“They say you have nothing to fear.
They say you’re safe for life.
But in the moment you relax
Then. Goes in. The knife.”
Amid a smattering of uneasy applause, a Miss Trostani—Wallflower still couldn’t tell the triplets apart and she was pretty sure they swapped classes when no one was looking—beamed at the navy-skinned poet. “Wonderful work, Etrata. A lovely critique of the air of distrust that can form all too quickly in this era of easy anonymity.”
Etrata rolled her slit-pupiled eyes. “Yeah. Totally what I was going for.” She flipped the hood of her sweatshirt back up and slouched into her chair, shrouding her face in her shadowy wings.
Miss Trostani just gave an indulgent chuckle before looking around the room. “Alright, who would like to go next for the poetry assignment?”
Wallflower took a deep breath, pushed down her magic as best she could, squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to actually look at anyone, and raised her hand.
After a brief eternity, she heard, “Wallflower? Oh, how wonderful to see you volunteer! Please, do go ahead!”
Wallflower could feel her hands shaking as she stood. She focused on her breathing and said, “I’ve actually been working on this piece for a while. Since before I transferred. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course, dear. We’d all love to hear something you’ve worked so hard on.” Miss Trostani cleared her throat. “Though it might help if you opened your eyes to read it.”
“No, it’s fine. I have it memorized.” One last deep breath, and Wallflower began.
“You don’t see me fitting in.
I’m sitting here alone…”
Nothing exemplified the nature of Ravnica High quite like a lunch period. Only the callowest of freshmen tried to take the direct route from one end of the building to the other in the middle of the day. Anyone who did make the attempt would find a traffic jam of hundreds if not thousands of people eating lunch wherever there was enough room to sit.
As such, when White Hat couldn’t find Wallflower, she just made her way to the conspicuously empty table. “Nice work with the suggestion,” she said, apparently to the empty air. “You need to work on the whole ‘blending in with the scene’ thing, though.”
A groan came from an area White’s eyes refused to focus on. A bit of mental effort, and she could see Wallflower slumped facedown on the table.
“Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad.” White said, holding out a chocolate chip cookie the size of her hand. After a few seconds of no response, she started poking Wallflower with it.
The resulting midpoke snatch ended up tearing the treat in half. “I broke into a musical number in front of my entire language arts class,” Wallflower said before stuffing a decent chunk of the cookie into her mouth.
“Yeah, Etrata made sure to tell me. She was actually smiling. You know how impressive it is to actually make that girl feel an emotion? Especially a positive one?”
Wallflower just kept scowling and chewing.
“It’s not like you show up on cell phone video,” said White. “No chance this’ll go viral.”
“So it’ll just be the school that hears about it and not the whole world.” Wallflower raised a single finger and waved it in the air. “Yay.”
White sighed. “Look, I’ll level with you: I don’t know about most of the school, but all of us in the Ismeri Project? We were honestly expecting this kind of thing.”
That got Wallflower to sit up and look at her. “Huh?”
White shrugged. “Well, you did transfer from Canterlot High. We figured that whole place is basically a giant musical 24/7.”
“That’s…” Wallflower trailed off. “Well, okay, there was the flash mob in the cafeteria, and the whole Battle of the Bands, and… It’s not going to help if I say that the singer at the Friendship Games was from Crystal Prep, will it?”
“Not really, no,” said White, holding back the laughter that she knew wouldn’t help.
Wallflower slumped backwards until she was looking up at the ceiling. “So, what now? Just accept that I’m going to be the singing Canterlot girl for the rest of the year?”
“That or you could use it as a way to practice your magic. Why wait for everyone to forget your faux pas when you can make them forget?”
Wallflower squirmed at the thought. “That seems really unhealthy in the long term. For everyone involved.”
White shrugged. “Hey, all things in moderation, especially moderation. And if you want to the school to remember you as a Bridleway star we stole from the Rakdos...”
“Magic practice it is.” Wallflower's hair made the phrase “Red as a tomato” especially apt.
White kept her grin down to a reasonable one for the circumstances. “Thought so.”