MY EARS RANG WITH PANIC. I’d closed my eyes, bracing myself for an arc of blood to catch me across the face, but the hot wet splash never came. I opened my eyes and uncurled my hunched body.
Like the volume being turned up on a radio, Alexandria’s scream appeared on the horizon of my awareness. It was a long, sustained, movie-star shriek. She was staring at the nebula of flesh that was suspended in front of her.
It spun slowly, a long pink streak of mist and foam and jellyfish-like hunks. I swallowed bile as I stood up and walked in a wide arc around the Dylan-cloud. There were a few recognizable spots. A toenail floated like a translucent seashell caught up in the froth of a wave. An eyeball dangled, ripe and whole, in the center of a fog of blood. I made my way to Alexandria and put a hand on her shoulder.
She stopped screaming, and in the vacuum left by the absence of her scream, I heard the slam of doors up and down the hall outside.
“Alexandria?” I whispered. “Alexandria. Hey.”
She turned her head toward me without taking her eyes off the tendrils of Dylan that hovered nearest her face. “Y—yeah?” Her voice was shaking.
“You need to put him back together, Alexandria. Can you do that? Please?” Some distant corner of my mind congratulated itself on the steadiness of my voice.
She shook her head, and tears spilled from both her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice them. “I don’t—I didn’t—what?”
I gestured to the exploded boy. He took up most of the center of the classroom. “It’s okay. You’re not in trouble.” That probably wasn’t true, but this wasn’t the time for honesty. “I just need you to put him back together, and everything will be okay. Okay?”
She shook her head hard, kept shaking it for too long. She started rocking back and forth. I gently cupped a hand along the back of her head, and she went still. She whispered, “I didn’t do this, I don’t know how to do this, I couldn’t—Miss Gamble, she—can you do it?”
Voices in the hall. Footsteps. Far, but not far enough.
Can you do it?
But of course, I couldn’t. I tried for less than a second, the way I always had, the way I’d always told myself I wasn’t trying—I tried to reach out with something that wasn’t my mind, with that something that Tabitha and Alexandria and Rahul and everyone here but me seemed to know how to access. It was a habit that I pretended not to have, and yet I did it then. I tried to reach out, and I failed like always. I couldn’t do it. I would never be able to do it.
I snapped my fingers next to Alexandria’s face. “Hey,” I said, my voice sharp. “This one’s on you. Put him back. Come on. We don’t have much time, now.”
She finally turned to look at me, turned all the way, and I caught my breath. All of the magic was gone from her face. Her hair was still blond, but next to her scalp was an inch of dark brown roots. Her eyes were smaller, closer together, and she had a pimple on her chin. I would have been willing to bet that when she opened her mouth, I’d see crooked eyeteeth.
She didn’t look all that different, though. Other than the stark terror in her eyes. “I don’t know how,” she pleaded, and I believed her.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, let’s just … let’s try.” She grabbed my hand, gripping it so hard I felt the bones grind together. “Let’s try this. Imagine…” I scanned my memory for something, anything from the journal, but there was nothing. All of that was so abstract and recursive and self-referential—but then I landed on a memory of Tabitha, nine years old, trying to help me understand how she’d made a daisy grow super-fast. How she’d explained it. “Imagine that your magic is a swimming pool, okay? Now hold your breath.” Alexandria nodded, her eyes locked on mine, and took a deep breath. She didn’t exhale. “Okay,” I said. “Now … now freeze the water, and then dive in.”
It hadn’t made any sense at all when Tabitha said it that day in our parents’ backyard. She’d said that, and I’d been so frustrated, so furious, that I’d stomped on the daisy and run inside. I’d locked myself in the bathroom and filled up the sink and spent an hour staring at the water, willing it to ice over.
It still didn’t make any sense to me, but Alexandria’s face grew determined. Her eyes unfocused, the same way Tabitha’s had the time she’d turned all the salt in Mom’s saltcellar to quartz.
