It was a while before Natalie stopped crying. Laura and I gave her, and each other, some space. Laura looked positively sick and wandered off for a moment. I sat with my head on my knees, letting tears drip silently in the safety of a bowed head. When we had recovered a bit, we all sat together on the grass. Natalie was listless and quiet, staring at nothing in particular. Laura looked embarrassed when I turned towards her.
“You,” I started but didn’t know quite what to say. I laughed nervously. “You’re a magical girl, too,” I said dumbly.
“Yes,” she said quietly, smiling slightly. “I was there when the rift opened. It was during the huge wind storm at the beginning of the year, remember? I couldn’t tell you what made me run into the woods but when I did, I found this clearing, and a woman standing in the middle of it. It’s hard to describe her,” Laura said. Her eyes unfocused as she thought back. “At first glance, she didn’t seem out of the ordinary but there was just something strange about her. She was…too much—of everything. Too tall, and her hair was too long and too dark. Our transformation outfits look like the one she wore. She seemed to grasp what had happened quickly and explained it to me. We talked a lot, and even then, I could see she was dying. She said it was my choice if I wanted to be a gatekeeper or not and for a while after she died and faded away, I filled that role.
“But then I lost the ring,” Laura said, nodding at Natalie’s hand where the large gaudy ring sat. Natalie didn’t look at Laura but she tucked her hand away defensively. “I eventually learned how to transform without the ring but by that time, you two were already gatekeepers.”
“So then the portal has really been open for eight months,” I said. “But we didn’t know about it until—Wait, you said us two. I’m not a gatekeeper.”
Laura only blinked at me. “How else do you explain how you know when something comes through the Gate? You’ve touched the ring, haven’t you? You were there when it was found, right?”
I was there, and I did touch the ring. In fact, I was the one who had found it. Six months ago, when I was walking home with Natalie, I saw the thing lying in the runoff stream from the road, glinting. I didn’t know what it was so I went to pick it up.
“Looks like someone lost a ring,” I had said, straightening. I turned it over in my hands. “Pretty ugly ring. You want it, Natalie?” Her face had brightened at the offer.
“Awesome!” Natalie had snatched it up and slipped it on her finger. As soon as it was secure, the stone started to glow. Things hadn’t been the same since.
I nodded in response to Laura’s questions, back in the present.
“So why doesn’t Brent transform?” Natalie asked, startling Laura and I after her long silence. Laura turned her eyes back to my face.
“I think you’d be able to if you wanted to,” Laura said. I sat stunned for a moment.
“I didn’t even know it was a choice,” I said.
Natalie snorted. “You’d look terrible in a miniskirt.” I blushed and Laura giggled a little. Natalie turned a hard glare at Laura all of a sudden. “So why didn’t you help out? You’ve got powers, too. Why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve been a team for months now.”
“Natalie,” I said. “She has helped out. Laura just saved your life.” Natalie turned a positively death-laden glare on me and I frowned, a part of me rebuked, the other part offended and angry for Laura’s sake.
“Keeping the Gate isn’t my whole life,” Laura said. “And I know I won’t be a superhero forever. I’ll get old. When that happens, and I’ve done nothing but wait for the next monster to come into this clearing, what will I be able to say about my life?”
“That it was amazing!” Natalie spat. I cringed a little on the inside. Laura’s words had touched a nerve. They had cut through a wall that Natalie and I had pretended wasn’t there for so long. Natalie’s face was red and her eyes were shining with anger. Or tears, I couldn’t tell which. “That you lived your life better than anyone else! That you learned that everyone else and their stupid lives were a complete waste of time and that you were better.”
Something clicked in my head. Like the final piece in a puzzle I had been assembling for six months. “You think my life is stupid, too…don’t you?” I said slowly. “You think you’re better than me, that I’m worthless.”
Natalie’s face looked practically feral. “Yes,” she snarled.
Even though I knew her answer before she even vocalized it, the vehemence, the sheer strength of it stunned me. I recoiled, as if I had been physically struck. “B-but,” I sputtered lamely, mentally grasping at straws, “what about finishing high school and—”
Natalie barked a harsh laugh. “It’s always grades with you, isn’t it, Brent? Can’t you have some perspective? Preventing monsters from breaching the clearing is important.”
“Can’t you have some perspective?” I shouted back, my throat tight and tongue thick. “I work at my grades and become better at my subjects each year. There are big problems in the world, Natalie, I know. Global warming, disease, poverty—hell, even monsters coming through the portal on the school grounds; I know. But I can’t ignore the present and the day to day problems either. Because the more I learn, the more I understand that those big problems and my small problems are intertwined. And I don’t appreciate you brushing me aside because I want to graduate from high school!”
Natalie jumped to her feet and I thought she might hit me. She raised her fist and everything. But I didn’t flinch. I just glared back at her. The pause only lasted the space of two heartbeats. Then Natalie stomped off.
