Wesson's parents weren't strict, so he often got away with more than most. That being said, his mother could be overprotective. Had the festival been held closer to town, we could have gone with no questions asked. It's because of the distance we meant to go on our own that made it a challenge.

Honestly, I had every intention of helping both of my friends, but I was biased toward going with Wes more. I had so much bad history with magic, and sometimes all I wanted to do was try to live my life and forget about it. I would still a.s.sist BJ with getting the interns.h.i.+ps, but if Wes and I made our plans with STR work out, then I was likely going with him.

BJ was a straight-A student, and my grades weren't too bad. With my rabbit spell, we were sure to be at least considered for the interns.h.i.+p. The problem was in the other candidates. We had no idea what our compet.i.tion was. We needed a sure way to guarantee our acceptance. If it weren't for most battle magic being illegal without a permit, most of BJ's harmful spells would have been great for submitting. She had an entire book of spells that made things blow up, catch fire, or act oddly.

When Monday morning rolled in, I went to school with Wes and BJ on my mind.

I had a first-period math cla.s.s with BJ. With it being the last week of school, we didn't have anything left to learn, which made most cla.s.ses little more than free periods. We sat in the back of the cla.s.sroom, and BJ worked on writing a new spell in her book.

"I'm glad your so interested now, but we cant sabotage applications," BJ said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it's immoral, and I want to be accepted by my merits and work ethic."

"You wouldn't have to do anything. I'd take care of it."

"Pitch, no. Besides, I have no idea who the other applicants are."

"There must be a way to find out," I said.

"Pitch!" She exclaimed, signaling I'd said enough.

"Alright, alright, I was joking anyway."

I was not joking, but BJ was right. I wasn't the type of person to be that sinister.

"We have to do something to put us over the top," I said.

"If we had another functional spell, I'm sure we'd be accepted on the spot."

"Maybe we can work with something in your book."

The rest of our cla.s.s kept a minimum of two seats between them and us. Between my natural lousy luck and BJ's radioactive spellbook, we were all but shunned when seen together. If nothing else, it gave us plenty of privacy, even when we didn't want it.

"All of my spells are too dangerous to submit," she said.

"Not if we find one and make it seem useful enough to warrant the danger," I said, thinking myself so clever.

"That's... that's not a bad idea, but it's easier said than done."

The bell rang.

It was time to head to our next cla.s.s. Unfortunately, my next period was the gym, so I had to table my conversation with BJ. I did, on the other hand, share gym cla.s.s with Wes.

Coach Par, the usual gym teacher, was missing in action due to an accident involving a weight bench being thrown in the previous period, so we had Ms. Harper as a subst.i.tute. Any other sub might have let us play dodge ball, but Ms. Harper went through the trouble of setting up a 5 part obstacle cores outside on the football practice field. She even had a whistle; she seemed to enjoy using a little too much.

I always hated gym cla.s.s because other kids cheated. I have to say I never had anything against magical creatures with natural abilities. For instance, Wes was a satyr, which made him naturally faster and more durable than most people. It's the kids who used magic to make their bodies light as air during running or gave themselves iron strength during deadlifts that made me mad. Almost everyone had some sort of magic they used to make the cla.s.s easier, everyone but me. Wes, being the best friend I could have asked for, ran the obstacle cores with. It was a little embarra.s.sing how easy everything was for him, especially when he purposely slowed himself down to stay with me, but the sentiment wasn't lost.

"You don't have to wait on me," I said through half breaths.

"It's just a few more laps dude," said Wes as he ran the course bedside me and in turn making me appear to be the weaker of us two.

"Have I ever told you how much I hate having fur," I said, pus.h.i.+ng through strides.

Having fur, even in breathable workout clothes, was torture in the summer heat. Not to mention, I didn't wear shoes because of my rabbit feet, so I had to deal with the wet, the b.u.mpy, and frequently uncomfortable terrain.

"You should try going pantsless, it lets everything breathe," Wes said as we finally finished the fourth lap of ten that we needed to complete to be done.

I was struggling to keep my feet moving, and there were kids literally flying by. Ms. Harper stood on the sidelines, blowing her whistle, but at no point did she regulate anything. Eventually, it became clear she was more focused on making music with her blow tool than keeping track of us, so Wes and I snuck away.

"How are you not out of breath or something," my voice was quick and almost slurred while I fit words through stammering breaths.

We went under the bleachers, and I leaned against a support beam to try to catch my breath. At the time, I had no idea, but my being able to keep up with Wes without the use of magic was a noteworthy feat. Sure he slowed himself down a little for my sake, but I held my own next to him while everyone else needed spells just to get through the first three laps.

