The Cost of All Things (11 page)

Echo said she needed to practice the spell a couple times to be sure but she’d let me know when it was ready. I said I’d work on the money, and I fully intended to work on it immediately, but it’s a funny thing about being depressed: it’s pretty fucking hard to make and follow through with a plan.

I had no money. My mom had no money. My sister, Kara, was eleven—and she had no money. Ari had enough savings from her parents’ life insurance to get her life started in New York, which was one of those almost invisible but huge differences between us, and though she might’ve given me the money, I couldn’t ask. It was her parents’ life insurance, for one thing. And she and her aunt needed that money. I couldn’t take New York away from her. Nice Win, upstanding boyfriend, Good Guy, definitely couldn’t do that. Asking for it would mean admitting I wasn’t Nice Win Good Guy anymore. Plus, if she knew what I was doing she would blame herself, and seeing that on her face would make me feel worse.

I loved her. But it was like loving someone through six feet of bulletproof glass. She was muffled, distant.

That left Markos. Markos himself had no money, and his mom had constant problems paying suppliers for the hardware store and covering their mortgage, but at least she had the store—people came in every day and handed them cash. I didn’t know how to ask him for it, though.

Knowing that the spell was on its way, I got my appetite back some, and I even managed to play a few baseball games without faking knee pain and sitting in the dugout.

It probably sounds strange that I was counting on the spell but made no attempt to figure out how to pay for it. I wasn’t planning on ripping Echo off or anything. I wanted to pay my debt. It’s just—I wanted to get better more. I wanted out of the hole.

It was a lot like a hole. Or more like a well, maybe: dark and claustrophobic, with the fingernail marks along the walls that the other prisoners made as they attempted their escapes. I’d look up and see a pinprick of light, but then I’d blink and the darkness would come in again; I’d start thinking about how my mom couldn’t catch a break and Kara would eventually get bitter and Ari probably didn’t really love me and Markos thought of me as an obligation, and I didn’t even blame them for any of it, because I knew I deserved to be treated like shit. Because I’d never done anything to make the world a better place, I wasn’t an upstanding moral citizen by any stretch of the imagination, and the fact that I couldn’t enjoy my life like a normal person
probably meant I was an evolutionary mistake that needed to be stomped out.

The world belonged to the happy people, the carefree souls. I didn’t begrudge them that. I only wanted out of their way.

One of the things that had originally drawn me to Ari was that she wasn’t one of the carefree souls. This was before I fell down the well for real, when I could still pretty much fake my way through a day, even the dark ones. We had been in school together forever, but I feel like I really noticed her for the first time in trig, which we both had first period sophomore year.

She sat so straight, like the line of her hair down her back. That type of posture could read snobby to some people, but I’d been going to school with her for a long time, and I knew her history. The tragedy of her parents, killed in a fire; the fact that she lived with her aunt, who had tattoos and worked in a coffee shop; and that she was a dancer, and good at it.

She’d lived through something
bad
. I didn’t pity her for it; it made me respect her.

I started talking to her before and after class, and we became friends. I couldn’t tell you how. The mechanics of how a person becomes friends, especially with a girl: it all takes place in gestures and moments and looks and jokes, and then before you know it you’re always at a person’s locker in the morning or at their house after school and plans on Friday are assumed, as are Christmas gifts and bad days and hurt feelings and last-minute rides to school. Impossible to track or re-create. We were friends for a year, and then we were together. It happened.

We were doing homework in her kitchen near the end of sophomore year, right before we started dating, when I was trying so hard to think of anything but how much I wanted to kiss her, so I asked her if she thought her spell was worth it.

“Yes,” she said without hesitating. “You know how people say ‘I can’t imagine how awful that must have been?’ Well, now I can say that, too. I can’t imagine it.”

For some reason I didn’t want to let go of the topic, even though I could tell Ari had said pretty much all she wanted to say about it. She rubbed her wrist with her thumb, frowning, and stared at her trig book intently. “Who do you think did it?”

“A tourist.”

“Why?”

“They found the remnants of fireworks in the grate. That always made me think of someone on vacation—someone here to have a good time. So what I think is that a tourist kid broke in, probably high, set off some fireworks, and it got out of control.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if reading a news report.

“So not on purpose.”

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t imagine that someone would do this on purpose. I just . . . can’t believe that.”

“If you believe it was a tourist, how can you even look at them now?”

“Kind of hard to avoid them.”

“They think they own everything.” They did own everything, at least compared to me. They could take vacations.

My mom drove me and Kara to Rhode Island and we took
the ferry to Block Island for the day once when I was eleven. It seemed a lot like home: tourists everywhere, beaches, seafood. She bought us ice cream. I felt, even more than usual, like I was supposed to be having a good time, and I was mad at myself for not feeling it. But that day I wasn’t the only one; none of our smiles stayed fixed.

