When We Were Magic

by Sarah Gailey

  I’m still staring at them when my math teacher announces that Josh is missing.

  7.

  I HAVE CALCULUS FIRST PERIOD. My teacher, Mr. Wyatt, is kind of a mess. His divorce was finalized at the beginning of the school year, and he’s been trying to date since winter break. School gossip has been unrelenting, with reports circulating of his unsuccessful dates with all of the single female teachers (and, uncharitably, a couple of the married ones). Sometime around January he bought a motorcycle and stopped buttoning the top few buttons of his shirts. I’m sure he’s a great guy and all that, but his midlife crisis is a little overwhelming to witness. We all try to be gentle with him, which adds an extra layer of hard-to-watch to his announcement about Josh.

  “Anyone who has any information about Josh’s whereabouts should head to the front office right away. You won’t get in trouble if you know where he is.” He’s trying to look calm and comforting, but also stern and authoritative, which results in a facial expression I can only describe as “clenched.” “His family is worried about him, guys,” he says in a scolding tone that implies we all know where Josh is but think it’s fun to keep the information to ourselves. “Think about what they’re going through. Do the right thing.”

  I glance around the room. Some people are casting worried looks at each other, mouthing, “Did you hear from him?” One girl is texting under her desk without watching the screen, her thumbs moving fast while she stares at Mr. Wyatt with a fixed, I’m-definitely-listening look on her face. A few people look totally locked down—they’re not responding well to Mr. Wyatt’s tone, his assumption that we know something but aren’t telling.

  Maryam sits two rows in front of me. I can’t see her face, and the back of her head tells me absolutely nothing about whether she’s mad or scared or sad or what. All I know is that she’s sitting very still. She doesn’t raise her hand and say, “I know who killed him!” She doesn’t look back at me. There’s nothing she could possibly do in this moment to make me feel better, but still—a bright knot of worry tightens in my belly at the sight of her stillness. What if this morning she was giving us all some kind of last chance? What if she’s decided that telling someone what happened is the Right Thing to Do?

  Mr. Wyatt finally finishes staring at all of us like we’re hiding his car keys, and transitions to handing out the day’s worksheet. We’re doing worksheets for the entire last month of school, because he knows that every senior he teaches has one foot out the door. He gives us completely unnecessary instructions, which basically boil down to “Answer all the questions on the page instead of screwing around for the next hour,” then sits down at his desk to fiddle with his profile on this month’s dating site. There are no pretenses here. The second his butt hits the chair, the classroom erupts into whispers.

  Nikki Palay, who sits in front of me, gets up and we swap seats. It’s a long-standing arrangement that lets me talk to Maryam while Nikki talks to her best friend, who sits in the back row.

  “Hey,” I say as I slide into Nikki’s still-warm chair. Maryam turns around to look at me. She’s styled herself in the last couple of hours. Her eyeshadow is silver and blue today, with sharp black cat-eye liner framing her lids on either side. The second I see her makeup, I breathe a sigh of relief—I realize that part of me was afraid she’d turn around and still be barefaced, grieving. Haunted by what I did.

  Or worse: afraid of what I am.

  “Hey,” she says, layering her hands over mine. She gives my fingers a squeeze. “How are you?”

  Her smile makes my chest ache. “I’m okay,” I say weakly, and we both laugh. “I mean, I’m awful, but I’m okay now. I was worried about you.”

  She shakes her head at me. “Don’t worry about me,” she says. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

  “Are you really fine?”

  “No,” she says, smiling a little. “But I know you guys tried your best,” she says, then glances away. “And I know we’ll figure something out. Together.”

  “You don’t have to be—”

  She cuts me off. “So, my video went viral this weekend.”

  Her eyes are wide and serious. I blink a couple of times. What the hell does her video have to do with anything?

  She nods once, then repeats herself, more slowly this time. “So. My video. Went viral.”

  Oh.

  She’s asking me for a break. She’s asking me to talk about this other thing, this significant thing that isn’t as significant as I murdered a boy with magic I don’t understand but that matters to her, that matters to our friendship. She’s asking me for time.

  I can give her that.

  “Tell me every single thing” I say, and just like that we slide into a conversation about her viral makeup tutorial. It has something like a million views now. She’s getting a shockingly low volume of hate mail, considering the usual tone of people on the internet. Marcelina is monitoring the comments section to report anything nasty in there. Maryam talks about the responses she’s getting with a brightness that almost reads as true. It’s the kind of conversation we’d be having if prom had gone any other way—a conversation about her ambition.

  She talks about makeup, and she talks about making the video, and for half an hour, everything is fine.

  * * *

  Here’s what you need to know about Maryam. She does these video tutorials even though, strictly speaking, she doesn’t need to know any of the skills in the videos. Her strongest magic is color, and she could do her makeup without ever picking up a brush. She can do things to pigment that I could never even imagine attempting, and she’s got an understanding of the structure of the human face that blows me away. She can will a color change or a pattern onto her lids without blinking.

  But she doesn’t usually do it that way—instead, she’s spent hours perfecting techniques and making videos to teach strangers on the internet how to achieve the things that she can do without thinking. She’s been working on it since middle school, when she first realized that she could change her lip color without lifting a finger.

