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“Dr. Churchill’s office,” says Maura.
“It’s Cassel.”
“Cassel!” she says. “I was wondering when you’d call. You know what the best feeling in the world is? Just driving down the road with the music blasting, the wind in your hair, and your baby gurgling happily in his car seat.”
I smile. “You know where you are headed?”
“Not yet,” she says. “I guess I’ll know when we get there.”
“I’m glad for you,” I say. “I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
“You know what I miss most?” she says.
I shake my head, and then realize she can’t see me. “No.”
“The music.” Her voice drops, low and soft. “It was just so beautiful. I wish I could hear it again, but it’s gone. Philip took the music with him.”
I can’t help shuddering.
Daneca is walking toward me when I hang up the phone. She looks annoyed.
“Hey,” she says. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”
I must look shell-shocked or something, because she hesitates. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not that. I want to,” I say. I’m not sure I mean it, but I am sure that Daneca and Sam were there for me when I really needed them. Maybe the point of real friendship isn’t that you have to repay kindness, but whatever. At least I should try.
As Daneca, Sam, and I cross the quad, I see Audrey eating an apple near the entrance to the arts center.
She’s smiling at me the way she used to. “Where are you guys going?”
I take a deep breath. “HEX meeting. Learning about worker rights.”
“For real?” She looks toward Daneca.
“What can I say?” I shrug. “I’m trying new things.”
“Can I come?” She doesn’t stand up, like she’s expecting me to say no.
“Of course you can,” Daneca says, before I can get past the idea that she wants to come. “HEX meetings are for us all to better understand one another.”
“They have free coffee,” Sam says.
Audrey chucks her apple toward the shrubs by the entrance. “Count me in.”
The meeting is being held in Ms. Ramirez’s music room; she’s the adviser. A piano sits in one corner, and a few drum toms rest near the back wall, against a bookshelf filled with thin folders of sheet music. A cymbal balances on the low shelf near a wall of windows, near a gurgling coffeemaker.
Ms. Ramirez is sitting the opposite way on the piano bench in a circle of students. I come in and pull up four more chairs. Everyone scoots politely aside, but the girl who’s standing doesn’t stop talking.
“The thing is that it’s really hard to stop discrimination when something’s illegal,” the girl says. “I mean, everybody thinks of workers as being criminals. Like, people use the word ‘worker’ to mean criminals. And, well, if we work a work, even once, we are criminals. So most of us are, because we had to figure it out somehow and that was usually by making something happen.”
I don’t know her name, just that she’s a freshman. She doesn’t look at anyone when she speaks, and her voice is affectless. I am a little awed by her bravery.
“And there are lots of workers who never do anything bad. They go to weddings and hospitals and give people good luck. Or there’s people who work at shelters and they give people hope and make them feel confident and positive. And that word—‘cursing.’ Like all we can do is bad magic. I mean, why would you even want to do the bad stuff? The blowback’s awful. Like, if all a luck worker ever does is make people have good luck, then all he has is good luck too. It doesn’t have to be bad.”
She pauses and raises her gaze to look at us. At me.
“Magic,” the girl says. “It’s just all magic.”
