The Cost of All Things

by Maggie Lehrman

  Now that I knew that they’d considered leaving town without me, I became convinced that they were trying to leave all the time. I pictured worse and worse things happening to them. It wasn’t enough that we spent time together. They really, really had to want to be around me, and not in some hypothetical future time. This moment. Before they could get any more great ideas.

  But something was broken. We sat around at the ice cream shop where Ari worked or someone’s basement or Ari’s aunt’s coffee shop and didn’t talk to each other.

  The thing was, I didn’t think Ari and Diana were talking to each other, either. Ari stayed silent and distant, gone someplace far away behind her eyes. Diana only smiled when she thought the rest of us weren’t looking, and spent the rest of the time touching her bruised face with a fingertip and wincing. No one said anything. It wasn’t fun.

  I kept trying, though.

  “You still look beautiful,” I told Diana. “And it’s healing fast.”

  We were in Ari’s basement, the least finished of all our basements, with not even a tiny high-up window to let the summer sun in. Ari lay on her back behind the sofa trying to stretch her leg over her head, and Diana looked at her face through her phone’s camera. She was still beautiful. She had her red hair and clear skin and big eyes. She didn’t respond to me, though, and didn’t put down the phone.

  If there was one thing I’d learned from Mina’s illness, it was proper bedside manner. So I’d been taking care of Diana—bringing her magazines and candy and occasionally one-sided conversations, so she could rest and recover.

  I tried to give her a couple Tylenol and a water bottle from my bag. She waved them away. “I’m fine.”

  “You know, that bruise, if it had been on me, would’ve made me look like a zombie. But it’s so obvious how pretty you are, it doesn’t matter about all that.”

  “Okay, okay,” Diana said, finally putting down the phone. “I get it.”

  “I was only saying—”

  “And you’ve said it. I don’t need to hear it anymore.”

  Ari spoke up from the floor. “Kay can tell me I’m beautiful if she really must.”

  “You are beautiful. Like, seriously.”

  Ari let out a single sharp ha. “You say that to everyone. You’re devaluing your compliments.”

  “I mean it!” They both laughed then, more genuinely, until laughing hurt Diana’s face and she went back to pressing it slowly and carefully with a finger.

  “Oh, I forgot to say. I got us tickets to Wicked in Boston!” I said.

  Neither of them responded.

  “I thought because you guys mentioned wanting to go to Boston at the bonfire. . . .”

  “That wasn’t really what we had in mind,” Ari said, sitting up and cracking her back. “But thank you, Kay.”

  “We’ll go, though, right? I mean my parents got us these tickets, and I don’t think they’re refundable. . . .”

  Diana glanced at Ari, who shrugged. “I don’t know,” Diana said. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Busy with what?”

  She ignored the question. “But maybe there’s some guy you want to ask . . . like Cal Waters. . . .”

  “To go see Wicked?”

  Ari hugged a leg to her cheek. “I think that’s Diana’s way of asking if you’re going to see Cal again.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of him much since the bonfire. “I don’t know if that’s a thing that’s going to be an ongoing, you know, thing.”

  “That’s good,” Ari said. “I mean, he’s a Waters. I love Markos but you know what they’re like.”

  “He seemed pretty nice.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Ari said. “They start nice. But they’ll get you to like them and then ditch you. I don’t want you getting your hopes up.”

  “I don’t have any hopes,” I said, but I could feel an inner part of me shrinking and twisting under Ari’s unasked-for advice. Had I put hopes into Cal? Did he think I was pining over him? Did he brag to his brothers about hooking up with me? If I didn’t want to date him, did that make me a slut?

  Is that what Ari was trying to say, pretending to be concerned?

  “The Waters boys make terrible boyfriends,” she was saying. “I’ve seen it enough times to know.”

  “I never said I wanted him to be my boyfriend.”

  “Good.”

