Elodie dumped the drink at the first trash can outside of the school. She waved goodbye to Brad as he took off for Skycroft, leaving her to suffer at school. Well, she supposed she wouldn’t be suffering, exactly.

She turned to enter the doors, just as she bumped into another girl her age. Luckily, the other girl caught her, being about half a foot taller.

“Sorry about that,” the girl said. “Are you okay?”

But Elodie found she was speechless. The girl was wearing a tank top and ripped jeans, a flannel tied around her waist. And on her right shoulder, exactly where Elodie had collided with her, there was a dragon-shaped birthmark.

The same birthmark that Elodie had.

“You have one too?” Elodie’s earth-brown eyes widened.

“I-I should go,” the girl stammered before speed-walking away.

Elodie stared after her, contemplating whether or not she should follow. But before she could reach a decision either way, a girl tugged on the sleeve of her jacket. Elodie whirled around to see one of the girls on the Speech and Debate team.

“Oh, hey, Adelaide,” Elodie said. “Penny, Renee!”

“Happy Birthday!” Adelaide held a cupcake out to her friend. “We made more last night.”

“Happy sweet seventeen,” Penny cooed.

“Feel any older?” Renee was practically bouncing up and down.

“Aw, thanks, and no, I don’t,” Elodie admitted. “I don’t feel differently at all.”

Renee slumped, disappointed.

“So, are you coming to the extra Congress practice?” Adelaide asked as they started walking to class.

“Sorry, I can’t.” Elodie bit into the pumpkin-spice flavored cupcake. “This is really good. Anyway, I can’t— Mama wants me home as soon as possible. But I’ll do the best I can, I’ll send what I can get done for my cases before I go to bed tonight.”

“Good.” Adelaide nodded curtly, as if checking off in a mental list. “We’ve got to get ready for the tournament at Oakley.”

“Right,” Elodie mumbled. The other girls started talking about their cases, and various rivals they’d acquired over the two previous years on the team. She just ate her cupcake, and thought about the new girl. Who was she? And why did she have the same exact birthmark on her arm as Elodie?

“Come on, we need to get to class!” Renee grabbed Elodie’s arm. “I can’t afford another tardy!”

Renee tugged her down the hall to their first period, AP English, before stopping abruptly, nearly throwing Elodie to the ground with the pure force of motion.

Elodie blinked. In her homeroom, Aideen Wentworth was sitting on top of a desk, surrounded by her friends, one of whom had given her a pastel balloon shaped like a “17.”

“I didn’t know we shared a birthday,” she whispered to Renee.

Renee just shrugged.

Elodie made her way past Aideen’s admirers to her seat,  close to the front of the English classroom. But when she turned her head, she saw Aideen’s dark blue eyes were following her, as if she’d seen her own ghost.

Elodie looked away, letting her dark hair fall into her face, concealing it all from the outside.

Already, today had grown too strange.

In the cafeteria, the new girl approached the table. She now wore the flannel, since the inside of Goldwater High was very chilly— probably because fall was so warm, nowadays.

“Hi,  I’m Kira.”  She looked Elodie directly in the eyes. “Sorry about bumping into you earlier. I wanted to just make sure you were okay.”

“She’s fine.” Adelaide glared. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Sorry, I just— I saw your birthmark,” Elodie said quietly.

“Oh, this thing?” Kira sat down at the empty seat at the table, causing Adelaide to huff a frustrated sigh. She pulled down the shoulder of her flannel. “Yeah, it’s shaped like a dragon— pretty cool, huh? Dad has one like that.”

Elodie blinked. Then she took off her jacket. The other girls went silent as she peeled down the black sleeve to reveal the identical birthmark. Jinn’s warnings echoed in her head, but Elodie had no idea what she’d say about another girl, some new kid, that had the exact same one as hers.

Kira paled slightly, although it was hard to tell, since the girl’s features were already as white as a sheet of paper. Elodie put the sleeve back up, but didn’t bother to put back on the jacket.

“I wonder what it means,” Kira whispered.

“I don’t know, but wonder somewhere else,” Adelaide barked.

