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She was just sitting there on the roof of the building, gazing out at the stars silhouetted by the moon, Bernard was sure that he did not know who it was; because he could not imagine any of the girls that he knew well sitting out on the roof. At least, not on the roof of the school in December on the one night that happened to be clear enough to gaze out at the stars; because it was still freezing cold. Bernard was sure that it was an ice magia who could stand the cold or a fire magia who could heat themselves up; and he knew neither of the two.

In fact, all the girls that Bernard did know were younger than him and his friends, all but one of whom was still unsorted. The one who was sorted was actually also in the first in the class to sort, and was now hailed as one of the coolest people in school since he was no longer invisible. He could only be caught with Bernard because the two of them happened to share a room. A room that Bernard was not in at the moment, but he had a good reason to be out past the posted curfew.

Bernard happened to be a photo-journalist, reporter, and an editor of the school newspaper; but that was because there were only two people that were helping him work on the paper in addition to the teacher that ran it. The truth was, they all had the triple title that Bernard had, but that did not keep his parents form being any less proud of their son and his achievements. Their hope was that after he learned to control his element, he would go home and live a normal human life; and if he choose to be a journalist then that made it all the better.

At first Bernard had to plead to be put into the school before he sorted; he’d found out that they had been getting letters from the school since he was supposed to start kindergarten, but his parents wanted him to have a normal education. When Bernard turned 10years old, he begged for his parents to finally allow him to go to the Academy so that when he finally did sort he would not be totally friendless starting his first year there. After a while, his parents relented.

It turned out that coming at the age of ten had been a good idea. Bernard, as though his name had doomed him, grew up a little awkward but he was able to keep his core group of friends because they had just always been there. That was the best part of the Academy. Though new faces showed up just about every year, the old ones never really went away. They just sorted into a different element.

Bernard’s roommate was a perfect example. It was no surprise to anyone that he’d sorted into the earth element, but what was surprising was that he sorted the night after his fourteenth birthday which just happened to be in August. He was the first freshman to join the Elemental training classes, and Bernard was just lucky that the two had been assigned the same room so he didn’t get to stop talking to him completely. Because it was an unwritten rule in every school; once a geek turns popular, he doesn’t talk to his geek friends anymore.

Anyway, more and more of Bernard’s classmates were sorting, so Bernard was asked to write an article in the school paper about what an awkward transition this can be for students. He’d spent the past couple of weeks finding people from each element and asking them about their own sorting experiences and what it was like afterwards. The key was to not only get someone from each element, but also to get a different story from each one; someone who it took hours to realize that they had sorted and someone who had realized what was going on right away, and whatever lay in between the two or were outside of the pretty little lines that Bernard had drawn up in his head.

It was the most fun piece that Bernard had been working on in a long time; and the only thing that was wrong with it, in his mind, was the two elements that he absolutely knew for sure that he was missing. Ligera-the element of light, and Oscuros-the element of darkness. Bernard had a feeling that there was at least one of each somewhere at the school, but the Ligera hid themselves for fear of being discovered, and Oscuros hid themselves so that no one would fear discovering them. At least that was Bernard’s personal feeling. He had hoped that there were some around that weren’t actually as bad as people believed that they were.

The piece was finished though, the deadline for it being the next day and Bernard having stayed up most the night in the library to finish it. Bernard had been able to get special permission to stay up and hammer it out from the librarian who was flattered when Bernard had asked her for her own sorting story. It turned out that hers was a good one, and he was able to use it in his paper in place of one that had pretty much been a repeat of another that he was already planning to write. Despite the fact that he had done it Bernard could not help but feel the need to go up and ask the girl about her sorting experience.

At least, the long hair that she let blow around in the wind made him think it was a girl, because other than that she was just a blob of warm sweatshirts and sweats. Trying to get the courage to get up on the roof and tell himself that it was worth it for another exciting story, he went inside the building and used the elevator to get to the top floor. From there, Bernard would have to climb up on to the roof from the stairwell.

