“ALSHFJSLAGDKDSH GOD HELP ME PLEASE I WANT TO DIE—”

  “Uh, Cayto? What’s the matter? You’ve been banging your head against the wall and screaming into your pillow for the past fifteen minutes. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “GET OUT OF MY ROOM, ORION.”

  Orion sighed and shut the door behind him. “Alright, I won’t bother you any more.”

  Cayto hugged his knees to his chest, faced the bedroom wall, and groaned as the most detailed flashbacks of the trashcan incident played through his mind, on repeat, in all of their agonizing glory. Why did this have to happen to him, out of all people? Why did he have to be in that specific spot out of all places, at that moment in time out of all times, and why did Ivan and Alexis, out of all people, have to be the ones to witness him dig through the trash like some sort of street animal, get a major insecurity of his pointed out by a preschooler, and hear him scream in the most embarrassing way possible? Cayto hated this. He wanted to disappear. He wrapped himself in a blanket and prayed for the void to swallow him whole.

  Yup. I’m pathetic. There’s no hiding it anymore, Cayto admitted to himself. And everybody else on this island thinks so, too.

  ***

  “Wow, you really are pathetic,” a female voice taunted Cayto as he coughed up a mouthful of dust and looked up at his opponent. From his place on the ground, where Cayto now sat after the earth mage threw him off balance with a particularly large earth pillar, she appeared to tower over him.

  “What did you say?” Cayto demanded as he pushed himself to his feet.

  Hazel laughed, and as if with no effort at all, sent a boulder flying in his direction. Only a second later did he register it in his field of view, stumbling aside to avoid its impact. “Oh, I just meant that you’re a lot less threatening than you look,” she remarked. “You see, you try to give off this vibe of being all tough and intimidating when in reality, you’re about as dangerous as a teddy bear. Since you’re someone with a particularly strong aura-type, I was expecting a bit more of a… challenge from you, so to speak. It’s just— come on, a lightning aura? All that power wasted on what? If you weren’t such a wimp, then perhaps you could inflict some real damage on me, but no, you’re too afraid to make a move.”

  Cayto flinched as Hazel sent another onslaught of rocks and dirt at him while he staggered his way towards the center of the ring. It wasn't that he wanted to be right there, in the danger zone, but it was what he had to do to win the game. Currently, he and Alexis were engaged in a 2v1 match with Hazel— one beginner and one intermediate student against one advanced— as part of a combined-group exercise. Whoever drove all of their opponents out of the ring two times first won the game, and to say that Alexis and Cayto were losing was an understatement. No, they were getting their asses handed to them, on a silver platter, by a girl who was smaller than them both. Cayto and Alexis had already taken one strike each, so it would take only one more defeat for either of them to be eliminated. Meanwhile, neither of them were able to lay a hand on Hazel.

  Normally, Cayto wouldn’t have cared how well he did on the training sessions. He only attended them because Alexis forced him too, after all. But as much as Cayto opposed these training sessions, and wrong as he believed it was for him to use his aura unnecessarily, he also disliked Hazel even more, and not just because she was an aura-mage. She also irritated him simply because she was too damn arrogant about her skills, and Cayto thought she could afford to be brought down a notch. And what better way was there to do that without going against his principles by winning the game without using his aura? The look on her face would be priceless— Hazel, who looked down on beginners, defeated by a beginner who didn’t even use his aura. Additionally, Cayto would be proving that he wasn’t pathetic, and that he was better than these curse-bearers. He wasn’t like the rest of the student mages, who summoned auras just because they could. Unlike them, he understood the seriousness of aura-curses. Unlike them, he actually was able to control himself, and had a chance to succeed in life.

  But unfortunately for Cayto, Alexis was not taking this round seriously at all. He already had a bad feeling when she picked him as a teammate, and that bad feeling only intensified when they were discussing game plans:

  “Alright, Alexis, so it’s us against Hazel. Do you have any ideas on how we can win this match?”

  “With the power of friendship?”

  Cayto facepalmed. “We aren’t even friends, Alexis.”

  In the present, Cayto paced around the arena in an attempt to find an opening, a possibility of scoring against Hazel at least once. “Hey! Lightning boy! Do you actually plan on trying to strike me, or are you just gonna use this time for your daily jog?” She taunted.

  Cayto sighed. Man, this girl must have a death wish if she wants to get struck by me so bad, he thought. But honestly, I can’t blame her when this is the world we live in.

  “Hello! Lightning boy!”

  Cayto ignored his opponent’s attempts at provocation and began scanning the field around him for anything he could use to his advantage. The training field, coated in a patchy layer of grass, stretched out on either side of him. Two white lines spaced roughly one yard away from each other encircled the field, forming a makeshift track, and two more straight white lines sectioned it off into four quadrants. On the upper and lower end of the training grounds, two scoreboards stood atop their posts, the one on the upper end keeping track of the number of strikes Cayto, Alexis, and Hazel had in their match. Use your surroundings to your advantage— it was a common piece of advice given in aura combat lectures, almost as common as the importance of taking safety precautions before a training session, such as wearing the appropriate protective gear for the situation. Hazel, Alexis, and Cayto may have all been equipped with six-in-one full-body elemental suits with retractable armor, (protects from fire, water, air, earth, ice, and electricity!) but Cayto didn’t trust them one bit. He had spent enough time at Silver Run Academy to know of their limited budget. If the staff’s tendency to skimp on other items was any indicator, the elemental protection gear was probably low-quality as well.

