Simon

Jessica was already off in a direction where he couldn’t see her. Their first classes were on different floors on the other side of the building from one another: Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores, newcomers, Coaches, and Teachers muddled around those first few minutes before the opening bell while his headphones played music to tune them all out.

It kept his focus off the masses of conversations that his mind would pick up and focus on. Years of learning the inherited body language of others made him adept at picking up on what was going on in front of his locker. He spun the lock into his combination, 32-16-4, and opened up to get himself organized for the first round. Once finished, he made sure to keep his left hand in his pocket.

No one needed to know why he had the ring on or why. The important thing was no one would be able to take it from him, and in the process, get to Jess. She had affirmed that before getting out of the car with him.

He was her Master, and he had a duty to her.

Simon had seen and read enough pop culture, movies, books, and tales to understand the warnings of power. The ring made it all the more apt a metaphor.

However, there would be no volcano to throw it away in this tale.

Instead, the power was responsible for protecting that which and who he cared for most. Of course, he would protect her, but she was right. They needed to know more about what they were going to be up against if something happened.

Power attracted to power. He opened his phone and found a note saved by Jessica that she had written for his research. Even the way she wrote his name had changed instinctively.

-Master.

I’ll try to write down as much as I can remember for you about what Mom said to me. We talked about most of it already. Hope it helps.

Simon scrolled through it and then switched back to the various downloaded screenshots of scanned ancient texts he gathered from world databases. His brain continuing to read, comprehend, and translate one text after the other.

If he hadn’t felt like a conspiracy theorist already, it felt like it now. However, something told him he couldn’t wish himself to know everything about a race of Masters and Genies. If all this lost info spread out, corrupted, encrypted in ancient ciphers, then wishing for certain things wasn’t possible.

After all, there were already two facts he definitely knew about Masters and Genies:

1) Genies liked to hide. They had ample reason to, given those that were hunting them, and they had used Earth previously and settled among humans for a reason. So why would Jess’ Mom think she would be safe here enough among them to have a child?

2) Masters were Malevolent. They most likely considered humans nothing, but there was a reason for why else they would disdain them. They viewed Genies as tools and had full power of binding them as such. They were horrific enough that Jess’ Mother would go to **** ends and ruin Jess’ life in the process to avoid them.

The period and areas in which genies spread were when the human civilizations were still in their infancy. Empires had risen and fallen, as had most of the world’s religions.

Thousands of years of human advancement must’ve just been a blink of an eye for them, or their perception of reality and time was such that they hadn’t known or just didn’t really care.

Simon stopped and went into Start-Up Mode on the side of the hallway.

What would the Masters need for civilization or technology, anyway? Their entire way of life was probably around the binding and controlling a race that existed to craft whatever they fashioned to their will?

Genies meant power, and if they could bind the power of Genies, wouldn’t that mean their society would as well? Or were they just off in their own realities to themselves?

There had to be something there with that.

“SIMON!”

The young man found himself snapped from his thoughts and nearly tripping over as he stumbled forward. Then, a familiar voice laughing behind him stopped him before he could fall over.

Kevin adjusted his glasses as he pressed his hand forward on the taller teen’s chest with a laugh, “Whoa, man, you were really on a roll there!”

Simon smirked and let out a nervous chuckle as he placed his phone away in his pocket and pulled one of the earphones away from his right ear, “Yeah! Got lost. Sorry.”

“Care to explain what you’re up to in that head of yours?” Kevin asked, smiling as they walked together.

“Um. Mythology!”

“Nice,” the scrawnier young man replied with a smirk, “Working on a project?”

Simon smiled with a nod, “Yeah, something like that. So what happened to your plan for Saturday? I gave up waiting.”

Kevin walked ahead of him and shrugged out his arms as he turned to walk backward. His lips were forming and letting out a raspberry as he turned down his thumbs.

“Not great, but I’m already working on something else. It'll be bigger than some stupid stink bomb. I might even let you know if everything works out. If you play your cards right.”

Simon looked up in thought, “Y’know, you could have used the air….”

“-Used the Air Conditioner unit to vent in the bomb through the ventilation system, I know, I know! You’ve only told me 15 Times!”

“Actually, this makes 7,” Simon pointed out innocently.

Kevin just rolled his eyes and slumped his shoulders at his friend, “Look, not everyone has the supercomputer for a brain as you do. We’re only human, after all!”

He then stopped talking for a moment and smirked with a shrug, “Well, ALMOST everyone is. So what’s your plan to get through first period today?”

Simon looked confused by the statement, “What plan?”

Kevin laughed and then spoke with a faux accent, “C’mon. Senora Peralez~.”

The auburn-haired young man looked down with a sigh as he kept his left hand is his pocket, “Kev, don’t be gross.”

“I’m just saying, Simon, you’re both lucky and unlucky. You probably got to see our Lady Jessica Edwards, your sister, and our esteemed Latina Eastlake High Cheerleader Coach all in the same morning, and they all probably want _nothing _to do with you!”

Simon’s nervous laugh was incredibly nervous given how this morning was going. His friend had no idea what he’d be doing to him if he saw how he spent the first hour of his day.