  We went back to not speaking. And slowly, an inner tide rising, I filled up with anger. There was no good reason why I shouldn’t date Cal. What was wrong with me that Ari thought I needed to be warned away? I didn’t believe that because he was a Waters and I was me, there was no chance.

  In fact, I knew there was a chance. In the pocket of my winter coat, there was a partially smushed chocolate chip cookie that could prove to Ari and Diana that I wasn’t just some girl who Cal took advantage of. They were wrong about me; I only had to show them.

  The next day, I wrapped the cookie in blue cellophane and a green ribbon and walked to Waters Hardware. Cal was manning the cash register, and I waited as a couple bought bug spray and aloe. He smiled at them even as they fumbled through endless fanny-pack pockets to find correct change. He smiled at me when he saw me. I was used to Ari and Diana and Mina, who almost never smiled nowadays. Cal’s cheerfulness seemed otherworldly.

  “Hey,” he said. “Kay, right? What’s up?”

  “Nothing much,” I said. “I was just around and thought I’d stop and say hi.”

  “Oh. Hi.”

  “I, uh—” I held the cookie out and stared at it, willing it to explain itself. “This is a cookie. Chocolate chip.”

  His smile receded. “Did you . . . make me a cookie?”

  “What? No!” I pretended to laugh and tossed my hair. “It’s a good luck spell. Lasts a day. My grandma sent it to me. But my hekamist said I’m not supposed to take more spells because of side effects, so it was going to go to waste, and so when I passed by, I don’t know—I thought you might appreciate it. I, uh—I had a good time at the bonfire.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” he said, and took the cookie out of my hand. I think he did it more to shut me up than because he really wanted it.

  A man got into line behind me with a bunch of fishing gear. I saw Cal’s smile re-affix itself as he glanced over my shoulder.

  “So I guess I’ll see you around,” he said.

  “Yeah. For sure. I’m around.”

  “Thanks again for the spell.”

  “No problem.” I didn’t move from my place in line. He hadn’t eaten it yet; I couldn’t risk him giving it to one of his brothers or a customer or anyone else. “You should eat it.”

  “What—now? Shouldn’t I save for a special—”

  “No!” I said. “That’s cheating, to take it when you know you need it. It’s more fun if you take it on a random day. Like today.”

  “Okay.” He glanced at the fisherman behind me, who sighed and shifted on his feet. Cal’s smile didn’t waver; he pulled the ribbon and stuffed the cookie in his mouth. “Mmm. Thanks.”

  I snatched the cellophane and crumbs out of his hand before they were eaten by rats and I became the Pied Piper of Cape Cod. “Great! I’ll throw this away for you. Bye!”

  Before I reached the door, he’d already started a conversation about fishing spots with the next customer. And for two and a half days after that, I heard nothing.

  Then Ari and Diana and I went to see Wicked in Boston. I didn’t even think about the one-hundred-plus miles we were traveling; I was too relieved that they’d agreed to come after all.

  During intermission, while Ari and Diana sat silently on either side of me, I checked my phone. There was a text from Cal Waters.

  Thinking of you

  Shit. I’d left him behind. Too far away.

  Heyyyy! What are you up to? I typed, hoping that sounded more casual than it felt.

  Ditched work and took the ferry to Boston. We should hang out when I get back.

  When I get back. He didn’t know I was in
Boston. The spell had drawn him here unconsciously.

  For a second I allowed myself to forget about the hook, and felt what it was like to have a boy text you that he wanted to hang out. I warmed to it. And the words blossomed and grew.

  It was only a text, I knew that. But it reminded me of the early days of becoming friends with Diana and Ari, when we were natural and fun together, rather than silent and weird and awkward. Back then, every time we hung out, it was a new adventure.

  Full of possibility.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  A week and a half after the bonfire, with less than three weeks left until we moved to New York on August 1, I drove to the beach and walked to approximately the spot where Echo had found me.

