It probably sounds strange that I was counting on the spell but made no attempt to figure out how to pay for it. I wasn’t planning on ripping Echo off or anything. I wanted to pay my debt. It’s just—I wanted to get better more. I wanted out of the hole.
It was a lot like a hole. Or more like a well, maybe: dark and claustrophobic, with the fingernail marks along the walls that the other prisoners made as they attempted their escapes. I’d look up and see a pinprick of light, but then I’d blink and the darkness would come in again; I’d start thinking about how my mom couldn’t catch a break and Kara would eventually get bitter and Ari probably didn’t really love me and Markos thought of me as an obligation, and I didn’t even blame them for any of it, because I knew I deserved to be treated like shit. Because I’d never done anything to make the world a better place, I wasn’t an upstanding moral citizen by any stretch of the imagination, and the fact that I couldn’t enjoy my life like a normal person probably meant I was an evolutionary mistake that needed to be stomped out.
The world belonged to the happy people, the carefree souls. I didn’t begrudge them that. I only wanted out of their way.
One of the things that had originally drawn me to Ari was that she wasn’t one of the carefree souls. This was before I fell down the well for real, when I could still pretty much fake my way through a day, even the dark ones. We had been in school together forever, but I feel like I really noticed her for the first time in trig, which we both had first period sophomore year.
She sat so straight, like the line of her hair down her back. That type of posture could read snobby to some people, but I’d been going to school with her for so long, I knew her history. The tragedy of her parents, killed in a fire; the fact that she lived with her aunt, who had tattoos and worked in a coffee shop; and that she was a dancer, and good at it.
She’d lived through something bad. I didn’t pity her for it; it made me respect her.
I started talking to her before and after class, and we became friends. I couldn’t tell you how. The mechanics of how a person becomes friends, especially with a girl: it all takes place in gestures and moments and looks and jokes, and then before you know it you’re always at a person’s locker in the morning or at their house after school and plans on Friday are assumed, as are Christmas gifts and bad days and hurt feelings and last-minute rides to school. Impossible to track or re-create. We were friends for a year, and then we were together. It happened.
We were doing homework in her kitchen near the end of sophomore year, right before we started dating, when I was trying so hard to think of anything but how much I wanted to kiss her, so I asked her if she thought her spell was worth it.
“Yes,” she said without hesitating. “You know how people say ‘I can’t imagine how awful that must have been?’ Well, now I can say that, too. I can’t imagine it.”
For some reason I didn’t want to let go of the topic, even though I could tell Ari had said pretty much all she wanted to say about it. She rubbed her wrist with her thumb, frowning, and stared at her trig book intently. “Who do you think did it?”
“A tourist.”
“Why?”
“They found the remnants of fireworks in the grate. That always made me think of someone on vacation—someone here to have a good time. So what I think is that a tourist kid broke in, probably high, set off some fireworks, and it got out of control.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if reading a news report.
“So not on purpose.”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t imagine that someone would do this on purpose. I just . . . can’t believe that.”
“If you believe it was a tourist, how can you even look at them now?”
“Kind of hard to avoid them.”
“They think they own everything.” They did own everything, at least compared to me. They could take vacations.
My mom drove me and Kara to Block Island for the day once when I was eleven. It seemed a lot like home: tourists everywhere, beaches, seafood. She bought us ice cream. I felt, even more than usual, like I was supposed to be having a good time, and I was mad at myself for not feeling it. But that day I wasn’t the only one; none of our smiles stayed fixed.
Ari hadn’t said anything, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. Finally she shook her head. “I can’t get angry at every tourist. I wouldn’t be able to function. But I can’t help hating them all a little, too.”
“And if they caught the guy? Would you feel better?”
“No.” She exhaled so hard it ruffled the pages of her notebook. “Besides, it’s been almost eight years. He’s long gone by now. I doubt he even knows the house burned down. It wasn’t like he did it maliciously.”
I felt my heart clunk down to my gut as I realized what she was saying. She’d given up hope.
Something inside of me warmed to that bleakness. Drew closer. Sitting next to her at the table, I actually felt the room get smaller, and the two of us slide together like water pouring down a drain.