The Cost of All Things (3 page)

My favorite memory of Ari is from a dance—no surprise. Not one of her performances, which were beautiful and complicated like moving sculpture, but the Homecoming dance junior year. We’d been going out for a few months, and I knew I liked her—a lot—but Homecoming changed everything.

It didn’t start out great. The suit my mother had found at Goodwill and the homemade corsage my sister, Kara, had made for Ari from a neighbor’s rosebush—they made me feel like an impostor, like a con man who’d lied his way into someone else’s life. I blamed that for the black cloud that followed me into the gym, even though the truth was I’d been under the cloud for days—maybe weeks.

(Maybe even my whole life. For as long as I could remember there’d been a weight attached to me. Some days it barely registered on the scale; others it felt as heavy as sandbags. This started out as a sandbag day.)

It didn’t help that dating Ari felt like the biggest act of fakery
of all. She was so beautiful and talented and strong and blah blah blah. Those were the things that had drawn me to her, but now that we were together, her beauty and talent and strength seemed to keep me at arm’s length. I was average in every way. I played shortstop (decently) and the trumpet (badly). I had a sister and a mother who I loved, plus good grades and loyal friends. Ari was exceptional. She was one of the best ballet dancers in the country. She had overcome a tragic past. She was vivid, the part of the painting the artist spent all day on before hurriedly sketching me into a corner.

On the night of Homecoming, once we arrived at the gym, Ari found her friends and went off to dance. Markos and I stood in a corner trading Markos’s flask back and forth.

“Hottest girl in the grade?” Markos asked.

“Ari.”

“Come on. For real.”

“I’m for real. What are you saying about my girlfriend?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll rephrase. Hottest girl who I could hook up with?”

“Serena Simonsen.”

“You came up with that quick! You sure you don’t want to go for her yourself?”

“Dude, come on. You know I wouldn’t.”

He saluted with the flask. “Always such a good boy.”

Across the room I spotted Ari dancing, and I could tell she was really trying to let loose—stop counting the beats, stop spotting her turns. She wanted to fit in with the rest of us normals.
The fact that I knew her well enough to know what she was thinking hit me with a pang right between my ribs, and I felt sorry for Markos that he thought being a “good boy” was a bad thing.

“How about Kay Charpal?” I said, since she was dancing right next to Ari.

Markos shook his head. “Too Frankenspelled.”

“Half the girls here have had a spell touch-up. Who cares?”

“Most of them looked fine before. You remember Kay’s old face . . .” He twisted his own into a sour expression.

“You are
such
an ass.”

“I’m honest. Not my fault if people can’t handle the truth.”

“I’d say Diana, but then Ari would kill you.”

“Plus I require a bare minimum of a personality.” He laughed and checked his watch.

“Oh no,” I said.

“What?” His eyes opened wide, as if that might make him look innocent.

“Please tell me you didn’t plan something.”

Markos grinned. “I’ve got a legacy to uphold.”

Markos’s older brothers had been telling us for years about their Homecoming pranks. Brian brought a goat in a tuxedo as his “date,” Dev rigged the basketball hoop with a laser light projector that spelled out insults onto one of the walls, and Cal replaced all of the DJ’s music with the Jackson 5’s “ABC.”

“Didn’t they do theirs senior year?”

Markos tapped the side of his nose. “The admin will be
watching me like a hawk senior year. This is all about the element of surprise.”

He peered into the crowd intently, and I watched the dancing, trying to see what he saw. Everyone seemed normal and happy to me. They all belonged exactly where they were. When I turned back to Markos, he’d gone. I thought about trying to find him but figured it would ruin the surprise, so I took a deep breath and elbowed my way into the crowd to join Ari. She shouted “Win!” and tucked her arm into mine, still dancing. I shuffled back and forth, trying not to step on her.

She had on a strapless blue dress, longer in the back than the front. I’d seen her bare, slightly freckly shoulders before—in her performances—and maybe that’s why I pictured her being lifted up overhead, arching her back and soaring. I couldn’t do that for her, so I shuffled.

When a slow song came on, she turned to face me, putting her hands on my shoulders. I placed mine on her waist and swayed back and forth. The blue material of her dress was warm from her body but so shiny I thought my hands might slide off. I was afraid to hold her too tight—not that I thought I’d hurt her, because I knew she was way stronger than me, but because it might give away how much I wanted to hold her, and she’d have to pull back, and it would become clear that she didn’t want me as much as I wanted her. Our dancing—our relationship—balanced on a seesaw. If I put my full weight into it, I’d go crashing down and she’d fly away.

“Feel the music in your core,” Ari said in a European
accent—her “ballet master” voice. “What does the music say to you?”

I listened. “It says, ‘I am a boy-band ballad with nonsensical lyrics.’”

Ari laughed. “How dare you. I’m thinking of getting these lyrics tattooed on my butt.”

“‘Waking this spire for you’?”

“It’s ‘quaking desire for you,’ actually.”

“Well, of course when you say it, it’s poetry.”

She smiled at me, a welcome kick in the ribs. Before I could chicken out I leaned in and gave her a kiss. She was still smiling when I pulled back, and maybe her cheeks were redder than before.

“You’re kind of the best, Win Tillman,” she said.

That was it—I was going to say something that would make it obvious how much I liked her, and the seesaw would come crashing down. I could feel words coming up my chest and I didn’t know how to stop them, or if I wanted to.

Something wet and sudsy dripped from the ceiling into my eyes. I let go of Ari to wipe it away, and that’s when the shouting started. When my eyes were clear, I could see Ari staring up toward the dark gym ceiling, laughing. Big soapy drips plopped from the ceiling vents. Around us, girls tried to shield their updos, and guys slipped in their formal shoes.

