corner whispering suspicions, everyone wondering what had happened. Rose knew those answers, and she had a lot more questions, primarily, "Had someone from the school helped the men?" Rose wasn't sure what she thought once the sun was up, fear scurrying back under the bed like a roach. Maybe they were former students there to pull a prank, maybe they were in the wrong building, maybe they really were just people who wanted to send their kids to Whitman. Maybe. She liked these benevolent intentions and chose to push the disturbing idea of betrayal out of her mind.

And reality insisted that they all get back to work, as classes resumed the next day and suddenly seemed more difficult. Every core class now had a major assignment due, one of which was a huge packet of math problems--infinitely more arduous with the introduction of variables. That's life, though, right? The variables, the things that do not remain constant, make life more interesting but also more challenging.

History of magic had become especially interesting. They learned how in Mesopotamia, sexism was a major issue, just like in Salem. Women were persecuted by the society for practicing dark magic, while men performing incantations were generally thought to be good. Rose loved how worked up Mr. Bennett had gotten when he was talking about it, pointing out how women have been mistreated for millennia.

"I mean, do you realize that women barely got the right to vote in this country in 1920? That's barely 90 years ago," he practically shouted, leaning forward. A bent-knee rant. He reminded her of Marie. "Women in certain parts of the world still don't have the right to vote today!" Bennett seemed like he was ready to fight, and Rose decided she would take up arms beside him.

Soon, September stormed into October, literally. Personification produced a series of beating, ragged rains, a typical "Nor'easter." Seniors and SOs who would leave campus for dinner returned sopping wet, their shoes transformed into buckets. Leaves all around the city were crisping orange and brown with the cold, slipping down from their branches in a silent death.

Alastair was fretting over his quarter finals as he walked to the twelfth floor lounge early Saturday morning. He was known around school as a nerd, and as a nerd should, he had his face buried in a book. But as no one should, he was walking at the same time, which led him to walk directly into someone, obscured from his view by the book.

"Oh, damn. Sorry," he said looking up. "I'm sorry," he repeated, this time with all the genuine remorse he could put into two words.

Sarah softened her face from anger to sorrow. "It--it's my fault," she stuttered. "I should have been watching for people walking while reading."

"Yeah," he looked down wearily. "Finals."

"Exactly," she nodded. "What are you reading?"

Surprise stole his words--he couldn't believe the sweet expression and soft tone Sarah offered--so Alastair held up his book. Semiotics for Beginners.

"Wow. What on earth is semi, semitotics?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"Semiotics. Symbology. You know, the study of symbols, and in this case, how they relate to magic."

She laughed and reached her hand out to swat his arm playfully, "Nerd."

Alastair grinned back, hungry for more. She was so lovely when she smiled. "Like our secret language," he hoped to remind her of the good times before things had gone so wrong.

"Sarah," snarled an angry voice. "What the hell are you doing?"

Sarah and Alastair looked over to see Mason standing in the just-opened elevator.
"Oh, nothing," she answered quickly, taking a step back. "We just bumped into each other and were talking about finals. That's all."

"Well, if that's all, then, let's go." Mason held one arm out to Sarah, the other restraining the elevator door.

"See you, Alastair," she murmured.

"Hm," he turned away. That was the first time Sarah had spoken to him since the "incident" in the auditorium two years ago. He smiled in spite of his disappointment at seeing her so easily leashed by Mason. She had not only talked to him, but it had been like before, sweet and funny. He ran his fingers across his forearm; she had touched him. He heard the elevator doors slide shut.

"Fag," blurted Mason. It was an ugly word.

Alastair didn't care. Sarah was back, maybe only in small doses, but she was back. He would be sated with a morsel though he craved a feast.

"Whoa! That moron is at it again?" Maggie walked up from the other direction, lured by curiosity to find the source of the hateful noise in a peaceful zone.

"When is he not?" Alastair retorted resignedly. Maggie tugged on his wrist, pulling him over to the common area so that they could study for their Symbology exam.

