Chapter 67.3

Chloé stuck to the middle of the pack, just in case. This allowed the people in front of her to look for potential roadblocks, but also for anyone behind her to help push her if needed.

Getting out of Amara’s apartment was, thankfully, quite easy. She lived on the first floor, and there weren’t any steps leading into or out of the building. Chloé happily wheeled out to the sidewalk, gasping with excitement as she started looking around.

She’d completely forgotten just how colorful the world was. Without magical assistance, attempting to fully engage her senses always demanded just a little bit more energy, so she’d stopped bothering. Now, with nothing holding her back, she eagerly looked around at nearby trees, the details of surrounding buildings, even the faint blue sky above. A light breeze skipped across her face, scattering her hair somewhat, and it carried hints of a nearby restaurant. A dog barked in the distance, students across the street laughed as they walked towards campus.

“Wow,” she whispered. As she appreciated her first moment outside, she was stricken with a desire to capture it. She pulled her phone from her pocket, hoping to take a picture with her friends. Attempting to turn it on, however, revealed the screen was somewhat glitchy. Waves of static distorted her home screen, and it wasn’t responding to her taps.

“Does the chair mess with electronics the same way the circles do?”

“Right, should’ve mentioned that,” Tessa said. “We studied every magic circle on campus, but couldn’t find a way around it. If nothing else, because the enchantments on the chair are smaller and more streamlined, the distortion field is much smaller. It should only affect devices directly next to it, which sadly means anything on your person, but random students lingering nearby hopefully won’t notice anything.”

“We really tried, Chloé,” Imani added. “In a perfect world, we wanted you to be able to game while relaxing, but there’s just too much we don’t know about the intersection of magic and technology.”

“That’s okay, really!” Chloé said. “This still means I can attend classes without exhausting myself, which will give me a ton of extra energy for games and stuff. Besides, it’s not like I’m Amara and constantly glued to my phone.”

“Hey! Rude!” Amara said, looking up from her phone. “For your information, I was about to suggest that we all take a picture. That’s what you were trying to do, right?”

Chloé giggled as she nodded. After slipping her phone back in her pocket, she started puzzling out how they were all going to take a picture together. She thought about asking Tessa to hold the phone using magic, then remembered they were outside and that would be incredibly obvious. Before she came up with an answer, she saw Amara reach into her coat. Using the fabric as cover, she summoned a selfie stick with a tiny burst of hellfire. She snapped her phone into the holster, then beckoned everyone to crowd around Chloé.

After taking a few too many photos—Amara was being extra picky about angles and lighting—they set off towards campus. Chloé’s first task was crossing the street that separated Amara’s apartment from the rest of the school, and she was thrilled to see ramps had been built into the curbs. She’d always been a proponent of these kinds of accessibility features, but it was another thing entirely to find herself relying on them. As she rolled into and out of the street, she found herself looking at the world in an entirely different lens. With her mobility now somewhat limited, she needed to approach Aurelius from a new angle.

It was a pattern that repeated itself over and over as they explored the campus. She normally got to the Quad by using a flight of stairs next to the cafeteria, but those were no longer an option. While there was a ramp that bridged the two levels, the campus geography necessitated that it be placed near the southern end of the field.

All the buildings on campus had elevators, but many of them were in slightly inconvenient spots. Lysander Hall was by far her favorite; its elevator was in the center of the building, tucked in the middle of the main staircase. Brandt Hall, however, was one of the worst. Despite having stairwells on both ends of the building, only one of them had an elevator. Even worse, it was the end opposite her classroom.

She was endlessly thankful for the company of her friends. Had they not been present as Chloé explored the campus, the entire process would likely have felt incredibly tedious. They also helped track down elevators and ramps when necessary, occasionally turning the hunt into spontaneous races.

It took roughly an hour for the exploration to tucker her out. As she pushed herself up all the different ramps on campus, she learned that the minimum slope guidelines established by the ADA weren’t always the friendliest. While all the ramps were traversable, that didn’t mean they were easy to ascend; wheeling herself around required upper body strength that she’d never needed before. Thankfully, the exhaustion of pushing herself around campus paled in comparison to the strain of manifesting without her chair. She found herself relying on her friends even more by the end of their journey, asking them to push her around when she needed the rest.

After so many months of feeling trapped between worlds, Chloé had never been happier to take up space.

When they finished visiting the last of Chloé’s classrooms, and she felt comfortable tackling her class schedule, the group decided to swing by the cafeteria for lunch. By this point, Chloé’s arms and chest were killing her, and Amara had taken over pushing her chair. The group talked and joked amongst themselves as they approached the main entrance, and Chloé couldn’t help but scowl as she saw a group of volunteers camped outside the cafeteria.

Three people in total, none of whom were students, all hovered near a large, ostentatious booth. Garish colors and hideous typeface design demanded attention, and in the very center sat one simple phrase: “GAME Responsibly!” The booth also held various stacks of informational pamphlets, and the volunteers were eagerly handing out material to anyone and everyone whose attention they managed to hijack. When they saw Chloé and the rest of her group approaching, they wasted no time grabbing handfuls of paper and running over.

“Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a fantastic day. What amazing weather we’re having, right?” the first volunteer said. He had medium-length, curly black hair and a stiff, practiced smile. Embroidered on his black polo was the same slogan plastered on the booth.

Nick spoke up first, preventing anyone else from shooing away the volunteers. “It’s pretty great, yeah!”

“Anyways, I know you’re hungry, so I won’t take up much of your time,” the volunteer said. “My name’s Brian, and I work with GAME to try and combat gambling addiction across the country. Did you know that up to seventy-five percent of all college students have admitted to using sports betting apps within the last year?”

