“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m asking about all this stuff.”
“It’s okay,” she said. She even smiled a little bit. “I’d rather you ask than never ever mention it like it was some sort of horrible disease. I’m fine now.”
“Right,” I said. “Of course you are.”
“I have Jess and Diana and dancing—and I have you, too.” She said the last bit quickly, like she wasn’t sure if she was going too far, claiming me as hers.
She wasn’t going too far. I felt good—great, even—being in the list of things she lived for, because I felt the same way without realizing it: she fit into a hole in my life I hadn’t known I’d had until then. That was the moment I decided I wasn’t just going to think about kissing her, but I was actually going to do it. I didn’t end up doing it for a little while longer, but the decision could be traced back to that conversation.
“I’m fine,” she said again, and elbowed me with her sharp, precise elbow.
But I didn’t believe her. She wasn’t fine, and neither was I.
We were not okay. After the bonfire, if I didn’t hear from Ari or Diana for a day, I’d start to get panicky—picturing Diana’s bruise or worse. That big black shadowy bird hovered over my head daily, threatening to swoop down and carry my friends away. I had to be on constant alert so that no one would get hurt again.
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.”