Page 4 of When We Were Magic
Somewhere downstairs, someone screams. We all jump. Laughter rises from the party like ripples in the wake of the scream, which repeats with a definite note of delight.
“Okay,” Marcelina says. The thick layer of black and silver around her eyes makes her look even more intense than usual. “So. What are we going to do?”
“We need a spell,” Roya says. Some of the drunken fuzz is gone from her voice. She comes over to stand next to me, and her arm brushes against mine, and my skin jumps like I’m a cat she’s petted the wrong direction.
“Yeah,” I say, because it’s true. There’s only one way to fix this, to bring Josh back and make everything the way it was before. “We need a spell that will make this right.”
We all look to Iris. She’s shaking her head at us, but I can see the gears turning. She closes her eyes and we wait. The glow of her magic shines through her eyelids, illuminating a delicate leaflike tracery of pink veins. We all look away.
Iris’s eyes glow when she comes up with spells. It’s a whole thing she does. She’s the only one of us who can do it—everyone else just kind of Does Magic and whatever happens happens, but Iris can gather our magic together and give it structure if she works on it really hard. But the working-on-it-really-hard makes her eyes glow. She gets so embarrassed about it. We don’t tell her that the glow is still totally visible even when her eyes are closed. It’s not abig deal to anyone other than her, but we know she would be self-conscious. It’s just better if we don’t tell her.
We look at each other to keep ourselves from looking at Josh or at Iris. I keep accidentally catching Roya’s eyes and then looking away from her. Paulie bumps her shoulder against mine and whispers “You okay?” and I shake my head. I amabsolutely notokay. I’m overwhelmed and terrified and oddly ashamed. And I’m mad that Roya had a prom date to ditch at all, even though that’s not what I should be thinking about right now. It’s too hot in the room, too crowded with the five of us plus Josh plus all the blood. Paulie grabs my hand and squeezes it. Her palm is dry and cool and I resist the urge to press it to my forehead.
After a few minutes, the magic glow from Iris’s eyes dies away. She looks at me and nods, the motion knocking one red curl into her face. “Okay,” she says. “I think I’ve got it. Let’s go.”
2.
WE STAND IN A SEMICIRCLEthat arcs out from Josh’s bed. We’re staring at our shoes because it’s getting harder and harder not to look at Josh. We’re all holding hands. Marcelina is next to me. Her hand is soft and warm and it feels like more than I deserve right now. Usually, Iris would be at the end of the line, opposite me—but I think that Paulie, Iris, and Marcelina arranged themselves to stay between Roya and me. It’s probably for the best, but it still makes me a little sad.
Here’s what you need to know about Roya: She’s my best friend. She’s on the swim team and she eats more pasta than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. She talks a lot about macros and carb-loading. She’s Afghani. Her mom is the chief of police and her dad is some kind of fancy accountant, but I can never remember what makes him fancier than a regular accountant. Roya’s parents adopted her when she was six and then gave birth to her little brother six years later. Being adopted was the first thing we bonded over—there was athing where everyone was supposed to bring in baby pictures and tell the stories of our families, and we were the only two who didn’t know our birth dads’ names.
When Roya is really happy and not paying attention, she makes flowers grow. She has this long thick black hair that’s always loose in beachy waves, unless she’s at a swim meet, in which case it’s tucked up under her swim cap and you can see the back of her neck, which is long and slim and covered in these fine hairs that look like they’d be really soft under your fingertips.
Anyway.
Roya’s always mad at someone. Right now, the person she’s mad at is me.
I thought I wanted this.
“Okay, here’s what we’re doing,” Iris says. Her voice has taken on this businesslike tone that she uses whenever she’s being bossy. She’s bossy a lot. It’s great. Seriously, we all love it—she takes charge like nobody else I know. She’s going to run the world someday.
“The spell should clean everything up. And then it’ll get rid of the body.” She frowns a little. “I think.”
“You think?” Marcelina mirrors Iris’s frown.
“I’m not sure. It’s kind of vague.”
“Wait,” I say. “That’s not what I meant when I said ‘make it right.’?”
“Oh?” Iris looks at me sharply. Her eyes are flashing, and I know what she’s thinking: that I’m the one askingfor a huge favor, here, and can I really afford to be picky? Still, I press.
“We have to … we have tofixit,” I say, hating the whine in my voice. “We have to make it right, we have to bring him back. There has to be a way to bring him back.”
Iris laughs. Her laugh is only a little cold, not mean, but she’s in that mood she gets sometimes, where she knows best and we’re all just failing to keep up. “If you think we can bring people back from the dead … That’s ridiculous, Alexis,” she says. “We aren’t miracle-workers. It’s going to be hard enough just to get rid of him.”
It stings when she talks to me that way. And it stings even more because what she’s saying is that I’ve done something that can’t be undone. I feel stupid for ever having hoped that things could go back to the way they were before.
I feel so small, and I’m so afraid that they’ll leave me all alone with this thing I’ve done if I ask them for too much help. So I don’t argue.
“It’s not like we can make it any worse,” Roya mutters. Someone knocks on the door, and we all jump. Roya shouts that the room is occupied, suddenly sounding a lot more sober than she did a few seconds before.
“Can we please, please get this over with?” Paulie growls, and everyone nods, and I can’t argue with them anymore. I can’t ask them for more help than I already have, and I certainly can’t ask them to risk getting caught with a dead body with me.
Besides, Iris is really smart. Like …reallysmart. If she says this is the only option, I believe her.
“Are you ready?” Iris asks. We all say yes, and then—
Magic.
