“Right,” we all say, sort of together. I feel like I’m going to cry, so I reach out my hands and let a tiny spark of my magic go out to each of the girls in turn. It’s not much, but it should give them a little bit of energy, a little bit of joy, a little bit of warmth. They each smile at me as they feel it.
“Besides,” Iris says, “we’re going to bring him back, right? Once we’ve gotten rid of all the pieces and the heart is beating again, we can bring Josh back, and then maybe we’ll all get the things we lost back too.”
“Oh shit, yeah,” Paulie breathes. “That might work, huh?”
“I don’t know, guys,” Maryam says, her brow furrowing. “It’s not like bringing him back is going to undo what you did. It’s just going to—you know what?” She interrupts herself, shaking her head. “Never mind. It could work. It could totally work.”
“It could totally work,” Marcelina whispers.
“It could totally work,” Roya echoes. “And then we can all go back to normal. Now, do you think I have time to get another burrito from the burrito-lady before the bell rings?” As if to answer her, the lunch bell drones, and the cafeteria is filled with the sound of scraping chairs and sneaker-squeaks and voices shouting about where to meet after school. “Damn it,” she mutters.
We all say goodbye, and a moment like this should feel fraught and tense, but it doesn’t. It feels comfortable. It feels like things are going to be okay. Like they’re really, actually going to be okay.
Although, I have to admit, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to feeling normal again.
Roya gives me a hug before she goes, and I can smell her hair and her body wash, vanilla and mint. My fingertips tingle. I squeeze her close, and she doesn’t let go of me either, and for the space of a caught breath I wonder if maybe she wants to hang on as badly as I do. I wonder if maybe—
But then she pulls away, and she says “See you tomorrow,” and then she’s stepping past me, and her hair is brushing my shoulder, and something in my chest aches.
“See you,” I call. I don’t turn to see her go, because even though things feel okay—even though I know I’m not alone—I don’t know if she’s going to look back at me. I’m so scared that she won’t look back.
* * *
When I get out of my last class of the day, Paulie is waiting for me. She’s leaning against a locker with sunglasses on and a lollipop stick between her teeth, and she looks so much like Danny Zuko that I stop dead in my tracks and start laughing. She grins, which makes it even worse, and then she looks over her sunglasses and winks at me, and there are tears streaming down my cheeks by the time I manage to catch my breath.
“Are you grounded?” she asks once I’ve regained my composure.
“No, why?”
“Because I want to finish what we started the other day,” she says. “Vis-à-vis the thing in my trunk.”
“I can probably go. Let me text my dads,” I answer, even as I’m trailing her out of the school and to her car. We stand outside the car with the doors open, letting the oven-hot interior air out for a couple of minutes. By the time it’s cool enough to get inside without melting, I’ve already gotten a reply. Have fun, thanks for checking in, love you! from Pop, and Be home by ten from Dad. I send them a string of kissy-face emojis and we get into the car. Paulie blasts the air-conditioning, and I buckle up and brace myself for another traumatizing ride.
“How’d today feel?” I ask, and she shrugs.
“Good,” she says. “Comfortable.”
“Think you’ll do this one again?”
She shakes her head, hesitates, then nods. “Probably. I mean, I look handsome as hell.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.”
“How could I miss it?” I laugh, and she gives me another wolfish grin.
We talk about college, and about New York, and about whether she’ll stick with female pronouns when she leaves our little town. We talk about State, and about the apartment I’m going to share with Roya and Maryam, and about how hard it is to believe that there are only three weeks left until summer.
“I meant what I said last time we talked about this. I’m going to miss you a lot, you know,” she says, no grin this time. I put my hand on her shoulder and she clears her throat. “All of you guys.”
“We’re going to miss you too. But we’ll come visit you in New York, and you’ll show us Times Square and all the best restaurants and clubs and stuff.”
“Yeah,” she says with a small smile. “Yeah, that’ll be great.”
We spend the rest of the drive talking about how scary all of this is—how awful it is to be losing pieces of ourselves as we get rid of the pieces of Josh. It feels like we all just started really understanding who we are, and now that’s all changing, and it’s awful.
Talking about it doesn’t make it better. But it’s good to tell someone I’m scared. It makes it easier, knowing that I’m not alone.
We get to Barclay Rock and lapse into a heavy silence. Paulie pops the trunk and hands me Josh’s arm. We walk into the trees and find the tree trunk we sat on last time. Paulie casts a net of magic out into the tree line, and then she spreads out a little blanket on the ground, and we sit on it and pick at the crunchy grass and wait.
“Do you think I can touch her this time?” Paulie asks.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” I answer. “She’s a coyote.”
“You touched her,” Paulie mutters. I glare at her and she holds her palms up. “Okay, okay, I was just asking.”
When the coyote finally shows up, she pauses and smells the air for a full minute before approaching us. She looks a little less ragged than she did last time we saw her. A little less bony.
She sits near the edge of our picnic blanket and cocks her head. Her muzzle is brown, muddy-looking, and I wonder if it’s dirt or dried blood I’m looking at. I hold out a hand and she growls, a low rumble in her throat, but she lowers her head and shoves it against my palm.
More meat for you and your pups, I tell her.
Why what smell who meat smell good meat why
I point to the arm, and she smells the full length of it before grabbing the wrist in her teeth and using it like a handle to tug the arm.
Wait, I tell her. Come back?
She looks up at me with golden eyes and drops the arm. She steps toward me and waits, her body tense.
I grab Paulie’s hand. Her fingers shift under mine, trying to lace into the spaces between my knuckles, but I turn her hand over so her palm faces down. Out of the corner of my eye I see her look at me, but I don’t take my gaze away from the coyote.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Easy now.
Careful.
I lift Paulie’s hand to the top of the coyote’s head.
As her fingertips land on fur, I let my thumb brush against the coyote’s head. Still, stay still, it’s okay, she’s good, I say, as quietly as I know how to talk in this language that isn’t talking. The coyote is unmoving, but rigid. Her ears twitch. Thank you thank you thank you, I say, and the coyote licks her chops, and I pull Paulie’s hand away. Her fingers twine between mine, and I can feel her trembling.