I shake my head at her and close my locker. “Seriously, you’re a riot,” I say, grinning at her with all my teeth. I start walking toward the cafeteria. If I’m lucky, Marcelina will be in there and we can split a bagel and I can forget about this whole conversation.
Gina grabs my arm. “Stop!” She’s too loud in the corridor, and the couple of other students who are crossing through the hall turn to look. She smiles at them awkwardly. I shake her hand off me. “Just stop,” she says again. “I know about—Alexis, where are you going? Come on—”
She’s trailing after me, but I can’t stop walking. A kind of numbness is taking over my arms and legs. Everything looks gray. The edges of my vision are vibrating. Gina knows?
She can’t know about the magic, too. She shouldn’t know about Josh and me making out, but she really, really can’t know about the magic. We’ve been careful. We all have.
Haven’t we?
With a sick feeling, I realize that we haven’t. We used to be so cautious. We all know that we’re different, that we have something people want. We’ve never needed to swear each other to secrecy because it’s obvious to us what the consequences could be if the world found out about our powers. We’ve seen enough movies and read enough novels to understand what happens to magic girls. But lately, we’ve gotten … comfortable. I think of Maryam doing my nails in class. I think of myself at the reservoir, drying Roya off with a thread of power. I think of all the little things—the ways we’ve fixed each other’s hair and mended each other’s damaged clothes, the ways we’ve grown so comfortable with each other that it’s second nature to expend a little magic helping each other out. I realize that anyone who was watching us closely would know right away what we are.
And apparently, Gina’s been watching.
“Look, I don’t know why you’re so freaked out about this,” she says. “I just want to talk to you about it. Unless you and your witch-friends did something wrong—”
I stumble. It’s a little thing—my feet betraying me, tripping over nothing at all. The sole of my sneaker makes a loud squeak against the linoleum. I turn to see Gina holding a hand out, as if she’s going to catch me. A small trickle of red oozes out from one of her tear ducts. My fingertips are burning.
Behind her, Iris stands frozen in the hall, watching us. She’s holding her How Does Magic Work journal in one hand and a highlighter in the other. She’s backlit by one of the fluorescents that’s actually turned on, and her hair forms a halo of orange curls around her face.
“Oh my god,” Gina breathes. “Wait … did you do something to him? You and your … your friends? Did you do something?”
“Of course not,” I reply sharply. I don’t know what the right reaction is. How would an innocent person answer this question? My phone is still going off, and I make a mental note to put my text notifications on silent. “I don’t know what your problem is, but this is honestly the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had.” Over Gina’s shoulder, Iris stares at me with wide eyes. “I don’t even know you, but you, what? You think you’re Veronica Fucking Mars? You think you know all these big secrets about me?” I take a step toward Gina, and she steps backward. “This is seriously the most we’ve ever talked, and you’re accusing me of—” The word “murder” sticks in my throat. I shake my head instead. “I don’t know what your deal is, Gina, but this conversation is over.”
Gina brushes her fingers against her face as if there’s a bug on her cheek, then does a double-take, noticing the redness on her fingers. She touches her cheek again. The tiny smear of redness there spreads into a garish stripe. She’s not bleeding any more than that, but it’s enough to put panic in her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she whispers. Her voice is shaking, and I can’t tell yet if she’s mad or scared. “I don’t think it’s over until we’ve talked to the police.”
“What are you going to tell them?” I ask. “That I’m Harry Potter? That I cast some kind of magic spell on Josh?” I wiggle my fingers at Gina the way she wiggled hers at me. She flinches away from me, but then she squares her shoulders and looks at me with a grim frown.
“No,” she says. “I’m going to tell them that you were the last person who saw him on prom night. I’m going to tell them that I think they need to talk to you and your friends about whatever it is you’re hiding.”
My entire body flushes hot, then cold, then hot again. I think I whisper “no,” but I’m not sure, because at that moment, Iris drops her notebook.
Gina whirls around with a little yell. Iris has both her hands raised high in the air. She says “Alexis, help,” and without thinking, I throw my magic at her.
I can’t see the dark-bright light of my own magic, but Gina gasps. She’s looking around with white-rimmed eyes, her braid flailing back and forth. She throws her arms over her head and half ducks like the ceiling is going to collapse on her.
Iris sweeps her hand through the air in front of her face, adding her own white light to the spell she’s crafting. It circles Gina like a lasso. Then it tightens around her mouth.
All of us are perfectly still for a moment. Me, with my arms half-raised toward Gina, my mouth open as if there’s anything I could say. Iris, her arms over her head, her hair frizzed out in a wild corona, her eyes still glowing like starfire. Gina, cowering, her mouth bound by light and power.
Then Iris drops both of her arms, and the spell vanishes.
Gina lets out a tiny squeak of a scream. In my pocket, my phone buzzes again. Iris stumbles into the wall.
I run to her. “Iris, are you—?” She waves me off with a weak smile, shaking her head, but I still press a hand to her cheek and search her eyes. No burst blood vessels in them, not this time. After what happened when she cast the spell in Josh’s bedroom, I was so scared that something in her had broken. That she wouldn’t be able to do magic anymore at all. But she just looks a little tired, a little extra pale under all those freckles. She’s okay.
I turn to Gina, who’s staring at her own hands in horror.
“What—what did you, how? No,” Gina stammers. “No, no, no—you—”
“Shut up, Gina,” I snarl, and her mouth closes fast. Her eyes are so wide, and she’s breathing hard through her nose. A tear slips down her cheek, cutting a clear path through the drying blood that’s smeared there.
“Am I going to die?” she whispers.
“No,” Iris says. Am I imagining it, or is her voice a little shaky? I take her hand and give it a squeeze. “Or … well, I mean, someday, probably. But I didn’t hurt you or anything.”
“What did you do to me?” Gina asks. She’s standing very, very still. Like she’s afraid that she’ll disintegrate if she moves too fast.
Iris looks askance at me. “I, um. Well. I made it so you can’t say what you were threatening to say. About us.”
“What do you mean?” Gina asks, her voice slowly regaining volume. “You mean I can’t tell the police that you’re all w—”