“Yes, thanks,” I say, grabbing the bottle in a wet hand. Our fingers tangle for a moment before she lets go of the bottle.
I shove my face into the spray. She’s my best friend. I don’t think about it.
“What are you guys doing here so early?” I call. “I thought you’d go back to bed.”
“Practice,” Iris answers, and that’s all she needs to say. They must have come straight here from Marcelina’s house. There’s a big meet coming up, but “practice” would have been the answer even if there hadn’t been a single meet on the calendar. With his two best swimmers about to leave, the swim coach has been driving the team hard all year. If I breathe deep enough, I can smell the chlorine still clinging to Roya’s hair and skin.
And Iris. It’s also clinging to Iris. Not just Roya. Not just Roya’s skin.
I lather, rinse, and inspect. Still dirty, although the first round got most of the loose dirt off.
“Hey, do you want me to do your hair?” Roya calls. I start soaping up again, trying to get some of the more stubborn dirt off my hands and arms.
“Why?” I ask as I rinse.
“So you don’t have to wash it,” she says. “I should be able to get the dirt out without getting it wet.”
“Too late,” I reply, turning off the water and wringing out my hair, and I hear her mutter an I told you so to Iris. “Um, speaking of which,” I add, but before I can finish, Roya’s arm thrusts back into the shower, this time clutching an only-slightly-damp towel. “Thanks,” I say sheepishly. After I take the towel, her arm hesitates for a moment.
I stare at the soft inside of her wrist. It’s a lighter shade than the deep brown-gold of the rest of her, but still dark enough that my fingertips look ghostly against the backdrop of her skin. A bangle, gold with dark green stones, hangs just above the jut of bone at the base of her hand. It’s the bangle I gave her for her birthday last year.
Her fingers flex. I don’t know what she’s waiting for. Slowly, slowly, I reach out and brush my fingers across her palm.
A soap bubble drifts by. I snatch my hand back, my cheeks and throat and chest all burning. What was I thinking? The soap. Of course she’s waiting for the soap. I grab it and fumble it into her hand, then towel myself off roughly. My breath comes fast and shallow, and I want to smack my head into the wall until the embarrassment fades.
Maybe she didn’t notice. Maybe she thought it was the towel or my hair or something, anything but my fingertips.
“See you at lunch?” Iris calls, and I can hear them zipping up backpacks. “There’s some stuff I wanna run by you.”
“Yeah, sure, perfect!” I call, my voice too bright and brassy.
“Bye,” Roya says, and I know it’s just in my head, but there’s a softness to her voice. A waiting-ness. I know it’s all in my imagination, but it feels like she’s saying something more than just “bye.” It feels like years of longing are contained in those three letters.
I shove my face into the towel and hold back a scream of frustration. Years of longing in three letters? God, I’m pathetic. She was just saying “bye.” Normal people say “bye” to each other all the time.
I don’t come out of the shower until long after their footfalls fade from my hearing. I throw my filthy clothes into the trash on my way out the door, because I can’t bear the thought of carrying grave-dirt-covered clothes with me all day. I buy my day-old bagel from the cafeteria, and I make it to my first class just before the bell rings. All morning long, my fingertips sweetly ache where they brushed Roya’s palm. It feels just like it does when I’m pushing magic out of myself and into the world, and I can’t stop checking to see if they’re glowing.
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.