The Cost of All Things (18 page)

“People are dicks.”

“I bet they’d hate me less if they knew I probably won’t ever dance again.”

As soon as I said it I wished I could take it back, grab the words out of the air and cram them back in my big stupid mouth. Moving to New York was the only thing I had to look forward to.

But now that everyone knew I’d erased Win, there was no pretending anymore: I hadn’t been to class in weeks. I could barely stretch my arms over my head. I’d lost all the blisters and calluses that make you a real dancer, because I wasn’t a real dancer.

I couldn’t dance.

“How bad is it?”

I pushed back my chair and stood in the middle of the kitchen, feet in fourth position, one arm over my head, one extended in front of me. I saw a pirouette in my mind. I’d done thousands. Easy. Deep breath. Arms out. Weight on the front foot. Let the momentum carry you through the turn. I barely made it halfway before I stumbled into the refrigerator.

Echo looked at my knees and my arms and my torso, calculating. “A brute force spell to fix that much clumsiness would have major side effects.”

“That’s what your mom told me. Said I’d have extra trouble because of the effects of my previous spells, too.”

“A careful hekamist could figure a way to make it work.”

“But there are side effects upon side effects. Aren’t there?”

She examined me. “It’s a risk, for sure. But if it’s done right, you’ll be a bit of a mess, but basically you.”

“And it costs five thousand dollars for a permanent spell, right?”

She shrugged. “When you’re a famous ballerina you can pay me back.”

My heart jumped in my chest, a wobbly grand jeté. “What?”

“I’ll help you. If I can.”

Now my heart was leaping in a circle, pirouetting with each landing. Spinning, dizzy, I struggled to stand. “Don’t make fun of me, please. I know you must hate me—”

“I don’t hate you.”

“—but don’t mess with me, okay?”

“I’m not making fun of you.” She stood, brushing invisible crumbs off the kitchen table. “I’ll consider it a favor to Win.”

I looked around the room as if I would find someone to tell the news to: everything had changed. I came to Echo furious, ready to blame her for all that had gone wrong this summer. I lost my memory, dance, and my best friends.

But now I had hope that I could get one of them back.

So a better person, a smarter person, a less-fucked-up-in-the-head person would tell you that he ate the damn sandwich, begged and borrowed the money, and then lived happily ever after. But because it’s me telling the story, I’m sorry to say it didn’t happen like that. You know the ending, anyway: pure tragedy.

First of all, I didn’t eat the sandwich. I found a Tupperware container with a snap lid and placed the sandwich in it and then put the container in my underwear drawer. Every day, if I managed to get out of bed, I’d look at it while getting dressed. And every day I decided
not yet
.

Maybe it was what Echo made me promise—that I’d take it rather than kill myself. I figured if I didn’t actively want to die while putting on my boxers, I didn’t need it yet.

And I started to think more about how permanent the spell was. If I ate this sandwich, I’d be changing the “real” me forever.

Something about my promise to Echo got twisted up in my
brain and I started to think that eating the sandwich would be the same as killing myself. It would kill, permanently, the real Win. I’d be some new happy Win—the Win I saw in yearbook pictures I didn’t remember taking, smiling and holding up my baseball glove, or the Win dancing with Ari at Homecoming in the soapy, sparkly dark.

Plus, I hadn’t paid Echo yet. It didn’t seem fair to take the spell until I did.

Even if I didn’t take it, I wanted to pay Echo, help her and her mom, in whatever weak way I could. She’d already put in the effort, after all. And so a few days after Echo gave me the sandwich, I made my first and only attempt to ask Ari for the money.

I picked up Ari and Kara from the dance studio. Everyone else in the pickup lane was a middle-aged mom, and I imagined—or maybe saw, but I can’t trust myself on that—them glaring at me suspiciously through their rearview mirrors. I started to shake. My hands rattled the steering wheel and my torso vibrated against the seat and my teeth chattered in my head. They for sure would’ve stared at me if I’d gotten out of the truck and run for the ocean, which is what the shaking was telling me to do, that or throw up all over the dashboard and smash my head against the steering wheel, and I couldn’t hold on—the car was shaking and I was shaking in it, so hard we had to be coming undone. And then Kara opened the passenger door and climbed into the back and a second later Ari sat in the front seat and gave me a kiss that I didn’t feel and I put the truck into drive.

