The Cost of All Things (12 page)

A week and a half after the bonfire, with less than three weeks left until we moved to New York on August first, I drove to the beach and walked to approximately the spot where Echo had found me.

I sat in the sand for the whole ninety minutes of “class,” which is where Jess thought I was. I watched the tourists and the seagulls, trying to think of a way to get Echo to leave me alone, forcing myself not to turn and look at the spot where Diana fell, imagining what was going to happen to me the longer I did nothing.

None of these were worries I could share with Dr. Pitts, the therapist that Jess made me go to. So when I sat down for our appointment, I disappointed her again. Not opening up. Not sharing. Not showing the proper sorrow. I tried to push through the session so I could go back to attempting to dance again, but I had to say something to pass the time.

“I’m not that girl anymore,” I said. The vaguer and more apocalyptic, the easier it was to lie.

“What do you mean?”

Uh-oh. “I mean . . . I feel different. There’s the me before Win died, and the me now.”

“Different how?”

Sometimes I thought Dr. Pitts was quizzing me. That she suspected I wasn’t right. “In ballet, some girls can’t recover after they get their period. It’s not just that they have boobs and they’re taller. They get scared. Their brain won’t let them jump anymore, or they start to doubt their balance.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s a metaphor.”

“How so?”

I blinked. “Well. I guess that some people react to a loss or a change or whatever by freaking out and losing themselves in
grief. And then some people—like me—manage to be different but not let it change them completely.” That sounded good.

“So you don’t think losing people changes you?” She tapped her legal pad with her fancy silver pen. “Grief over loss—it’s something only weak people succumb to?”

I shrugged.

Dr. Pitts leaned forward. She was wrapped in scarves like a mummy; I didn’t even know if she was fat or thin, because she always wore them, along with huge flowing pants and boots that went up who knows how high because of all the fabric engulfing them. “Grief is not a weakness, Ari. It’s not something to push down and power through. Yes, it can change you, but that’s what people do—change, grow. It concerns me that you’re in denial.”

I felt my face flush. “I’m not in denial. I . . . miss Win.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really! Maybe I’m not, like, prostrate every day, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sad. What kind of therapist are you, insisting I act as sad as everyone else in the world? That’s sick. I’m dealing with this in my own way.”

Dr. Pitts looked satisfied for a few seconds, which was extra infuriating. “Anger is good,” she said, and it made me want to upend a coffee table and storm out. If her plan was to get me angry, bravo. “Tell me about your parents.”

“No,” I snapped before I could control myself.

“Why not?”

“They died almost ten years ago. It’s not relevant.”

“You lost them. You lost Win. It makes sense to be angry.”

“I’m angry at
you
, not because people keep dying!”

She nodded, as if people said they were angry with her all the time. Maybe they were.

I forced myself to lean back on the couch. In my mind, I moved smoothly, and the motion suggested I was relaxed, at home, unbothered. But I knew very well that to Dr. Pitts I probably looked as jerky and angry as I actually felt.

I thought of my new tapes. Every morning I got up, turned on the camera, put on some music, and attempted a simple sequence of steps: something from a showcase; an audition piece from the Institute; even the chorus girl choreography from last year’s musical. I remembered them all perfectly. In my head, I performed them perfectly, too.

I forced myself to go through each and every motion, even though I tripped and fell, even though I knew what the camera would show. Me, making a mockery of ballet. Me, like one of those girls who lose their nerve after puberty, except a thousand times worse, since I had the nerve—I just didn’t have the control.

In dance, you have to feel the music in order to express it. I used to be able to summon the love, fear, anger, joy, or whatever else the piece demanded. The music brought the feeling forward, an alchemical process in my mind transformed that feeling into steps and motion, and then when you watched me, you felt it, too.

Now, I could think that I was feeling love, fear, anger, joy, or whatever, but my brain wouldn’t transform those feelings into expressions and gestures. I’d lost the connection.

Adjusting my seat on Dr. Pitts’s couch, I struggled to keep my face neutral, as if I chose to flail on her couch for no reason.

It occurred to me that if I didn’t find a way to stop Echo from telling, I wouldn’t have to go to therapy anymore, because Echo would spill the beans and Dr. Pitts wouldn’t expect me to be grief-stricken and tortured over Win anymore. That would be nice. But that would perhaps be the only nice thing.