Two hours later, Alastair and Maggie parted ways on the 11th floor. As Alastair walked into his bedroom, which he shared with four other juniors, but not, thankfully, Tommy or Mason, he was hit by the strong stench of urine. His belongings were spread over his bed, not how he would ever leave them. He crossed the room in two long steps, and his fears were confirmed. It was his bed, his clothes and books, everything he owned that reeked. Someone had taken a piss on, well, on him. He didn't have to wonder who had done it. He knew. The same bastards who had done all the other crap to him, probably spurred by his interaction with Sarah earlier. Deep, dark, piercing magic bloomed from far down in his soul. He was ready to shred anyone who crossed his path, and he hoped like hell it would be them.

He held his Symbology book clutched in his hand, the pages becoming wrinkled under the weight of his anger. The edge of the book jacket cut into his middle finger. That sting of pain brought him back, and he steered his gaze toward his urine-soaked sketchbook, flipped open to the charcoal and pastel sketch of eyes. Sarah had run from him, terrified by who she saw when he was in this state before. He hated himself for that moment, for scaring the girl he only ever wanted to love. And Rose, Rose who had inspired that sketch and who looked up to him and who clearly had enough monsters in her life. And what about his mother. Leah Silver's heart would break if Alastair embraced his father's darkness. Thinking of the pride in her eyes at parents day, remembering the imploring shadowy eyes of Rose and the softness today in Sarah's, he felt the evil burgeoning from within him begin to recede. He would be better for them. He would be better because he couldn't bear the thought of seeing again in Sarah's eyes what he had seen before, what he had been before.

He worked methodically, cleaning what he could and discarding what he couldn't. When he got to the sketchbook, he stared sadly at his masterpiece, curled and yellow with liquid hate. There was no way to clean it. But he couldn't imagine trashing it either. He did his best to get the smell out, then carried the ruined sketchbook down to the third floor to turn in his final project early.

««•»»

Rose arrived to her first final feeling totally ill-prepared. Arts had no final exam, just final projects to be turned in and viewed by the rest of the class in a sort of gallery walk. Music projects were played one after another throughout the final period, as the other students wandered the room viewing the various projects. Cowdrey had described the project as something that reflected the work they had done during class. Rose struggled at first with the question of what to turn in for her end of term arts project, having done little more than watch Alastair and read poetry.

In the end, Rose handed a half-sheet of white paper covered with tiny cursive writing to Mrs. Cowdrey, who tipped her head to the right as she read it. She smiled and nodded, sending it flying over to the poet's corner, where it seemed to enlarge as it fixed itself on the wall.

"Go on, look around, listen," Cowdrey prompted her.

She heard an acoustic guitar and turned to see a tan boy with a mop of curly black hair. As he strummed, he sang, a soft raspy tenor. Rose walked around the room, viewing magnificent sculptures, paintings, fashions. She found herself standing in front of Alastair's drawing, which she had seen at a much earlier stage. It was dark, haunting even. The yellowed page ran as if someone had poured liquid on it, like he had wanted to destroy it. There were eyes all over the page, some black, with a sorrowful, defeated look. Others were green, the only color on the dark page, and looked terrified. Where the charcoal melted, it looked like the multitude of eyes were crying. It made Rose sad, so very sad. It's the kind of sad you don't come back from, she thought. She knew this sadness too well.

"Do you think the liquid was intentional?" asked Mrs. Cowdrey from behind her.

Rose looked at the teacher, confused. She shrugged.

"Look at it, consider," she pressed. "I don't know the answer. I just wondered what you thought."

Rose stared, unmoving except for her eyes, which ran back and forth across the page like a suicide drill in basketball. No, she decided. She shook her head.

"Hmm. Okay then, do you think he did it himself, an accident?"

Rose shook her head immediately. She saw that the corner of the page was torn away, the place where Alastair had originally signed his name. Someone had done this to him. Rose wondered what that meant for him, for his project.

"What you felt when you saw this, that's what we call Empathic Magic," Mrs. Cowdrey said. "When a work of art is powerful enough, enough magic has been bled into it, a person seeing or hearing or even tasting it can literally feel the same emotion that the artist felt."