  I sat in the sand for the whole ninety minutes of “class,” which is where Jess thought I was. I watched the tourists and the seagulls, trying to think of a way to get Echo to leave me alone, forcing myself not to turn and look at the spot where Diana fell, imagining what was going to happen to me the longer I did nothing.

  1. I would never work through my side effects.

  2. Echo would tell everyone I had the memory of Win erased.

  3. They would be furious/disappointed/repulsed.

  4. Dancing would be impossible forever.

  5. I might never get out of Cape Cod.

  6. If I did get out, the Manhattan Ballet would kick me out of the junior corps on the first day.

  7. I’d die here, having accomplished nothing and been nowhere.

  None of these were worries I could share with Dr. Pitts, the therapist that Jess made me go to. So when I sat down for our appointment, I disappointed her again. Not opening up. Not sharing. Not showing the proper sorrow. I tried to push through the session so I could go back to attempting to dance again, but I had to say something to pass the time.

  “I’m not that girl anymore,” I said. The vaguer and more apocalyptic, the easier it was to lie.

  “What do you mean?”

  Uh-oh. “I mean . . . I feel different. There’s the me before Win died, and the me now.”

  “Different how?”

  Sometimes I thought Dr. Pitts was quizzing me. That she suspected I wasn’t right. “In ballet, some girls can’t recover after they get their period. It’s not just that they have boobs and they’re taller. They get scared. Their brain won’t let them jump anymore, or they start to doubt their balance.”

  “Did that happen to you?”

  “No.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s a metaphor.”

  “How so?”

  I blinked. “Well. I guess that some people react to a loss or a change or whatever by freaking out and losing themselves in grief. And then some people—like me—manage to be different but not let it change them completely.” That sounded good.

  “So you don’t think losing people changes you?” She tapped her legal pad with her fancy silver pen. “Grief over death—it’s something only weak people succumb to?”

  I shrugged.

  Dr. Pitts leaned forward. She was wrapped in scarves like a mummy; I didn’t even know if she was fat or thin, because she always wore them, along with huge flowing pants and boots that went up who knows how high because of all the fabric engulfing them. “Grief is not a weakness, Ari. It’s not something to push down and power through. Yes, it can change you, but that’s what people do—change, grow. It concerns me that you’re in denial.”

  I felt my face flush. “I’m not in denial. I . . . miss Win.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really! Maybe I’m not, like, prostrate every day, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sad. What kind of therapist are you, insisting I act as sad as everyone else in the world? That’s sick. I’m dealing with this in my own way.”

  Dr. Pitts looked satisfied for a few seconds, which was extra infuriating. “Anger is good,” she said, and it made me want to upend a coffee table and storm out. If her plan was to get me angry, bravo. “Tell me about your parents.”

  “No,” I snapped before I could control myself.

  “Why not?”

  “They died almost ten years ago. It’s not relevant.”

  “You lost them. You lost Win. It makes sense to be angry.”

  “I’m angry at you, not because people keep dying!”

  She nodded, as if people said they were angry with her all the time. Maybe they were.

  I forced myself to lean back on the couch. In my mind, I moved smoothly, and the motion suggested I was relaxed, at home, unbothered. But I knew very well that to Dr. Pitts I probably looked as jerky and angry as I actually felt.

  I thought of my new tapes. Every morning I got up, turned on the camera, put on some music, and attempted a simple sequence of steps: something from a showcase; an audition piece from the Institute; even the chorus girl choreography from last year’s musical. I remembered them all perfectly. In my head, I performed them perfectly, too.

  I forced myself to go through each and every motion, even though I tripped and fell, even though I knew what the camera would show. Me, making a mockery of ballet. Me, like one of those girls who lose their nerve after puberty, except a thousand times worse, since I had the nerve—I just didn’t have the control.

  In dance, you have to feel the music in order to express it. I used to be able to summon the love, fear, anger, joy, or whatever else the piece demanded. The music brought the feeling forward, an alchemical process in my mind transformed that feeling into steps and motion, and then when you watched me, you felt it, too.

