Original Souls (A World Apart #1) (50 page)

"You're late, as usual, but I'm going to let it slide, as usual. But this seems like it is becoming a bit of a bad habit. You might want to look into breaking it sooner rather than later," she said while giggling. She was very good with kids. She was the perfect ministrant to instruct rotations class. "Go in and find a seat then." She waved him pass.

But before he could enter, a hyperactive gentleman walked out abruptly. The man roughly bumped Corinth in the doorway, sending his flimsily held stance wobbling to the floor. "I'm sorry, man, but you should watch where you're headed!" the rude guy blurted out.

"Uncle Evan?" Corinth looked up from the ground where his uncle had knocked him down. He was beyond surprised to see him jetting out of Sena. Lilith's fully filled classroom. "Where ya going?" Evan's blue eyes seemed wild and confused when Corinth first spoke. His hair and clothes were so disheveled that Corinth barely recognized him as the spiffy and dapper fellow he loved so much. It looked as if the man had not long ago been crying too.

"I'm on my way. No where special, just getting away from here." He suspiciously looked to Lilith when he stated his case to the boy on the floor. He didn't bother to help him up or anything.

"Here, honey, le
t’
s go into class." She extended her hand and Corinth took it.

She continued waving him in through the door, even pushed slightly on his red and blue backpack. But he couldn't help but look back, wondering what was up with his uncle. He hadn't seen him since last Friday. He took him out for an awkward lunch after he heard about him losing to Lindle at the tournament. He seemed distant and cold then. But not nearly as bad as right now.

<*>

"Rotate, Rotate, Rotate," tha
t’
s all Lilith said as she walked the aisles in-between the silver desk. Corinth was standing amidst a bunch of students he didn't know very well yet. He had classes with Emma, Emmy, and Claudia, but none of them were in his first period. She stopped at Corinth's desk. "Good job," she said, looking down at him willing the key to spin at his chest. "The idea behind rotating your llave; is that special drive from within. That force inside you that you derive your strength from!" she continued on speaking out to the entire class as Corinth tried to focus on doing exactly what she just said. From the will within. From the will within; he kept on telling -himself to hold true to Sena. Lilit
h’
s words.

Corinth had to borrow a spare key of sorts. He didn't have a personal llave like most everyone else. This made him stand out in rotations class. Everyone would compare their llaves, whether the treasured tools possessed protective or specialized spells and whatnot. But Corinth not having one of his own put him on the outer perimeter when that type of socializing went on. No one really wanted to talk to him anyway because of his strange eyes. He scared some people. Everyone had a preconceived notion about whom they were around, dependent solely on the perso
n’
s eye color. But Cor
y’
s eyes were so different. Something none of them had seen before, unless they had somehow met Corinth before. He was that supremely unique. Draconians almost never married outside their race. Simply a known fact, not as much a judgment coming from the other students.

He lost his focus while he was looking at the kids around him with faster and steadier rotations. Normally, these keys would just drop out of position if someone could no longer stabilize them. But something always made Corinth's experience with them a lot more disastrous. In a flash of golden light, the llave burst into the pixie dust from which it came.

“
NOT again!" Corinth felt as embarrassed as ever. Everyone at their desk around him instantly recoiled. The dust filled the room as they all stepped away, coughing up a storm. A storm stirred by the odd boy that could not wield magik.

Sena. Lilith was the only one brave enough to come closer. She put her hands on his shoulders from the front of his desk. "You'll get the hang of it. I'm sure of that." She used a finger -with pink nail polish on it to lift his chin. "Don't be embarrassed." She turned and looked to all the cowering students in the class, covering their mouths and whispering laughable explanations to Corint
h’
s weird lack of dexterity with magik. "Who here can say that they've mastered rotations?" No one said a word. "That's right! None of you have. Otherwise, you'd be instructors, not students. This is a place of learning, not judgment. If you see someone like Corinth having a rough go of it. Extend what you've learned from the ministrants if you're truly so much smarter than they are. Don't just stand against the walls like defenseless little children." She smiled at the end to let her pupils know that she wasn't angry, but instead concerned.

A few came up to Corinth with a spare llave from the golden box up front on Lilith's desk. One kid even joked about the golden pixie dust llaves Corinth kept breaking at every class. "You've broken so many of the gold pixie llave
s—
that I'm surprised the school has
n’
t started charging you yet." Corinth forced a grin as all the kids now surrounding his desk laughed out loud. Even with that relatively kind gesture, he was still uncomfortable. But couldn't figure out quite why.

<*>

Math and history class with Emma didn't help him to feel any better. She wrapped herself up in the pink jacket she wore overtop her school uniform, while sitting behind him in the row of desks.

Military-gray jackets, with navy-blue and red stripes going round the collars and cuffs. The creased pants and ruffle skirts were navy-blue, excepting the red and gray stripes at the cuff ends. White-collar shirts underneath and white socks covered by black loafers, which made every student feel restricted and confined inside their own bodies when donning the overly structured apparel.

"Have you ever noticed i
t’
s so much colder on the sixth floor than any other floor? That's why I always bring an extra jacket out with me." She was lying through her teeth. She really just hated the uniforms, so she chose to style them to her liking.