“Funny. Very funny…”

The shorter Kevin looked down at his watch under his long-sleeved shirt, “Shit. I need to get moving and check on something before I miss the bell! Especially before that hag, Cooper kills me for being late to Bio again. I’ll see you later, man!”

“See ya,” Simon replied in a mumble, placing his headphones back on and entered the door to Spanish class.

He sat down at the second row of desks near the middle of the class, getting out his textbook and tablet. The young man picked up where he left off on his phone, using the digital pen to trace and zoom in on another symbol he hadn’t seen before.

Another classmate around his height walked up behind him and then slumped sideways into the desk in front of him, who Simon immediately recognized.

“Hey, Harris. Sister ask about me?” Chris joked in a somewhat tired but playful greeting.

Simon looked up at him and squinted with a growl.

There was the first comment about his sister. Numero Uno, in Espanol.

“Chris! Be nice!” The voice of another cohort of the popular group arrived, wearing a blue smock shirt, the petite brunette with blonde highlights in her bob-cut smiling brightly.

“Hi, Simon!” Cassie beamed.

Of all the cheerleaders, Cassie was usually the nicest to him- at least before Saturday- but she was also the one with her head almost ready to fly off into the clouds. The girl was energetic, but less like Sam’s Fiery Tempest or Jessica’s Burning Sun, and more like…sugar? Usually lots of sugar, but also, bubbly?

So, Soda? Like a fruity, bubbly, sugar-fueled soda. That or an actual pixie.

He figured genies were already real at this point; what else could the cheerleader squad be hiding?

Still, the young man awkwardly raised his hand and waved at her, “Hi.”

His response seemed only to make her more bubbly as she giggled and adjusted herself in her chair with the same smile beaming from cheek to cheek. Her eyes then locked in on his desk and his hands.

“Wow,” she said, amazed, “That ring is so pretty! Where’d you get it? Is it one of our class rings?”

Why did Cassie have to string questions a million miles a minute? He asked himself. She seemed so lovely until all the questions would start incoming.

“Um, sort of….”

“Hey, what’re you looking at?” she immediately asked, pointing and leaning over to look at his tablet.

“Better that than the ring,” he thought to himself.

He scrambled to try and get back control of the conversation, “J-Just a project!”

Cassie reached over and scrolled down to see what he was looking at and gasped, “Oh hey, I know what that is!”

She did.

Wait, what? She did?

“You do?” he found himself asking aloud.

The bob-cut cheerleader smiled, “Yeah! That’s the Seal of Solomon! It’s huge in a lot of mystic stuff. I know a lot about that because I got into some stuff over the summer. Y’know, symbols, astrology, mysticism, zodiac….”

Simon gave a blank stare as she continued to babble on about her studying the occult for fun.

Huh, he thought to himself.

Suddenly the idea of having three straight periods with the loud, spirited girl didn’t seem so bad.

Everything shifted focus as the door closed shut and the sight of a 30-something Latina woman walked in with her black hair tied into a short bun behind her head. She wore the same lined pants the gymnastics coaches wore in school colors and with the matching zip-up jacket undone to reveal the tight powder-blue tank top molding to the sports bra underneath it.

“Class. Page 204, Por Favor!” the voice called out to get their attention.

Chris turned back to Simon and Cassie behind him, mumbling with some amusement, “Not a bad view today, huh Harris?”

Simon rolled his eyes, causing the football player to chuckle. But, unfortunately, that made him the primary target of Spanish Teacher Natalie Peralez.

“Is something funny, Mr. Harris?”

“N-No, Ma’am!” he stuttered out nervously.

The no-nonsense coach opened her sharpie and began to write down something in front of her, “Well then, how about we start with you today from where we left off. En Espanol, Por Favor!”

Simon felt his brain switch like it had when he first used the wish for his language fluency, “Si?”

Peralez asked him Spanish, “What did you do for your weekend?”

Simon shrugged and answered back as he usually would, except in the same tongue, “I went out to a party with my sister at her friend’s house. Then I went to an old friend’s house and spent the night.”

He looked around the room, finding his teacher and the entire class staring at him like he was an alien.

“What?/Que?”

His teacher began clapping her hands in astonishment and let her mouth stay open so her gawk can form into a smile.

“Tre Bien, Simon! That’s incredible! You’ve really been practicing! Now, bonus points if say something to me as your teacher! En Espanol, Por Favor!”

The sudden praise from a teacher made Simon felt a bit warm, and his eyes looked around the room nervously as he tried to think of something to say. Finally, he mumbled and blurted something out to get it over with.

“You look beautiful.”

Some of the class laughed, not knowing what he was saying, as his teacher’s reaction caused a similar response among the class. Finally, she exhaled and let out a nervous laugh.

“All right, Simon. I wasn’t expecting that, but I’ll take that today! Now let’s move on!”

The young man slumped in his chair as he found the two classmates that had spoken to him earlier now staring at him. Cassie smiled and whispered in a hushed tone, “That was amazing.”

Chris looked at him, trying to figure out what the hell just happened, “Seriously, how’d you do that?”

Simon blinked and thought of a response, “Oh. I had a girl help me learn who could do that thing with her tongue, see?”

He opened his mouth and showed how his tongue could now bend his tongue a sure way to say his Rs.