The Cost of All Things Read online

  The smack of the floor on my hip—that I felt. The humiliation—those synapses were working fine.

  The piano stopped. The other girls looked down at me, still lying on the floor, their faces full of pity and also disgust. Who falls in the middle of a simple combination?

  Not me. I was going to be in the Manhattan Ballet junior corps. I was going to get out of here and make everyone proud.

  I didn’t trust myself to stand. Rowena appeared next to me. She took hold of my elbow and hoisted me to my feet, making it look as much as possible like she was only offering support. But without her I’d have stayed on the ground flailing like a turtle on its back.

  In the hall, she didn’t let go, even when I sat on the changing bench. Her fingers were daggers in my skin. “I’m okay,” I said. She still didn’t let go. “I’m fine.”

  Cautiously, she released my arm. “You should take as long as you need, Ariadne.”

  “I don’t want to take any time.”

  Rowena shook her head. “Sometimes the body knows what the mind does not.”

  That sounded like one of those solemn dancerisms that could explain anything from a stiff hip to a nervous breakdown, but still I wondered if she was right. The pulse of my bad wrist felt like it was spreading through my whole body, and I could barely feel anything else. Not even shame.

  “This is the thing you can never plan for,” she said. “One of life’s tragedies.”

  “Yes, but . . . New York.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “August first.”

  “Two months. Plenty of time to prepare.”

  “Jess and I—we’ve been planning for years. It’s my chance. I have to be ready.”

  “Then you will,” she said simply. “And I have to go back to class. Stay, and we’ll talk more?”

  I nodded, but as soon as she left the changing room I pushed myself to my feet and ran, awkwardly, out the door.

  My body didn’t feel like one muscle anymore, and it didn’t feel like twenty muscles. It felt like thousands. The parts of me that weren’t working weren’t out of practice—they were out of my control completely.

  I had traded in my ability to dance for some stupid boy. A boy I probably would’ve broken up with anyway when I moved away to New York. That boy somehow was worth nine years of effort, practicing five hours a day, auditions and competitions and pain, everything I always thought I would be, the only thing I’ve ever been any good at. In order to forget my past, I’d obliterated my future.

  The me of yesterday had been a selfish, foolish bitch.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  My brothers got me to the church for Win’s funeral. They sat me in a pew. They surrounded me like linebackers. Like goddamn secret service in black suits. I didn’t remember my dad’s funeral, but I could see all of them remembering it, comparing it, sharing sad, knowing glances. Their shared tragedy. The thing that bonded them together. Their stupid club I could never join. Fuck them. This was my friend. This was Win’s day, not Dad’s. This was my torture, not theirs.

  I looked straight up at the ceiling. Wood beams. Sunlight. A white banner tucked into a corner. I looked at my feet. Black shoes. Black laces. Gray carpet. I looked at my hands. Cut up. Splintered. Bleeding around the half dozen Band-Aids my mom had stuck on them before I snapped at her to stop. I’d ripped down the rotting treehouse in the backyard the night before. My hands closed into fists, over nothing.

  Up at the front of the room there was a white casket. I didn’t have to look to know it was there.

  I heard the pastor clear his throat and I knew if I listened to a single word this man said—this self-important dick who’d never even talked to Win, who only knew him from the pictures that lined the aisles and looked up at the bottom of our chins from Xeroxed programs on every lap—I would start screaming and never stop.

  I pushed past Cal, who didn’t try to stop me, and my mom, who made a lunge for my arm but missed. I ran away from the coffin into the entryway, but there were more people coming in, streams and streams of them, and outside it was sunny and summery and unbearable, a beautiful June weekend, the first weekend of the summer, what a stunning fucking miracle, so I turned before I reached the outer door and stepped into a closet filled with bunting and banners. In the dark, I leaned into the fabric until I could only see black, and I talked to myself.

  —Coward.

  —I’m not afraid.

  —Then why hide?

  —I don’t want to be a part of this phony bullshit.

  —You’re hiding. You don’t want anyone to see you. Boo-hoo, poor Markos. You think they haven’t noticed that you’ve left?

  —I don’t care what they think.

  —Even your brothers? They’re out there. They’re wondering what the hell’s wrong with you.

  —They don’t care about Win.

  —But you do. Stop being a coward and get out there.

  —Why?

  —It’s up to you. You have to.

  —Why me?

  —Because you’re a Waters. Suck it up.

  I took a couple more breaths into the fabric and was about to head back out when the door opened. I lunged for the handle to close it and practically ran face-first into Ari Madrigal.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She stared at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed. But her sadness didn’t make me angry like the rest of the crowd’s did. She had earned it. She, like me, had loved Win well enough to be entitled to this pain.

  “What are you doing in here?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Why did you open the door?”

  “To get away for a minute.”

  “Yeah.”

  She glanced from side to side and let go of the door. “Sorry to bother you,” she said.

  “Wait!” I grabbed her arm. She looked at my hand, and I let go. “Are you—will you be at the house later?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “We should talk,” I said.