"So I asked my dad if I could go to the festival yesterday," he said.

"What did he say?"

"He doesn't care."

"That's great," I said as I stood up and dried my forehead of sweat.

Let's be honest; an interns.h.i.+p would have been like a job, so going to the festival with Wes seemed like the better option. I still had every intention of helping BJ get her and myself into the interns.h.i.+p because I wanted to be a good friend, but going to FTR felt like a more fun summer plan than potentially blowing myself up trying to do new magic.

"Yea, but my mom doesn't want me to go," he said.

"s.h.i.+t!"

"She doesn't think I'll be safe spending weeks across the country with you."

So the problem his parents had wasn't with the festival, it was me. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I couldn't.

"I should be worried about spending that long with you," I said jokingly.

"Dude, you gotta admit, you have the worst luck," he said in a way, clearly withholding the intent of hurting my feelings.

But I took some offense, despite my knowledge of it being true.

"Whatever," I said.

"It's all good though. She said I could go with you if we find someone else to go with us."

"Someone else like who?"

"Someone safe, someone responsible, someone who doesn't have a history of being hit by cars or attacked by swarms of bugs."

"Someone like BJ?"

"f.u.c.k, no! Anyone but her dude," he answered so quickly I thought he might knock me over with his words.

"BJ is good people," I argued lightly.

"BJ is a stuck up rich kid. I don't get why you like her anyway. Her parents are magicians ...and you hate magic."

"She doesn't care that I'm so unlucky," I joked.

"I don't care that you're unlucky, she tolerates it because she's using you," he said as if worried.

"How is she using me?"

"Doesn't she make you help her with her wild magic?"

"I do that because I want to help, because she's my friend, just like you are."

"Sure, dude, but we need to find someone straight-laced to take with us on our trip," he said as we peeked through the bleachers checking to see if the cla.s.s was over yet.

"I'm sure we can find," I said before I was cut off by what I saw flying in our direction.

Before I could utter another word, someone using flying magic shot through the bleachers punching a kid-sized hole through the metal seats. And of course, they crashed right into me. Somehow the stands didn't fall, and Wes was completely untouched, but I was knocked out.

I woke up in a familiar place. A place I came to know too well. A place where blood, sweat, and tears flowed to no end. I woke up in the nurse's office. As usual, nurse Flairing, a white elf the school didn't pay half enough money, was sitting waiting for me to wake up. Reading a magazine, I don't think she noticed I was awake until I sat up in my usual paper-covered medical bed.

"How long was I out?" I asked, at which point she put down her magazine.

"You missed most of the day," she said.

"What time is it?"

"3:30," she replied with monotone.

I missed an entire day of school. My dad might have been p.i.s.sed or concerned had the school bothered to call him. They stopped notifying him of every time I got hurt once people realized how frequent incidents occurred around me. The only time they called my dad was when someone else got hurt, and seeing how he wasn't around that meant whoever crashed into me must have been fine.

Getting hurt so often, I think my body healed faster than most. That being said, as I walked out of the nurse's office, I was more than sore enough to regret being hit by an unidentified flying a.s.shole.

Walking through the school after hours felt like wandering through an abandoned crime scene. It was too quiet. You knew people were there not too long ago, and something was bound to happen there if the right or wrong people were still lurking around. I made my way outside, and to my surprise, someone was waiting for me on the front steps.

BJ and Wes were both outside. I a.s.sumed they stuck around for me, but it seemed they couldn't help but argue while they waited.

"I wouldn't need magic to beat you," Wes said to BJ.

"You don't have any magic," BJ replied.

"Because I don't want it."

"Only a fool would go through life, making things harder without magic."

"Or someone whose strong enough to get by without it," Wes said confidently.

"You would lose," BJ said just as confident.

"What are you guys talking about?" I finally cut in.

I don't think they would have noticed me had I stayed silent.

"Pitch!" BJ exclaimed.

Wes walked over and wrapped his arm around my shoulder before he spoke.

"Buddy, will you please tell Bug Burner I would win in a fight."

"A fight?" I asked.

"If he and I were on Wizard Wars," BJ explained.

Wizard Wars was a popular TV show where contestants battled head to head in random and sometimes odd challenges. It was one of the few places people were allowed to use magic while competing. Magic was banned from most professional sports for the safety of players, but on Wizard Wars, contestants were encouraged to use whatever spells they knew in order to win.

"I think you'd both lose," I said as we walked down the steps.

"What!?" Wes exclaimed.

