Page 66 of When We Were Magic
And I have to face it all.
Maryam and I are the last ones to arrive at the restroom during first period. It’s not that we have trouble getting hall passes—it’s just that it’s nearly impossible to make Mr. Wyatt look up from the earnest “Are you interested in dating a high-strung calculus teacher with a penchant for lavender ties?” profile he’s in the middle of composing. He doesn’t seem to notice that we’re standing next to him until there’s a knock on the door of the classroom. It’s a freshman from the administrative office with a note for Mr. Wyatt—a summons for Angela Trinh.
Here is what I know about Angela: Her twin brother is on the lacrosse team. She does badly on quizzes but never seems stressed about her grades. She wants to be a singer. That’s about it. Sometimes I wonder how it’s possible, in a town as small as mine, that I don’t know more about all of my classmates—but then, I’ve never really needed to learn more about them. I’ve always had my friends, and they’ve always been all I need. And by the time I started to really feel bad for not making more of an effort to get to know everyone, it was already senior year, and it felt like a waste.
Angela leaves slowly. Her eyes fill with tears as she picks up her bag. She could have been called to the principal’s office for anything, but everyone in the classroom is thinking the same thing as she hesitates with her hand on the doorknob: she is going to be questioned about Josh.
Josh, who has been missing for over a week now. Josh, who still hasn’t been found.
We trail Angela and the office messenger down the hall, walking a little slower with every step until we’re far enough behind them to duck out of sight. We scoot behind some lockers and wait until we can’t hear their footfalls. Until we can’t hear Angela sniffling anymore. Maryam’s face is calm, but she twists the hem of her shirt between her fingers.
“You okay?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” she says. “Just worried about Roya. And everything.”
“You don’t have to come to this. It’s probably about the thing, and the less you know, the less involved you are.”
Maryam looks at me like I’ve slapped her hard across the cheek. “Of course I’m coming. It’s a 911, Alexis. I’m not ignoring that.”
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Sorry.”
She shakes her head. “I’m still here, you know,” she murmurs. “Just because I couldn’t—”
“I know,” I interrupt desperately. “I know, I’m sorry, I know. I didn’t mean it that way.”
She lifts her chin. “Stop apologizing,” she says. “Let’s go.”
When we walk into the restroom, Roya steps past me and locks the door. I raise my eyebrows as Marcelina checks all the stalls for occupants. “What’s the big emergency?” I ask.
Roya leans against the sink with her arms crossed. She’s wearing a flannel over ripped-up shorts today, and I have towork hard not to stare at the lines of muscle in her thighs. She’s not looking at Paulie, and I can’t figure out if she’s just not looking at Paulie or if she’s specificallynot looking at Paulie. There’s a major vibe. I try to catch Paulie’s eye, but she’s busy adjusting something in the back of her high-waisted skirt. Paulie is all business today: chignon, pressed blouse, a pen on a necklace. I try to parse what message today’s fashion is sending, because there’s always a message with Paulie. But my head is swimming, and I just can’t. I can’t decode my friends today.
“We have a problem,” Roya says. Her voice is low, strained. She takes out her phone and pulls up a photoset. “Look.”
She passes the phone around, and I watch as one by one, my friends see whatever it is that made Roya lock that door. Marcelina makes a noise low in her throat. Iris sways on her feet. I peer over Maryam’s shoulder when the phone gets to her. Wordlessly, she hands it to me, and I am the last to see.
At first, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. They’re pictures of photos. Photos of dry grass, little yellow plastic triangles, grid markers and rulers. A plastic bag with … something in it. Something that my brain can’t resolve into athing. It looks like a ham covered in jelly, or maybe the broken end of a baseball bat with paint on it. Or … no, none of that is right. I squint, and then, finally, the red pulp in the picture resolves itself into a recognizable shape.
It’s an arm.
It’s a half-eaten arm.
I drop the phone. It clatters across the tile and comes to a rest against the base of the already-full trash can. Roya stoops to pick it up and checks it for cracks before tucking it back into her pocket. “So,” she says.
“What the fuck, what the fuck? What the fuck?” My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking. Maryam wraps an arm around me and takes a few deep breaths, trying to make me match her rhythm so I’ll calm down. Another trick Iris has taught us over the years. I struggle to breathe with her. My throat feels too narrow to admit all that air.
“They found it last night,” Roya says. I look up at her and realize that she has the wide-eyed stare of someone who hasn’t slept. Her hair is in a tangled bun, and the outline of yesterday’s headband is still creased across the top of her head. I was so busy staring at her legs that I didn’t even notice how exhausted she is.
I feel like an asshole. What kind of friend am I, to miss that kind of thing?
“I overheard my mom talking to my dad about it after she got home,” Roya continues. Now that I’ve noticed how tired she is, I can hear the fatigue in her voice, too. “They got a call from someone who thought they’d found a body, but it turned out that it was just the arm. I guess it was chewed up by something. They matched a birthmark to a picture of Josh. I don’t know about, you know. DNA or whatever. But there’s going to be a search party. They’re canceling classes tomorrow. You’ll hear about it in fourth period.”
The rest of the girls immediately start talking over one another, talking about the search party. About where it will be and what the searchers might find, and whether we should go. While they argue, I try to remember a birthmark. I didn’t notice it. I was going to sleep with that boy, and I didn’t even know about his birthmark. I fed his arm to a coyote, and not once did I look closely enough at it to see the damnedbirthmark. I swear, every time I think I couldn’t possibly have screwed this up worse, I discover some new way that I’m a disaster.
“It’s my fault,” Paulie whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” Roya snaps, making Paulie flinch. “We just need to fix it. What are we going to do?”
Someone tries to pull open the door to the restroom, then pounds on the metal when they realize that it’s locked. Maryam shoots out a hand and, faster than gasping, the light of her soft, suffuse magic etches mascara trails down Marcelina’s cheeks. Paulie and Roya wrap their arms around Marcelina, and Roya hisses “Cry!” as Iris unlocks the door.
