Isabella’s local elementary school had decided to try something new when she was in third grade. Whoever it was that ran the place, had an idea to give the students something that wasn’t homework or some boring speech she and the other kids would have to sit through and promptly ignore completely. Isabella always thought the teachers had some kind of secret cabal meeting place or something like it to come up with ideas to make her homework worse, so when her parents told her about an email they’d gotten from the school about them hosting some kind of ‘talent show,’ she was near immediately jumping at the chance.

Her parents tried to appeal the idea to her by mentioning how she could do some of the ‘magic tricks’ she’d been practicing (She wasn’t particularly great, but she’s like eight, so cut her a little slack.) She would say that she thought it was just a trick to get more homework shoved onto her and others, but it was plainly obvious how she only said it as an excuse to try and act cool. In Isabella’s mind, it was an amazing opportunity. While her parents did some kind of techy thing for the government or something, - at least, that’s what they told her - Isabella saw her parents job as just kinda lame.

At first, she was interested because of how cool it sounded. Her parents made it sound like they were creating flying cars, but it was a “Computer Operated something something!” It sounded neat! … But then she actually got to watch them work, and realized that they just kinda type weirdly broken sentences all day. Her parents might’ve been a bit hurt when their daughter dismissed their work as ‘super lame’ and ‘not something she’d ever do,’ but again, still a kid, not very perceptive yet.

A bit afterwards, like a month or so, her parents took her out to see a ‘magic show.’ Isabella was skeptical, but couldn’t resist the urge to see if it was actually gonna be magic.

And she was immediately hooked.

There was plenty to like about the show, the tricks with a bunch of people coming out of a box when you never saw them enter, one where a guy levitated a bit, some guy lit himself on fire but also wasn't on fire, illusions, and tons more she can’t remember anymore…

But what she really liked, to her parents' surprise, were the card tricks.

After the show had ended, Isabella pestered her parents the entire ride back home about them. She wanted to learn how to do it, she said. She promised she’d commit this time, she said. The usual kind of thing you’d hear from a child trying to get their parents to give them a new toy, with the parents knowing full well the kid would forget it existed within a week.

But Isabella didn’t forget it existed, to their surprise. In fact, the fixation continued for months as she convinced them to sign up for some magic magazine, buy her a deck of cards to practice tricks with, and other such things. It was a wonderful way to keep her occupied when they needed a break, her parents soon discovered, and the fact that she was genuinely invested in it was the cherry on top.

They were starting to wonder if they had a little budding magician on their hands.

And so came along the school talent show.

Its two hour length passed almost in the blink of an eye for the parents, mostly because they didn’t actually stick around for the entire thing.

Soon after the talent show, they moved to a different area, and got their daughter into a new school.

Something they felt was necessary, as not even halfway through the talent show, their daughter came to them in tears and refused to touch her playing cards, or anything even related to magicians, ‘ever again.’

...

The rest of elementary school came and went, and soon, Isabella found her family moving once again. But rather than an incident at school causing it, this was instead related to her parent’s job. This reason would become more and more prominent as the years went on. For a reason unknown to Isabella, her parents programming job had them needing to move across the country almost every year throughout her time in middle school.

She’d tried to form friendships with her classmates, but it turns out middle school friendships don’t last very long when you’re moving across the country every single year. Normal long distance friendships are hard enough to maintain, and trying to make a middle school friendship last with that? To Isabella, it was basically impossible.

By eighth grade, she’d basically given up on trying to have any sort of social life. It was hard for her to drum up the motivation to get friends when she knew they would all forget about each other and never meet again come the end of the year. It had caused some… arguments, between her and her parents. She never won them, of course, whatever their job was was just ‘too important,’ whatever that meant.

Come high school, Isabella found herself in a completely new area once again, and she was no less irritated by it. One thing she’d picked up on over the years was how her parents seemed to be trying to get her to be independent as fast as possible. They were trying to teach her how to do all her laundry by herself, cook, clean, handiwork, yardwork, basic life stuff, taxes, the whole thing. Coinciding with that was a steadily decreasing amount of time they were at home.

