The Cost of All Things (7 page)

“We
always
go to the bonfire.” Diana opened my closet doors and rooted around violently. “Always. No arguments—we’re picking up Kay in ten minutes.”

I swiveled in my desk chair, wishing Diana would leave so I could go back to watching my dance videos. It had been a month since I took the memory spell, the weeks passing at a crawl, as if I were stuck in a picture, expression fixed. I still couldn’t dance. August first—our move-out date, settled months ago—was less than a month away. Jess had started collecting boxes, which she piled behind the doors of every room.

But Diana wanted to go to the bonfire. The Fourth of July existed solely for the tourists, so the Waters clan claimed the third for a beach bonfire for their friends. I remembered most of the bonfire from two years ago, but last year’s bonfire memory was Swiss cheese. I hadn’t even considered going until Diana burst into my room.

“I know it’s only been a month since Win . . .” Diana paused, then rushed through to her next thought. “It’s only been a month but it would mean a lot to me if you went. I mean, not just me, but everybody. To see you out there—it means that we’ll survive this, you know?” She abandoned my closet and sat on my bed and curled her arms over her knees. “And I think not only for us, but for you—you haven’t been anywhere in weeks, Ari.”

“I go to work. And to class.” Not true; I hadn’t been to class since I fell, the day after the spell. Lies, lies, lies.

“And then you come right home. You sit with me and Kay for forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, and then the look on your face when you can kick us out . . . You’re relieved.” Diana shook her head. “I miss you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You’re going through stuff. But I don’t want you to think you’re alone.” She shrugged, self-conscious. “You’ve always got me.”

“I know.”

“And Kay, too.”

“Right. Kay.”

Diana jumped up and dug around for a couple of shirts, which she tossed at me. “Try these on.”

I hugged the shirts to my chest. “I don’t know if I can go, Diana.”

“I’m pretending I didn’t just hear that. La la la la.” She plugged her ears until her eyes fell on my wrist, red from all the
times I’d pinched it. Then she dropped her hands and looked serious. “Ari, are you—is everything okay?”

I was fine in the way she was asking about, and miserable in ways I couldn’t tell her.

“Let’s have a movie night instead,” I said. “We haven’t had a movie night in weeks.”

Diana shook her head, half smiling. “We haven’t had a movie night in over a year.”

“We haven’t?” I shook off my confusion and tried to look sad. “Oh, right, sorry, of course. Win . . .”

“You guys always did homework on Sundays.”

“Right. Well, let’s bring movie night back.”

Diana bit her lip. “But I want to go to the bonfire.”

“Come on, Diana. Why do you care so much?”

“Why don’t you care at all?” Diana shot back.

Because I didn’t remember enough to care. The bonfire belonged to Old Ari. I wanted to be left alone.

But I couldn’t say that to Diana, and normally, I wouldn’t have to. She’d never argued with me like that before. The Diana I remembered usually did what I wanted to do, back when I actually wanted to do anything. When we became friends in fourth grade, she didn’t call me until we’d been hanging out at each other’s houses every day for six months. She cried easily and hated conflict—normally I’d have to push her to express an opinion so I knew I wasn’t steamrolling her. She wasn’t the type to take charge.

This Diana seemed different. More forceful. And then
there was her hair, which she’d dyed bright red a week or two after the funeral. I didn’t understand what had happened. The hair was weird enough—she hadn’t even consulted me before doing it, and something that big should’ve been worthy of discussion. I wanted to ask her why she’d done it, but I was afraid it was something I should know already, and admitting I didn’t would mean admitting everything else I couldn’t remember.

“Your hair,” I said. “I keep forgetting and then being surprised again.”

Diana twisted a red strand around her finger and pulled it forward to look at it. “You know what’s funny? I got used to it right away. Like my hair had always been red underneath the mousy blond.”

“It looks good.”

“Stop trying to change the subject. Why don’t you want to go?”

“I’m . . . nervous about seeing everyone,” I said.

“Come on, it’s the Waters bonfire, and everyone loves you,” she said, elbowing me gently. “Plus, you have to humor me—Markos will be there.”

“Oh, Diana,” I said, groaning.

