The Cost of All Things

by Maggie Lehrman

  I ate my cookie in two bites.

  People who went to hekamists were desperate. I couldn’t argue with that, Mina. But it’s easy not to hate yourself when you’re beautiful and when you have friends. It wasn’t my fault I hated myself. I needed to be fixed before I could be lovable—like Mina’s chemo. I didn’t see a difference between chemo and the cookie. Chemo did even more messed up things to your body than hekame. So did Mina hate herself when she went in for treatment? No. She hated cancer, I know she did. And I hated my face and my loneliness.

  Luckily for both of us, there was a cure.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  At the funeral, it wasn’t difficult to look stricken and severe, and to feel like I’d lost something important. No one could tell I was mourning dance and not Win.

  If they could’ve peered behind my red eyes and grimace, they would’ve seen me leaping and spinning in unison with the corps, elegantly romantic in a pas de deux, shimmering like a mirage in a solo. They would’ve seen me replay over and over the fall I’d taken in class, humiliating, inexplicable. They would’ve seen me catalog each of my muscles one by one, knowing I couldn’t control any of them the way I needed to.

  But they couldn’t see inside my mind, and so I let them believe that I was sad about Win. I faked it.

  I had thought I would tell Diana and Jess the truth about the spell, but then I’d gone to class and fallen. When I got home, Jess looked up from her book and asked me how it went.

  “Fine,” I said. In the past, class had sometimes been painful or joyous or exhausting or boring, but at its core, it had never been anything other than “fine.”

  My mouth didn’t know how to form the words to explain how not fine I really was.

  “I’m glad,” Jess said. She took a deep breath as if steeling herself. “Do you have class Wednesday afternoon?”

  “I have class in the morning and the Sweet Shoppe in the afternoon. Why?”

  “I made an appointment for you with a therapist.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re going through something tough.”

  “No, no—dance will help me. You shouldn’t be spending money on something like that anyway. We need it for New York.”

  Jess worried the fraying fabric on the back of the couch. “Maybe we should think about whether it’s the right time to move.”

  “Of course it’s the right time. August first. The date’s set. The Manhattan Ballet chose me. They invited me.” My voice shook, too loud, and I couldn’t stop talking. “They might not want me in another year—I’ll be too old. I’ve learned everything I can from Rowena, and I need to get professional training now so that I don’t develop bad habits, and you know they cast most of the company from the junior corps, so I could get a real job there in a year. I don’t want to wait. I can’t sit here rotting away for another year. Jess, please. We have to go. We have to.”

  During my speech I stepped closer to where Jess was sitting on our old velvet couch. A lamp stood a foot or two away, hardly close enough for me to reach, if I’d even thought about it at all, but of course I didn’t and I banged one gesticulating arm on it then tripped on the edge of the carpet. Jess stood up and put her arms around me, catching me out of my stumble. I stiffened and twisted out of her grip.

  “We’ll move, Ari. We’ll do whatever you need to do.” She half smiled. “But you still have to go to therapy.”

  “I won’t have anything to say.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Talk about dance if you don’t want to talk about Win.”

  “The therapist won’t understand.”

  “So explain it. It’s not good to let these things fester.”

  The truth faded farther away with each breath. How could I open my mouth now and say “I’ve done something terrible,” tell her about Win and the side effects, after arguing so hard for New York? Jess loved me, and she would understand, but she’d pity me, too. She and Diana and everyone else. They’d know I wasn’t strong enough to handle some sadness. They’d know I cared more about some boy than I did about dancing, which was impossible. I didn’t know who I was without dancing. I didn’t know how to live without it, because I’d never had to live without it.

  And I wouldn’t. This couldn’t be the end—this couldn’t be forever. I would dance again. I had to dance again. I was moving to New York August first, and that was the most important thing—more important than a stranger named Win, anyway.

  “Fine,” I said to Jess. Fine, I would go to the therapist. Fine, I would pretend.

  I would let them believe that I remembered this Win Tillman. It would make them feel better, not disrupting what they already believed to be true, and I wouldn’t have to explain the inexplicable. And I’d figure out how to dance again.

  I got serious about dance soon after my parents died. Jess moved into town from San Francisco to take care of me, breaking up with her girlfriend to do it. I’d only met Jess a couple of times before that, so she was practically a stranger, mourning her older sister and brother-in-law and crying over her busted relationship.

  Out in public, everywhere I went I was reminded that I was different from everyone else. They all had parents. I had none. It was bad enough when someone at recess casually mentioned their mom or dad. Worse was when someone had obviously been told about me, and so carefully avoided saying mom or dad or even fire, which eventually meant carefully avoiding me.

  Jess didn’t avoid me, but she didn’t know what to do with me, either. She took me to the hekamist for the trauma erasing spell, so I wouldn’t have nightmares about seeing the house collapse with my parents in it, and then she left me alone as I crept through our new house, trying not to jump at every creak of the floorboards. I listened to a lot of music to cover any weird sounds, on the iPod I had somehow saved from the old house—the one possession not lost in the fire. I slept with the window open even in winter, in case I had to jump out in the middle of the night. I checked the burglar alarm three or four times a night.

  Jess didn’t know what kids were like and she didn’t know what I was like before; she didn’t know this wasn’t normal. (Plus she never noticed I checked the burglar alarm at all. She could sleep through anything—which made me even more anxious.) She probably would’ve caught on eventually, or I would’ve started acting out even more. But instead, I threw myself into dance.

