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Description
2
Urban Adventures

I stood and took in my surroundings from the new perspective. They were mostly the same: dark, dusty, and ruined. Except that now I was seeing them from the ceiling, or so it seemed to me. Just then, I heard footsteps through the door into the next room.
There was a smack and a solid thump. It sounded like someone had tripped. Then, a boy’s voice rang out, “Don’t be retarded, squirt. Ghosts aren’t real.” I frowned. No one had said anything, so who was he talking to?
The voice’s owner entered and froze in shock. Did I not look normal? I smiled innocently. A smaller boy came in behind the first one.
The bigger of the two wore a collar and bracelets with sharp spikes, and there were red and blue lines snaking around his right bicep. This was obvious, since his noxious yellow-green t-shirt was ragged and torn, though I could still see the skull and bones on it. His jeans and sneakers were in no better shape. But the thing that really grabbed my attention was his hair and his eyes. His spiky hair was silver. Not gray: shining, metallic silver. His eyes were silver-blue-gray, the color of moonstones.
The second was ragged and dirty as well. Jeans, sneakers, black shirt and loose, cotton, jacket were all torn and muddy. He had messy, chestnut-brown hair that fell in his jade-green eyes. A pink scar made a jagged line across his cheek.
I nearly choked. He looked like a witch! What was a witch doing in the US? More importantly, did he recognize me as a transformed dragon?
Apparently not. When he saw me, a smug look crept over his face. He turned to the other and flicked his hands around. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I smiled all the same. A glint caught my eye, and I noticed that he wore a chain of spiky links on his hip.
“Hi, I’m Ruby Gem Frost. Who are you?” I inquired. The silver-haired boy gave me a skeptical look, as if unsure if I was being serious or not.
“Uh, I’m Nick and the squirt’s Will,” he answered. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m just exploring.”
“Oooookay,” Nick said slowly. He wandered off, presumably also exploring. Will smiled at me. I immediately liked this quiet boy.
“Hi, Will. Are you also here to explore?”
He shook his head.
“You aren’t?”
Another shake. He pointed to his mouth.
“You won’t tell me?”
A third shake. I grew angry. Well, this was nice! And to think, I had begun to like him! The boy turned and began to draw with his finger in the dust on the floor. How queer.
When he had finished, Will tugged me over to see. I started to think that maybe he was mentally challenged. I looked at the marks, slowly reading the words. There weren’t many.
I’m mute.
Oh. I felt stupid.
“Why didn’t Nick say so?” I wanted to know. Surely he’d meant to mention it? It wasn’t like it was common.
He likes 2 make things difficult 4 me.
“Why?”
Will shrugged. I let it go at that.
“Hey, squirt, I’m going home, c’mon!” Nick called. Will scrambled away. I followed, at a loss.
“May I walk with you?” I asked. The boy nodded. The friendly look in his eyes had turned to fear and resignation the instant Nick had spoken. I wondered how the two knew each other.
“Where’re you going?” Nick demanded. Everyone was asking questions today.
“I’m new here,” I replied, picking my way through the ruined house. “I was wondering if you might show me around.” I flashed him a smile. Will started to nod, but then glanced at Nick for approval.
“Whatever,” the older boy sighed. Will grinned at me. For the first time, I noticed something. Though his skin was grubby and covered in dirt, two clean lines traced from the corners of his eyes to his chin: tear-tracks. This boy probably wasn’t a witch.

We reached Will’s house during late afternoon. It was a tiny, run-down place. A girl waited on the front step. She wore her long, black hair loose, falling to her waist. A black halter-top covered her upper body, a short skirt and wide belt of similar color around her hips. Her black boots came to within an inch of her skirt’s hem, and a black trench coat flared to her ankles. The only splashes of color were her green scarf-collar and her blazing, golden eyes.
“Who is that, Nick?” she demanded. Her voice sounded like a crow’s harsh cawing.
“She’s Ruby. We found her exploring the house. She’s new,” Nick explained. He turned to me, “Rube, this’s Raven, my girl. Will’s said he’s gonna show her around.”
“Hello, Raven,” I greeted her. She laughed, sounding even more like a crow. Will winced.
“Well, you certainly got yourself in a fix there, squirt,” Raven commented. “I doubt she knows sign language.” From this, I assumed that sign language was how Will communicated without speech using… signs? That couldn’t be right. I also realized, with my limited human vocabulary, that they were calling Will ‘squirt’. That was just plain mean!
Will took no notice, moving his hands and fingers around in complicated patterns. Raven and Nick seemed to understand, though, and I did not want to look stupid, so I said nothing. I could only hope it didn’t mean I couldn’t be friends with Will anymore. He was nice, and the only human I knew, besides Raven and Nick. But neither of them seemed inclined to like me, so it was unlikely that they would be of any help.
“Well, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow, Ruby,” Raven stepped off the front step and walked away, down the sidewalk. Nick went into his house without a word. Will waved, though I was standing beside him, and scampered after Nick. I got two pieces of information from this: the first being that waving must be goodbye in ‘sign’ language, therefore meaning that the signs were made with his hands, the second being that Nick and Will must be brothers. By this time, I had figured out that Will wasn’t, in fact, a witch. Let’s hear it for my powers of deduction, people.
