The Cost of All Things

by Maggie Lehrman

  Just because I hadn’t poked myself full of holes and shaved my head like she did didn’t mean I hadn’t changed, too. I was a different girl now.

  After we pulled into the familiar lot and parked in our usual space next to a misshapen hedge, Mina got out and looked at me expectantly. “Ready?”

  I leaned against my open car door. “You go,” I said. “I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

  If I’d been the old Katelyn, the look on Mina’s face would’ve ripped out my heart. Surprise, confusion, disappointment, hurt. Things had been tense between us all summer, but nothing I’d done had come close to causing this look.

  I didn’t care. I didn’t have to care.

  “Why are you being like this, Katelyn?” she asked, her voice small.

  I closed the car door and stared at her. “Really?”

  “I barely see you all summer, you’re always with your friends, and then when I do see you, you make a point of saying something terrible.”

  “I’m sorry that me having friends is so inconvenient for you.”

  She rubbed her shaved head, and I tried to imagine her hair sticking up in every direction in frustrated spikes. I didn’t even know what Mina’s hair would look like now. “Whatever, I’m late. Do what you want.”

  She walked toward the oncology wing. I waited for her to disappear past the double doors, not looking back, before I made my way around the building to the ER.

  Lots of people who’ve gone through stuff I’ve gone through hate hospitals because they associate them with death and loss and hopelessness. But I think even if Mina had died, which we thought was inevitable for three years, I still would’ve liked the hospital.

  Sure, there’s suffering everywhere. But it’s also where people go to get well. I loved hearing pages and getting glimpses of freshly stocked linen closets. I loved the special clipboards and the beds with a thousand different levers. I loved the mean nurses too busy to talk to you and the nice ones even when you could tell they were checked out and faking it.

  And I loved the doctors. The doctors! They came into a room and owned it. Everyone looked to them for answers, and unless they were brand new or things were particularly clueless, they knew the answers. Even when things were hopeless, they were the ones to let us know. They issued proclamations: prescriptions, diagnoses. They wore better clothes than everyone else, and they shook your hand and theirs was dry from so much washing. I loved them. I’d watch what they did, check the charts when they left, try to get Mina to laugh by imitating them.

  One time I came into her room after school, took a look at her chart, said something, Mina laughed—and then ten minutes later a real doctor came in, looked at the chart, and said exactly the same thing. Mina’s eyes got huge in her thin, dark face.

  “You’re going to be a doctor,” she said.

  “Whatever.”

  “No, seriously, Katelyn. You’ve got to.”

  I didn’t believe her. I wasn’t that good in school, and doctors had to go to school forever. Besides, the whole reason I liked doctors was because they were so unlike me. I could never walk into a room and own it like a doctor.

  Mina let it drop and never brought it up again, which proved my point: wasn’t going to happen.

  But I remembered enough about my years imitating doctors and keeping Mina company that I knew how to blend in. While Mina was at her appointment, I passed the time trying to diagnose everyone in the ER waiting room. A couple flus, a kid with a high fever, a middle-aged man with the worst sunburn I’d ever seen. A woman holding a dish towel around her hand got taken back almost immediately. The rest of us sat around.

  When I got bored I walked confidently through the swinging doors to the patient rooms. I knew my way around, and I knew that people didn’t ask where you were going if you looked like you had a destination. I’d been invisible in these hallways hundreds of times.

  They hadn’t changed. I walked purposefully past moaning rooms and crying rooms and scarily silent rooms, past the rooms where half a dozen family members forced loud laughter, past many of rooms with only a TV blaring. It was all so familiar, but removed. Like walking through a dream.

  Since I hadn’t bothered to pick a destination, my feet took me to pediatric oncology out of habit. Mina would be meeting with Dr. Brown in his office, so I turned toward the residents’ floor instead.

  Once there, my purposeful walk slowed. A few kids hung out in the rec room area watching TV or playing board games. I looked for familiar faces out of habit, but of course there wouldn’t be any; I hadn’t visited in two years, and the kids I remembered would be out by now, like Mina, or dead.

  A child stepped in front of me. With the shaved head, I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl, and though he (she?) looked around ten, I knew in this place she (he?) was probably a couple years older than that. My age when I started coming here with Mina.

  “You don’t belong here,” the kid said.

  “Yeah? How do you know?”

  “You don’t look sick.”

  “How do you know I’m not visiting someone?”

  “Are you?”

  I shrugged. “How do you know I’m not a super hot young doctor?”

  She looked at me skeptically. (I had decided she was a she.) “Where’s your doctor coat?”

  “I don’t wear one.”

  “Where’d you go to med school?”

  “Northwestern.”

  “What kind of cancer do I have?”

  I looked at her. She was wearing plain green pajamas, long pants and long sleeves. I couldn’t see any scars. It was almost impossible to tell by looking at someone what they had. That was one of the scary things about cancer. You could be walking around, happy, and inside cells were mutating, growing. I suddenly thought of Mina, alone in Dr. Brown’s office down the hall, and felt a faint pang.

  “Leukemia,” I said, because that was a good shot, percentage-wise.