  Her eyes grew big and she swallowed. Almost like she was afraid.

  Coward.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I . . . want to be alone.”

  I remembered a flash of the night Win died, the sand and rain and sky, how happy and how awful it was. Then I lurched forward, extended my arms, and hugged her.

  She didn’t hug back. Her entire body tensed. When I leaned back to see her face even her teeth were clenched.

  “Sorry,” I said, and let go.

  She backed away, shuffled into the church with the last of the stragglers. The pastor had begun his bland speech but I couldn’t hear the words from out in the entryway.

  Ari wasn’t someone I would’ve ever chosen to be friends with. She came with Win. At first she seemed like any other girl, but you spend enough time with someone, and they surprise you—they do something unexpected or unusual that gives them three dimensions. Ari had made me laugh, and that made her real.

  She was probably my closest friend now. Not my best friend—not the way Win was my best friend. Just that she was the only person who knew me for real.

  She went out there and sat and listened. She knew Win. If she could do it, so could I.

  I took a step into the church.

  Black jackets.

  Bowed heads.

  White coffin.

  Win’s sister Kara sitting in the front row breathing little-kid breaths, trying to keep it together.

  I took a step back out into the entry. Then another step, and another, until I was running out to my mom’s car in the parking lot. I didn’t have the keys, so I sat on the ground with my back against a wheel and tried to breathe.

  Coward.

  I wasn’t as strong as Ari. Win always said she was tough, that she could handle anything, and I guess he was right. I couldn’t
do it. Not even for my best friend.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  I sat in the row behind my best friends near the front of the church. Ari stared blankly as people hugged her over and over, and Diana cried too hard to talk to anyone. I kept close and waited for someone to need me.

  I had liked Win. He was quiet and sweet and would nod to me in the hall or ask how’s it going. When we all hung out in a group, which was rarely, he included me in conversation. Nothing huge, but it meant something.

  Plus there was the fact that I wouldn’t have friends at all if it weren’t for him. If Ari hadn’t been busy with Win, Diana never would’ve been lonely enough to call me. I’d always been grateful for that.

  In the past week, his death had loomed over me, the idea that he was gone forever and never coming back, the great big black wings of fear bearing down on me. I hadn’t felt that clutching in my heart since before my sister Mina left for her world tour, and I didn’t miss it. This was what was supposed to happen to Mina for so many years when she was sick: the huge dark bird would scoop her up in his talons and she’d disappear. I’d pictured sitting at Mina’s funeral many times; I’d pictured it so well that when I sat behind Diana and Ari in the church for Win’s, I felt I’d been there before.

  But in actuality this was the first funeral I’d ever attended. Mina got better and went away. She was back for the summer now, but I could no longer stand the sight of her.

  In the row in front of me, Diana put her arm around Ari’s shoulder, and I felt a stab of jealousy. I reached out to rest my hand on top of Diana’s, but Ari shook off Diana’s arm and I let my hand drop back into my lap. Ari didn’t look at Diana, but Diana watched her intently through her tears, looking for some clue as to what she should do and how she could help. I watched them both, wondering the same thing.

  The pastor talked, there were long, horrible silences, and then Ari made it to the top of the steps to the podium before turning back around and sitting down without saying anything. She tripped on the way down the steps, and the entire church gasped. Ari, whose feet did exactly every impossible thing she wanted them to do, nearly fell. She stumbled back to her seat, her hair over her face.

  An uncle talked, or maybe a neighbor—I was starting to lose track. Pockets of crying kept erupting from the back and the sides of the church. The coffin sat up on the stage, a shiny white brick. I felt the dark wings flapping closer. I wished the coffin had been open so I could be sure who was in it.

  I couldn’t think about death or that great giant bird would get too near, so I thought of what I wished I could tell Ari and Diana instead, what the weakest, softest, most useless part of me felt. Stuff I’d never told them, because you don’t talk about depressing stuff like your sister’s near-death experiences, hanging out in the hospital every day after school, watching her waste away. No one would want a bummer like that around. And I wanted them to want me around, not only put up with me because my spell made them. The spell, at least, gave me the opportunity. I had to take advantage of it.

  But still, I was full of weakness.

  When my sister Mina first got sick, four years ago, we went to a hekamist. Well, first we went to the doctor, had all the tests done, cried, got a second opinion, went back to the first doctor, had more tests, started chemo—and then we went to the hekamist. Back then Mina insisted I come with her when she had big appointments. “Katelyn’s old enough. She deserves to be there,” she said, but I could tell in her eyes—because we were that close—that she was afraid to go alone.

  So I went with them the day they had the appointment. It wasn’t the townie hekamist who lived in the neighborhood behind the high school; this one had been highly recommended by the best of the best—my dad wouldn’t go to anything less. She had a real office next to a hospital in Boston. Money had never been a consideration for my parents. Or perhaps it was the only consideration—the only thing they knew to do when tragedy struck was to spend.