Then it hit me. I had nowhere to sleep that night. The only place I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed was the old house. That wasn’t a very appealing idea. But it was the only one I had.
I dejectedly returned to the dilapidated house and resumed my true shape in a flash of frost and light. I curled up under the dust sheet on a couch and hoped that no one else felt like exploring the house that night. It was some time before I was able to sleep.

I walked to school behind Nick the day after meeting Ruby. Raven and my brother were chatting, ignoring me, as usual. As we neared the school, I noticed a lone figure by the front door. It was Ruby.
She stood, looking unsure. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing yesterday.
“Hey, Will, Nick, Raven,” she called, when she caught sight of us. I wanted to groan, and would have if I could. Did she want everyone to think she was a freak? She ran towards us, skirt flapping like a swan’s wing.
I waved hello when Ruby had reached us. Nick and Raven took absolutely no notice.
“Not very friendly, are they?” the girl whispered to me.
I shook my head and signed, You don’t know the half of it. I knew she couldn’t understand, but I did it anyway. I wanted to tell her to put on jeans and sneakers: normal clothes. I wanted to advise her to try to blend in. She was an albino; she had to have been teased at her other school, didn’t she? Shouldn’t she know not to stand out any more than she had to? My muteness and scar had given rise to some nasty treatment, and that was nothing compared to looking like a ghost!
“Will, can I tell you something?” she spoke up. I signed yes and nodded, hoping that she could pick up on the sign’s meaning from this. She did. “Thanks. I’m… not supposed to be here. No one’s expecting me; I have no parents or history. I more or less just appeared on the face of the earth yesterday. Can I follow you?” I nodded my hand yes to cover my confusion. What did she mean ‘appeared on the face of the earth’? How could she not have a history? This girl was an enigma.
For the rest of the day, Ruby followed me from class to class, telling each teacher that she was new and nothing else. If Ruby asked me a question, I wrote on a piece of paper. She didn’t ask questions very often, in fact, she appeared to know everything being taught already. The only thing that she struggled with was reading. She read on the level of a third grader.
At the end of the day, I had to ask her something that had been nagging at me for a while.
Y did U come a week B4 school ended? Y not wait till next year?
I wrote.
“Umm, I didn’t know it was ending,” Ruby confessed. “I didn’t have a choice, either. It was come here now, or… well, nothing good.” I shook my head in disbelief but didn’t press her. I knew what it was like to have a history you’d rather not talk about. I changed the subject.
What was your full name again?
“Ruby Gem Frost,” she reminded me.
That’s unusual. RU related 2 Robert Frost or something?
“Not that I know of. Who’s Robert Frost?” Ruby replied cheerfully. “I think someone would have told me if I had a relative with such a weird name.”
Oh, so she thought that ‘Robert’ was a weird name, but ‘Ruby Gem’ was perfectly normal? Where was she from, Russia? I was dragged from my thoughts by my least favorite question in the world.
“Is your Will short for William?”
Nope. Just Will. I wish no one had ever been named William so I wouldn’t have to answer that question all the time.

The days passed like this, Ruby following me around in school, the two of us playing around all afternoon, and finally each returning home. We hung out in DC most of the time, seeing the sights. I never learned more about her past, but I learned all sorts of mindless things about her.
She liked to dance and loved to swim. She adamantly hated fighting. She ate like a freakin’ wolf, gulping and tearing at her food. She was an only child and an orphan. Her two best friends were going to visit soon, and her boyfriend… well, she didn’t like to talk about him. I surmised that he had dumped her from her sighs and the awful sadness in her eyes when she said his name: Opal.
But Opal’s a girl’s name.
“Where I come from, there’s no such thing,” she huffily responded. I didn’t bring him up again. Nick and Raven began to tease me about her, but I didn’t care. When I was out with her, I was away from them, and that was all that mattered. Being away from Nick didn’t happen often.
Not that I didn’t enjoy roaming around with her. Her ways and speech were so foreign, and she had a funny way of looking at things. Sadly, her observations were mostly true.
“It says here that you spent millions of dollars inventing ink that could write in space so you could use pens there,” she read off a plaque in a museum. “What was wrong with your pencils?” I laughed so hard at that. Just… the way she said it so innocently, like there had to have been a reason. Like no one could possibly have been that stupid. Then, when I took her up in an observation tower:
“So, let me get this straight: you pay to go up in a tall building, and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground. Where you just were. What? Why?” That also made me laugh, but sadly, it was true. Why did we do that?
She was the first person I’d ever met who didn’t find my laughing-without-a-sound creepy. Everyone else sidled away and found other things to do, but she just smiled back at me and asked, “What? What’s so funny?” Ruby quickly became my best friend and, around her, there was never a dull moment.

As promised, a week after school had let out Ruby’s friends came to visit. She bounced around, all sorts of happy. She had said that they ‘weren’t supposed to be here’, but she was ecstatic that they were. I wondered why they weren’t supposed to be ‘here’ and where exactly ‘here’ was. The neighborhood? The county? The state?
