Closet Negotiations
He stared at me, gold eyes reflecting florescent light from the ceiling of the Underground station’s entrance. He never stopped staring at me. No one else seemed to exist to him, the instant he laid eyes on me.
It was only me who saw him appear out of that wall.
I stared back, sure my eyes were playing tricks.
His molten-gold eyes studied mine. His bow-shaped mouth hung partly open, his dark eyebrows raised. He gaped at me, like he found me as odd to look at as I found him.
Although he was roughly my age, instead of a schoolmate, my mind conjured a storybook prince. Some of that was his clothes, some his hair, some his unearthly beauty. Possibly a faerie, my child’s mind decided, although he didn’t have pointed ears.
Yet, he also looked like me, somehow.
He lookedlikeme, in a way I couldn’t explain.
We gaped at one another, two halves of a mirror, then his eyes flickered up above my head, like he saw something there he’d only just noticed. Whatever it was, it made the astonishedlook on his face turn to shock. What he saw made him uneasy, afraid, yet also left him utterly transfixed.
I looked up, too.
Once I had, I was as transfixed as him.
Floating above his disheveled white hair hung a black, smoking crystal, surrounded by a writhing cloud of black fire. The flames and smoke rippled as if under a high wind.
I wanted to point at it.
I wanted to ask him what it was.
I remained silent, though, maybe afraid to break the spell.
Then the first light flashed from directly behind me. A thunder-like peal jerked and rumbled the pavement, and I got thrown forward until I sprawled on the cement.
There was a high, horrible, sickening, whining, buzzing sound?
I hadno idea how I made it back to my dormitory.
Somewhere after the magi-physician walked away, something inside me must’ve crashed, because everything went blank. I didn’t remember anything after that, nothing at all until I woke up again, at something like four in the morning.
Someone left water by my bed, which I drank down greedily, not even considering there might be something in it that could kill me. I instantly felt better. I felt worlds better, suspiciously better, and decided someone, Jolie probably, must’ve put a healing potion in the glass.
I was too grateful to question it.
I still wore the bare bones of my school uniform, but someone had removed the tie, my shoes and socks, my formal robes, and my earrings.
I wandered to the bath wearing only the skirt and blouse over my knickers and bra, my feet stuffed into a pair of fuzzy slippers. When I saw a stack of clean towels on the inbuilt shelves, along with shampoo, conditioner, soap, moisturizer, and a dozen other bottles and sprays, I decided to take a shower.
The hot water felt like a religious experience. I swore I saw more of that black smoke seep out of my skin as the high pressure nozzle pounded down on me.
By the time I made it back to our room, it was getting light outside, and Jolie was gone.
Had she been gone before? I had my doubts, but honestly, I had no idea.
I took a few minutes to explore my new room.
Inbuilt bookshelves filled the walls around my bed?twice as many as I remembered from the evening before, and twice as many on my side of the room as Jolie’s. My own books filled half the shelves already. A desk lived under my window. I also had a small bureau, a filing cabinet, and a leather-upholstered chair.
Jolie’s side had a framed painting of a bird of paradise on the wall, and several detailed maps of the Magical body, with colorful energy centers outlined in one map, bones and muscles in another, internal organs, veins, and the Magical nervous system in a third.
I decided our room was perfect.
