One last year. Only one. Last chance. In their last year of mundane primary, the students at Inyanga's school, Praịmarị Atọ, knew class was a competition to get into magician's college. 

Every day of her final year of primary, Inyanga ticked off a calendar box and conducted a little ritual: destroying a pamphlet of one non-magical university.

Her school had given out enough pamphlets for her to burn, rip, tear, run over with her moto, flush, drown or scrunch one to smithereens every day, and so, as she munched breakfast in the family kitchen each day with Mama on one side and Grandmama Amandla on the other, two decisions must be made: which brochure and which method of annihilation?

Would it be Literature at Corsicaa and umama's paper shredding macchina, or HR at Fulu burned over the sink into ashes? She would let the water carry them far away down the drain, rather than let the mess disrupt umama's pristine kitchen. One day she had shoveled toast down held in one hand while the other hand used a thick black pen to black out every square centimeter of a non-magical engineering program at Taiyi School of Paper Products: "We Design Boxes, Envelopes, and Seals for Tomorrow's Mundane Needs."

Like there would be a need for non-magical paper tomorrow when Constellation development brought starpage prices down every year. Like she was going to dream that small. Paper. One day Constellation was going to go to the moon, and the mundane population was still working on perfecting the best paper production process.

With her own fingers she had shredded to bits "Customer Service: Learn to Truly Connect" at Tapecue College, with nails sparkling white and dazzling aqua blue (a birthday treat from Amafu, they both went to the magician's salon).

That one had earned a head shake and a tongue click from umama. "I have no doubt you'll grain admittance at Constellation Univasiti, but do you have to act as if you're above the hard work the rest of us do?"

Ouch, that had stung. Kyuma had a way with always speaking truth so that you knew aeh wasn't aiming to hurt, wasn't mad. It's just aeh wasn't going to let you go about your day until your behavior has been illuminated, brought into the light, checked, and course corrected.

Praịmarị Atọ was a one-room school on the third story of a red brick building on Aria. A corner of the grid of desks where Inyanga's year sat, in a six by five block of desks, faced the board and away from the lower year kids who filled the room with squeals during quiet time, and the older ones filled it with whispering and nervous foot-tapping, pencil drumming, bored sighs — distinct noises coming from the blocks of students in each grade.

The students at Praịmarị Atọ non-magical school competed to sit in the front, and when they did, they sat up straight, held hands high for every question, wore their glasses if they needed them to see the board, and competed for top grades.

The front rows of desks didn't come first come first served; who could sit nearest Maestra Alma would be determined each week by a point system, and the rankings provided an easy to see and remember pecking order that reminded the students who would be accepted to the best colleges and universities, though only one school, the magicians college, was on every mind. And those ranks would change fast.

For three weeks Inyanga had sat front row center, and then she fell all the way back to fourth row.

At the same time she was climbing her way back up to third, Amafu made it to the front for the first time, and from the end of the row she looked back and beamed, sitting sideways. Iwu and Esperanza were up there too, another couple of longshots, and the lovely yet mute shy Ahihia had yet to be unseated from the other end of the row. As Inyanga poured every ounce of energy into dethroning one of them, fingers crossed it wasn't Amafu so they'd be up there together, Inyanga felt a little guilty.

But this was her dream. Hers. How she could be expected to accept a mundane education and career at this point, she certainly didn't know. Live forever and never learn magic? It was unfathomable. The thought made her stomach sick.

Even though she would live forever, the school almost never accepted anyone except straight out of primary — and that was a whole issue, so unfair, when she got to be a hundred would she not be smarter than she was at nineteen? How about at four hundred, or nine hundred, or two thousand?

If she kept learning, kept studying, surely the passing years would make her a more ideal candidate for a magician's license, not less. Maybe it would change in a hundred years or a thousand, but right now it was as everyone said: "That's just the way it is."

Magicians college admissions happens after the last year of primary, they said. That's all she would get. Unless she broke the world apart, and reordered how it all worked, which was pretty much what she planned to do at this point if she didn't get in.

And the other thing "they" said at Praịmarị Atọ was more of a question. "They" always asked: "How many will get in?" Because here's the thing: Inyanga's class at Ato Primary is the most competitive in generations. That was why it got so hard for Inyanga to hold on to her front row seat. The race for top marks was tight, not between two students or three, but between all of them. The whole class. It seemed as if they were a year of gifted scholars and prodigies — but no way was Constellation Univasiti going to admit thirty of them.

Some days Inyanga tried to motivate everyone, when they were losing hope. "I bet all of us get in," she would say.

"Never going to happen," Amafu had lamented over a hundred school lunches.

When they got back from lunch, of course everyone talked about the one thing Inyanga didn't want to talk about: who would get in.

"Ahihia? Hell and starsfire no, didn't you see her faceplant the last spell scavenge and choke at debate on the stage? They aren't going to take a student with performance anxiety, not from Atọ."

"How can you say that? She has a perfect mark in every subject," said Iwu.

"Who doesn't?" said Esperanza.