The increased altitude along with the shock of walking back into the cold after coming in contact with a heater made Bernard feel like daggers were hitting his unprotected hands. Why could he never bother to put on gloves? He fetched them out of his jacket pocket and tried to pull them on his quickly numbing hands. Finally he managed, but by the time he did he was discovered.

“You aren’t supposed to be up right now,” the hypocritical female who had been sitting on the snow covered roof pointed out. Bernard could see her footsteps leading to where she had been sitting before he had gotten there. There was limited light, but even so Bernard could tell that her eyes were brown.

“Oh,” he said. “You aren’t sorted.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” she demanded, folding her arms into her chest, her lips turned down into a pout.

She was a tiny little thing, about five inches shorter than Bernard, who was hardly considered tall by his friends’ standards. Somehow he had missed out on his father’s tall and muscular gene. Anyway, her hair was a brown-dark red and freckles dusted her nose. Bernard got the feeling that this was not the first time that she had been sitting out on the roof to look at the stars, it was merely the first time that she had been caught doing so. He also got the impression that she daydreamed in class a lot, and that she was a ton of fun if her friends could just get her to sit down and focus.

A school journalist Bernard might be, but fiction writing was his real passion, and he had a habit of making a fictional character based on a person’s looks. The only real problem with it was that Bernard tended to be disappointed when the real thing did not match up to his imaginings. Yet something in him still could not help it, and this same something told him that she’s the kind of girl that he would like to go on a life changing adventure with.

“Nothing,” Bernard answered quickly, shaking his head wildly trying to make sure that he had not offended her. He was sure that he had seen her around before, and that she was younger than he was and a year behind because he had not seen her in any of his classes. “Except I’m writing an article for the school paper. I saw you sitting out here and figured that anyone…” he let his voice trail off because he was sure that he had been about to insult her again by calling her ‘weird.’

“Weird enough to sit on the roof had to have a weird story to tell about sorting?” she offered, raising an eyebrow.

She cut him to the quick. Bernard prided himself on being good with words, but when he failed them he was not sure what to do, and they were certainly failing him now. She was smart, she was cool, and she was really pretty unless the moonlight was playing tricks on him. His hormones were screaming in frustration with his gentleman upbringing.

“I was trying to find a nicer way to put it,” Bernard replied, swallowing down his own spit in order to speak again. He felt like he was choking under the weight of his own thoughts, and the pressure not to look like a total idiot in front of her.

“That’s sensitive of you,” she retorted, rolling her eyes, clearly not buying it.

Bernard took a mental note, she thought that he was being cool and cocky which she did not appreciate because she must have been hurt by someone who displayed those two attributes. But Bernard did not know what else to do. He could not act like a total geek in front of her, and he did not want to just leave her because that would seem like he only wanted her for the interview.

“Maybe I’ll do a follow up story,” Bernard informed her with a shrug. “Once you’re sorted.”

“Aren’t you worried about your own sorting?” she snapped at him, and Bernard raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“I hardly think that worried is the appropriate response to being sorted…” Bernard tried to tell her, but she shook her head.

“A friend of mine sorted today,” she told him. “She and her boyfriend had a fight, and she threw her lunch at him—half a bowl of chili—and it burst into flames just before it left her hand. He’s got third degree burns and had to go to the hospital.”

“I heard about that,” Bernard said with a flinch, but who was he kidding? The whole school had heard about that, and out of sensitivity for the poor girl—as well as self-protection instincts—he did not run that particular sorting story in his paper. “How is your friend doing?”

“The one who was burnt, or the one who was sorted?” she demanded to know.

“Well, I was more concerned about the one who had sorted,” Bernard answered. “The other has doctors and stuff to look after him, he’ll be fine, but she needs a friend that isn’t going to tease her about what happened, at least not until she’s ready to be teased about it. I’ve had embarrassing moments before where someone got hurt and everyone teased or lectured me about it afterwards. That’s rough.”

“You aren’t supposed to tell a girl that you like that you’re a geek,” she lectured with a half-laugh half-sigh as she shook her head. “But thanks for understanding, she said she’ll be okay.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” Bernard answered, rolling his eyes even though he had known that tip already. It did not mean that he was any better at not letting it slip. “But we all turn out okay, in the end, just don’t tease her about it until she jokes about it first, okay? Even if it takes weeks.”

