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

got one event at this meet, and I’m sure the coach wants her to make it count.

Maryam slides on a pair of huge sunglasses and leans her back against the railing behind us. Her brows arch over the top of the enormous dark glasses. She looks like a movie star. I tell her so and she flashes that deep-dimpled smile again. “Thanks for listening to me in the car,” she says. “It helped a lot. You’re a really good listener.”

It’s hard to tell because of the sunglasses, but I feel like she’s staring at me. She’s talking like there are layers of significance to her words, but I can’t begin to untangle what they might be, so I pretend not to notice. “Anytime.”

A whistle sounds and a group dives into the water. We watch them, even though neither of us can really tell what’s happening under the white froth of the water, and we can’t tell who any of the swimmers are, and we don’t really even know what they’re trying to accomplish other than go fast and don’t drown.

“You know I’m always happy to return the favor, right?” Maryam asks as the swim-dad in front of us stands up, blocking our view. He’s shouting something about shoulders. Does he think that his kid can hear him in the water?

“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t look at her because I don’t know. I mean, I know she would listen if I asked. She would listen to me talk about whatever I need to talk about. I know she would probably give me good, kind advice.

But I don’t know if she’d be happy to do it. Maybe it would just be annoying to listen to me complain. I don’t know if it would burden her—or any of my friends—to hear about my insecurities, my worries. Aren’t I already asking enough of them all? They’re hiding a body for me. I can’t help but feel like I should deal with my emotions about it on my own. And if that’s hard, well … don’t I deserve to be alone with it? With what I’ve done? With what I feel?

But that’s a lot to say to someone, and if I told Maryam I was feeling that way, she’d probably try to comfort me, and that would just make it worse. So I say “yeah” one more time and stare at the chipped hearts on my fingernails.

Maryam looks at me and opens her mouth like she’s about to say something, but she’s interrupted by another loud whistle and swim-dad’s defeated groan. The bleachers shake and rattle with the footsteps of people going down to the pool to comfort or berate swimmers.

“Excuse me.”

I look around Maryam and realize that the rattle of our row of bleachers wasn’t an overinvolved parent. It was Gina Tarlucci, walking along our row. She has a long lens on her camera—she’s probably here to take pictures for the yearbook. Her dress is green with white flowers, and her hair is in some kind of 1940s-ish style that would make Paulie’s jaw drop if she saw it. Maryam tucks her legs to one side to allow Gina to pass, but instead, our row rattles again as Gina steps down to the bench in front of us. She plops down onto the spot where swim-dad was sitting until a moment before. She looks pissed.

“Are you in on this whole thing too?” she asks Maryam.

Maryam looks at me, inscrutable behind her movie-star sunglasses. I shake my head. “No, Gina, she doesn’t have anything to do with any of your crazy conspiracy theories. Please leave us alone.”

Gina drums her nails against the metal, and the sound echoes across our section of the bleachers. “Well, does she know what you are?” she hisses.

“I don’t care what she is,” Maryam says smoothly, looping her arm through mine. There’s a note of warning simmering in her voice. “She’s my friend.”

“Oh, are you sure about that?” Gina’s eyes narrow and she looks at me with such hate that my heart jumps. “Because you might like to know that she’s a—”

“Enough,” Maryam growls, her fingers tight on my arm. She whips off her sunglasses with her free hand, then leans forward and looks into Gina’s face. Maryam’s eyes spark with furious fire. “That is enough. I will not tolerate whatever hateful garbage you think you have to say. Alexis asked you to leave us alone, because she is a good and kind person. I am not asking you to leave us alone.” Her voice is low and dangerous, and the colors on her face are sharpening with every word. The shadows under her cheekbones seem to grow a little deeper. Her eyes flash, not with anger, but with the light of growing magic. “I. Am. Telling you.”

A breeze ripples between us, and Gina bolts upright. She’s gone before Maryam’s got her sunglasses all the way back on. She shoves someone aside to tear away down the bleachers. The wind continues behind her, pushing at her back, whipping her hair into her face.

I notice that the people she passes don’t seem touched by even the slightest of breezes.

I look at Maryam. She’s back in movie-star mode, her face exactly as still and unreadable as it was before Gina showed up.

“Did you do that, just now?” I ask Maryam. She gives a single nod, pursing her lips. “You can do wind?”

“I try not to,” she mutters. “But sometimes when I get angry …”

“Remind me not to mess with you,” I intone.

She looks at me over the top of her sunglasses in an uncanny impersonation of Roya’s swim coach. “If you don’t know that by now, I can’t help you,” she says sternly.

I laugh and give her arm a squeeze. “You’re amazing. That was amazing. I can’t believe she thought you didn’t know—or that she didn’t think you were also—that was amazing.”

“You can tell me, you know,” she says.

“What?” I can’t see enough of her face behind the sunglasses to know if