I grip a dusty skirt spilling from the box I’m hiding behind and press it against my mouth to stop myself from screaming. My brain’s a jumbled mess of thoughts. All their tricks defy possibility—not because they’re the best magicians I’ve ever seen, but because the tricks are not tricks at all. The thought hits me hard in the way only an impossible truth can. The type of truth that tilts your world and leaves it spinning forever off-balance. Like finding out vampires exist. They may not be vampires, but they’re something. Something my mom might have been as well. Her journal entries were the fantastical things I imagined they were as a kid. But if she had real magic, wasn’t she always warning me away from it? Why?

The tank’s so packed full of flowers that I can’t see the twins anymore.

Until their hands slap against the sides of the glass. The crowd quiets. Unsure.

I don’t know whether this is part of the trick or if I should run onstage and fish them out—human or not, they’re kids. They haven’t been up for a breath this whole time. How long has it been? I can’t be sure. It feels like I’ve been hiding here in shock forever.

The twins erupt from the top of the tank at the exact same time, lifting their small hands and waving at the audience. Wet flowers dangle in their hair.

The crowd gets on their feet, giving them more love than Xander got for his butterfly. I’m not sure what to do. I can sneak away and pretend I never saw this, or I can dive into the water and maybe drown, because one thing I know for sure is that if Mom had magic like this, she hid it from me. But what if she was just waiting until I was older to let me in on her secrets?

She’s not here to ask. These people feel like the closest thing I have to her lost journals. If I miss this moment, if I walk away and they pack up and leave tomorrow, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering, and I’ve already spent too much of my life wondering why both my parents are dead.

My legs wobble as I stand up and head down the steps, turning away from the door leading to the audience and heading back to where the answers are. I expect to step out into a room and have them all turn dramatically to look at me, but there are rows and rows of boxes, like every show that’s ever performed here has left something behind that’s never gotten tossed out.

Cold seeps from the cement floor, and I shiver.

A voice rises and drifts off.

I move around several rows of boxes until the conversation grows louder.