"Because I'd win," I answered.

Normally I'd have to decide who I wanted to go home with, but that day was different. BJ and I needed to work on another spell to submit for the interns.h.i.+ps, and Wes lived down the street from me, so for what might have been the first time ever, we were all together.

"You know he's going with me to the interns.h.i.+p," BJ said.

He's going with me to the festival," Wes replied.

It was like walking with children. They couldn't coexist in the same s.p.a.ce for 10 minutes without going back and forth.

"I'm leaving you both if you keep arguing," I said.

"You can't do both, Pitch," BJ said as she stopped walking.

Wes and I turned around to face her.

"As long as I don't have to get a job this summer, I'd hang out with a zombie," I joked.

" Come on, man, you know it be more fun at STR than at some interns.h.i.+p," Wes added.

"No one wants to get with me now, so why would anyone want to at a festival full of more interesting people?" I asked, almost sarcastically.

"Dude, rabbits are cool," he said.

"Until someone figures out I was born human, then I'll be the idiot kid who cursed himself," I replied.

"All the more reason to come with me, we could potentially learn ways of turning you back," BJ interjected.

"Or get ourselves killed," I quickly responded.

I didn't mean to be so harsh. I was lucky to have friends who liked me enough to want me involved in their summer plans, but I would have been happy just to spend more time with my bed. STR might have been a fun idea with plenty of opportunities, but it had the potential to be another chance to embrace myself and be rejected. And the interns.h.i.+p, as amazing an opportunity as it might have been, was still dangerous as h.e.l.l. Someone had to be a realist out of us three, but I suppose I might have been swimming in pessimistic waters.

"I'm not saying I don't want to go with you guys, but no matter what I do, with my luck, something bad is bound to happen," I said.

The universe was really gunning for me that day. Like magic, my words of pessimistic precaution seemed to summon danger. Before I could even turn around, I found myself knocked into the middle of the street.

Daybreak was a townhome to many diverse people, human or otherwise. Two of those groups of people were Trolls and Orcs. Trolls were very tall and very strong. Orcs were very fat and very strong. They both came in a variety of different colors, with trolls usually being blue and Orcs typically being green. From time to time, ordinary people confused the two races with one another, but Orcs and Trolls were like day and night. They hated one another, and would often cause mayhem when they clashed. Like other magical creatures, they didn't need spells to be threats. Because they usually lived on opposite sides of town from one another, Orcs and Trolls rarely met. I'm not sure how or why, but somehow I got caught in the middle of a fight between an orc and a troll that day.

I tried to get out of the struggle, but they kept knocking me back into the mix. It all went down in the middle of the street, so I'm sure many pa.s.sersby caught the show. I thought I might actually die until my friends jumped in.

"Don't worry, dude, I got you," Wes said as he rushed into the street to try to break up the fight.

BJ followed after him but kept a distance as she opened her spellbook. She did a spell I remembered, but I couldn't see why it was her first choice. If not for my high tolerance for pain, and my body learning to heal so quickly, I'm sure I might have pa.s.sed out after the first misdirected punch that hit me in the face. BJ used her bug spell to create a snare of ladybugs that blinded the two battling creatures long enough for Wes to pull me out of the fray.

"Ladybugs?" Wes asked as we ran.

"They were b.u.t.terflies last time," BJ replied.

"Those wouldn't have helped either."

We didn't stop running until we ran out of breath. By then, we were far from the fight, but the sound of property damage was still heard.

"My spell saved Pitch," BJ said excitedly.

"Your spell killed more bugs, harmless, defenseless bugs," Wes protested in an attempt to level BJ's mood.

"But it saved Pitch," she said.

"I saved Pitch," he said.

"You guys," I cut in.

It was the second time that day I'd been struck. I should have had a concussion.

"Can we just go home," I said in a drained voice.

If nothing else, we figured out which of BJs spells to submit. Her bug spell made the perfect blinding agent. Despite its unpredictability when it came to which breed of bug might come to the rescue, it proved reliable enough to halt a fight between an orc and a troll. If only she'd used it before I got tossed around like a ragdoll.

I spent the rest of the week trying to find someone to go to STR with Wes and I. While everyone was happy to go anywhere with my friend, finding someone willing to travel with me was proving to be a challenge. There weren't many options, and there were even fewer Wes and I were actually willing to entertain.

"I want fish," said Lance as Wes and I followed him out of the cafeteria.

"Fish?" I questioned.

"Not just any fish, I want three Gilded Star Lions," Lance added.

"You want us to buy you fish," Wes asked.

