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PROFESSOR LARICHE returned to the head of the class, stuffed the excess papers back into her briefcase, and observed her students, a hand on her hourglass hips. “Eight,” she said, finger jabbing into the air. “We need nine. Who’s missing?”
A search around the room and, sure enough, Vix counted eight of them in attendance.
LaRiche slammed her hands down onto the front desk. “Can anyone explain to me why we need nine?”
“To make the spells work,” a guy in the back called, but it was more question than certainty.
“Yes,” she mimicked him. “To make the spells work.” LaRiche flung her briefcase across the room where it exploded into a flurry of papers and noise. “Damn it! Who are we missing?”
Ijemma slowly raised her hand until LaRiche stared as if beating a path through the woman.
“Takon isn’t here yet, ma’am. He’s working, but he said he’d get here as soon as he got off.”
The professor braced herself against splayed arms which gripped the edges of the desk. “The door is shut, Ijemma,” LaRiche whispered. “He cannot come in tonight.”
The woman seemed to fume, her head lolling this way and that as she contemplated options Vix couldn’t begin to understand.
LaRiche composed herself. A visibly deep inhale. Controlled exhale. “Regardless, we shall begin.” A flush of complexion shifted across her face. Reddened, pinkish, then pale.
“First, I want to answer the question I answer every year. This building, and many like it, is protected from the outside world’s view until you’re given admission to it. Likely, you’ve never seen this school before, and that is why—we’ve hidden it from you until now. As you develop your skills, you will begin to see more and more about your world and this city that seemingly was never there before. Don’t be alarmed, although that is a natural reaction.”
The teacher paced as she continued, “I’ll be covering Applied Empathy this semester, as you can see, as well as Energy Manipulation. Towards the end, you’ll spend time with Professor Ingram for Foundations of Elemental Control. Just the beginnings of your understanding of the real world and how to become a contributing member of society in extraordinary ways.”
Vix felt the creeping—a sensation of bugs climbing first up her arms, then her face, and into her hair—return for the fourth time this month, only this time the sensation held real. Her own unease magnified into a physical manifestation which, she couldn’t convince herself, wasn’t happening.
“Empathy,” Professor LaRiche began, “is the root of human understanding. The quintessential component to gaining access to someone’s thoughts and feelings, and then making them your own.”
“You,” she pointed to someone in the back of the room. “Give me an example of empathy.”
The guy totally fumbled. His words fell on top of one another in a jumble of nonsense. “Empathy is knowing what’s wrong with a person and then pretending you care.”
“Wrong! Empathy is not ‘pretending’ to care.” LaRiche was clearly in her element. Strong back. Standing tall. “You.” Her thin finger pointed at Vix.
The creeping stopped. Heart bouncing around like a racquetball. “It’s when you say, ‘I’m so sorry,’ just to be polite?”
LaRiche smiled, kind of. “Close.” The woman dramatically flicked her wrist, like swatting away a bug which flew too close to her face. “With empathy, you do mean, ‘you’re so sorry.’ You do care. With Applied Empathy, however, you say it when you’re not sorry and you don’t care. There’s a difference; I hope you all see that.”
Moving around to the front of the desk, Professor Anastasia LaRiche propped her perfectly tight rump on the front edge. “Applied Empathy is what most of you have been doing your whole lives: faking feeling, faking caring. This tactic has gotten you very far when it comes to self-preservation. When we start to discuss becoming a functional member of society, however, actual empathy is critical to gaining trust, making connection, and building the foundations of family and friendship. All of you,” she pointed to the eight of them, “understand pretending to care. What you don’t understand, is why you do it, or when you should. That’s where I come in.”
A hand raised in the back of the class. The same guy as before. “So we should act like we care even if we don’t? I feel like that’s what I just said.”
“Mr. . . .?”
“Desmond Gails, ma’am.”
“Mr. Gails, there’s a subtlety you’re missing. You described Applied Empathy when I asked about empathy.” LaRiche paced the front of the classroom. “Empathy is about caring, about seeing yourself in someone else’s situation. You lose your dog, for example, and I can imagine how bad that must feel and act accordingly. Applied Empathy is more about manipulation; about knowing you lost your dog, and then me intentionally making you feel like I understand without me ever understanding. Understood?”