  “Nice try. Hepatocellular carcinoma.”

  I had never heard of that before, but I recognized part of the word. “Ah. The liver,” I said, and nodded in a doctorly way.

  The girl laughed, a short bark. A couple of the TV-watching kids looked up at us. “I like you,” she said. “I’m Hana. If you get caught, you can say you’re visiting me.”

  Cold washed over me, and I took a step back. This was too familiar. I’d been here before, bantering with someone who might or might not get better. “You don’t like me. You don’t even know me.”

  Her expression folded in on itself. I noticed this with Mina, too: without hair, emotions lived closer to the surface. “Don’t be weird.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Good luck with your hepatocellular carcinoma.”

  “Hey—where are you going? Wait!”

  I didn’t look back, and she couldn’t catch me.

  My heart pounded against my ribs as I made my way back to the ER. Talking to Hana, I’d fallen into an old role. I didn’t want to be that girl anymore—the one who cheers you up when you’re sick. The one who has nothing better to do than visit day or night. The one whose entire purpose in life was to support you and help you get better. The one who was left behind. And I wasn’t her. At least, I didn’t have to be. I could walk away.

  But as soon as I reached the ER, I thought about where I was.

  Paramedics were wheeling in a young guy with a splint around his leg. He had dark hair and for a second I thought Cal and then I thought Diana and Ari and not here no not here I’m leaving I promise I’m leaving I’m leaving now!

  It was like the Whirlpool only much worse. It wouldn’t be hard at all for the spell to arrange for them to bump into me at an ER.

  My fingernails bit into my palms as I struggled not to panic. But maybe panic was the right reaction.

  I ran for the automatic doors, ducking and weaving around sick people and their friends and family, completely abandoning the rules of remaining invisible. A shout came from the intake desk but I didn’t stop run
ning until I reached Mina’s car in our spot in the lot.

  Mina was waiting for me.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “In the ER,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. My heart was pounding so hard my vision pulsed.

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Can we get out of here? Please?”

  Mina played with the studded leather cuff around her forearm.

  “Dr. Brown says I’m fine. No sign of the cancer. If you care.”

  “Oh. Good. Let’s go.”

  Mina half laughed without amusement and didn’t look at me as she turned on the car and pulled out of the lot.

  The pounding in my chest lessened. I could breathe.

  Cal and Diana and Ari hadn’t shown up in the ER. Maybe the hook had some sense. Maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as I’d thought.

  And I was no longer the girl who sat patiently in a visitor’s chair and imitated doctors. Hana would forget me before the end of the day. Mina didn’t need me. She was fine.

  Mina pulled onto the highway, checking her blind spots carefully. She caught my eye. “What’s wrong with you, Katelyn?”

  “Nothing,” I said, grinning for the first time all day. “Actually, everything’s perfect.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  I woke up hungover and with a bitter acid taste in my mouth. For five days in a row.

  It reminded me of the day after Win died. I was low from spell side effects and then I drank half a bottle of vodka and tore down the treehouse in the backyard. I was lucky I didn’t break my neck, crying and drinking and ripping rotting boards out of the branches, tearing up the skin on my hands, but it was hard to feel lucky about anything when the unluckiest thing in the world had happened.

  See, I remembered that horrible last night. The alcohol only dims so much. In the morning everything’s crystal clear again.

  After the hekamist told me about Ari’s memory spell and I kissed Kay, I stopped going to the hardware store. Stopped going anywhere, really, except the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It was too much trouble to climb the stairs to my room. Besides, there would be another terrible movie on TV or someone to kill in a video game or beer to steal from the fridge instead.

  My mom tried to cajole me into doing something, but she was easy to ignore. She’d bring me a hamburger or sit on the couch next to me or shout at me from the doorway. Boring.

  “Here’s some corn on the cob,” she said one night, or day, I wasn’t quite sure. She placed a plate on the coffee table next to my bare feet. “You should eat something other than chips.”

  I pushed the pate away with my heel.

  “This Howard Hughes act is getting old, Markos. Eat.”

  “I’m not eating anything you bring me.”

  She drew back. “Why not?”

  “What if you put a ‘get happy’ spell in the butter?”

  She went white; it felt . . . not good, but satisfying.

  “When you stole that money from me,” she said, shards of glass in each word, “I let you off easy. I regret that. You’ve been through a lot, but we are not discussing that money or what it’s for or who it’s for. Ever.”

  “Like I give a damn.” I pulled the smelly fleece blanket over my head to block out the rest of whatever it was she’d come to say.

  Then my brothers descended on me, oldest to youngest. Brian came in his uniform and lectured on “manning up” and “letting go.” Dev tried to joke with me, going after my fat ass sitting doing nothing, then my wussy feelings getting in the way of life, then the unlikelihood of my ugly face getting a girl even if I did manage to find the shower—and then he stopped, because I threw a stone coaster into the wall next to his head.

  When Cal finally came to see me, I was tired of it. I didn’t give him a chance to try to cajole me out of my chair. Knowing Cal, his tactic would probably be smiling and tripping over something for a laugh. That was Cal—probably the most easygoing of us. Never held a grudge. Didn’t deserve my black mood.

