by Sarah Gailey
* * *
When I get to school, almost no one is there. I walk to my locker to drop off my sad bag lunch, and I don’t see a single person on my way. The school feels so liminal when it’s empty—there are scuff marks on the linoleum but no sneakers leaving new ones. Rows of empty desks in every dark classroom I pass. Half the lights in the halls are still turned off. There’s gum everywhere. I get distracted by how haunted and strange the school is, and I almost walk right by the flowers without noticing them.
The senior lockers are all in the same hallway, so it stands to reason that Josh’s locker would be near mine. I’ve probably passed him standing by his locker a dozen times without noticing him. I’ve probably bumped into him on his way to class.
It shouldn’t surprise me, is what I’m saying.
And yet it does. The third locker from the end of the hallway. It must be his, because it’s been turned into a kind of altar. Someone put his yearbook photo on it. Drugstore carnations are heaped against the base of the locker, and notes stick out through the ventilation slits in the door. Someone duct-taped a teddy bear to the metal. I stare at it. It’s a little white bear, and it’s holding a heart. The duct tape covers its arms, so it’s hard to tell if the heart says anything on it. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” probably. I wonder, briefly, what the bear is supposed to be for. Is it supposed to be a gift to comfort Josh when he comes back from whatever ordeal has made him disappear? Is it an offering, a hope that he’ll be able to get back whatever childhood is taken from him while he’s gone?
If Josh came back and saw that white bear, what would he do with it? What use would a traumatized eighteen-year-old have for that little plush toy?
I stroke the bear’s paw with my fingers, vividly remembering how Roya’s skin felt when I did the same thing just yesterday. Remembering her fingers brushing that sudden bruise away from my leg.
I wish I could have had a dream about that. I didn’t realize how much I missed dreaming about Roya, until I stopped.
“You must really miss him.”
I snatch my hand back as though the bear has burned me. “What?”
When I turn around, Gina Tarlucci is standing behind me with her arms folded over her camera. I almost never see her when we’re not in class or at the soccer field making awkward small talk. She’s wearing a pink-and-gray floral dress that makes her look like something out of a 1950s movie about surfers. She looks down at me with sad, sympathetic eyes. “I just meant, this is probably really hard for you.” She gestures at the locker. “You guys were a thing, right?”
My reaction is immediate and visceral. “What? No. No, we—no, we were not a thing. I barely even knew him.” I wince. “Know him. I don’t even know him.”
Gina’s eyebrows shoot up. She plants a hand on one ample hip and purses her lips. “Um, okay, well, that’s interesting.”
My phone is buzzing in my pocket again, but I ignore it. I don’t like the way she says “interesting.”
“I don’t think there’s anything interesting about it,” I snap. “It’s just the truth. Ask anybody.”
“So, I guess what I saw at prom was just some friendly making-out between strangers?” she hisses. I glance up and down the hallway—thank goodness, we’re alone. When I look back at her, I can tell that checking to see if anyone could hear her was the wrong move. A triumphant smile is spreading across her face. She starts fidgeting with her shiny brown braid. I fight the sudden impulse to give it a sharp yank and run away as fast as my legs can take me. “What, was it supposed to be a secret?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must have mixed me up with someone else,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“Um, no. You two almost sat on me,” she says. “I’m still finding glitter from your dress on all my stuff. Trust me, I know who I saw.” She looks at his locker, and her brows draw together. “Why don’t you want people to know that you were a couple? I won’t tell anyone, but … I mean, it’s weird. Everyone would probably want to support you.”
Two freshmen walk through the hall. Gina and I stand silently, trying not to look like we’re waiting for the freshmen to be gone before we finish talking. My mind is racing. Gina saw. A knot of terror forms in my gut.
I think back to prom night. Josh and I made out in the kitchen for all of five minutes before I whispered in his ear, asking him where his bedroom was. I’d thought we were alone. I’d been irritated about it. People at parties were supposed to linger in the kitchen—they were supposed to see us, talk about the fact that we were climbing all over each other. The gossip was supposed to get back to Roya. But there hadn’t been anyone else in the kitchen to see his tongue in my mouth. I remember being annoyed, but also not wanting to make out with him for longer than was strictly necessary, so I just figured I’d get it over with.