“Look, Will, there they are!” Ruby squealed while we were walking down the street. She raced forward to greet them and was swept up in a hug by the boy. He had blond hair and a gray shirt under a green vest-jacket. His eyes were an unnatural shade of orange.
“Hey, Ruby Gem!” he greeted her. “It’s been too long.”
“Only two weeks,” she giggled. “And it’s just Ruby, now.” She turned to me. “Will, I’d like you to meet my friends: Topaz Spark and Aqua Hydra.” The pair also faced me. “Guys, this is Will. He’s my friend.”
“Hi, Will,” the girl named Aqua smiled. She wore a banana-yellow, short-skirted dress decorated with gold flowers. Her pale blue hair was tied in pigtails with more gold flowers. Her eyes were also blue. She looked so much younger than thirteen, which was how old Ruby had said she was. “That’s a strange name, isn’t it?”
No more strange than ‘aqua’, I signed back. The newcomers looked slightly surprised. I forgot: they didn’t know I was mute.
“Will’s mute,” Ruby hurried to my rescue. “He talks by writing or sign language, but I can’t understand that very well, either.”
“Oh. Hello, Will,” Topaz smiled. They were all named after jewels, I thought. What’s up with that?
“So, how’s that project coming along?” Aqua asked with an obvious glance my way. What project? School was out.
“Not well,” Ruby sighed. “Not a single lead. Still, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“You should come home,” Topaz urged. “You could do a lot more good at the source.” Jeez, were these people speaking in code?!
“You know there’re very specific requirements,” Ruby told them. “I intend to follow them to the letter. Normal, that’s what I am.”
How long? I signed slowly. They were some of the few words Ruby now knew. I pointed at Topaz and Aqua then pointed at the ground.
“How long will they be staying? Not long,” Ruby admitted. “In fact, they should return now, before they’re missed.” There followed some sad farewells, and they departed. I again wondered what was up with this girl’s personal life.

It was difficult, to say the least, keeping Will in the dark. Simple things, like tying my shoelaces, brought up awkward questions, which was why I wore boots. I was glad he seemed so understanding and never truly asked these questions. His silent acceptance made me want to tell him even more than if he had been wildly trying to find out.
I still returned to the old house to sleep, and occasionally went out flying in my dragon shape. There came one time when I launched into the air and circled the town. As I descended to land, I saw Raven in the middle of the road, staring up at me.
I banked sharply, doing an inelegant trying-to-brake-in-midair kind of thing. I dove behind a rooftop. After a moment, I stuck my nose over the edge to see if I’d been spotted.
Raven stood, face turned to the sky: exactly how she’d been before. I took a risk and slid to the ground. A few seconds later, I strode around the corner and greeted her.
“Hey, Raven. Looking for UFOs?”
“You might say that,” she smiled and gave me a strange look. She turned and walked in the direction of her house. Strangely enough, from that day on Raven was much nicer to me. She never spoke of it again, so maybe she hadn’t seen me. Only time would tell.
Over the summer, Will and I got into all sorts of trouble. We hung around places clearly labeled ‘authorized personnel only’; we strung our old science teacher’s house with toilet paper and threw eggs at his car, and, on one memorable afternoon, even stole a wrecking ball.
Nick talked us into that one, not that I had needed much persuasion.
“Hey, Rube, Squirt,” he said, coming towards us. We were sitting on a stone wall, throwing rocks into a pond. “Did you hear? The city’s planning on knocking down that old house.” I went cold. My house? Where would I sleep?
“They can’t do that!” I blurted. Will nodded vigorously.
“Of course they can,” the shining-silver-haired boy’s face twisted, as if he tasted something sour. “All the neighborhood kids’re up in arms bout it. Damned if I know why. They’ve already brought in a wrecking ball.”
“We need to stop them,” I decided. Will nodded again, though more uncertainly. I don’t think he liked my tone. Nick, on the other hand, smiled craftily.
“The dude who drives it leaves the keys in on his lunch break,” he hinted. “I watched him when he knocked down that old office last year. It would be easy for someone small and unnoticeable to slip in and… take matters out of his hands.” I hadn’t known that Nick had such a wide vocabulary. He talked like a thug most of the time.
My resolve was set, I had a plan. Now all that was left was to put it into action. Will adamantly refused to let me go alone. He twisted a finger away from his body (alone) then drew a finger across his throat. Even I got that message.
We lay in wait for awhile, watching as a rumpled, dirty man drove a huge contraption to my house. It looked like a gigantic giraffe with a huge, iron ball hanging off its neck instead of a head, and treads instead of cloven hooves. It rumbled menacingly as it approached the dilapidated home. My dilapidated home.
Will tapped my shoulder and drew something in the dirt.
Why do u care so much?
“I live there,” I whispered fiercely. The boy looked shocked. “I told you that I don’t have any parents, didn’t I? Where did you think I was living? That old house was the first…” I shook my head. It was the first place I saw as a human in human lands. It was the first place I thought of when I thought of home. It was my sanctuary, my safe-house. It was the first place I had talked to humans.