Ari hadn’t said anything, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. Finally she shook her head. “I can’t get angry at every tourist. I wouldn’t be able to function. But I can’t help hating them all a little, too.”

“And if they caught the guy? Would you feel better?”

“No.” She exhaled so hard it fluttered the pages of her notebook. “Besides, it’s been almost eight years. He’s long gone by now. I doubt he even knows the house burned down. It wasn’t like he did it maliciously.”

I felt my heart clunk down to my gut as I realized what she was saying. She’d given up hope.

Something inside of me warmed to that bleakness. Drew closer. Sitting next to her at the table, I actually felt the room get smaller, and the two of us slide together like water pouring down a drain.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m asking about all this stuff.”

“It’s okay,” she said. She even smiled a little bit. “I’d rather you ask than never ever mention it like it was some sort of horrible secret. I’m fine now.”

“Right,” I said. “Of course you are.”

“I have Jess and Diana and dancing—and I have you, too.” She said the last bit quickly, like she wasn’t sure if she was going too far, claiming me as hers.

She wasn’t going too far. I felt good—great, even—being in the list of things she lived for, because I felt the same way without realizing it: she fit into a hole in my life I hadn’t known I’d had until then. That was the moment I decided I wasn’t just going to think about kissing her, but I was actually going to do it. I didn’t end up doing it for a little while longer, but the decision could be traced back to that conversation.

“I’m fine,” she said again, and elbowed me with her sharp, precise elbow.

But I didn’t believe her. She wasn’t fine, and neither was I.

We were not okay. After the bonfire, if I didn’t hear from Ari or Diana for a day, I’d start to get panicky—picturing Diana’s bruise or worse. That big black shadowy bird hovered over my head daily, threatening to swoop down and carry my friends away. I had to be on constant alert so that no one would get hurt again.

Now that I knew that they’d considered leaving town without me, I became convinced that they were trying to leave all the time. I pictured worse and worse things happening to them. It wasn’t enough that we spent time together. They really, really had to
want
to be around me, and not in some hypothetical future time. This moment. Before they could get any more great ideas.

But something was broken. We sat around at the ice cream shop where Ari worked or someone’s basement or Ari’s aunt’s coffee shop and didn’t talk to each other.

The thing was, I didn’t think Ari and Diana were talking to each other, either. Ari stayed silent and distant, gone someplace far away behind her eyes. Diana only smiled when she thought
the rest of us weren’t looking, and spent the rest of the time touching her bruised face with a fingertip and wincing. No one said anything. It wasn’t fun.

I kept trying, though.

“You still look beautiful,” I told Diana. “And it’s healing fast.”

We were in Ari’s basement, the least finished of all our basements, with not even a tiny high-up window to let the summer sun in. Ari lay on her back behind the sofa trying to stretch her leg over her head, and Diana looked at her face through her phone’s camera. She
was
still beautiful. She had her red hair and clear skin and big eyes. She didn’t respond to me, though, and didn’t put down the phone.

If there was one thing I’d learned from Mina’s illness, it was proper bedside manner. So I’d been taking care of Diana—bringing her magazines and candy and occasionally one-sided conversations, so she could rest and recover.

I tried to give her a couple of Tylenol and a water bottle from my bag. She waved them away. “I’m fine.”

“You know, that bruise, if it had been on me, would’ve made me look like a zombie. But it’s so obvious how pretty you are, it doesn’t matter about all that.”

“Okay, okay,” Diana said, finally putting down the phone. “I get it.”

“I was only saying—”

“And you’ve said it. I don’t need to hear it anymore.”

Ari spoke up from the floor. “Kay can tell me I’m beautiful if she really must.”

“You
are
beautiful. Like, seriously.”

Ari let out a single sharp
ha
. “You say that to everyone. You’re devaluing your compliments.”

“I mean it!” They both laughed then, more genuinely, until laughing hurt Diana’s face and she went back to pressing it slowly and carefully with a finger.

“Oh, I forgot to say. I got us tickets to
Wicked
in Boston!” I said.

Neither of them responded.

“I thought because you guys mentioned wanting to go to Boston at the bonfire . . .”

“That wasn’t really what we had in mind,” Ari said, sitting up and cracking her back. “But thank you, Kay.”

“We’ll go, though, right? I mean my parents got us these tickets, and I don’t think they’re refundable. . . .”

Diana glanced at Ari, who shrugged. “I don’t know,” Diana said. “I’ve been busy.”

“Busy with what?”

She ignored the question. “But maybe there’s some guy you want to ask . . . like Cal Waters. . . .”