  After a moment, Cayto's attention turned to a row of earth pillars rising out of the ground like stalagmites, ones that Hazel had recently left behind. Only a few minutes ago, just as Cayto had finally claimed the center of the ring for the first time, Hazel drove him out by raising four pillars from the earth in a single row, running atop them towards the middle of the ring, and then pelting a barrage of dirt, dust, and rocks down on him. Cayto was eventually forced out of the arena, receiving his first strike for that round.

  And yet the buzzer rang two times when it should’ve only rang once, and for a moment Cayto worried that he got pushed out twice and was now eliminated. Yet when he looked up at the scoreboard, both him and Alexis were still in the game— but Alexis had a strike, too. Right before Cayto’s defeat, she had also crossed the white line that marked the border of the ring, and was now standing outside it with her phone’s camera in hand, recording. Etched on her face was a irritating smirk, and from the looks of it, she was hyping up her opponent:

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  “OH MY GOD, that was amazing. I'm totes putting this on the Silver Run Scoop!” Alexis exclaimed.

  Cayto glared at his teammate. “Are you for real right now?”

  Alexis giggled. “Oh come on, you can’t deny how EPIC that was, can you? My bestie right here is like, a foot shorter than you, outnumbered two to one, and yet she managed to score not one, but TWO victories with that unreal move of hers. I mean, come on, pulling up FOUR pillars from the earth and running atop them?! Raining down on her opponent with a whole-ass avalanche?! And then blowing me out of the park right afterwards so I can record? Hazie went all out, and I’m HERE FOR IT.”

  Cayto rolled his eyes. “Her ego’s big enough as is. Don’t feed it.”

  Yup. Partnering with Alexis was a huge mistake.

  But as much of a mistake it might have been for Cayto, having a teammate at all was, unfortunately, one of his only advantages. With this in mind, he pulled Alexis aside. “See those pillars leading from the center to the edge of the circle?” He whispered while trying to avoid getting hit by flying rocks. “We’ll use them to block off Hazel. First you’ll drive her over to that area…” he pointed to a section of the ring to the right of the outermost pillar “...and then I’ll close in on her and push her out. The goal is to block her on all sides, including upwards, to prevent her from escaping in that direction.”

  Alexis nodded and shielded her face against an airborne mass of dirt. “Okie-dokie!”

  Alright, Cayto thought to himself as Alexis ran to the place where he pointed, here goes nothing.

  One second later, Alexis began jumping in the air and waving her arms around. “Hello! Hazel!” She yelled. “Come get me!”

  Cayto rolled his eyes. I said drive Hazel out of the arena, not lure her! He shouted internally while a torrent of rocks came rolling over the ground at Alexis, knocking her off-balance. Immediately going to the edge of the ring and expecting Hazel to follow you is stupid when we all know she is capable of ranged attacks.

  Feeling the ground shift beneath her, Alexis yelped and stumbled over the white line, triggering a buzzer. Then the numbers on the scoreboard by the upper end of the field changed, and her name went dark:

  Strikes

  Hazel: 0

  Cayto: 1

  Alexis: 2

  Alexis bowed her head. “It was an honor to be defeated by you, Hazel. I shall be forever grateful,” she proclaimed. Cayto slapped his forehead.

  Not what I was hoping to happen, but I was definitely expecting something like this, he thought to himself. But good riddance, at least. Alexis is the worst teammate and that was the worst performance I’ve ever seen.

  A few seconds later, Alexis looked at him. “I heard that,” she told Cayto from outside the arena. “You think I’m the worst teammate you’ve ever had, is that right?”

  Cayto shrugged. “Yeah, and? Those were my thoughts. Don’t go snooping around in them if you’re not gonna like what you find.”

  Alexis made a show of fake sobbing, wiping away crocodile tears. “You’re so mean!” She cried out, dramatically collapsing in front of a patch of bushes by the bleachers. “I shall decompose and make my corpse into plant fodder. Goodbye forever.”

  Cayto looked at Alexis with contempt. The nerve of this girl to refuse to cooperate for a BLOG POST when all my life, I would’ve been punished for the slightest sign of disobedience, intended or not…

  The nerve of this girl to pretend to cry for a joke when I always got shamed for crying for real!