“I think I can do that, thanks,” she said, tilting her head and running her eyes up and down Bernard as though she were really looking at him for the first time.

“What?” he demanded. “What am I doing wrong now?”

“Nothing, I just was up here wishing that I knew what to do to help my friend, and then you come up here and give me specific instructions that I really think will help her,” she informed him. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a wish come true before, and if I have it was never so quickly.”

“Maybe you’ve just been wishing for all the wrong things.” Bernard suggested.

“Maybe,” she shrugged. They stood there in silence for a moment, it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was not totally awkward either. Bernard felt inclined to say something but at the same time he was content just looking at her big brown eyes some more. “Listen,” she said. “Thank you, for the help. My name’s Larissa Kennedy; and I expect you to get back to me on that follow up story after I sort, okay? It was great talking to you, but we should both get to bed.”

“Bernard,” he responded. “Lawson,” he added when he realized that she had given him her last name and he had failed to do the same. “I’ll walk down with you, since I live in a different building.”

“I should hope so, since you’re a boy,” she giggled, and Bernard fell in love with the sound though it made his ears burn and turn red because she had caught him making another mistake.

They walked down to the elevator together, and she got off on the third floor. Bernard was sad to be riding it on his own again; but he felt something growing inside of him. It was more than just hormones, Bernard decided, it was more than just the desire to stop the elevator and walk Larissa to her room just to have a few more moments with her. He felt a little sinister, as if some bubble of innocence inside of him had popped.

Bernard went into the room, and found that though it was completely dark in there because none of the lights were on, it might as well have been as bright as it was in the hallway because he could still see. Confused, Bernard looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were a darker shade of grey than they had been before. His jaw dropped. Did that mean that he was sorting? That had to have meant that he was sorting…but the sinister feeling? The being able to see in the dark?

He swallowed hard. He could not have possibly been sorting into the Oscuros element, because that meant that all his parents’ hopes of him being normal were dashed. If Oscuros were the monsters that everyone made them out to be, that meant that once he fully sorted there would be no going home. There would be no normal life. It would mean that he would constantly be looking for someone to taint, to control…

Those thoughts, Bernard decided, would come soon enough. He would allow himself to deal with those problems once he became fully sorted, since any solutions that Bernard came up with now would just be reworked then anyway since an Oscuros would never listen to someone that was unsorted, even if it was them a few days beforehand. Instead, Bernard took out a blank journal that he had been saving to use for the after math of a truly tragic event or a new story that he had to write down. This belonged under the ‘truly tragic’ category.

A record of my last days as a normal unsorted kid Bernard began to write. He wrote the article that he had already written and turned in again, word for word. These things I have written for the school paper. They are the stories of other people who were lucky that they were not sorting into the element that I have been chosen to sort into. I’m certain right now, that I am going to become an Oscuros. I believe this because though it is pitch black in the room that my roommate and I share it might as well be the middle of the day. I feel as though something evil has entered my heart, and is even now corrupting me, convincing me that it is better to be dark and powerful than it is to be the weakling geek that cannot even talk to a girl correctly.
A girl; funny that I mention her now. I can only assume that the cause of my sorting was her, that somehow it was flirting which put the seeds of sorting in me. I do not know why it did not happen all at once, but I am glad that it did not. I am glad that I have some time, at least, to tell my story…

Bernard stayed up the whole night writing his story in that journal, his whole story. Everything that he had been doing before he sorted, everything that he had hoped to do after he had sorted before he even knew what element he was going to be sorted into. He wrote down everything that he feared now that he was sorting and how that fear was giving way to the growing sense of excitement and anticipation.

I am fearful because of the only thing I know for sure, Bernard wrote. I know for sure that myself and my world will not ever be the same. And, it is the thing that excites me most. Gone will be the geek, the person that people make fun of. Gone will be the guy that has to act cool in order to get Larissa’s attention. Gone! Gone…