“I love it, but I don’t get it,” Ari said. “Where’s Markos?”

I grabbed her hand and we slip-n-slided to the doors to the gym. People were mostly streaming out to the parking lot, so
we turned in the other direction, heading deeper into the dark school. At a fork in the hallway we paused until we heard voices.

Down the hall to the right, Markos had his back against a locker, his arms crossed over his chest. A cop stood in front of him.

“. . . lucky it was me and not someone else assigned to the school. This is so unbelievably stupid, Markos,” the cop was saying, and I knew before we got close enough to see that it was Markos’s oldest brother, Brian. I hurried the last thirty feet to them, Ari close at my heels. Brian turned to us. “Win, get back to the dance.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Markos put bubble machines in the heating vents.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Markos said.

“Really? So if I check inventory at the store there won’t be a bunch of supplies missing?”

“Good luck with that.” Markos’s family’s hardware store was notoriously disorganized; Markos probably banked on that fact. Brian knew it, too, and his frown deepened.

“I should take you in, Markos. Might teach you a lesson.”

“Come on, Brian! What about all the pranks you and Dev and Cal did?”

Brian glared. “That’s different. You flooded the gym.”

“Flooded? It’s only a few bubbles.”

“They’re not bubbles after they go through the heating vent, dumbass. They’re just soap.”

“You’re such a hypocrite.”

“And you’re such a fuckup. That’s thousands of dollars of damage and no one can even tell what it’s supposed to be. You can’t even plan a simple prank right.”

Markos flinched. I stepped toward him out of instinct—no one was allowed to hurt my best friend—but before I could reach him, Ari ducked in between Markos and his brother. “It wasn’t Markos,” she said. “He’s been with us all night.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “I found him out here, not in with you.”

“He
just
left, I swear. There’s no way he’d have time to set all this up,” she insisted. “And it doesn’t make sense, Brian—I mean Officer Waters. You guys always did your pranks senior year, right? So why would Markos do one now?”

Brian took a second to absorb this piece of logic, then turned to Markos. “Is this true?” Markos didn’t look any of us in the eye, but he nodded. “What were you doing out here, then?”

Markos cleared his throat and looked up and down the hall. For the briefest second, when he caught my eye, he winked. “Meeting a girl. You probably scared her away. Thanks a lot, by the way.”

Brian made a disgusted noise and turned to Ari. “So you’re going to vouch for him.”

Ari planted her feet and looked at him levelly. “Markos didn’t do it, Officer.”

Brian turned to me. So did Markos and Ari. It was my turn to decide what to do.

But for me and Markos, it’s never really a decision. I always have his back and he has mine. “Ari’s telling the truth.”

Brian stared at us for a moment, then pivoted on his heel and stomped down the hall.

When he was out of sight, Markos grinned. “That was fun.”

Ari punched him in the shoulder. “You idiot. I just lied to a cop.”

“He wanted to believe you. That way I’m not such a failure.” Markos saluted and stood up from leaning on the locker, straightening his suit jacket. “Have a fantastic rest of your evening, lovebirds.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Oh, I never lie to my family.”

From behind us I heard a giggle—Serena Simonsen waved from the doorway of a dark classroom, and Markos waved back. Ari rolled her eyes, and as Markos passed me, he put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in. “She’s all right. You can keep her around,” he muttered into my ear, as if it was his decision (or even mine) whether or not Ari stayed with me.

I grabbed his arm before he could walk away. “She might not agree.”
She might not really want me. Average me. Impostor me.

“Are you kidding me? She’s all in. Get your head out of your ass and look at her.”

Ari and I watched Markos and Serena disappear into the empty classroom, then we headed back the way we came. As we walked I did what Markos said and I looked at her. Not the idea of her. Not the Ari who wore toe shoes and floated onstage. Not the one whose parents died when she was little. The girl in front of me. Leaning toward me. Looking right back at me.

As soon as we stepped back into the gym, our arms were around each other. Soapy water still sputtered from the vents in the ceiling. Ari’s dress was so slippery and the floor so slick I had to hold her as tight as I wanted to or I’d lose her and we’d fall. My hands met at the small of her back. She held me just as tight—her hands linked at the back of my neck, twisted in my hair, her cheek pressed close against my collarbone—and I could feel her heart beating through the fabric of my secondhand suit.

Anyone upset by their ruined clothes and hair had long since left, but a fair number of us had stayed. Someone had cut the lights, probably afraid of electrocution, so it was dark in the gym except for the glow of people’s cell phones flashing off the sparkle of dresses. It smelled like a laundromat, and since the DJ had long since given up, we could hear people laughing and splashing and attempting to dance to a small portable speaker someone had plugged into their phone. It was only a matter of time before Brian or some other authority figure came by and kicked us out, so we seized the moment.

Ari relaxed into me. All effort left her. We melted together.

“You saved Markos’s ass,” I said to her.

“Brian’s too harsh on him.”

“I didn’t even think you liked him. Markos, I mean.”

She sighed deeper into my arms. Her hair was wet and flattened, half her makeup had run down her face and was now being rubbed onto me, and her dress had gone shapeless and bedraggled. But she was the most beautiful I’d ever seen her when she raised her head just enough to whisper in my ear.

“Not as much as I like you.”

Her soapy skin so close to mine. Her arms holding me and holding me up. She shook slightly, maybe a shiver. She wasn’t stone and marble; she wasn’t perfect and remote. She was here, in front of me. Choosing me.

“I love you,” I said.

She looked at me, eyes bright. She wasn’t surprised, I noted with relief. “I love you, too.”

We swayed back and forth. Dancing. In the dark and wet, the two of us together.

It’s my favorite memory of Ari out of a thousand memories. It’s the one I keep on hand, the talisman. That was the girl I loved.