The Cost of All Things Read online

  I went back to the kitchen and sat down across from her. Echo kept crying, tears gathering at the end of her nose, mixing with blood, and dripping onto her black-sleeved arms, which she’d crossed on the table. I wondered if that was what I would’ve looked like if I hadn’t taken the spell, and was in real mourning.

  “I wasn’t in love with him or anything,” she said after a while.

  “Oh. That’s okay.”

  “But he listened, he trusted me. I’ve been on my own, basically, for a long time. I . . . miss him.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

  “What was he like?”

  She looked down at her sleeve and the fingernails clutching the hem. “He played baseball. He was always kind to his sister.”

  “I’ve met her,” I said. I remembered a small, pale girl who hugged me fiercely at the funeral. Where was she now? Would Old Ari have sought her out, spent more time with her? Did she miss me?

  Echo stood up so abruptly I thought she might pass out. But though she swayed, she stayed upright, grabbing plates and throwing them into the sink. She stowed the puck in a cabinet next to a stack of dented baking sheets. The dirty gauze pads went into the garbage and the clean ones back where they came from. She moved too fast to follow in such a tiny kitchen.

  “Win was a good brother,” she said. “Not that I have anything to compare him to. I’m an only child, obviously—and I’m not sure how my mom managed to have me, because it’s tough for hekamists to have kids. Something about the shared life of a coven isn’t conducive to the selfishness of a baby. That’s why—it’s why most hekamists used to join covens when they were older, back when it was legal to join. They’d wait until they’d already had their kids.” She stopped moving in the middle of the kitchen, as if shocked by her own words.

  I was shocked, too. No babies. Not ever. I didn’t want one then and I doubt she did, either, but it was a tough life sentence to bear.

  “But you wanted to know about Win,” she said quietly. “Not about me. I wish I had something to tell you. But I knew him so briefly—I didn’t get a chance . . .”

  I wished I hadn’t asked. It was a stupid, selfish impulse from that same part of me that studied the tapes of my dance performances, digging up proof of . . . what? The secrets and kisses and looks didn’t mean anything to me. It all had no context. I searched for clues about Win clinically, selfishly, while the people who knew him mourned.

  “He never even got to use the spell I made him,” she said. She glanced at her mom, asleep on the couch, then sat back in her seat at the table and leaned her face into her hands. “I think, well, if he had taken it . . . I don’t know. Maybe he wouldn’t be dead.”

  “So the money was for a spell? What type?” She shook her head and wouldn’t answer. “How could your spell have prevented an accident?” I pressed.

  She didn’t say anything. Another secret, then—another thing I didn’t know about him.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. She crumpled her head down onto the table again, and I could hear her jagged breathing.

  “I hate to admit it, but . . .” She took a deep breath and spoke straight into the tabletop. “I can see why you’d rather forget.”

  I squeezed my wrist with the opposite hand so hard the muscle ached. “You’re probably the only person who will say that.”

  “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 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: everything had changed. I came to Echo furious, ready to blame her for everything 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.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  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 “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 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 couple 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 in to 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 e
lse 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 car 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 car-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.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  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.