But Gina must have been there after all. I try to remember, but … I can’t. I remember Josh, and his hands moving from my waist to my butt, and the too-soft, too-wet way he kissed me. Tongue-first. I remember my heart pounding. I remember opening my eyes and trying to see past his nose, trying to see the rest of the room, trying to see if anyone else was there. I remember the way he nodded when I asked if we could go upstairs—two short, sharp twitches of his head, and then he was grabbing my hand and leading me out of the kitchen.
But I don’t remember seeing Gina at all.
Shit.
“Look, we weren’t a … a couple,” I say in a low voice once the freshmen are gone. “It just kind of happened. It’s not a thing. I don’t want people to know because …” I hesitate—then inspiration strikes. “Because I don’t want to take the attention away from people looking for him.” It comes out in a rush.
Gina frowns at me. “Well … I mean. I guess that makes sense,” she says slowly. “But you should at least tell the police that you saw him that night, right?”
“Oh yeah, totally,” I lie. “I talked to them already.”
“I mean, maybe what you did to him has something to do with why he disappeared,” she says casually. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other. Her head tilts to one side. “Don’t you think?” I walk to my locker without saying anything, trying to buy time. Gina follows me. “What was it?” she asks softly. “A love potion?”
I pull my locker door open too hard, and the bang of the metal echoes through the hallway. “What are you talking about, Gina?” I snap.
“Well, if you guys didn’t know each other at all, I’m assuming you did some … you know.” She wiggles her fingers at me. I stare into my locker, not seeing the contents. I’ve temporarily forgotten what lockers are for, what books are for, where I am. Behind me, a few people are filtering into the hallway.
“You’re assuming I did some what?” I whisper.
“Some magic,” Gina whispers back. I look at her, and she’s smiling at me. It’s a little smile, a secret smile, like we’re sharing something. Like we’re friends. She’s too close. I can smell her lip gloss.
“Some magic,” I repeat slowly.
“You know. Like, how you and your friends do things.”
I come to my senses. It’s like someone’s thrown a bucket of cold water over my head. I laugh, a loud, bright, hard laugh that makes Gina flinch. “Wow,” I say, shoving things from my backpack into my locker at random. “You’re hilarious, Gina. I mean … I didn’t take you for the dark humor type, but honestly, that’s just way too funny.”
She’s looking at me very strangely. “I don’t get you,” she says. “You know I’m not joking. You can tell me.”
I shake my head at her and close my locker. “Seriously, you’re a riot,” I say, grinning at her with all my teeth. I start walking toward the cafeteria. If I’m lucky, Marcelina will be in there and we can split a bagel and I can forget about this whole conversation.
Gina grabs my arm. “Stop!” She’s too loud in the corridor, and the couple of other students who are crossing through the hall turn to look. She smiles at them awkwardly. I
shake her hand off me. “Just stop,” she says again. “I know about—Alexis, where are you going? Come on—”
She’s trailing after me, but I can’t stop walking. A kind of numbness is taking over my arms and legs. Everything looks gray. The edges of my vision are vibrating. Gina knows?
She can’t know about the magic, too. She shouldn’t know about Josh and me making out, but she really, really can’t know about the magic. We’ve been careful. We all have.
Haven’t we?
With a sick feeling, I realize that we haven’t. We used to be so cautious. We all know that we’re different, that we have something people want. We’ve never needed to swear each other to secrecy because it’s obvious to us what the consequences could be if the world found out about our powers. We’ve seen enough movies and read enough novels to understand what happens to magic girls. But lately, we’ve gotten … comfortable. I think of Maryam doing my nails in class. I think of myself at the reservoir, drying Roya off with a thread of power. I think of all the little things—the ways we’ve fixed each other’s hair and mended each other’s damaged clothes, the ways we’ve grown so comfortable with each other that it’s second nature to expend a little magic helping each other out. I realize that anyone who was watching us closely would know right away what we are.
