Now I’m second-guessing my outfit. Maybe I should change. Maybe it’s too on the nose to wear a Willington hoodie to a meeting for a scholarship I’ll use to go to Willington.

“You should do the chant,” Mom says, smiling at me. “Today is a day for affirmation. And a little extra magic won’t hurt.”

I visibly cringe. “No way.”

Her smile grows a hard edge. “Shayna, if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.”

I can’t believe she won’t let go of this tradition. “I believe in myself. I just don’t want to do the chant. It’s embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing?” She shakes her head. “Child, the only people in this room are me, you, and your dad.”

“Can we just share magic like normal people?” I say. “Without the weird chanting?”

“What is this ‘normal people’ you’re talking about? You want to be like everybody else? If everybody starts huffing potion fumes, are you going to do that too?”

“Okay, let’s—” Dad starts to say, but Mom continues over him.

“Now we’re going to do the chant, and you’re going to go wow them in that scholarship meeting today. Okay?” The look in her eyes tells me I’m not getting out of this one. I nod grudgingly. “Shayna is a . . . ?”

“Winner,” I mumble. She gives me a look.

“Shayna is a . . . ?” she repeats, louder this time. Her magic emerges from her skin in tendrils and drifts toward me in a burgundy haze. It mixes midair with the rich brown of Dad’s magic.

“Winner!” I say just as the magical strands sink into my skin. My heartbeat immediately quickens, and a burst of energy hits me. I become more and more conscious of how they’re feeling—I can sense Dad’s gentle contentedness and Mom’s fierce pride and the slight undercurrent of exhaustion that’s always there whenever we share magic. Soon their emotions fill my body, as strong and real as my own.

Mom locks eyes with me, and her pride echoes between us. “Shayna is a . . . ?”

“WINNER!” I shout.

“SHAYNA IS A WINNER!” all three of us yell together. The sound reverberates through our apartment. No matter how corny that chant is, it does hype me up.

“Now go get that scholarship, baby,” Mom says, her brown face crinkling into a smile.

Chapter 2

The average high school senior has a magic level of 27. Our seniors have an average magic level of 38.

—T. K. Anderson website