“I’m trying to pay you back in advance for all the help you’ll have to give me with acting,” I say. “Want to do texture-adjustment practice instead? You’re too good at change-of-state drills.”

“Whatever’s fine,” she says unenthusiastically.

Ugh, she’s right. I’m being too serious. The point of this was to make her feel more confident about the test on Saturday. She doesn’t need to practice practical magic anyway.

“Hey, I’m going to miss you when you’re all busy with drama shit,” she says suddenly, sitting up in the bed. “What am I going to do without my main squeeze?”

“I’m not going to, like, disappear. I’ve been busy before,” I point out.

She ducks her head and runs her hands back through her hair. “Sure, but I barely saw you last semester.”

“Yeah, but . . .” I trail off, because she’s right. We don’t hang out as much anymore. We used to go to the gym to play one-on-one terraball all the time—that was how we became friends in the first place. Our terraball coach at school recommended the gym as a way for our team to get extra practice in, and Lex and I were the only ones who liked going enough to do it more than once. It became our thing. But we barely played together last semester. I think last weekend was the first time we had gone in months.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It really sucks. I mean, you’re super busy with your application stuff too. I felt like our schedules never lined up last semester outside of work.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I was locked up in my house writing supplemental essays for my college apps.”

I wince. That was a bad time. Lex is applying to all of the top fifteen ranked licensing universities, and they each have different essay requirements.

“At least Galpert doesn’t require an additional essay,” Lex says.

I raise my eyebrows. “Galpert? You’re applying there?”

She plays with my comforter, bunching it up between her fingers. “I added a few non-licensing colleges to my list.”

“Why?” I ask, my brow furrowing with confusion.

Her hand tightens into a fist around the fabric of the comforter. “I want to go to college this year,” she says. “And I don’t even know what I want to study. I know my parents want me to be a magimed like them, but I can try to transfer to a licensing college if I decide to do that.”