When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey (novels to read txt) 📗

I’ll admit it: my first thought is that she should calm down. I get that her freckles are important to her, that she’s spent a long time learning how to love them. I get that they’re basically her defining feature, and that her face looks completely different now and that’s scary. I get it. But I can’t help thinking that it’s kind of a mercy, that she’s only losing freckles when everyone else has lost things that are so much bigger. I immediately regret the thought: if my entire face changed, I would be freaked out too. But whether the thought is right or wrong, I still think that she’s lost something smaller than everyone else.

But then she lifts a hand to her face. She’s still looking in the mirror. Her hand starts to glow, and power sparks between her fingers wildly. She looks between the mirror and her hand, shakes her fingers. The magic grows until it’s almost too bright to look at.

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

“I’m trying to fix it,” she snaps. “But I must have drained myself freezing the hands. I can’t get my … you know. I can’t get it to go.”

I squint at the bright nimbus of her hand. It’s blinding. When I look away, spots dance in my vision. “Iris, what are you talking about? You’re holding the freaking sun over there. Can’t you—oh.”

For the first time in our friendship, I figure something out before Iris does.

She can’t see it.

She can’t see it, and she’s spent so long relying on seeing it that she doesn’t know how to just feel it.

“Iris, stop pushing,” I say softly. “You’ve got a lot of magic around you right now, and you’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t stop.”

“No,” she says, her voice cracking. “No, I’m—there isn’t any—I’m not. I can’t.” She won’t look at me. She’s surrounded by a bright halo of magic, and she’s pushing more out around herself every second, and not a single freckle has reappeared.

I reach over and gently, carefully, gingerly wrap my hands around hers. I close her fingers into fists and force myself to look into her starbright eyes. “You have to stop,” I whisper.

Her magic fades, and she stares at me with wide, desperate eyes. I can’t believe I thought, even for that brief moment, that she hadn’t lost all that much. Even if she could still see her magic—even then, she would have lost something that tells her who she is, that helps her anchor herself.

Iris leans forward and her head drops onto my shoulder. I’m still holding both of her fists as she lets out the first sob. She shudders against me. She weeps on me with a desperate kind of loss I don’t know how to contain; the only thing I can do is be there for her to lean against, so that’s what I do. I hold her as she chokes on her own tears, and I watch over her shoulder as the pieces of Josh start to melt away.

15.

ROYA SLIDES INTO THE SEAT next to me on Friday at lunch as if everything isn’t broken. Her eyes are on the door to the cafeteria, where the gray-haired police officer is standing, watching the room. She makes a disgusted noise in the officer’s direction, then grabs my burrito with one hand and a few of Iris’s fries with the other. “I’m starving,” she says through a mouthful of rice and beans.

“Me too,” I say, and take the burrito back. She makes puppy-dog eyes at me, and I hiss at her like a pissed-off cat. “Eat your own lunch first, you vulture.”

“Come on,” she whines, half-serious. “I’m starving. I’m a starving athlete. I need your carbs.”

“Get your own carbs,” I say, holding my lunch out of her reach.

“She’s desperate. Coach has been brutal lately,” Iris says, dousing her fries in ketchup and getting some on Roya’s reaching fingers. Her voice is flat in a way that sounds like more than just exhaustion. I search her face, which is heavy with foundation. She won’t look at me.

“It’s your last meet tomorrow, right?” Maryam asks, and they both nod. Iris looks a little sad about it, but Roya looks thrilled. She’s an amazing swimmer, but she kind of hates being on the team. I think she’d like it if she were a little more passionate about it or if the coach were a little less passionate about it—but as it stands, she’s ready to be out of the water. Still, it’s her last meet, and we shouldn’t miss it. “I’ll be there,” Maryam says. “Alexis, want me to give you a ride?”

“Sure,” I say, even though I had been planning to walk. I know how to drive, but I don’t have a car and I’m not allowed to drive the family car since an incident involving a closed garage door that I thought was open. I’m at the mercy of my friends to get me from A to B. It sucks, but also, it’s nice to ride around with them. It’s nice to have time together like that.

“Me too, me too, me too,” Paulie sings as she tosses her salad onto the table. Maryam rolls her eyes and throws up her hands.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll drive both of you. But, Paulie, you gotta be at Alexis’s house when I get there. I’m not playing bus driver, okay?”

“Sure thing, Mom,” Paulie says sweetly, sliding into the last empty chair at the table and giving Maryam a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. She’s giving off greaser vibes today with her slicked-back hair, white tee, and boyfriend jeans; the moment her butt lands in a chair, Maryam leans forward and starts touching up her brows, muttering about how they need to be darker and fuller to complete the look. Paulie sits patiently, but she peeks at me out of the corner of one eye and gives me a wink.

“I wish I