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THE LUNCH CROWD at Jacob’s Good Eats was always a mix of street bums who’d come across a couple bucks, the downtown businessmen and women who wanted a cheap lunch to treat clients to, and in and out teens who’d either skipped school or dropped out altogether. Total, that equaled about thirty percent of the clientele who would actually tip Vix when they were done eating, sixty percent who would only pay for their food and bail, and ten percent who would stiff the bill entirely without paying a cent.
As she swept the damp rag over a tabletop to clear out breadcrumbs and spilled soda, Vix heard the bell above the door signal a new arrival. Ugh, teens. She pitched the rag over the counter and moved to the front of the restaurant.
“Grab a seat wherever you’d like,” she said counting out three menus from the stack. “Three?”
“Duh.” One of the teens chuckled at their own humor.
Little shit.
She followed them and their store-bought ripped jeans to a crimson booth where they each slid into place. Vix tossed the menus onto the table rather than hand them out individually.
“Waters all around?” she asked and walked away without waiting for confirmation.
Behind the counter, everything out of eyesight of the customers was a mess. Boxes of condiments spilling over. Stacks of cups lying on their side on the floor. An entire container of individually wrapped cheese slices sitting out in the open, unrefrigerated.
“Order up,” Jamal yelled from the kitchen and rang the service bell in case she didn’t hear him.
She always heard him. He knew that.
The bell was for his own fun. She knew that.
The worst part of the job, however, wasn’t Jamal. Vix stopped caring the second Jacob Good Eats himself said, ‘no more raises’ and, ‘split your tips with the kitchen staff.’ Honestly, she knew it was a shit job to begin with, but to have to split the already crappy tips with someone else made it that much worse. Which was why she didn’t mind helping herself to some lunchmeat now and again to take home to Gracie.
Filling three water glasses, she hustled back to the teens. “You guys ready to order?”
She set the glasses down and then slid one toward each kid.
“Not yet,” one of them replied with a snarky tone. “It might be a while.”
She fought to hold back an audible growl. “Give me a wave when you’re ready.”
The bell dinged again. And again.
As she squeezed between one patron with his chair sticking out and their neighbor’s table, someone reached for her elbow.
“Lady, this burger isn’t cooked.”
She eyed the massive bite taken from the burger and saw the sharp pink coloring of the meat and the red stain of blood streaking the bottom bun. “So sorry,” she said, forcing some good old applied empathy. “I’ll get you a new one.”
Taking up the plate of raw meat on bread, she pushed toward the kitchen where the temperature rose about ten degrees all around the range and ovens.
Ding, ding, ding.
“I got it, Jamal,” she yelled. Don’t rush me.
By the time she reached the kitchen, three dishes waited in the window to be served.
She shoved the burger across the counter to him. “Raw. Try again.”
“The hell it is,” Jamal shook his head and flipped a chicken breast over on the grill. A fresh burst of steam bloomed into the air around him. Sweat dripping from his face back onto the grill.
“It’s pink.”
“It’s rare, honey.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She balanced the three plates along her arm. “They want a new one.”
“Well, they can wait.”
Vix clenched her teeth. God, she wanted to scream at him. “You know we work for tips, right?”
She left without an answer and stopped at the counter long enough to dig in a basket for silverware and stuff the napkin-wrapped bundles into her apron. A flash caught her attention across the room. At the teenagers’ table, one kid held their hands rigid in the air levitating the napkin dispenser. The other two giggled, then quickly grabbed it and set it back down, glancing around the room to see if anyone noticed.
If it weren’t for the previous day’s events and a whole night of lying awake searching magic schools on her phone, Vix would have written the sight off. Kids screwing around. But clearly someone got their invitation to Little Shits Academy of Magic.
It could have been her at that age. It should have been her. Ten years older and she was up-selling seafood platters and doling out turtle-killing straws all at once, and for what? Chump change.
Ding.
“A well-done burger!” Jamal hollered from the kitchen.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Her blood pressure rose. Her ears warmed as the increase in total piss off built inside her. She was better than this. She was meant for more than grinning and bearing it all.
And for the first time in her life, she had another option. Sure, she stormed out of the school, but they’d let her back in. Had to.
Vix set each plate down on the counter, stuffed the tips thus far into her own pocket, removed her stained apron, and threw it onto the greasy terracotta floor.
The next class was tomorrow. She had homework to do.
