I stall by taking a bite of my burrito. If I were Roya, I’d snap at them to figure it out. If I were Maryam, I’d pat Iris’s arm and tell her that I believe in her. If I were Marcelina, I’d ask what ideas they already had, and then I’d help them put something together. If I were Iris or Paulie, I’d … well. I guess I would come up with something brilliant and dangerous and say go.
But I’m not any of them, and I have to figure out for myself what to say.
It’s so much easier to think about my friends than it is to think about myself. It’s so much easier to predict them than it is to predict me. What does Alexis say? What’s the right answer? What does Iris need to hear right now? She and Paulie are both staring at me. Iris has a waiting-face on. Paulie is looking at my mouth and I wipe it with my thumb, thinking I must have rice sticking to my chin or something. I realize that the table has gone quiet: everyone is looking at me, waiting. I swallow my mouthful of burrito and clear my throat.
“We’ll all help you however we can.” I say it without thinking, and once I’ve said it, I know it’s the right answer. I reach out and grab Iris’s hand, giving it a firm squeeze. Relief floods her features. “You’re not alone,” I add, and I’m surprised at the tears that fill her eyes. “You know that, right? You know you’re not all by yourself in this?”
“Yeah,” she whispers, but I wonder. I think back to what she said yesterday, about being the one who’s supposed to have all the big ideas. Iris has always put a ton of pressure on herself, but I wonder if maybe we’ve been putting some pressure on her too—making her feel like she has to be the smartest, the most put-together out of all of us. I squeeze her hand again. She looks away.
“I mean it,” I murmur, low enough that it’s just between the two of us. “You don’t have to have all the answers.”
“I don’t really have any of the answers,” she says. She taps twice on my knuckle with her thumb, and then she lets go of my hand and pretends to rummage in her backpack. “I mean, I still haven’t figured out why we can all do what we do, and I’ve been doing research for years now. Besides, I’m not the one who figured out about the heart,” she says, not looking up.
“You—did you tell everyone about … ?” Everyone’s eyes are still on me.
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Roya says.
“What’s worth a shot?” I ask. My burrito suddenly feels strange in my hands. I pass it to Roya.
“Getting rid of the pieces to bring back the heart,” Maryam says softly. “Your idea.”
I shake my head and look to Iris as if she’ll give me answers, but she’s still pretending to rummage through her backpack. This doesn’t sound like what I said—but it makes sense, sort of. As much as anything does. “So, you guys think that if we get rid of all the pieces of Josh—”
“Maybe his heart will come all the way back, and then we can bring him back to life from there,” Paulie finishes. “Yeah.”
“We should try, right?” Maryam says. “I mean … it’s still worth trying to make it right, obviously. This method is better than nothing.” She’s got her hands folded neatly on top of the table, and everything about her looks carefully constructed to seem calm.
I wait for Iris to look up. When she does, I catch her eye, and she frowns.
“It makes the most sense,” she whispers. “And every time you guys get rid of a piece, except for when Roya did the arm—I feel better every time. Like the thing that’s wrong in that spell is slowly easing off.”
“It feels like we’re setting things back where they’re supposed to go,” Roya says through half a mouthful of my burrito. “So, yeah. Let’s go with it, huh?”
“What about the arm?” I ask, and Iris shakes her head.
“She didn’t actually get rid of it. She just hid it,” Iris says. “She’s gotta go back and get it out of there, get rid of it the right way.” The way she says it, I can tell that they already talked about this part. Without me. They figured it all out already.
Roya rolls her eyes. “Fine, yeah,” she says. “I’ll do it again. Alexis Rules: we have to get rid of the piece all the way, for keeps, before the heart comes back to life. Right?”
Alexis Rules? I’m not used to being the one credited with the big plans, and I’m so afraid that someone will be angry with me if this goes wrong too. “What if it doesn’t work?” I ask.
Maryam unfolds her hands to drape an arm across my shoulder. “Then we’ll figure it out. Together. But we have to try.”
“Maryam’s right,” Marcelina says. “This keeps getting harder and more complicated, and you all know I’d rather run away, but … I don’t think this is a thing we can run away from, and either way, I can’t live the rest of my life knowing I didn’t at least try to do the right thing.”
“You’re not alone either, you know,” Paulie says with a smile. Before I can say anything, the lunch bell rings.
We all get up to head to class, but Paulie grabs my arm. “Hang on a minute,” she says, running her free hand through her hair. It’s a femme day for her, and she’s wearing her hair long and loose. It falls past her shoulders in perfect waves. She sees me looking and winks. “Maryam helped me out with it this morning,” she says. “She’s been practicing on me. I told her that I’d let her if she promised to stop feeling bad about how she can’t really help with the Josh project.” She tosses it back and forth in a goofy parody of a Baywatch babe. “I think it came out pretty great, yeah?”
Pretty great is an understatement. She looks like something out of a shampoo commercial. “It’s amazing,” I say. “She’s so incredible. Damn.” I feel myself smile, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve smiled today. I love seeing the things my friends can do. I love being impressed by them. “I didn’t know Maryam was doing hair … stuff,” I say. I glance around to see if anyone is listening to us.
“It took her like thirty seconds,” Paulie whispers. “She grew it longer, even. This morning it only came to here.” She holds her hand flat about four inches above the ends of her hair.
“Wow,” I breathe.
“Yeah,” Paulie says. She reaches out and touches my wrist with one hand. “So, I was thinking of going for a drive. Do you want to come with?”
“Uh, sure,” I say, distracted by the way her fingers are brushing mine.
“Cool,” she says. “Let’s go.”
“What, now?” She laughs and starts walking. I stand where I am, confused for a couple of seconds, before jogging to catch up with her. “What about fifth period?” I ask, like a total square.
“What, do you have a test or something?” she asks, pushing open an emergency exit door. No alarm goes off—they never do. I wish I could credit Paulie’s magic for that, but it’s really just that the school deactivated all of them because they were tired of alarms going off all day.
“No, I just have study hall,” I say, blinking in the sunlight. “But …” I trail off. But what? It’s a gorgeous day, and there’s hardly any school left, and Paulie wants to go for a drive. What am I gonna miss? A bored teacher trying to get through their grading so that they can actually have a night at home without piles of half-assed essays to mark up? A room full of seniors trying to decide if they can get away with napping?