  At that moment, a newfound sense of indignation overcame Cayto, and seconds later he stormed out of the arena, the buzzer sounding behind him. The dazzling sunlight and the bright white clouds drifting lazily across the idyllic blue sky sharply clashed with Cayto’s growing rage, and the number of strikes recorded on the scoreboard next to his name switched from 1 to 2. Then his name went dark— a total victory for Hazel. “Dear Blanche, both of you need to chill,” Hazel remarked. “Cayto, you know that Alexis is just joking around. She likes being dramatic and doing things to get a reaction out of people, so there’s no need to make it a big deal—”

  But the earth mage’s advice was not heeded, and Cayto continued at a brisk pace towards Alexis. He had a frightening look in his eyes, and a single glance at him would reveal that this wasn’t Cayto— no, this was somebody entirely different, not a man but something more animalistic, a creature consumed by pure instinct and fury. It was a far cry from the cautious and restrained person Cayto usually was.

  “You’re pretending to cry for a joke?! You think I’m being mean? Well, I’ll show you mean! I’ll make you cry for real this time!” Cayto shouted at the girl on the ground. “If you think you can get away with disrespecting my boundaries, blackmailing me, and now sabotaging the team's efforts and using me as entertainment, sorry, but you’re WRONG!”

  As Cayto’s breathing became heavier and a red mist clouded his eyes, the smug look on Alexis’s face disappeared and a blank stare took its place. Good, Cayto thought. I’m getting through to her. She deserves to feel bad for everything she’s done.

  She deserves to feel like the vile, disgusting piece of shit that she is… I hope you hear that, Alexis.

  A moment later Alexis put her hands out and began shifting away from Cayto, an awkward smile plastered on her face. “Whoa, that’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?” She commented. “I get that I’ve made my own share of slip-ups, but calling me a “vile and disgusting piece of shit” inside your head and hoping that I hear may be a reach. Shouldn’t you save that title for people who actually deserve it?”

  Ignoring her words, Cayto leaned forward and grabbed Alexis by the strap on her elemental protection gear, the one just below her shirt collar. The cool autumn wind stung his face, which by now had become flushed with rage, and his entire body shook dangerously, as if everything he had been holding back up until this moment would suddenly spill out of him and crush the training grounds with its impact.

  My entire life, I’ve been exploited and berated and beaten and yelled at and made to feel horrible just for existing the way I am, Cayto thought. And yet I was expected to take it all “like a man,” without letting anybody know how it had affected me. For once, let ME be the one in power instead of the one pathetically crying myself to sleep! Let ME be the one dishing out the anger, the insults, the righteous criticism that nobody can afford to not listen to because they know, deep down, that every word I’m speaking is the truth and only the truth!

  “That’s the thing! You DO deserve it!” Cayto shouted, long past his tipping point. “In fact, everybody on this goddamn hellhole of an island deserves it! But especially you! You, Alexis, are the embodiment of everything that is wrong with people. You are the reason why the spirit realm is disappointed in us, and why we can’t have nice things. You’re lucky that my father isn’t here, because as far as I know, he despises pissy, spoiled, and useless crybabies like you are! IF HE WAS HERE, HE’D BE A LOT WORSE THAN I AM RIGHT NOW, TRUST ME!”

  Okay, maybe that was a lie. Martin wasn’t one to let his emotions get the best of him, so he probably wouldn’t be raging as much as Cayto was. But if anything, Cayto thought, that did make him worse. He didn’t need to yell or curse or absolutely flip his shit to be listened to— no, he could destroy somebody on the inside with nothing more than a subtle change in voice and cold, hard facts. Perhaps that was why Cayto felt uneasy around him for no valid reason— one couldn’t argue with facts. Not to mention that Martin was the only reason Cayto would ever be able to be successful in life at all. Crossing him to the point where he gives up on his son would be social and financial suicide.

  Alexis, meanwhile, gave a strained smile in an effort to cover up some other emotion— fear? Shame? Or was she feeling nothing at all? Cayto had no way of knowing what it was exactly, but either way, she looked to be on the verge of a breakdown. He almost wanted to see her cry, just to feel the relief of not being powerless for once. Grabbing the strap on her suit even tighter, he waited impatiently for her reaction.

  But instead of crying, Alexis laughed. Then she pulled a candy bar out of your pocket. “Hey, you’re not you when you’re hungry. Have a ChocBar.”

  “ARE YOU FUCKING MOCKING ME RIGHT NOW?!” Cayto fumed while he violently shook her. Then he felt a pit form at the bottom of his stomach and a jolt shoot through his arms.

  No. No. Nonononononono…

  At once, Cayto released Alexis and stumbled backwards, silently praying that he didn’t cause her any physical harm. But it was too late. Her body was already spasming and twitching uncontrollably. “Alexis?!” Cayto shouted. “ALEXIS?!”

  She wasn’t responding. Cayto’s blood went cold. Any rage he had in him before dissipated at once, and reality set in. Suddenly he could hear whispers surrounding him. When he looked up, people were staring.

  The voice that was quietly tugging at the back of Cayto’s mind before had now completely consumed his brain to the point where it drowned out the whispering of the people around him. Look what you’ve done, it nagged. You’ve just verbally assaulted Alexis, and now you’ve electrocuted her.

  No wonder your mother was afraid of you and your father tried to control you. You’re even worse than both of them combined.