––––––––
AT HOME, VIX STUFFED the few dollars she’d earned into the Darth Vader cookie jar by the sink and kicked off her shoes. The textbook from Pent College sat lifeless on the coffee table between her tray of candles and a stack of equally important tabloid magazines she’d stolen from her neighbor’s mail slot. She always fed them back through the slot a week or so later. For all Mrs. Wells knew, her subscription was late. It was a victimless crime.
Vix sat on the couch, legs crossed under her, and brought the textbook into her lap. Every bit of the try-hard-in-school situation foreign to her way of being.
Principles of Energy: Sensation, Absorption, Manipulation, Protection
Seemed fun, she guessed. Vix had never been a gifted student. Never had the chance or desire to prove herself. By the time she was fifteen, she’d already attended eight different schools, three of which she got herself kicked out of for “acting out” or “being too independent to follow rules”. She supposed those were good qualities to have in life, but in a structured world of “do as told” and “don’t ask questions” it wasn’t appreciated, by anyone.
Cracking the spine, Vix flipped pages until she reached the beginning of chapter one: Understanding Energy.
Basically, energy was everything she thought it was—electricity, fire, running water—but the text diverted from classical teaching the second it began talking about feeling energy. That sensation when you hold a finger over a flame to see how long you can stand it. The way the ocean yanks you around in the surf. How looking at the sun forces a squint. All of that, Vix read, was “feeling energy” and the trick was to start feeling it where you weren’t expecting to find it—sitting still in the dark, in a waiting room, on open ground.
Energy was free flowing, always, and not limited to specific confines. Likewise, energy moved in and around everyone and everything. Her, Gracie, the candles, her couch, the air in the room, all had some quantity of energy already present and alive within it. More importantly, all energy touched. There was never a disconnect or gap between quantities of flowing energy, they simply kept brushing up against one another and pinging off each other.
Vix glanced over at Gracie where she rudely sprawled her body on the left side of the couch as she bathed in fifth gear. She tried to think of Gracie as a ball of energy and laughed a little.
Gracie was a ball of energy.
Vix was a ball of energy.
And somewhere in all of that, their energies could sense each other? It was . . . weird, but for the first time in her life, Vix wanted to learn more. She wanted to understand the world around her. The real world around her.
Gracie interrupted her grooming and stared at her human.
“Are you energy? Huh?” Vix asked, to which Gracie purred and continued their eye contact.
Something in her wanted to ask again, to reach deep, and see if Gracie would come out with it, but as the humorous thought entered her mind, a heat like a carpet burn crashed into her left arm and hung there. Vix feverishly swatted at her arm as if putting out a flame and smothered the invisible embers until her skin cooled again.
She tossed the book onto the table and jumped up from the couch.
What the hell was that?
She paced the room, the cat watching her as she circled. Vix fought to regain control of her breath.
What the hell was that?
Staring at her skin, nothing appeared burned, but her arm was sensitive to the touch as if it had blistered to raw.
This was too much. A day earlier and magic was the stuff of movies: not real, and certainly not happening to her. Now, she panted, tried to still the nerves jolting inside her. This school was going to keep her from legal trouble, sure, but what was it really going to cost her?
Yet, her current MO—the lying, stealing, scraping by—wasn’t exactly sustainable. At this point, something had to give. She couldn’t miss a chance to alter her story.
After a deep breath, she returned to the couch and drew the textbook back into her lap.
––––––––
AT A HAIR BEFORE SIX o’clock, Vix entered the double doors of the Pent College building and made her way to room 406. After climbing her way up the stairs, she made a sharp left, but where there had been a door to 406 now stood a wall.
“The hell?” Vix spun on her heel.
Behind her, to the right of the stairs a very plain door stood open and the classroom beyond it looked just like the one she’d sat in two days prior.
Weird.
Once in the classroom, she grabbed her usual spot closest to the exit. Already seated, Opera read over a chapter in the textbook while Ijemma and a guy Vix didn’t recognize from the first day stood chatting at the front of the room.
“Trying to get ahead?” Vix asked.
Opera glanced up and nodded. “I can’t believe all of this.” She motioned around the room and then at the textbook. “I always thought I was . . . You know, I always wished, I mean, suspected I was something more.”
Vix slipped her purse off her shoulder and slung it onto the table ahead of her.
“Seriously?” All her life she had plenty of people reminding her she wasn’t anything special, yet all she ever wanted was to belong.
“Yeah, it’s amazing.” Her eyes flashed with light, so happy with her life. “My dreams are coming true.”
“I never thought that.” She grabbed a stick of gum and offered a piece to Opera. “Spearmint, not wintergreen.”
