5. Alex
Chapter 5
Alex
“ W hat do you mean it’s not stamped correctly?”
Gah! I just want to send a stupid letter to my sister, since they seem to have forgotten we live in the stupid twenty-first century at this stupid school.
The student on the other side of the counter sighs, clearly exasperated. “Look,” she says, tapping the envelope with a pointed nail. “You’ve put the stamp in the bottom left corner. It needs to be in the top right.”
What difference does it make? It’s there, isn’t it? Besides, my only exposure to sending mail was through TV shows and movies. All of my communication thus far in life has been through email, text, or phone calls. I could have searched for proper mailing procedures if I had my phone, but this university insists on not allowing students that convenience.
I slide the envelope, back in her direction, gritting my teeth. “I’m just trying to get this out by tonight. Alright?”
She shoves it back. “I can't send it out if it's not properly labeled.”
“How else would you suggest I reach out then? Maybe, carrier pigeon?” I respond. My words landed like a sack of flour in the room, their weight and dryness filling the space between us.
“Look, I already gave you that stamp as a favor, even though it's against the rules. You'll have to fix it if you want it sent out.”
“I just need you to take this and for it to be dropped off at the address on the label,” I insist, waving the envelope at the bored-looking student behind the counter. “Can’t you just take it this one time?”
The student exhales, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I’ve told you three times already. The postage is wrong. I can’t accept it.”
I was about to launch into another argument when a figure swoops in front of me, cutting into my personal space.
“Excuse me,” the newcomer drawls, flashing a brilliant smile at the mail room attendant. “I have an urgent piece of mail to send.”
“Of course, Camden,” the girl gushes, her earlier scowl replaced by a simpering smile. “I’d be happy to take care of that for you, right away.”
My jaw drops, watching the student eagerly accept the Legacy’s letter, not even glancing at the postage. The pompous jerk hadn’t even bothered to stamp it.
“Are you kidding me?” I sputtered, gesturing wildly at the counter. “I’ve been trying to send this for ten minutes!”
Camden turns, fixing me with an empty stare. “Some of us have important business to attend to.” He smirks, running a hand through his artfully tousled hair. “You understand, don’t you?”
“Hey!” I protest at the worker. “What about my letter? I was here first!”
“Having trouble with the big words, or did you forget how to spell your name?” Camden taunts while the employee finishes up with his. Was his addressed to Japan?
My jaw clenches. Of course, a Legacy had to show up. My day was going just fine before.
“As I was saying, you need to come back when your envelope is filled out correctly.” Her eyes raise behind me. “You’re causing a line.”
Camden gives me a little finger wave, his eyes gleaming at my dismissal.
I have a finger for you, jerk face.
I storm away from the counter. Spinning, I nearly collide with a lanky guy standing entirely too close.
“Whoa there! Hi, I’m Alfie,” he says with an awkward grin, running a hand through his unruly red hair. “Looked like you were having some trouble. Everything okay?”
I clutch the envelope closer to my chest. “Just peachy. They won’t take this stupid thing because of the stamp.”
Alfie’s eyes lit up. “I might be able to help with that! Watch this…”
Before I have time to protest, he plucks the envelope from my hands. With a flourish, he tossed it high into the air, attempting to catch it behind his back. Instead of grabbing it, it clatters to the floor, creasing the edges.
“Ta-da!” he says excitedly.
“Amazing,” I deadpan, scooping up my item and heading over to one of the chairs in the small room.
“Sorry about that,” Alfie says sheepishly, following me as he rubs the back of his neck. “I thought I’d mastered that trick.”
I snort, carefully smoothing out the now crumpled envelope. “Maybe stick to pickpocketing instead of magic tricks,” I mutter.
Why was he still here?
“So, um, what’s in the envelope?” Alfie asks, leaning closer to peer at my handiwork.
I sigh, not looking up from my task as I carefully pull the stamp off and shift its location. “Nothing that concerns you.”
“Right, right. Of course.” He drums his fingers on his knee, the sound echoing in the cramped mail room.
I grunted in response, carefully pushing the stamp into the correct corner. The last thing I need is some wannabe magician ruining my chances of getting this letter to my sister.
“Who’s Clara?” Alfie asked, leaning in to peek at the address. “Family, friend?” He waggles his brows provocatively. “Girlfriend?”
I shoot him a glare, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave me alone. No such luck.
“Oh, come on,” he prods, a grin spreading across his overly freckled face. “You can’t possibly be mailing something boring if you held up the line like that. What’s the story?”
I hold up the envelope, examining it to make sure there’s nothing else the student at the front desk could possibly complain about and jump back in line. Alfie right on my heels.