  I’ll never forget when she showed Roya and me what she could do, behind the school administration building during lunch one day. We were in sixth grade, and she was just starting to cross the line with Roya and me—the line between friends and best friends. She told Roya her secret first, and then, when Roya vouched for me, she told me what she could do. We asked if we could see. She asked us if we could really keep secrets, like for real, and we all pinky-swore, and then she lifted her fingers and twitched them and turned Roya’s hair pink.

  I’ll never forget the uncertainty in her eyes in the moment before Roya and I started falling over each other to reveal our own secrets. I’ll never forget the feeling that we’d unlocked something together, the three of us—some secret to friendship and teenagedom and grown-upness. Maryam has worked tirelessly since that day to perfect her control of her powers—and to make sure that she doesn’t need them to pursue her passion. She’s one of the only people I know who’s always had a plan for what she’s going to do with her life. She’s the kind of person who you can tell is going to be a big deal someday.

  After we part ways at the end of class, I notice that my manicure is restored. I didn’t even feel her do it. There’s a tiny black heart on each sparkling nail—a little thing to make me smile all morning, so long as I don’t think about Josh’s heart when I look at my hands. That’s Maryam for you. She’s an amazing friend, and I realize: part of me was worried that I’d lose her over Josh. I don’t know how I ever could have doubted her, even in the scared part of me that doesn’t want to be left alone. She would never bail over a guy.

  Even a dead one.

  * * *

  I don’t see any of the girls again until lunch. We text between classes, but it’s still a relief to find them all crowded around our usual table. I think some part of me was expecting them to be gone. To have left me behind to deal with what I’ve done and whatever it is that I’m becoming.


  But of course they would never do that. Of course they’re still here, and they’ve still saved me a seat.

  I watch them from the burrito line. Roya is devouring a pile of cold pasta salad, holding her hair back into a ponytail with one hand and shoveling carbohydrates into her mouth with the other. By the time I get to the table with my foil-wrapped burrito, she’ll have finished her pasta, and I’ll have to defend the first half of my lunch from her appetite. Paulie has a thick sandwich, half of which she’s already passed to Marcelina. Iris is squeezing a ketchup packet out all over the top of a pile of soggy cafeteria french fries—her defense mechanism against Roya, who won’t eat them if they’re already contaminated. Maryam is ignoring her boxed salad in favor of adjusting Iris’s eyeliner to be curlier at the inside corners. Her brow is furrowed and she’s saying something in that quiet I’m-right-next-to-your-eyeball way she talks when she’s doing makeup, and Iris is pursing her lips.

  I can quote the conversation by heart: Maryam is trying to get Iris to let her experiment with contouring, and Iris is responding that she won’t cover her freckles. And Maryam is saying that there are ways to accentuate the freckles while still highlighting the bone structure, and Iris is saying that she wants her freckles to show exactly as they are because she worked so damn hard to love them and now they’re her favorite thing about herself, and Maryam is saying that she knows, and then they’re starting all over again.

  Except that Maryam looks a little more animated than usual, and Iris is a little more gentle. Usually, Maryam leaves a lot of space for Iris to be opinionated and stubborn—no small sacrifice, given how opinionated and stubborn Maryam is on her own. But right now it looks like she’s pushing harder than usual, and I know Iris well enough to know what it looks like when she bites her tongue.

  If I had to guess, I’d say that Iris is giving quarter because she feels guilty for our failure this morning. And Maryam is pushing her, trying to make her feel like everything’s okay. Like everything’s normal. Just like this morning in class, when she tried to make me feel like everything was normal.

  Maybe I’m overthinking things. But then again, maybe I’m not. Maybe I should stop worrying about overthinking things and just trust that I know my friends better than anyone should know anyone.

  Paulie spots me and waves, and I wave back, pissing off the burrito-lady, who has to ask me twice if I want bean-and-cheese or chicken. “Chicken, thanks,” I say, even though we both know that there won’t be any chicken in there. The school burritos are beans, rice, and tortilla—filling enough that I can sacrifice the last few bites to Roya, cheap enough that I can use the remainder of my lunch money to buy a bag of chips to split with Marcelina. I almost always want to take a carb-crash nap during fifth period, but it’s study hall anyway, so nobody notices if my eyes droop a little.

  I start to make my way toward the table. Iris catches my eye, and I remember that she wanted to talk to me about something—she wanted to “run something by me.” I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to pry Maryam off her when something happens.

  It’s that thing where all the attention in a room shifts, and without anyone saying anything, you know that you need to look. Maybe it’s the way conversations shift to whispers; maybe it’s the way heads turn to point in the same direction. Maybe it’s one of those shared-consciousness things, where everyone is sharing a wavelength, and it twitches toward danger. Meerkats poking their heads up out of holes, looking at a shadow on the horizon.

  That’s the thing that happens. Without knowing why or how, something in the room makes me look up at the door to the cafeteria.

  There’s a cop.

