CHAPTER 1 SUPALONELY You'd think a place like Fox Glacier High School for the Magically Adept - which has taught magic for decades - might've found a way to heat its super-secret underground compound, or at least the sick bay. Especially since it's under a river of ice. The ceilings are low, the walls are thick, and there's an air-circulation system anyway- it could surely have been a warm air-circulation system. If not with magic, then with a solar-powered something; the glacier is pretty reflective. And cold. The sick bay shouldn't be cold. It's unhealthy. This wet mess the nurse has put on my head isn't helping. And it smells. She's gone off somewhere, maybe to make a note in her ledger about what's happened this time, Mr Te Maro ?I bet she has a tally. To be fair, us Defensives are probably winning for the highest number of avoidable injuries. At least they're usually only to ourselves, and not to others - unlike the Minders. Theirs isn't a bad Specialty - the things they study do a lot towards mental health care and law and stuff - it just seems to have attracted shitty people in my year. And one group in particular has been making the whole lot look bad lately. Last time I was in here it was because one of them had decided it would be hilarious to make me hallucinate that my custard was full of spiders. I'd ended up with a broken dessert bowl, a five-centimetre cut on my shin and no more custard. Come to think of it, the time before was their fault as well, and I have a scar from that, too. I'm still thinking about it when their poster boy, Elliott Parker, walks in; I'm pretty sure he was the one who found out I don't like spiders. I feel my shoulders bunch up - he doesn't look injured enough to be here legitimately. He's still in full uniform, even though it's after eight. He probably likes the way the blue stripe brings out his eyes or something. Or maybe the contrast of dark, scholarly grey and his floofy blond hair sparks joy. Who the hell knows with him. He stares at me for a second as I lie on the only occupied bed, and I wonder if the nurse's proximity is enough to keep him from being a dickhead. Though, I would like to practise some of my new Advanced Defence magic on him. Disembowelling, perhaps. Maybe that's technically Advanced Offensive magic. Maybe I don't care. 'Te Maro,' he says. 'Dickhead,' I reply. He's looking at me like my being here is suspicious, which is ridiculous since I'm obviously actually injured and he's just swanning around like he normally does. Plus, the other Tim got expelled last year so he could probably afford to use my first name now. Maybe he's still sulking over it. They were friends, or whatever passes for it when you're low-key evil. 'I see whoever did that didn't manage to knock some manners into you,' he says, eyes flicking up to my hairline. 'Would you prefer Sir Dickhead?' The nurse comes out to find out what the noise is about. 'What brings you here, Mr Parker?' He shoots me another look, wary this time. 'Things I'd rather remained private,' he says, and blushes, his pale skin giving him away. Mine never betrays me like that. Thanks for the melanin, Dad. Shame you buggered off somewhere and left me and Mum alone. The nurse sighs and beckons Elliott into her office. I close my eyes and try out a hearing-enhancement spell, even though I don't have a mea to help me focus my magic. I stop breathing so I can hear better, but it doesn't seem to work; they're too quiet. I bet he's got an STI. I compile a list of horrific things he might be infected with while I wait for whatever the nurse has put on my head to do its thing. It was a tiny cut, but apparently 'the real danger with exploding snow globes is the unsanitary water inside them' and she's worried about infection. Nobody sees the irony in my girlfriend (ex-girlfriend, now) owning a snowglobe when we live under a glacier. Or that it's that particular piece of crap which landed me here and not the river of actual ice a couple of metres above our heads. Or that it's her fault I'm here; she's a Healer and they're meant to be the good guys. Elliott slinks out of the office a few minutes later, looking shifty. Maybe I was right. Maybe the imagined 'Parker's Pustules' are real and his crotch truly is encrusted with weeping purple sores. The nurse wanders off to rummage in a cabinet. Elliott comes closer and with the way he's looking at me, I wonder if the carving around my neck will be enough to protect me. Perhaps a full-body condom would be more appropriate, considering what might be wrong with him. 'So,' he says, and sits on the bed next to mine like we don't dislike each other all of a sudden. 'What do you want?' I reply, making sure to keep the hostility out of my voice lest he think I'm trying to start something when I'm actually just trying to stay still enough that the goop on my head doesn't slide into my eyes. It's been hard enough lying here with my hair in a bun, the hair tie's digging into my head and it hurts. 'I want to know if you're going to do anything about the situation we're in.' I fight the urge to turn and get a better look at his expres- sion. My eyes hurt from glaring sideways. 'What situation?' He sighs. 'The one where my ex-friend has run off with your ex-girlfriend.' I was under the impression she'd run off alone after I exploded a snow globe all over her homework, but hell, when is life ever simple or painless or not a complete and utter mess? 'Since when?' 'By the looks of your manuka poultice, about half an hour ago,' he says - accurately, which is a bit suspect. 'I must say, I didn't expect she'd have clobbered you.' 'She didn't.' I want to scowl at him, but I have to keep my eyebrows still. 'How do you know all this?' 'Blake - roommate, ex-friend - very kindly informed me that our own arrangement was at its natural end and he was taking up with your girlfriend.' He sighs again and, in the blur of my periphery, I see his gaze drop to his hands, clenched in his lap. 'Apparently they're in love.' 