Nolan sat down. The movement was a little awkward, because prosthetics were designed specifically to malfunction at inopportune moments. His leg didn’t malfunction per se, but even with the enchantments to make it act like a real leg it was still not the best at bending movements. Still, it beat using the crutches in terms of looking like a biped. He was faster on crutches and didn’t have to mess with uncooperative fake joints, but at the cost of first impressions. No thanks.

The girl at the table wasn’t American but that was as far as Nolan could guess from her accent. It was like British but not. Well, ‘international’ was in the school’s name. They probably had people from all over. Nolan knew Britain had its own magic school that used to be in the IWCE (it had been discussed as a place to send Nolan, but apparently they didn’t take Americans in the middle of the school year or something, and also Nolan hadn’t wanted to leave Oklahoma let alone the country) but maybe there was some reason not to go there even if you were British.

His tablemate hadn’t taken any food but Nolan was hungry so he grabbed a cheeseburger off the plate in the middle of the table and took a bite. It was a good burger, but not, like, in the top twenty burgers he’d ever eaten. At home his mother made burgers after Nolan and his dad went hunting, and she mixed green onions, bacon, mustard, and egg yolks in with the ground elk or venison before they grilled them. And she fried pickles to put on top of the burgers and the cheese melted all over them and now he wanted to eat one, dang. He’d have to settle for the normal cheeseburger he had.

It was really nice of her to offer him a cookie. He was going to accept but then she described it. Nolan didn’t bake but he was pretty sure that cookies needed flour and sugar and eggs and milk. “But those are all the things that go in a cookie,” he said, curiously peering into the bag. “If you don’t put them in, then is it even still a cookie?”