“Siegfried and fucking Roy, Penny, I know that it’s serious. He’s got my number. I don’t even have my number, but the Humdrum’s got it down.”
“How can we still know so little about him,” she fumed. “He’s so…”
“Insidious,” I said. “‘The Insidious Humdrum’ and all that.”
“Stop teasing, Simon. This is serious.”
“I know, Penny.”
When we got back to Watford, the Mage heard us out and made sure we weren’t hurt, but then he sent us on our way. Just … sent us home.
It didn’t make any sense.
So, of course, I spent this whole summer thinking about Watford. About everything that happened and everything that could happen and everything that’s at stake … I stewed on it.
But I still didn’t let myself dwell on any of the good things, you know? It’s the good things that’ll drive you mad with missing them.
I keep a list—of all the things I miss most—and I’m not allowed to touch it in my head until I’m about an hour from Watford. Then I run through the list one by one. It’s sort of like easing yourself into cold water. But the opposite of that, I suppose—easing yourself into something really good, so the shock of it doesn’t overwhelm you.
I started making my list, my good things list, when I was 11, and I should probably cross a few things off, but that’s harder than you’d think.
Anyway, I’m about an hour from school now, so I mentally take out my list and press my forehead against the train window.
Things I miss most about Watford:
No. 1—Sour cherry scones
I’d never had cherry scones before Watford. Just raisin ones—and more often plain, and always something that came from the shop, then got left in an oven too long.
At Watford, there are fresh-baked cherry scones for breakfast every day if you want them. And again in the afternoon with tea. We have tea in the dining hall after our lessons, before clubs and football and homework.
I always have tea with Penelope and Agatha, and I’m the only one of us who ever eats the scones. “Dinner is in two hours, Simon,” Agatha will tsk at me, even after all these years. Once Penelope tried to calculate how many scones I’ve eaten since we started at Watford, but she got bored before she got to the answer.
I just can’t pass the scones up if they’re there. They’re soft and light and a little bit salty. Sometimes I dream about them.
No. 2—Penelope
This spot on the list used to belong to “roast beef.” But a few years back, I decided to limit myself to one food item. Otherwise the list turns into the food song from Oliver!, and I get so hungry, my stomach cramps.
I should maybe rank Agatha higher than Penelope; Agatha is my girlfriend. But Penelope made the list first. She befriended me in my first week at school, during our Magic Words lesson.
I didn’t know what to make of her when we met—a chubby little girl with light brown skin and bright red hair. She was wearing pointy spectacles, the kind you’d wear if you were going as a witch to a fancy dress party, and there was a giant purple ring weighing down her right hand. She was trying to help me with an assignment, and I think I was just staring at her.
“I know you’re Simon Snow,” she said. “My mum told me you’d be here. She says you’re really powerful, probably more powerful than me. I’m Penelope Bunce.”
“I didn’t know someone like you could be named Penelope,” I said. Stupidly. (Everything I said that year was stupid.)
She wrinkled her nose. “What should ‘someone like me’ be named?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know. Other girls I’d met who looked like her were named Saanvi or Aditi—and they definitely weren’t ginger. “Saanvi?”
“Someone like me can be named anything,” Penelope said.
“Oh,” I said. “Right, sorry.”
“And we can do whatever we want with our hair.” She turned back to the assignment, flipping her red ponytail. “It’s impolite to stare, you know, even at your friends.”
“Are we friends?” I asked her. More surprised than anything else.
“I’m helping you with your lesson, aren’t I?”
She was. She’d just helped me shrink a football to the size of a marble.
“I thought you were helping me because I’m thick,” I said.
“Everyone’s thick,” she replied. “I’m helping you because I like you.”
It turned out she’d accidentally turned her hair that colour, trying out a new spell—but she wore it red all of first year. The next year, she tried blue.
Penelope’s mum is Indian, and her dad is English—actually, they’re both English; the Indian side of her family has been in London for ages. She told me later that her parents had told her to steer clear of me at school. “My mum said that nobody really knew where you came from. And that you might be dangerous.”
“Why didn’t you listen to her?” I asked.
“Because nobody knew where you came from, Simon! And you might be dangerous!”
“You have the worst survival instincts.”
“Also, I felt sorry for you,” she said. “You were holding your wand backwards.”
I miss Penny every summer, even when I tell myself not to. The Mage says no one can write to me or call me over the holidays, but Penny still finds ways to send messages: Once she possessed the old man down at the shop, the one who forgets to put in his teeth—she talked right through him. It was nice to hear from her and everything, but it was so disturbing that I asked her not to do it again, unless there was an emergency.