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

“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