  I’d been taking the beginner classes casually for a couple of years, like everyone else. But that year, class became something else. For an hour at a time, I didn’t have to listen for strange noises. It didn’t matter who I was or what had happened to me. I could make myself move beautifully. Even early on, I could tell that I had control in a way the other girls didn’t.

  When I told Jess I wanted to start going to dance every day, she didn’t blink. She nodded and added it to the giant calendar she had taped on the kitchen wall. She picked me up from school, drove me to dance, and picked me up again when it was over, and she never complained. And we became a family.

  So dance saved me. Not only because Jess and I were forced to interact for that hour a day we spent in the car, but also because dance itself—when you do it with your whole heart and being, and when your training sinks into your bones—is transporting. I was lifted out of my body and into the music. It became the thing I poured myself into, the container for my messy, wobbly, bursting-at-the-seams emotions. I let myself flow into ballet, and it remade me into someone who was strong, capable, and free.

  I remembered that. I flew.

  Without dance, I was back again to nothing, a shadow creeping through the house, different and alone. For weeks after the funeral, I watched videos of famous prima ballerinas on the internet, or Aunt Jess’s sneaky shots of my performances at competitions or shows.

  I knew how it felt to make those movements, familiar as a favorite song, b
ut as I watched I also felt a creeping hot anger that started in the back of my neck and spread up to my cheeks and down through my arms and back.

  The worst part was, I didn’t have anyone to be mad at. I’d done this to myself. Old Ari—the Ari that was—had taken away the only thing that made any sense to me. The only thing I was good at. The only thing I loved.

  I pored over glimpses of her. After my performances were over, Aunt Jess kept the camera running when I ran out to meet her in the lobby. So I got to see someone who looked exactly like me do things I had no memory of doing. Because there, in the lobby, was Win.

  He was the first person I’d hug when I arrived on the scene, and we’d keep holding hands as I accepted congratulations from Jess and my friends. He was cute in a somewhat rumpled way, light brown hair curling slightly into his gray eyes, shirts wrinkled, shoes scuffed.

  But he was a stranger. I’d never seen him talk or move in real life, at least not that I remembered. In the videos he seemed almost shy, though maybe it was the context—he hung back, smiled a lot, but let me interact with my audience.

  “Ari, who are you wearing! Turn and smile for the camera, darling!” Jess riffed and zoomed in the camera close to my face; I swatted her away and leaned on Win’s arm to give him a kiss.

  “Guys, deceptively youthful parental authority, standing right in front of you.”

  The old Ari ignored Jess and casually went en pointe in her sneakers to whisper in Win’s ear, and I replayed the moment a dozen times hoping to make out what I was saying, but I could never quite tell.

  “—authority, standing right in front of you.” Lean, kiss, toes, whisper.

  “—rity, standing right in front of you.” Kiss, toes, whisper.

  “—standing right in front of you.” Toes, whisper.

  “—right in front of you.” Whisper.

  It was private forever between those two—both of them gone. I couldn’t be nostalgic, though, or sad or wistful. How could I miss a precious moment with someone that, as far as I knew, I’d never met?

  Mostly I watched for some clue—a hint—to what on earth made that girl punish me like this, taking away dance and leaving me with nothing.

  And maybe somewhere in there, there would be a hint to how I could get it back.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  One more thing about Ari. Just one more.

  When she was invited to join the Manhattan Ballet junior corps, January of our junior year, she couldn’t stop crying.

  No one else knows this. Not Diana, not Kay, not her aunt Jess. I didn’t tell Markos or Kara or my mom.

  We sat in her bedroom while her aunt was at work. She had curled into a ball in the corner of her twin bed, back against the wall. I sat in place of the pillow, her head in my lap.

  “Wh-wh-wh-what is hap-hap-happening to me?” she asked, taking these desperate, heaving little gasps of breath in between almost every word.

  “You’re sad,” I said.

  “N-n-n-n-n,” she said, meaning no. “I’m g-going to b-b-be a—a—a prima ballerina.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m g-g-g-going to l-l-live in New York and take classes w-w-with legends and—and—and—”

  “I know.”

  “I never cr-cr-cy.”

  “I know you don’t. You’re Ari Madrigal.”

  She broke down into another sob, and I stroked her hair away from her face. Soft hair, damp from her tears. Her skin was hot and each breath rattled her whole body.

  “If I were you,” I said, just loud enough for her to hear, “I’d be scared. Scared to leave home, scared to be around strangers. Scared to mess up. Or scared to not mess up.”

  She hiccupped, still crying, but I could tell she was listening.

  “But luckily I’m not you. You are. You’ve got no reason to be scared. They picked you because they saw how talented you are. How passionate. They’ll be lucky to have you.”

  “But I’m sc-sc-scared, too.”

  I sighed, and the breath ruffled the dry hairs around her neck. “Good.”

  She stopped crying out of surprise. “Good?”

  “We have something in common.”

  She lifted her head and swiveled so that she was sitting curled in my lap, legs tucked over one of my knees, head right above my collarbone. I could rub her back now, and I did.

  “You probably think I’m an idiot,” she said, with only minimal gasps.

  “I will never think you’re an idiot.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “What if I move away and you forget me?”

  “Never.”

  “What if I go to New York and root for the Yankees?”

  “Not even then.”

  She snuggled closer, chin nuzzling my neck. “So you’ll never leave me.”

  “Never.”

  “You’re mine, then.”

  I bent my head so I could kiss her. Salty, warm. “Always.”

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  “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 doorways 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 rooted around for a couple 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 house 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.