Ari and Kara talked to each other, which spared me for a few minutes. I could feel Ari giving me looks, though. Side-eyeing me as we stopped at red lights.

Ari was smart and she noticed things about me, which was scary sometimes.
You seemed mad at lunch. You laughed at that show—must’ve liked it. What are you worried about?
Things I hadn’t noticed myself yet. She’d noticed the shaking for sure. She probably wouldn’t be surprised when I asked her for the money; she’d only be surprised when I couldn’t tell her why I needed it.

We dropped off Kara at her friend’s house. She made smoochie faces at us and Ari stuck out her tongue at her. It amazed me sometimes how Ari could do that—be so free and easy with Kara, laughing, teasing, sticking out her tongue. I had to think it all through, even how to say goodbye to my sister.

“What do you want to do?” Ari asked.

I kept my eyes on the road, but it blurred.

Ari was so happy. It radiated off of her. She didn’t even know she was doing it, and that was the weirdest part. She simply
was
.

“Whatever you want to do,” I said.

She stretched her arms over her head, overextending the elbows. “I’m a mess. I should probably take a shower before we do anything.”

“Okay,” I said, and turned toward her house.

She grinned at me. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

If I hadn’t been thinking of how to bring up five thousand dollars, I would’ve racked my brain for what I was missing. But all I could do was blink.

“It’s our anniversary. One year.”

“Oh man.” I rubbed my eyes. Last May seemed like a thousand years ago. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Be lucky you have such a cool girlfriend who doesn’t care about stupid stuff like anniversaries.”

“I am lucky.”

I stopped at another light and she kissed me on the cheek. I believed her when she said she didn’t care. But she remembered. If I’d remembered . . . what would I have done? Would it have made me feel any better? Or would the pressure of an Important Day hanging over me be just as bad?

I wouldn’t be planning on asking her for a huge sum of money, that was for sure.

The truck shook again. Slightly. Maybe this time it was the wind.

“I can’t hang out tonight,” I said into the silence. “I’m such an ass. I’m sorry. I think I’m getting a migraine, and—my mom’s working the night shift, and Kara—”

“Really?” Ari said. She didn’t look disappointed yet, only surprised. But the disappointment would come soon.

“And you know, tonight’s not our anniversary,” I said.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not. You’re calculating from that night we were at Markos’s. We talked, and walked in the garden? But I’m positive it wasn’t until after midnight that we kissed.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious. I’ll be ready tomorrow. I’ll feel better, and we’ll
have a really good time, and it’ll be the actual anniversary. I mean you wouldn’t want to jinx it by celebrating on the wrong day, right?”

We pulled into her driveway. She touched my knee. It could’ve been someone else’s; it even looked far away. “It really doesn’t matter about the anniversary, Win. You don’t have to feel bad or anything. We’re good, you know?”

“It’s just a headache,” I lied.

She reached up with her other hand and touched the line of my jaw. She studied me, and I noticed her hair pulled tight into a bun, the freckles by her ear, the light brown flecks in her dark brown eyes. I noticed it all, familiar as always. I didn’t understand how I could be numb to the entire world, including her hand on my jaw, like a ghost, but I still knew I loved her, knew I didn’t want to hurt her.

I wanted the numbness to take away that feeling, too. It wasn’t doing any good.

I opened my mouth to ask her for the money to pay Echo, and she kissed me.

I remembered other kisses. Homecoming on the dance floor. Curled up in her room while she cried. I couldn’t remember the feeling, but I remembered what I did. And I copied that until she pulled away.

“You’re right,” she said, smiling at me. “Tomorrow’s our anniversary. Of course.”

