Summer
The drive home passed in a blur.
When I got back to the apartment, I slammed the door shut and ran to Lara’s room.
She wasn’t there.
But I’d seen her car next to mine in the parking lot. So I hurried back into the living room and opened the door to the balcony.
Lara was sitting on a chair with a textbook on her lap, a highlighter in her hand, and a half-finished glass of wine on the table next to her.
She snapped her head up to look at me.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I think I might have killed Courtney.” The words came out of my mouth in a rush.
Lara placed the book down on her lap. “What are you talking about?”
“She didn’t actually invite me there to see if I wanted to join the sorority.
She brought me to her room, and she called me a slut because she thought I was hooking up with Trent, and then she picked up these little crystal-gem things and threw them at me, but I was so angry, and they turned back around to fly at her, and then she tripped backward and her head smacked into the wall. ..”
I paused to take a breath. The wind chimes rang behind me, like they were playing background music to my totally crazy story.
Lara was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “I’m sure she’s okay,” she said, even though she had no way to actually know that.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She was so still.”
“But you didn’t touch her. She tripped.”
I nodded, replaying the scene in my mind for the hundredth time. I definitely hadn’t touched her. “But those gems…” I said, since I couldn’t make any sense of it.
“Are you sure she threw them at you?” Lara asked.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“And then they spun back around and hit her?”
“It sounds crazy,” I said, since I didn’t believe it myself. “But I know what I saw.”
She nodded slowly, and I could tell she was at a loss for words.
I just stood there, trying to steady my breathing.
Had Courtney been breathing after she fell?
I didn’t know. I hadn’t looked.
I should have looked.
“Maybe it has to do with the magnetic field,” Lara said, interrupting my train of thought. “The Northern Lights last night might have something to do with it. That’s one of the theories online—that they appeared because of a shift in Earth’s poles.”
“What does that have to do with gems?” I asked.
“Gems are from the Earth?” she said. “I’m just theorizing here.”
“Okay.” I ran my fingers through my hair and took another deep breath. “You’re right. Maybe that’s it.”
“Sit down,” she said, and she picked up her phone. “I’ll look it up.”
I sat, but bounced my knee up and down, unable to sit still.
Lara was tapping on her phone, and from the intense way she was studying it, I could tell she wasn’t finding much.
“Well?” I asked, unable to take the waiting.
“Hold on,” she said, and I sat back in the chair, gazing out into the parking lot.
The more times I replayed the scene in Courtney’s room in my head, the more times I wondered if I was remembering it correctly.
As I was thinking, a black SUV that was definitely too fancy for this neighborhood turned into the parking lot and pulled into a space.
My heart rose into my throat.
Was it the cops? Did they track me here to question me? Or to bring me into the station?
“Let’s go inside,” I said to Lara, even though being inside wouldn’t hide us from the cops.
Plus, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t touched Courtney.
Still, I paced anxiously around the living room anyway.
Lara finished off the rest of her wine in a few seconds and kept scrolling through her phone.
I took my phone out to try to help, but my body was shaking so much that my fingers kept landing on the wrong keys. So I gave up, shoved my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, and kept pacing.
A knock on the door made me freeze in place.
“I’ll get it,” Lara said, and she jumped off the couch. “Stay here.”
As if I had anywhere else to go? We were on the third floor, so I couldn’t exactly jump off the balcony. Besides, I wasn’t stupid enough to run from the cops. It would only make me look guilty.
I wasn’t guilty. I knew that. I hadn’t touched her.
But I felt like I was.
Lara opened the door, and I held my breath, panic rising in my chest.
Two people around our age stood on the other side. A girl with light blond hair, and a guy with dark hair. They both wore jeans, and she wore a white top, while his was deep red. Plus, they had backpacks, like they’d just come from the library.
“You don’t look like the cops,” I said, and the girl smiled slightly, her bright gray eyes twinkling with amusement.
“That’s because we’re not cops,” she said. “Not anywhere close to it.”
“Can we come in?” the guy asked.
Lara glanced at me, waiting for me to make the call.
Something inside of me—a something that could have been incredibly stupid—made me want to trust them.
“If you’re not the cops, then who are you?” I asked, since either way, their arrival was beyond strange.
“I’m Nicole,” she said, and she pointed to her companion. “This is Blake. We sensed a magical awakening in the area, so we came to check it out. We traced it here—to you.”
A magical awakening?
“What?” I asked, totally dumbfounded.
“Last night, you discovered your magic,” she replied. “Our radar sensed it in this general area. Tonight, you used it on that girl on campus.”
“You mean Courtney?”
I was barely processing what she was saying. Because it was crazy. Totally and completely crazy.
Then again…
I glanced down at my hand, since no matter how insane it sounded, I could have sworn I’d done something to those gems.
Lara stepped to my side. “Is this some kind of prank?” she asked them.
“Not a prank,” Nicole continued, remaining focused on me. “You used a pretty large blast of magic. We went to the sorority house to check out what had happened, and it was a total commotion, but we managed to learn that you knocked that girl out and ran.”
Relief released inside of me. “You mean she’s not dead?”
“She’ll have a nasty bruise,” Nicole said. “And maybe a concussion. But she was very much alive. And she was convinced you used some sort of devil’s sorcery to throw a bunch of crystals at her.”
“She threw them at me,” I said. “And then…” I trailed off, unsure how to explain it in a way that made sense.
“We’re here to help you,” the guy—Blake—said calmly, his tone reassuring.
Nicole was looking at me with so much hope.
“Are you like me?” I asked, even though I didn’t know what I was. All I knew was that I needed help, or guidance, or something.
Not even my mom’s midnight, incense-enhanced yoga sessions could prepare me for this.
“We are,” she said. “If you let us in, we can explain more. Because like Blake said, we want to help you.”
I looked to Lara, and this time, she shrugged.
Nicole and Blake watched me patiently.
I wanted to believe they were telling me the truth. But given what had happened with Courtney, I was beginning to think my truth-radar wasn’t in tune today.
Maybe they were here because I was dangerous and they wanted to lock me in some sort of magical prison?
But they were my only leads on what had happened tonight. And they sounded sincere. If I sent them away, I’d regret it forever.
“I guess I have nothing to lose at this point,” I said, and then I walked to the door, opened it further, and invited them in.
* * *