Ordinary Magic by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway Page B

Miranda Blythe’s romance novels, and I decided I liked him immediately when he didn’t laugh or reassure me that we’d be reading
real
books. Like Mrs. Andrews had last year.
    He did say, “I’m afraid Ms. Blythe is not on the curriculum this semester. We’ll be starting your education here with the epic poets—boring, I know, but necessary building blocks. However, an extra-credit book report is always welcome, and you’re free to choose whatever topic you like.”
    Then Mr. O’Hara added, “I think Ms. Blythe’s works would be a particularly interesting topic for a report. In fact, if you want an example of the archetypal hero journey—”
    “Wait, wait, wait.” Fred raised his hand. “You read romance novels?”
    “My dear boy,” Mr. O’Hara replied, “I read everything.”
    We stayed in the same classroom for languages. That class was a little weird, I’ll admit. I mean, a couple of language classes are required at every school. I don’t know why; you usually don’t learn more than how to say “Where is the bathroom?” and “I’d like a cheeseburger.” (Or, in Olivia’s case, “Oh my, a button has popped off!”) Olivia and Gil said if I had a choice, I should takeAstrin, which is supposed to be the easiest because it’s so close to Westren, and Jeremy insisted it’d look better on my transcript if I took Svar, because it’s the hardest. But they all agreed that language is usually two semesters, over and done with. It’s a token class.
    That was not the case at the Margaret Green School. Here it was required. We were going to learn a different language each year, and in order to graduate to the next grade we’d have to be what Mr. O’Hara called “functionally fluent.”
    “Why? So we’re ready to be bought and sold?” Peter muttered under his breath.
    “In case you’re bought and sold,” Mr. O’Hara answered so everyone could hear. “I think you’ll find escape much easier if you know the local language.” And then he spent the rest of the class introducing us to Astrin and teaching us the tourist basics, like
hello, good-bye, please, thank you,
and
help, I’m being kidnapped!
    Every now and again I’d glance out the large windows and watch Becky holding her class down in the courtyard. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but it looked like she had the older students and was making them run around a lot and dig into the ground.
    Midmorning was Ms. Macartney for math and history. Unlike Mr. O’Hara, Ms. Macartney didn’t seem interested in what we’d done in our other schools or in getting us to talk. She barely talked herself. She took roll by waiting for everyone to sit down and stop talking (something about her calm, watchful expression made it a short wait) and then checked our names offa list. She walked up and down the rows, handing out quizzes, and took a seat behind her desk as we spent the better part of the class filling them out. The quiz was basic math—adding, subtracting, multiplication, some division, and a little geometry. I guess to figure out how much we knew. The instructions said to try every problem, even if we didn’t know the answer, and to show our work.
    Class was almost over by the time we finished; Ms. Macartney stood and gathered the papers herself, though it would have been easier to just poof them over to her desk.
    When she spoke, I realized it was the first time I’d heard her voice, because I wasn’t expecting that slow, seaside drawl. It sounded at odds with her cool-eyed stare and every-hair-in-place bun. “The life of an ord is hard,” she began, taking us in kid by kid, “and it starts here. I do not give out As in this class, or Bs or Cs. You are all old enough to know your alphabet by now. You either pass or you fail. If you fail”—and she somehow made
if
sound like
when
—“you will be required to repeat this class and this Year until you pass. Judging from this attempt”—she paged through our quizzes—“some of