Cracks

029 | mountain meadow

M O U N T A I N M E A D O W

—

         Klaire pulled at her hair, and chewed anxiously on the edge of her mountain meadow green mechanical pencil, unable to bring her thoughts back to her Spectroscopy Lab Analysis. She currently sat at a picnic table off to a far-corner of the quad, away from everyone. If Sabrina or Devon came, then Avery wasn't too far off. And if Avery came, they pretended to ignore each other's awkwardness until one of them made an excuse to leave.

The witch's absence was something she  noticed. Constantly. Someone who'd been so easy to talk to now had her drawing a blank upon every sparse interaction. A part of Klaire felt juvenile, the phone call with her twenty six year old aunt making sure of that.

The Inquisition employed witches, and her aunt worked with a few, an admittance Matilda urged Klaire to keep to herself. Apparently it was moderately guarded information, and it seemed everyone in her family was privy to it but her. Well, until Klaire wore it out of Matilda, who had seemed to know a suspicious amount about American witches.

Never in a million years, would Klaire guess her twenty-six year old aunt was catching drinks with inhuman coworkers, or whatever else they did after work.

         Klaire had vastly underestimated how big this for her, both her aunt's revelation and Avery's. Most days, she teetered somewhere in the valley between acceptance and disillusion. And just when she thought she was coming to terms, they'd run into each other. Groaning, Klaire folded her arms and let her face rest in-between them.

         It was hard. He was the only witch she'd ever met on un-hostile terms and she couldn't keep from viewing him as her case study.

        The sight of him doing something so quintessentially average–like studying, or eating a sandwich, or staring into space–was
suddenly fascinating in an out-of-body way. Instructive thought like, 'that's a witch over there, eating a fucking sandwich' would hit her with no warning.

       Avery pretended not to notice her stares, just like she pretended not to notice his. Well, hopefully she was doing a little better than he was; it was too easy to tell what he was thinking; if he liked something, if he was stressed out, if Devon was annoying him.

       Klaire pinched the bridge of her nose; considering another other issue at hand. She was running out of excuses for the increased solitude and her friends were starting to catch on, despite her reassurances. Sabrina confronted her twice, and her and Lily had drifted a little.

      She was oblivious to Sabrina's strut from her spot across the quad, jumping in alarm as a book bag slammed on top of the table. Klaire blew hair out of her face, trying to look calm and wondering if her train of thought had somehow manifested this.

Sabrina plopped down next to her, "So you two are taking some space." Klaire's stomach dropped, those words dimming her mood farther. Meanwhile Sabrina watched her best friend's face, trying for the life of her, to glean some understanding of what was going on.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Why did this news upset Klaire? There wasn't anything wrong with it. That was a perfectly logical explanation to give.

        "I'm sorry Sabrina," She started, hoping to sound bubbly enough that it hid her somberness. "I just, I didn't want to talk about it." Sabrina proper her cheek up on her hand, face almost blank of it weren't for the subtle furrow of her brow.

"When did it start? The vibe's been weird between you two for like, a week." Then, her voice got softer, she took a breath and collected herself. "Did he do something to you?"

        "No—"

        "Did he threaten to?"

     "No..." Sabrina hesitated to consider her words, not wanting to push her too hard.

      "You know anything you say, stays with me, right?" Klaire nodded, her gaze running over the lawn, people were lounging about under the light-dappling trees, the quiet hum of distanced, indecipherable conversation floating in the air. A warm spell had hit Illinois, and many students were in short sleeves. That included a certain boy across the way, leant up against a tree facing away from her, copying something from laptop to notebook. A bloom of anxiety grew in her gut, and an emotional pain spread under her sternum.

       Nothing really had changed, yet she would never look at him the same again. The story he'd told her that night checked out, thanks to a little, casual record hacking. Though his AAE score made her do a double take in face of his alleged and intended, self sabotage. To qualify for Tulsa, you had to be in the 90th percentile, the lower end of those scores being somewhere in the 1520s since the test was out of 1600.

        Avery was smart. Like really fucking smart. And it wasn't till she was faced with literal numeric proof that she could affirm it. His score of course, was high. Better than hers, better than a decent amount of people—and he'd never gone to a cram school to sharpen a skill or two. Klaire had spent four months strengthening her auditory processing. Distant laughter brought her back and Klaire found herself admitting the words she knew to be true, this time out loud.

       "It's something I started, Bina." She could feel Sabrina's quiet stare beaming into the side of her face, her own eyes still staring off in the distance.

   With it clear she would learn nothing more, Sabrina got up from the picnic table. "When you're ready to stop being so mysterious." She gave one last glance at her best friend curiously, "I'll be here." She picked her away across the grass and Klaire watched her this time. The leaves of the surrounding trees rustled and swirled. Some broke off and fell, the brief indian summer unable to stop the natural undoing that was fall.

        Something about that motivated her into action. Before she could talk herself out of it Klaire shoved all of her shit into her bag and moved across the lawn.

"Hey, can we need to talk?" When his head lifted, his features were schooled, his eyes however, widened in surprise. It wasn't long before Klaire stood under fluorescent lighting, facing him with certain apprehension in the same bathroom from two weeks prior.

    She said and asked everything and anything that came to mind, rambling in the beginning, clarifying in the middle, and almost choking up in the end. Not because she was weak, or guilty, or frustrated, but because of the personal truth in her words.

What he was, or who she was, where he came from, and who her parents were—it was her choice how much importance she gave to these things. If Matilda was anything to go off of, maybe none of it needed to matter, as much as it could.