Rose nodded. She understood. She had felt sorrow and self-hatred when she saw the picture a couple of weeks back, making her feel the sadness of her music all over again, making her wish she could tell Alastair not to hate himself. Now it was sadness, loss, anger, self-loathing, viciousness, maliciousness, rage, jealousy. It was much more than she could find words for. She wondered whether someone else can add to the Empathic Magic; like, did the person who ruined Alastair's work add his own emotion to it?

Alastair walked around the arts room obligingly, not really wanting to be there. He saw Rose walking around blankly until she got to his piece. He felt anger all over again, looking across the room at his piss-stained drawing.

The music became a booming, pounding, thudding. He looked up and saw Tommy beating on the drums. Alastair imagined kick-drumming Tommy's face. Instead, Alastair took a deep breath and looked at a little one's drawing of sunflowers. It was actually quite good, the Empathic Magic immediately affecting his mood.

He continued around the room, almost skipping over the Poet's Corner. Then he saw a large paper with tiny words up and down, around, sideways, all over. He stepped closer and found that Rose had compiled a sort of word cloud from lines of poetry, from a handful of different poems. He had never seen anything like it, and while it didn't have the power of Empathic Magic behind it, he loved it. Here was Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle," over there Auden's "Stop all the Clocks." Alastair saw phrases he assumed were from poems, but they were unlike any poetry he'd ever read like, "rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad." That line stuck in his head the way the chorus of a song does, repeating over and over until you finally get to hear it. He would have to ask her where she found it. Maybe reading the poem would get it unstuck.

After the first final, there was a two-hour break, during which most students studied frantically, cramming as much as they could into their brains before the next final. Alastair was no exception, as his most difficult class, Symbology was his second exam that day.

Bennett had warned Alastair's class that the quarter final would have a ton of short answer questions, and for the essays, they would be given a handful of symbols to interpret, justifying their use in today's magical practice. Alastair was grateful that the book for this class had been spared the recent attack on his belongings. He needed to study. He ate lunch as he reviewed the ancient symbols, making use of every available second.

"Hey, Maggs," Alastair said as he took his seat for the test. "You ready?"

She sighed, "I guess I have to be. You?"

"Same."

"Hey, Raj Sandha said someone peed on your bed, on everything. You having bad dreams, babe?" She smiled, but Alastair could see the concern underneath.

What could he say? "The worst."

"You don't want to talk about it."

He shook his head.

"He said your stuff was ruined. If you need to borrow any of my books, just let me know."

"Thanks, Maggie May, I will. And I already invested in a bed-wetter's plastic mattress cover."

She snickered appreciatively as Bennett walked in with a giant stack of tests. Alastair didn't really think the whole thing was funny, but somehow Maggie always made him find the humor in a crappy, or rather, pissy situation.

««•»»

Rose sat through her quarter finals with little confidence. Algebra 2 the first day was a killer. But the math had finally clicked one day when she went to class a bit early.

"Crap!" Ms. Steele had said to herself as Rose looked on. She turned and searched on a table behind her desk, lifting mountains of paper stacked haphazardly. As she set the top pile down, pages began to cascade to the floor, sliding like mud after heavy rains. Rose walked over to help.

"Oh!" the teacher exclaimed. "I didn't know anyone was here."

Rose moved forward wordlessly, watching as the papers flew back up onto the desk and arranged themselves in neat piles at her silent command.

"I will never get used to that," said the teacher, shaking her head. "What can I do for you?"
Rose had pointed to the packet of homework, which Ms. Steele immediately explained. There was something about the way she did it when they were alone that just made sense to Rose, and from then on, it was easy.

Her other finals were not as difficult, and by the time Thursday rolled around, she thought she had everything pretty well handled. She had myths of magic first, and as one might expect from a class advertised as distinguishing fact from fiction, the entire exam was True/False. Rose smiled. "Practitioners use cauldrons to mix potions." False. "Animals can boost a practitioner's powers." True. "Practitioners can use magic to read minds and predict the future." False. This was going to be easy.