“What’s the point?” I asked. I meant what’s the point of making me angry, but Dr. Pitts didn’t hear it that way.

“The point is that there will always be grief, disappointments, tragedy. The point is that you have to learn to deal with them, so they don’t derail your life. The point is letting go of fear. You refuse to talk about your parents. You’ve managed to tell me practically nothing about Win. But I drive by the spot on the road where he crashed and there are notes, signs, remembrances. What’s the difference between all those people and you?”

“They didn’t know him. Not really.”

“But you did. I don’t want you to go leave a teddy bear in the pile, but I want you to think about why all those people chose to honor Win like that. They could’ve left the road alone, but they didn’t. They were compelled to mark the spot.”

They wanted to remember him, of course. That was what she was getting at. As much as she drove me crazy, sometimes I left her office convinced. Only it wasn’t stubbornness or fear keeping me from being a model patient, it was Old Ari, screwing things up yet again.

Back in my car after the session ended, I asked myself again
what the point was. Unless I discovered another surprise stash of money, it was all moot. All the lying, the sneaking off to “ballet,” the practiced sad face, Dr. Pitts’s questions, all of it—pointless.

Old Ari stole from her dead boyfriend, and now I was the one who had to pay it back. It was my offering to Win’s roadside memorial. I couldn’t feel grief, so I gave the money instead.

I started the car, but instead of driving to the Sweet Shoppe, where my shift began at noon, I drove to Waters Hardware to talk to Markos Waters.

Wednesday was the first day in a long time that I didn’t wake up scowling. It wasn’t like there were suddenly birds tweeting and grass growing and love transforming my heart or any of that garbage. I just felt . . . better. For the first time since Win died. Like instead of being buried alive in shit, I was suspended weightless in some nicer substance. It was easier to breathe.

I’d seen Diana every day since the bonfire. I didn’t even care that she probably thought I was in love with her. She never said anything weird about it. I could call her or show up at her house because it felt right and was what I wanted to do.

I still hadn’t tried to get anywhere with her, though I thought about it sometimes. I considered leaning over and kissing her in the middle of a sentence, or touching under her shirt while we were watching TV. I could’ve done it. She never gave me any sign that she wouldn’t be totally into it. But the fact that I
could
do it kept the idea banked, ready to use should I ever really need it.

It wasn’t like with some girls who made you look at them
and expected you to want them and who were only listening because they thought that’s what you wanted. Diana listened because she wanted to hear what I said. She let things surprise her, instead of greeting each new moment with a sneer.

In the past, I’d only ever seen her as Ari’s shadow. She sat silently next to Ari at lunch, or faded away when Win and I would pick up Ari at her locker. She wasn’t funny like Ari, or confident, and that made it seem like she had nothing going on. At least nothing that would be worth seeking out.

But she seemed different now. It was like she said: with Ari otherwise occupied, she had to do something. Be someone. She still wasn’t particularly funny or confident, not when compared to Ari or other girls. But it turns out there are lots of other things you can be besides funny and confident. Like . . . compassionate, I guess is the social-worker word for it. Thoughtful not as in “nice” but as in
thought
-ful, full of thoughts. Nonlobotomized.

When I was around her, I didn’t have to be together and cool and Waters-ish and okay. And because there was no expectation to be happy, I managed to feel better anyway.

So Wednesday I felt as good as it was possible for a nonlobotomized person to feel—not that my family noticed. They crowded around the kitchen table for breakfast like they always did, despite the fact that Brian and Dev didn’t even live there anymore.

“Sweep up the woodshop today, all right, Markos?” my mom asked. She had her big accounting ledger out and was erasing something furiously. We’d all tried to convince her to
computerize her accounts, but she clung to the ledger, wouldn’t let any of the rest of us touch it.

“Where’ve you been, anyway?” Brian asked.

“Asleep in my room.”

Brian rolled his eyes, and Dev flicked a Cheerio at my face. “Been doing something in his room, that’s for sure.”

“Oh! Markos has a girlfriend,” Cal said. “I saw them walking together by Junior’s Auto.”

“Oooh, who is she? Hot?” Dev asked.

“Not bad. Her name’s Diana North. Crazy red hair.”

“Fiery,” Dev said.