“What?” she asked. “Can’t a girl dream?”

“Markos is great, but he treats girls so bad.”

Diana laughed. “You just said he was great! How can he be great and also bad?”

“Context.”

“Don’t worry, he’ll probably ignore me like he has hundreds of times before. But you should come and be my moral support anyway, don’t you think?”

I no longer remembered how or why I became friends with Markos, but I knew we were in each other’s corner. He was fun and less of an asshole than he seemed—but I wasn’t dating him. Diana was too sweet and sheltered; if they got together he’d hurt her without even realizing it. She needed someone serious and kind like she was. “Isn’t there literally anyone else on the planet you could have a crush on?”

“No, I’m stuck with Markos forever. Does this mean you’ll come?”

I glanced at my wall, where there was a picture of me and Win with our arms around each other. He was wearing a baseball uniform, and I had on the cap. She seemed happy—I mean
I
did. If I went to the bonfire, it would mean a whole night of pretending to be that girl, avoiding pointed questions or boozy reminiscences, hoping no one noticed my awkward walk or lack of memory. It wouldn’t bring me any closer to dancing again.

But it was either that or another night of videos and self-recriminations and questions without answers. Another night of Diana changing. In my memory, we were the same as always. But in hers, we hadn’t had a movie night in a year. She didn’t feel the need to get my opinion on her hair. She’d brought in Kay to pick up my slack.

I only had a few more weeks left until I moved to New
York—maybe I could go and pretend to be someone I wasn’t, just for her sake.

“All right,” I said.

Diana squealed and hugged me and dressed me and I left the safety of my room for a life I didn’t remember.

Diana picked me up for the bonfire. Ari was already in the front seat of Diana’s mother’s Impala. I’d seen them like clockwork the past couple of months, just as the hekamist promised back in January. At least every three days, no matter what, I’d get a call or Diana would need a ride or I’d run into one of them at the grocery store. Sometimes I’d think there was no way the spell could come through, and this would be the day it fell apart, but always, without fail, it worked.

I helped it out as much as I could. I was available at all hours and on all days. I went by Ari’s work and Diana’s house and sent texts and emails, making it easy for them to respond, to invite me in. Without the spell, maybe they would’ve let my calls and emails linger. Maybe they wouldn’t call back at all.

This way, they always called back. Even if they didn’t always have something to say.

I’d been looking forward to the bonfire. I’d never been before. For years I didn’t even know it existed, and then when
Mina left and I started paying attention, I was afraid to go by myself. Maybe showing up out of nowhere would be against the rules. It would be much better going with Ari and Diana, who were bonfire experts. Up until the day of the party I didn’t know if they would want to go, but I should’ve known better than to doubt the spell.

For a while I thought that Ari losing Win might help us. Not in a horrible way—I wasn’t glad that he died or anything like that. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I had thought that maybe his death would soften Ari, make her rethink her priorities and relationships, and make us closer friends. It would certainly give her more time for us.

That hadn’t happened. If anything, she’d gotten harder since Win’s death. Colder. Sometimes I felt like she wasn’t even there behind her eyes, and the Ari we saw was a placeholder.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said. They didn’t respond. “Ari, your shirt’s really cute.”

Ari shook herself, as if waking up from a nap. “Thanks.”

“So do you guys know where to go? Is it always in the same place? Where does everybody park?”

“You’ve really never been before?” Diana asked. “Were you living under a rock?”

I couldn’t tell from her tone if she was teasing in a nice way or a mean way. I turned to Ari to check, but she was staring out the window, gone again.

“I guess I was. Ha.” I fiddled with the seatbelt across my chest, which had twisted my shirt almost all the way around my
body. Diana and Ari, as usual, looked gorgeous. “I like your hair, Di.”

Diana half turned in her seat—I thought to accept the compliment. “Diana,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I like your hair,
Diana
.”

Diana kept driving and Ari looked out the window. This was the time when I would say something charming or thoughtful or witty and they would laugh, and we would be a trio. There had to be charmed words, somewhere, to make that happen. The spell had given me the opportunity to be in the car with these girls. Now all I had to do was take it and make it real.

