Chapter Two - Relatively Normal
To the untrained eye, Mina McKinnon appeared to be nothing short of a normal 23-year-old woman. She was perhaps a little more friendly and easily impressed by people willing to travel by airplane than your average American woman, but to the random passerby, she looked like your average young, bouncy, strapped for cash graduate student. And in many ways, she was. For example, on an evening in late May, Mina could be found at a small French bistro somewhere in Los Angeles, on a date with a rather attractive young man by the name of Bob Smith.
“So, what do you do for a living?” Mina inquired, as people typically do on first dates.
“I’m in construction.” Bob took a drink of his water so violently that the man seated at the table next to them stared. Mina just assumed the question had been difficult for him to answer and he had needed to rehydrate as quickly as possible.
“Uh huh. Interesting.” She pulled out a notepad and pen and quickly scribbled Bob’s name, height (6'3), hair color (brown), eye color (brown), and the word “construction” on it, something that people do not typically do on first dates. Her companion’s brow furrowed slightly, but he let the odd behavior pass, due to the fact that he hadn’t been on a date in at least a couple of weeks and Mina had nice legs.
“Yeah.” He paused to grunt. “What do you do?”
“Oh, well, actually I’m in grad school right now, working on my Master’s.” She pursed her lips together and eyed her date pensively as though contemplating which question would be best to ask him next.
“Oh yeah? What are you studying?” Bob seemed genuinely interested, which shocked Mina slightly. She took note of his interest on her notepad.
“Non-magic studies with an emphasis in magic/non-magic relations,” she informed him nonchalantly, taking a sip of her own water and glancing over her cup to observe the reaction of the man seated across from her.
“Oh.” His brow furrowed again in confusion. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that I study the relationships between people like myself, that is to say, witches and wizards and other magical creatures, and people like you who, well...don’t have an inclination towards the magical, I guess.” She said all this as though it were pretty straight forward and self-explanatory. Bob frowned for a moment, then chuckled.
“You almost had me for a minute there. ‘Non-magic studies with an emphasis in magic/non-magic relations.’ Good one.” He shook his head and laughed a bit more before taking another gulp of his water. Mina was unfazed, her face still completely serious.
“I wasn’t kidding,” she informed him simply. “I’m a witch and I am studying magic/non-magic relations at Wigglseworth University. ”
“Yeah. Right.” Bob grinned. “And I bet you went to Hogwarts too, huh?” Mina finally laughed along at this.
“Don’t be silly. Hogwarts isn’t a real place. I went to Evans Preparatory School for the Magically Gifted.” As she finished talking, Mina realized that the man at the table next to them was staring at her, apparently eavesdropping on their conversation and looking just as baffled as her date. She smiled brightly at him and turned back to Bob, who had lost his smile once again.
“You’re not kidding,” he realized aloud. She shook her head.
“Nope.”
His face went white. She jotted a few notes on her notepad.
***
“Ivy! I’m back!” Mina called to her cousin as she stepped into their first-floor apartment. A short blonde emerged from the kitchen, her hair tied back and hands clad in yellow rubber gloves.
“Wow, you’re back early. Want to clean the kitchen for me?” she requested immediately.
“Sure.” Mina pulled her wand out of her purse and flicked it in the direction of the kitchen. The dirty dishes immediately began cleaning themselves as the broom swept itself across the floor. Ivy sighed in relief.
“Thanks. Your way is so much easier.” She lowered herself down onto the couch next to her cousin who had just done the same. “How was your date?”
“Well,” Mina began with a sigh as she pulled her strappy black heels off her feet. “Kind of a bust, really. I guess it was successful from a research standpoint, but it’s kind of getting boring how every guy reacts almost exactly how I expect him to. It would make this whole thing a lot more interesting if at least one of them was like, ‘Witch, huh? That’s cool.’” She did her best impression of a male voice, prompting a giggle from her companion. “Seriously. They all freak out like I just told them I was planning to eat their children. Which is exactly what I expect them to do.”