The woman slid a piece from the pack and unwrapped it tenderly. “That’s really sad. You never believed in yourself?”
Swallowing down the initial sugar-sting spit from the gum, Vix smiled at the positive and purely optimistic glee on Opera’s face. “I believed I could get away with things. Believed I could sneak around behind people’s backs. Steal money, food. Magic?” She shook her head. “Never.”
“I’m sorry. I feel bad for you.”
What? Never in her life had Vix been on the receiving end of sympathy, at least not to her face.
“Ladies,” Ijemma said, skull nails tapping the table as she leaned toward the pair. “This is Takon. We work together at the Green-Mart.”
The man beside Ijemma extended a hand. Tall, dark, handsome, and a few more clichés. Exactly the kind of person she would cheat with or cheat on. Vix shook, followed by Opera. “Good to meet you.”
“Victoria, but I go by Vix.”
“Good to meet you.” He winked and then shook Opera’s hand. “Can’t believe I’m even here.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Opera beamed.
God, was she the only person that still didn’t feel like she understood what was going on, let alone feel like she belonged?
“Seats!” Professor LaRiche entered the room and slammed the door behind her. “Welcome back.”
Takon and Ijemma rushed to their places.
Hand raised, LaRiche poked the air as she counted each student. “Nine. Good. Now we can really begin.”
Dropping a textbook onto her desk, the professor flipped it open to the first page of the first chapter. “Before we jump into energy and empathy, the second class session is the best time to discuss the currently reckless festering of your abilities.”
She paced the front of the class. “Years of your life have passed while your talents have settled to the bottom like silt in a stream. Now that you’re here, often students of Pent College find the rushing waters of knowledge start to, shall we say, stir things up. The silt is tossed into currents along with all of the gravel, leaves, and dead fish of your past experiences.”
She set her rump on the front of her desk and leaned back, proud, assured. Her four-inch heels were killing it. “The key here is: your bodies are changing. Change with them. Latent talents are going to lift with the tide. Lift with them.”
Vix shifted in her seat. That moment, in her apartment. The burn on her arm when she addressed Gracie’s energy. Was that some kind of latent talent? Burning the shit out of yourself?
“If you need,” she continued, “my door is always open. Well, not always,” she laughed and pointed at the shut door. “But if you’re having problems, come see me.” Her voice dropped an octave. “We’ll get you through this.”
Opera raised her hand. Her thin arm trembling ever so slightly. “Professor?”
LaRiche tipped her chin toward her.
“For the past two days, I keep feeling like I’m not in my body.”
“Drugs?”
The classroom chuckled quietly.
She lowered her arm. “No.”
“Losing feeling in your limbs?”
“No.”
“Losing consciousness?”
“Nothing like that. It’s like I can see myself, like I’m able to . . . step away if I wanted to, and go somewhere else without taking my body with me.”
The professor’s brows pulled together. “And have you?”
“What?”
“Stepped away?”
A shock of sound left Opera’s throat. “No, I, . . . It scared me.”
Nodding, she strolled back to the seat behind her desk. A firm expression on her face as she continued to nod as if she were contemplating what to do or what to say.
“Everyone, pay attention to this,” she said. “If it scares you, then hold back. Whatever you do, don’t push it any further when you’re unstable. Fear is not an invitation to continue; things will only get sloppy. Fear is a signal to stop. Always.”
An odd silence fell over the class. Vix held frozen, unsure how to process the warning. The burning sensation on her arm did scare her, and LaRiche made that sound like the point of no return. Surely, she hadn't been up against some horrid precipice of some kind if she pushed it instead of recoiled, right?
“Moving on,” the professor said, her voice climbing back up to near chipper. “Last time we discussed empathy and applied empathy. Then I had you read a chapter on energy and sensation. Why is that?”
A few hands went into the air.
“Jackson Blanchard.” She pointed.
One of the three guys in the back of the room sat relaxed, his arms flopped across the lab bench. “The way I see it, empathy is like 'hey, I know what you're going through,' and applied empathy is like, 'hey, I don't know what you're going through, but I'm going to pretend I do,' and energy is like, 'hey, I can feel what you're going through'.” He smiled, head bobbing with pride.
Frozen with eyes shut, it seemed LaRiche was processing the wisdom Jackson just shared. “Actually,” she nodded. “Yes. I've never heard quite such an explanation, but you have a strangely accurate grasp on the concepts.”