The Gails guy shook his head ‘no’ while saying, “Yes.”
LaRiche smiled, like a crocodile, like a gambler playing the house. “Good.”
Vix brought both hands to either side of her face and smoothed the stray hairs which refused to participate in her dreads. What were they even talking about? This class was like a merry-go-round. She expected basic life skills, maybe balance a checkbook, or stick to a grocery budget. What did empathy have to do with anything?
“Miss Ibarra, are we boring you?”
The woman’s stare drilled into her, a sense of unease digging into her sternum, headed straight to her heart. “No, I . . . Just thinking.” Her turn to flub. “This is really interesting to consider. Thank you.”
The stare went sour. LaRiche was like a damn x-ray machine, only Vix freaking knew she was being seen for who she really was.
At that, Professor Anastasia LaRiche collected her briefcase, stuffing in the loose papers, clicked both sides closed, and grabbed the handle. “Enough for tonight. I know this will take a bit. Your textbooks are in a stack in the hall; grab one and go. I expect each of you to return in two days having read chapter one and bring with you a list of at least five examples of applied empathy from your own life when you lied to someone in pain. Then we’ll have material energy to work with.”
Scooting off lab stools and the jingle of keys, and the majority of students were quickly out the door.
A strange sensation, like bubbles under her skin, overtook Vix. Nothing about this was right. Maybe Officer Gallion was trying to help her, but this couldn’t be it. Russet potatoes at a dollar a pound and you only have three dollars—that’s what she was expecting. As the rest of the class filtered out, Vix remained.
LaRiche stared at her again, this time, however, it seemed she knew full well the tangled confusion Vix was experiencing and she understood. Immediately, her chest relaxed; she felt more at ease.
Fuck.
She’d fallen for it.
Applied empathy.
––––––––
“PROFESSOR LARICHE?” Vix said, slinging her purse over her shoulder as the last of the other students stepped into the hall and snagged their textbooks. She stuffed her syllabus into a side pocket in her bag.
LaRiche’s face grew soft, as if she couldn’t wait to carry on a dialogue with her new student. Damn, she was good.
She approached the woman who was more than a little intimidating mixed with a sharp softness. A feminist in a mini-skirt. A skyscraper pretending to be a cottage. “Sorry to waste your time, but I think there’s been a mistake. I shouldn’t—”
“There are no mistakes, Miss Ibarra, only opportunities for growth.”
Vix fought an eye roll. She’d seen those exact words on a poster in the back room at work. “Seriously. I don’t need to be in this class. Something’s wrong. It’s not exactly court ordered, but I mean, there is a class I need. It’s just that this isn’t it, I don’t think.”
LaRiche pursed her lips and yanked her briefcase to her side. “Follow me.”
Textbook in hand, down one flight of stairs and one long hall, passed a strange trophy case, none of which reflected sports, Vix trailed the woman to a small office space behind a small, brown door.
The professor dropped the briefcase by the door, circled behind her desk, and graciously lowered into the black leather swivel chair.
“Close the door.”
Vix complied and snagged a small side chair, green vinyl, which made her think of Gallion.
“I understand you came to us through non-traditional means.”
She dropped her purse into the chair next to her. “You heard about the corn nuts and jerky?”
The room grew brighter as LaRiche crossed her arms in front of her chest. A salty, ocean scent surrounded them. “Victoria, you’re what we call a ‘Return to Sender.’ Someone who was pre-selected for higher training at an early age, but whose invitation to the Language of Spells Academy came back unopened.”
“Higher training?”
“Yes, it’s true.” Her hand swirled in the air as she spoke, “Sometimes individuals slip through the cracks, as it were, and LSA invitations get lost in the mail. For the most part, enhanced talents don’t begin to develop until puberty, but the majority of students welcome the opportunity to enter into a new world—a new way of living.”
She rubbed her forehead, her fingertips squeezing the skin together above her nose. “An invitation? I’m not sure I’m following.”
“Simply put, Victoria, we missed you. You got away from us and grew up in ‘normal’ society where undeveloped and un-honed skills such as yours were allowed to fester unchecked.”
