Awaking in a daze, Quin arose and began her morning routine. Not being much of a morning person, Quin looked past the peculiarities on her clothes and skin. She sleepily walked over to the dresser, and the moment she looked into the mirror, she awoke to a sudden surprise: she was covered in blue polka dots. Emerging into a frantic panic, she almost missed the small note in the corner of the dresser mirror.
You’ve had your fun, and now so have I, but to achieve your spot free skin and clothes, you must now take a journey. Follow the map I have drawn, and you will find a reversal spell, but getting to your treasured spot will be no easy task, for it lies within a public meeting place, where you are sure to be noticed. Remember, though, no one may discover our secret. Love, your dear sister, Mia
“Are you kidding me?” Quin asked to herself as she finished reading her sister’s note, “She’s really gone too far this time! How does she expect me to get by without anyone noticing my spots?!”
As Quin pondered this, she noticed Mia had left her makeup out, which she brought from home.
Although their skin tones didn’t match, they didn’t have to for this type of cover up. It was a magic type that matched your skin tone perfectly, no matter how different you were, and it was the perfect trick for getting rid of the polka dots, at least temporarily.
“I guess I can use this disgusting goop, even though it is Mia’s. But you know what, she wouldn’t have left it here if she didn’t want me to use it, and she was the one to get me into this mess, so I think it’ll be ok, except for the part where I have to put this disgusting goop on my face,” making the most repulsed face you can imagine, Quin applied the cover up to her face, and taking the map Mia drew up, she left the room.
Following the map very closely, Quin made it through the entire building without even looking up. She turned when the map said to turn, and walked where the map said to walk. THUD, tap, tap. Eventually she made it to a large room where a thumping sound, accompanied by some fast paced footsteps, filled the air. There was another sound, that of muffled conversation, not too far off. This sound was growing stronger as Quin continued to walk, and stronger yet as she opened the door to another room.
As she entered the room, Quin finally looked up. She had entered a forbidden zone for all girls: the boys locker room. Returning to her prior panicky state, Quin tried to escape, but losing all sense of direction, she turned every which way before finding the door. By the time she did find the door, a boy who had been whispering something when she entered approached her.
Blocking the entrance with his arm, he remarked, “you know you’ve got a lot of nerve to come in here right after first period gym class. A lot of guts too. I like that in a girl,” Quin, turning red, began to shiver and get nervous. Smiling coyly, he continued, “you wanna go somewhere we could be alone after class? Maybe you and I could have a little fun today. I can get rid of that shyness of yours, show you what it’s like to be with a real man…”
At this point, Sho, who Quin had barely met the previous day and who happened to be in this gym class too, noticed what was going on and began making his way over to Quin. However, before he had the chance to interfere, the origin of the “thud, tap, tap” noise made her way into the locker room.
“You know, girls typically aren’t allowed to go in here. Why don’t I help her out, Kiley,” the girl said through gritted teeth to the boy, as she pulled Quin out of the locker room and back into the gym, “You should watch yourself around here, not everyone is so nice in this school. Are you new? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. I’m Rika Aizawa, class 1-B.”
Smiling innocently, while stretching out her arm, Quin replied, “Quin Hitachi, class… ummm,” Quin glanced at her ID card quickly, “1-B.”
They smiled at each other, acknowledging the coincidence of being in the same class, and then continued.
“Pleased to meet you Quin,” Rika answered, shaking her hand, “So, don’t worry about going into the boys locker room too much. It was probably an accident, but now I’ll stay with you, so you’ll be fine.”
“Oh, but it wasn’t an accident. You see, my sister left me a map, and I had to find the…” stopping herself just short of spilling everything to her new friend, Quin continued, “class schedule. Yep, my class schedule. She took it this morning to make a copy and said she left it here, so I have to get it now.”
“Class schedule? That’s strange, why would she lea- ”
“Quin? That’s your name, right? Remember me, I’m Sho Tanaka, we met yesterday,” with Quin’s nod of confirmation, Sho continued, “I ran into your sister this morning, and she asked me to pass this along to you. She seemed a little strange actually, she had this dark aura around her and she kept laughing vindictively,” Sho drifted off in his anecdote, as he handed Quin a folded piece of paper.
“My schedule! Yes thank you Sho, this is so important to me,” she quickly hugged Sho and ran off back to her room, fearing the effects of the makeup would run out soon, since it was the teenage version of it, and only meant to last one and a half hours.
Back in the safety of her room, Quin read her sister’s note,
You’ve found the reversal spell, congratulations. Now all you have to do is use mom’s special powder, which is in the secret compartment of our dresser, behind the mirror, and say the following words ‘yane bodu galuba yabol shi’. Oh, and don’t forget, your first class is at 8:35, so you better hurry. Love, your dear sister, Mia
* * *
We return now to a time earlier this morning, and a location of the school cafeteria. This is where Mia would be found simultaneous to Quin’s moment of awakening.
