The limit

Chapter 6

Call dropped the pen, which immediately stopped spraying. But the damage was done. His hands and desk, his test book and hair, were covered in ink. He tried to wipe it off his fingers, only succeeding in leaving blue handprints all over his shirt.

He hoped the ink wasn’t poisonous. He was pretty sure he’d swallowed some.

Everyone in the class was staring. Even Master Milagros was watching him in what looked alarmingly like amazement, as though no one had ever managed to destroy a pen so thoroughly. Everyone was silent except the lanky kid who’d been talking to Tamara before. He had leaned over to whisper to her again. Tamara didn’t c***k a smile, but from the smirk on the boy’s face, and the superior glint in her eyes, Call could tell they were sneering at him. He felt the tips of his ears pinking.

“Callum Hunt,” said Master Milagros in a shocked voice. “Please — please leave the room and clean yourself up, then wait in the hallway until the group rejoins you.”

Call staggered to his feet, barely registering that the blond boy who’d almost been soaked with ink threw him what looked like a sympathetic smile. He could still hear someone giggling as he banged out through the door — and still picture Tamara’s scornful look. Who cared what she thought — who cared what any of them thought, whether they were trying to be friendly or mean or not? They didn’t matter. They weren’t part of his life. None of this was.

Just a few more hours. He repeated it to himself over and over as he stood in the bathroom, doing his best to scrub off the ink with powdered soap and rough paper towels. He wondered if the ink was magical. It sure wanted to stick. Some of it had dried in his black hair, and there were still dark blue handprints on his white shirt when he emerged from the bathroom and found the other aspirants waiting for him in the hallway. He heard some of them muttering to one another about “the freak with the ink.”

“Nice look with the shirt,” the boy with the black hair said. He looked rich to Call, rich like Tamara. He couldn’t have said why exactly, but his clothes were the kind of tailored casual-fancy that cost a lot of money. “For your sake, I hope the next test doesn’t involve explosions. Or, oh, wait — I hope it does.”

“Shut up,” Call muttered, aware that this was hardly the greatest comeback of all time. He slouched against the wall until Master Milagros, reappearing, called them all to order. Silence fell as she called out names in groups of five, directing each group down a corridor and telling them to wait at the other end. Call had no idea how the airplane hangar managed to house such a network of hallways. He suspected it was one of those things his father would say he was better off not thinking about.

“Callum Hunt!” she called out, and Call shuffled along to join his group, which also contained, to his dismay, the black-haired boy, whose name turned out to be Jasper deWinter, and the blond boy he’d spattered ink on earlier, who was Aaron Stewart. Jasper made a big show of hugging Tamara and wishing her luck before he sauntered over to join his group. Once there, he immediately started talking to Aaron, turning his back on Call as if Call didn’t exist.

The other two kids in Call’s new group were Kylie Myles and a nervous-looking girl named Celia something, who had a big mass of dirty blond hair and had clipped a blue flower behind her bangs.

“Hey, Kylie,” Call said, thinking now was the perfect opportunity to warn her that the picture of the Magisterium that Master Milagros was conjuring for them was merely a flattering illusion. He had it on good authority that the real caves were full of dead ends and eyeless fish.

She looked apologetic. “Would you mind … not talking to me?”

“What?” They had started moving off down the hall, and Call limped faster to keep up. “Seriously?”

She shrugged. “You know how it is. I’m trying to make a good impression, and talking to you isn’t going to help. Sorry!” She skipped ahead, catching up with Jasper and Aaron. Call stared at the back of her head as if he could drill into it with anger.

“I hope the eyeless fish eat you!” he called after her. She pretended not to hear.

Master Milagros led them around a last corner, into a huge room that was set up like a gymnasium. There was a high ceiling, and from the center of it dangled a big red ball, suspended high over their heads. Next to the ball was a long rope ladder with wooden rungs that reached from the roof to brush the floor.

This was ridiculous. He couldn’t climb with his leg the way it was. He was supposed to be throwing these tests on purpose, not being so terrible at them that he’d never have been able to get into magic school in the first place.

“I will now leave you to Master Rockmaple,” Master Milagros said after the last group of five had arrived, indicating a short magician with a bristling red beard and a ruddy nose. He was carrying a clipboard and had a whistle around his neck, like a gym teacher, although he was wearing the all-black outfit the other magicians were in.

“This test is deceptively simple,” said Master Rockmaple, stroking his beard in a way that seemed calculated to look menacing. “Simply climb the rope ladder and get the ball. Who would like to go first?”

Several kids shot up their hands.

Master Rockmaple pointed to Jasper. He bounded up to the rope as though being selected first were some kind of indication of how awesome he was, instead of just a measure of how eagerly he’d waggled his hand. Instead of climbing right on, he circled the apparatus, looking up at the ball thoughtfully, tapping his lower lip.

“Are you quite ready?” Master Rockmaple asked, eyebrows raised just slightly, and a few of the other kids snickered.

Jasper, clearly annoyed at being laughed at when he was taking the whole thing so seriously, launched himself violently at the dangling rope ladder. As soon as he’d climbed from one rung to another, the ladder seemed to lengthen, so that the more he climbed, the more he had to climb. Finally, it got the better of him and he toppled to the ground, surrounded by coils and coils of rope and steps of wood.

Now, that was funny, Callum thought.

“Very good,” said Master Rockmaple. “Who would like to go next?”

“Let me try it again,” said Jasper, a whine creeping into his voice. “I know how to do it now.”

“We have a lot of aspirants waiting for their turn,” Master Rockmaple said, looking as if he was enjoying himself.

“But it’s not fair. Someone will get it right and then everyone will know how to do it. I’m being punished for going first.”

“It looked to me like you wanted to go first. But very well, Jasper. If there’s time after everyone else is done, and you’d still like to try again, you may.”

It just figured that Jasper would get another chance. Call assumed that from the way he was acting, his dad was probably somebody important.

Most of the other kids didn’t do any better, some making it halfway up and then sliding back down, one never even hauling himself off the ground. Celia got the farthest before losing her grip and falling onto a practice mat. Her flower hair clip wound up a little mangled. Although she didn’t want to show she was upset, Call could tell she was by the way she kept anxiously trying to fix the clip back into place.

Master Rockmaple looked at his list. “Aaron Stewart.”

Aaron stood in front of the rope ladder, flexing his fingers like he was about to jog onto a basketball court. He looked sporty and confident, and Call felt that familiar ache of jealousy in his stomach, quickly smothered, that he got whenever he watched kids play basketball or baseball and be totally at home in their skin. Team sports weren’t an option for Call; the opportunity for embarrassment was too great, even if he’d been allowed to play. Guys like Aaron never had to worry about things like that.