“Simply primitive!” she’d praised when Alex showed her his stark sculpture replica of the High Priest Justine’s palace.
And with all this praise, every day Alex waited anxiously for his private lesson, hoping to hear the same news that Meghan had received already: that Ms. Octavia would be talking to Mr. Today about advancing him to Magical Warrior Training. But every day, in the awkward silence at the end of each session, she merely praised him for his stunning work and sent him on without another word.
Soon Lani—and a month later Samheed—joined the ranks of student warriors, leaving Alex as the only one in his group of friends not to have earned a coveted component vest, which the others wore proudly to class. Conversations grew awkward. Alex took to brooding alone rather than share the pain of what he perceived as his failures.
Meghan was especially thoughtful about not discussing warrior classes too much in front of Alex, but there were times when even she couldn’t help but show off a spell. Meghan could now lull a person or creature into a trance with her singing, and her high-pitched piccolo could cause someone to turn tail and run away screaming. When she danced the fire step, whomever she aimed her focus toward would suddenly feel his feet grow warm, then hot, then near blistering.
Samheed was a quick study in the soliloquy, and he had mastered several styles by now that all had different effects on people. His dagger spell was most impressive, for those he used it on would see and feel a magical dagger plunging into their chests, and they’d fall to the ground, stunned, though the spell did no actual damage to them. He could also “call horse,” and an invisible steed would come to him and take him wherever he wanted to go. He practiced this one often on the lawn outside (although once he tried it in his room, which made a terrible mess), and he even ventured into the forest with the steed on a few occasions. But each time he quickly returned to the lawn, having gotten the wits scared out of him first by a large gray wolf, and then by Simber, the prowling winged-cheetah statue, who apparently had left his post by the mansion door and was out on a hunt for food that evening.
But Meghan and even Samheed were careful not to perform any magic on Alex, since he couldn’t fight back.
Lani, on the other hand, was quickly becoming a big pain in Alex’s side. She wouldn’t leave him alone, and she didn’t seem to understand how gut-wrenchingly awful Alex was feeling about having been passed by a twelve-year-old. And how embarrassed he’d been when she magically changed his lines in Actors’ Studio as a joke, and when she made him fall asleep at dinner by using a secret phrase. One day at lunch Lani put Alex to sleep and he fell face-first into his soup.
He awoke immediately with a sputter. “What—what is your problem?” he shouted when he had his wits about him again. He grabbed his napkin and began to wipe his face, but there were noodles in his hair, and a small slice of carrot stuck to his cheek.
Lani giggled. Even Meghan had to hide a smile, and Sam-heed just smirked.
Alex looked down at his soiled shirt, and then he set his napkin on the table. He stood, pushed his chair in, and left without a word, without looking back.
Meghan’s eyes widened, and she almost stood to go after him, but Lani waved him off. “He’s just a sorehead,” she said.
“You should tell him you’re sorry,” Meghan said.
“It was just a joke. He’ll get over it.”
Lani didn’t apologize to Alex, and he’d had all he could stand. From that point on, Alex withdrew from the others and took his meals in his room. And since they used the blackboards to call on him, he shut them out by putting Clive, his blackboard, on permanent “shush.”
He spent his free time in his room, drawing and painting like mad, desperate to improve enough to make it to the warrior level of instruction. Late in the evenings, when his arms ached and loneliness clawed at his insides, he lay on his bed and thought about home, and about Aaron, and about what Samheed had said. Alex still had a hard time believing that his brother, Aaron, would have reported a fellow classmate. Why would Aaron do something like that? Many nights Alex chose to stand by his brother in favor of Samheed. After all, Alex knew his brother best of anyone, didn’t he? And he knew from experience that Aaron was creative too—he’d just never been caught. If only Alex had known before the Purge what being Unwanted really meant, he would have reported his brother in an instant so they could be together.
“Oh, Aaron,” he’d groan, feeling helpless to save him. Alex began to miss Aaron terribly now that he felt so distanced from his friends.
And even though there was nothing that could bring Alex back together with his twin, he sometimes got a feeling, or a notion, almost like he could sense Aaron’s presence and understand his thoughts. This made Alex feel even more alone. He wondered what Aaron was doing, how his studies at Wanted University were going, and what he was especially good at. And he wondered if Aaron was sad, as sad as Alex was sometimes.
“No, probably not,” Alex said. He grew so lonely that recently he had begun chatting aloud, even arguing with himself. “It’s impossible for Quillens to feel anywhere near as sad as we can feel here in Artimé.
“But he believes that I’m dead. That’s got to make him sad,” Alex argued.
“Don’t forget where you came from, Alex. He’s forgotten you, like he was taught to do.”
And yet Alex couldn’t help feeling like Aaron was somehow different because of their birth link. That maybe, just maybe, Aaron was mourning for him. Over time Alex grew convinced that Aaron belonged here in Artimé too.