Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest
Chapter 4: Continuing My Education - part 1

I arrived for school, with a document in my pocket saying my expulsion had been suspended pending a legal case. Gerdni had seemed more interested in my bus pass than usual. I found there were police at the gates. I realized my breathing was faster than normal and I was sweating a bit. I wasn’t sure how people were going to react to me being back and had thought of a lot of things to say to them. The police were separating the boys and girls. The girls were being sent straight in but they were lining up the boys and checking us one at a time. Goflakh and Utnisdian, two popular boys, although I didn’t like them, were standing against the wall with police watching them.

“I thought you were expelled,” said Buldis, who was in line in front of me.

“My Dad’s fighting it in court,” I said, more crossly than I’d really meant to, “and I’ve got a court order saying I can stay until after the case.”

“You’re lucky to have a lawyer for a Dad.”

Jedris, a friend of Goflakh and Utnisdian was pulled out the line when he reached the gate and put against the wall.

When we got to the front of the line, there was a police officer with a visor looking us over one at a time. As far as I could tell, they’d just let everybody, except Goflakh, Utnisdian and Jedris, through after checking them. The officer with the visor seemed to take longer checking me than the others and I was starting to get more nervous although I had no idea what I’d done that the police would be interested in. It was blue day, but the visor seemed to reflect more red light than it should and I was sure it was a magic detector, so this cop must have been a mage. She was certainly a nibeyah.

“You’ve got a lot of magic residue,” she said.

“Have I?” this was genuinely a surprise.

“This our guy?” asked a male cop.

“No,” he hasn’t used a date rape spell and doesn’t have any artifacts. “Go on!”

Blue day is when the sapphires are on but Aleph isn’t in the sky.

There was an unusually somber mood in the classroom.

“I thought you were expelled,” said Rutten, wrinkling her brow and clenching her teeth.

“I got a court order ...”

“Why are you suing Pendina?” asked Maclan, jabbing a finger at me.

“What?”

“You’re suing Pendina for giving you a negative infinity rating,” said Wiandra, sneering.

“Although that was totally justified,” said Maclan. “The gays don’t want to copulate with you either so it’s unfair you picking on Pendina.”

“I don’t want the gays to copulate with me!” I said, holding my hands out in front of me. “I do want a girlfriend! I think that’s a valid difference although my Dad must have arranged this. I didn’t know anything about it before. It’s not my fault Pendina is the only person on Midbar who’s prejudiced against non-polydactils!”

“She’s not prejudices against non-polydactils!” said Maclan, waving her arms.

“She’s always waving her seven fingered hands around like it makes her better than other people!”

“She’s just happy with what she is!” said Maclan.

“And Pendina was told to do it!” said Wiandra, as if this was an accusation against me.

“What? By whom?”

“I don’t know,” said Wiandra, turning her palms upwards.

“She’s not allowed to talk to you about it,” said Maclan, thumping her desc. “But she’s totally urinated.”

Pendina was in a different class from me and so wasn’t in my form room.