Over long periods of time, consistent daily magic sharing will make your body used to containing a higher density of magic. If you stop regularly sharing magic, your body will experience a period of acute exhaustion, and you may find it difficult to complete magical tasks that you once found easy.

—Your Magical Body: A Health Textbook for the Magical Teen

Everything goes back to normal, more or less. For the next few days, I’m pulled into private rehearsals with Mr. B. We go over choreography, all of my scenes, and my solo. It’s helpful, but uncomfortable. He’s decided we’re best friends now and really wants to shoot the shit with me while we’re working.

It feels as if I have to pretend to buy into our so-called friendship. Every time I try to get us back on track, he doubles down on our previous conversation by asking me a super-personal question. At this point he knows most of what there is to know about my family and friends, my interests, and my entire (nonexistent) dating history.

In our group rehearsals, I am very noticeably Mr. B’s favorite again. My castmates gossip about it endlessly. They don’t talk to me about it, of course, but when I pass groups of people on our water breaks, they fall silent. You would think that actors would be better at playing it cool than that. Ed, because he low-key lives for drama, takes it upon himself to appear and confirm that I’m the current hot topic.

“Dude, what did you do?” he asks, sidling up to where I sit at the front of the stage. We’re essentially on break because Mr. B is busy magically fiddling with the broom props. “Last week you were the second coming of Jesus, then you were suddenly just like the rest of us, and now the sun shines out of your asshole again.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I say.

“I heard that you and Mr. B had a secret conversation in the greenroom.” He waggles his eyebrows at me. “With the door closed.”

“What?” His last few words echo in my mind. “I talked to him about what I could do to perform better in the show. What are people saying?”

“Just stuff.” He shrugs and plops down to sit beside me. “A bunch of them have weird crushes on him, so . . .”

“So they made up a rumor that I’m hooking up with him?” Ed doesn’t deny my guess. I cast a surreptitious glance at where Mr. B hovers in the air, paranoid that he can hear this conversation from across the stage. “What the fuck?”