His New Friend

“How did you get detention on the first day of school?” Matias Gonzalez–Alvaro found out his last name from his number–asked. The Latino, seated in a cheap plastic chair, offered his hand out in front of him, over the small, laminate-covered table in the mall’s food court.

Alvaro slapped the hand in greeting.

“I got lost going to class,” he said.

“How do you get lost? Didn’t you go through orientation?”

Alvaro put his hands into his front pockets and rocked back onto his heels, before standing straight up again and shrugging his shoulders. “I missed that, too,” he lied. He could not tell anyone else what he saw, because even he did not believe what happened.

“Best learn where to go so you don’t get detention again. Too many of those and they’ll suspend you.”

“Right. I’ll get in early tomorrow and walk the halls.” He pulled his hands out of his slacks pockets, then slumped his shoulders. “I’ll be okay.”

“Did you want something from here?” Matias pointed his thumb behind him at the Chinese food restaurant.

“Yeah. Sounds good.” Alvaro looked around the crowded area of tacky tables and mismatched chairs, some with noticeable cosmetic damage to them. There were dozens of familiar teenagers in this section of the mall. Either they shared a class with Alvaro, or he had seen them in the halls between periods.

Though, except for Matias, he had yet to learn any of their names.

Finally returning his attention to Matias, he said, “Give me a minute.”

“Want me to order for you?”

“Whatever the special is. Thanks!”

Alvaro headed through the crowd to the hall where the bathrooms were, a bilingual sign hanging above the entrance indicating this and the emergency exit at the end of the short passage. He buried his hands into his gray pullover hoodie’s pockets, and kept his head down.
The tiles of the floor made irregular patterns between the green, red and white squares. The Arbor Line Mall used those colors in its logos and on nearly all of its signs.

“Excuse me,” he said, after he nearly bumped into someone passing by him. Before he could make it to the men’s room, he felt the stranger grab his shoulders from behind and thrust him forward.

“Hey!” Alvaro shouted, almost tripping over his feet trying to keep his balance.

He tried to turn his head to see who was assaulting him, but his assailant’s hand pushed his face back forward. Before he could cry out for help, his body crashed against the exit door, opening it under both of their weights.

Outside, in a narrow passage surrounded by the walls of the stores on either side of them, the mystery person shoved Alvaro hard one final time. When he tried to recover and twist around, his shoulder was tugged, turning him to face his assaulter.

The young woman pinned him against one of the brick facades. His glasses slipped off his face, but he caught them in his hand before they fell onto the concrete walk.

She was the red-haired girl who he had followed earlier today. She held his shoulders and back to the wall, her fists clutching his hoodie in front, while she scowled furiously at him.

“What were you doing in the bomb shelter?” she asked. Alvaro tried to struggle free, but her strength was greater than he had assumed. He tried again, only to have her push his shoulders back harder. “Answer me!”

“I just followed you.”

Her brow furrowed deeper.

“What were you doing there? And what was that thing?” Alvaro was trying to hide his pain from being pinned so hard but felt his cheek twitch and teeth grit.

“Why were you following me?” Perhaps because she no longer saw him as a threat to her, she released his outerwear.

Before he could lift his glasses, she grasped his hand and rolled up his sleeve.

“Hey!” he said.

She ignored him and checked his other forearm in the same manner.

He demanded, “What are you doing?”

“You don’t have the marks,” she said. “You’re not a revenant or an eidolon, then.” With a skeptical look on her face, she stared him down. “So why were you following me?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

The girl pressed just her left thumb against Alvaro’s sternum and pushed him against the bricks again. He grabbed at her thumb with his free hand, and grunted in pain.

“Answer my question first!” she said, with a growl in her voice.

“You–you had a glow to you.”

Her eyes went wide. She dropped her hand and released him. His hand rubbed where her thumb had dug into his bone. Her eyes darted down and she snatched away his glasses.

“Where did you get these?” she asked, and held them up to the sunlight.

“I broke my glasses while I was at my grandparents’ in Mexico. That’s what they could make for me before I returned home. Why?”

“Your family? So you’re part Mexican?”

“Yes,” Alvaro said, his eyes squinting to better witness her facial expressions. “What’s wrong with them?”

“They have a faint green tint to them. An expensive treatment was done to your glasses as cheaply as possible.” She handed them back to Alvaro. “They have a rare isotope of chromium in the glass, probably from an illegal mine in the Amazon. I’d say they dumped the metal off cheaply and it ended up at the manufacturer of your lenses. The chromium oxide that isotope is part of is what is causing that dark green hue in the sunlight.”

Alvaro stared at the young lady, his mouth open. Finally, he said, “How would you know any of that?”

“Put them back on.”

He did so.

Though most of what was outside his immediate focus was a bit blurry, he could still see her coppery green eyes, her fair skin, the long red hair, two tufts caught in front of her pierced ears. No longer was she in her school outfit, but now she wore an ice blue blouse. He looked down to see a black mini skirt held by a silver-buckled and black leather belt, and leather sandals without socks.

“You’re Asian,” he remarked.

“Japanese,” she said. “Notice anything different now?”

“Wait, how did you know that I–”

She interrupted, “Because that type of chromium oxide is what we use in our own lenses to see what you witnessed earlier today.”

“You’re not glowing now.”

“Because of you!” she stuck her finger out at him. “You followed me and saw something no Null should have seen.”

“Null?”

She sighed, almost forced. “Nulls, what we call people like you.”

“People like me, because I’m half-black?”

