Would my life have been different if I hadn’t grown up with Simon like a brother? If I hadn’t become his placeholder girlfriend?

I still would have ended up at Watford, learning magic tricks. But I wouldn’t have been standing at ground zero, year after year after year.

“When are you coming home?” Penelope texts.

I’m not, I’m tempted to reply. And why do you even care?

She and I were never best friends. I was always too posh for Penny—too shallow, too frivolous. She just wants me in her life now because I was always there before, and she’s holding on to the past as desperately as I’m trying to run from it.

I was there before things fell apart.

But my coming home won’t put anything back together.

* * *

“I can’t believe you’re drinking that,” Ginger says.

We’ve just sat down to lunch and I’ve ordered the only black tea on the menu. “I can’t believe it either,” I say. “Vanilla Mint Earl Grey. My father would be appalled.”

“Stimulants,” Ginger says, shaking her head.

I add some skimmed milk to my tea. Full-fat is never an option here.

“And dairy,” Ginger groans.

All she drinks is beetroot juice. It looks exactly like blood, smells like dirt, and sometimes, like now, leaves a bright red moustache on her upper lip.

“You look like a vampire,” I say. Though she looks nothing like the only vampire I’ve ever met. Ginger has springy brown hair and freckled brown skin. Her mom is Thai and Brazilian, and her dad is from Barbados, and she’s got the brightest eyes and rosiest cheeks of anyone I’ve ever met. Maybe it’s the beetroot.

“I feel activated,” she says, spreading her fingers in the air.

“How activated?”

“At least eighty per cent. What about you?”

“Holding steady at fifteen,” I say. A waitress sets down Ginger’s quinoa bowl and my plate of avocado toast.

“Agatha,” she says, “you always say fifteen. We’ve been working the programme for three months. You’ve got to be at least sixteen per cent activated by now.”

I don’t feel any different. “Maybe some people are born inactive.”

She tuts at me. “Don’t say that! I would never have befriended an inert organism.”

I smile at Ginger. But the truth is, we were both feeling rather inert when we met. That’s how we became friends, I think—travelling in the same scene, drifting at the edge of it. I kept ending up next to Ginger in the kitchen at parties, or sitting near her on the dark part of the beach at bonfires.

San Diego has been better for me than the Watford School of Magicks ever was. I don’t miss my wand. I don’t miss the war. I don’t miss the everyday pretending that I cared about being a good mage.

But I’ll never be of this place.

I’m not like my classmates here. Or my neighbours. Or the people I meet at parties. I’ve always had Normal friends, but I never paid attention to all the small and subconscious ways people are Normal.

Like, I realized when I got here that I didn’t know how to tie my shoes. I never learned! I learned how to spell them tied instead. Which I can’t do now because I left my wand at home.

I mean, it’s fine—I just leave my shoes tied or wear sandals—but there are loads of things like that. I have to be careful about what I say out loud. To strangers. To friends. It’s too easy to blurt out something weird or ignorant. (Fortunately, I usually get a pass for being British.)

Ginger doesn’t seem to mind when I say weird things. Maybe because she’s constantly saying something a little weird. Ginger’s into neurofeedback and cupping and emotional acupressure. I mean, beyond just the “I’m from California” way. She’s a believer.

“I don’t really fit in here,” she said to me one night. We were sitting on the sand, with our toes in the surf. At the edge of the party again. Ginger was wearing a peach tank top and holding a red plastic cup. “But I don’t fit in any better anywhere else.”

It was like she’d pulled the feeling right out of my heart. I could have kissed her. (I still wish sometimes that I wanted to.) (That would feel like an answer to … the question of me. Then I could say, “Oh, that’s who I am. That’s why I’ve been so confused.”)

“Same,” I said.

The next time a party moved on without us, Ginger and I left and got tacos.

And the next time, we skipped the party and went straight to tacos.

We still felt strange and lost, I think, but it was good to be strange and lost together.

It was good to be lost with a friend.

Ginger’s phone chimes, reminding me that she isn’t lost anymore.

She picks it up and grins, which means Josh, and starts texting him back. I eat my avocado toast.

My phone vibrates. I take it out of my bag, then groan. Penny has finally cracked how to get me to reply to her:

“Agatha! We’re coming to see you! On holiday!”

“What?” I text back. “When?” And then—I should have said this first—“NO.”

“In two weeks!” Penny sends. “YES.”

“Penelope, no. I won’t be home.” It’s true. Ginger and I are going to the Burning Lad Festival.