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

the short gray hair and the long nose. She’s standing at the edge of the soccer field, maybe halfway across the grass from us. The sun glints off her handcuffs. She’s got her arms folded, and I can’t tell if she’s watching the players or if she’s watching us.

Either way, she’s too close for us to talk about what we need to talk about. She’s way too close.

We walk together, looking over our shoulders the whole time, and wind up behind the school in one of those spots that seems built for skulking. There are no windows looking out into this little alley between the classrooms and the chain-link fence that marks the boundary of the campus. Cigarette butts litter the ground, and there’s a used condom just on the other side of the fence. I look away from the condom, but it lingers in my mind, bumping up against memories that I’d rather not relive.

“What’s up?” I ask Iris. She lets her backpack thud to the ground.

“Okay,” she says, and then she takes a deep breath and says it again. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay, so, something’s going on.”

I lean against the fence, bouncing against the chain link. “I know,” I say. Iris gives me a confused look. “I mean, I know about one thing that’s going on. Maybe it’s not the same thing you mean? But I know about Paulie and Marcelina.”

“And Roya,” Iris adds, and now it’s my turn to be confused. She looks uncertain. “Did she not tell you?”

“Um, no?” There’s my asshole-voice again. I don’t know where this is coming from, this anger. I could let it trip me up, but instead, I cross my arms and just try not to feel embarrassed at my ignorance. I try not to wonder why Roya didn’t talk to me about whatever’s going on. I try not to wonder why she talked to Iris instead.

“Well, anyway, I figured it out this morning,” Iris continues, blatantly ignoring the uncomfortable moment. She’s not going to tell me what’s happening with Roya, then. I usually really admire how Iris and Maryam both refuse to gossip, but right now, it’s the most annoying thing about either of them. I just want to know what’s going on.

“I went over some of my notes and I realized that there’s a correlation between some of the—well, okay, let me back up. See, after I cast the spell on the, um.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “The body? I felt like I was being pulled in a bunch of different directions. It’s gotten a little better every day, and at first I thought that I was just getting used to it. You know, like. Getting stronger or something.” She looks uncomfortable. “I guess I wanted to believe that I was growing, somehow. Getting more powerful. But then I started talking to everyone and I realized that every time I was feeling better, someone else was feeling worse.” She clenches her fist as she talks, but her voice stays low. “And then last night, I got a text from Paulie right after you guys got rid of the leg, and I realized that I wasn’t just getting used to feeling bad. I really was feeling better. Because you got rid of one of the parts.”

I shake my head at her. Poor Iris—she’s so ambitious. The idea that she thought she was getting better when she really wasn’t is kind of heartbreaking. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I whisper.

“It does, though,” she says. “See, my magic is what’s holding all the pieces of Josh separate. And it’s a lot, you know? That spell was a lot. I’d never done anything like that before. It’s … it’s all of us, all bound together, stretching one spell to its breaking point to try to make someone disappear.” She rolls her wrist across her hip, pushing a rubber band from her wrist onto her fingers. She stretches it out tight. “Like this but a million times more complicated.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” I lie.

“Shut up, no it doesn’t, but just. Listen.” She holds the rubber band up and stretches it as far as she can. “Here’s what I think is happening. When you get rid of one of the body parts, my part of the spell is over, and the magic kind of … breaks. I can feel it. It pulls really tight, and then it snaps. And then the recoil hits us.” She flicks her thumb, and the rubber band snaps against her palm. Her pale skin reddens immediately. “This is a really powerful spell, and it’s connected to all of us, and it’s super volatile. When one of us gets rid of a body part, I think we sever our connection to it. The magic breaks, and snaps back on us. I think we’re all losing things because the spell is doing something to each of us every time we break part of it.”

I shake my head. “That’s never happened before,” I say.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” she answers. “We’ve never … we’ve never killed anyone before.” She can’t look into my eyes, and I know what she isn’t saying.

It’s not that we killed someone. It’s that I killed someone.

I used someone. I lied to him. I pretended that I was ready for something I wasn’t, and I pretended to be someone I’m not. I took the part of me that knew I was only going to hurt myself by making myself do something I didn’t want to, and I pushed it so far down that it turned into this. It turned into Josh being dead.

I used him, and I lied to him, and I killed him, and now all of my friends are dealing with the consequences. An awful thought occurs to me: What if my friends weren’t helping deal with the consequences? What if all the losses weren’t distributed across our group? If I had tried to use magic to get rid of the body all by myself …