It was true. Agatha had a perfect attendance, despite showing up to most classes very late. A combination of signs and spells allowed Agatha to stretch her time between classes and arrive unnoticed, while simultaneously having her classmates and teachers believe she had always been present. 

The technique was advanced, but it was a mere party trick for the Warlock that taught it to her. Her Father used it as a springboard to teach many things, but perhaps most importantly, how to see through the illusion. She wasn’t risking discovery just to arrive on time for classes: She was using it to suss out others just as attuned to magic as herself. 

So far, she could discount all of her teachers, the Principal, the hall monitors, and her classmates. While prospects were not high for finding others like herself, it did mean she could continue to reap the benefits of being perfect.

Perfection had its own cost, of course. Other students avoided her, for the most part, and in the first week learned not to stare or say her name. She’d long ago learned that teenagers may be crude, but nothing could put the fear into them quite like getting icicles from across the room after saying something nasty about her in private. 

While this did achieve the effect of being left alone, this also achieved being othered. Something she had hoped to avoid in round two of highschool by keeping her nature a secret. Not the W word, but the T word. This tepidly tenuous topic was a tad tense, though it tended to stay trivial. No one, aside from Skylar or Meredith, knew she was Transgender. Just a very plain, flat chested, tall girl. A late bloomer to some, a strange sight to others.

By contrast, no one knew she was what some might call a Witch. This was the first time in her life she could recall being unable to share that fact with anyone, and it left an even deeper pocket of longing

 The chance of discovery in first period English was all but impossible. Agatha was convinced that she could probably get away showing up late the old fashioned way. Mr Addams was a wonderful teacher, but easily distracted by excited tangents on literature. Or Film adaptations of that literature. Or music that reminded him of that literature. This morning, it was how his career reminded him of The Alchemist. 

Agatha preferred to sit in the back left corner, where she could keep her eyes on the board, and bewitch the kids that talk shit with an overwhelming feeling of being watched. Ever the fastidious student, Agatha intended to work on her Algebra homework while waiting out the morning sermon.

Kids in this class straddled the fine line between rambunctious and quiet at the drop of a hat, but one group in particular caught her eye: Ophelia, the girl in a bunker housed of short, black, curly hair and massive round spectacles; Todd, the somewhat jockish every-dude with a passion for ‘nerd shit’ when you get him to open up; and Cara, the long haired blonde girl who would paradoxically be more and less popular if she wasn’t such a loudmouth busybody. 

Ophelia and Todd were slowly getting the ball rolling on talking about another book they’d read, while Cara was leaning forward, mouth agape at their inability to engage with the homework assignment.

“Hey! Focus guys” Cara said in a sudden and shrill escalation. Just as soon, she invaded their personal spaces by rearranging the homework sheets on their desk, and gentled her tone. “Nobody else is going to get the bonus credits or your… Guy Man, or whatever. Chapter Eight, wha—”

“Gaiman. Neil Gaiman. And you don’t have the right to demand an answer from us.” Said Todd in his usual calm demeanor. Agatha believed Todd was, decidedly, a good one and hoped his confidence and sensibilities would rub off on Erik, the neighbor kid. She saw them together often enough and wondered what they had in common.

Sensing a need to change targets, Cara turned her cats eyes to the mousier of the two. “Well, Ophelia? Can you afford to miss out on these credits? I can’t imagine, not with all the extracurriculars you’ve been up to. Wanna tell Todd?” Letting the last part hang like a kerosene soaked rag. Todd looked puzzled and turned to Ophelia for some kind of hint. Agatha couldn’t see the poor girl’s face, but could sense the abject terror from the tremors rippling from her chair at heart-attack rhythms.

“I… well, me and… How did you know?” Ophelia tried to whisper and ended up cracking the last syllable, breaking through half of the room’s conversations like a shattered bottle.

It’s now or never, Agatha.

“Todd, I hate to break it to you, but your dork pal—” Cara started, before being interrupted for the second time by Todd.

“Is, what, in your feminist book club?” He uttered unnaturally; his cadence lacking the usual careless confidence.

“That’s right.”