“Rocked it!” he cheered for himself. Classic jock type, but Vix had to give it to him on the understanding. Even she hadn't gotten such solid footing yet.
“Now,” LaRiche said, pointing at him, “Tell me a time when you used applied empathy to serve your own purpose. What did you write in your assignment?”
Rubbing his thick fingers together, he hung his head low. “I acted like I cared about this chick whose parents died in order to get her tickets to the Blue Rivers Band concert last year. The funeral was that day, she wasn't going to use the tickets, but I didn't care about her parents or her. Not really.”
“Perfect example.” LaRiche grinned in a sick, I-know-something-you-don't kind of way. “This is a perfect example of you all using your abilities in the wrong ways to meet your own wants. This is the kind of behavior we hope to squelch at Pent College.”
“But I—”
“Don't bother. You denied an orphan a moment of joy when she needed it most because you wanted to go to that concert.”
“That's not how it—”
“No.” She made a swish motion, like chopping the conversation at the quick. “Did you buy the tickets from her, Jackson? Or did you conveniently take them off her hands?”
He froze. Mouth shut tight.
Arms wide, LaRiche polled the class. “Am I being too harsh? Am I calling him out on his bullshit? Or am I working with his energy, teasing it out, picking up on that sliver of guilt he's been carrying for a year, and shoving it into the spotlight so we all can examine it? If you're defensive now, Jackson, then it's only because you're feeling exposed. More like, your guilt is exposed.”
He mumbled in the back.
“Come again?”
“I didn't feel guilty about it. It was an awesome concert.”
A crocodile grin from her. “But it was there, Jackson. The guilt was there.”
She clapped loudly. “Let's clear it out!” she shouted above her own clapping. “Break the energy of Jackson's guilt. Clap.”
Reluctantly, each student began a slow, then boisterous applause. Vix, both intrigued and confused, did her part to chop the energy around her with clapping. She looked to Opera who only offered a submissive grin below her chopped bangs as she complied with instruction.
“Good!” LaRiche, still clapping. “We'll break it up and begin again.” Her hands stilled. “Quickly, everyone change seats.”
Side glances and smirks.
“Change seats. Do it.”
Students scooted stools and collected belongings. After a minute of disruption, everyone settled into place in new spots.
“There we go. You see, anytime there's energy you need to disperse, create an equal disruption of your own. Clap, move around, light a candle. The more you become aware of the energies around you, the more you can choose if those energies will disrupt you. Instead of being reactive in life like you have been up to this point, you can now be active and make choices.”
Mind swirling, Vix tried to make sense of this lecture where LaRiche basically insulted a student and then made a point to congratulate herself on dispersing the shit talk.
By the end of class, Vix's head wasn't screwed on any straighter. LaRiche had gone on and on about empathy and energy so many times she'd seen it both as completely interconnected and never touching at the same time. Just as the night before, however, she found herself wanting to untangle the unknown rather than walk away from it.
Of course, she knew there had been a million times when she lied, no, applied empathy to get what she wanted. That was practically her entire high school life and early adulthood. Now, unfortunately, she observed her life for what it was: a mish-mash of false promises and fake emotions which got her from A to B to C. But none of it had ever really advanced her life; it was all temporary cravings and meaningless wants. Then the regret which followed.
Vix sat up straight. The regret! That was energy pushing against her, shoving to be heard over all the manipulation.
LaRiche broke her concentration. “Before next class, read chapter two on energy textures. Right now, bring your empathy lists to me on your way out.”
Tugging the edge-worn loose-leaf page from the middle of her textbook, Vix slung her purse over her shoulder and collected her things.
“Vix,” Opera said, as she rushed to her and latched onto her wrist. “A couple of us are going to the Lancer after. Want to come?”
Oh boy. Drinks? Fine. Any day of the week. Magic strangers and alcohol? Maybe not. And yet, LaRiche could probably feel that resistant energy from across the room, just pinging off everything and everyone.
The woman's grip tightened. “Please. You're the first person I met in here. There are only nine of us going through this crazy experience; we may as well get to know each other.”
Although some kind of energy told her not to, Vix found herself nodding and saying things like, “Thanks for inviting me. It'll be fun to all hang out.”
Before long, she'd handed in her paper, driven to the Lancer, and stood in the moonlight outside the place, the jukebox blaring Beastie Boys, and the smell of fried food wafting through the door.
Regret energy surged inside her.
“Yeah, buddy, I hear you.” She sighed, gripping the pool cue door handle. “And we're going in anyway.”