Between the two finals, students were given a long break to study. She was ready for her English final, so she had nothing to do. She decided to wander over to the dean's office.
The dean looked up with surprise. "You should be studying, Rose."

Rose glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. She walked into the room, setting her stuff down.

I'm ready for my final. Can I help? she wrote on a torn corner of paper.

"Yeah?" Whitley seemed unsure. "Yes, okay. Can you tear these? Separate them by grade and first class, so that we can distribute them on Monday."

Rose looked at the pages. They were the next quarter schedules for the secondary students. All the other freshmen had French first, while she had history of magic with the eighth graders. It was just as she suspected. There was one other ninth grade student continuing in Myths with her, a girl named Ellie Choi. She was a boisterous, intelligent girl. Rose had liked her contributions to their classes since the first day.

As she got further on, she found that the 11th grade class was in Mr. Grant's first period AP composition and American literature. And there was Alastair's schedule. Her heart beat a little faster. He's only sixteen, she thought, surprised. Well, almost seventeen. His birthday was in two weeks. Rose felt a strong need to give him something, to repay him for all he had done for her. She wanted to show him kindness where others showed him scorn. But, as far as Rose knew, only older kids were allowed off campus.

When she finished the task, she set the sorted piles on the dean's desk. "Oh, well done, Rose. Thank you."

Rose nodded, then slid another note across.

I want to buy a present for someone. How can I do that?

Dean Whitley looked at her for a moment, considering. "I can give you a day pass for Saturday. You have money?"

She did, two hundred dollars that Marie had given her before she died. The dean handed her a navy blue pass as Rose nodded.

"Good luck on your last final!"

Rose smiled her thanks.

««•»»

Alastair took his GPA tracker to the main hall Friday afternoon to record his grades. This had been a strange quarter, and he felt anxious as he scanned the pages affixed to the walls. He had a strong record at the school, always the top of his class. He worked hard every quarter to make sure it stayed that way.

He found the core classes first. He was relieved to see that even after failing his first quiz, he still got the highest grade in Grant's English class. He had no science class, having completed chemistry, physics and physiology at NYU over the last three summers. Alastair's heart sank as he saw his three grades from Cowdrey. He barely got the A in creative writing and art history, and failed to in arts. An A-minus! She must really have hated his final project. His shoulders slumped.

"Dammit," he whispered to himself. He was just short of the perfect grades he needed.
A soft hand touched his arm. His eyes found a pair of dark ones looking up, smiling. Rose pointed at her grade, a B. She shrugged. He could see that she didn't care, but she was too young to care. Nonetheless, he smiled back, appreciating the fact that she, of all people, was cheering him up. He was amazed that those dark eyes could glint with so much--what was it, exactly? Joy? Admiration? Humor?

Alastair craned his neck toward her GPA tracker to see how she had done in the rest of her classes, but she had nothing written.

Rose was happy to get a B. She thought Alastair deserved an A plus for his art, but she thought the accidental addition of the liquid had hurt his grade, like if it had been his idea, Cowdrey would have found it brilliant, but since it was a mistake, or more likely, an attack, it was just a ruined bit of almost-brilliance.

Alastair reached down and took her page, writing in her B for Arts. She glanced at the page listing his straight As before he tucked it away under hers. He looked at the remaining classes listed and led Rose to find her scores. Rose allowed Alastair to fill in her form, even though she had already seen all her grades. It just didn't seem important to have a written record. Surely someone at the school kept track of all that. But she liked the praise he gave her as he wrote down her grades:

History of Magic - 97% A ... "Three percent! Almost perfect. Still awesome."

English - 89% B+ ... "Grant can be a real hard-ass but a B-plus is outstanding!"

Intermediate Incantations - 100% A ... "wow, good job. Cain is tough! You must have done all the bonus questions."

Myths of Magic - 100% A ... "You're a regular little nerd, aren't you?" he asked. He had withheld comment on the B in algebra 2 and arts, and the B minus in AP biology, which she appreciated.

