Chapter 1

Sonia sighed, keeping her eyes on her magazine.

“No, really,” Maya said from the floor. “What if magic were real?”

Sonia looked at her best friend, sitting at her feet, painting her toenails. Maya got it a lot worse in school than she did, but that wasn’t enough of a reason to make things up.

“Quit being such a kid.” Sonia tapped Maya’s shoulder with one of her feet.

Maya blushed and looked down at Sonia’s toes, barely avoiding a spill. “Don’t startle me like that! It’s hard enough to get this done without you moving around, too.”

Sonia chuckled. For some reason, she liked how easy Maya was to tease. Almost anything she did could get her flustered. She felt a bit guilty about it now and then, but it was so much fun to get her to do things for her, knowing she couldn’t really resist her. It was obvious to everyone that Maya had a crush on her, but she somehow thought it was a secret. It made Sonia laugh every time she thought about it.

“Alright,” Sonia said. “Stop making up children’s stories then. Magic isn’t real. We just have to solve our own problems the boring old way.”

Maya pouted, though she continued carefully working on Sonia’s toenails. Sonia was very demanding, especially right before a date.

“Yeah?” she asked. “How’s that been working out for us?”

Sonia glanced at her magazine again.

“Better for some than for others,” she said, smirking.

She turned the pages over, letting Maya work, giving her a look now and then to make sure she wasn’t getting distracted and was doing it right.

“Ok, all done.” Maya smiled up at Sonia.

Sonia looked down at her with a frown. “They’re not dry yet, and Dan is due in ten minutes.”

Maya looked up at Sonia. That was the part she liked the least. It was ok to do something nice for her best friend, but this was just too much.

“Come on,” Sonia said. “We don’t have all day!”

Maya gave one last pleading look, but wilted under Sonia’s stern gaze. She lowered her head, and began to blow Sonia’s toenails dry.

“Good girl.” Sonia chuckled. “You’re a real sweetie. I don’t know how I’d manage without such a wonderful ... friend.”

She was laughing inside, but the least she could do was give Maya the chance to pretend, at least to herself, that she wasn’t a complete doormat. So she tried not to make it too hard on her. It wasn’t her fault that Maya would let herself be used. She enjoyed placing her in slightly demeaning situations, but if she didn’t like it, why didn’t she do anything about it? Sonia even wondered now and then if Maya got something out of it too.

Maya blushed. She hated how meek she was with Sonia, but she really liked her. Sonia could be pretty mean when she refused her anything, probably because she was used to always getting her way. And anyway, they were best friends, and best friends would do anything for each other, right? Even if it was awkward or embarrassing, it was just the two of them. She couldn’t remember Sonia doing stuff like that for her, but then it was true she had never asked, either.

Maya kept blowing, hearing Sonia giggle as she felt the cool air on her toes. What she hated the most about it were the smells. It wasn’t even Sonia’s feet. They did get pretty smelly, and she could never manage to ask her friend to wash them before having her nails done, but that wasn’t the worst. After lots of exposure, she had learned to put up with them. It was the harsh, chemical fumes from the nail polish and the remover. Just painting them made her a little dizzy sometimes, but drying them this way required her to get really close as she took air in.

“Do they look nice?” Sonia asked.

“They look really pretty,” Maya said, interrupting her blowing for a moment to pay her a compliment.

She knew Sonia could get rather nervous before a date and needed all the support she could give her.

At last, the doorbell rang. Sonia propped her hand on Maya’s head to jump off the sofa, rushing to put on her shoes, not bothering to spare her friend a glance.

“You can wait up for me if you want,” Sonia said as she was about to leave. “If you get bored, you can clean my room while I’m out.”

“Uh, yeah, ok,” Maya said. “You’d like me to be here, right?”

“You know I like talking to you after my dates,” she said, already distracted, thinking about the boy waiting outside. “Anyway, whatever. You may sleep here.” She went out and closed the door, without looking back.

“Thanks,” Maya said, quietly, and gave a sigh. “That’s very kind of you,” she added, daring sarcasm now that her friend wasn’t there to hear it. “I’m such a pushover.”

She cleared everything up, making sure Sonia’s polish and remover were closed tight, and put them back where they belonged. Then she got rid of the used cotton toe separators, and went to her friend’s room. It was a mess, as usual. She tried to fight the urge, but there wasn’t much else for her to do anyway, and Sonia liked it so much when she came back and saw her room all tidy. She had such a lovely smile. She knew that, in spite of herself, she would be cleaning everything, putting things in order, and doing a wash or two while her friend had fun with another boy.

She took a couple of slow breaths.

“It’s got to be real,” she said. “Magic’s real. My grandmother wouldn’t have made it up.”

She attempted one of the mental focusing exercises her grandmother had taught her. It felt like her mind was a bow ready to shoot, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t get the last part to work.

She laughed at herself, on the edge of pouting. She got on the floor, and started crawling, picking up the discarded, crusty, worn socks scattered all over the place, almost as if Sonia had done it on purpose.