I would be wearing the customary black ring of mourning through my eighteenth birthday. Everyone who has a family member who dies has to wear a ring that boasts a fat obsidian in the center for an entire year as an emblem of their bereavement. And I did want to respect the death of my father, but I absolutely hated wearing that ring. It was like a giant stamp of my depression, and made people think that they were allowed to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want the elderly woman who rang up my lunch every day to give me pitying looks. I didn’t want people to avoid looking at the hideous ring on my finger. I didn’t want the giant elephant in the room anymore. I just wanted to be okay about losing my dad.

And every time I caught my reflection on the dark, glassy surface of the ring, I felt a hurt deep in the pit of my throat like an invisible hand was squeezing it closed. I wanted to stay home with my mother through the fall, but she insisted that I finish school like normal and she was right. She didn’t say it, but it was what my dad would have wanted. And to be honest, I was relieved to leave. Every time I would open the front door and instinctively anticipate his presence in the chair in the kitchen, it felt like a knife in my chest. It hurt when I saw a book in the store that he had talked about wanting to read. I cried when I found a sock in the laundry that I knew belonged to him. The space in our house where he used to be was noticeably and horribly empty.

It was about six months since he died and I was starting to feel okay about it most of the time. Sometimes I still cried, but most of the time it was just okay. But the creeping barnacle on my middle finger was a constant, awful reminder not only to myself, but to other people that he was gone. I hated that I couldn’t just rip the stupid thing off my finger without seeming disrespectful. So at this point, I was just counting down the days until I could throw it in the trash like a little kid counts down until his birthday.

There were only two people who I felt at ease with: Professor Siegel and my best friend Saul. The only thing Professor Siegel ever said to me about my father’s death was, “Stay strong. This is what the living do.” And after that he mentioned nothing because I mentioned nothing, but I knew that if I ever did need anything he would be there. But most importantly when, near the beginning of the school year, I was having a bad day, he just looked at me and nodded and let me leave to go curl up and deprogram in my dormitory.

And I knew that he knew what it was like to be depressed—rumor had it that his wife up and left one day without any reason, leaving him with their three-year-old son. So we had an equal understanding of what it felt like to not have any answers, and how sometimes you just don’t have it in you to smile.

Saul was my best friend in the world because he helped me laugh even when I didn’t want to. He stuck by me through my ups and downs and, most importantly, gave me reasons to get out of bed on the weekends instead of letting me wallow beneath the sheets in self-pity. He would kick open the door to my tiny single room (annoying Anna Marie and Maeko whose room was next to mine and could hear the slam of the knob against the wall as well as I could), and say, “I need you to help me buy new jeans. Last time you weren’t with me so I had no one to shame me out of buying that ridiculously tight pair. I don’t want to end up wasting forty bucks only to have you call me Ricky Martin again.”

Or he’d say, “I need a study buddy for the Cultural Studies exam before Madeline finds me and forces me into it again. It’s really uncomfortable reviewing the rituals of the Bridge Trolls when she’s practically got her gargantuan tits in my face.”

Or he’d simply yell on the top of his lungs, “Get the hell up! It’s a bee-yoo-ti-ful day outside! It’s sunny and warm and wonderful! Is this yelling bothering you? Yeah? Well get up and I’ll stop!”

And it was also Saul who I discussed my upcoming birthday with because it would be the day that I would receive my inheritance from my dad, reminding me yet again that he was gone. I knew that I, being his only child, would receive his amulet one day but I had expected him to give it to me by hand when we were both much older. Now, since his will was enchanted, the amulet would appear to me on my eighteenth birthday and not a minute before—it was, at the moment, floating somewhere in what magic scholars refer to as the Waiting Place; a place that enchanted items, such as items that are to be inherited at a specific time, disappear to while they wait for the deadline so as ensure that the right person receives it at the right time. No one knows where this place is really, but Saul is convinced it’s the same place that the all the missing socks from his laundry go. I have to agree.