When we pulled into the beach parking lot, Ari lingered in the car after Diana cut the engine.

“Sure about this?” she asked.

Diana nodded. “Go ahead. We’ll meet you down there.”

Ari took a deep breath and started to make her way carefully down the beach. Diana sighed, leaned back in her seat, and watched her.

“She seems . . . out of it,” I said.

“Yeah,” Diana said. “I thought this would be good for her but now I’m not so sure.”

“She’ll be all right. You’re doing everything you can.”

Diana ran a hand through her hair, recently dyed bright red. “I’m going to give her some space for a little while tonight. I don’t want to push too hard. Maybe you should, too.”

“Okay.”

“And maybe some space from me, too.”

“Oh . . . sure.”

“We don’t always have to do everything together.”

“Of course not.”

My face must have looked stricken, because Diana focused in on me in the rearview mirror. “You’re going to be fine. It’s just a party.”

“I know,” I said, and laughed. Just a party. As if I even knew what that meant.

Diana got out of the car, waiting for me to exit before locking it, but not waiting for me to catch up as she walked down the beach toward the fire.

“I’ll find you later,” I said to her back, her long red hair swinging behind her. I hated how my voice sounded, so desperate, pathetic. I hated that Diana’s hair swung naturally and mine was a spell meant to imitate hers. I even hated Ari a little bit for holding back from us so determinedly. But those were also the things I loved about Diana and Ari. Diana’s naturalness. She was unaffected. Ari’s stubborness. She had guts. The spell let them be themselves—that was what was so great about it. Nonintrusive. Harmless, really.

Diana melted into the crowd, and I stood alone on the edge. I should’ve been used to it—it was, after all, my entire life before Diana and Ari—but I was meant to be with people. Alone, I disappeared.

I got a half-foam beer from the keg, poured by one of Markos Waters’s older brothers, and watched Diana and Ari from the sidelines. Diana walked off with Markos. A punk girl in a black
coat watched Ari. Mina was there, too, wearing a thrift-store men’s shirt as a dress, talking to some people from her grade.

When she saw me, she made her way to me through the crowd.

“Hey, Katelyn, what’s—”

“What are you doing here?”

Mina laughed. “I’m here for the bonfire. Just like you.”

“You’re not staying, though, are you?”

“Why not?”

“Because this is my party.”

She looked around. “It looks like everyone’s party.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t. What’s going on, Katelyn?”

“My name is Kay.”

“Oh, well, nice to meet you, Kay. Have you seen my sister? She used to be such a nice girl. . . . I wonder where she could’ve gone. . . .”

“Har har. Please, Mina. Just leave me alone.”

I could see her throat constrict in her too-thin neck. “Why?”

“Because for one night I don’t want to be Mina Charpal’s little sister. Okay?”

I couldn’t see her eyes in the dark. Firelight flashed off her piercings as she nodded. “Fair enough.”

She threw her plastic cup onto the ground and turned away. I expected her to drift into conversation with someone, but she waved goodbye to a couple of people and then started walking up the dune and toward the parking lot.

Well, I’d asked her to leave me alone. This was good.

Mina walking away. I should’ve been used to it.

As I watched her go, a guy stumbled and bumped into me and I dropped my cup. He apologized quickly, then looked into my face. I had to stop myself from wincing, because sometimes I forget I’m beautiful now.

“I’m Cal!” he practically shouted. “Cal Waters. Are you in Markos’s class?”

“Yeah. I’m Kay.”

“Have we met? I feel like I would have remembered you.”

I looked up at Cal. He was handsome. He was a Waters. That meant something.

“I’m Kay,” I said, stupidly, again.

“Oh-
Kay
,” he said, laughed, and flicked a silver lighter to light a cigarette. “Can’t believe I wouldn’t remember someone who looked like you.”

He was drunk. Diana and Ari would warn me away, probably—Ari would make fun of him to his face and Diana would whisper jokes in my ear.

But Diana and Ari weren’t there. Maybe I needed to make some new friends.

I smiled my now-flawless smile and touched Cal’s arm like I’d seen other girls do.

“You can remember me now,” I said.