And apparently, Gina’s been watching.
“Look, I don’t know why you’re so freaked out about this,” she says. “I just want to talk to you about it. Unless you and your witch-friends did something wrong—”
I stumble. It’s a little thing—my feet betraying me, tripping over nothing at all. The sole of my sneaker makes a loud squeak against the linoleum. I turn to see Gina holding a hand out, as if she’s going to catch me. A small trickle of red oozes out from one of her tear ducts. My fingertips are burning.
Behind her, Iris stands frozen in the hall, watching us. She’s holding her How Does Magic Work journal in one hand and a highlighter in the other. She’s backlit by one of the fluorescents that’s actually turned on, and her hair forms a halo of orange curls around her face.
“Oh my god,” Gina breathes. “Wait … did you do something to him? You and your … your friends? Did you do something?”
“Of course not,” I reply sharply. I don’t know what the right reaction is. How would an innocent person answer this question? My phone is still going off, and I make a mental note to put my text notifications on silent. “I don’t know what your problem is, but this is honestly the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had.” Over Gina’s shoulder, Iris stares at me with wide eyes. “I don’t even know you, but you, what? You think you’re Veronica Fucking Mars? You think you know all these big secrets about me?” I take a step toward Gina, and she steps backward. “This is seriously the most we’ve ever talked, and you’re accusing me of—” The word “murder” sticks in my throat. I shake my head instead. “I don’t know what your deal is, Gina, but this conversation is over.”
Gina brushes her fingers against her face as if there’s a bug on her cheek, then does a double-take, noticing the redness on her fingers. She touches her cheek again. The tiny smear of redness there spreads into a garish stripe. She’s not bleeding any more than that, but it’s enough to put panic in her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she whispers. Her voice is shaking, and I can’t tell yet if she’s mad or scared. “I don’t think it’s over until we’ve talked to the police.”
“What are you going to tell them?” I ask. “That I’m Harry Potter? That I cast some kind of magic spell on Josh?” I wiggle my fingers at Gina the way she wiggled hers at me. She flinches away from me, but then she squares her shoulders and looks at me with a grim frown.
“No,” she says. “I’m going to tell them that you were the last person who saw him on prom night. I’m going to tell them that I think they need to talk to you and your friends about whatever it is you’re hiding.”
My entire body flushes hot, then cold, then hot again. I think I whisper “no,” but I’m not sure, because at that moment, Iris drops her notebook.
Gina whirls around with a little yell. Iris has both her hands raised high in the air. She says “Alexis, help,” and without thinking, I throw my magic at her.
I can’t see the dark-bright light of my own magic, but Gina gasps. She’s looking around with white-rimmed eyes, her braid flailing back and forth. She throws her arms over her head and half ducks like the ceiling is going to collapse on her.
Iris sweeps her hand through the air in front of her face, adding her own white light to the spell she’s crafting. It circles Gina like a lasso. Then it tightens around her mouth.
All of us are perfectly still for a moment. Me, with my arms half-raised toward Gina, my mouth open as if there’s anything I could say. Iris, her arms over her head, her hair frizzed out in a wild corona, her eyes still glowing like starfire. Gina, cowering, her mouth bound by light and power.
Then Iris drops both of her arms, and the spell vanishes.
Gina lets out a tiny squeak of a scream. In my pocket, my phone buzzes again. Iris stumbles into the wall.
I run to her. “Iris, are you—?” She waves me off with a weak smile, shaking her head, but I still press a hand to her cheek and search her eyes. No burst blood vessels in them, not this time. After what happened when she cast the spell in Josh’s bedroom, I was so scared that something in her had broken. That she wouldn’t be able to do magic anymore at all. But she just looks a little tired, a little extra pale under all those freckles. She’s okay.
I turn to Gina, who’s staring at her own hands in horror.
