by Sarah Gailey
“I hope … I hope it’s not too bad,” I say softly.
“It’ll be fine,” she says, giving me a tiny smile. “Whatever I lose, there’s no way it’ll be as bad as what I lost last time. And besides, it’s only temporary. We’ll bring Josh back, and I’ll remember my brother again, and you’ll dream again, and we’ll all be fine. It’ll be over before we know it, yeah?”
I nod. Dreaming again. I don’t think I realized how much I missed being able to dream, but I find myself tearing up at the idea of getting my dreams back. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.” She ruffles my hair. “Now get out of my car.”
“Love you,” I call out over the squealing of her tires, and she throws a hand out the window. Her pinky, index finger, and thumb are outstretched in the sign-language symbol for I love you, and my heart swells with our friendship, and what could have happened, and the reasons why it didn’t happen.
It’s totally obvious, she said. I can’t help but wonder if it’s that obvious to Roya, too.
I head inside and slip into my room without getting intercepted by anyone. I tug the backpack out from under my bed—the one with the heart in it. I unzip it slowly. Part of me doesn’t want to check on how it’s doing. But I haven’t looked at it since before Iris got rid of Josh’s hands, and I hadn’t realized that Roya had taken extra measures with the leg she dropped in the reservoir, and now Paulie and I have taken care of the other leg—if getting rid of pieces of Josh is bringing the heart back, I figure it’ll be obvious by now.
As soon as I unzip the bag, I know I’m right. The heart inside isn’t quite flesh, but it’s softer than it was last time I touched it. It’s cool to the touch, like Maryam’s hands first thing in the morning.
I cup it in my palms. It’s still heavy, but lighter than it was the last time I held it. It beats and the sudden spasm is startling, nothing like the soft, occasional throbs of the morning we all tried to bring Josh back. The way the heart moves now—once every thirty seconds or so—is so violent and visceral that I almost drop it. The whole thing jumps in my grip. It feels wrong to put something so clearly alive back into the backpack, but I do it anyway. Between heartbeats, I lower the heart carefully into the bag. I zip the backpack shut and push it under my bed.
It’s working. We’re getting rid of pieces of Josh, and his heart is coming back. If we do this right, everything will go back to being the way it was.
If we do everything just right, the whole plan will work.
I lie back on my bed and try not to listen for the sound of the dead boy’s heart beating underneath me.
16.
ON SATURDAY, A BAREFACED MARYAM pulls up to my house in her brother’s spotless car. It’s already sticky outside, the kind of warm early-morning air that portends either a thunderstorm or a hellaciously hot afternoon. I’m in a tank top and shorts, and I’m still plucking at the fabric where it sticks to my back and thighs. “Paulie texted me a couple of hours ago,” she says as I slide into the front seat, the bare skin of my legs squeaking on the leather. “She’s not feeling well.”
“Hope she’s all right,” I mumble, avoiding eye contact. “You doing okay? You’re naked.” I gesture to her face.
“Fine. Just indecisive today.” Maryam grabs one of two metal thermoses out of the cupholders between us and hands it to me. I take a sip—it’s iced tea, I think, but it’s cool and squashy and weirdly sweet, and I can’t tell if I love it or hate it. I hold it up and give Maryam a what-the-hell-is-this face.
“Cucumber strawberry mint iced tea, I think?” She shrugs. “I don’t know, my dad’s been on a Pinterest binge lately. He told me to have you try the tea so I could report back. He thinks I’m being ‘unfairly critical of his efforts.’ ” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel, fidgets with her earrings.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Last night he made miniature quiches in a muffin tin and I told him my opinion.”
“How’d they turn out?”
She gives me a look. “Wet.”
I offer a sympathetic grimace. Maryam’s dad has been on a journey into the world of creative cooking for a few years now. Sometimes he succeeds. Other times he has what he calls “learning experiences.” Lately he’s been doing a lot of “learning.” I sip the tea again. “It’s … good, I think? It’s different. It’s good.”
“I’ll tell him you said so,” she says grimly. She turns into the school parking lot, which is already crowded with minivans and SUVs. She pulls into a space, cracks the windows, and turns the car off. She flips down the mirror on the driver’s side, pursing her lips at her reflection. “I can’t decide what to do. I was almost late coming to get you because I kept putting different colors of liner on and then deciding they were wrong.”
“Want help?” I ask, and she tugs at her earring again, considering her reflection.
“Mmmmm … yes,” she says, and I nod. We both unbuckle our seat belts and turn to face each other. I settle my tea in the cupholder and hold out both hands. Maryam rests her fingertips on mine and lets out a long, slow breath. She closes her eyes. “I feel lost,” she starts, and then she’s off. It’s something we’ve done for years, since our shared drama class where the teacher made us do all these bonding, trust-fall types of exercises. I think the teacher secretly wanted to be a guidance counselor. None of us came out of the class wanting to be thespians, but it was a good class. It taught us how to listen to each other.
I can’t give Maryam advice on how she should do her makeup—that would be like Nico trying to give soccer tips to Mia Hamm—but I can listen while she figures things out for herself. She talks about the different colors she tried, and how they all felt too juvenile, too trendy, too pop-star. She talks about how everything looks the same after a while. She talks about how worried she is for all of us, that this thing we’re trying to do will break us or change us into people we don’t want to be. She talks about trying to find a new line so her brows will feel interesting, and feeling stuck in the same looks she’s been exploring for years. Maryam isn’t telling me what she wants her face to look like—she’s telling me how she feels now, and how she wants to feel when her makeup is on.
