“We have one bit of housekeeping to discuss before you’re dismissed,” he says. “We’ve finalized the arrangements for the total solar eclipse this summer.”
I look down at my desk and shift in my seat. I’ve ached for this eclipse ever since I learned it was coming, years and years of counting down to my way out.
But now the eclipse fills me with fear instead of relief.
I don’t want to be stripped.
I let the thought sink in, roll it around in my mind, decide if it has a place here. I feel it take root and settle into my skin.
I’m amazed and happy and terrified to realize it’s true. I don’t want to be stripped.
But the impossibility of it is heavy. It isn’t only that I don’t want to be stripped; I don’t want to be stripped, and I don’t want to be isolated.
I don’t want to be stripped, and I don’t want my magic to target the people I care about.
I don’t know if those things can coexist. The eclipse is coming, and if they can’t, I will be forced to make a choice.
And that scares me.
“We will be evacuating the night before and staying in upstate New York. We’ll be out of the path of totality and can see the partial eclipse from there.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you’ll never get to see a total eclipse?” Ari asks thoughtfully. “I think it would be amazing to see.”
“It would be incredible,” Mr. Mendez agrees. “Some shaders say it’s life-changing.” His voice is far off and wistful, like he’s forgotten he’s teaching a class. He clears his throat. “But being unable to see a solar eclipse is a small price to pay for being a witch.”
All witches in the path of totality are required to evacuate. It’s illegal to be stripped on purpose—the atmosphere would fall into disarray if witches were stripped of their magic every time a total eclipse occurred.
Still, it would be remarkable to see.
“Are there any other questions?” Mr. Mendez asks. He looks around the room, and when no one raises their hand, he dismisses us.
I stand up and shove my books in my bag. When I leave the room, Paige pulls me aside. She’s holding a stack of books to her chest, and her hair is in a ponytail.
“I remember what you told me,” she says simply. She doesn’t have to elaborate for me to know what she’s talking about.
I look down, my heart racing.
It was before. Before we broke up, and before Nikki died. She’d asked me what my parents were like during a long, sleepless night where we shared secrets and kisses and laughter. I told her all about them, about how Dad thought it was the coolest thing in his life that I’d been born a witch. About the way my mom would ask me to make it rain in summer just so she could dance in it. She loved the rain.
I told her about how they died, how my magic roared out of me in a burst of lightning and sunlight and heat, incinerating them on the spot.
I told her how sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and hear their screams.
That was before I knew my magic sought out the people I loved, rushing toward them until it swallowed them whole. I didn’t make the connection until Nikki died and Ms. Suntile dove into research. That’s when I ended things with Paige and moved into the cabin in the trees.
But still, I knew my magic was dangerous. I knew it was a power I might never learn to control.
So that night in my bed, with my fingers laced through Paige’s and her hand in my hair, I looked her in the eye and whispered, “I might stay for the eclipse.”
She didn’t gasp in horror or lecture me or pull her hand from mine. Instead, she brushed my hair behind my ear and said, “I might try to stop you.”
That was all. We never spoke of it again.
I look at her now, the image receding to the corner of my mind where I hold all our broken promises and memories too vivid to forget. “I know you do.”
“Do you still feel that way?” she asks.
I think about what I discovered with Sang and how it could stop witches from dying. I think about all the good it could do.
And I think about how, if I can’t learn to control my magic fully, I will have to isolate myself for the rest of my life because of it. That’s a life I’m not sure I can commit to.
“I don’t want to be stripped,” I say. It isn’t a lie.
She studies me, and it’s clear she knows there’s more I’m not saying. “Good,” she finally says, “because I don’t want to have to stop you.”
Then she walks off without another word.
I’m still trying to shake the memory off when I get outside. Sang is leaning against a brick wall and stands up when he sees me. He gives me a crooked smile that pushes all the tension from my body, all the tight knots and clenched muscles.
And he’s not even using his magic.
“Hey,” he says, walking over.
Spring has washed over him. Everything about him is brighter, as if I’d only ever seen him in shadow and he has finally stepped into the light. The rings of gold in his eyes are richer and deeper, an ocean of sunlight I can’t look away from.
He looks perfect.
If I were the Sun, I’d choose to live in his eyes too.
Neither of us has mentioned his comment about kissing me, but I think about it all the time. I’m convinced it was a product of the moment, a comment brought forth by the intimacy and shock and absolute wonder of what we’d just experienced. It would have been odd if we hadn’t felt a need for each other.
And yet it lingers. The