The young lady looked at him with a raised eyebrow, then her face changed to one of bemusement. She chuckled. “No, no, because what you witnessed,” she paused and glared at him again, “was what you call magic.”

“That can’t be,” Alvaro said, folding his arms. “Magic doesn’t exist. That was some light and smoke trick you were doing.” He saw that her glare had not diminished, and he let his arms fall to his sides. “Wasn’t it?”

“I’m a Witch,” she said. “A dual-sphere magic user.”

“This makes no sense...”

“Listen,” her voice stern, “I don’t have all day to explain this to you. But you’ve already seen what happened and I can’t take that back. So you’re the only person right now I can talk to about it.”

“About what?”

“I’m not the only magic user in this world. But our ranks keep it as hidden as possible from Nulls like you.”

“What is a Null?”

“Someone who is empty of any magical abilities. May I continue?”

Alvaro nodded.

“I am at Hughes High School because there are no full time protectors to watch that portal which you saw today. A magic user needs to be around at the school who can blend in with you Nulls.”

He looked at her hair. She noticed this.

“I dye my hair, and change it often. Get used to it.”

“Get used to it?”

“Yes, because you’re going to help me fix the mess that you created.”

“What mess?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and voiced her disgust with a groan. “That green thing you saw. It was a gremlin. I was trying to bind it so it could not escape. A level one imp monster that by itself does no real harm. But once in a while, enough get through to our world and–”

“Wait, you can’t just tell me all of this and expect me to understand what you’re saying. None of this makes any sense to me. It’s not scientific.”

“Of course not! Magic defies science. You Nulls use technology and science to achieve what we Wizards use magic to achieve. But our magic keeps the ether from opening a passageway to the monster world.” She pressed a finger to his chin to keep his mouth shut. “Just listen, and I will explain in due time.”

She folded her arms and lowered her brow again. “My name’s Mariko Takashi. I’m a divination-protection Witch, rank two. And because I allowed a Null to witness my magic, and to see a monster come through a portal, my powers have been suspended.”

Mariko paused to allow the confused young man to respond. After a few seconds, he shouted, “Wow! This is so cool!”

“Eh?”

“You’re an actual Witch! You know how cool that is?”

“Shush, keep your voice down. No one is to know of this. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

“I’ve gotta tell Matias–”

“No,” she growled. “This is a secret you keep. No one is to know what you saw earlier. No one is to know who I am. And no one is to know that magic exists. Got it?”

“Then why are you telling me?” Alvaro asked.

Mariko rolled her eyes. “I already said. You Nulls use technology and science to achieve what we Wizards use magic for.”

“Okay?”

Mariko nodded, prodding him to get the point. When it was apparent that he did not, she shook her head. “I have to catch that gremlin. My magic has been suspended. And I will not get my abilities back until I can prove that I will not be so careless in letting you Nulls know about magic.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

She reached forward, then flicked his ear.

“Ow!”

“You already know. You just don’t know what you really saw. My Wizards know that you know. I talked them out of,” she used her fingers to create air quotes, “causing an accident,” her hands now down by her sides, “to make sure you wouldn’t say anything. On the promise that if I couldn’t make you my Voice, they could go ahead with their plan.”

“Your Voice?”

“Okay, I’m going to have to remember that everything needs to be explained to you for now.” She loudly sighed, then explained, “My Voice is a Null that I’ve taken to assist me in all matters, to bridge my magic abilities with the real world.”

“Oh. I think I got it.”

“You either work with me and help me protect that school against all enemies, or Wizards will visit you in the middle of the night and destroy you.”

Alvaro looked at her expression, unsure of whether she was telling the truth. “Do your threats always work?”

Mariko smiled, rather wickedly. “Don’t know. You’re the first Null I’ve ever had to threaten.” Her smile withered some, but she still presented herself as an innocent teenage girl. “Is it working?”

“These other Wizards, their magic is much stronger than yours?”

Mariko nodded. She pantomimed with her hands a growing ball that she thrust at Alvaro, then spread her arms wide while making an explosion sound.

“Happy to be your Voice!” he said, offering his hand.

“Happy to be your tormentor!” she replied and shook it.

“Takashi is a boy’s name, though, isn’t it?”

Mariko’s expression turned sour quickly, and her anger returned. “Don’t you dare try to malign my name. It’s very personal to me.”

“Sorry. I just know many boys named Takashi from my manga,and–”

She sighed loudly and pressed her face into her palm. “Of all the Nulls, I had to be careless around a nerd.”

Alvaro tried to say something else about her name, but stopped himself. Instead, to break the silence between them, “So what do we do now?”

Mariko straightened up, her expression now neutral. “Have you said a word to anyone else?”

“No,” Alvaro said. “I had no idea what I would even tell someone. I still don’t believe it happened.”

“It did. And now that you’re on the case with me, we’re going to send that little cretin back to the monster realm.”

“Okay, you’re going to have to explain what this monster realm is.”

“Be at my house at seven tonight,” she said. Alvaro took out his cell phone, and programmed her information, as she spoke them, into his contacts.

“Should I bring anything?”

“Your laptop if you have one, and your glasses.” She turned toward the parking lot, never looking back. Her hips swayed as she walked. Alvaro noticed her skirt swishing in the gentle breeze. She shouted back without turning, “And be prepared to read. A lot.”

Alvaro watched her turn the corner and disappear. He then looked back at his phone, at her information still on his screen.

“This is so cool!” he shouted.

If you wish to read more, visit marikotakashi.com to find out how to purchase the full novel.