“To go see
Wicked
?”

Ari hugged a leg to her cheek. “I think that’s Diana’s way of asking if you’re going to see Cal again.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of him much since the bonfire. “I don’t know if that’s a thing that’s going to be an ongoing, you know, thing.”

“That’s good,” Ari said. “I mean, he’s old. And he’s a Waters.
I love Markos but you know what they’re like.”

“He’s only like twenty, and he seemed pretty nice.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Ari said. “They start nice. But they’ll get you to like them and then ditch you. I don’t want you getting your hopes up.”

“I don’t have any hopes,” I said, but I could feel an inner part of me shrinking and twisting under Ari’s unasked-for advice. Had I put hopes into Cal? Did he think I was pining over him? Did he brag to his brothers about hooking up with me? If I didn’t want to date him, did that make me a slut?

Is that what Ari was trying to say, pretending to be concerned?

“The Waters boys make terrible boyfriends,” she was saying. “I’ve seen it enough times to know.”

“I never said I wanted him to be my boyfriend.”

“Good.”

We went back to not speaking. And slowly, an inner tide rising, I filled up with anger. There was no good reason why I shouldn’t date Cal. Twenty wasn’t that old. What was wrong with me that Ari thought I needed to be warned away? I didn’t believe that because he was a Waters and I was me, there was no chance.

In fact, I knew there was a chance. In the pocket of my winter coat, there was a partially smushed chocolate chip cookie that could prove to Ari and Diana that I wasn’t just some girl who Cal took advantage of. They were wrong about me; I only had to show them.

The next day, I wrapped the cookie in blue cellophane and a green ribbon and walked to Waters Hardware. Cal was manning the cash register, and I waited as a couple bought bug spray and aloe. He smiled at them even as they fumbled through endless fanny-pack pockets to find correct change. He smiled at me when he saw me. I was used to Ari and Diana and Mina, who almost never smiled nowadays. Cal’s cheerfulness seemed otherworldly.

“Hey,” he said. “Kay, right? What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “I was just around and thought I’d stop and say hi.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“I, uh—” I held the cookie out and stared at it, willing it to explain itself. “This is a cookie. Chocolate chip.”

His smile receded. “Did you . . . make me a cookie?”

“What? No!” I pretended to laugh and tossed my hair. “It’s a good luck spell. Lasts a day. My grandma sent it to me. But my hekamist said I’m not supposed to take more spells because of side effects, so it was going to go to waste, and so when I passed by, I don’t know—I thought you might appreciate it. I, uh—I had a good time at the bonfire.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said, and took the cookie out of my hand. I think he did it more to shut me up than because he really wanted it.

A man got into line behind me with a bunch of fishing gear. I saw Cal’s smile re-affix itself as he glanced over my shoulder.

“So I guess I’ll see you around,” he said.

“Yeah. For sure. I’m around.”

“Thanks again for the spell.”

“No problem.” I didn’t move from my place in line. He hadn’t eaten it yet; I couldn’t risk him giving it to one of his brothers or a customer or anyone else. “You should eat it.”

“What—now? Shouldn’t I save it for a special—”

“No!” I said. “That’s cheating, to take it when you know you need it. It’s more fun if you take it on a random day. Like today.”

“Okay.” He glanced at the fisherman behind me, who sighed and shifted on his feet. Cal’s smile didn’t waver; he pulled the ribbon and stuffed the cookie in his mouth. “Mmm. Thanks.”

I snatched the cellophane and crumbs out of his hand before they were eaten by rats and I became the Pied Piper of Cape Cod. “Great! I’ll throw this away for you. Bye!”

Before I reached the door, he’d already started a conversation about fishing spots with the next customer. And for two and a half days after that, I heard nothing.

Then Ari and Diana and I went to see
Wicked
in Boston. I didn’t even think about the one-hundred-plus miles we were traveling; I was too relieved that they’d agreed to come after all.

During intermission, while Ari and Diana sat silently on either side of me, I checked my phone. There was a text from Cal Waters.

Thinking of you

Shit. I’d left him behind. Too far away.

Heyyyy! What are you up to?
I typed, hoping that sounded more casual than it felt.

Ditched work and took the ferry to Boston. We should hang out when I get back.

When I get back.
He didn’t know I was in Boston. The spell had drawn him here unconsciously.

For a second I allowed myself to forget about the hook, and felt what it was like to have a boy text you that he wanted to hang out. I warmed to it. And the words blossomed and grew.

It was only a text, I knew that. But it reminded me of the early days of becoming friends with Diana and Ari, when we were natural and fun together, rather than silent and weird and awkward. Back then, every time we hung out, it was a new adventure.

Full of possibility.