“I know I messed up earlier, but you want to see another trick?” he asks. “Come on, let me redeem myself.”
This kid could not take a freakin’ hint.
I shuffle forward in the line, clutching the letter tightly. I can hear Alfie chattering away behind me, his cheerful voice rising above the general murmur of the post office.
“And for my next trick,” he announces dramatically, “I shall make this coin disappear and then reappear!”
A few people in line turn to look, but I keep my eyes fixed ahead.
“Give that back, freak,” a student exclaims from somewhere behind me. “I didn’t give you permission to go through my purse!”
I released a heavy sigh and resist the urge to look back. My sister needed this letter, and I wasn’t about to let some magician distract me from my mission. The line moved forward again, and thankfully I was next in line.
Alfie rubs at his forehead beside me and despite my irritation, curiosity gets the better of me. “What exactly were you trying to do back there?”
Alfie’s face lit up. “I made the object disappear and…”
My nose creases. “No, I mean with my letter.”
“Oh! Well, I was attempting to make the stamp disappear and reappear. You know, real magic.”
I snorted, finally glancing at him. His freckles seemed to dance across his nose as he grins sheepishly. “Real magic?” I question.
“It exists, you know.”
Okaaay, so the guy had a screw or two lose inside his brain, and I was encouraging him. Smart, Alex.
“Sure it does,” I say, my frown deepening. “And I’m the Queen.”
Alfie’s eyes widen. “You are? I had no idea! Your Majesty, I—”
“No, you idiot,” I cut him off. “It’s called sarcasm.” Why was I humoring this kid again?
He deflates a bit, but his enthusiasm is apparently unquenchable. “I’m telling you, magic is real! Have you ever heard of fairy dust?”
Finally, I was at the front of the line.
“There. Happy now?” I ask slamming down the envelope and ignoring Alfie’s continuous chatter.
The student inspects it closely, her nose practically touching the paper. “I suppose that’ll do,” she said with a sniff.
“Fantastic,” I muttered, shoving the letter further her way. “Now can you please just mail it?”
“Well…” she drawls, glancing at an ornate clock on the wall. “We’re actually closing in two minutes.”
I felt my eye twitch. “You cannot be serious.”
She shrugs, already gathering her things to leave. “Rules are rules. Come back tomorrow.”
Suddenly my eyes go wide as a handful of shimmering particles dance around my vision, leaving a trail of tingling sparkles. The dust glows with an ever-changing array of colors.
I stared at Alfie in disbelief, my skin tingling where the shimmering particles landed. “Where did you—”
“Shhh,” Alfie whispers, pressing a finger to his lips. He winks at me, then turns to the student behind the counter with a dazzling smile. “My dear lady, I believe you’ll find that your clock is running a bit fast.”
She grabs a rectangular piece of plastic beside her and flips the “OPEN” sign to “CLOSED.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall, my heart sinking with each slow tick. “Please,” I beg. “I just need to send this one letter. It’s important.”
The girl behind the counter smirks. “Sorry, mudslide. Rules are rules.”
The venom in her tone makes my skin crawl. Realization dawns, cold and heavy in the pit of my stomach. The Legacies. Of course. Camden had no doubt done this.
I gripped the envelope tighter, worried I would have to wait an entire day to let my sister know I was okay.
I hate the no phone policy. I hate the Legacies. I hate that my dad thought Altair would fix me. What made him believe that this place was right for me?
My clinging hope was that when my father had gone here, they’d had the same policy, and he could update Clara as to why I couldn’t be in touch as often.
I hated this school.
“Well, that sucks,” Alfie huffs after the girl disappears into a back room without another word. My letter is left abandoned on the counter.
I glower, trying in vain to brush the shimmering dust off my arms. But it clung stubbornly, making my skin sparkle like I’d fallen into a vat of liquid diamonds.
Alfie’s eyes widen in panic as he realizes I’m not happy.
“I-I’m sorry! I just wanted to see if it would work,” he stammers, taking a step back from my glittering form. I could deck him, I was so frustrated.
He frantically starts brushing at my arms, sending tiny sparkles floating through the air, but I force him away.
“Work? What exactly were you hoping would happen?” I spit, annoyed beyond belief.
Alfie fumbled in his pocket and pulled out an ornate vial. “I found this right outside the door. It’s supposed to be real fairy dust! I thought maybe…”
“You found a bottle on the ground and thought it was real fairy dust?” I repeat slowly.
“Yeah, I mean look for yourself,” he says, shoving the bottle in my direction. “It says real fairy dust.”