“She’s in his year, I think,” Cal said. “Friends with Ari Madrigal.”

They barely paused at Ari’s name, just long enough to think of Win—Win and Ari, Ari and Win—and then hurriedly covered up the thought with more talk.

“Bring her over, Markos, I want to meet her,” Mom said.

“It’s not like that.”

Mom frowned. “What’s it like, then?”

“You embarrassed of us?”

“Afraid we’re going to steal her away?”

“Friendly advice,” Brian said, which was practically a catchphrase for him. “Bring her over, don’t bring her over, but don’t get too committed going into senior year. You’re going to want all your options open.”

“You’re too young to commit to anything, is what Brian means,” Mom said, and Brian shrugged in semi-agreement.

“Still, bring her around,” Dev said. “Once Markos gives her up, maybe she’ll want to go out with me.”

“You’re not her type,” I said, and Dev laughed. “Besides, we’re just friends.”

The whole table turned and looked at me. I shouldn’t have said anything. Better for them to think I was hooking up than to wonder
What’s wrong with Markos now?
I could see them gearing up to ask questions I didn’t want to answer, and so I got up before they could open their mouths.

“I’m going to sweep the woodshop.”

As soon as I was outside I had the urge to find Diana and complain about them. I didn’t think she’d understand, and she wouldn’t like that they talked about her, and anyway she was babysitting all day and I had shit to do, so the idea faded.

I had an imaginary conversation with myself instead, letting my mind wander as I walked into town.

—I hate my family.

—You don’t hate them.

—I hate that they think they know me.

—Don’t they?

—No! They think I’m exactly like them but younger. Like I
am
them when they were younger. Dev sometimes forgets I don’t play water polo, you know? Because he did.

—They love you.

—Yeah. As long as I don’t embarrass them.

—What would embarrass them?

—Not being a real Waters man.

—What does that mean?

—Not being cool. Getting too drunk at the bonfire. My failed Homecoming prank. Everything I do.

—What else?

—Diana. No. I don’t know. Maybe. She’s not what they’re used to.

—You’re not giving them enough credit.

I stopped walking. Leaned over. Put hands on my knees. Gulped air. Felt the ground tilt under my feet. A normal block, vacation rentals on all sides, no one out yet because it was too early in the morning for tourists.

In my head, for a second, I wasn’t talking to myself. All I could hear was Win.

Win had loved my brothers. And they loved him, too—not that we ever talked about Win since he died. Not that we talked about anything real at all. Sometimes the three of them and Mom talked about Dad, but it was always the same carefully preserved stories, and I didn’t remember any of them. Win, we ignored. If I had died instead of Win, I bet they would’ve been happy to share stories about me with Win all day long. But there was something about me that made them shut their mouths.

When I could move again, I stopped thinking of anything at all and ran the rest of the way to Waters Hardware. In the back of the store, there was a full woodshop with all the carpentry and other manly gadgets anyone could ever want. It’s my understanding that my dad opened the hardware store so he could make himself this woodshop.

I ducked past rows and rows of junk and unlocked the shop’s tiny, almost hidden door. I swept up quickly—Mom would never notice the difference—and decided to weld some leftover pipe into a bong, even though I’m not supposed to use the welder on my own. They even locked it up in a corner cage in the shop, as if I didn’t know exactly where they kept the key on a hook by the woodshop door. Welding took up all my concentration, so I made five more—there’s always a market for drug paraphernalia, as long as Brian didn’t find it—and the hours went by, until I saw Ari Madrigal in the shop’s closed-circuit camera bank.

Since the store was such a crowded, confusing labyrinth, there was a real chance someone could walk off with half the inventory without any of us noticing. But instead of cleaning it up and organizing it—because god forbid the Waters clan attempt anything that ambitious—we installed more and more cameras. They peeked around all the many corners and into each of the several dead ends. A flat-screen monitor displayed a grid with all the angles.

Ari wandered from aisle to aisle, sometimes in circles, looking around with a pathetic expression on her face. I smiled. She’d been here countless times, but she could never seem to figure it out. No way she’d find me without some help. I flipped on the intercom. “Right at the sandpaper.” She jumped, stumbled, but made the right. “The door’s to the left of the paint chips.”