It was the first place I had seen Will in.
But it’s uninhabitable! What do you eat???????
“Look, he’s leaving,” I pointed, changing the subject. I really didn’t want to explain my diet of rats to Will. Sure enough, the greasy man was exiting the wrecking ball. Apparently, lunchtime came earlier for him than for the rest of the world. So, he was lazy. That was a good thing.
“Now!” I hissed. We sprinted for the open door. I sprang in and slid across to the passenger’s side. Will slammed the door shut against the man’s protests and gunned the engine. He stomped on the gas, and we were off.
The wrecking ball didn’t achieve much in the way of speed, but we chugged along determinedly. I had to laugh at Will’s face. He looked like a commando on a mission he might not return from. The look of concentration and focus… it was funny. He shot me a glare that clearly told me that I should not be laughing. I giggled anyway. A corner of his mouth twitched, but that was all.
The dirty, fat, rumpled, greasy man hadn’t chased us far. Even the wrecking ball’s sluggish pace was too much for his hefty frame. He doubled over, wheezing, but still bellowing at us ‘damned young ’uns’. I learned at least ten new words that could make Will wince when I repeated them.
We abandoned the wrecking ball a few miles later, when it began to choke. It sounded like it was going to roll over and die. Will began to mess with the machinery. I took the keys. The dirty boy popped up, holding two important-looking wires, and we galloped off. A siren started to wail in the distance.
Will shot me a look of despair. I deliberated for a moment, and then came to a decision. I pulled him into an alley between two buildings and knelt on the pavement. I seized some chalk out of my skirt’s single pocket and sketched a star on the concrete, muttering.
“Out of sight,
Out of mind,
As if deaf,
As if blind.”
Will obviously thought that I was crazy. I pulled him with me into the hastily-made pentacle and snapped my fingers. He looked at me, wondering what I thought I was doing, and made as if to step out of the star. I restrained him, and he surrendered. Topazgem had always said that I could be stubborn when I put my mind to it.
We listened as the police found the wrecking ball, and discovered the missing wires. I learned a few more interesting words. Will watched with amazement as a police officer peered into the alley we were standing in. The officer saw nothing and moved on, satisfied.
Will’s mouth flopped open, and his eyes bugged out as another officer did the same.
“Something wrong, Will?” I asked, good-naturedly. The woman poking around the alley heard nothing. He signed frantically. “What? They can’t hear or see us now,” I sort-of explained. “It’s a good thing, man.” I blew a raspberry as the lady passed within a few inches.
The downside was that we were stuck in that place for hours as the police investigated. They would’ve noticed two teenagers springing out of thin air. I started to worry. The pentacle spell would only last a few more hours without any candles or other magical paraphernalia. I told this to Will. It worried me how calm he looked. I guess he’d decided that he was dreaming.
“Rubygem,” someone hissed. I looked up and saw Topazgem and Aquagem on the roof of the building beside us.
“How’d you find us?” I whispered. Topazgem smiled wryly.
“We followed the sirens. Come on,” he urged, “the cops aren’t looking.” I nodded and touched my forehead. The pentacle spell dissolved, as did the human spell. I looked up at Will, concerned by how pale he was. He sat down, very suddenly, staring at me.
Topazgem and Aquagem glided down, also in their dragon shapes, and each gripped one of Will’s arms. I took the collar of his jacket in my claws and we took off.
It was difficult to fly so close together. Our wings kept hitting each other’s, and we stopped and landed a few blocks away. Will sat on the pavement, limp and staring.
Suddenly, Topazgem’s tail whipped around, and Will slumped down, knocked out.
“What the **** was that for?!” I screamed, using one of the words I’d learned from the driver of the wrecking ball. It seemed to be an exclamation used in anger, and was I angry!
“Well, he saw us in our dragon shapes!” Topazgem explained. He put up his claws to fend me off. “And he saw you use magic. Calm, down, it’s not like I killed him.”
“We should do something, though,” Aquagem added. “He can’t walk around talking about magic and dragons and blow your cover.” I rolled my eyes.
“He’s mute. He won’t talk about anything. Besides, humans don’t listen to young ones. They’ll think he’s crazy.”
“But… we have to…” Topazgem protested feebly. I growled and he shut up.
“Fine, have it your way,” Aquagem gave up. “But, you know, if normal humans act like this, maybe you shouldn’t come back to the Archipelago after all.” She and Topazgem took off and flew away. I felt guilty. I’d been a jerk, but they’d hit Will! Surely that excused it…? No, it didn’t. I knew that.
I flashed to my human shape. It was easy to pick up the thin boy and carry him to my home. I laid him on a couch and covered him with a blanket. I left for a few minutes and returned to find him awake. He looked at me with wide eyes half-hidden behind his fringe of chestnut bangs and I held up two bags of food.
“McDonalds,” I said. “The king of grease and fat.” I handed him a burger and a Coke. For a few minutes we just sat in the ruined house, eating fast food. All too soon, the food was gone and Will was drumming his fingers on the armrest. He leaned down and wrote a single word in the dust on the floor:
Dragon.