  Her eyes sweep across the cafeteria. She’s wearing a full uniform. Dark blue, designed to make sure everyone around her remembers the authority she has over us. We’re small enough that we don’t have a dedicated police officer who works here all day, like some of the bigger schools do. But still, it’s not rare to see cops here. Kids get caught with drugs or they start fights or get the wrong person on staff mad, and the police show up.

  It always feels wrong to see them on campus, though.

  Even if the fear I feel right now is amplified and more personal than usual, I’ve always been afraid of cops. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen how some of my friends get treated differently by police than I do. Or maybe it’s Dad’s and Pop’s stories of things that have happened to them and their friends at protests and marches and parades and all the little moments in between those things. Or maybe it’s because police officers bring loaded guns into schools where we have regular drills about how to hide from people who bring loaded guns into schools. I don’t know—they just scare the shit out of me, okay? And they scare the shit out of just about everyone I know.

  I don’t know how to reconcile how I feel about the police with how I trust Roya’s mom. I’ve known her since I was too young to remember ever not having known her. She’s put Band-Aids on my knees and made me grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s hard to think of her as the same kind of person who makes Pop’s hands tighten on his steering wheel when she drives behind him. But then again, I don’t often see Roya’s mom in uniform. She wears suits most of the time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with a gun in her hand.

  Maybe I wouldn’t trust her so much if I saw her with a gun in her hand.

  The cop in the doorway doesn’t have a gun in her hand, but she’s resting her hands on her belt, which hangs heavy with threats—baton, taser, cuffs, pistol. She’s got short gray hair and a long, hawkish nose. She looks like she’s seen it all before, twice, and wasn’t impressed. Assistant Principal Toomey stands behind her, and they’re both looking around as if all eyes aren’t on them.

  I’m holding my breath, trying hard to look normal. The cop’s flat stare passes over my face without pausing. It lands on the table where we usually have lunch, and she points, and they start walking toward the place where everyone but me is sitting.

  I slide onto a bench and watch what’s happening across the cafeteria. The girl I’m next to—an underclassman I’ve never met—gives me a look, but doesn’t tell me to leave. Toomey and the sharp-nosed cop walk up to the table and say something. Paulie answers, and Iris nods. Maryam’s eyes are locked on the officer’s gun, and I see Marcelina grab her hand under the table to give it a squeeze.

  Roya stands up, shaking her head and looking pissed. She gestures to Iris’s fries, and the assistant principal shrugs. The cop rests a hand on the butt of her baton and gives Roya a sizing-up look, and my stomach clenches.

  “Ah, fuck!”

  I turn to look at the girl next to me, the one who frowned when I sat at the end of her bench. She’s swearing, and she’s got one hand cupped underneath her nose, which is streaming blood. No, not streaming—gushing.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, grabbing a pile of napkins from the freshman at the opposite end of the table. As I do, I notice that my palm is glowing. Oh god, what did I do?

  “I’m fine,” she says, grabbing a fistful of napkins from me and mopping up her chin and upper lip. “I think—I think it’s over, actually? That was so weird, I never …”

  I don’t catch the rest of what she’s saying, because I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. When I look over, Iris is standing up and putting her hand on Roya’s arm. Maryam is staring at the table, her face fixed, her gaze distant. Roya sinks back into her chair, her arms folded, and glares at the cop. Iris says something to Marcelina. Then she walks out of the cafeteria in front of the assistant principal, her posture defiant, high red ponytail swinging. She doesn’t turn back, doesn’t pause before leaving. She looks like a warrior.

  The cop stays behind, saying something to Roya, who rolls her eyes. They exchange a few more words before the officer leaves. I finally let myself inhale. My breath comes as ragged as if I’d been drowning.

  I don’t come to the table until she’s gone. Maybe I’m a coward, but I don’t think I could have kept my shit together in front of those
handcuffs. In front of that gun.

  “What was that about?” I ask as I hand my chips to Marcelina. Paulie gives me a Significant Look.

  “They want to know about Josh,” she says.

  “Why would they think Iris knows anything about Josh?” I ask, ripping foil off my burrito. My fingers tremble a little, but then Roya leans over and takes a huge bite right out of my hands, spilling rice all over me. I glare at her, and she winks, her cheeks bulging. “You’re gross,” I snap, my voice harsher than I want it to be.

  “You wuff it,” she replies, her voice muffled by burrito. I roll my eyes, but I can’t help smiling, because … it’s Roya.

  “The cop said that they found texts from Iris on Josh’s phone,” Maryam says, pulling Iris’s abandoned fries across the table with a shaky hand. “From the night of the party.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I say.

  “Well, that’s not what the cop said,” Marcelina interjects. We all turn to look at her—Marcelina isn’t usually one to correct people, not unless it really matters. “Sorry,” she says, looking everywhere but at us. “It’s just that, well. Um.”

  “It’s fine,” Maryam says, although she sounds irritated. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay, well, what she said was that they found Josh Harper’s cell phone, and that there was evidence indicating that Iris had been in contact with him in the time adjacent to his disappearance, and that they wanted to discuss the situation further without disrupting her class schedule.” She’s talking fast, and her voice rises with every new clause. “And then Roya said that they were disrupting her lunch, and that seemed more important than Iris missing Econ, and then—”