'They're in love ?' Thinking back, less than an hour ago, Lizzie was trying to explain something when I really wanted her to stop talking altogether - everything she said felt like another brick on my chest, and I lost control of my magic for a second. Picture frames rattled on the wall, a magazine shivered and slid off her bed and then one lone snow globe shattered outwards, glass flying and its tiny penguin inhabitant suddenly exposed for the first time in its life. It's been years since I lost my shit like that - I would've been a kid the last time, maybe twelve, my magic just starting to manifest. Now I guess the unbridled joy of Dad walking out and my girlfriend leaving me is enough to render me a hazard. ' Tim ,'Lizzie had said, her voice so concerned, so careful ... I saw a thousand patronising words in her eyes. Look at you, losing control. What's wrong with you? Get yourself together, Tim. Cheer up. Get a haircut. What if what she really wanted to say was, And by the way, I'm in love with Blake Hutton. 'Apparently.' I don't have enough faith in her right now to not believe Elliott, and my eyes start to prickle so I focus on him instead. It's better than crying. 'What arrangement?' I ask, even though I think I know what him and Blake might've been up to. Maybe marvelling at the fact we might have certain interests in common will distract me from my misery for a second. Then again, maybe I'm projecting. 'Have a little imagination, Te Maro, won't you?' he says with a tilt of his head and a smirk that's interrupted by the nurse. Right, not imagining that, then. 'You're lucky I found this, we were almost cleared out last month,' the nurse says, appearing at the foot of the bed with a tiny glass jar in her hand. 'After - well. You know.' 'Sadly, yes, I do know,' Elliott says with a pained look and I have a sneaking suspicion that my imaginings regarding his crotch problems might not be completely unfounded. 'How are you, there, Mr Te Maro? All absorbed?' she asks. I don't know how she expects me to know - I can't see it. 'I think he needs another minute, Ma'am. I'll stay with him,' Elliott says, and I twitch with the urge to gape openly at him. We've never been friendly, to put it mildly. To be less mild, I hate him and I'm a hundred per cent sure the feeling's mutual, so I don't know why he's offering to keep an eye on me. But the nurse just says, 'Very well, give me a shout,' and disappears again into her office. Maybe she's adding to the Minder ledger this time: another case of purple sex-boils, order more ointment .I'm mildly horrified she's leaving me alone with him. 'So, Te Maro. My ex, your ex, both terrible people - what say we mess with them a bit?' There it is. I could've guessed this would be a mostly selfish endeavour. Dick. I wave my hand at the little jar in his hand and take a punt. 'Perhaps a bit less messing around with them would've done you some good?' 'Or in your case, perhaps a bit more?' He cocks his head to the side and I want to belt him, sod the bloody goop on my head. Let it fall in my eyes, I can fight blind. 'I hate you,' is all I say though, focusing on the low, grey concrete ceiling and the dusty metallic criss-cross of ducting. 'That's irrelevant and not remotely surprising,' he huffs. 'The question is, will you stand for your little girlfriend running off with a big, bad, nasty Minder?' 'That's stereotyping,' I say, even though I usually call them something far worse. Usually when they're trying to practise on us without permission. 'Just because it's a stereotype, doesn't mean it's not true,' he says, pointedly adjusting the expensive-looking silver ring on his middle finger. 'He really is quite big.' My mind goes places with that statement, and it takes me a second to realise Elliott might be causing it, trying to push my thoughts towards jealousy. I don't know who decided it was a good idea to teach a bunch of teenagers how to manipulate people's brains. I wish they hadn't. Even though I kind of want to be able to do it too. Becoming a Minder was, admittedly, my second choice, since it's the second most versatile Specialty, but I'd rather have quit school altogether than commit to hanging out with any of that lot on purpose. Elliott's not even the worst of them. At least there are three less Minders now after last year's fiasco and the Principal's zero-tolerance attitude towards people actively setting the school on fire. I like to think she doesn't like Minders either, anymore. 'I don't care,' I say, forcing my mind clear. 'You said you wanted to know if I was going to do anything about it - I'm not. What else do you want?' 'Well, you know ... proper central heating, not living underground for most of the year, a flat white that doesn't make me cry a little inside, an entire tray of apple crumble, maybe my parents sending me a postcard once in a while ...' His voice trails off like maybe he didn't mean to say that, and I wonder if he has anyone else to talk to. Only him and Manaia are left from his little group of Aucklanders after last year, and I doubt the other Minders are any good to confide in. I wouldn't tell them shit. 'Anyway. I'll settle for petty revenge.' 'I'm not dating you to piss off Blake, if that's what you're getting at.' 'Interesting that's where your brain went.' 'Pretend that wasn't your aim.' 'My aim is to annoy him, not confuse him.' 'So what do you need me for?' He huffs out a breath. 'I want you to help me come up with something so they both suffer, since if it wasn't for Elizabeth I'd still have a perfectly good friend with perfectly good benefits , and absolutely no need to talk to you.' 'Sucks to be you. Sadly, I don't feel super motivated to help you with anything, since I don't actually like you.' 'What do you want, then?' He tosses his hands up in the air. 'Do you want me to pay you?' 'I don't need your money, Elliott.' 'OK, one, from the state of that hoodie, I think you probably do. But, two, if you're this stubborn, then surely you at least want to get your own back on that heartless praying mantis of a woman who just left you for someone else? Apparently without even telling you that was the case.' He stands to leave. 'I'll think of something and let you know.' 'I wish you wouldn't.' 'And yet, I will. Spend a night alone with your thoughts and see how you feel.' He comes to stand over me. It's unnerving; I still don't trust him. 'He looks about ready, Nurse Hiatt,' he calls out, then, 'ta-ta.' 'Whatever.' Twat. Unimaginable, unspeakable twat. Who the hell says 'ta-ta'? Is he an eighty-year-old woman? Why would I ever help him? What could he ever do for me? And why, after four and a half years, can he not just leave me alone? Excerpted from Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by H. S. Valley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