Description
2
Urban Adventures

I stood and took in my surroundings from the new perspective. They were mostly the same: dark, dusty, and ruined. Except that now I was seeing them from the ceiling, or so it seemed to me. Just then, I heard footsteps through the door into the next room.
There was a smack and a solid thump. It sounded like someone had tripped. Then, a boy’s voice rang out, “Don’t be retarded, squirt. Ghosts aren’t real.” I frowned. No one had said anything, so who was he talking to?
The voice’s owner entered and froze in shock. Did I not look normal? I smiled innocently. A smaller boy came in behind the first one.
The bigger of the two wore a collar and bracelets with sharp spikes, and there were red and blue lines snaking around his right bicep. This was obvious, since his noxious yellow-green t-shirt was ragged and torn, though I could still see the skull and bones on it. His jeans and sneakers were in no better shape. But the thing that really grabbed my attention was his hair and his eyes. His spiky hair was silver. Not gray: shining, metallic silver. His eyes were silver-blue-gray, the color of moonstones.
The second was ragged and dirty as well. Jeans, sneakers, black shirt and loose, cotton, jacket were all torn and muddy. He had messy, chestnut-brown hair that fell in his jade-green eyes. A pink scar made a jagged line across his cheek.
I nearly choked. He looked like a witch! What was a witch doing in the US? More importantly, did he recognize me as a transformed dragon?
Apparently not. When he saw me, a smug look crept over his face. He turned to the other and flicked his hands around. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I smiled all the same. A glint caught my eye, and I noticed that he wore a chain of spiky links on his hip.
“Hi, I’m Ruby Gem Frost. Who are you?” I inquired. The silver-haired boy gave me a skeptical look, as if unsure if I was being serious or not.
“Uh, I’m Nick and the squirt’s Will,” he answered. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m just exploring.”
“Oooookay,” Nick said slowly. He wandered off, presumably also exploring. Will smiled at me. I immediately liked this quiet boy.
“Hi, Will. Are you also here to explore?”
He shook his head.
“You aren’t?”
Another shake. He pointed to his mouth.
“You won’t tell me?”
A third shake. I grew angry. Well, this was nice! And to think, I had begun to like him! The boy turned and began to draw with his finger in the dust on the floor. How queer.
When he had finished, Will tugged me over to see. I started to think that maybe he was mentally challenged. I looked at the marks, slowly reading the words. There weren’t many.
I’m mute.
Oh. I felt stupid.
“Why didn’t Nick say so?” I wanted to know. Surely he’d meant to mention it? It wasn’t like it was common.
He likes 2 make things difficult 4 me.
“Why?”
Will shrugged. I let it go at that.
“Hey, squirt, I’m going home, c’mon!” Nick called. Will scrambled away. I followed, at a loss.
“May I walk with you?” I asked. The boy nodded. The friendly look in his eyes had turned to fear and resignation the instant Nick had spoken. I wondered how the two knew each other.
“Where’re you going?” Nick demanded. Everyone was asking questions today.
“I’m new here,” I replied, picking my way through the ruined house. “I was wondering if you might show me around.” I flashed him a smile. Will started to nod, but then glanced at Nick for approval.
“Whatever,” the older boy sighed. Will grinned at me. For the first time, I noticed something. Though his skin was grubby and covered in dirt, two clean lines traced from the corners of his eyes to his chin: tear-tracks. This boy probably wasn’t a witch.

We reached Will’s house during late afternoon. It was a tiny, run-down place. A girl waited on the front step. She wore her long, black hair loose, falling to her waist. A black halter-top covered her upper body, a short skirt and wide belt of similar color around her hips. Her black boots came to within an inch of her skirt’s hem, and a black trench coat flared to her ankles. The only splashes of color were her green scarf-collar and her blazing, golden eyes.
“Who is that, Nick?” she demanded. Her voice sounded like a crow’s harsh cawing.
“She’s Ruby. We found her exploring the house. She’s new,” Nick explained. He turned to me, “Rube, this’s Raven, my girl. Will’s said he’s gonna show her around.”
“Hello, Raven,” I greeted her. She laughed, sounding even more like a crow. Will winced.
“Well, you certainly got yourself in a fix there, squirt,” Raven commented. “I doubt she knows sign language.” From this, I assumed that sign language was how Will communicated without speech using… signs? That couldn’t be right. I also realized, with my limited human vocabulary, that they were calling Will ‘squirt’. That was just plain mean!
Will took no notice, moving his hands and fingers around in complicated patterns. Raven and Nick seemed to understand, though, and I did not want to look stupid, so I said nothing. I could only hope it didn’t mean I couldn’t be friends with Will anymore. He was nice, and the only human I knew, besides Raven and Nick. But neither of them seemed inclined to like me, so it was unlikely that they would be of any help.
“Well, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow, Ruby,” Raven stepped off the front step and walked away, down the sidewalk. Nick went into his house without a word. Will waved, though I was standing beside him, and scampered after Nick. I got two pieces of information from this: the first being that waving must be goodbye in ‘sign’ language, therefore meaning that the signs were made with his hands, the second being that Nick and Will must be brothers. By this time, I had figured out that Will wasn’t, in fact, a witch. Let’s hear it for my powers of deduction, people.