After a few minutes, she lets out another big breath and she opens her eyes. I sit quietly, keeping my face as neutral as possible. She looks at me for a long time, then nods. “Okay,” she says. “I think I know what I’m gonna do.” She smiles at me, and as she does, magic washes across her face like the glow from a flashlight. This is Maryam’s magic: subtle and suffusive and luminous. Her lips go dark, plummy, and a gradient of grays spread over her eyelids. Her brows fill in, sculpted and long, higher and thinner than usual. By the time she’s finished, she looks like an older version of herself—regal. Imperious. She doesn’t check her work in the rearview mirror; instead, she looks at me. “What do you think?”
“Brilliant.”
She smiles, a tucked-in kind of smile that gives her deep dimples. “I know.”
* * *
The swim meet is already in full gear by the time we walk into the pool complex. It’s open-air, but surrounded by high concrete walls so that people can’t get drunk and sneak in and make out in the pool at night. The pool is enormous and blue-bottomed, with long strings of white buoys separating the water into lanes. The crowd is a sea of swim caps and sun hats, goggles and sunglasses. A long line snakes away from the tiny concession stand, where a student volunteer is selling Costco snacks and off-brand sodas to the families of the competitors.
Maryam and I climb all the way to the top of the bleachers, where we won’t get splashed by swimmers or deafened by overzealous swim-moms shouting encouragement to their kids. We look for Roya in the crowd—it’s hard to tell the swimmers apart when they’re all wearing caps and goggles, but she always stands out. To me, at least.
“There,” I say, pointing, and Maryam stands up to wave. She flings both arms over her head and flails them around, trying to get Roya’s attention. I cup my hands arou
nd my mouth and shout “GOOOOOOOO ROYAAAAAAAAA,” and half of the people in the complex turn around to stare at us. It’s worth the dirty look I get from the swim-dad in front of me, just to see the way Roya’s head tips back as she laughs at us. We cheer until she does a strongwoman pose for our benefit, her arms flexed in different directions to show off her biceps and triceps, which are rippling from the grueling hours of extra practice she’s been through in the past few weeks.
The coach points at Maryam and me and gives us an over-the-sunglasses death glare. We shut up before our hollering gets Roya in trouble. Her smile doesn’t fade even as the coach leans in and says something to her—probably telling her to keep her head in the game and not let her weirdo friends distract her. She’s only 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 she’s even looking at me.
“Whatever it is that Gina was going to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re entitled to your privacy,” she says softly. “But I’m here to listen, and I’ll still love you no matter what. You don’t have to be worried that I’ll, I don’t know. Disapprove. Or whatever.”
The bleachers are digging into my thighs and I shift, but I can’t get comfortable. “I’m pretty sure she was talking about magic.”
Maryam purses her lips. “What else, though?”
“I mean … you know everything about me. Pretty much everything.”
She’s still not really looking at me. “I don’t,” she says. “I know the stuff you tell me, but there’s stuff you hide, too. And that’s okay. I’m not hurt or anything.” I don’t know if I believe her. She says that she’s not hurt with a breeziness that rings false. “I just want you to know that you’re not the only one who can listen.”
“I know you can listen,” I tell her. “I just feel bad. I keep making you guys listen to my problems and clean up my messes and it’s not fair to you, you know? I’m starting to think maybe I should just turn myself in.”
There’s another shrill whistle-blast. Swim-dad stomps back up the bleachers. He sits in front of us with his arms crossed, shaking his head. I wonder if his kid even likes swimming. He adjusts his cap, blocking my view of the pool. But then his elbows drop, and I look down to the water, and there she is.
There’s Roya.
She’s standing behind one of the starting blocks, shaking her hands out by her sides. She squeezes her fists tight, then shakes out her fingers three times, then rotates her wrists, then starts over from fists. She’s nervous. It’s her only event at her last meet and she’s n
ervous.
I want more than anything to send the thinnest thread of magic her way, just something to say that I’m here and it’ll be fine and she’s going to do great. Just a little warm touch, the kind we all send each other all day long, checking in, making sure everyone knows that they’re not forgotten and not alone. But she’d be furious—she made us all promise a long time ago that we’d never, never help her at meets. Even though I wouldn’t even know how to use magic to help her swim, just the act of making her less nervous would probably count. She doesn’t want any interference, and that means no magic at all, not even her own. She doesn’t love swimming, but still—she wants to be amazing in her own right.
Not that she needs help.
She climbs onto her starting block and bends to grip the edge. My chest aches at the sight of her. I know that this event is the 100-meter butterfly, because that’s all she’s been talking about for a month. That’s pretty much all I know about it, and that largely describes the end of my knowledge about the sport as a whole. I’m not a great swimmer. I can mostly just keep myself alive in the water and make my way across the reservoir. Roya, though—she might not use her power for help, but she doesn’t need it. What she does in the water is its own kind of magic.
When the whistle blows, she shoots off the starting block like a finger of lightning jumping from one cloud to another. Her entire upper body arcs up out of the water, her arms meeting over her head and then driving powerfully backward. She moves through the water like a torpedo. When she kicks off the wall of the pool and turns around before anyone else has finished even half of a lap, I let out a whoop that makes swim-dad jump and turn to look at me. I ignore him, standing up to cheer.
She wins. Of course she wins—she’s Roya. She’s incredible.
Maryam and I yell ourselves hoarse, but we don’t go down to congratulate Roya. Not now. She hates being talked to right after she swims. I did it once at the beginning of sophomore year, her first year on the team: I ran right up to her to congratulate her, offer a high five, and ask how it felt to kick so much ass. She was glassy-eyed and panting, her cap clenched in one hand, her hair in a tight braid that hung over one shoulder. I can still picture how the tip of her braid was dripping—I was surprised because I always thought the swim caps were there to keep your hair dry. She had goggle-lines around her eyes, and I remember being startled by the impulse to reach up and smooth them.
