Prip. I scrambled to grab my ID, but it was already out of reach. My first day--no, my first ten minutes--and I was already screwed. Who else lost their ID, on the invisirails, on their first day of school? I couldn't even call Piper for help.

Or maybe I could. Grandma said that phones would work here. But what if I ended up dropping my whole backpack trying to get my cell phone? I was pretty sure the invisirails would stop eventually. Maybe I should just wait.

I get- Eva started to jump off my shoulder, but I grabbed her.

"Don't, you might get lost or run into someone else flying."

There weren't any stops. People just jumped off whenever they wanted to. Maybe I should risk taking out my phone or sending Eva to get help. Either way, I should have a plan. If I just grabbed at my backpack and unzipped it, things were sure to fly out. If Eva got caught up in the wind of this invisirail, she could get seriously hurt.

Something strange caught my eye.

What was that? It was flying toward me at an incredible speed. Small, transparent, glowing with hovering gold letters--it was my ID. It flew up and attached itself to the collar of my shirt. Apparently, that was a zipcord. An invisible, automatic puppy leash for my ID. They really did think of everything here.

I left it attached to my collar. It wasn't going anywhere. After a minute or two, gold light flashed, and I was on solid ground again. I stumbled off of the patch of cobblestone I'd landed on. If I stayed too long, I might have someone else land on top of me. The landing pad was directly to the left of a skyscraper with Beginning Magic over the door.

A little later, Piper appeared on the cobblestone patch.

"Any trouble getting here?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Not really."

Eva gave me an accusing look.

"Maybe it was a little troublesome. But we're here, so it wasn't too traumatizing." I nodded at the building. "How am I supposed to find my classroom? It's huge."

"Easy peasy. Just click on the map icon, then search for the classroom number." She skipped up the front steps to the Beginning Magic Building.

I followed her inside, messing with my ID. As soon as I found the right classroom, I clicked on it, and a green line appeared on the floor, stretching down the wide, marble-floored hallway. I stepped on the line. It curved to go over my foot. When I moved my foot away, the line flattened.

"Cool, right?" Piper had her ID out, too, and she seemed to be following the same line I was.

"Can everyone see it?"

"No, just you. Actually, no one can see anything that's displayed on your ID unless they have a special telepathic reader. Don't think you can sneak movies during lecture, though. Teachers can activate a blocker that disables everything but the basic ID features while you're in their class."

"Smart." I moved after her down the line. A little ways along, a blue line led off from the green line. "What's that?"

"It shows where the bathroom and water fountains are, if you want to take a quick stop on the way to class. If you see a yellow line, that's going to some kind of quick food shop convenience store thing."

She paused to skip around a group of satyrs loitering along one wall. "Ooh, and if you friend anyone in the comms app, then red lines will appear leading to your friends. You can turn off the extra lines if you want, but I would keep them unless you get way too many friends and it gets confusing."

"I don't think that'll be a problem." Even before learning I was a changeling, I'd never been a sociallite. Two friends--technically three if you counted Eva--was plenty for me.

"You might be right." She shrugged. "I don't have that problem, but I've heard a lot of people do."

We followed the green line over to what looked like an elevator shaft without the elevator. The green line went into the elevator shaft and straight up.

"That's a safety hazard."

"Is it?" Piper turned around and walked backward into the shaft. She flew straight up.

I hadn't seen her click anything on her ID or say anything, so I guessed there wasn't a trick to it. If there had been one, she would've told me, right? Of course she would have.

I walked to the edge of the elevator shaft and peered in. There was another floor below this one. If I fell, it would be painful, to say the least. Piper definitely would've told me if there was a trick to this. I gritted my teeth and stepped into the shaft.

A gust of wind shot me straight up. Coming from above, a fairy maneuvered down and around me without any apparent effort. I tried to count the floors as I rose, but they were going too fast to count. Before I knew it, the wind stopped coming from below and started coming from behind. It flung me out of the shaft and back into the hall, where Piper was waiting for me.

"You're catching on." She spun around and followed the green line down the hall.

I sped up to walk beside her.

She gestured at my ID. "That's your best friend on campus. You can't get anywhere without it, and if you somehow manage to lose it, you'll be in serious trouble. It's pretty hard to lose, though. The zipcord is one of the few features that works off campus, and it hardly ever breaks. You would have to shoot it with a magic cannon to break it."

Leaning in closer, she lowered her voice. "But you're a you-know-what, which means that you deal with a lot more magic than most people. Just be careful." She stopped in front of a classroom door. "This is yours. It's only the second week, so it shouldn't be too hard to catch up. I checked, and we've both got lunch break at about the same time. Ky does, too. We usually eat at North Dining, so you can meet us there. Good luck!"

She turned to leave, then apparently realized something and turned back around. "Stick out your ID."

I stuck it out, and she tapped it with her own ID. A red friend request appeared on my ID. I accepted it.

She put her ID away. "Now you can find me, easy. Or you could always be old fashioned and call me. Oh, and one other thing. It looks like you're carrying a thousand pounds of books. Did you get a textpad?"

"Yeah, but I can't figure out how to download anything on it." The little clock in the corner of my ID said I still had a few minutes until class started, so I swung my backpack off and pulled out my textpad. It was basically a laptop-sized version of my ID. When I double tapped it, it turned from gray to transparent.

Piper took my textpad and set it on the ground. She grabbed a thick textbook in both hands. Giving me a conspiratorial look, she lifted the textbook over her head.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She grinned. "You'll see." She hurled the textbook at my textpad.

I lunged to grab it, thinking she'd gone insane, but I wasn't fast enough. The book hit my textpad and disappeared. A hovering, obviously digital version of the book appeared over the textpad.

"What the-"

Eva flew down and pecked at the textpad. She jumped on top of it and seemed disappointed when she didn't disappear inside.

Piper laughed. "Awesome, right? Just keep in mind, that only works with books. And it only works with certain books. They've got to have a certain spell on them. If you try that with a normal, unenchanted book, you would break it. Every book in the college bookstore has that kind of enchantment. The library books don't. Theft prevention, I guess."

I cautiously took another textbook out of my backpack. Grandma had ordered all my books from the college, so they should have the same enchantments on them. Eva scrambled out of the way as I let the book fall onto the textpad. It disappeared, reappearing as a virtual version.

"How do I get it back out again?"

She pointed at a red "eject" button in the corner of the textpad. "Just click that. You won't have to take it out unless you really like paper books; you can read the books, mark in them--all that stuff--with the textpad. At the end of the semester, you can return them--for the whole price, if you've purchased the textpad from the school and you haven't written in the books with a real marker or anything."

"Uh huh." I took out another book and held it higher this time before letting go. It fell like a rock and disappeared into the textpad. There was something really satisfying about watching ridiculously heavy books disappear.

"I'll just leave you to that. See you at lunch." She left with a quick wave.

I made another textbook disappear.

Someone moved past me toward the classroom door. They stopped and hissed. "What do you think you're doing here?"