School by Nathaniel Hardman (top reads .TXT) 📕

re-focused on the pencil on the desk. Around them, the class quieted. She pictured the pencil, then pictured a Hello Kitty pen her grandma had given her but which she had been too embarrassed to take to school. She pictured her room at home where the pen sat on her diary. She looked at the yellow pencil but forced over it the mental image of the Hello Kitty pen; then she raised her wand and said in a loud, firm voice, “Switch.”

Flicker.

From all around the room, kids asked, “Is that your pen?” or “Whose pen is that?” Until Suzy lifted it, eyes wide with wonder and hope, and said, “It’s MY pen, from home!” They erupted in cheers.

Jeff slapped her shoulder and shouted “Visualize and attack!” The pen was pulled from her hand and passed around the room like some sort of holy relic. Then someone yelled, “Do something bigger!” and someone else yelled, “Switch me!” and there was general pandemonium.

“Okay! Settle down.” Suzy waved her arms, and gradually the class quieted down. “Let’s try the school.”

Now the hush in the class became profound. Suzy closed her eyes and pulled up a mental image of a castle. She didn’t know what the castle looked like that had displaced her school, but she held the idea of that castle in her mind – the place where it had been, the aliens that had been here, and the place where it had gone. She pictured it in the middle of Alpharetta.

She opened her eyes to take in the classroom where she stood, and she slowly raised her arm. In her mind, the castle replaced the school, and the school replaced the castle, back to where they belonged. This time, the spell came out as a shout. “SWITCH!”

A wire-thin thread of a spell flew from Suzy’s wand to the wall. They held their breath. Nothing happened. “Well, that worked great,” said Peter, at the same time Jeff said, “You need to build it up more.”

Suzy turned to Jeff, and he went on, his voice rising with excitement. “We know that the wand can work, but the school is way bigger than a pen. So you just have to build it up.”

They worked through the syntax together for a minute, ignoring the eager suggestions of everyone but Shen, and then finally Suzy lifted the wand again.

“Wait,” said Jeff. “We should even do the drawing-dance thing. You know, pull out all the stops.”

Suzy nodded, frowning. Yurwush had shown them how to add power to a spell by dancing on an image of it, but they hadn’t practiced it more than once or twice.

Preparing the picture took several minutes. There was no chalk in the classroom, as all the boards in the class were whiteboards, and there was some search and some more debate before they decided to use pencil shavings from the pencil sharpener instead. Then they cleared away desks in a ring and let Jada, the best artist in the class, draw the picture.

Or, not “draw” precisely; with meticulous little shakes, she spread the pencil shavings into the outline of a school, then surrounded her picture with a nearly-perfect circle of shavings. Suzy ground her teeth at the slow progress. Twice, they had to hurry and sharpen more pencils, but when Jada was done, Suzy had to agree with Jeff’s low whistle of appreciation; it was a work of art.

As she stepped up to the picture, she noticed out of the corner of her eye a look on Jeff’s face. A longing. She paused. He could be pretty annoying sometimes, but he was her brother. She held the wand out to him. “You want to save the day?”

Jeff’s eyes widened, and he smiled. “Yeah! But…” His face fell. “The whole dancing thing…” He squirmed.

Suzy rolled her eyes. “You just keep moving to a steady beat.”

“I KNOW that’s all you do, but I… Oh fine. Here.” He took the wand and stepped up to the picture. The class became deathly still.

Jeff began to dance.

He WAS a terrible dancer, Suzy noticed. And he DID look awkward and silly, earnestly shuffling his feet and chanting, “School to castle, castle to school, Earth to Uoshn, Uoshn to Earth, switch.” But at the same time, as he grew into the rhythm, and even more, as the power of the spell began to build, it was also kind of cool.

Jeff made slow, deliberate progress along the line of shavings, the focus around him sharpening, almost as if a spotlight shone on him. After what seemed a long time, Suzy looked down at the pattern and calculated Jeff was just over half done. Then she heard the voices in the hall.

“This way,” she heard, from what had to be one of the guards. Suzy ran to the door and saw dark silhouettes through the frosted, wire-lined glass window of the door.

She grabbed the knob just as it began to turn. They were NOT going to lose their wand and get locked away forever in this classroom. Not when they were this close.

“Jeff!” She barked, gritting her teeth as she struggled to hold the knob still, “Hurry up! Do it now! Jamal! Get the wand!”

Over her shoulder, she heard Jeff speed up both his chanting and his dance. “Prithi, Peter, anyone!” Suzy shouted, “Come help me!”

There was a scramble behind her, and then Nacho and Ramon were there with her, shoving against the door. A moment after that, Shen pushed his way between them, by their feet, jamming something under the door – a doorstop, she saw. She almost smiled, but then the doorknob started growing hot.

Now Suzy registered the sound she had been hearing in the hall, the chant of “Keshu, keshu, keshu, keshu.” She tried to grit her teeth against the pain and hold onto the doorknob, but it was too much. She let