Page 13 of When We Were Magic
Nico looks nothing like me, which makes sense since we were adopted from entirely different families. Where my hair is brown and curly, his is black and straight and stands up in every direction even when he doesn’t put too much gel in it. We both have brown eyes, but mine are dark and his are light in a way that I’m sure girls his age think is dreamy. He’s two years younger than me, and he goes to a STEM magnet school that’s annoyingly close to my school. He’s getting taller every half hour or so, which means that his elbows are pointy and his neck is weirdly long and he’s developing horrible posture because he doesn’t know how to be tall yet. He’d be really good-looking if it wasn’t for the slouch. And if he wasn’t my little brother. And if he wasn’tconstantlyunderfoot, like he is now.
“What are you doing up?” I ask. He looks down at his soccer cleats and then raises his eyebrows at me like I’m ten cents short of a dime, which … fair.
“Dad said you weren’t coming to my game today because you’d probably be hungover from prom,” Nico says.
“He did not say that,” I snap back at him. I want to yell at him to stop slouching, just to annoy him. I don’t have that many months left to be an annoying older sister who yells at my kid brother.
He rolls his eyes and heads toward the kitchen, his cleats pulling at the carpet.
“Whatever,” he yells over his shoulder. “Dad, Pop, the prodigal daughter has returned!”
I love my little brother, but he’s at an age where he thinkshe’s clever. Normally I would say that I want to kill him, but … that’s a little close to home right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say that again, to be honest. I turn down the hallway that leads to my bedroom, hoping against hope that I’ll be able to get there without interruption, but apparently, it’s not a good morning for hoping.
“How was prom?” Dad pokes his head out of the bathroom. He looks a lot like Nico, which he swears wasn’t intentional, but which makes people think that Nico is his son from a previous marriage or something. He has the sticking-up-everywhere black hair and the lighter-than-mine brown eyes and the altitude. But his black hair is starting to become salted with white, and his brown eyes have a web of laugh lines around them, and he’s what people call “olive” where Nico is just vampiric.
He’s my dad, and he’s got toothpaste foam on his chin, and he’s kind of the best. And I would give anything to not have to talk to him right now, because I’m tired and I have body parts in a bag and what if I get mad at my dad and hurt him somehow? I wasn’t even mad at Josh when I killed him, but it still happened.
You weren’t mad at him,something in me whispers.You werelyingto him.
“Prom was fine,” I say, and that lie doesn’t kill my dad, so I push away the thought that it might matter.
“Just fine?” he asks, and I want to scream.
“It was great,” I answer, forcing a smile. “I’m just tired.”
“Okay, well, we didn’t even know that you’d be back this morning, so you’re free.” He sticks his toothbrush back intohis mouth and makes a series of unintelligible noises. I decide to interpret them as “By all means, go lie in the dark in your room and try to figure out how you’re going to dispose of that nice boy’s head.”
“Love you,” I say, and he waves at me, and his salt-and-pepper head disappears back into the bathroom. I walk into my bedroom, shut the door, and allow myself an all-out dramatic sigh, complete with a slouching lean against the door.
I think I’ve earned some melodrama.
I pull out my phone before I’ve finished crossing the room to flop onto the bed. I have a million notifications, and I dismiss all of them except for the text messages. I don’t have the energy for social media yet.
I have a bunch of texts from Maryam.
She’s doing that thing where she’s anxious, but she doesn’t want to put what she’s anxious about in writing, so she’s over-explaining and being vague at the same time. She wants to know if everything’s okay, and if everyone’s on the same page, and if there’s anything she should know about, and if we can have a phone call, or maybe a phone call’s a bad idea, and maybe we shouldn’t even be texting, and can I delete her texts just in case?
I hesitate, then delete all of the messages she’s sent in the last twelve hours. There are nineteen of them. I send a thumbs-up emoji, and nothing else, because I don’t know what I could possibly say that wouldn’t make her worry even more. She replies immediately with a message that says simplyI love you no matter what.
She loves me no matter what. Even if I’m a murderer. Even if I’m a monster—because, let’s face it, the kind of person who does what I did? That’s a monster. It wasn’t on purpose, but that doesn’t really feel like it matters.
Something is wrong inside me, something I don’t understand and can’t control, and Maryam wants me to know that she loves me anyway.
The group text thread is pretty quiet. I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what to say. I can’t blame them—I don’t know what to say either. I draft and delete nine messages before chickening out and sending a string of heart emojis.
The only texts I haven’t read yet are the ones from Roya.
My mouth is too dry for me to read the texts from Roya. When did my mouth get so dry? It wasn’t like this until I saw her name on the screen.
I hate seeing her name on the screen. I wish I saw it more.
I slip out of my room, hoping no one will ambush me in the hall to ask if prom wasjust fine. I can hear Dad and Pop and Nico making leaving-noises in the front entryway. I stand at the sink, drinking water and trying to get my heart rate to settle down a little. I open the texts from Roya.
Hey did you get home ok?
Marcelina says you’re staying at her place, lmk if you need anything
Man, this duffel bag I’m thinking of buying is an ~arm and a leg~
