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

“You dropped me off at home two hours ago,” I tease.

“Okay, but it feels like four,” she says. “The point is, Iris shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry about your dads.”

“It’s okay,” I say, even though it isn’t, because it’s easier to say “It’s okay” than to keep trying to dance between mad at Iris and too mad at Iris and mad at myself and sad about hurting Pop. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I add, because that’s more true.

“Okay. Anyway, it’s been a weird time over here. Want to hear about it?” Paulie asks, brightening.

“Absolutely. Wait, I thought you’ve been studying?”

“Well, yes, okay, but not the whole time I’ve been home.”

“Oh my god, have you actually opened a study guide tonight at all?”

“Shut up,” she says, and then “hang on,” and I hear rustling and a click as she gets up to close her bedroom door. “Okay, so, I got home and my mom was being totally bizarre,” she says in a soft voice. “I walked in the front door and she was sitting in the kitchen and drinking wine and looking through this photo album, right? But get this: I went to look in the album over her shoulder, and it was all pictures of me.”

“Uh, okay? How is this weird?” I ask, lying back on my pillows and trying, in some corner of my mind, to remember the last time I talked on the phone with someone for this long. Usually I just text with all the girls, but it’s kind of nice to be hearing Paulie’s voice. I can picture the way she chews on her thumb when she’s thinking about how to phrase something.

“I mean, it’s a little weird because she’s drinking wine by herself in the kitchen. But then, check this out, extra weird-factor: she was looking at pictures of me, but this other kid was Photoshopped into like … all of them.” She pauses for a moment. “Yeah, I know, it’s totally bananas, right? She was acting like I was supposed to know who this kid was, and I was like ‘I don’t get what you’re trying to do,’ and she got really upset. She acted like I was being mean or something, I don’t even know.” Paulie sighs into my ear.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Who was the kid?”

“I don’t know, some little boy,” she says. “It was like she added him into my entire childhood, like she was writing fanfiction about me or something. How did she even find the time?”

I frown. “It wasn’t Drew?”

“Who?”

I feel hot and cold all at once. “Drew,” I repeat, sitting up slowly. “Your little brother, Andrew.”

“Ha,” she says, a humorless parody of a laugh. “Yeah, okay, sure.”

“What?”

“Did my mom put you up to this? And if so, can you please tell her it isn’t funny?”

“Why would you think that?” I ask. “I don’t talk to your mom. Paulie, are you feeling okay?” I’m about to ask her if I should come over, but then I remember Pop’s face, and I know that I have to be at home tonight. Even if he’s still mad at me … I shouldn’t leave.

“I’m fine,” she snaps. “I just don’t get what you and my mom are trying to do. She kept talking about ‘Drew’ too and I don’t get the joke, Alexis.”

“There’s no joke,” I say softly. I feel dizzy. “Andrew was your little brother’s name. He, um. He died a long time ago. When you were both little kids. I wouldn’t mess around with you like this. I’m telling the truth. I …” I hesitate. “I pinky-swear.”

She knows I wouldn’t swear to her on a joke. She has to know it. There’s a long pause on the line, long enough that I ask if she’s still there. “I’m here,” she whispers. “I have a little brother.” Her voice is strange, distant—it sounds like she’s underwater.

“Had a little brother,” I correct softly, because I think she needs it.

She’s silent for a long time again before she says, “What happened to him?”

I swallow hard and pull one of my pillows to my chest. “He drowned,” I whisper. “When you were seven and he was four. Your babysitter wasn’t watching him and he fell into your swimming pool. That’s why your dad had it filled in.”

There’s a loud, hard sniff. “He died,” she says evenly. “My little brother died.”

“Yeah,” I say, my eyes starting to burn.

“I can’t remember,” she says. “I try to remember and I can’t. Why can’t I remember?”

“You mean like … like he’s fading or something?” I say it knowing that’s not what she means, but hoping, desperately hoping, that it is.

“No,” she says, her voice cracking. “I mean I can’t remember him, I can’t—it’s like there’s a hole there, I can’t remember anything about him, I can’t—oh my god, my mom.”

“Paulie? Are you, I mean—obviously you’re not okay, but—”

“I have to go,” she says, sniffing again. She sounds far away. “I’m sorry, but I have to go, I have to talk to my mom, I have to look at those pictures—I don’t remember him, I have to remember him—”

“It’s okay, go, go, go,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I love you, call me if you need to, okay?”

“I will, love you bye,” she says in a rush, and then she hangs up and I’m sitting in my bedroom, alone in the silence.

How could she forget Drew? How could she forget him between the time we left school and the time she got home?

My phone lights up. It’s the group text. I check it, and even though the latest messages aren’t from her, Iris’s voice chimes in my memory. Have you noticed anything weird these last few days? Have you noticed anything missing?

Why, yes, I think to myself. I have noticed something missing.

I stare at my phone for half an hour or so, not doing anything, just waiting to see if Paulie texts me to say