The Newest Initiate

8. Lucky Charm

I glanced at the clock. 11:55 a.m. I took a deep breath. This was make it or break it. If I impressed her at lunch, I could make a new friend, if I didn't, I'd be alone until someone else came to the Brooklyn House and wasn't conscience of the fact that I was a total loser. I let the air out of my lungs. I was going to need all the luck I could get.

**************

I walked down the stairs, panicked and worried at the same time. Sure, I had stuffed my pockets with every four leaf clover I had ever found and pressed, my preserved scarab key chain, a few scarab necklace charms I bought from the Brooklyn House sau, some coins, and seven peices of paper with the number seven written on them, butI still wasn't feeling any different. My pockets were jingling from all the lucky metal I had crammed in there, but the good fortune wasn't doing anything to help the swelling balloon in my chest. The prospect of my loneliness was too hard for me to bear, no lucky charms could stop that.

************

I reached the door leading to the outside balcony, and set my hand on the handle. There was so much nervousness filling me up that I could almost swear it was overflowing onto the ground. What if I couldn't talk? What if my tongue simply refused to move? What if the words I said came out as incoherent mumbles? What if I could talk, but I couldn't say anything intersting? What if I said something stupid? So many ugly scenarios filled my mind to the brim, until I stopped trying to prepare myself, and let my legs walk me out the door while my mind still worried about the images I was seeing. Even though the only thing I could see was an image of myself tripping over my own foot, my body found itself standing in front of a table with a small, blonde girl sitting in it. The images instantly faded from my mind, unlike the nervousness. I opened my mouth, but was speechless. she stared up at me, the smile vanishing from her face.

"Is  something wrong?" She asked.

"No," I choked, "Can I sit here?" Despite my voice being squeakier than thousand year old stairs, her smile returned and she nodded.

"So classes start back tomorrow," I said, trying to make conversation.

"Yeah. I think it's really interesting, how they teach you to do magic. I mean, sure, I'm not very good, but I'll get better. I'm really going to enjoy going to class when I don't have to work for forty minutes on one spell. I bet it's great to be able to magic."

She sounded wistful, and I wasn't sure what to say, so I replied with my bodies default response: "Yeah,"

Her eyes lit up, "You mean you can do it? Just whip out your wand and make the hyroglyphs?"

Oh, God. "Uhh.."

She shined at me. "Can you show me?"

My stomach dropped. What had I gotten myself into? "Well, I..I..." She looked curiously at me. 'Say something!' I screamed at myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bast walking by a crowded patio table. I had it! "I don't like to do magic when there are people around. I'm just precautious, what if something went wrong and the spell hit someone? I could never forgive myself."

"Oh," Her face fell. "Well, that makes sense."

"Yeah, maybe some other time." I said.

She looked at me, mischieviously and gave me a small smile. "Definitely," She said quietly.

My stomach rumbled impatiently. "I'm going to get breakfast. I'll be back in a minute," I told her, walking off to please my hungry stomach. I was almost immediately flooded with anxiety, what would I say? I'd always been so bad at making conversation, but the little skill I did have disppeared when I was nervous. What should I talk about? Not magic. Not people, our thoughts would differ too much. I don't read, so I couldn't even pretend to care about that. I was hopeless. What if we just sat in silence until she got bored and decided to leave? My thoughts rambled on as I piled random assortments of foods onto my plate absentmindedly. Eventually I decided I couldn't stay at the table all day, so I turned to head back to Blithe. That's when I caught my first glimpse of the food I had put on my plate, and it kind of scared me that they had so much odd stuff on the table that I had never seen before. There were normal thing like bacon, eggs, toast, and pancakes, but there was also a chunk of unfamiliar meat, some sort of straw-like vegetable, a slice of flat cornbread with strings poking out the sides, and-

I tripped over a table's leg and started to fall, but, fortuneately, I caught myself on the way down. Once I stood back up and looked over at Blithe. She was staring at me, she'd seen. I mentally groaned. 'Why do I always have to look like an idiot?' I asked myself.

I sat down in the chair across from her. "Did you..?" I started.

"Yeah," she nodded sheepishly.

"Ah. That's good,"

She smiled. After a few moments of silence she asked, "What's that?" pointing to the straw like vegetable.

"I-I don't really know."

"What about that?" She poked the meat with her fork.

"I don't know that either."

"I heard some people talking about setting out flamingo meat for Khufu. It as a few days ago, but-"

Without a second's hesitation I threw the flamingo meat into the pool. Phillip of Macadamia jumped up and caught it in his mouth and fell into the water again. At least someone liked it.

Blithe laughed and then said, "Do you really think he'll eat that?"

"I hope so," I answered. "I'd hate to have to clean bits of it out of the pool."