Then it hit me. I had nowhere to sleep that night. The only place I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed was the old house. That wasn’t a very appealing idea. But it was the only one I had.
I dejectedly returned to the dilapidated house and resumed my true shape in a flash of frost and light. I curled up under the dust sheet on a couch and hoped that no one else felt like exploring the house that night. It was some time before I was able to sleep.

I walked to school behind Nick the day after meeting Ruby. Raven and my brother were chatting, ignoring me, as usual. As we neared the school, I noticed a lone figure by the front door. It was Ruby.
She stood, looking unsure. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing yesterday.
“Hey, Will, Nick, Raven,” she called, when she caught sight of us. I wanted to groan, and would have if I could. Did she want everyone to think she was a freak? She ran towards us, skirt flapping like a swan’s wing.
I waved hello when Ruby had reached us. Nick and Raven took absolutely no notice.
“Not very friendly, are they?” the girl whispered to me.
I shook my head and signed, You don’t know the half of it. I knew she couldn’t understand, but I did it anyway. I wanted to tell her to put on jeans and sneakers: normal clothes. I wanted to advise her to try to blend in. She was an albino; she had to have been teased at her other school, didn’t she? Shouldn’t she know not to stand out any more than she had to? My muteness and scar had given rise to some nasty treatment, and that was nothing compared to looking like a ghost!
“Will, can I tell you something?” she spoke up. I signed yes and nodded, hoping that she could pick up on the sign’s meaning from this. She did. “Thanks. I’m… not supposed to be here. No one’s expecting me; I have no parents or history. I more or less just appeared on the face of the earth yesterday. Can I follow you?” I nodded my hand yes to cover my confusion. What did she mean ‘appeared on the face of the earth’? How could she not have a history? This girl was an enigma.
For the rest of the day, Ruby followed me from class to class, telling each teacher that she was new and nothing else. If Ruby asked me a question, I wrote on a piece of paper. She didn’t ask questions very often, in fact, she appeared to know everything being taught already. The only thing that she struggled with was reading. She read on the level of a third grader.
At the end of the day, I had to ask her something that had been nagging at me for a while.
Y did U come a week B4 school ended? Y not wait till next year?
I wrote.
“Umm, I didn’t know it was ending,” Ruby confessed. “I didn’t have a choice, either. It was come here now, or… well, nothing good.” I shook my head in disbelief but didn’t press her. I knew what it was like to have a history you’d rather not talk about. I changed the subject.
What was your full name again?
“Ruby Gem Frost,” she reminded me.
That’s unusual. RU related 2 Robert Frost or something?
“Not that I know of. Who’s Robert Frost?” Ruby replied cheerfully. “I think someone would have told me if I had a relative with such a weird name.”
Oh, so she thought that ‘Robert’ was a weird name, but ‘Ruby Gem’ was perfectly normal? Where was she from, Russia? I was dragged from my thoughts by my least favorite question in the world.
“Is your Will short for William?”
Nope. Just Will. I wish no one had ever been named William so I wouldn’t have to answer that question all the time.

The days passed like this, Ruby following me around in school, the two of us playing around all afternoon, and finally each returning home. We hung out in DC most of the time, seeing the sights. I never learned more about her past, but I learned all sorts of mindless things about her.
She liked to dance and loved to swim. She adamantly hated fighting. She ate like a freakin’ wolf, gulping and tearing at her food. She was an only child and an orphan. Her two best friends were going to visit soon, and her boyfriend… well, she didn’t like to talk about him. I surmised that he had dumped her from her sighs and the awful sadness in her eyes when she said his name: Opal.
But Opal’s a girl’s name.
“Where I come from, there’s no such thing,” she huffily responded. I didn’t bring him up again. Nick and Raven began to tease me about her, but I didn’t care. When I was out with her, I was away from them, and that was all that mattered. Being away from Nick didn’t happen often.
Not that I didn’t enjoy roaming around with her. Her ways and speech were so foreign, and she had a funny way of looking at things. Sadly, her observations were mostly true.
“It says here that you spent millions of dollars inventing ink that could write in space so you could use pens there,” she read off a plaque in a museum. “What was wrong with your pencils?” I laughed so hard at that. Just… the way she said it so innocently, like there had to have been a reason. Like no one could possibly have been that stupid. Then, when I took her up in an observation tower:
“So, let me get this straight: you pay to go up in a tall building, and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground. Where you just were. What? Why?” That also made me laugh, but sadly, it was true. Why did we do that?
She was the first person I’d ever met who didn’t find my laughing-without-a-sound creepy. Everyone else sidled away and found other things to do, but she just smiled back at me and asked, “What? What’s so funny?” Ruby quickly became my best friend and, around her, there was never a dull moment.

As promised, a week after school had let out Ruby’s friends came to visit. She bounced around, all sorts of happy. She had said that they ‘weren’t supposed to be here’, but she was ecstatic that they were. I wondered why they weren’t supposed to be ‘here’ and where exactly ‘here’ was. The neighborhood? The county? The state?