Isabella had no siblings to speak of. She had no aunts, uncles, or cousins on her mothers side of the family, and her father never even talked about his side, and she’d never gotten the chance to meet either side's grandparents. And on top of all of that, she had no friends whatsoever.

Basically, she was lonely.

Homework never took long for her, she was a smart cookie, her teachers always said at the parent teacher conferences, if a bit withdrawn. But what did she do when she didn’t have any homework left?

… Well, given the day and age, she just played video games all day.

She had nothing else to fill the time with, and her parents never really got on her case for it. And for the first two years of high school, that was all she really did.

She didn’t talk to anyone, no one talked to her, and that was that.

There were people that, looking back, she wishes she took a chance on, but that time is long gone.

She’s in college now, after all.

...

Before her second year of college started, Isabella was back home for summer. For all that a place you were in for three months could ever be called a home, anyway. The college dorms were turning out to be more of a home than anywhere her parents ended up moving for that government job.

But regardless of that, she was conscripted into helping get all of her parents' stuff, and her old stuff, into their truck and the U-Haul they rented. For whatever reason, they really didn’t like having movers do it for them. Isabella didn’t really care, her relationship with her parents was pretty frayed nowadays, but it was a bit weird.

She had been going through her old stuff to bring with her to the next spot, some of it brought home from college, others things her parents had set up for her in the room that she hadn’t really seen in years.

And it was when she was going through that old stuff that she pulled out something she’d not seen in a literal decade.

Her old set of playing cards.

They’d been custom made, after she’d shown as much interest as she did, her parents tried to go all in as much as they could. They had custom backs which were given cool symbols, ones that she later found out were in the style of norse runes, and the fronts were all stylized to seem all the more magical. All things that appealed so heavily to her as a child.

And staring at the dust encrusted deck in her hands, she found that it still did.

When something wet fell against her hand, she quickly rubbed her eyes with her sleeve and made to find something to clean the cards with.

The memories of the talent show were still present, and they’d likely remain so forever, but still…

She wanted to see if she still had it, you know?

...

As Isabella stood in front of the door that would maybe lead to her first real social interaction with her peers that wasn’t either having some variation of a conversation to an argument online or group projects, she considered turning back and forgetting that she ever had the idea to come in the first place.

Her palms felt sweaty as she burned the taped-on paper’s writing into her mind.

“The Secret Sealing Club.”

Or rather what it actually was, an occult club.

But why was she even here, to begin with?

She’d gotten interested in the runes on the back of her cards, is the truth of it. Or at least, that's where her interest started. She had wanted to learn what they all meant, or what they were supposed to do if they actually had magic powers in their writing. A desire spawned from a curiosity she held while she was practicing her card tricks again for the first time in a decade. And one cultivated by her incredible boredom.

As her hand now rested on the doorknob, she hesitated once again.

But her hesitation soon didn’t matter, as someone yanked open the door, and, with her hand so firmly gripping the door, sent Isabella flying forward directly into the other person.

And that’s how Isabella made her first friend in years.

...

As she lay bleeding out on the floor, a phone call with someone shouting on the other end that she could no longer make out, Isabella found some measure of comedy that, in spite of everything, she still would only manage to hold a friendship for a single year. Though the circumstances in this case would be that she was literally about to die, it was still true.

She had all the evidence, and her friend would be able to spread it all around since Isabella sent everything she had recorded her way as fast as she could. And so could her parents, she supposed, since that was who she’d called in her final moments.

But really, as pain split through her body, and her hand rested on her old deck of cards, Isabella would never get to mess around with her cards ever again, would she?

Her eyes began to shut against her will, and though she could hear her mothers desperate voice, and her fathers panicked shouting, she stopped being able to make out what was being said.

Honestly, she couldn’t help but wish she hadn’t called at all. Despite everything, Isabella didn’t want the last memories her family would have of her to be the sound of her choking on her own blood.

It just felt horrible.

And then, she stopped thinking entirely.

And the phone only got louder.

In what felt like an instant and an eternity at the same time, Isabella heard something.

The sound of waves breaking on a shore.