The Dylan-cloud began to spin faster. The toenail and the eye drifted close to each other, and I had a wild urge to shout Don’t scratch yourself. I held my breath as the pink fog picked up speed, whirling—not into a funnel, although I kept watching the bottom of the cloud, expecting it to narrow. Rahul’s voice echoed in my memory: Alexandria always seems to be right in the eye of the hurricane, though. Which I guess would make Dylan the hurricane. And yet, the cloud didn’t tighten at the bottom as it spun; instead it drew into itself, thickening in places. As I watched—as Alexandria stood beside me, as still as a cat—the cloud formed a tight sphere. Mountains formed on the surface, then separated themselves away from the loose planet of flesh, revealing their substance. I fought down bile as a long spool of intestine spun out into a Saturnine ring. Three flat planes of dark purple rested like lakes before tremoring and sliding together into a beating heart, which hovered like a spasmodic moon. It clenched and unclenched around nothing for the space of a minute before a fine flow of red and yellowish motes fizzed up from the surface of the sphere and began to flow through it, pulsing in time with the movements of the heart and sketching a wide ellipse.
“Oh my god,” I whispered.
Bones formed, marrow first. Half of a brain branched backward from each of the eyes. Two crystalline networks of nerves, fine as spiderwebs, sketched the shape of a body in two pieces. Long meaty muscles began to group themselves together, looking disconcertingly like pork hanging in a butcher-shop window. I wondered if Alexandria would be able to assemble it all, or if Dylan would fall to the ground in pieces. The spinning slowed, and I let out a little of the breath I’d been holding, in an attempt to lessen my dizziness.
I tore my eyes away from Dylan’s liver to look at his sister. She was sweating profusely—her hair had gone limp and wet, and she was reaching up to wipe at her eyes. Her lips were white.
“Alexandria,” I whispered, not knowing what I would say, not sure if I should put a hand on her shoulder or if touching her would ruin all of this, would leave Dylan dead. She shook her head without taking her eyes from her work, and bit her lip so hard that I saw a thin line of blood appear under her tooth.
I looked back to Dylan just in time to see skin sheathing each half of his body. His eyes had eyelids now, and they were closed, but I could see his heart beating in the left half of his chest. It was worse, somehow, seeing him almost put together—it was harder than it had been to see him in pieces. The two halves drifted toward each other, spinning as slowly as the mobile over a baby’s crib. They pressed against each other, and the seam in his skin began to heal over. It was like watching a sped-up video of a flower blooming—his skin formed a scab, and then a scar, and then it was smooth, and then I wouldn’t have known that there had ever been a fissure there at all.
Alexandria made a small sound from the back of her throat, a sound like a weightlifter gripping a school bus by the bumper, and then Dylan began to float across the room. He drifted down to a lab table on the other side of the room, landing as gently as a leaf falling from one of the black oak trees that lined the school campus.
She collapsed, then retched. I didn’t look back at Alexandria as I ran to Dylan, weaving between chairs. He was unconscious, but breathing. I pressed two fingers to his throat and felt the strong, rapid thud of his heartbeat pushing back. A sound exploded out of me without my permission—half sob, half laughter.
“He’s alive,” I said.
Someone in the hall outside the classroom let out a ragged scream. I looked up from Dylan just in time to see Courtney shove her way through a crowd of students that had gathered outside of the classroom to watch through the windows. She burst into the room, still screaming.
“Dylan! OhmygodDylan!” She ran toward the spot where I stood over Dylan’s still body. She ran through a fine blue-gray powder that littered the floor—the remains of Dylan’s clothes, if I had to guess. Her foot slid through the thick dust, and she tripped, sprawling headlong across the front of the classroom. There was a thick, wet crunch when her face hit the linoleum.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, looking frantically around for Tabitha—I couldn’t handle this on my own anymore, there was just too much. But my sister was nowhere to be seen, so I went to Courtney and helped her up. Blood poured from her rapidly swelling nose.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered, freezing up with my hands six inches from Courtney’s shoulders—until Alexandria appeared in my periphery. I turned to look at her. She still wasn’t wearing her magical enhancements, but she looked steadier than she had just a moment before.