All Three heads turned to Agatha, poor Ophelia’s on the verge of tears, and Cara’s gossip-gasm was thoroughly ruined. Todd blinked twice and carried on as if he hadn’t forgotten the last two seconds, which was all her handiwork. Voice throwing was another ‘great party trick’. Her teacher failed to mention that the participant is unwitting and unaware, so she didn’t learn it until late in her career. Or, more precisely, 17 years from now.

“Cara and Ophelia are in the book club, Todd. It’s a feminist book club, but Gaiman counts in my opinion.”

The three of them looked on, wordlessly, like they’d just seen a dog talk. Agatha suddenly realized that it may have been the most words she’d ever said out loud in this classroom to anyone. Mr Addams slid into the atmosphere and —in his own out-of-touch enthusiast fashion— proceeded to try to sell Todd and the rest of the class on the club. In the wake of the collective ‘hard pass’ of the student body, Ophelia mouthed a thank you! Agatha returned her usual cold stare, but melted her icicles into ice cubes. She had appearances to keep up, after all. 

Appearances were everything to a girl seldom seen, seldom heard. They only know what little they perceive, and oh what little they perceive. That one was less likely to be directly from her father, and almost certainly the ramblings of the old guard he begrudged. Still, as a general philosophy for blending into mundane life, it worked.

She applied a much more liberal reading of that philosophy to changing in the locker room for Phys. Ed.

No one had ever seen her put on her gym clothes. This wasn’t a spell, she just had the good sense to wear her gym clothes under her normal attire. The problem came from the reverse. There was no fool proof way to apparate clothes onto a human being, and even knowing how many people and from what direction she was being watched brought her no comfort. Instead, her solution was twofold: Put her clothes back on over the gym clothes, and do as little exercise as possible to avoid sweating out her clothes.

The brisk September air would have made running such a pain, she mused from the east side bleachers. From here, she could spend the next hour or so getting caught up on her homework, and let her ‘party trick’ do the exercises for her. The catch was, she had to be wearing the gym clothes in order for it to appear correct, and the inactivity was causing her to shiver. Agatha reached into her bag for her fingerless gloves, when suddenly the familiar edges of the coarse spiral notebook gave her an idea.

Hey, Wanzewan, if I fed you these pages of my old homework, could you make me some smokeless fire?

DO YOU POSSESS ARTICLES WITH MORE

LIVING THINGS

Like, humans? Stories?

YOUR ‘ALGEBRA TWO’ IS NOT MY DOMAIN

I REQUIRE

VERVE. STIRRING.

GUY MAN WOULD SUFFICE

So you were listening to that? OK, how does… this little orange bible sound? Agatha proceeded to summon one of those awful attempts to prosthelytize to students from the detritus of the ground below. With a satisfying slap, it was caught in her hand on impact. Wordlessly, she placed it on the bench, and let Wanzewan get to work. It burned bright, but small, and that was easy enough to cover with her own ongoing illusion. The fire however, brought no warmth.

Wanzewan… you failed to mention that your fire produced no heat.

MY FIRE PRODUCES NOTHING 

IT ONLY CONSUMES

 In the middle of an exasperated sigh, Agatha looked up in time to see wide eyes staring back from across the field. Stopped dead in his tracks, Erik was now looking back and forth between where Agatha’s illusion had been jogging, and where she currently sat. The look she had trained to use every day had shattered. Fear had taken both of them. Fear of the truth, and fear of the unknown. Agatha snapped out of it and took account of the situation, noting only Erik had fought the illusion. Todd was running back to Erik, and Erik turned to point at her— and she was gone.

After swapping places with her illusory double, Agatha lost track of what was said between Erik and Todd. She could feel Erik’s eyes stuck to her for the rest of class, never wavering if he could help it. She didn’t dare acknowledge him.

The adrenaline of the shock helped keep her act up, but she could feel her sore limbs screaming to be released from exercises she’d been spared from for weeks, only for the instructor to add another set. Erik’s gaze was slowly replaced with, at one point or another, every other classmate. Her unnatural effortlessness was replaced with visible struggle.

Several girls were whispering… giggling. She could make out the words ‘pit stains’ before several of them burst into hysterics. There would be no staring back this time. She couldn’t bear to turn around and see that boy accuse her of being something else. By the end of the class, she was drenched in sweat, frightened, and cold.

But she still couldn’t bring herself to change in the locker room.