I walked her to her door, where she turned to me and put both hands around my neck. I leaned down to kiss her again,
trying to focus on my lips and hers, but there was still no feeling there. I touched the sides of her waist below her breasts, flatter than usual underneath her dance leotard; I pressed my lips harder against hers; I thought about seeing her naked for the first time a few months ago—usually a reliable memory to heat up my numb insides.

But there was nothing. Not a twinge. Not even when she sighed and leaned in and I tasted the lightly salty skin by her temple.

“Headache?” she asked.

“I just need to rest,” I said.

“Seriously, Win. You’d tell me if something’s wrong?”

I could feel her concern as a physical force, more than I could feel her lips or skin. The problem with this question was that even if I decided to tell her everything, to open myself up like a book and start tearing out pages, I’d have to admit that there were many days—dozens of them—seriously dark times that I never told her about. She’d be hurt about those other days, even if she wanted to help with today. That would be putting my feelings over hers. I wanted to spare hers.

I couldn’t be that sick if I wanted to spare her feelings. I didn’t need the spell if I could do that much. Right?

“They should move New York closer,” she said.

It took me a second to realize she was talking about next year, and her and Jess’s big move to the city. “It’s not that far,” I said.

“It feels far. It feels like another planet.”

“It’s not another planet. It’s New York.”

She scowled, her small features fierce. “It’s a stupid thing, dancing. You should be able to do it anywhere.”

I leaned back so I could see more than her face in close-up. I looked for signs she was going to start sobbing again, like the day she’d gotten into the Manhattan Ballet. I didn’t know what I’d do if she did—it might have broken me completely. But her eyes were clear, her skin pale, unflushed. She’d never gotten upset again after that day. It was as if it had never happened. “You have to go to New York,” I said.

“I know. Jess is counting on it.”

“No,
you
have to go. To dance.”

“Sounds like you want to get rid of me.”

“No. No! It’s only . . . you’re so good at it. And you have this thing you can dedicate your life to.” I could feel panic creeping in around my edges, vibrating in the air around our heads.

She sighed, dismissing the compliment. “Most people say long distance is stupid.”

The panic seized me, like the shaking in the car a thousand times over. “Do you want to break up?”

“Of course not. I thought if you’re anxious about it—”

“It’s not going to make me less anxious to break up. I mean, it would be awful. I can’t imagine it.” Breaking up would have meant giving up. “No, I’m fine. I’m going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to dance, and I’m going to . . . It’s been a weird day. My head’s been all over the place. Tomorrow we’ll have an anniversary. I know it’s going to be great next year. I’ll
come down for
both
anniversary days. I’m so excited for you—I’ll be there every weekend.”

“All right, all right,” she said.

“I love you,” I said, because I did, and I didn’t know how else to tell her except by telling her, even though the words felt stupid and insubstantial, gone as soon as they left my mouth.

She smiled a funny smile. “Duh. I love you, too.”

She planted a kiss on my cheek and I turned my head to kiss her for real, as seriously as I could remember how.

When we broke apart I ran for the truck before I could say or do anything else to ruin whatever we had left.

I could never ask Ari for money for the spell. Never.

That truck-shaking panic stayed with me all night, on and on until the dark and silence of three a.m., watching the flash of the alarm clock light on the bedroom wall. Panic gnawed at me until I was worn down to nothing but fibers.

But I didn’t feel bad enough to eat the sandwich.

It was a relief to be bad. I didn’t have to be nice or funny or kind, and I knew I would never be alone. That heavy cloak of feelings and worries and responsibilities—I could take it off and leave it off. I wasn’t scared of the nothing underneath. I felt free. Unhooking was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.

Even with Mina, who wasn’t under the spell, I could let go. She’d already left me, after all. I didn’t owe her anything.

On Monday, I went with Mina to her annual checkup at the hospital. I got in the car out of habit, because I always went with Mina to her appointments, but as soon as we were on the road, I remembered: I didn’t have to do this.