  I mean, when we were kids, after our dad died, he went through a period where he scared the shit out of me—jumping off the garage roof onto his skateboard, stealing stuff from the hardware store, trying to impress Brian and Dev’s friends by drinking until he puked—but by the time he was in high school and I was in junior high, he’d mellowed. Become a real Waters brother like the rest of them.

  And he’d been hanging out with Kay. He’d gone to the carnival with her. She thought they were dating. Just the thought of her stirred a sick feeling in my gut that I quieted with half a can of beer.

  Cal looked as shitty as I felt, skin clammy and eyes unfocused. He swayed in the doorway to the living room.

  “Leave me alone,” I said.

  He coughed into his arm, a rattling, wet noise.

  “Dude, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Cold,” he said.

  “Go take a nap.”

  “Supposed to talk to you. Because you’re so sad.”

  I threw my half-full can of beer down. It spilled onto the carpet. “I kissed your girlfriend. You gonna do something about it?”

  Cal shrugged. “She’s not my girlfriend. Haven’t even seen her in a week.”

  I hated how easy it was for him to say that. Like it was obvious. Of course she wasn’t his girlfriend. Of course it didn’t matter. I wanted to not care, too.

  But wanting to not care is just another kind of caring.

  “Tell me what’s going on. We’ll figure it out,” Cal said, wiping his nose on his sweatshirt.

  Maybe some other guy—maybe Brian or Dev—would’ve taken him up on the offer. Talked it out. Analyzed the problem. Cried. Felt better. Maybe that would’ve helped a normal brother feel less alone. Maybe I would’ve done it, too, if they had bothered to try to reach out to me at any point in the past two months, and if I hadn’t been so committed to living on this couch and being pissed at the world.

  I thought of my mom’s panic at the mention of the spell money. She really didn’t want me talking about it. So it was perfect. I didn’t know if the money and the spell were for Cal—or what the spell was for at all. But it was just awful enough to throw in his face and see if it stuck. Rag on Cal and piss off Mom, all in one shot.

  “It’s probably not just a cold,” I said. “I bet Mom finally ran out of cash and didn’t get you your spells this month.”

  “My what?”

  “Your spells, dummy. It’s Sunday, isn’t it? So maybe you’ll get your spells today. All six-thousand-dollars-a-month’s worth. Are they to make you smarter? Because you should up the dosage.”

  Cal’s face filled with confusion. “I don’t take any spells.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, almost cheerfully. “Every month Mom pays for them. I’ve seen the money—stolen it, too. Maybe your spells make you less of a loser. I’d believe that, because you seem sort of desperate. Before she kissed me, you should’ve heard what Kay said about—”

  He lunged across the room at me, arm bent, forearm across my throat, other hand pulled back to punch me in the face. But I didn’t grow up with three older brothers for nothing. I relaxed my neck—it hurts worse if you try to brace for it—and waited for the snap and the sting.

  When it didn’t come, I opened an eye and saw Cal’s face twisted in concentration, his punching arm shaking with effort. He grunted. But he couldn’t make the arm connect with my face. Even the forearm over my neck seemed to be pulling back involuntarily, as much as he pushed forward with the rest of his body.

  “Well, that answers one question,” I said. I raised my hands and pushed him away. He stumbled but didn’t come back at me.

  He couldn’t.

  His face drained of blood. He was the one being spelled. Lucky guess. The spells wouldn’t let him hit me, or probably anyone. He looked at me, bewildered, as if I was
the one who’d just hit him.

  I wished I could tell Diana.

  And that was the moment—the shock making me weak-willed—when I thought her name and saw her in my mind and remembered how it felt to sit across from her at the diner or next to her in the car and I missed her, oh god I missed her. I missed Win, too, but there’s a different way you miss a dead guy, and not only because I wasn’t hooking up with Win. I missed Win stupidly and pointlessly, because part of me understood the situation, which was that death is permanent and life finite and there are no angels, etc., etc. But Diana. I missed Diana like being punched repeatedly in the stomach, because she was out there walking around, talking to people, touching her hair, and worst of all probably miserable and broken because of something I did, because I cut her off completely and I made out with Kay and I did it all knowing I shouldn’t.

  All this time, Cal was still in the room. Screwed-up Cal who didn’t even know he was on horse tranquilizers or whatever.

  “Are you crying?” he asked, and I didn’t answer, because he had to be able to see for himself, and the question was asked to poke at me.

  “I did a stupid thing,” I said.

  When I looked up I expected him to nod, but he was staring at his hands, turning them over and balling them into fists. He pinched the inside of his left wrist with his right hand, frowning.

  “Doesn’t matter about your spell,” I said. “You don’t need to beat the shit out of me because I’m punishing myself plenty.”

  Cal shook his head. “I can’t believe Mom would do this to me.”

  “She said she was looking out for you.”

  “For how long?”

  “A couple years. At least.”

  Cal didn’t bother trying to cheer me up anymore. He left, and I was alone in the living room again.

  But I could never be alone enough, because my brain kept whirring.

  —This sucks.