People talk about Jada’s mom. They say all the things you’d expect them to say about a woman who has ten kids by four different fathers. Stupid. Crazy. Slut. Irresponsible. Welfare queen. They don’t understand. They don’t know that she just wants to see one of her kids survive to adulthood, and she’s trying her hardest, and it isn’t enough. She’s secured spots in the Scholomance for her two eldest children, Frank and Jada; the other eight have to do without. She doesn’t forget, even for a second, that it may still be the case that all of them die.

They talk about Frank and Jada (although of course most of them call her—”him”—by another name), too. On the one hand, they pull the school’s test score average up significantly. Not just with their own scores, though those are good, but through their habit of befriending and tutoring every immigrant kid, to practice their languages. They speak more languages than any elementary schooler their teachers have ever met.

On the other hand, they have discipline problems. Frank picks fights with everyone (who insults his mother or gets away with picking on a younger and smaller kid). Jada crossdresses and shuns her fellow boys in favor of the girls and refuses to answer to her legal name (because she is a girl, of course). Both of them, despite their stellar test scores, blow off their homework, citing “more important things to study for” (they are right). Their father, Frank Jones Sr., had been a gangster and drug dealer; his father, Paul Jones, had been a corrupt businessman and politician. Two generations of bad men who ended up behind bars, and Frank and Jada sure to follow. What was their mother thinking?

(She was thinking her kids would need good genes if they were gonna grow up smart, strong, tough, and mean enough to survive the Scholomance.)

Frank is a big guy—a disadvantage early on, but an advantage later, especially since it’s all muscle. His affinity is for magic that upgrades a person’s capabilities in some way; he’s going for artificing track with it. He’s charming enough to inspire loyalty from people, and honorable enough to keep it. Jada keeps all that in mind as she thinks about what could have happened to Frank over the last year. She hopes he’s there to welcome her to school.

Jada’s own affinity is healing. Her mother impresses upon her what an advantage this is in recruiting allies. If someone is hurt and needs help urgently, you can give it, and they will be in your debt. Jada isn’t the sort of person to think in those terms naturally, in another life she might have seen helping people as its own reward, but she sees her mom’s point. She needs to survive if she’s going to help anyone at all.

She’s going languages track; she entered elementary school already knowing English, Spanish, and Mandarin; she has since picked up French, Russian, and Arabic. Learning so many unrelated languages has pushed her brain to its absolute limit, but she’s determined that her mother’s effort in securing her a Scholomance slot will not go to waste. Her mom didn’t tell her to lose weight ahead of induction, but she did anyway. She can’t keep up this workout routine forever, but she doesn’t need to, she just needs to keep the pounds off long enough to have room for her own gear on top of the letters that are her price of admission.

Her mom had tried to dissuade her, when she first started showing signs of being trans. She gave up on that plan when it became clear it was killing Jada even before the Scholomance could. Instead, she called in some favors from a doctor she knew when Jada turned thirteen. The doctor froze sperm samples, then gave Jada an HRT implant. Jada includes more pellets and tools to implant them in her gear.

Jada gathers her eight younger siblings (half-siblings, the haters would remind her) to speak to them before induction.

“Now, you be good when I’m gone. Don’t give Mom too much trouble caring for you without me and Frank. And always remember that I love you.”

Her siblings cling to her tearfully as long as they can, until she vanishes.