“Shit, really?” Imani gasped. “That’s… a lot. Wow.”

The two volunteers behind Brian quickly handed out pamphlets to everyone present as he continued. “Exactly! Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun from time to time, but it’s always important to G.A.M.E Responsibly!” Brian paused for a little too long as he puffed his chest out to accentuate the cheesy slogan. “Anyways, as a nonprofit organization, we’re here to raise awareness for an upcoming vote that will greatly affect funding for groups like ours. You’ll find lots of great information in these pamphlets, and there might even be a fun surprise inside!”

Chloé scoffed. “Have you even bothered reading the actual text of the proposed funding bill?” Her question came out with more bite than she intended.

Brian swallowed nervously. “W-well, I haven’t had the chance to, um… to read it myself, no.”

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. Annoyed at how frustrated she was, Chloé broke away from Amara and started pushing towards the cafeteria. “C’mon guys, let’s just go inside.”

By the time she’d pushed the door button and gotten inside, everyone else had awkwardly excused themselves from the conversation with the volunteers. She was halfway to the food line when they caught up with her, at which point Vee spoke up.

“Hey, Chloé, are you okay? I’ve never seen you snap at anybody like that before.”

“Yeah, what’s up?” Tessa asked. “Aren’t you all about charities and shit?”

“Ugh, I’m sorry,” Chloé muttered. “I’m just so sick and tired of hearing about GAME. They’ve been all over our campus recently!”

“Am I the only one who's never heard of that group before?” Amara silently asked permission to start pushing Chloé again, then they got in line to wait for their food. “It looks like they’re anti-gambling or something.”

“They’re not against gambling, just gambling addiction,” Chloé clarified.

“That’s… still good, right? I’m confused why that’s a bad thing,” Nick said.

As they passed by the different lunch options, Chloé found the counters to be uncomfortably high compared to her sitting height. This agitated her even further, and she forced herself to close her eyes and take several deep, steady breaths. Once she felt more like herself, she silently asked Amara to grab her several dishes before returning to the conversation at hand.

“I should probably start from the beginning, so you all have the full context. GAME stands for ‘Gambling Addiction Mediation and Education.’ They’re a nonprofit group that offers free counseling for anyone struggling with gambling addiction. That part’s great, no complaints from me. The problem is that they’re not against gambling itself, and if you’ve never placed a bet in your life, they’re happy to show you how fun it is. Actually, don’t take my word for it—open those damn pamphlets they handed out.”

By this point, everyone’s hands were full of food. It took a minute to find a table and sit down, but once they did, they were free to look at the handouts from earlier.

“Oh shit, there’s a scratch card in here!” Tessa said excitedly.

Vee grimaced as she opened her pamphlet. “Oh, that’s… not great.”

“That’s exactly my point! They’re traipsing around college campuses and trying to show everyone how great gambling is!” Chloé took an angry bite of food, then continued. “And like, look, it’s a complicated issue. I’m a huge proponent of making things legal so that we can fairly tax them and pass protective laws, but that hasn’t happened yet. Gambling companies—especially sports betting companies—are able to do almost anything they want because no one has passed any laws restricting their actions. They engage in all sorts of predatory behaviors, often by preying on young people specifically. For a group that’s all about gambling responsibly, I just think GAME is being awfully irresponsible.”

“Okay, but they said they were raising awareness about a bill or something. What’s that about?” Imani asked.

Clenching her fists around her silverware, Chloé fought to keep her voice down. “Illinois Senate Bill 1408. The entire thing is meant to restructure how nonprofits are funded, and it’s terrible. Every change it proposes benefits larger nonprofits while making it almost impossible to run smaller ones. Groups like GAME want it to pass because they’re huge and it benefits them directly, but smaller nonprofits? Smaller charities like the stuff I’m constantly trying to support? This bill will make it almost impossible to run groups like that. It’s also poorly written and incredibly vague; people online have already identified dozens of potential loopholes that would allow bad actors to abuse the system.”

Amara leaned closer and wrapped an arm around Chloé’s shoulder, pulling her in for a hug. “Dang, you’re really fired up about this.”

Chloé blushed in embarrassment. “Sorry, I just… I’ve been following this bill for a while. I didn’t mean to distract from how great today is, and it’s been really great! I can’t thank you guys enough!”

“The whole point of the wheelchair is to make it easier for you to live your life, right?” Nick asked. “If living your best life means educating the masses about problematic nonprofits and advocating for better written legislation, I think that’s great. Besides, I’d rather deal with stuff like that than… y’know. Everything we’ve been wrestling with the last few months.”

Everyone in the group chuckled, then the conversation slowly shifted to other topics. Vee talked about all the homework she was still trying to catch up on, and Amara happily shared updates about all her different photography projects. Tessa lamented that she didn’t have a magical problem to tinker with anymore, which led to her and Imani brainstorming other possible ventures. Nick shared his plans to start working out with his friends again, optimistic that he could still find enjoyment even while holding himself back. In time, the pleasant company made it easy for Chloé to forget about their interaction with GAME. Nick was absolutely right—compared to fighting evil witches and monstrous werewolves, a slightly annoying volunteer group was hardly the worst of their problems.

After finishing their food, but before leaving the dining hall, they decided to indulge in the scratch cards they’d been given earlier. Each card resembled a calm, glittering river, and the different scratch points looked like pieces of gold floating to the surface. The cards themselves had been procured from Tyche’s Paradise: a casino built several years ago in the flashy commercial district of Ekstápoli.

Ironically, out of everyone in their group, only one person walked away with a winning card: Chloé. She won a hundred dollars, and vowed to donate it to some of the charities partnered with her app. As annoyed as she was about this shady marketing tactic, she was at least able to walk away from lunch feeling vindicated in her beliefs.