Chapter 9
On the following Monday at three p.m., Bryn found herself sitting in the lower library in a little grouping of chairs arranged in front of wide windows with a backdrop of books, books, books, and a mezzanine filled with more books.
It was not her favorite of the libraries, but it was the brightest, most open, most airy, and, Amelia thought, least threatening.
She was here to meet the after-school club.
In itself, this was kind of a mindfuck. She’d been part of the after-school club when she was a student, and she’d hated it, but also relied upon it.
Maybe she was relying upon hating it as a sort of stable throughline for her otherwise higgledy-piggledy social life.
If you took higgledy-piggledy to mean a few times when people seemed to like her and many more times when she seemed socially invisible.
In Bryn’s time at the school, the after-school club was considered a catch-all for weird kids, the ones who didn’t fit in.
Membership in it had been mostly grudging, and Bryn had only joined because Professor Herringbone had told her it would be good for her—something she’d taken quite personally at the time.
She vividly remembered the sudden flush of shame, the desire to say, Am I really that bad?
Can everyone tell I don’t belong here? The sensation of being exposed had lingered, coloring even the relatively mundane aspects of the club, which had been more of a support group than anything else, and one in which Bryn still never truly felt included.
She hadn’t realized then that her challenges with adjustment applied across all mediums and formats of socialization.
She missed the illusion that it was simply because she came from a siren background, instead of really understanding that she was just kind of odd.
No matter what context she happened to be standing in.
Though after she agreed to be the faculty facilitator, she realized that it had never been explained to her (or, as far as she knew, anyone else) what the club was supposed to accomplish.
Perhaps things had changed, or perhaps the club seemed less alienating with the clarity of age; in any case, it was clear that the new after-school club had a focus on academic support for witches from non-magical backgrounds.
According to Amelia, these were the three second-year students who were struggling the most with both adjusting to Grimoire Academy and their impending MSEs, which was supported by Bryn’s recent pre-tests and the reports of other professors.
“I’ve been meaning to set this up all year,” Amelia had confessed.
“But time got away from me, and Professor Herringbone had always played club sponsor until she became headmistress shortly after we graduated. No one picked it up and …” Amelia had looked at Bryn as if, of all people, she was the one who was truly best suited to help her.
And that sensation went directly into Bryn’s bones.
Now, actually waiting for the club to begin, it was hard to recapture that feeling of competence.
Mostly, Bryn just worried she’d do or say something that would make it obvious how out of her depth she was.
The first student to arrive was Circe, the girl who’d been in the professor’s classroom the first time Bryn and Amelia had walked in.
Having now known her for a few more weeks, Bryn had heard her say exactly as many words, which was none.
Circe didn’t seem to talk. Not, Bryn thought, in a some kind of physical or mental or behavioral issue with talking way, though of course she wasn’t an expert.
More in a this is all impossible and I will not participate way. And to be honest, Bryn respected that.
Still, it could well be a sign of failure to adjust to the witching world. And so here she was.
The other two names on the list were Violet and Luke.
Violet, she/they; Luke, he/him. No additional details.
Both of them arrived five minutes late. But not as if they’d been traveling together, merely as if neither of them had cared particularly to arrive on time.
In those five minutes Bryn had spoken to Circe a few times, and Circe had only looked up through eyelashes and then away again.
It did not feel rude or standoffish. It simply felt like she didn’t wish to speak.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Violet said, hands on their hips.
“My grades are fine.” Which was both true and not true.
Violet had been one of the kids who’d taken out their phone and been frustrated to discover that it could no longer help with exams after Bryn’s network-dampening charm.
Bryn had no idea how much of their current grades were a product of previous cheating.
“Please have a seat,” she said, gesturing to a chair.
“Please tell me why I’m here.”
“I was hoping you could tell me why you were here.” That got a spark of interest from the defensive teenager.
Bryn sensed a possible in, and went on, “I’m new here, but this is the list of names I was given.
So I guess, from my perspective, you’re here because your name was on a list. I assumed you three would be able to tell me more. ”
Luke dropped heavily into an armchair. Far more heavily than his skinny, bony frame seemed to warrant. “I’m here because I’m a dunce.”
Bryn raised her eyebrows. “A dunce? What, with the cap?”
Luke’s face split into a grin. “Yes, pointy cap in the corner. ‘Stay there until you can focus.’ Or, ‘Luke you haven’t even started on your work.’ Or, ‘What are you doing there? That’s not where you’re meant to be at all.’”
“Is that what being a dunce is?” Bryn asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s better than being called stupid, I think. It feels like being a dunce is sort of a choice, and being stupid is a thing that you were born as and you can’t escape from. So I’d rather be a dunce.”
“You’re not a dunce,” Violet said, enunciating carefully. “You have ADHD. Calling yourself a dunce is actually quite ableist.”
He frowned. “It is? Even if it’s what I am?”
“Yeah, that’s internally ableist,” they said in an exhausted tone. “Ugh, why don’t you know this?”
Another shrug. “Well, anyway, whatever I am, I know why I’m here.
I’m here because I don’t do my homework.
And I often don’t do my schoolwork either, which really annoys the professors.
And I get that, but also, I just can’t make it important in my brain?
I want to. I try to make it important. But I just …
don’t care. Is that wrong?” He shook his head.
“I don’t want them to think that it’s personal. It’s really not. I just—”
“Have ADHD,” Violet said again.
“Maybe,” he agreed. “I mean, I don’t know. I’m not diagnosed, so I’m not sure you should really be saying that. But it does kind of make sense. I’ve done like 7,000 internet quizzes, and they all come up ADHD.”
