Chapter 1: Welcome to Verdera

Steel gray clouds pouted over the town this particular morning near the end of August. Verdera High School’s first day since summer vacation began, and it all began with a rainstorm.

When Torri rose that morning, she frowned at the big cold droplets, and forced herself out of her bed. Having just moved to Verdera, a beautiful town with a large, yet extremely shallow lake, forested parks, a nearby university, an ancient library, and a hangout place, the town was considered by many—Torri included—to be perfect. Torri liked the new place, and her new house, but she wasn’t completely sure if her new town would like her as much.

Torri liked her new house almost as much as she liked the library. She hadn’t been to the library yet, but it looked ancient and interesting. The house wasn’t especially large—it didn’t have to be, but what it offered was more than enough for her. The entire house offered a rustic-modern effect, with its old architecture, but recent remodeling from the people who had previously owned the house.

The front porch of the house was wide, and spanned the entire front. It had shaped wooden supports, stained mahogany, with matching railings. The steps and front walk leading to the porch were concrete, but didn’t look it at all. The walk was colored a deep brown, with a reddish hint, and was seemingly of randomly cut stones. The steps looked like bricks, with slabs of the random stones laid over them. The effect was nice, although in an interesting way. The house was painted a sandy yellow to accent the porch and steps. There was a garage as well, painted a slightly darker shade of the sandy yellow.

Inside the house was definitely the best, in Torri’s opinion. The entire house had been painted in accordance with the rustic-modern appearance. The floors all followed a golden trend, in a multi-toned pattern with different width and length boards, to spice it up.

The front hall merged with the family room without a wall or a change of flooring or wallpaper. They just became one. The family room had a door to the only door to the study and bathroom, and shared a chimney with the living room. The fireplace was brick, with a handsome white brick mantelpiece, adorned already with an antique-style clock that Torri thought she should be allowed to have in her own room. The family room included a big wooden entertainment center; with a lot of electrical equipment that only Torri’s father really understood how to work. Torri could work the television remote, and that was enough for her. The walls in the family room were light chocolate brown, which matched the furniture pretty well. There was a huge bookshelf built into one corner of the room, near the fireplace, which Torri had already filled with the countless souvenirs, pictures, books, and knickknacks that they’d collected over the years. Games, mostly of the board genre, sat on the bottom shelves.

The kitchen had marble counters in a majestic emerald, with the expected golden cupboards. The sink was shiny black with silvery faucets, two bowls, one with a metal drying rack painted shiny black. The refrigerator and freezer were built into the wall and had a—surprise, surprise—golden finish, and an ice/water dispenser, something Torri took advantage of frequently. The oven and microwave was one unit, and came in black, to match the sink, Torri guessed. The walls, or what you could see of them, as cupboards mostly covered them, were left alone, to give the room a little relaxation from all the color it already had. There was a set of golden wood stairs, with a runner of matching color on them, lead up to the second floor.

The dining room was across the front hall from the kitchen, and was extremely elegant in that rustic way. The walls were the soft yellow color of almonds, barely noticeable, but just enough. There was a chair rail around the room, the bottom half of which was identical vertical wooden planks, stained a dark gold, like the chair rail.

The living room was pleasant and casual, therefore perfect for its intended use: talking. These walls were covered with pink and blue flower wallpaper with a pale yellow background. The chairs were charcoal gray leather, with round end tables with little lamps on them that gave off more light than was expected. The chairs were arranged around the fireplace, which looked exactly like the fireplace in the family room, only with the difference of the antique-style clock, the one in the living room actually being an antique. The mudroom was in the corner of the living room, and led to the garage and was the location of the washer and dryer of Torri’s family.

There were three bedrooms on the second floor: all basically identical. Each had a decently sized bathroom, a closet with a folding door, the master bedroom having everything slightly larger than the other two. Where the chimney came up out of the first floor, the second floor stopped. The roof over the living room, dining room, and mudroom was what some of the windows of the master bedroom looked out and saw. The last room on the second floor was the recreation room, Torri’s indoor playground if she chose to use it that way. There wasn’t a whole lot of use for it other than storage, but with enough organization, the boxes could be ignored and the room could be actually used.

Whoever had lived in the house before hadn’t finished, it seemed, because all of the walls on the second floor were white, although all of the floors were perfect matches of the flooring downstairs. Torri was used to white walls, and didn’t think anything of it, although she covered the middle of her floor with a dusky blue rug.

Torri stepped out of the shower and noticed that the rain was lessening. Maybe that was a good sign. Buh-bump. Torri wrapped her plushy black bathrobe tighter and went to her door, opening it just a crack, and saw her mother, wearing her own bathrobe, only hers was pale sky blue.

“Torri, here’s some lunch money for the week,” Torri received a twenty dollar bill, “and go somewhere with your new friends after school. I want you to really come out of your shell, this time.” Torri rolled her eyes and said her mothers speech in her mind, leaning against the plain wall of her room, “Last time it took you most of the school year to go to a single party, and you seemed to so unhappy most of the time. Fifteen-year-old girls should go and party, and hang out with boys, and date. I promise you we’ll stay here at least until you graduate because your father and I think that its time we grew some roots and you made some friends.”