"If you want me to go anywhere with danger rabbit, that's my price," Lance said before trying to leave us to get lost in a sea of people during the pa.s.sing period.

Wes and I spent two days going around asking people to accompany us on our trip. By Thursday, we were left with no other choice but to turn to more unique options. One such person being Lance Hagen, an elf who'd gone to school with me since before my transformation. He and I were never very close, mainly because he could be annoying, but I never thought we had a problem with one another. That was until that day.

We followed the pointy-eared wood elf through the crowd.

"But why?" I asked.

"Because when you fell through the ceiling three months ago, you killed my fish," he replied, and it was beginning to be difficult hearing him as he clearly tried to distance himself.

"That was you," I said in a lighter, almost joking tone that Lance didn't seem to appreciate.

"Yes, that was me," he said as he stopped at his locker, finally giving Wes and I time to talk without trying to lose sight of him.

"You know it took 2 hours to get all that broken fish bowl gla.s.s out of me," I joked.

"Get me my fish, or find someone else," the elf said before slamming his locker shut and storming away, literally.

The guy must have been p.i.s.sed because he summoned a storm cloud to knock me away while he walked off basically. So Lance was a no go.

After school that day, Wes and I walked home together. We turned over every stone we could think of, but no one was willing to go to STR, not with me.

"Those fish cost more than a car," I said.

"Then we'll find someone else," Wes rea.s.sured.

"No one wants to go anywhere with me."

"I do," Wes said.

"You don't count, you're tough enough my bad luck can't hurt you, and you're nice to everyone."

"We just need to keep looking," he repeated.

"Is there anyone left?" I questioned with doubt.

Wes put his arm around my shoulder as we walked down the street. I didn't mean to kill the mood, but lucky for me, Wes was good at picking it back up.

"What if we sneak you into the festival?"

He spoke so casually I had to believe he thought it was a good idea.

"We don't have to tell my parents you're going if you don't go with me. It be so easy, we go by ourselves and meet up when we get there," he continued.

"It's a nice plan, but I don't have the money for a plane ticket, or a festival ticket without my dads help, and he wouldn't let me go anywhere that far away by myself," I said before he could further spin out into his bad idea.

Before going home, Wes and I took a bit of a detour and went into town. Daybreak was modern enough to have cellphones and TVs, but so dated that most buildings looked faded and in need of a paint job.

There were three places to hang out when you didn't want to go home. The Dead Woods was great for parties, but usually, an easy place to find trouble. Uptown Mall was the closest thing to the modern world within city limits, but having no job meant window shopping was the best I could do when I paid a visit to the town's marvel. Then there was Mabel's Marble Slab, an ice-cream shop that doubled as an 80's themed arcade. The retro lights, old school games, and cla.s.sic milkshakes made it a good place to zone out, especially because my unnatural bad luck never seemed to hurt me there. My curse made it impossible to win a simple game of Tetris, but at least the ceiling never crashed over my head.

Wes and I had a usual table in the back close to the kitchen doors. I never liked sitting there because of how often the doors would swing open and almost hit me, but Wes thought sitting closer to the food meant getting it faster. His strength and speed were natural abilities, but they required a lot of energy, needless to say, my friend could eat. He was almost just as skinny as me, but Wes ate enough for two people and could lift a car if he had to.

"What does STR even mean?" I asked while I watched him devour plates of meat and gla.s.ses of ice-cream.

"Super Together Rainbow, or something, it just sounds cool," he said.

"So it doesn't mean anything," I said sarcastically.

"People love acronyms," he replied.

"But people don't love me."

"Dude, keep your gloom and doom away from my shake."

"It's alright, I think BJ and I are going to get those interns.h.i.+ps, so at least I'll have something to do this summer."

"Don't give up hope, Pitch. There's still time, and a whole town of potential ride alongs," Wes said with a mouth full of French fries.

His cheerful demeanor was enough to make me tired, trying to keep up.

"Why don't we invite BJ?"

"No way, man," he swallowed his mouthful before trying to continue, but I already cut him off.

"Listen, I mean, what if we told your mom we invited BJ?"

"But she wouldn't actually come?" He asked as I pa.s.sed a handful of napkins across the table for him to clean his face.

"Exactly."

"That ...that could work, but what if my mom asks BJ's parents about something or whatever," Wes asked before getting to his feet.

"We'll just have to get BJ in on it," I said.

"And you think she'd help us?"

"I think she'd help me."

"Great," Wes said as he stood next to the table with his hands in his pockets.

"You didn't bring any money, did you?" I said with a low brow as I realized I was stuck with the bill.