“I think I can help?” She said it like a question, and before I’d taken even a split second to think it through, I was nodding. She reached out and took Courtney’s hand, threading their fingers together. Courtney flinched away, but Alexandria held fast to it, biting her lip.
“Imagine your magic is a tree,” she murmured, and I could picture fourteen-year-old Tabitha clear as day, trying to help me understand how she made a feather levitate. It’s like if magic is a tree, but all the leaves are made of taffy, and you just … pull it.
Courtney cried out, and there was a smell in the air like strawberry lemonade, and then we all looked at her nose. It was still swollen, but it had stopped bleeding. Courtney backed slowly away from Alexandria. Her foot slipped in the blood that had dripped onto the floor. She was shaking hard, too hard to call it trembling.
I glanced at the window that looked out into the hallway. There was a massive crowd out there, just … watching. Silent. I had never seen so many eyes before, so many stunned faces.
The clock above Tabitha’s desk ticked five times. It felt like hours.
The door to the classroom burst open, and Rahul ran in, followed closely by Torres. Mrs. Webb eased in a few steps behind them, then waved her hand at the windows. They went dark, but the afterimage of all those faces burned in my vision. From outside, I could hear voices—Toff and another teacher, trying to break up the crowd.
“What is going on in here?” Torres said in a voice that felt inappropriately calm. I tried to figure out where to start, but before I could say anything, Courtney interrupted.
“She did what she did to me, she did it, she did what Miss Gamble did, and I—she did it to him, is he dead? Did he die? What did you do?” With this last word, she lunged toward Alexandria. Rahul caught her by the shoulders and held her in place even as she kicked and screamed nonsense panic-sounds like a cat trapped under a fallen branch.
“Mrs. Webb?” Torres said sharply, and Mrs. Webb stepped forward. She placed her palm against Courtney’s forehead, and the girl slumped over, unconscious. “Thank you.”
Rahul scooped the girl up and gently placed her on Tabitha’s desk. He hadn’t looked at me once since he came into the room.
“Now, Ms. Gamble,” Torres said, leveling a cool stare at me. “What exactly happened in here? And why,” she added crisply, “is there so much blood everywhere?”
“Excuse me, um, sorry,” Alexandria said, and it didn’t sound like her at all. She was quiet—almost timid. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but … Miss Gamble. I mean, Ivy. She didn’t do anything.”
Torres looked at her with the same removed stare, evaluating, then nodded. “What did happen, then?”
“Well,” Alexandria started, stammering, “we were talking. Ivy—can I just call her Ivy instead of Miss Gamble? It’s confusing because there’s like, two of them? Okay, well, Ivy was, was asking me some questions. And then it, um, it turned out Dylan had snuck in and was doing his invisible thing to spy on us.” Torres sighed, then nodded: this was an everyday occurrence. “He was really upset because, um.” She flushed. “Because Ivy said I was the Chosen One. And then my hands got hot and then Dylan … exploded.”
Mrs. Webb went very still. “Go on,” she said quietly.
“I think I blew him up,” Alexandria said in a quavering voice, and tears started to stream down her cheeks again. “I think I blew him up, and then Ivy came and she told me how to put him back together, and then Courtney came in and she tripped and broke her nose and that’s why there’s so much blood.” Her chest shook as she held back sobs.
“You can’t have blown him up,” Mrs. Webb said, peering at Alexandria like she was some exotic new species of jellyfish, dredged up from the uncharted depths of the ocean for study. “You can’t have. It takes years of … but then, your hands…” The old woman walked to Dylan, still on the lab table. The heat of his skin fogged the sealed black surface of the table. She flicked her wrist, and a long Osthorne-blue sheet billowed over Dylan, covering him from the chest down. She pressed a hand to his forehead, and I wondered if she was performing some magical evaluation I would never be able to understand, but it looked for all the world like she was a grandmother checking a child for a fever. She shook her head. “This isn’t possible. This isn’t something that happens by accident.”