I could tell as we drove down the familiar streets that Mina thought I’d decided to come with her because I wanted to give her my support, like I used to. She didn’t say anything, but she looked at me out of the corner of her eye at stoplights and right-hand turns. She thought I was the same Katelyn who’d come with her to so many appointments in the past. The young, stupid
Katelyn who did whatever she asked, who only cared about cheering her up, who didn’t have any other friends or interests.

Just because I hadn’t poked myself full of holes and shaved my head like she did didn’t mean I hadn’t changed, too. I was a different girl now.

After we pulled into the familiar lot and parked in our usual space next to a misshapen hedge, Mina got out and looked at me expectantly. “Ready?”

I leaned against my open car door. “You go,” I said. “I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

If I’d been the old Katelyn, the look on Mina’s face would’ve ripped out my heart. Surprise, confusion, disappointment, hurt. Things had been tense between us all summer, but nothing I’d done had come close to causing this look.

I didn’t care. I didn’t have to care.

“Why are you being like this, Katelyn?” she asked, her voice small.

I closed the car door and stared at her. “Really?”

“I barely see you all summer, you’re always with your friends, and then when I do see you, you make a point of saying something terrible.”

“I’m sorry that me having friends is so inconvenient for you.”

She rubbed her shaved head, and I tried to imagine her hair sticking up in every direction in frustrated spikes. I didn’t even know what Mina’s hair would look like now. “Whatever, I’m late. Do what you want.”

She walked toward the oncology wing. I waited for her to
disappear past the double doors, not looking back, before I made my way around the building to the ER.

Lots of people who’ve gone through stuff I’ve gone through hate hospitals because they associate them with death and loss and hopelessness. But I think even if Mina had died, which we thought was inevitable for three years, I still would’ve liked the hospital.

Sure, there’s suffering everywhere. But it’s also where people go to get well. I loved hearing pages and getting glimpses of freshly stocked linen closets. I loved the special clipboards and the beds with a thousand different levers. I loved the mean nurses too busy to talk to you and the nice ones even when you could tell they were checked out and faking it.

And I loved the doctors. The doctors! They came into a room and owned it. Everyone looked to them for answers, and unless they were brand new, they
knew
the answers. Even when things were hopeless, they were the ones to let us know. They issued proclamations: prescriptions, diagnoses. They wore better clothes than everyone else, and they shook your hand and theirs was dry from so much washing. I loved them. I’d watch what they did, check the charts when they left, try to get Mina to laugh by imitating them.

One time I came into her room after school, took a look at her chart, said something, and Mina laughed—and then ten minutes later a real doctor came in, looked at the chart, and said exactly the same thing. Mina’s eyes got huge in her thin, dark face.

“You’re going to be a doctor,” she said.

“Whatever.”

“No, seriously, Katelyn. You’ve got to.”

I didn’t believe her. I wasn’t that good in school, and doctors had to go to school forever. Besides, the whole reason I liked doctors was because they were so unlike me. I could never walk into a room and own it like a doctor.

Mina let it drop and never brought it up again, which proved my point: wasn’t going to happen.

But I remembered enough about my years imitating doctors and keeping Mina company that I knew how to blend in. While Mina was at her appointment, I passed the time trying to diagnose everyone in the ER waiting room. A couple of flus, a kid with a high fever, a middle-aged man with the worst sunburn I’d ever seen. A woman holding a dish towel around her hand got taken back almost immediately. The rest of us sat around.

When I got bored I walked confidently through the swinging doors to the patient rooms. I knew my way around, and I knew that people didn’t ask where you were going if you looked like you had a destination. I’d been invisible in these hallways hundreds of times.

They hadn’t changed. I walked purposefully past moaning rooms and crying rooms and scarily silent rooms, past the rooms where half a dozen family members forced loud laughter, past many rooms with only a TV blaring. It was all so familiar, but removed. Like walking through a dream.

Since I hadn’t bothered to pick a destination, my feet took
me to pediatric oncology out of habit. Mina would be meeting with Dr. Brown in his office, so I turned toward the residents’ floor instead.