Mina attended a university on a small island off the coast of Maine, but she was spending the summer in Los Angeles with Ivy to conduct research on romantic relationships between witches and wizards and their non-magic counterparts. Her original hypothesis had been that the longer a couple was in a relationship before the non-magic one found out that their significant other was a witch, the less likely they were to abandon the relationship. For the past few weeks she had been testing this hypothesis by dating men for various lengths of time and then informing them that she was a witch. So far they had all reacted the same way: they freaked out and never called her again. It was very predictable.
“Well, people are afraid of what they don’t understand,” Ivy reasoned with a shrug. “And it’s not like any of these guys even know witches exist before you tell them you are one. It’s natural for them to be a little disturbed.”
“I guess,” Mina conceded, rolling her deep blue eyes. “Maybe I just need to find one guy and stick with him for a long time before I say anything. Then maybe he’ll fit in with my hypothesis and not dump me at the first sign of magic.”
“Doubtful.” Ivy snickered, tossing her blonde hair behind one shoulder. “Listen, we need some food. Want to go grocery shopping with me?”
“Sure. Just let me get out of these clothes and into something more comfortable.”
***
“Radishes are a weird color,” Mina observed, squinting at the vegetables in her hand.
“They’re red,” Ivy replied, clearly not understanding what her cousin found weird about this.
“Right. But name one other vegetable that’s red. Hmm? You can’t, can you?” She tapped her temple knowingly.
“Tomatoes.”
“Tomatoes aren’t vegetables, technically. They’re fruit.” She paused to smell the radishes, a pensive expression on her face. Ivy looked about ready to burst into laughter.
“What are you doing?” she asked, suppressing the smile that was fighting to appear on her face.
“Uhhh...smelling them,” Mina replied in an obvious tone. “I think they’re kind of dodgy. Have a smell.” She stuck the vegetables in her cousin’s face and this was too much for the blonde. She exploded into giggles, prompting Mina to first look insulted and then join her in her laughter. “I don’t know why we’re laughing,” she admitted through her giggles.
“Because you are weird. Even for a witch,” Ivy replied, sticking her tongue out at her raven-haired counterpart and grabbing the radishes from her as her laughter subsided. Mina just shrugged and they continued down the produce aisle.
“You say I’m weird, but you want know what’s weird about these people?” she inquired of Ivy as she snatched the radishes back with one hand and gestured towards the other customers around them.
“A lot of things, but I bet you’re about to tell me what you think is weird about them.”
“They’re so oblivious,” Mina stated and she pointed to a red-headed woman across the aisle from them who was looking through her cart seeming befuddled. Mina lowered her voice to a whisper. “Like that lady right there. I put a Vanishing Charm on her lettuce as I passed just to see if she would notice, and look...she’s just assumed that she never had one and she’s getting another. It doesn’t even occur to her that it’s just disappeared.”
“That’s so mean!” Ivy exclaimed in disbelief.
“It’s not mean, it’s science.”
“How is that science?”
“Social science, you know. Studying people and stuff.” Mina nodded as if this settled the matter. Ivy shook her head.
“No wonder non-magics are scared of witches.”
“Because we vanish their lettuce to study their behavior?”
Ivy seemed ready to respond with a witty quip, but the conversation was abruptly interrupted by a tall man with curly hair who chose that moment to walk backwards, bumping into Mina and knocking her radishes to the floor.
“Aw, shit. Sorry!” he exclaimed, immediately scrambling to pick up the radishes before Mina or Ivy had much of a chance to react.
“Oh, it’s no problem,” Mina finally replied with a laugh, bending down to take the red vegetables from him. Their eyes locked briefly and she got the sudden feeling that he was staring at her for an unnecessarily long amount of time. She smiled and stood up. “Thanks.”
“Yeah. Sorry,” the man apologized again. The brunette next to him was smirking, Mina noticed.
“It’s okay,” she assured him once more before she and Ivy passed him and continued on their way.
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