“Please,” Alexandria whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how I did it, I didn’t mean to—”
“That’s alright,” Torres said, laying a hand on Alexandria’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll talk about it in my office, alright? You’re not in trouble.”
Alexandria nodded. “Okay.” Then she turned to me. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I didn’t— I didn’t do what you think I did.”
I nodded at her. “I believe you.”
I didn’t know for sure if I was telling the truth, but her face forced the words out of me—and not with a body slam of emotion. It was the change in her. She looked completely haunted. She looked afraid. She looked terribly, terribly young.
I thought about the story she’d been building for herself—a girl, a young woman in charge of her world. Unstoppable. Fearless. But that girl had never encountered anything this frightening before. She’d encountered drama with her friends and her parents and boys and grades. Maybe she’d seen bullying, intimidation, violence. But in all this time, she’d never encountered anything so frightening as her own power.
“Let’s go to my office, Alexandria.” Torres put an arm around Alexandria’s shoulder, and started guiding her toward the door. “Mr. Chaudhary, please come with us. I’ll need your assistance. Mrs. Webb? Would you mind waking the other two, and they can join us?”
Mrs. Webb nodded, and Torres, Alexandria, and Rahul walked out. I didn’t see if Rahul turned to catch my eye as he left the room. I couldn’t stand to look, in case he didn’t. It was just me and Mrs. Webb. I realized I had no idea what her first name was.
She rested her hand on Dylan’s forehead again, and something about the position of her fingers was different, but it was nothing I could have described in a report. He took a deep breath, a gasping, choking breath, and sat up.
“What—what happened?” He looked at Mrs. Webb like a drowning man might look at the shadow of a whale shark. “Oh my god, I was—what happened?”
Mrs. Webb peered into his eyes, but didn’t see what she was either worried about or hoping for. “You aren’t the Chosen One, my boy,” she said. She didn’t say it gently, but she wasn’t cruel, either—she was ripping off a Band-Aid, and must have known that wasting time would only make it hurt more.
Dylan heaved an immense sigh. “Okay,” he said. He nodded to himself, then to Mrs. Webb. “Okay. I’m not the Chosen One.” He laughed softly, still nodding. Something seemed wrong—the boy who had been ready to tear Alexandria apart was gone.
“It’s your half sister,” Mrs. Webb said. “I’m sorry. I know you two don’t get along—no, now, don’t try to deny it. But it’s her. She’s more powerful than anyone you’ve ever heard of. And she’s going to need a friend in the next few years, when the Prophecy is fulfilled.”
Dylan pushed himself off the edge of the counter. “It’s funny,” he said to Mrs. Webb—neither of them seemed to remember that I was still in the room—“it’s funny, but I’m not so worried about it anymore.” He looked like he was going to say more, but he interrupted himself with a retch. He doubled over, clutching the sheet to himself, and gave three long, hacking coughs. He held his hand to his mouth and spat something into it, something that clicked against his teeth.
“What is it?” Mrs. Webb asked sharply. “What did you find?”
Dylan pulled out a tiny blue marble—smaller than a regular marble, but bigger than a ball bearing—and handed it to her. “I don’t know. This isn’t mine? I, um. I don’t feel so well.”
She rolled it between her fingers. “Hm. Go along to Ms. Torres’s office, Dylan. I’ll be there shortly.”
He walked out of the classroom with the sheet wrapped around him, sparing me the barest of glances as he passed, lingering for a moment next to Courtney’s still-unconscious form. I started to raise my hand in a wave, but he was already gone.
Mrs. Webb walked to the front of the room. I drew up beside her.
“What is that?” I asked, gesturing to the little ball in her hand. She touched it to her tongue before dropping it into my palm.
“If I had to guess? I’d say it’s his obsession.”