Once there, my purposeful walk slowed. A few kids hung out in the rec room area watching TV or playing board games. I looked for familiar faces, but of course there wouldn’t be any; I hadn’t visited in two years, and the kids I remembered would be out by now, like Mina, or dead.

A child stepped in front of me. With the shaved head, I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, and though he (she?) looked around ten, I knew in this place she (he?) was probably a few years older than that. My age when I started coming here with Mina.

“You don’t belong here,” the kid said.

“Yeah? How do you know?”

“You don’t look sick.”

“How do you know I’m not visiting someone?”

“Are you?”

I shrugged. “How do you know I’m not a super hot young doctor?”

She looked at me skeptically. (I had decided she was a she.) “Where’s your doctor coat?”

“I don’t wear one.”

“Where’d you go to med school?”

“Northwestern.”

“What kind of cancer do I have?”

I looked at her. She was wearing plain green pajamas, long
pants and long sleeves. I couldn’t see any scars. It was almost impossible to tell by looking at someone what they had. That was one of the scary things about cancer. You could be walking around, happy, and inside cells were mutating, growing. I suddenly thought of Mina, alone in Dr. Brown’s office down the hall, and felt a faint pang.

“Leukemia,” I said, because that was a good shot, percentage-wise.

“Nice try. Hepatocellular carcinoma.”

I had never heard of that before, but I recognized part of the word. “Ah. The liver,” I said, and nodded in a doctorly way.

The girl laughed, a short bark. A couple of the TV-watching kids looked up at us. “I like you,” she said. “I’m Hana. If you get caught, you can say you’re visiting me.”

Cold washed over me, and I took a step back. This was too familiar. I’d been here before, bantering with someone who might or might not get better. “You don’t like me. You don’t even know me.”

Her expression folded in on itself. I noticed this with Mina, too: without hair, emotions lived closer to the surface. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Good luck with your hepatocellular carcinoma.”

“Hey—where are you going? Wait!”

I didn’t look back, and she couldn’t catch me.

My heart pounded against my ribs as I made my way back to the ER. Talking to Hana, I’d fallen into an old role. I didn’t
want to be that girl anymore—the one who cheers you up when you’re sick. The one who has nothing better to do than to visit day or night. The one whose entire purpose in life was to support you and help you get better. The one who was left behind. And I
wasn’t
her. At least, I didn’t have to be. I could walk away.

But as soon as I reached the ER, I thought about where I was.

Paramedics were wheeling in a young guy with a splint around his leg. He had dark hair and for a second I thought
Cal
and then I thought
Diana
and
Ari
and
not here no not here I’m leaving I promise I’m leaving I’m leaving now!

It was like the Whirlpool at the carnival only much worse. It wouldn’t be hard at all for the spell to arrange for them to bump into me at an ER.

My fingernails bit into my palms as I struggled not to panic. But maybe panic was the right reaction.

I ran for the automatic doors, ducking and weaving around sick people and their friends and family, completely abandoning the rules of remaining invisible. A shout came from the intake desk but I didn’t stop running until I reached Mina’s car in our spot in the lot.

Mina was waiting for me.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“In the ER,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. My heart was pounding so hard my vision pulsed.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. Can we get out of here? Please?”

Mina played with the studded leather cuff around her forearm.

“Dr. Brown says I’m fine. No sign of the cancer. If you care.”

“Oh. Good. Let’s go.”

Mina half laughed without amusement and didn’t look at me as she turned on the car and pulled out of the lot.

The pounding in my chest lessened. I could breathe.

Cal and Diana and Ari hadn’t shown up in the ER. Maybe the hook had some sense. Maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as I’d thought.

And I was no longer the girl who sat patiently in a visitor’s chair and imitated doctors. Hana would forget me before the end of the day. Mina didn’t need me. She was fine.

Mina pulled onto the highway, checking her blind spots carefully. She caught my eye. “What’s wrong with you, Katelyn?”

“Nothing,” I said, grinning for the first time all day. “Actually, everything’s perfect.”