“Okay,” Bryn said. “Thanks, Luke. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself, Violet?”
They sighed and finally took a seat in a chair.
She didn’t settle into it with the same gravity that Luke had, but sat instead towards the front, their back ramrod straight, hands clasped loosely on their lap.
“I’m Violet Peltier. I turn sixteen in three weeks.
I’ve been here at Grimoire Academy since my first year.
And before that, I went to a regular public school with non-magical people.
I come from a non-magical family. And even though I displayed magical abilities from a very young age, they still didn’t put me in a magical school until high school.
So any problems that I have with culture shock are definitely my parents’ fault. ”
This was delivered with a straight face and serious tone, leaving Bryn to wonder if she was on one of those hidden-camera shows, and these kids had been called in from Central Casting. She glanced up at the crown molding, but no small black lenses looked back. “Okay, thank you, Violet.”
Amelia had said that these three seemed to be academically struggling and unengaged with any other micro-communities on campus.
Micro-communities had been the term she’d actually used, which Bryn hadn’t asked her to define, but she assumed it meant all of those cliques and groups and clubs to which she, as a student, had also never belonged.
“And Circe? What about you?”
“Circe doesn’t speak,” Violet said.
Circe, glancing up again from beneath her bangs, shrugged. Just slightly. Just enough so that Bryn knew she was paying attention.
“You don’t speak ever?”
Slight head shake.
“Are you physically capable of speech? I mean, is there something wrong with your vocal cords, or something else?”
Slight head shake.
Violet piped in with, “I don’t think you should really ask things like that. It might imply that different abilities are less deserving of respect.”
“Well, I definitely don’t mean to imply that.
I guess I’m just curious.” Bryn paused, checking her instinctive defensiveness.
How much did it matter why Circe didn’t speak?
Was she going to insist? Surely not. She nodded, her initial irritation melting away.
“Okay, Violet, I take your point. My curiosity is probably also not applicable to this situation.” Bryn ducked her head to look at Circe.
“As your teacher, though, do you need medical help of any kind?”
Head shake.
“All right, then. I think the headmistress just wanted to offer the three of you any additional support you might need to make your time here easier.”
They stared back at her. Or rather, two of them stared back at her, and one of them stared up at her from beneath her hair.
Great. This is going well. “So, does anyone need any additional schoolwork help? We could do homework if that would meet your needs.” Meet your needs?
Had she really just said that? What was she, a group therapist?
She had to stop channeling the ghosts of schooling past.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Violet said, tossing their hair. “There’s nothing wrong with the way that I do school or anything else. I usually excel.”
“Wonderful. Maybe you’re here to help your classmates.”
This seemed to sink in. They turned to Luke and said, “Well, do you need help?”
“I did get slightly stuck on the math assignment.”
Violet sighed. “What part?”
“It’s just I never learned fractions, which I didn’t think would matter, and then they keep coming up again.”
“That’s how math is. They just cycle through the same four concepts over and over and over again.”
Bryn, slightly delighted by this answer, had to keep her smile under wraps. “Circe, did you need help with anything?”
Circe shook her head, then opened her backpack, pulled out a notebook, and began writing in it. Her hair was fully in her face now, long enough to drag along the page.
“All right,” Bryn said, feeling that she was completely adrift and had no idea how to make this club work. Or how she’d even know if it was working.
Later, at dinner, Amelia asked how it had gone. It wasn’t exactly a private conversation, but Bryn, seated in between Amelia and Piper, couldn’t resist the chance to get another read on the situation.
“I think maybe … terribly?”
“Can’t have gone that badly,” Piper assured her, still chewing on a mouthful of salad. “Circe doesn’t say boo to a ghost and the other two aren’t exactly troublemakers.”
“Circe wrote in a notebook the entire time. For forty-five minutes.”
Piper nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“What about the others?” Amelia asked.
“Which others?” Mr Wicks asked from across the table.
“Violet and Luke, both second-years.”
He nodded. “Violet has a lot of potential. Luke, I despair of ever getting to complete any of his assignments.”
“I think they all have a lot of potential,” Amelia said. Tension seemed to flare between them, but Bryn wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, because she knew how Amelia felt.
Mr Wicks only nodded. “I don’t disagree. But I do find Luke’s continued misbehavior troubling.”
“I’m intrigued by all three of them,” Bryn said, hoping to defuse the possible conflict, even as she acknowledged internally that it had nothing at all to do with her. “But I don’t have any idea how I can possibly help them.”
“Being consistently available is a good start,” Amelia said.
Mr Wicks cleared his throat. “I would caution against being too available. We best serve our students by inspiring them towards independence.”
Gulping, Bryn shot a sideways look at Piper, who was studiously eating salad and pretending not to hear any of this.
“Be that as it may,” Amelia said after a moment, “all I’m asking is for you to reach out to these three specific students.” She offered Bryn a smile. “You don’t have to work miracles.”
Reflecting upon the possibility that a portion of the students were literally going to fail their MSEs, Bryn thought Amelia really did need miracles to be performed. Though, clearly, not by her.
“You should get them moving,” Piper suggested. “Get out of the library. Take a walk around. Go feed the ponies or something.”
The idea of Violet, with their long sparkling golden hair, feeding ponies did bring a smile to Bryn’s face. “You think?”
Piper shrugged. “Can’t hurt, really.”
“No, that’s true.” She thought of something else and turned to Amelia. “What’s the school policy on field trips?”