Kira flinched, picked up her tray, and speed-walked away again, head down, allowing her reddish-brown braid to swing forward, over her shoulder.

Elodie frowned at Adelaide. “What’s the matter with you?”

“You clearly haven’t run into Kira Goldstein before.” Adelaide rolled her eyes. “Girl’s crazy. She’s always nervous, and she’s just so weird. She wears squid jewelry, and like, believes in the Mothman.”

“I thought she was new.”

“Oh, she is.” Penny lit up at the sound of gossip. “Just transferred in a week ago. But plenty of people know who she is. She’s really weird, trust me.”

“And that’s a reason to be rude to her?” Elodie’s voice was quiet, yes— but it carried with surprising force.

The other girls looked guilty, and fury rose from the pit of Elodie’s stomach. She stood up, grabbing her lunch. Without another word, she left, and joined Kira, where she sat by herself.

“Hey, is there room for me?” Elodie asked, forcing a pleasant expression on her face.

“Oh.” Kira swallowed quickly, as Elodie had caught her when her mouth was full of food. “Um, sure— if you want to be here. I totally get it if you don’t— no one likes me all that much—“

“Well, I don’t mind at all.” Elodie sat down directly across from Kira.

Kira closed a notebook with a dragon on the cover. The very sight of the scaly creature reminded Elodie of her nightmare.

“What’s in that notebook?” Elodie asked.

“This?” Kira laughed nervously. “If you really want to know, it’s some notes for a new Dungeons and Dragons campaign I’m going to run. For my dads— since no one here wants to play— or if they do, they’ve been avoiding me.”

She took that opportunity to unscrew her Ravenclaw-themed water bottle from her matching backpack.

“Dungeons and Dragons— that’s a roleplaying game, right?” Elodie had heard of it before, but she wasn’t super familiar with the terms.

“Yeah.” Kira screwed back on the lid of the water bottle. “I like creating the stuff to use for it— characters, monsters, all that stuff.”

“So you’re a writer?”

“Kind of.” Kira tilted her head slightly to the side. “I do some short stories. But I like the game, making a story for others to experience. It’s more active than reading, if you have to play it all out, make the decisions. And it means I have to plan for multiple endings. Which I kind of like.”

“That’s actually kind of cool,” Elodie said. “I’m more of a book person.”

“What kind of books?” Kira propped her head up on her hands, but her amber-brown eyes were wide and interested. Elodie felt like Kira was paying more attention to her in that moment than Renee, Penny, or Adelaide had in all the years that Elodie had gone to school with them— which was practically her entire life.

It was so much easier when they were younger, Elodie mused. Everybody was friends because they were in the same class— and that was that. Then puberty happened, but as much as she tried to hang onto her friends, it was like holding a fistful of glitter. No matter how hard she tried, they all seemed to be slipping away from her.

“Well, I really like fairytales, mythology from around the world, legends, that sort of thing,” Elodie said. “My absolute favorite, I have to admit, is Arthuriana.”

“Arthuriana?” Kira leaned in closer, as if she was hearing the best secret in the world.

“Myths about King Arthur and his Round Table,” Elodie explained. “Like the search for the Holy Grail, Excalibur— all of that.”

“Oh, gotcha.” Kira nodded. “That’s really cool. I sometimes like looking at those old stories for inspiration.”

“They are inspiring, aren’t they?” Elodie laughed. “I don’t know, I always feel better when I read all these great old stories from around the world. Like there are people that understood exactly what it was like.”

“Yeah!” Kira knocked over her water bottle in excitement. “Oh my— I’m so sorry!”

“It’s alright,” Elodie assured her. “I’ll go get napkins, just hang on.”

She felt the eyes of her other friends, but she kept her own trained on the napkin dispenser in the center of the cafeteria. She couldn’t go back, now.

Elodie and Kira quickly cleaned up the mess, and resumed conversation. Elodie was surprised at how easy, in some ways, that Kira was to talk to. As if they’d been friends all their life but had never known it.

When they parted ways for their classes, Elodie found herself catching a second and third glance over her shoulder, wondering when they would be able to talk again.