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

“It’s okay,” Roya says, wiping her ketchup-fingers on a napkin with a grimace. “We’ll come by the Crispy Chicken after to give you the play-by-play.” Marcelina smiles at her, even though missing the meet isn’t exactly what’s bothering her about having to work a Saturday-morning shift at the Crispy Chicken while the rest of us are cheering by the pool.

“I’ll hook you guys up with curly fries,” Marcelina promises. Her eyes slide from Roya to Iris, and they linger. Roya and I follow her gaze. Paulie’s eyes strain even as she tries to hold still for Maryam’s brow touch-ups.

Usually, we let Iris be. When something’s wrong, we let her decide when and if she wants to talk about it. We don’t push her the same way we push each other, because she’s got so many different levels of thinking and feeling and analyzing going on below the surface, and she has to sort them all out before she can talk about things. Most of the time, we let her come to us.

But this is bigger than the usual stuff she goes through. And we’ve all been exchanging glances and hoping that someone else would bring it up first. Marcelina is watching Iris eat french fries, and we’re all watching Marcelina watch Iris, and nobody says anything for a long beat. Marcelina purses her lips and I can see her deciding that enough’s enough.

She clears her throat. “So. Iris.” She trails off awkwardly, then gestures to Iris’s face. The foundation there is matte, thick, and heavy. She’s not wearing any other makeup. She’s just … hiding.

“We gotta talk about it,” Roya says bluntly.

Iris picks up five french fries and shoves them all into her mouth, then makes a helpless series of gestures that translate to alas-I-can’t-talk-my-mouth-is-full. It’s a blatant Roya move to get out of answering, one that doesn’t fit right on Iris. Roya can get away with using gross humor to deflect us, because it’s kind of her thing. On Iris, it seems like a grotesque masquerade. Roya’s brow furrows. She chews on her lower lip for a moment, then catches Maryam’s glare and switches to chewing on a fingernail.

“We gotta talk about it,” Paulie echoes. Her voice is muted because Maryam still has a grip on her chin, but everyone hears her loud and clear. I try very hard to be invisible.

“I think so too,” Marcelina says softly. “I think we have to talk about it because if we don’t, I don’t know what will happen, but I’m pretty sure I’ll explode.”

The bite of burrito in my mouth turns to cement. I swallow hard and pass the rest of my lunch to Roya. I know Marcelina didn’t mean “explode” like how Josh exploded, but still. My appetite is gone.

And they’re right. We have to talk about this.

Maryam releases Paulie and raps her knuckles on the table. “Out with it, all of you. Enough of this. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”

“Fine,” Iris says, her voice taut. “Fine. We’ll talk about it.”

She steeples her fingers on the table, not looking directly at anyone. She goes into tutor mode, neatly sidestepping the question of what’s going on with her face. She explains the whiplash effect that she told me about the day before—the way that the magic is moving, taking things. Finally, when she can’t talk around it anymore, she holds a hand out to Roya.

“Roya, take it off,” she says. She grits her teeth as Roya grabs her hand. A glow suffuses their clasped hands, and then the thick foundation on Iris’s face is thinning, thinner, vanished.

The other girls gasp. She doesn’t look that different from how she looked with the foundation—maybe a little less orangey—but still. I don’t think any of them really realized what she looked like without her freckles. I know I didn’t, not until I saw it for myself.

She’s blank. She’s still gorgeous, but she looks empty—not just in that her skin is an unbroken expanse of cream. There’s something missing in her eyes, too. She looks miserable, like she knows that the thing she loves most about herself is so far out of reach that there’s simply no hope of retrieving it.

“Oh no,” Roya whispers. “Oh god, Iris, I’m so sorry.”

My fault.

The tears fall, but Iris holds her chin high, and when she speaks, her voice is steady. “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s not fine, that was a lie, but … it’ll be okay.”

Paulie looks at Maryam. “Can you … ?”

Maryam shakes her head. “I tried. I can’t put them back. I can make them show up, but they fade right away.”

Iris squeezes Roya’s hand, then lets it go. “I, um. I should tell you guys about the rest of it too.”

And then she looks at me. She’s not saying anything, but her lips are white and her eyes are wide and her nostrils are flaring and I can see it, I can see the cost of saying it out loud. I can see the toll it will take on her. I raise my eyebrows and hesitate because maybe I’m misunderstanding—but then she nods at me.

“Please,” she whispers.

I look around the table. “She can’t see her magic anymore,” I say. My voice is shaking. I make myself meet all of their eyes, make myself see their horror at Iris’s loss.

“I’m going to have to relearn it all,” Iris says. Her hands are knotted together in front of her, the knuckles stark white. “I’m going to have to figure out how to do it all without looking. I can’t do anything right now, hardly. Last night I figured out how to warm up my hands, but I burned myself a little.” She shows us a red patch on her palm.

Paulie takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I lost my memories of Andrew,” she says. She doesn’t say that she’ll be fine, and I’m oddly grateful that she’s not trying to pretend it’s okay. Roya and Marcelina look surprised. Maryam doesn’t.

“I can’t forget anything