I show up at seven with my notes and my best smile.
There are six people already there, spread across the couches and armchairs, textbooks open on the coffee table. They look up when I walk in.
"Hi," I say. "I saw the flyer. Is there still room?"
Silence. The kind of silence that has weight.
"We're actually full," says a girl with glasses and a Tempest pin on her collar. "Sorry."
There are two empty armchairs. I can count.
"Right," I say. "Okay. Maybe next time."
"Maybe," she says, in a tone that means never.
I walk back to my room with my notes clutched against my chest, and I don't cry, because I'm Everly Grey and I don't give up that easily.
But I'm starting to understand why Brittany said scholarship kids are lucky to survive.
The note is waiting when I get back.
Slipped under the door, folded once, my name written on the outside in handwriting I don't recognize. I pick it up and unfold it.
Two words.
Go home.
I stare at it for a long time. The paper is plain, no crest, no identifying marks. It could be from anyone. A student. A professor. The administration itself, for all I know.
Go home.
I don't have a home to go to. My family can't even hear the word magic without their eyes glazing over. If I leave Nyxhaven, I leave the only place that might be able to explain what I am—and I go back to being the girl who moves objects when she's upset and feels storms coming before the sky changes and knows, has always known, that something inside her is different.
But sitting here in this room, holding this note, I'm not sure I can stay either.
The tears start before I can stop them. Not dramatic sobbing—just slow, steady leaking, like my body has finally given up trying to hold anything in and has decided that crying is no longer optional. I sit down on my bed with the note still in my hand and I cry, quiet and ugly, until I've given myself the hiccups.
I’m still crying when Brittany finds me.
She doesn't say anything at first. Just drops her bag by the door, takes in the scene—me on the bed, blotchy and disgusting, the note crumpled in my fist—and goes to rummage under her bed.
She comes up with a bag of sour gummy worms, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a bottle of something that's definitely not allowed in the dorms. She sets all three on my bed and sits down on hers, across from me.
"Fourth one this week," I manage, waving the note. "Someone shoved one in my bag during Theory."
"I know. I saw it fall out."
"You didn't say anything."
"You didn't need me to tell you people suck. You already knew." She cracks open the chips. "Eat something. You look like shit."
I grab a handful of gummy worms. They're stale. I eat them anyway.
"This is stupid," I say, once I can talk without hiccupping. "I've never—I don't—" I gesture vaguely at my own tear-streaked face. "I don'tdothis. I'm the one who makes friends. I'm the one who fits in everywhere. That's my whole thing."
"Your thing doesn't work here."
"I noticed that somewhere between trying to make friends and making none at all."