“Look, Will, there they are!” Ruby squealed while we were walking down the street. She raced forward to greet them and was swept up in a hug by the boy. He had blond hair and a gray shirt under a green vest-jacket. His eyes were an unnatural shade of orange.
“Hey, Ruby Gem!” he greeted her. “It’s been too long.”
“Only two weeks,” she giggled. “And it’s just Ruby, now.” She turned to me. “Will, I’d like you to meet my friends: Topaz Spark and Aqua Hydra.” The pair also faced me. “Guys, this is Will. He’s my friend.”
“Hi, Will,” the girl named Aqua smiled. She wore a banana-yellow, short-skirted dress decorated with gold flowers. Her pale blue hair was tied in pigtails with more gold flowers. Her eyes were also blue. She looked so much younger than thirteen, which was how old Ruby had said she was. “That’s a strange name, isn’t it?”
No more strange than ‘aqua’, I signed back. The newcomers looked slightly surprised. I forgot: they didn’t know I was mute.
“Will’s mute,” Ruby hurried to my rescue. “He talks by writing or sign language, but I can’t understand that very well, either.”
“Oh. Hello, Will,” Topaz smiled. They were all named after jewels, I thought. What’s up with that?
“So, how’s that project coming along?” Aqua asked with an obvious glance my way. What project? School was out.
“Not well,” Ruby sighed. “Not a single lead. Still, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“You should come home,” Topaz urged. “You could do a lot more good at the source.” Jeez, were these people speaking in code?!
“You know there’re very specific requirements,” Ruby told them. “I intend to follow them to the letter. Normal, that’s what I am.”
How long? I signed slowly. They were some of the few words Ruby now knew. I pointed at Topaz and Aqua then pointed at the ground.
“How long will they be staying? Not long,” Ruby admitted. “In fact, they should return now, before they’re missed.” There followed some sad farewells, and they departed. I again wondered what was up with this girl’s personal life.

It was difficult, to say the least, keeping Will in the dark. Simple things, like tying my shoelaces, brought up awkward questions, which was why I wore boots. I was glad he seemed so understanding and never truly asked these questions. His silent acceptance made me want to tell him even more than if he had been wildly trying to find out.
I still returned to the old house to sleep, and occasionally went out flying in my dragon shape. There came one time when I launched into the air and circled the town. As I descended to land, I saw Raven in the middle of the road, staring up at me.
I banked sharply, doing an inelegant trying-to-brake-in-midair kind of thing. I dove behind a rooftop. After a moment, I stuck my nose over the edge to see if I’d been spotted.
Raven stood, face turned to the sky: exactly how she’d been before. I took a risk and slid to the ground. A few seconds later, I strode around the corner and greeted her.
“Hey, Raven. Looking for UFOs?”
“You might say that,” she smiled and gave me a strange look. She turned and walked in the direction of her house. Strangely enough, from that day on Raven was much nicer to me. She never spoke of it again, so maybe she hadn’t seen me. Only time would tell.
Over the summer, Will and I got into all sorts of trouble. We hung around places clearly labeled ‘authorized personnel only’; we strung our old science teacher’s house with toilet paper and threw eggs at his car, and, on one memorable afternoon, even stole a wrecking ball.
Nick talked us into that one, not that I had needed much persuasion.
“Hey, Rube, Squirt,” he said, coming towards us. We were sitting on a stone wall, throwing rocks into a pond. “Did you hear? The city’s planning on knocking down that old house.” I went cold. My house? Where would I sleep?
“They can’t do that!” I blurted. Will nodded vigorously.
“Of course they can,” the shining-silver-haired boy’s face twisted, as if he tasted something sour. “All the neighborhood kids’re up in arms bout it. Damned if I know why. They’ve already brought in a wrecking ball.”
“We need to stop them,” I decided. Will nodded again, though more uncertainly. I don’t think he liked my tone. Nick, on the other hand, smiled craftily.
“The dude who drives it leaves the keys in on his lunch break,” he hinted. “I watched him when he knocked down that old office last year. It would be easy for someone small and unnoticeable to slip in and… take matters out of his hands.” I hadn’t known that Nick had such a wide vocabulary. He talked like a thug most of the time.
My resolve was set, I had a plan. Now all that was left was to put it into action. Will adamantly refused to let me go alone. He twisted a finger away from his body (alone) then drew a finger across his throat. Even I got that message.
We lay in wait for awhile, watching as a rumpled, dirty man drove a huge contraption to my house. It looked like a gigantic giraffe with a huge, iron ball hanging off its neck instead of a head, and treads instead of cloven hooves. It rumbled menacingly as it approached the dilapidated home. My dilapidated home.
Will tapped my shoulder and drew something in the dirt.
Why do u care so much?
“I live there,” I whispered fiercely. The boy looked shocked. “I told you that I don’t have any parents, didn’t I? Where did you think I was living? That old house was the first…” I shook my head. It was the first place I saw as a human in human lands. It was the first place I thought of when I thought of home. It was my sanctuary, my safe-house. It was the first place I had talked to humans.