  Now, I could think that I was feeling love, fear, anger, joy, or whatever, but my brain wouldn’t transform those feelings into expressions and gestures. I’d lost the connection.

  Adjusting my seat on Dr. Pitts’ couch, I struggled to keep my face neutral, as if I chose to flail on her couch for no reason.

  It occurred to me that if I didn’t find a way to stop Echo from telling, I wouldn’t have to go to therapy anymore, because Echo would spill the beans and Dr. Pitts wouldn’t expect me to be grief-stricken and tortured over Win anymore. That would be nice. But that would perhaps be the only nice thing.

  “What’s the point?” I asked. I meant what’s the point of making me angry, but Dr. Pitts didn’t hear it that way.

  “The point is that there will always be grief, disappointments, tragedy. The point is that you have to learn to deal with them, so they don’t derail your life. The point is letting go of fear. You refuse to talk about your parents. You’ve managed to tell me practically nothing about Win. But I drive by the spot on the road where he crashed and there are notes, signs, remembrances. What’s the difference between all those people and you?”

  “They didn’t know him. Not really.”

  “But you did. I don’t want you to go to leave a teddy bear in the pile, but I want you to think about why all those people chose to honor Win like that. They could’ve left the road alone, but they didn’t. They were compelled to mark the spot.”

  They wanted to remember him, of course. That was what she was getting at. As much as she drove me crazy, sometimes I left her office convinced. Only it wasn’t stubbornness or fear keeping me from being a model patient, it was Old Ari, screwing things up yet again.

  Back in my car after the session ended, I asked myself again what the point was. Unless I discovered another surprise stash of money, it was all moot. All the lying, the sneaking off to “ballet,” the practiced sad face, Dr. Pitts’s questions, all of it—pointless.

  Old Ari stole from her dead boyfriend, and now I was the one who had to pay it back. It was my offering to Win’s roadside memorial. I couldn’t feel grief, so I gave the money instead.

  I started the car, but instead of driving to the Sweet Shoppe, where my shift began at noon, I drove to Waters Hardware to talk to Markos Waters.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollin
s Publishers

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

  Wednesday was the first day in a long time that I didn’t wake up scowling. It wasn’t like there were suddenly birds tweeting and grass growing and love transforming my heart or any of that garbage. I just felt . . . better. For the first time since Win died. Like instead of being buried alive in shit, I was suspended weightless in some nicer substance. It was easier to breathe.

  I’d seen Diana every day since the bonfire. I didn’t even care that she probably thought I was in love with her. She never said anything weird about it. I could call her or show up at her house because it felt right, and was what I wanted to do.

  I still hadn’t tried to get anywhere with her, though I thought about it sometimes. I considered leaning over and kissing her in the middle of a sentence, or touching under her shirt while we were watching TV. I could’ve done it. She never gave me any sign that she wouldn’t be totally into it. But the fact that I could do it kept the idea banked, ready to use should I ever really need it.

  It wasn’t like with some girls who made you look at them and expected you to want them and who were only listening because they thought that’s what you wanted. Diana listened because she wanted to hear what I said. She let things surprise her, instead of greeting each new moment with a sneer.

  In the past, I’d only ever seen her as Ari’s shadow. She sat sit silently next to Ari at lunch, or faded away when Win and I would pick up Ari at her locker. She wasn’t funny like Ari, or confident, and that made it seem like she had nothing going on. At least nothing that would be worth seeking out.

  But she seemed different now. It was like she said: with Ari otherwise occupied, she had to do something. Be someone. She still wasn’t particularly funny or confident, not when compared to Ari or other girls. But it turns out there are lots of other things you can be besides funny and confident. Like . . . compassionate, I guess is the social-worker word for it. Thoughtful not as in “nice” but as in thought-ful, full of thoughts. Nonlobotomized.