A car honks at me as it passes by, and I yelp with fear. My breathing goes all hiccuppy, and before I know it, I’m sobbing into the phone. “I’m s-sorry,” I manage to gasp out with difficulty.

“It’s fine. You don’t need to apologize for crying, just . . . Where are you?”

“Um, on the s-street,” I say, trying to get my crying under control. “Outside school.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Chapter 33

You can be a positive influence on your friends’ well-being by encouraging them to also not share magic.

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

When Lex picks me up, she immediately hands me the half-drunk Starbucks drink in her cupholder. I cradle the cup in my hands, letting the cold seep into my skin and ground me before I drink any. When I take a sip, the flavor of toffee nut hits my tongue.

“Thanks,” I say.

Lex gives me an expectant look. “So what happened?”

I lean my head against the window, exhausted. “Mr. B and Brittany. I, um, saw them together. In the faculty parking lot.”

“What? Like . . .”

“Like they were making out. And sharing magic.”

“What the actual fuck!” Lex shouts. She slaps a hand violently against the steering wheel. “That’s so creepy! At school?”

“Yeah,” I say. There’s an air of unreality around me right now, like none of this is actually happening. I feel strangely disconnected from myself. My brain keeps circling back to the image of Mr. B and Brittany kissing, but it’s like something I saw in a movie somewhere. Not something that happened in real life.

“I knew he was a creep, Shay!” Lex says. She jerks the wheel to the right, flying us into the nearest plaza. “I knew it. It always felt weird that he forced you to audition by threatening you with the scholarship. That’s why I told you not to do the show.”

“Yeah,” I say dully. Belatedly, I notice that I’m still clutching the coffee cup. I relax my grip on it and place it back in the center cupholder.

Lex glances over at me as the car settles onto the ground in a parking space. “Did Mr. B ever . . . do anything to you?”

I rear back from her, shaking my head definitively. “No.” But as I say that, a sour taste fills my mouth. “I mean, he was kind of touchy-feely.”

“Touchy-feely?” she echoes.

Memories flash in my mind, suddenly invested with new meaning.

There’s Mr. B pulling me out of rehearsal to practice partner dancing alone with him.

And there’s Mr. B telling me that I’m too pretty to be a lesbian.

And there’s Mr. B touching my thigh when I scraped my knee in rehearsal.

And there he is grabbing my shoulder, leaning too close, telling me to relax.