Iwu's mouth opened and then closed again, and then Esperanza, catching it and for sure aware that Iwu did not have a perfect score in every subject, rolled her eyes with a mean smile and said, "All of us have perfect grades, starfire brains. If they took everyone with straight cents, what would the pre-spell decathlons and the spell chases be for? Extracurriculars are todo, ya? That's why I'm not going to get in — I did the scuola paper and wiequi stones club, that's not impressing anyone at the universidad board."

Esperanza acted like she didn't even want to get into Constellation University. Her chin raised a little higher when she added, "I won't give up writing poetry for anything, not even to go to magicians' college. And I'm all right with that."

"You're going to be a poet?" said Iwu. "Forever? Nobody pays for that, nobody hires a poet, you'll never make any money. No starborn for you."

"I don't want money and I don't plan on having children, thanks."

"How will you support yourself, live with your madre forever? Eternal life in your parens' basement?" The debate raged on and on until Esperanza's eyes began to glisten, but she would not, could not, give up her pride and joy for poesy.

"I want to write, and that's it. If I have to mop floors non-magically a mano all the millions of years of my life in order to write every day, I'll do it."

Iwu gave her a mocking bow. "Thank you for removing yourself from the competition, your sacrifice is noted."

Inyanga noticed Iwu never felt confident in herself, that was why she didn't brag that she would get in.

Like a big sister Inyanga put her hand on the shorter girl's shoulder, and she said, "You can get in. There has never been any formal ruling that states magicians' college can only take one of us; if ten of us did exceedingly incomparably well, they would take all ten."

Amafu said, "Yes, that is true, but they have never taken more than one student from Ato."

"Is that true?" said Inyanga. "It can't be."

Iwu said, "Never have, never will." 

"You can't give up," said Inyanga.

"Sure can," said Iwu. "Out of the three large primaries in Soliara, Ato has only ever sent one student from each graduating class to magicians' college — and not even every year has an Ato student gotten in. The classes at Constellation Univasiti almost entirely come from the two big schools: Soliara One Primary, and Scuola Primario Due. Everybody knows that."

"How can everybody know that if I don't know that?" said Inyanga.

"Maybe if you ever took your head out of your book, you would know things."

"I know things because I read books."

"Some things can only be learned by eavesdropping. No book will tell you."

"Eavesdropping? Why didn't someone just tell me?"

Turns out Sahan had been listening from the next table, because she turned around and said, "The adults don't want to put any pressure on us. Or, any more pressure, more like."

The students at Inyanga's school all knew it was a competition, but no one ever told Inyanga. Only one student from their mundane primary, at most, ever got into magicians' college? How was she just learning this now?

"Last year's class had Neshama, Canción, Ushi Gloriam and Sya Satiri. I always figured those four all got in. Didn't they all go?" she asked.

"Nope," said Amafu. "Sya and Ushi didn't get in. Not all Gloriams and Satiris go to Magicians College."

"Since when?"

"Since there are dozens of Gloriam and Satiri cousins, and Soliaris, and Auras, and Neros, and Potestases, all from those rich old families—"

"Like the one your dad is from, Little Miss Satiri-Luzulu—"

"—And not all of them are all that smart. Canción Luz, on the other hand, was top of the class, way smarter than those other girls. And she went. She's the only one from Ato, though."

"What about Neshama?"

"Waitlisted, for a one-year magical cosmetology program. Sabra says her sister is doing pre-magic at Soliara Primary One this year, and after she finishes cosmetology, she'll be a hairstylist magician."

"Good for her — and good for us, maybe she'll give us the friends-of-her-little-sister discount."

"But wouldn't you hate it if you got into Constellation Univasiti and went to class to learn magic — but only for how to do people's hair?"

"I guess so. I want to pioneer magic to get Soliari into space, or fix the glitches with time travel, or solve the immortal animus problem — but better hairstyling magic than nothing. It's a nice fit for Neshama, though; she's already an artist when she's working with mundane styles."

"Ten solidae says only you get in," said Amafu, and her joke stung right in the eyes, like a slap of water across Inyanga's eyeballs. What infused her joke was exactly what made Amafu such a good comedian — constant unrelenting tension.

There was something odd, uncharacteristic, about how Amafu searched Inyanga's eyes for a reaction. She wasn't one to check other's faces to see how they reacted to her jokes or anything else she said.

Under her searching eyes Inyanga forced a laugh.

What made Inyanga laugh also made her want to cry. "What are you saying? You're coming with me." How dare she. Inyanga's throat was tight as she looked forward at the board, head held high for both of them.

Holding itself up in denial for both of them.

Their whole lives they had talked like both of them would go learn magic together. Yet one would think if Inyanga got in, Amafu wouldn't, and if Amafu got in, Inyanga wouldn't. And yet the girls had never, ever talked about it, until this here joke when Amafu admitted there was a chance she might not get in, for the first time in their lives, and then she searched Inyanga's face to see how she would react to that idea.

Thank you for reading Inyanga's Star!