The Cost of All Things (29 page)

I could tell you about the aftermath. How we went to the hospital—the big, familiar hospital—and they patched us up. I could tell you how Cal became infamous and his mother pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and filed for bankruptcy. I could tell you about the weeks and weeks it took for my ribs to knit back together. All that did happen, and I was there, but no one looked at me.

I could tell you more about my spell. No one listens to me anymore, which is how it used to feel in the hospital with Mina. I would ask something of a doctor or nurse and it was as if no one had spoken; Mina used to have to repeat my questions. Yes, I could use the bathroom. Yes, food was coming soon. Yes, that’s what “carcinogen” meant. It makes you feel like a speck on the wall, an irritating stain, something to frown and sigh heavily at and hope no one else notices. With my side effects, I feel all of those things a hundred times over.

I could tell you how Echo’s mom faded fast once Echo died.
She could no longer spell, she was in a great deal of pain, and then she stopped eating. She died before the last of the tourists left in September.

I could tell you that Diana and Ari were so grateful that I saved their lives that we went back to exactly the way things were before—no, better—but that would be a lie.

I am not alone, though. I have Mina. Mina loves me so she can see me despite the spell. She stayed home from school for a semester and took care of me. “What’s another year?” She laughed, and for the first time, I saw what she meant. Some things are more important than schedules and plans. Some things you have to do
now.

Ari tries, too. She calls me; we talk. We’re honest with each other. It’s real. She gives me what she can afford to give, and I don’t expect or demand any more.

It’s okay. All I ever wanted was two good friends.

The good thing about my side effects is that it’s not just the bad emotions that are amplified. When I’m happy—which is not infrequently—I can feel it clearer and sharper than ever before. When good things happen I can squeeze every last drop from them. And good things happen all the time. Even to me.

Still, some nights I dream I’m stuck in the hardware store, but instead of a locked-up Diana and knocked-out Markos, there’s everyone I’ve ever loved, even a little bit, behind a chain link fence in the woodshop. Mom and Dad and Mina and Echo and Markos and Ari and Diana. I’m the only one there to save them, and I keep running into traps that break my legs and sting
my lungs and turn me around in circles. I never see any sign of Cal, only the traps. I get more and more frantic until I’m ripping the chain link with my bare hands, and my loved ones stare at me, horrified, speechless, desperate, and I realize I
am
Cal—I am the bad guy—and they are scared and imprisoned because of me. The horror chokes me as bad as the smoke filling the room—and there’s no hekamist there to save us—and then I wake up, gasping.

Glad to be invisible.

A week after Waters Hardware burned down, I went to Echo’s funeral with Echo’s mom, Diana, Markos, Kay, Mina, and Jess. None of us knew what a hekamist funeral should be, and Echo’s mom couldn’t tell us, so Kay’s parents paid for something simple at the local Unitarian church.

As I sat there in silence—except for Echo’s mom’s weeping—I thought about how blind and bewildered I’d been at Win’s funeral, stuck on my own pain. Rows and rows of people behind me, grieving Win, staring at me as I tried to make up some words to say. And I thought of my parents’ funeral. Jess had been a stranger, I hadn’t yet befriended Diana, and I’d taken a spell that had plucked out a terrible memory and made my wrist sore. Like at Win’s funeral, people had filled the church. I may have felt alone, but my parents hadn’t been lonely in their lives.

But we were the only ones there for Echo, and most of us had met her in the past few months, if we’d known her at all. She’d spent nearly her whole life in hiding.

I found myself wishing Win was there. Not for myself, obviously, but for Echo. Someone who she’d cared about, someone who’d probably cared about her, paying his respects. Someone who’d made her life less alone.

Diana held my hand and a bandaged-up Markos held her other one. Diana had cut her burned hair into an asymmetrical bob, and it was redder than ever. Markos’s scars made him look even more like a handsome villain. Markos had moved in to Diana’s basement after leaving the hospital. Diana told me things were strained with his brothers, and his mother might have to go to jail. Jess had found out that I could sue Cal in civil court for damages, but the Waterses had no money; it had all gone to Echo and her mom over the past nine years. And I didn’t want to sue. I believed it was an accident back then and that the shock of remembering it all at once and all of a sudden had pushed Cal into what he did at the hardware store. He seemed to be suffering enough, living with his messed-up mind. After the hospital, he’d moved to the psych ward, where he was likely to spend many years. I didn’t forgive him—not yet—but I wanted to, one day.

Word was that the Waterses would move as soon as they could, but that Markos wanted to stay. Markos and I weren’t talking too much—again, not yet—and the only thing he said to me at Echo’s funeral was out of the corner of his mouth, while Diana was in the bathroom.

“I get it,” he said, and then looked away, as if there was anyone there who cared whether or not he spoke to me.

At first I thought he meant he got why I took the spell to
erase Win, but we’d already covered that—my general weakness, not caring enough about Win to remember. When I thought about it more I figured he was talking about Diana, trying to say he got why she was my best friend. And then I started thinking maybe it went even deeper than that. Maybe he understood me and Win, why Win wanted to be with me, why we belonged together. I would’ve liked to know that myself, but I knew I couldn’t ask. It was a secret I’d never know.

