Test Day
Isabelle Gerhart
I careened through the sky on the Warlock Tram, one of this town’s busier sky buses. I would have preferred the quieter Broomstick Train, but the bus was the faster option. I would have really loved to ride my griffin, Amy, to school, but she got a wing injury yesterday racing my friend Becca’s wyvern down an abandoned sky highway. I was just glad I’d been able to find a seat on the bus this morning. I was squeezed between a wizard, a witch, and a hobbit. The wizard next to me had spiky green hair and looked to be not much older than me, but in reality, was probably close to three hundred. He had a copy of the Twisted Tales Chronicle open to the gossip column. The plump hobbit on my left was slurping a steaming cup of neon pink coffee, which was probably from that hip new coffee shop down the road from the custom saddle shop and the general store. The witch across from me was chomping on blue apples while perusing a spell book.
I personally had my textbook open in my lap to the page on unicorn biology. Today was our big unit test, and, as per usual, I was still reviewing until the last minute. I was in the midst of index cards and memorizing the nine categories of healing magics a unicorn can perform when I heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, Allison.”
I looked up from a diagram comparing the different muscle structures of unicorns and pegasuses to see the bright blue eyes of my best friend.
“Hi Jason!” I said.
“Is there an open seat?” asked Jason, which was entirely unnecessary since he plopped down beside me on the bench anyway. The wizard with the spiky green hair next to us gave Jason a look for squeezing in on the already crowded bus seats but went back to reading his newspaper with an annoyed snap and flourish of the pages.
“Not that I’m not happy to see you or anything, but what are you doing on the bus, Jason?” I asked.
“I figured the bus ride would be lonely. Besides, I had Drew fly ahead to the school yard in case we wanted to go somewhere for lunch. You know you could have just asked to ride with me and Drew. Drew’s young for a griffin, but he wouldn’t have minded carrying you too. The view from here is amazing!” said Jason as he looked out of the bus window at the clouds and the ground below.
I knew I could have asked, but last time I’d ridden to school with Jason and his griffin, they’d done loop de loops the whole way there until I was green in the face. I looked back down at my study materials as Jason continued to look out the window.
“How are you feeling about Professor Gilburn’s test?” I asked Jason without looking up from my thick stack of multi-colored index cards.
Jason sighed dramatically and sunk into the bus seat in an exasperated heap. The wizard gave Jason another sideways look as the bus seats jostled and squeaked from the melodramatic display of exhaustion and stress.
“Sorry,” said Jason to the wizard as he adjusted to sit in a more unobtrusive way and scooted closer to me. The wizard harrumphed and mumbled something in a language so old it probably couldn’t even be found in the library’s oldest hexology textbook.
“I can’t believe we have to have all seven components of a unicorn horn memorized. And with no word bank! What language are those words even from?” said Jason.
“It’s an ancient form of Gaelic used by some druids,” I replied automatically. I didn’t notice that the wizard gave a start at hearing this bit of information from me or that he narrowed his gaze at both of us from behind his newspaper as we kept talking.
Jason gave me a blank stare.
“You haven’t even opened your magibiology textbook have you?” I asked.
“No, no, that’s not true,” said Jason, “I spilled orange juice on it, and I opened it to dry the pages. Chapter five still smells citrusy.”
I laughed and went back to my notes. Jason seemed content to gaze out the window at the sunrise. Or maybe he was observing the hobbit who had finished his coffee and was now halfway through eating an entire turkey on the bus. Either way, the view was astonishing for two completely different reasons. Not too much longer, but still with plenty of time for the hobbit to have finished his turkey and begin eating an oversized cupcake, I felt the Warlock Tram begin to descend and saw the name of the street by our school, Maple Wood Drive, pop up as the next stop.
“Ready for the test?” Jason asked me as we gathered our things to get off the bus.
“I suppose,” I replied as we began walking off of the bus after it had touched down on a grassy field not far from the school yard.
I was so preoccupied with packing up my notes and Jason shoving his textbook in my face to verify that, yes, it did indeed still smell like orange juice that neither of us noticed the wizard next to us get up and follow us off the bus with a glint in his eye and one hand on a crooked wand made from hemlock trees. Neither of us noticed him slide into the shadows cast by trees in the front of the school and pull out a communicator. No one saw him dial a number, and no one heard him as he said, “Scott, call Terry, you won’t believe who I think I saw on the bus this morning…”