This was too much, simply too much to take in, and half of everything LaRiche said was confusing. “You’re saying I missed out on some kind of magic school as a kid and now I’m a summer school reject?”
“Night school, Victoria.” Anastasia’s twisted expression showed the insult. “We catch as many as we can through outreach and filtering illegal activities. You’re one of the lucky ones.”
There was that phrase again—one of the lucky ones. A heavy sigh, like surgically removing the last breath from Vix’s lungs, was all she could manage. She rubbed her temples, clockwise, then counter-clockwise. “No offense but, Officer Gallion sent me here to become a productive member of society, not to fart around with crystals and magic wands.”
After flipping through a few files on her desk, Ana stared up at her in a serious manner reserved only for dead relatives and groundings. “Says here Gallion experienced your manipulation techniques first hand. You tried to persuade him to destroy his report and let you walk.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Clearly it is, and clearly, this is exactly where you’re meant to be. Gallion is trained in spotting Return to Senders, and resisting their influence. If it wasn’t for him, you’d be sitting in a jail cell and,” she tipped the file toward herself, “Gracie would be sick on pepperoni and begun starving by now.”
Spots dotted Vix’s vision as the room darkened for an instant. How did anyone know about Gracie? Even her landlord didn’t know about her cat. Had these people been watching her? Was it more than a simple threat of jail? Was she going to end up on the street if she didn’t go along with this nonsense?
“I’ll admit,” LaRiche released the file, “you should have been trained early on in your teens, but here at Pent College, we’re determined to do our best to redirect you back onto your correct path. A few years of proper training and we’ll be able to introduce you to the magic society that exists hidden in plain sight to the rest of the world. That is my promise to you.”
Vix shook her head. “I still don’t think you understand what I’m saying.”
“Victoria, the skills which have gotten you through life to this point: lying, stealing, misdirection, representing yourself as someone you’re not. It’s all magic run amok without structure or foundation. We’re here to help with that. To get you back on track.”
Vix closed her eyes, squeezed them in fact, and reached deep within herself for anything solid to hold on to. Divorced parents, dysfunctional homes, moving from school to school, disconnecting from all friends in order for it to not hurt when she lost them. Nothing about her life contained any form of magic, least of all her shoplifting habit.
She rubbed her temples again and forced a tough, emotion-blocking front. “I need a drink.”
“Oh, because numbing your abilities by drowning them has always fixed circumstances for you?”
“You don’t get it.” Vix rolled her eyes.
“The hell I don’t!” LaRiche yelled. She slammed the file down onto her desk. “You think I had it easy? That I didn’t fall into the same traps you did? Drug abuse, manipulating men for money, selling your blood for a meal. You know as well as I do that the path you’re on isn’t an upward climb, and there are no prospects for an improved future. The universe, thankfully, has righted your path and put you here where you will finally have the chance to learn who you really are and improve your circumstances.”
Then, like a gear clicking into place, Vix’s heart dipped. Tears threatened as walls fell and realization finally hit her. “I was left out.” Her voice weakened. “Do you have any idea how different my life could have been? Do you realize how fucking horrible it was for me? And you’re telling me now there was a place that could have accepted me, given me stability!” Her whole body shook as she screamed, “Where were you? How could you leave me like that? Unloved. Abandoned. And you guys didn’t bother to find me until now? When I fucked up and got caught?”
Vix slouched back into the chair and covered her face as she sobbed. Normally, she held all emotion back, but for some reason LaRiche made her feel safe, protected.
A warm hand pressed against her back.
“I’m sorry, dear.” LaRiche cleared her throat, her tone sincere. “We got you now. That’s what’s important. We have you now.”
Wiping away the wetness from her cheeks, she stood and brushed the professor’s hand away. “You’re too late.”
She grabbed her purse and stormed out of the office, down the stairs, and out into the evening air. The street was dim, a single lamppost illuminating the back of her car in the darkness.
Vix wouldn’t come back. Couldn’t. They failed her once already. She wouldn’t let them do it again. She had a job, a place to live. She didn’t need them, or anyone else.