“What—what did you, how? No,” Gina stammers. “No, no, no—you—”
“Shut up, Gina,” I snarl, and her mouth closes fast. Her eyes are so wide, and she’s breathing hard through her nose. A tear slips down her cheek, cutting a clear path through the drying blood that’s smeared there.
“Am I going to die?” she whispers.
“No,” Iris says. Am I imagining it, or is her voice a little shaky? I take her hand and give it a squeeze. “Or … well, I mean, someday, probably. But I didn’t hurt you or anything.”
“What did you do to me?” Gina asks. She’s standing very, very still. Like she’s afraid that she’ll disintegrate if she moves too fast.
Iris looks askance at me. “I, um. Well. I made it so you can’t say what you were threatening to say. About us.”
“What do you mean?” Gina asks, her voice slowly regaining volume. “You mean I can’t tell the police that you’re all w—”
“No!” Iris shouts. Gina claps both hands over her mouth. “No, don’t say it,” Iris says desperately. “Look, I …” She looks around the still-abandoned hallway. “I made it so that if you tell anyone what you think you saw—which you didn’t, by the way—if you tell anyone, something will happen to you. Something bad.”
Gina’s eyes are brimming with tears. She looks between Iris and me, still covering her mouth.
“What’ll happen to her?” I mutter, and Iris grimaces.
“Her, uh, mouth will seal over,” she says. “Temporarily, though. I think.”
Behind her hands, Gina screams. I shake my head, trying to figure out how to make this right, but before I can say anything, she turns on her heel and runs. I hear the door to the girls’ restroom slam open and then shut. She’s probably hyperventilating. Or maybe the thought of what we are has made her sick.
It’s making me a little sick.
“Jesus, Iris,” I say. “That’s … that’s a lot.” Iris shrugs, looking uncomfortable.
“It’ll only happen if she commits to snitching. You gave me the idea,” she says as she stoops to pick up her journal. “When you asked if she was going to tell the cops that you’re Harry Potter, I thought of setting her up with a consequence. Hermione did the same thing to the girl who snitched about Dumbledore’s Army, remember?”
I think back to the books. “I thought she gave that girl word-acne?”
“Whatever,” Iris
says, running her hands over her curls. “Close enough.”
Jesus. Iris is always intense, but this is next-level even for her. “Iris. This is really messed up. I mean—”
“I just saved your ass, Alexis. Besides, I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me what’s fucked up,” she growls. I stop short and she walks a few steps ahead of me before stopping. Her shoulders rise and fall in an intense sigh. She lifts her hands to her face and scrubs the heels of her hands across her eyes before turning back to me.
She looks so tired.
“Are you okay?” I whisper. “You’re … not really acting like yourself right now.”
“I’m just trying to fix it all,” she says. She sounds hollow.
I shake my head at her. “You don’t have to fix it all by yourself. We’re all together in this, you know?”
She gives me a grim smile. “I know. But I’m supposed to be the one with the big ideas, right?” Before I can say anything, she steps forward and pulls me into a stiff hug. “I’ll fix it. I mean, I’ll find a way to undo the thing with Gina. Don’t worry.”
I want to trust her. I do. But Iris doesn’t really hug people, and something feels wrong. I ask the only question I can. “Do you promise?”
She steps back from me and holds out her pinky finger. “Promise.”
I wrap my pinky finger around hers and we shake on it. The promise is sealed more tightly now than any spell could bind us—the pinky-swear is unshakable. And Iris might be turning into someone whose power I don’t understand, but she’s still my friend. I have to trust her.
I have to.
We head to the cafeteria together, weaving our way through the people who are slowly filling the halls. My phone goes off again, and I hear Iris’s phone going off at the same time. “Do you know what’s going on with Marcelina?” I ask. “She’s been acting kind of off, and then those texts this morning—”
“Yeah,” Iris interrupts. “I wanted to ask you about that. Have you noticed anything weird these last few days?” I don’t say anything, letting the absurdity of the question hang between us. “Right,” she says, “okay, that’s fair. But like, have you noticed anything missing?”