She hopped from box to box on the monitor and a few seconds later she was standing in person in the doorway to the
shop. My good mood from the morning must’ve been stronger than I thought because I was glad to see her. It didn’t hurt to look at her, to be reminded of Win, because I was already thinking of Win. Instead, it was like an old friend who I hadn’t seen in ages stopping by.

Which she was, actually. Maybe Diana was right and I should’ve been talking to her this whole time.

Thinking of Diana, though, my stomach sank. Ari had to be there because of all the time I’d been spending with Diana. I had been repeatedly and emphatically warned away from Diana more times than I could count, and I didn’t care to get into the same discussion again.

So I took my time as I switched off the welder and pushed it back into its cage, clanging the chain link door shut behind it and locking it. Then I flipped up my visor and tossed the last bong onto the floor with the others. She flinched at the sound.

I remembered what Diana said about Ari being scared to come into the store. I figured only Diana herself would make her do it.

“Ari Madrigal,” I said, drawing it out. “The fuck are you doing here?”

She looked around the shop, gaze lingering on the bongs and the mess I’d made. Her ultrastraight hair, normally so razor-edged, had gotten raggedy at the ends, and she held one wrist with the other as if she was taking her own pulse. She was still pretty in that small, delicate, deceptive way, but I never understood what it was that made Win so crazy about her. One time I
saw her point her foot all the way over her head, so maybe it was a ballet thing.

“Hello to you, too, Markos,” she said pleasantly.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, everywhere. I’m a social butterfly.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, and I’ve taken up knitting. I’m fabricating doghouses for homeless dogs.”

“Nice to see you working for the less fortunate.”

“It’s an important charity. They’re doing such vital work in the area of knitted domesticated animal enclosures.” She shifted on the balls of her feet. “I’ve been meaning to call.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well. You could’ve called me.”

“Why? So you could recruit me to knit?” She half shrugged. I pressed on. “Or so we could cry together? I dunno, you made it pretty clear at the funeral you weren’t into talking about Win, but you know, the knitting sounds great, go ahead and sign me up for six.” I yawned, stretching my hands over my head. “Why are you here, Ari?”

She straightened her shoulders, which was odd because she usually didn’t need to. I prepared myself.
Stay away from Diana. Stop messing with her head. What’s your evil plan?
But there was nothing she could make me do. I was ready. I was reminded of my brothers giving me advice at breakfast: They thought they knew what was going on, and they gave advice to control me. But they didn’t and they couldn’t.

“I need to borrow five thousand dollars,” she said finally.

All the air
whooshed
out of me, but the next second I was back, mental guard in place. “Ha ha,” I said. “Those dogs need a lot of yarn.”

“I’m not joking. I need it. I’m sorry to ask you, but I didn’t know who else—”

“I’m not a bank,” I said.

“I know. But you have the, uh, pipe sideline—and the store—”

“It’s my mom’s store. What the hell do you need five thousand dollars for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“That worked for Win, but it won’t work for you.”

Her forehead crinkled. “What do you mean it—oh. He got it from you.” She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Shit.”

Of course Ari knew about Win’s borrowed cash. I’d thought I was the only one he told, but that was stupid of me. “He didn’t tell you where the money came from?”

She hesitated, and then shook her head. “No.”

Great. I got cut out of the story entirely. “Did he tell you what it was for?”

“No.”

At least he hadn’t told her that; I would’ve felt like a complete chump if she knew that and I didn’t. “This is an amazing coincidence, isn’t it? Both of you asking me for the exact same amount of money.” I kicked the locker next to my workbench
and the lid fell down and snapped shut. “I guess I know what you both think of me. Thought of me.”

“Please, Markos. You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.”

“And what’s so important?”

She wrapped a hand around the opposite elbow and bit her lip. “Win owes someone five thousand dollars.”

“Yeah, and I gave him five thousand dollars. So that’s done.”

“She didn’t get that.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . I spent it.”

I exhaled all the air in my chest.

“I didn’t know it was his,” Ari said. “I mean, yours. I found it in my closet. He must’ve hidden it there.”

“So return whatever you bought and give this person the money.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to say what she spent it on; I could see that. I think she thought I would be grateful that she told me anything at all.

“Fine, then,” I said. “Win’s debts died with him. Tell this person you went on a shopping spree and they can fuck off.”