Jonathon sat with his back to her. He wanted to pretend she didn't exist. He set his tray down on the chipped plastic table and sat down. His friends lounged around him: Scott, the football jock, Trevin, the soccer player, Sam, Spencer, and Ryan, the Senior class officer. They all had their sports or talents. Jonathon's thing was art. His class notes and assignments were always doodled all over.
The boys joked and teased and complained about the questionable nature of what the cafeteria called 'chicken enchiladas'. Ten minutes of lunch remained when Jonathon saw Scott's face light up at something behind Jonathon.
"Johnny," he smirked. "Dude, that creepy girl behind you is totally checking you out." All of the boys snickered and snuck glances over Jonathon's shoulders.
He knew he shouldn't look. Looking would only make things worse. But he did.
The first image that came to mind was the girl from the Ring. Her long, greasy hair was sloppily dyed black to match her clothes. Dozens of gaudy necklaces and bracelets encrusted her neck and wrists, and black eyeliner caked her eyelids. She was not checking him out. Pale, watery blue eyes stared defiantly and disturbingly right at him.
Jonathon twisted back around to face his friends. "Her name's Amanda," he explained. "She's the foster kid my mom decided to bring home. She stares at me like that all the time. Hardly ever says more than a word at a time. Just stares."
The girl called Amanda fingered the crescent moon charm around her neck. He had appeared so shocked that for a moment she had worried that the illusion spell had worn off. The fake friends surrounding him laughed and elbowed him until she could almost feel his face turning red from behind him. The human time device on the wall pointed at the swirly sign at the bottom, which meant she had only a little more time until the young humans were herded like cattle into their next prison.
She took a deep breath to steady herself and stood up. The noise from the boys' table instantly ceased, cut off mid-syllable. With more confidence than she felt, she crossed to his left side and sounded out the human words she had painstakingly memorized.
"Can I borrow your History notes, Jonathon? I think I missed some things about the Fall of Rome."
He didn't look right at her. "Sure, Amanda." He fished through his bag until he found the right notebook. "Here you go."
"Thanks." She took the notebook back to her seat. Hands shaking, she turned to the first page. The human scribbles swam like so much gibberish in front of her, but that wasn't what she needed.
Stuffed into the margins and interspersed throughout the human writing were the runes, symbols, and patterns used for elvin magic. Page after page was filled with spells simple and complex, small and powerful, benign and deadly. Eagerly, she turned the pages. The final page with writing was entirely devoted to a huge spell. She gasped. If she was reading this right, then depending on the incantation used and the intent of the caster, this spell could heal someone on the brink of death, make everyone within ten miles speak in rhyme for a day, burst the eardrums of everyone with blonde hair, or incinerate an entire city.
"Um...Amanda?"
She jumped. Jonathon stood right next to her. She blushed.
"...Yes?"
"It's time to go to class. I need my notebook back." A look around showed the feeding grounds to be empty besides the slaves cleaning the tables. Wordlessly, she handed him back his book and walked away.
Girls are weird. Jonathon shook his head. Amanda had been staring at that doodle page for more than eight whole minutes without blinking, hardly breathing. He shrugged on his backpack. She was definitely crazy.
The girl called Amanda looked around behind the school to make sure no one saw her before removing the crescent moon illusion charm. Illusions had always made her feel stuffed up and light-headed. She flicked her golden sunlight hair out of her face as she thought.
It wasn't possible for him to remember. The memory spell was too strong for even him to break. She might as well just resign herself to the fact that even though he still invented new spells in his history notes, he would never remember what he once was. He would never remember that his name wasn't really Jonathon. He'd never remember the forest where he had run wild with the other elves. He'd never remember that he was a prince.
He'd never remember that once upon a time he had loved her.