It was the first place I had seen Will in.
But it’s uninhabitable! What do you eat???????
“Look, he’s leaving,” I pointed, changing the subject. I really didn’t want to explain my diet of rats to Will. Sure enough, the greasy man was exiting the wrecking ball. Apparently, lunchtime came earlier for him than for the rest of the world. So, he was lazy. That was a good thing.
“Now!” I hissed. We sprinted for the open door. I sprang in and slid across to the passenger’s side. Will slammed the door shut against the man’s protests and gunned the engine. He stomped on the gas, and we were off.
The wrecking ball didn’t achieve much in the way of speed, but we chugged along determinedly. I had to laugh at Will’s face. He looked like a commando on a mission he might not return from. The look of concentration and focus… it was funny. He shot me a glare that clearly told me that I should not be laughing. I giggled anyway. A corner of his mouth twitched, but that was all.
The dirty, fat, rumpled, greasy man hadn’t chased us far. Even the wrecking ball’s sluggish pace was too much for his hefty frame. He doubled over, wheezing, but still bellowing at us ‘damned young ’uns’. I learned at least ten new words that could make Will wince when I repeated them.
We abandoned the wrecking ball a few miles later, when it began to choke. It sounded like it was going to roll over and die. Will began to mess with the machinery. I took the keys. The dirty boy popped up, holding two important-looking wires, and we galloped off. A siren started to wail in the distance.
Will shot me a look of despair. I deliberated for a moment, and then came to a decision. I pulled him into an alley between two buildings and knelt on the pavement. I seized some chalk out of my skirt’s single pocket and sketched a star on the concrete, muttering.
“Out of sight,
Out of mind,
As if deaf,
As if blind.”
Will obviously thought that I was crazy. I pulled him with me into the hastily-made pentacle and snapped my fingers. He looked at me, wondering what I thought I was doing, and made as if to step out of the star. I restrained him, and he surrendered. Topazgem had always said that I could be stubborn when I put my mind to it.
We listened as the police found the wrecking ball, and discovered the missing wires. I learned a few more interesting words. Will watched with amazement as a police officer peered into the alley we were standing in. The officer saw nothing and moved on, satisfied.
Will’s mouth flopped open, and his eyes bugged out as another officer did the same.
“Something wrong, Will?” I asked, good-naturedly. The woman poking around the alley heard nothing. He signed frantically. “What? They can’t hear or see us now,” I sort-of explained. “It’s a good thing, man.” I blew a raspberry as the lady passed within a few inches.
The downside was that we were stuck in that place for hours as the police investigated. They would’ve noticed two teenagers springing out of thin air. I started to worry. The pentacle spell would only last a few more hours without any candles or other magical paraphernalia. I told this to Will. It worried me how calm he looked. I guess he’d decided that he was dreaming.
“Rubygem,” someone hissed. I looked up and saw Topazgem and Aquagem on the roof of the building beside us.
“How’d you find us?” I whispered. Topazgem smiled wryly.
“We followed the sirens. Come on,” he urged, “the cops aren’t looking.” I nodded and touched my forehead. The pentacle spell dissolved, as did the human spell. I looked up at Will, concerned by how pale he was. He sat down, very suddenly, staring at me.
Topazgem and Aquagem glided down, also in their dragon shapes, and each gripped one of Will’s arms. I took the collar of his jacket in my claws and we took off.
It was difficult to fly so close together. Our wings kept hitting each other’s, and we stopped and landed a few blocks away. Will sat on the pavement, limp and staring.
Suddenly, Topazgem’s tail whipped around, and Will slumped down, knocked out.
“What the **** was that for?!” I screamed, using one of the words I’d learned from the driver of the wrecking ball. It seemed to be an exclamation used in anger, and was I angry!
“Well, he saw us in our dragon shapes!” Topazgem explained. He put up his claws to fend me off. “And he saw you use magic. Calm, down, it’s not like I killed him.”
“We should do something, though,” Aquagem added. “He can’t walk around talking about magic and dragons and blow your cover.” I rolled my eyes.
“He’s mute. He won’t talk about anything. Besides, humans don’t listen to young ones. They’ll think he’s crazy.”
“But… we have to…” Topazgem protested feebly. I growled and he shut up.
“Fine, have it your way,” Aquagem gave up. “But, you know, if normal humans act like this, maybe you shouldn’t come back to the Archipelago after all.” She and Topazgem took off and flew away. I felt guilty. I’d been a jerk, but they’d hit Will! Surely that excused it…? No, it didn’t. I knew that.
I flashed to my human shape. It was easy to pick up the thin boy and carry him to my home. I laid him on a couch and covered him with a blanket. I left for a few minutes and returned to find him awake. He looked at me with wide eyes half-hidden behind his fringe of chestnut bangs and I held up two bags of food.
“McDonalds,” I said. “The king of grease and fat.” I handed him a burger and a Coke. For a few minutes we just sat in the ruined house, eating fast food. All too soon, the food was gone and Will was drumming his fingers on the armrest. He leaned down and wrote a single word in the dust on the floor:
Dragon.