“Nothing. Let’s get started.”
I raise my hands between us, and Paige does the same. Magic rushes out of me, and I pull away, surprised by the force of it.
Paige raises an eyebrow. “Welcome back, Winter.”
I roll my eyes and start again. This time I’m ready, and the burst isn’t so surprising. I send it into the air above me, and soon a cumulonimbus cloud hangs overhead.
“Let’s light her up,” Paige says. We hold our hands up in front of us, palms facing one another, and an electrical charge crackles and pops in the space between us.
But something doesn’t feel right.
This isn’t the normal aggression of winter magic. It’s building too fast, too much energy too soon. We haven’t produced a single lightning bolt yet, but there’s enough electricity between us to set the trees on fire.
It’s the tension. The anger. The hurt and the memories. The air between us is thick with secret moments and open wounds.
That’s when I realize what’s happening.
“Paige, stop,” I say, jumping back. My hands are almost down to my sides, expelling my half of the energy, when Paige grabs my wrists and pulls me back in.
“I’m not failing this assignment because of you.” Her grip on me is tight, and I try to move out of her grasp, but she’s too strong. The energy flowing from me is building, my skin buzzing with power, my fingertips aching to produce light. I close my eyes and focus, doing everything I can to lessen it.
“Let me go,” I say, yanking my hands away.
“No.”
There’s isn’t much time left. We’ll set the whole field on fire before Paige lets go.
“Why are you doing this?” Anger burns my eyes and sharpens my tone.
“You don’t get to call all the shots, Clara. This is my assignment, too, and we’re going to finish it.” Her grip tightens.
She’s being impulsive. Reckless. Maybe that’s what pain does.
I squeeze my eyes shut. There is so much magic building off of Paige’s energy, off all the emotions and things left unsaid.
“Stop holding back on me,” Paige says. “I know you can do better than this.” She’s trying to provoke me, but her voice is strained. She feels the tension too.
I take a breath. Imagine the way her long hair fell over her shoulder when she laughed. She never laughed in public, not like that. But when it was just the two of us, she laughed with her entire body.
On my exhale, I shove away from her as hard as I can.
I break free of her hands, and she tumbles back, losing control of her magic. It reaches for my own, and panic seizes me as my magic rushes out to meet it.
I struggle against the force of it, but my magic recognizes her instantly.
I see the flashes of light that erupted when my parents died. When Nikki died. And all I can think is, Not Paige too.
I run at her and tackle her to the ground, rolling her out of the way as magic releases into the air with incredible precision. But I’m not fast enough, and lightning strikes the space we fall through, catching me in the side before finding the gold chain around Paige’s neck. It follows the metal all the way around before vanishing.
Paige shakes beneath me. I scramble off her and stay by her side.
There’s a burn under her necklace, and she stares at me, eyes wide. Then she looks away, and her chest turns red, the way it always does when she’s embarrassed.
And suddenly, I’m stuck in a memory. The first time I noticed that blush, we were in my room in Summer House, studying for a history exam. We were sprawled out on my bed, books open, highlighters and pens lost in the sheets, when Paige said she’d never kissed anyone.
It came out of the blue, unprompted. And it was surprising. Paige was always confident, sure of herself, and the vulnerability in her voice made my throat tighten. It wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. Paige had never been in a relationship because she’d never thought anyone was good enough for her. I wished I was more like that.
But sitting on my bed, her hair cascading past her shoulders, she trusted me enough to punch through her hard exterior and hand me a part of the softness she kept hidden. Red splotches formed on her pale skin until her chest matched the color of my hair.
“Will you kiss me?” she asked.
My first thought was how brave it was to ask. I didn’t know if I’d ever been that brave. I wanted to emulate her.
My second thought was how badly I wanted to.
When our lips touched for the first time, I knew there was no going back.
And for the next two months, there wasn’t.
Mr. Donovan rushes over, but I’m frozen in place, trapped between the memory of Paige’s lips on mine and the image of her body on the ground. I’m shaking beside her, terrified of what just happened. Terrified of how much worse it could have been.
“You’re okay,” I whisper. Without thinking, I take her hand.
She looks down at it, up at me, and back to her hand.
I let go.
Then her head lolls back, and she’s out.
Chapter Thirteen
“It never occurred to me that change was undesirable until someone who prided themselves on consistency told me it was.”
—A Season for Everything
Paige is lying on a narrow bed in the nurse’s office. She has a mild burn on her neck from the lightning heating up her necklace. Ironically, the pendant on her necklace is a little gold lightning bolt that Nikki gave her years ago.
I have a matching one. Nikki was buried in hers.
I’m in a chair beside Paige, a similar burn on my left side where the lightning passed over me. I can’t stop seeing images of my parents and Nikki, can’t stop thinking about how easily Paige could’ve joined them.
I’m a danger to those around me, and I can never forget it, not even for a
