The Cost of All Things

by Maggie Lehrman

  “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 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.

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  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 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. Those were the things I loved about Diana and Ari, though, too. 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 look
ed 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 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.

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  Win died and everyone around me got simultaneous lobotomies. No, that wasn’t right. What happened was this: Win died and I became the only person in this entire town whose congenital lobotomy spontaneously reversed itself. I could see everything they couldn’t. Win dying opened my eyes.

  Or maybe that’s not exactly it, either. It sounds like some hippie shit. Here’s what probably happened: Win died and I was the only person who cared enough to know what the hell that meant.

  Win was dead. See, I could say it right out loud. Dead. I no longer had a best friend and never would again. You couldn’t be best friends except with someone who knew you forever, since before you could remember.

  My mother talked loudly and fed me. My brothers punched my arm and stared into the middle distance. Even Ari—we didn’t avoid each other, but we didn’t hang out or talk, either, not since the funeral when she made it clear she wasn’t interested in commiseration. Fine. Good. She had the right idea. It hurt to look at her, anyway.

  Here was what it meant, Win’s death: It meant that the world was unfair. The wrong guys came out on top. Nothing anyone did mattered because eventually we all came to the same end. What was the point of loving or being loved or any of that shit when death was so absolutely permanent?

  I hung out by the keg at the bonfire and watched them all laughing, everyone I knew, everyone Win and I used to call friends. If you’d asked them, they would’ve said they were sad about Win. But it sure didn’t seem that way from where I was standing.

  My brothers kept the party going. Brian turning a blind eye to the underage drinking, Dev starting games of tackle football in the dark, Cal smiling and glad-handing from group to group. They had a crowd of people around them at all times. They made everyone laugh. For them it seemed effortless to be a Waters, to be the guys who threw the party, who knew everyone, who had no worries.

  Brian came up to me first, stepping away from a trio of girls. If he saw the look I was giving him—a very special get-the-fuck-away-from-me glare—he pretended like he didn’t. “Little bro,” he said, swinging a heavy arm around my neck. “In my professional opinion, it does not look like you’re having the time of your life.”

  “Maybe I’m not.”

  He went on as if he didn’t hear me. “In my professional opinion,” he repeated, “you’re sulking.”

  “What profession are you talking about? Law enforcement?”

  “Being an older brother is my profession.”

  I ducked out of his arm. “Can I talk to your manager, then?”

  He frowned, which clearly pained him—Waters boys didn’t frown at parties. “I know you’re upset. But you’ll be fine if you just relax, okay? And if you’re not up for it, you can always go home. Skip the party this year. I’ll drive you, just let me know.”

  Kicked out of my own party by my brothers. No way.

  I turned my back on Brian and saw Diana North, Ari’s best friend, standing staring into the fire. She had dyed her hair a blinding red and was wearing an open shirt over a neon green bikini top. She’d always been vaguely off-limits because of Ari. And she used to be mousy and quiet, shy in a boring way, doing whatever Ari told her to do; it had never seemed worth pissing off Ari to flirt with her. Now I looked at her red hair and bikini and thought about Win and how pointless and impossible everything was and I thought: fuck it. There was no point in spending time with someone I actually liked. They would only disappoint me. I could talk to Diana North and not care if it ended or began.

  That was probably awful. Ari would’ve told me I was being a pig and dragged Diana away. But Ari wasn’t around. Besides, why did I have to listen to Ari? Win was dead. She was no longer my annoying conscience.

  I left Brian talking to a group of girls that had materialized around him and walked over to Diana. She pretended not to notice. “You look different,” I said. That’s one of those things that is true but noncommittal. I didn’t like to have my words thrown back at me—“you’re beautiful” could be turned into some nuclear-level shit.

  Diana ran a hand through her newly red hair, worrying the ends of it. She smelled good— shampoo and suntan lotion, even though it was dark out.

  “I dyed it,” she said. “I’ve wanted to for ages but I never did—afraid, I guess, though it sounds dumb to be afraid of a hair color. I thought if I dyed my hair I wouldn’t know who I was anymore, but the exact opposite happened. I feel . . .” She looked up at me, as if she’d forgotten who she was talking to, or as if she’d heard her words coming out of someone else’s mouth. “Um. Well. You look exactly the same.”

  That was blatantly not true, I mean not only on a physical level, because I had lost ten pounds in the last month, but on a deeper level, too. My insides were a mess, like the wrapped present you shake so hard it breaks the toy inside, so there’s nothing but shards of plastic rolling around. Even this July third beach bonfire, which I had been going to since I was seven, when Brian threw the first one, felt different.

  “Let’s take a walk,” I said, which in bonfire-speak means make out, at a minimum. Diana froze.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand.

  We walked down the beach, not talking, passing couples making out lying in the sand or standing ankle-deep in the waves. The ones in the waves were always the ones deeply in love. Soulmates splashing each other and carrying their shoes.

  I spotted Ari talking to my brother Cal. She didn’t see me and Diana. Something seemed off about her, and I realized she wasn’t standing up straight. She slouched. I don’t think I’d ever seen her like that. Some automatic gut response made me wonder what was wrong with her, until I remembered what was wrong with us both.

  But she didn’t want to talk. Okay. I should be more
like Ari. I should be able to handle this on my own.

  “I think everyone misses Win,” Diana said. I pointed to the frolicking couples and she shook her head. “I think they do, inside. In their way.”

  “I miss him,” I said.

  “Of course you do.”

  “Just because I’m not sobbing my guts out doesn’t mean I don’t miss him.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Wait,” I said.

  I stopped walking, dug my heels into the sand. Diana stopped walking, too, and looked up into my face. I had the urge to be mean to her. Like, really mean. Her hopefulness and sensitivity were there, right in front of me, and if I wanted I could stomp her down until she understood what the rest of lobotomized horde didn’t: this was all pointless.

  Maybe that was why I brought her out here after so many years of ignoring her. Maybe I could tell that it was within my power to make her feel as shitty as I felt all the time. It would be so fucking easy. As easy as kissing her would be. She had no defenses at all. I could be a bastard—laugh at her, as I’m pretty sure I’ve laughed at her before—or a dream come true, giving her a romantic memory to treasure forever. Well, not forever, since there’s no such thing. Till the end.

  I sank onto the sand and Diana sat next to me. If she came any closer I would have had to choose—bastard or dreamboat—but she didn’t. She looked out at the dark ocean and waited.

  I breathed in through my nose. My heart was beating like I’d run up the dune. I told myself to calm down, but the panic only got worse. The ground tilted like I was going to be thrown off the planet.

  “We’ll be seniors soon,” I said. It was by far the stupidest thing I’d said all day, and if any of my brothers had heard it they would’ve laughed so hard they hurt themselves, but of course Diana didn’t make fun of me for it. She seemed to almost understand my need for stupid chatter, because she didn’t say Win’s name again.

  We talked. About her hair and her cat and her babysitting job, things she cared about. About my brothers and the bonfire and the ocean, things I could see right in front of me. Every time she shifted in the sand my heart drilled again, but I never had to choose which person to be. I was not responsible for anything or anyone. I just was.