As she made her way past the tables and to the breakfast bar, Mia double checked her ID card and schedule to make sure she wouldn’t have an unfortunate run-in with her sister later in the morning.
“Yep, class 2-A, and I have an early tour and introduction to my advanced chemistry class,” as she looked through her schedule further yet, she let out a sigh of relief, “This is great, at this rate, I won’t see Quin at all until lunch, and after that, the only class we’ll have together is gym. I couldn’t be happier with this class arrangement.”
After looking carefully through all the breakfast choices, Mia took some plain yogurt and walked off. Since many students at this school were very studious and serious about their futures, Mia wasn’t the only one eating an early breakfast. She grew stiff as she realized that every table had people sitting at it, and being too shy to sit down with complete strangers, she began to worry, until she found salvation in an empty, somewhat broken table in the back of the cafeteria. She made her way through the entire cafeteria and sat down at the shabby little table. There she ate her yogurt in peace, while studying her old chemistry notes from the magic kingdom.
“I wonder if they still use liquid rhodium to create the spectrum effect in the archegonia of plants to create rainbow fruit,” Mia wondered this while browsing through her notes, until she looked up and realized the cafeteria was completely empty and that first period breakfast was over. She gathered her things and began to run out of the cafeteria, as she collided with another student, and all her papers and notes went flying.
“I’m so sorry! I’m new here, someone was supposed to help me catch up in my first class, and I’m already late; I should’ve watched where I was going; it’s completely my fault, I’m just so sorry!”
“It’s fine, I usually wouldn’t be coming here right now anyways, I was just supposed to show an exchange student around, but my first period gym class ran late, so I ran all the way down here,” the other student explained, while helping Mia pick up all her papers.
As the other student handed Mia her notes, and they finally met face to face, they both realized that this was not the first time they had met. The student with whom Mia collided was none other than Sho Tanaka. Mia’s face turned beet red as she saw him. Then they both comprehended that it was each other that they were running to meet.
“So, you’re in Chemistry 4?” they both asked.
“Umm, yea. But I thought you and your sister were in lower classes,” Sho remarked, as they began to walk to the chemistry lab.
“My sister is in class 1-B. I’m in class 2-A. I’m a year older than her.”
“But chemistry 4 is primarily a senior class. I know I got in because they’ve always been putting me into higher classes, but how did you get in?”
“You’re not a senior? What is your class then?”
“Oh, 2-A, same as you. They typically divide the classes by intellectual, jocks, creative, and undecided.”
“Undecided?”
“Yea, like people who fit into more than one category, or new students who they don’t know much about yet. 2-A is undecided, so it makes sense that you‘re in this class. It wasn‘t likely for the school to know much about you, what with being from Djibouti and all,” Mia laughed nervously as Sho said this, thinking it might lead to a question about what things were like back there, so she decided to change the history that Quin created for them to something more convenient.
“Yes, well we’re actually not from Djibouti. Quin was just making a joke. We’re actually from… America. Yep. America.”
“Oh, that’s pretty cool, which state?”
“Ummm…” Mia blurted out the first state she could remember, “New York. Oh, but while we’re on the subject of Quin, did you give her the spe- I mean schedule?”
“Oh, yea, I did. That’s why I was running late. It was very strange actually, she- ”
“Did she look strange in any way?!” Mia exclaimed, and then muttered to herself, “Oh no, now I’ve exposed both of us, just because of my stupid drive for revenge, and we’ll have to stay together and be exiled and studied and then the authorities will punish us for letting the secret out and…”
“Well, no she looked fine, except she was wearing a lot of make up. You might want to tell her that she’s going to get in a lot of trouble if she continues wearing so much make up. But the strange part was that she walked right into the boys locker room. No girl has ever done that before.”
“Oh, hmmm. That is strange,” Mia said as they walked into the Chemistry lab, “Oh, hey, it looks like we’re here.”
In the remainder of the break before their class began, Sho showed Mia all the equipment, and how to use it. He also gave her a copy of their book, and his notes from the first month of school.
Mia began to look through them and, curious about how far through the subject they had already learned, she asked, “So, have you done any experiments with Mikaleav’s newer elements, such as Calimidium? It looks so awesome when you mix it with powdered O2 and it creates the purple and red feathered explosion!”
“What…?” Sho asked with a blank face.
Immediately following this he burst out in laughter, “Wow Mia, how do you come up with these things?”
Mia laughed nervously, yet before she could reply, Sho took back Mia‘s book and opened it to a page close to the beginning. “This is the last thing we learned. The only lab we‘ve done so far is the first,” As he said this the bell rang, and students began to enter the classroom, “If you want, I’ll explain it to you later.”“Ah, thanks!” Sho took a seat in the front of the classroom, and Mia, handing a slip to the teacher, sat down at the only remaining desk, in the very back of the classroom. After gazing for a few moments at the front of the classroom, Mia began to hurriedly take notes, and proceeded this way for the rest of the class.
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