  We’d heard that hekamists couldn’t cure people, but we’d also heard the rumors: that you had to find the right hekamist. That covens gave their members an extended lifespan. That hekamists stopped curing people in retaliation for the government making joining covens illegal twenty years ago. And Mina was sick—possibly dying, we didn’t know—so we had to try.

  “None of that’s true,” the hekamist said. Her face was so full of lines her eyes almost disappeared. She wore a white lab coat and spoke in a dry, lecturing tone. “A hekamist operates like a spiritual accountant. We operate in three areas—traditionally, the body, mind, and soul; or the physical, mental, and the aura, as I prefer. Say your budget has plenty of smarts but nothing allocated in the beauty department.” I could have sworn that everyone in the room looked at me, except Mina. “We rearrange the way that resources are allocated so that some of the brains stockpile is converted to beauty. When someone is as sick as Mina is—and I’m so sorry, my dear—the cost to her mental abilities could be catastrophic.”

  “She’d live, though?” my mom asked. Mina had inherited our mother’s sleek black hair, dark smooth skin, and elegant nose, though not her tasteful fashion sense and obsessive gardening habit. I’d inherited my dad’s sallow, acne-prone skin and small eyes, and I didn’t know what else, since he spent most of his time in Boston earning us a lot of money so my mother could garden in peace.

  The hekamist shook her head. “She’d be a vegetable.”

  Mina sighed and my parents started to argue between themselves in whispers. “If there was even a chance, the doctor would’ve told us,” I said to Mina.

  “And lose all his future business?” she answered, running her hand over her newly bald head. She hadn’t yet found a hat that didn’t itch like hell. She whispered so the hekamist wouldn’t hear us. “I hate this place.”

  “What do you mean? It’s fine.”

  “Don’t you feel weird? This is where people go when they’re desperate.” The hekamist was watching us, and Mina smiled at her as she lowered her voice even more. “They can’t live with themselves.”

  “Tons of people get spells.”

  “People do extreme things when they hate themselves.”

  “I hate cancer,” I said. “You hate cancer, right?”

  “That’s like hating snow or the color red.”

  She didn’t explain what she meant by that, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I think she meant cancer was simply a thing, like snow, and there was no point hating it because it didn’t care about you. Hating it wouldn’t change it, it only meant you were holding on to hate. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything to say back to her, and then we were getting up and thanking the hekamist for her time and fleeing to our car in the lot across the street.

  I thought of that conversation when I went for my beauty spell three years later. Mina hadn’t said much when I told her I was doing it. Not surprising, with half the world between us. Her response email was only a line long—“No time here. Good luck. Love you.”—like she was sending a telegraph and paying by the word, instead of dealing with spotty internet cafés in Uttar Pradesh. She could’ve written more, but she didn’t care. She’d left me.

  And I thought of it again when I got the friendship binding spell. While I waited for the hekamist to make the spell, in a small living room totally unlike the antiseptic faux-doctor we’d gone to for Mina, I remembered what Mina had said: Everyone who sat in this chair was desperate, and they hated themselves.

  I thought about it, and as much as I wanted to disagree with Mina, it was true. I was desperate, and I hated myself. Everything she said about spelltakers was true.

  The hekamist unwrapped a new box of cookies and shook out a handful onto the counter. “We call this kind of spell a hook,” she said, fiddling with the cookies and a jagged stone. “You eat one, and you give one to each of your friends, and they won
’t be able to leave you.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “Good question. Good, good, good. How much can you pay?”

  “I’ve got four thousand dollars.” I’d taken out the daily max from my savings account and emptied my mother’s wallet for four days in a row. Mom hadn’t even noticed. The tall stack of crisp bills sat in the middle of the table, incongruous in the dingy house.

  The hekamist stopped moving and turned to look at me. “That’s enough to make it permanent.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  “People grow up. People change. Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” I pushed the stack of bills so that the money fanned out over the table. “I won’t be alone.”

  The hekamist didn’t say anything else and turned back to the counter. Eventually she presented me with a plate of four cookies. I poked at them. “There’s an extra one,” I said.

  She looked down at the plate, as if trying to focus and count moving objects. “Ah . . . I see. Well, keep it. You never know.”

  “My beauty spell affected my brain,” I said (and I had the D in chem to prove it), “but this hook—what department does that steal from?”

  She hesitated a second, I thought she might not tell me, or she might lie. She already had my money—what did she care? But when she answered, it sounded like the truth.

  “Hooks are about location and control. It’ll keep your loved ones near you, using luck and coincidence and chance. They’ll see you every three days; they’ll go no farther than fifty miles away, no matter what. You might find that other parts of your life . . . dislocate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The hook stays hooked. Other things unhook.”

  “What things? What do you mean unhook?”

  The hekamist shrugged. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—explain any more.

  I tried not to worry about it and instead thought of all I’d given Mina—years of my life, my every thought or hope or wish—and how when she’d recovered she’d immediately left me behind. The cancer hadn’t taken her like I’d always thought it would, but she surgically removed herself from my life anyway. And she was my sister, who said she loved me. If she could do that, anyone could.