“It’ll be nice to have something that was so important to your dad,” he said to me while we were studying in the library. Well, pretending to study. We pretended to study a lot, hoping that maybe we’d absorb some kind of information while we talked and our notes sat spread open before us. As a consequence, we somehow managed to get good grades anyway and everyone thought we were studious and intelligent.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, flipping through my math notes disinterestedly, “He never took it off you know. I think he even showered with it on. I mean, he swam with it on in the summer and everything.”

“I did that once,” he said, “but then it got all rusty and nasty and left greenish shit all over my skin. My mom made me take it off because she was convinced I was gonna get tetanus.”

“You know I still haven’t met mom? Or your family,” I said, peering at him. “You know what?”

“What?”

I paused and looked at him suspiciously, “I don’t think they really exist.”

Saul put down his Morphology textbook and gave me the look he administers to me when he thinks I’m being ridiculous. Like when I say that beautiful people and ugly people should be forced to procreate so there’s not such a disparity in attractiveness in the population. “Pandora,” he said, “You’ve talked to my mom on the phone. On multiple occasions.”

“She could very well be an imposter is all’s I’m sayin’.”

Saul rolled his eyes, “So anyway, speaking of more important things, I think I have a problem.”

“What now?” I asked, knowing already that it was about some girl. Saul’s problems were ALWAYS about some girl in some class that was into him but he didn’t like yet still debated whether or not to pursue. The funny thing was that Saul had an insane crush on Eva Mellick, but she had no interest in Saul whatsoever. She preferred older guys. I’d told him on multiple occasions to have some dignity and move on from Eva, but he would just slouch like a pouty kid.

I don’t think he even really liked Eva, he just wasn’t used to having someone brush him off, much like he brushed off other girls. I was convinced it was karma, but it was a belief that would not be wise to say to his face.

“You know who Elsie Hutchinson is? Long brown hair, brown eyes, shortish?”

“That’s like half the girls that go to our school, Saul,” I said.

He rolled his eyes at me, “Anyway, she’s in my Illusions class with me and she’s like, all up in my grill. She’s my lab partner this marking period and she asked me if I wanted to go out to coffee. I’m not really that into her but she’s cute. It could, you know, go somewhere.”

Illusions, Morphology, and Minor Elementals were the only classes that Saul and I didn’t have together because I didn’t take any spell-casting classes. Not that I didn’t want to—oh I did, but it would be kind of important to be able to cast spells in spell-casting classes.

I had what the medical community referred to as a Magics Disability—most people who had this were the equivalent of being learning disabled and thus had a difficult time mastering a certain sector of spells. I, however, was the 2% of the world population that had Severe Magic Manipulation Deficiency Disorder— a rare genetic condition that inhibited all ability to manipulate magic.

So I had waited through my puberty years and watched as my twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays had passed without the appearance of any Abilities before seeking blood tests and receiving the awful news that I would never know the joys of having Abilities. I had gotten over it years ago, with my parents’ support. My mother said, as most mothers do, that I was perfect just the way I was and I would be successful anyway and other motherly things. Because to my mom, I always would be the greatest gift she had ever received and I could never disappoint her. And my father through it all seemed rather unfazed, like he still thought that I would still be able to wield magic one day—I had always dreaded his realization that it would never happen. I guess now I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

But back to Saul’s dilemma.

“Yeah. Wow,” I said, “That is quite a problem.”

He gave me a look that could wither plants.

I sighed, “You know what I’m going to say. I’m going to say that it’s a bad idea. And why? Because you don’t even really like her.”

He’s made the same mistake countless times. Some girl shows interest, he pursues, he gets sick of her, he dumps her, he swears he’ll never do that again, and the cycle repeats.

Saul frowned, his forehead puckering in contemplation. “Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. I am going to just not indulge in the temptation. I am not a scumbag.”

“Right. Good job.”

He sighed, “Thanks for saving me from myself.”

“No problem.”