221 Midtown Moments (1/2)
”Hold up, Luca really picked a fight with the enemy commander last night?” Ty asked again.
He was leaning over to his left with a hand over his mouth so that no one else in class could hear our conversation. Not that it mattered as the other sophomores rarely listened to the chitchat of the three nerds sitting at the back of 10th Grade World History.
Arah, who was sitting on the seat to the other side of me, nodded her head at Ty's question. ”He was really lucky Dean got there before things got too serious…”
”Man, I wish I was there to see it,” Ty said, slumping back into his own seat. ”Donar had me memorising the rituals from the Book of Fay Arcanum again…”
The idea of Ty sitting alone in a room while Donar Firemonger taught him magic one-oh-one most nights now and then having to sit through the slog-fest of Mr. Tenor's class made me pat him sympathetically on his back.
”On the bright side, there haven't been any deaths, injuries, or magic-induced accidents in a while,” I reminded him. ”Let's enjoy this lull while it lasts, yeah?”
Ty chuckled softly to himself. ”I guess this is the longest break we've had from war, isn't it?”
”War is coming soon enough…” Arah sounded so ominous that watching her scribble down notes from Mr. Ternor's lessons on the Peloponnesian War was a little surreal. ”So, have you decided what to do with the scroll the Dominion commander gave you?”
”I sent it to Darah,” I answered. ”Above my pay grade really…”
”What note?” Ty asked.
”The scroll that had a message on it requesting a meeting between Lord Rah and Great General Darah to discuss the possibility of Sunspire Dominion and Trickster Pavilion alliance,” Arah replied offhandedly. She was still busy with her note taking.
”An Alliance?!” Ty repeated in surprise.
Unfortunately, his loud voice caught everyone's attention, and as all eyes turned on him, Ty was visibly trying to shrink his tall form back into his seat.
”I was actually just getting to the old Greek alliances during the war, Mr. Cruz,” Mr. Tenor said in a wheezy voice. ”Perhaps you can join me up front and poi t out to your classmates which states had allied with Sparta against Athens?”
He beckoned Ty over with the pointer in his hand, forcing Ty to reluctantly get up from his seat. His eyes glazed over the expectant class before landing on me.
”Help,” he mouthed.
---
Mr. Tenor had held Ty up after class so he could be reprimanded properly for disturbing lessons with what Tenor called, ”Innane teenage babbling.”
This meant Arah and I had to wait for him outside the classroom before we could all leave Midtown High for the afternoon.
”Candidates,” Arah said under her breath while her eyes glazed over the students moving across the hallway.
”What?” I asked in confusion.
My eyes turned on a small group of freshmen hanging around on the other side of the hallway, and the intensity of my stare might have been the reason they scampered off quickly.
”Mudcrap,” I said. ”You actually think the candidates they were talking about could from Midtown? No way…”
I glanced up at the white ceiling and the florescent lights above. Then I turned my head over to the white-washed walls and the appropriately dressed kids in their white sleeves and khaki pants who all looked like they were just going through the motions. Nope, if magic existed in Mudgard, Midtown High was not the place you'd go to find it.
”This place is as mundane as it gets,” I said out loud.
”You're from Midtown,” she reminded me. ”So is Ty, the so-called 'Chosen One'.”
”Yeah, sure,” I conceded. ”But, Arah, lightning doesn't strike the same place twice.”
”It does in the Fayne, Dean,” she countered.
Our debate would have continued if Ty hadn't escaped through the classroom door at that exact moment with both his fists pumped into the air.
”Free~eedomm~m!” he called to us.
This earned him another reprimand from Mr. Tenor who was still inside the classroom.
”No shouting in the hallways, Mr. Cruz!” Tenor called after him.
But the three of us were already gone and on our way out of the Mundaneness that was Midtown High.
---
”Does aunt Lena even ask where you get your cash now?” Ty asked while he gazed down at the pile of Leprechauns I'd dropped down on the counter. ”I mean, has she even seen how big your bank account is now?”
”Nope and nope,” I said satisfactorily while knowing Ty had to fabricate a part-time job just so he could justify to his dad why he'd been spending wads of cash on his brand new gaming rig. ”I don't flaunt my earnings the way you do.”
The shop we were in had the bland interior of a local arts and crafts shop. Displays of locally-made tools and figurines lined the immaculately clean shelves on either side of the walls. Stacks of old movie videos and vinyl discs could be found in carefully labelled containers. On the old retro gadget shelf I liked to frequent, one could find an old Playstation One sitting snugly between an Atari and a Nintendo Family Computer.