I grit my teeth. My patience is completely gone. Un- freaking -believable.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “That’s a bottle of glitter from a craft store. It’s for children’s art projects, not magical feats,” I say, pointing at the label on the back.
He blinks at me, deflating like a punctured balloon. “But…but it sparkles just like they say fairy dust does in the stories!”
I must be losing it, because I can’t help but chuckle, despite my exasperation. “Of course it sparkles. It’s glitter. It’s designed to sparkle.”
He turns the bottle over in his hands, squinting at the label.
“Well,” he says, a hint of a grin playing at the corners of his mouth, “I suppose this explains why nothing happened when I sprinkled it on the hummus I had in my bag.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Chickpeas,” he responds like that’s a logical answer. “I wanted to grow a giant bean stalk.”
I stare at him, mouth agape, torn between calling out his lunacy and face-palming. “You…you put glitter in your hummus?”
He shrugs, a crazy glint in his eye. “Well, when you say it like that, it does sound a bit ridiculous.”
“A bit?” I choke out. “You’re lucky you didn’t end up with the world’s most fabulous case of indigestion.”
“So you’re saying I probably shouldn’t eat the carrots either?”
My head shakes side to side. “Probably not.”
“Well, I gotta go,” Alfie says suddenly, and a giant cloud of white smoke appears around him with a poof .
Coughing, I blink, swatting away the influx of smoke and stare at the spot where he’d just been standing. The door chime dings a moment later.
“Well, that was…different,” I mumble to myself, shaking my head in bewilderment.
I swear, Altair gets weirder and weirder by the day.
As I turned to leave the mailroom, my eyes fall on the letter I’d come to mail in the first place.
With a groan, I pick it up and slip it into my pocket, as flecks of glitter fall onto it.
Another irritated sigh settles in my throat. Great.
As I step out of the mail building, sparkles mock me with its cheerful glimmer. Glitter clung to every inch of me, sparkling in the outside air. I squint, momentarily blinded by my own radiance.
“Well, well, well,” drawls a familiar voice. “If it isn’t our favorite charity case. Get all dolled up on our account?” Sylvester taunts.
“Yeah, you’re practically glowing,” Camden chimes in right after.
My eyes shoot to the sky. As if this couldn’t get any more embarrassing.
Of course Camden and Sylvester would be here now, of all times. I turn to face the duo casually lounging against the opposite wall.
“Gents.” I nod, trying to maintain my dignity while shedding a small cloud of glitter with every movement. “Lovely day for some sparkle, isn’t it?”
“Looks like someone had an accident with some fairy dust.” Camden drawls.
My eyes narrow, instantly knowing I’d been set up.
Of course. Literally of course, because why couldn’t this day be any worse?
“Screw off,” I snarl, trying to dust more of the glitter off my skin, but it only surrounds me in a bigger cloud. I bite back my groan; it was never going to come all the way out.
“Come on, mudslide.” Sylvester chuckles. “We just thought you could use a little sparkle in your life. Tough gig, being a reject and all.”
I bite back my flinch. Sylvester had no idea how true those words were.
“What happened to Prescott? Did she get in a fight with a disco ball and lose?” The third Legacy, Bishop smirked as he sauntered up to his friends.
I take deep breaths, trying to bring myself back to the present instead of dwelling on the memories of him nearly naked in his window the other night. I am all too familiar with Bishop's body, even under the sporty Altair jacket he currently wears instead of the standard black blazer. Despite it being tight and branded with the school’s logo, it does little to conceal his muscles which bulge and flex beneath it, almost like a second skin.
Focus Alex!
Blinking, I raised my chin defiantly, meeting Bishop’s gaze with steely determination. “I dunno,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “I thought I’d try out a new look. Clearly, it’s working, since I’ve got your undivided attention.”
Bishop’s smirk falters for a moment. “Cute. Prescott’s found her voice.”
The other two Legacies snicker, but I refuse to back down. Numbness was superior to pain, and these jerks would never see mine.
“Glad you finally noticed.” I say. “It’s hard to be heard when I have to constantly talk over your egos.”
Bishop’s eyes grow feverish as fresh rage seeps from his pores. “Why don’t you crawl back to whatever gutter your father pulled you from?”
I cluck my tongue, unimpressed. “Wow, Bishop. Did you spend all night coming up with that one? I’m impressed. It must have exhausted those few brain cells of yours.”
Seizing the moment, I smile politely and step closer, shaking off as much glitter as I can in their direction. It was the least they deserved, seeing as they set up another student with their cruel prank.
Was the guy with more freckles than I currently had glitter weird? Sure, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be an unknowing participant in a prank that was meant for me.
If these jerks wanted to embarrass me then they should do it themselves. Not have others participate in their schemes.