I stared at the little ball. No mysteries swirled within its depths. It didn’t feel warm, it didn’t vibrate, it didn’t glitter. It looked like a funny little marble, like something a grandpa would have in a cigar box tucked away on a shelf somewhere.
“Is that something you can do? Mages, I mean—you can just take something out of someone like this?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Webb murmured. “I was a healer for longer than you’ve been alive. This is impossible. But then, that’s a Prophecy for you.” She shook her head. “Young Miss DeCambray is probably only just starting to show us what can be done when magic is applied the right way. Or rather, when magic is applied her way.”
“What do we do with it?” I asked.
“You dispose of it,” she answered. “It’s medical waste.”
“Really? That seems … I don’t know. Wrong, somehow.”
“Does it?” she asked. “If you had your gallbladder removed, would you want to save it just because it pained you for a decade?”
I considered the little marble, then set it on one of the lab tables. “I guess not.”
“Hmph.” Mrs. Webb picked it up and hucked it. It smacked into the trash can near the door with a loud, satisfying ping. She approached Courtney and pressed a hand to the girl’s forehead, then jumped backward as Courtney sprang off the table.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god Dylan I can’t believe she did it to Dylan you have to stop her—”
Mrs. Webb looked at me, apologetic, and then slapped Courtney smartly across the face. Courtney’s mouth shut with a little pop.
“I’m sorry, young lady,” Mrs. Webb said, and she sounded like she meant it. “You’re panicking, and you have to stop. You’re safe. Nothing bad is happening to you.”
“But Dylan—”
“Dylan is safe too,” Mrs. Webb said. “Everything is fine. Now, we’re all going to go to the front office, and you’re going to talk about whatever you need to discuss.”
Courtney looked between Mrs. Webb and me. She shook her head. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t need to talk to anyone.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked. “You seem pretty, uh. Traumatized.”
“I’m sure,” she said, looking away from both of us.
“Alright,” Mrs. Webb said. She turned, walking toward the door. I looked between the two of them, trying to figure out what to do, then dashed out the door after Mrs. Webb, leaving Courtney in the classroom alone.
“Wait,” I called, and Mrs. Webb paused in her brisk walk down the hall. “Wait, don’t you think she needs, like … counseling or something? She seems really freaked out.”
“She just saw her secret boyfriend explode,” Mrs. Webb said, dry as kindling. “Courtney will be fine. She might be a little panicky for a few days, but then they’ll make out and she’ll have a big personal revelation about true love, and then she’ll be back in school next Monday with new bangs.” Mrs. Webb patted at her immaculate hair. “I’ve seen it a thousand times. Always a crisis, with these girls.”
I didn’t know what to say. It seemed wrong—it didn’t seem like enough. But I didn’t know how to say that to someone who clearly thought it was so much more than enough, so I watched her head down the hall away from me, slow and stately. Something didn’t fit. I stood in the hall by myself, uncertain—where could I go from here? But before I could decide, Courtney eased the door to Tabitha’s classroom open behind me.
“Oh, Courtney,” I said, reaching for her automatically. She looked up and down the hall, then slowly sank to the floor, sobbing. “Oh, god, uh, oh man. What—what are you—” I stood there, not knowing what to do with my hands. She was sobbing harder than I’d ever seen anyone cry. Worse than Tabitha on my couch a few days ago. Worse even than my dad, sitting on the edge of the empty hospital bed in our living room so many years ago. It was a kind of sobbing that seemed to come from below her lungs, from the deep aching roots of her. Finally, desperate, I grabbed her under the arms and half pulled, half carried her across the hall and into the empty library. I steered her to a chair and she sank into it, folding her arms on the table and sinking her face into her elbows.
“Hey, shhh, hey,” I said, over and over, rubbing her back in small circles. I’ve never been good at comforting people—never really known what they might need. But the low drone of my voice seemed to help, and after a while her sobs diminished, and became hiccups.
She lifted her head, and her eyes locked on mine. “Oh, god,” she moaned. “Oh, god, I can’t believe—I can’t believe it happened to him, too.”