"It's late May," Corinth said while rubbing his head and pushing his growing dark hair away from his face. He needed to get it cut, but could
n’
t be bothered to enter that creepy barbershop at the Refectory.

"So!" she shouted like a mad princess. "That doesn't mean it won't get cold some more before summer settles in," she twisted her lips up like she was right, never mind the logistics.

He laughed, which made her turn to him dramatically, inching forward in her desk to see what the turquoise-eyed boy was up to. "Actually, that's exactly what it means. Because it's late May, it's not going to get any cooler. Not at least until September!" With his back twisted toward her, he flung his hands around trying to describe in great detail just how wrong she was.

This pulled the attention of their substitute history ministrant. "Excuse m
e
… back ther
e
… but this sure isn't study group time. We're answering the questions at the end of the chapter, if we've wrapped up reading it already, of course." He put his head back inside the newspaper he held after that whole spiel. Why he had a
pape
r
—
newspaper, none of the students knew. He was
n’
t even that old, so they figured h
e’
d be a likely adult to embrace newer technologies. But apparently not.

"What does he mean, 'if we've wrapped up reading.' He's neck deep in a news article. He's not reading what we're reading. He probably just gets the answers from the back of the teacher's book." Corinth seemed unusually agitated.

"What's wrong with you today? Back in math you were so annoying." She was one to talk. "But I liked it. You should be like this more often. It's way cooler than your whole,
little distressed boy act.
" She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a compact and lip-gloss. As she reapplied, she kept on talking, "...by the way, no one's buying that crap."

Corinth agreed with her about one thing. He had been acting weird. His distressed boy 'act' is reall
y—
him. Not that he was unhappy, but many stressing matters had come about in his life. He was surprised by how well he dealt with it all. He was glad that she didn't like him that way. It meant to him that he's generally a reasonable person, because Emma seemed to despise using good reason at all cost. But something else much larger than that was weighing on him. To the point that he thought he'd explode if he didn't work it out soon.

From the last vertical row of desk, he looked out the windows to the left of him. He felt an unsettling twinge of fear in his heart. From the seat behind him, Emma followed his eyes to see what he was glaring down at on the OlympusGrounds. Walker was passing underneath the branches of a sycamore tree. He abruptly stopped during his stroll and looked up toward the sixth floor classroom windows. Corinth knew he couldn't see him because of the broad windowsill, but he stared at Walker all the more since the ma
n’
s warming eyes were now facing up. Walker turned his gaze away to the grass beneath his feet, but gave a modest nod while looking down. He went on passing through with his book firmly gripped in one hand. He spat out apple seeds just after he took another bite from the luscious fruit he held in the other hand. Corinth didn't want to, but he knew that he needed to speak with him immediately.

Emma pulled in closer, snapping her fingers in front of his face. But he crept closer to the window, pressing his fingers, and nearly his entire -faceup against the glass. He watched Walke
r’
s every move, like a hawk stalking prey. "What are you doing?" she sounded sincerely concerned for her friend. All her -
respectful
snapping at him yielded no response. Figure that! Still, the glazed over look in his eyes scared her while she watched from behind, as Cory seemed to break with reality.

He came back to the real world a second later than she would have hoped. He shot her an agile glance, and then turned around quickly, plopping his bottom back down at his desk seat. "Worry about yourself. I'm fine."

It wasn't often that she did it, but Emma took the high road. "I just want you to kno
w—
that I'm here if you want to talk about it."

He unfolded his arms and looked back at her behind his desk. "Like I said, I'm fine!" He seemed certain that Emma wasn't the right person to bring his feelings up with. He had to get to Walker.

<*>

Corinth decided to skip lunch for two reasons. First, he didn't want to see Anvard. He knew he'd have a ton of questions that he couldn't answer just yet. Second, he figured it was the perfect time to catch up with Walker. After science class with Emmy and Emma, he told them he'd meet them at lunch after he came from the bathroom. That was an obvious lie, but not to them at the time. By now, they'd most likely figured it out. But he was already halfway to Walke
r’
s villa off the West Lake.

The Olympus Grounds were a galactic stretch for someone to walk on an empty stomach. So Corinth decided to cut out the middle man and travel back upstairs, to the twelfth floor of Olympia. From his dorm he retrieved the green whistle his friend had given him. From there he took Oeste skywalk, cutting across the twelfth floor of Olympia to the twelfth of Concordia Nova. The skywalk glided across and through the sky much faster than Cor
y’
s tired legs could carry him by foot. He looked down to the Diamond Atrium as kids sat outside eating lunch and chatting about. The atriu
m’
s structure made it so that the Concordia Nova dormitory set out much farther across the grounds to the left, or west, of Olympia. Walking out of that building from a side exit would put him much closer to Walke
r’
s place along West Lake.

His stroll across the treeless grounds was uneventful. The most interesting thing he witnessed was the beauty of West Lake. The second to smallest, but definitely the most graphically detailed. The way the sun hit the sandy wood docks, and most certainly the water itself, made everything light up in the area. He could see that the silver pixie dust was being put to good use on Walker's villa. The house reflected more light than the lake. It shimmered as Corinth tiredly dragged himself up the many looping ramps Walker had installed outside his front door. It reminded him of standing in line at an amusement park. Minus the dreadful wait, that is.