I could see why Diana loved him, though. Around her, he showed all the good parts I remembered about being friends with him: he was funny and loyal and quick to defend his friends. All that—plus he listened to her and took her seriously, believed in her completely. It made me think I’d underestimated them both.

After the funeral, he went to Diana’s to rest and she and I sat in my room, like we had so often before. Diana was making me laugh about something Markos had said to her when I stopped and blurted out, “I don’t think I’m ever going to dance again.”

Diana tilted her head, doubtful. “You could get another spell, like the one Echo made for you.”

“Knee surgery, too.”

“Sure. But a spell and knee surgery aren’t that big a deal. You’ve been training for years. And the Manhattan Ballet . . .”

“If Win hadn’t died, I don’t think I would’ve gone to New York. I would’ve stayed here to be with him.”

Diana shook her head. “You’ve always wanted to dance.”

“That doesn’t mean I’ll never want anything else.”

She hugged her arms over her chest. “Echo wanted you to dance.”

“Echo wanted to get out of here.” That sounded cruel, so I shook my head. “She wanted to save her mother. And I think she wanted . . . people. Other people. She helped us. She gave me what I told her would make me happy. I think . . .” I thought she was in love with Win, actually. But she kept Win’s secrets, so I kept hers. “I think she felt guilty about Cal, too.”

“You shouldn’t feel guilty. If you took another spell, everyone would understand.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

I pressed my aching wrist to my heart.

I didn’t need more spells. It was enough work getting used to the ones I had. The blank of my parents’ last moments on earth. The year I’d lost being in love with Win. The different kind of pain I had instead.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

I fought the urge to nod and laugh and say “of course,” and instead thought carefully about what I really felt. “I feel like everything’s changing and it’s totally out of my control,” I said.

She nodded. “And you can’t dance.”

“I can’t dance,” I said, and ignored the lump that rose in my throat. “But Jess and I are going to New York anyway.”

Diana froze, waiting for the joke. “But—why?”

“People who don’t dance move to New York all the time.”

“You’ll leave me here?”

“You won’t be alone.”

“Don’t throw Markos in my face. I never did that to you when you were with Win.”

“Not just Markos,” I said, and that damn lump kept rising. I tried breathing through my nose. “You have—your parents. You remember the kids at school, the teachers. My memories are fuzzy.”

“You remember me,” she said fiercely. “You want to forget me, too?”

The nose-breathing didn’t work. I was crying, and so was Diana. Ugly, gulping crying. I thought,
You don’t deserve to cry
, which only made me cry harder. “I was always going to go. I should’ve been gone already. What’s the difference if it’s for the Manhattan Ballet or not?”

She opened and closed her mouth, then wiped her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “Give me some time to think of a reason.”

I hugged her. It was a kind of lurchy hug because my bad knee froze up halfway across the room, but it worked—I latched on and wouldn’t let go. I was not a hug person, so I didn’t know the secret of hugs until that moment: They’re not only one person’s effort. You hold each other up.

Maybe it was stupid to leave Diana now that I was finally being honest with her. Part of me thought that would be enough, to lean on Diana and let her get me through this. But a bigger part of me knew that what I needed more than anything was a blank slate—and not from hekame this time.

“I’m afraid,” I said.

Diana let go and took half a step back. “Of Cal?”

“No. I mean in the future—when I lose someone else, like I lost Win. I’m worried it’ll be more than I can handle.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

What else was there to say?

I didn’t think I’d choose to forget someone again. Not now, knowing what I did about the costs: to the hekamist to make the spell, with her food, blood, and will; to everyone else, who had to carry their pain alone; and to me—not only the loss of dance but losing the connection between what I was and what I will be.

Until I walked into Waters Hardware for the last time, I’d thought that my parents’ death was safely stored away in the past. But the past isn’t past—it’s who we are every second of the day.

Cal and I both forgot things and became different people than we would’ve been otherwise. So here’s the big question: What would I have been like if I’d kept the memory of my parents’ death? I used to think I’d be broken, damaged goods forever. But maybe I’d have been a better person. I didn’t mean “good” or “perfect.” Better. More whole.

“What are you going to do now?” Diana whispered.

I told her the truth. “I don’t know.”

But not knowing didn’t make me feel trapped or out of control. It made me free.

Jess found us a place on the Lower East Side. It’s tiny and practically windowless and funny smells drift up from the sinks. But the stairs outside our apartment door go up to the roof, where
someone left a rusted lawn chair.

I climb, legs wobbling, and settle in the chair. The East River’s right in front of me; across it, Brooklyn. To my left I can see the top of the Chrysler Building; to my right, more river. We’re surrounded by water again.

Tomorrow I start senior year at a new school. A normal high school, no dance, where no one knows me and I know no one. It’s dark out and hot and humid and smells like exhaust and garbage. I’ve been reading a lot—it makes me forget my uncooperative body—and writing to Diana and Kay, but at night I come up here to think. I can’t change the choices I’ve made, or try to piece together the million alternate Aris that might have been. Instead I sit on the roof and try to answer Diana’s question for myself.

What am I going to do?

Who am I going to be?

Would I be Markos, an asshole with a heart of gold—or at least silver?

Would I be desperate but bold like Kay?

Open and sincere like Diana?

Would I give myself away to do one good thing?

I only have the rest of my life to find out. It’s time to get started.