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

same don’t-talk-to-me distance that they get after a swim meet. Iris is staring at the palms of her hands. Behind me, I can hear people loading Josh onto a stretcher. The sound of sirens is a rising howl in the distance.

“We did what we could,” Maryam whispers, wrapping her arms tight around Marcelina. Paulie squeezes my shoulder. “You did everything you could.”

She’s right. I did everything I could.

It just wasn’t enough.

23.

ROYA’S MOM PUTS OUR NAMES into a report, then tells us that we can go home. She says she’ll call us later, take our statements when our parents can be nearby for them. We leave together, even though she dismisses us separately.

We’re quiet for the entire walk back to the parking lot. No one really knows what to say. We bump into each other. I tangle my fingers loosely with Roya’s for a few paces, then drop them. It doesn’t feel right. Nothing feels right.

When we get back to the cars, we stand together awkwardly, not wanting to say goodbye but not wanting to stay here either. After a little bit of uncomfortable shuffling, Maryam looks up at me, visibly reluctant to say whatever’s on her mind.

“The arm,” she says.

“Yeah?” I ask.

Paulie clears her throat. “Did you … Where did it go? The arm that was cut off?”

It takes me a moment to catch up to what she’s asking. “I didn’t—no, I didn’t rip his arm off,” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke. Like something ridiculous.

Everyone looks at me.

“Do you really think I’d do that?” I ask.

“No,” Marcelina says quickly. “Of course not. Not on purpose. It’s just … maybe you did it by accident.”

Roya takes my hand again. “It’s okay,” she murmurs.

I shake my head. “No, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. He was like that when I found him.” It sounds like I’m lying, and I catch Iris looking out of the corner of her eye at Paulie. I don’t know how to make them believe me, so instead of saying anything else, I hold out my pinky finger.

After a second, Marcelina links her pinky with mine. “Okay,” she says.

“Right,” Maryam agrees. She adds her pinky to ours. One by one, so do the rest of them. It’s awkward—Roya has to bend her elbow at an angle that makes me cringe—but we all shake on it.

“No secrets,” I say.

“No secrets,” they repeat.

That awkward silence returns. Roya slips her arm around my waist and I lean into her. She’s warm.

She’s alive.

All of us are alive.

Iris clears her throat. “Can one of you drive me home? I, uh. I hurt myself while I was doing compressions on Josh.” She holds up her hands. There are crescent-moon cuts there, fingernail wounds. The blood that’s run across her palms and down her fingers is dry, but the wounds look deep and painful. “I held my hands wrong, I wasn’t—I wasn’t thinking. They tell you not to make fists, but …” She trails off helplessly. “I must have made fists.”

A pull flickers deep in my belly.

I couldn’t help with Josh. But I can help with this.

I take a deep breath, deep enough that white spots flare in my vision, and then I reach out and grab Iris’s fingers. Everyone gathers in close to look at her hands, to see what I’m doing. I grip them hard, look her in the eye, and whisper, “Hold still.”

And I give in to the pull.

No surprises this time. It’s just like it was in my bedroom when I showed Pop my magic—tiny spirals of blood rise out of the crescents in Iris’s palms, curling into themselves and freezing into vines. Snugly furled buds form at the tips of impossibly delicate stalks of blood, and they stay that way, curled up tight as a promise. By the time the vines drop into Iris’s hands, her skin is healed.

“What the fuck?” Paulie gapes, her eyes moving between the vines and my face. “What did you—what the fuck? You can—what?!”

“Yeah.” I feel awkward, trapped. Everyone is pressed together around me, and they’re all looking at me, curious and excited. I don’t know how to say I guess I can do blood magic. “I, um. Yeah. I can do that now.”

“Is it healing magic?” Iris asks, her eyes lighting up. “Like Roya?”

“No, I think it’s … I think this is its own thing. Its own kind of magic. The first time it happened was, uh. Prom night.”

I hear Gina before I see her. “I fucking knew it. I knew you were magic.” I turn and there she is, right behind me, tall enough to have seen between my shoulder and Paulie’s. Everyone was so busy staring at Iris’s palms, at the little flowers there, that we didn’t see her.

How long has she been there?

Gina’s eyes flick to Iris, and then to me. I realize, suddenly and without understanding why it took me so long, that I’m done fighting. It’s too much, and I’m too tired, and Gina—Gina doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve to be so scared. She shouldn’t have to carry something this big just so I’ll feel safe.

She’s looking at me, and I’m looking at her, and I give her a nod. Go on, I think. Do what you have to do. Tell whoever you have to tell.

But she doesn’t say anything. She looks back at Paulie, her brows drawing together, and she shakes her head. Then she looks at Iris and shakes her head again. And then she makes a low humming noise, and her eyes start to fill with panic, and I understand what’s happened.

Iris. The consequence.

Her, uh, mouth will seal over. That’s what Iris had said.

But I can help with this. I know I can.

It feels like kissing Roya did: I can’t tell you how I knew where her mouth would be even when my eyes were closed. I don’t know how I knew that biting her lower lip would make her sigh like the fluttering of new spring