Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

I.ii If Inyanga Gets In

One last year. Only one. Last chance. In their last year of mundane primary, the students at Inyanga's school, Praịmarị Atọ, knew class was a competition to get into magician's college. 

Every day of her final year of primary, Inyanga ticked off a calendar box and conducted a little ritual: destroying a pamphlet of one non-magical university.

Her school had given out enough pamphlets for her to burn, rip, tear, run over with her moto, flush, drown or scrunch one to smithereens every day, and so, as she munched breakfast in the family kitchen each day with Mama on one side and Grandmama Amandla on the other, two decisions must be made: which brochure and which method of annihilation?

Would it be Literature at Corsicaa and umama's paper shredding macchina, or HR at Fulu burned over the sink into ashes? She would let the water carry them far away down the drain, rather than let the mess disrupt umama's pristine kitchen. One day she had shoveled toast down held in one hand while the other hand used a thick black pen to black out every square centimeter of a non-magical engineering program at Taiyi School of Paper Products: "We Design Boxes, Envelopes, and Seals for Tomorrow's Mundane Needs."

Like there would be a need for non-magical paper tomorrow when Constellation development brought starpage prices down every year. Like she was going to dream that small. Paper. One day Constellation was going to go to the moon, and the mundane population was still working on perfecting the best paper production process.

With her own fingers she had shredded to bits "Customer Service: Learn to Truly Connect" at Tapecue College, with nails sparkling white and dazzling aqua blue (a birthday treat from Amafu, they both went to the magician's salon).

That one had earned a head shake and a tongue click from umama. "I have no doubt you'll grain admittance at Constellation Univasiti, but do you have to act as if you're above the hard work the rest of us do?"

Ouch, that had stung. Kyuma had a way with always speaking truth so that you knew aeh wasn't aiming to hurt, wasn't mad. It's just aeh wasn't going to let you go about your day until your behavior has been illuminated, brought into the light, checked, and course corrected.

Praịmarị Atọ was a one-room school on the third story of a red brick building on Aria. A corner of the grid of desks where Inyanga's year sat, in a six by five block of desks, faced the board and away from the lower year kids who filled the room with squeals during quiet time, and the older ones filled it with whispering and nervous foot-tapping, pencil drumming, bored sighs — distinct noises coming from the blocks of students in each grade.

The students at Praịmarị Atọ non-magical school competed to sit in the front, and when they did, they sat up straight, held hands high for every question, wore their glasses if they needed them to see the board, and competed for top grades.

The front rows of desks didn't come first come first served; who could sit nearest Maestra Alma would be determined each week by a point system, and the rankings provided an easy to see and remember pecking order that reminded the students who would be accepted to the best colleges and universities, though only one school, the magicians college, was on every mind. And those ranks would change fast.

For three weeks Inyanga had sat front row center, and then she fell all the way back to fourth row.

At the same time she was climbing her way back up to third, Amafu made it to the front for the first time, and from the end of the row she looked back and beamed, sitting sideways. Iwu and Esperanza were up there too, another couple of longshots, and the lovely yet mute shy Ahihia had yet to be unseated from the other end of the row. As Inyanga poured every ounce of energy into dethroning one of them, fingers crossed it wasn't Amafu so they'd be up there together, Inyanga felt a little guilty.