Rose shined up at him, shrugging. If she could speak, she would say, "apparently" or maybe, "look who's talking," or even, "who're you calling little!" But the truth was, Rose wasn't really a nerd. Nerds cared about school, liked it intrinsically. Rose did her work because there was nothing else to do here, not out of some devotion to learning. She doubted Alastair understood that.

"Oh, hey, I wanted to ask you," he wagged his pen at her, "about a line from your poetry project in Arts."

Rose felt her cheeks darkening and twitching into a smile. She raised one eyebrow.

"It goes, 'rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad.' Where did you find that line?"
Charles Bukowski, "For Jane, with all the love I had," Rose wrote on the edge of his GPA tracker.

"All right, thanks."

She followed him to a row of chairs by the front windows where he calculated her GPA for her. "You know, you probably could have an A in arts if you played piano again," he said to the paper as he did the math.

Rose shook her head, took her paper, and walked away, casting a glance back over her shoulder. Everyone was pressing her to do more, to be more. Grant pushing her to talk, the girls in her grade who whispered insults at her back because she didn't, and now Alastair. This was all she had. None of them understood how difficult it had been just to get up and go to classes those first days, how much she wanted to stay in bed with her head hidden under the covers. She had only done the work for her classes as a way of avoiding her own thoughts, a way to numb her ravaged heart. Playing piano, talking, caring about grades... These were things she just didn't have in her.

The next morning, Rose slid on her Converse and pulled on a cardigan as she prepared to go out shopping for Alastair's present. No matter what he said yesterday, she still wanted to show him she appreciated him. She hadn't been outside since August, and in California, October is still in the 80s, so she really didn't know what to expect out there. She stuffed five 20 dollar bills in her pocket and headed out the front doors, the blue day pass in hand. Not that anyone was at the door to check.

Seventh Avenue was a shock of noise compared to the quiet inside, seeming to shove Rose back as she exited the school. Even though it was still early, she saw cabs, buses, people everywhere. The air was crisp, but the sun was shining. She had searched the Internet in the library, finding a listing for Lee's Art Supplies off of Seventh, about twenty blocks up. Rose nearly got lost as Broadway and Seventh traded places in Times Square, but finally, she found the art store.

She pushed through the double doors into an oasis of art supplies and imagined that Alastair would love it here. Rose looked around the large room until she saw a young woman in a red apron. She took a pen and the paper beside it meant for sampling, scribbling out a note to ask for help. She walked over and handed her the note. The girl read the note then began asking a series of questions, which Rose answered with silence and wide eyes.

Frustrated, the girl, whose name tag read Kinney, walked her over to a section with sketch pads and turned to leave. Rose held out her arm and scratched quickly on the corner of the paper, asking which materials were best.

"It depends on what type of media you're going to use. For charcoal, this one is very good." She held up a ten dollar sketch pad. Rose nodded and held up two fingers.
"Okay, so then you want charcoal. That's over here." Rose followed her to the drawing supplies. Rose held up the same question.

"Again, it depends. Just charcoal, this," she pointed at a box of black sticks. Rose shook her head. "For more variety, you want something like this?" The girls gestured at a wooden case full of colors: pens, pencils, charcoal, pastels, paints and brushes, fancy erasers.

Rose wrote one final query: It's not for me. It's a gift for a real artist whose supplies were damaged. Are these good enough for someone who knows what they're doing?

Kinney nodded, "Yes, but this one's even better, and you might want to get one sketch pad and one watercolor pad." The first variety box had been $20. This was double. Rose nodded, and Kinney pulled down the more expensive set from the shelf, then selected a watercolor pad. Rose glanced at the shelves around the store and pointed at leather cases. Kinney followed her finger. "You want a portfolio? That's a good idea." Rose chose one that was waterproof and had a lock, another thirty bucks. As Kinney rang up the purchase, Rose smiled handing over the slip of paper, to which she had added, thank you!

She had spent nearly half of all her money, but it was worth it. Alastair was worth it.