[4/24/457 AC, 3:28 PM]

  “Where are you going Lee?” Cmbers a cracking voice after me, as I head down the stairs. “Poetry club is in like five minutes.” I look over my shoulder, sort of sinking into my jacket. Dropping the pen I was flitting between my fingers. The dark burgundy of my coat makes me look all the paler in the dreary linoleum halls of Southwest Belmont High. As shouts Drew Boggin, behind thin rectangur gsses and swooped back hair. The only one more a nerd about pre-mystfall poetry than me. And thus the reason I even made any friends at school.

  Well . . . besides Bea.

  “He said he's skipping this week, some people actually have a social life Drew.” Flora gently thwacks her cousin on the shoulder. Fittingly she’s now the captain of the baseball team (I’m trying not to stare but her arms). . . and a weightlifter. “Tell Bea happy birthday for me. Kay? Sorry I couldn't come.” She winks and her lips crease.

  My cheeks start burning.

  “Aye aye!” I jokingly salute over my left shoulder. As she peels off with Drew, down the hall. And I shove open the outdoors. I walk quickly across the wn, and out to the parking lot. Coughing out a puff of pink vapor.

  Gods youre stupid Lee. She doesn’t know you’re a Winnower, A MAGE. And she’s literally Bea’s EX-GIRLFRIEND.

  For so many reasons —

  Dont.

  Crush.

  On.

  He—

  “Earth to space cadet Meadows.” She wraps her arm around my neck, pulling me in. Her chest vibrates as a warm chuckle. Eyes like a stormy sea, and a nose always a little crooked, like her smile. “You there?”

  She smells like pine smoke. A campfire. Smores.

  And pot.

  Aaaaaannnd a smidge of acrid blood.

  Buuut I try and focus on the more pleasing notes. My mind wanderin—

  “— Lee?”

  “Oh shit!” I jolt. Slipping from her hold. Bumping into her beat up and duct-taped-together Rezubian Ranger. “Yeah hi Bea. Meadow reporting!” I give another salute. Seriously, why do I do that?

  “You good?” Her brows furrow as the car doors unlock. And my chest flusters.

  Seriously brain.

  Stop flustering about gay girls.

  ESPECIALLY YOUR FUCKIN BEST FRIEND

  “Uh, yeah.” I chirp like an unstable pulsar, climbing into the passenger after her. “Just excited.”

  “Now what on earth could you be excited for?” She croons, as I buckle up, and the engine sputters. She sighs, as I simply sm my hand against the central console, and with a flicker of red and blinking dials, the engine grumbles and sputters to life.

  I slick back my auburn overgrown curls in a mockery of confidence. “Wouldn't you like to know wizard-girl.”

  “I would.” Her mirth only doubles. fanning herself with her short bck nails. “What could ever be so important on such a fair te winter's day?”

  “Pffft. Happy birthday Bumble Bee.”

  “Save the sappiness for the party.” She turns away suddenly, as she pulls the car out of park. Almost hiding behind her bob of faded lic and her baggy blue fnnel, dancing in the cold breeze of the open window. “Come on, it’s gonna be sick.”

  As we peel down the old highway.

  I swear.

  I see her ears flush pink.

  * * *

  [4/24/457 AC, 8:01 PM]

  Well . . . I certainly feel sick. At the edge of the precipice. A starless void greats me under a myst den sky. I don’t want to look at the ke, Bea’s friends and friends of friends twenty feet below in the dark. I don’t want to look at myself either. Sickly pale skin and patchy red leg hair, half shaved, shining in the moonlight. Like some gangly naked goat in an oversized swim shirt and trunks.

  I teater forward. One foot. The other.

  The gloaming waters seem to lurch below me, beckoning with the chorus of my peers, the grey rocks jagged at m—

  “Jump.”

  I hear her say one word. One impossible word. And I do.

  I jump. Off of the cliff.

  Right into a spreading maw of porcein teeth.

  * * *

  Bea screams. Teens drop bottles and cans, conversions ending in terror and silence as a wave busts from the water’s edge. Nocking everyone back, and a couple under. Fish-like. Boar-like. Long teeth and gristle, and foot long bristles, as it upchucks a half liquified hind all over a Daniel Craigs . . . And opens its maw. To swallow Lee whole.

  So Beatrice punches it.

  Her weapons left in her canvas bag on the shore. And so she punches it. With eyes bzing neon blue, the air shudders with the discordant drowning of static. Of half remembered radio. Of memories unmade.

  And the fish-like beast crumples . . . As a nky redheaded teen falls into it in a bze of red with the force of a railway cannon from the 280s.

  It fittingly crumples and bursts.

  Bea surges forth, crawling into the imploded flesh as she feels a hand grasp her own. And pulls.

  * * *

  [4/24/457 AC, 8:47 PM]

  I wipe the sludge of blood and pulverized guts off my face with a very soft beach towel. Far from the pastel tones it once had. “Sooooo…. You’re definitely a cryptid hunter.” I pique, twinning blood from my hair with the help of now murky ke water. Its all the same color.

  “We both know you knew.” She wryly states, as water drips from her face onto the thorny scaled carcass, as she carved it open with a cold-iron bde. “I’m sure half our css does.”

  “I mean I wasn’t going to pry.” I catch my breath, every joint still aching from the impact. Thin red smoke still clinging to the water’s surface. “You never pried about my Winnowing. I wasn’t going to pry about yours.”

  “Magick never comes from a very magical pce does it?” She chortles. As she climbs up the shore to her car, the parking lot is left otherwise empty. As she hauls a pack of dismembered monster parts. Smelling vaguely of rotten fish and pond scum.

  “Nope!” I chirp. Sliding into the passenger seat… doing my best to ignore the grime coating us “Folktales and reality. They don’t match up much I think.”

  “Yeah…” Her expression looks tired, blood and muck covering her olive skin “You’re right.”

  “Still… happy birthday” I start, before putting back the present in my bag. “Hey… what’s wrong. And don’t say it’s just your party being ruined or us almost getting eaten by some ke monster. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m moving.”Is all she says, as she puts the car in drive down the road. Taking a tight turn out of the county park, and towards the twinkling lights and foggy coast of Belmont.

  “After senior year? I mean that doesn’t surprise m—”

  “I’m moving over the break.”

  WHAT!

  My voice falls quiet. “That’s in like half a week Bea.”

  “I know.”

  “And you didn’t tell me!”

  “I don’t want to!” She shouts, and I shrink. “I don’t want to go. My dad got a new job in San Toros, working for the Bureau's office there.”

  “Then don’t go!” I shout back, pleading as her car pulls into the long drive of my house. The rickety old building, an off yellow. Like daisies in early fall. “You could always stay with my mom and me! She loves you.”

  “Lee.” The car shudders to a stop. She doesn’t look at me. Or even at my house. Just the long coast. South. Away. “I’m going.”

  “So that’s it.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You wish.” She snarks on instinct.

  “You know what.” I blurt as I unbuckle and step out the door. Into the cool breeze. “Yeah.”

  My heart sinks.

  What did we say?!

  “Lee…”

  “Just please stop it.” I plead, nails scoring my palm. “I don’t feel like talking.”

  “Neither do I” Her lip shakes, gripping the wheel, as she looks at me. Blue eyes. Too blue. “But this isn—”

  “Goodnight” I sm the door. And run.

  “Wai—”