“Sure, Mom.”

“Torri, please listen to me. You known we only want what’s best for you—a normal teenage life. I order you to make friends today.”

“I promise,” Torri stifled a sigh of exasperation. She had been plenty happy the previous year. She’d had friends. She’d gone out. Her mother just never knew. Their old town, a decent place called Concord, had brought out her nightlife, not her day life. She’d met the coolest people she’d ever know through her work. Her mother just never knew.

Torri was actually a lot happier than her mother realized. Torri was a witch. After they moved to Concord, Torri found lots of minor oddities with her existence, but as she got older, things just got weirder and weirder for her.

Minor things were like being able to jump higher and farther, like when running up the stairs. Sometimes objects that she thought she couldn’t reach seemed to always be close enough to grab, or if she needed to flip out a light switch she didn’t fully need to touch it to get it to move.

Things became a lot less minor and Torri could no longer brush things off when her powers really began to grow. Jumping up the stairs turned into floating up them, and objects began to move, as she wanted them to. At first Torri hadn’t understood anything, What was going on? Why was this happening to her? She nearly exposed her freakishness when the sun was in her eyes and lowered the shades; Torri realized she needed to control herself better.

That wasn’t too far into the time they were in Concord, and as Torri found books about her ‘condition’ and learned more about her powers, a new world opened to her. The night world. Torri met other witches, male and female, many who had the same powers as she. It was right before she moved that another power sprang to life. The power of Sight. Old George, a powerful, yet aging friend had given her counsel on this matter.

“Few witches grow beyond basic powers, Torri, but for those that do, these powers are no harder or easier to master. Sight is a tricky thing. Aura’s and seeing in the darkest of moments is troublesome at times—I would now. But, my young friend, don’t be discouraged. Be wise, and be careful,” he had said.

Although it had been two months since she gained Sight, Torri still couldn’t tone it down or up. She understood things better, like how the faint colors at the edges of aura’s dictated their lives. Torri had never met anyone without an aura, and she preferred it that way, because George had said; “A man with no aura,” he’d looked at her gravely, “is a man with no soul.” Those words had given Torri nightmares when devils seemed to enter her dreams.

Torri constantly spoke with two people in particular from Concord—George and another witch, who also knew George.

He was in high school, like Torri, and he had the same powers as her, although he’d had them a bit longer. Torri recalled the time she first met Bryan as she brushed out her hair.

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He’d been settled a few feet off the ground, levitating, with George leaning back in a chair. Torri had entered, and when he’d turn his head he’d lost his concentration, and fallen to the floor.

“Sorry,” Torri had blushed as she interrupted, “Do you want me to wait in the shop?”

“No, please, sit.” George motioned to a chair where Torri tentatively took her seat. “Torri, I would like you to meet my other favorite student, Bryan. Bryan, this is my newest student, Torri.” Bryan winced slightly as he got stiffly to his feet.

“You’re a freshman, right?” he’d inquired.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen you around.”

“Both of you,” George summoned their attention, “have similar powers. I think it would make a deal more sense to train you both together. It will add a more competitive atmosphere so you two can progress faster and practice together. Then I can spend more time running my shop and less time training you two.”

George repositioned himself and he began to train them together. His idea really had worked, Torri considered, because both she and Bryan had constantly tested each other, and, true to George’s predictions, they learned much faster and they trained longer.

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Torri shook her head to return herself to the present, still thinking. Her Sight had changed the daily rituals with Bryan, because he hadn’t developed the Sight like she had, and she’d returned to training solo with George.

One perk of knowing Bryan was his older sister, Claire. Claire was a fashion queen. She could predict what would be in and when it would go back out again, and what clothes would be permanent fashion, and Torri’s wardrobe had prospered during a few well-spent evenings at the mall and Claire’s closet. Torri opened the door to her closet and decided to put Claire’s ‘training’ to the test.

Verdera was in a warm part of the country, to Torri’s relief, and the weather rarely got as low as freezing. The beginning of fall was still warm enough for tank tops, and Torri decided to take full advantage of the warm weather. She put on a plain khaki tank top, then an olive green mini-cargo skirt. Claire had gotten frustrated with Torri’s love of khaki and olive green, informing her that it looked like she was wearing the same thing every day. Torri had selected a pair of khaki sandals, and applied her make-up, satisfied.

Her mother looked up when Torri trotted down the stairs and into the kitchen. She wrinkled her forehead and gazed at Torri for a minute, “You haven’t been shopping recently, Torri, where’d you get those clothes?”

“Claire,” Torri shrugged, sitting at the counter and pouring a bowl of cereal.

“Who’s Claire?” she inquired, trying to enter Torri’s life for just a minute.

“Friend from Concord.”

“Oh. Why didn’t I ever meet her?” she tried to get something from Torri, although that would be asking for too much, it seemed.

“Only saw her at school,” Torri lied, without remorse.

“Oh.” She poured a glass of orange juice for Torri and turned to making an omelet for herself.