When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey (best books to read non fiction TXT) 📕

“Whatever,” he yells over his shoulder. “Dad, Pop, the prodigal daughter has returned!”

I love my little brother, but he’s at an age where he thinks he’s clever. Normally I would say that I want to kill him, but … that’s a little close to home right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say that again, to be honest. I turn down the hallway that leads to my bedroom, hoping against hope that I’ll be able to get there without interruption, but apparently, it’s not a good morning for hoping.

“How was prom?” Dad pokes his head out of the bathroom. He looks a lot like Nico, which he swears wasn’t intentional, but which makes people think that Nico is his son from a previous marriage or something. He has the sticking-up-everywhere black hair and the lighter-than-mine brown eyes and the altitude. But his black hair is starting to become salted with white, and his brown eyes have a web of laugh lines around them, and he’s what people call “olive” where Nico is just vampiric.

He’s my dad, and he’s got toothpaste foam on his chin, and he’s kind of the best. And I would give anything to not have to talk to him right now, because I’m tired and I have body parts in a bag and what if I get mad at my dad and hurt him somehow? I wasn’t even mad at Josh when I killed him, but it still happened.

You weren’t mad at him, something in me whispers. You were lying to him.

“Prom was fine,” I say, and that lie doesn’t kill my dad, so I push away the thought that it might matter.

“Just fine?” he asks, and I want to scream.

“It was great,” I answer, forcing a smile. “I’m just tired.”

“Okay, well, we didn’t even know that you’d be back this morning, so you’re free.” He sticks his toothbrush back into his mouth and makes a series of unintelligible noises. I decide to interpret them as “By all means, go lie in the dark in your room and try to figure out how you’re going to dispose of that nice boy’s head.”

“Love you,” I say, and he waves at me, and his salt-and-pepper head disappears back into the bathroom. I walk into my bedroom, shut the door, and allow myself an all-out dramatic sigh, complete with a slouching lean against the door.

I think I’ve earned some melodrama.

I pull out my phone before I’ve finished crossing the room to flop onto the bed. I have a million notifications, and I dismiss all of them except for the text messages. I don’t have the energy for social media yet.

I have a bunch of texts from Maryam.

She’s doing that thing where she’s anxious, but she doesn’t want to put what she’s anxious about in writing, so she’s over-explaining and being vague at the same time. She wants to know if everything’s okay, and if everyone’s on the same page, and if there’s anything she should know about, and if we can have a phone call, or maybe a phone call’s a bad idea, and maybe we shouldn’t even be texting, and can I delete her texts just in case?

I hesitate, then delete all of the messages she’s sent in the last twelve hours. There are nineteen of them. I send a thumbs-up emoji, and nothing else, because I don’t know what I could possibly say that wouldn’t make her worry even more. She replies immediately with a message that says simply I love you no matter what.

She loves me no matter what. Even if I’m a murderer. Even if I’m a monster—because, let’s face it, the kind of person who does what I did? That’s a monster. It wasn’t on purpose, but that doesn’t really feel like it matters.

Something is wrong inside me, something I don’t understand and can’t control, and Maryam wants me to know that she loves me anyway.

The group text thread is pretty quiet. I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what to say. I can’t blame them—I don’t know what to say either. I draft and delete nine messages before chickening out and sending a string of heart emojis.

The only texts I haven’t read yet are the ones from Roya.

My mouth is too dry for me to read the texts from Roya. When did my mouth get so dry? It wasn’t like this until I saw her name on the screen.

I hate seeing her name on the screen. I wish I saw it more.

I slip out of my room, hoping no one will ambush me in the hall to ask if prom was just fine. I can hear Dad and Pop and Nico making leaving-noises in the front entryway. I stand at the sink, drinking water and trying to get my heart rate to settle down a little. I open the texts from Roya.

Hey did you get home ok?

Marcelina says you’re staying at her place, lmk if you need anything

Man, this duffel bag I’m thinking of buying is an ~arm and a leg~

I let out a long, slow breath that would be a laugh if I wasn’t so dizzy. Of course Roya’s got jokes. She’s always got jokes.

“Well, go find them,” Dad says from the entryway, and I catch a note of exasperation in his voice. It’s always like this, trying to get Nico out the door—a thousand loose ends, everything last-minute and forgotten. Dad’s pretty type-A, and he tries hard not to expect Nico to be as organized as he is, but it definitely drives him up the wall.

“I think they’re in Alex’s room,” I hear Nico call back behind him, and then his cleats are tearing up the carpet in the front hallway, and—

“Shit,” I mutter, dropping my glass into the sink hard enough that I have to check to see if it’s cracked. It isn’t. “Shit, shit, shit.” I run for the hall. My bedroom door