“Ah!” They sputtered, coughing and rubbing their eyes. Well, Camden and Sylvester did, Bishop remained stationary. Unchanged. Immobile. As still as a statue.
I got a reaction from two of the three though, so I counted it as a win. It’s not my fault the one with brown hair had the personality of something so lifeless.
“What’s wrong, boys?” I taunt. “I thought you might appreciate a little sparkle in your lives.”
“You crazy b—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” I waggled my finger at Camden. “Language. Wouldn’t want to add ‘potty mouth’ to the list of a Legacy’s charming qualities, would we?”
“You’re going to pay for this!” Sylvester insists.
I shake another limb. They deserve the cloud of glitter in their faces after what they did to me at the assembly anyway.
Speaking of…
I march up to Bishop, so that he can see the self-satisfied gleam in my eyes.
“Next time you decide you want to embarrass me? Don’t.” My voice turns cold, laced with warning.
His jaw locks, a slight twitch in his cheek betraying his control.
“Or what?” he hisses, lips curling into a sneer. “What exactly do you think you, a worthless Prescott, can do about it?”
I don’t flinch. A strange kind of tension crackles between us like a live wire, ready to shock us both at any moment. It's as perplexing and disorienting as my own feelings towards him. Bishop has made it clear that he wants me gone, so why does my pulse quicken whenever he’s this close?
“Trust me,” I say, each word deliberate and dripping with venom, “you don’t want to find out.”
Bishop’s face remained impassive, but I smile. I’m not afraid of him.
I brush past him, only stopping momentarily at the other two. “I would suggest you do your own dirty work in the future, instead of having others participate unknowingly,” I comment, my tone thick with feigned sweetness. “The consequences would seem earned then, no?”
Their faces contort with a mix of shock and indignation as my words sink in, but I don’t wait to see how it plays out, walking away from the now-sparkly trio.
“Woah, what happened to you?” Sutton asks shoving past a group of students leaving the courtyard outside Altair’s main building. “Did you fall into a unicorn’s litter box or something?”
I shake my head, snorting. “No, I’ve just been chosen as the new Fairy Queen. Can’t you tell by my dazzling aura?”
Sutton chuckles, falling into step beside me. “Right, and I’m the princess of Altair. Seriously, what’s with the glitter explosion?”
As we walk, the late afternoon sun caught the tiny particles clinging to my clothes and skin, sending little rainbows dancing across the cobblestone path. A few passing students did doubletakes, some whispering and pointing. I growl in their direction, trying to maintain my composure despite the glitter tickling my nose, and I must show enough conviction because they turn away.
“You do realize that stuff is poisonous, right?”
“Relax, I don’t plan on ingesting a bucket of it. There was a miscommunication, but I handled it,” I say.
Sutton eyes my glitter-covered form with a mixture of amusement and concern, before tucking a lock of hair behind her headband.
“Look, I was actually coming to find you to see if you wanted to help me with a project.”
“An art project?” I hedge, remembering how closed off she’d been the other night when I’d asked her about her art. “What kind of project are we talking about here? Because I’m not sure I’m up for anything involving glitter.”
She chuckles, her eyes flickering with playful intent. “No glitter, I promise. It’s for my mixed media class. I’m thinking of doing something with found objects and maybe some spray paint. Could be fun, right?”
“Spray paint, huh?” I say, arching an eyebrow. “You’re not planning on getting us arrested for vandalism or anything, are you?”
“Of course not,” Sutton says, scoffing.
I hesitate, brushing more of the sparkly flecks from my sleeve. “What day were you thinking?”
She shrugs. “Whenever. It’s not due until next week, so I pretty much have an open schedule anytime between now and then.”
“Are you free this Thursday evening?” I ask, a plan already forming to get out of having my one-on-one with Sylvester.
“Sure,” she agrees. “Thursday works for me.”
“I’ll be there,” I say with a nod.
I can still see the curiosity in her eyes, but she didn’t press me further about how I ended up like this, and that’s what I was quickly realizing I liked about Sutton—she was always up for anything, no explanation needed. I didn’t push her about her art, and she didn’t push me to explain myself.
“We’ll meet up in the studio,” she says, excited.
“Absolutely,” I confirm.
Helping Sutton with her art sounded way more appealing than spending a few hours alone with a Legacy going over the history of Altair.
“It’s a date then!” Sutton beams, squeezing my arm in excitement, but then pulls it away a moment later to shake off the glitter she’s now infected with.
She can thank the Legacy guys for that one.
“Come on, glitter bomb.” She chuckles. “I’m hungry.”
My eyes light up. A woman after my own heart.