Diana and Markos were in love. I’d never been in love. As far as I knew.
Diana loved Markos. He would break her heart, the bastard, but she’d gotten what she always wanted. She hadn’t listened to my advice—she didn’t need me. She had red hair and her own strong opinions and we hadn’t had movie night in a year and she’d been forced to befriend Kay and now she was asking to worry about me.
Maybe I should let her.
“I took a spell that erased my memory of Win,” I said. The words floated out of me easily, lightly. “So I wouldn’t have to be sad, I guess. I don’t remember anything about him.”
Diana jerked back as if I’d hit her. She blinked rapidly. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t remember Win.”
She put a hand over her mouth and stared at me. I couldn’t tell what was going through her head. Fear? “So you’ve been lying all summer,” she said.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah. It was . . . easier. I guess . . . maybe . . . I was ashamed. I didn’t know how to explain why I’d done it, because I didn’t remember what made me feel so bad. I thought it would be better to pretend.”
Diana stood up and started pacing the length of the room. “You’ve been lying to us. You’re not suffering. You’ve just been avoiding me.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could’ve tried telling me the truth.”
“I am telling you—”
“I mean before.” She paced again, looking anywhere in the room but at me. “Before you did this. After Win died. You could’ve told me you were thinking about it. I could’ve helped you. Talked about it. I would’ve helped you do whatever you wanted to do. You—you didn’t trust me even then.”
“I’m so sorry, Diana.”
She shook her head, hair whipping from side to side. “You never came to me with problems. You’d talk to Jess or to Win. I was always silly old Diana with her pointless crush, your loyal shadow.”
The sting started in the back of my throat and traveled up through my sinuses to my eyes. But I wouldn’t cry. I pressed my thumb and forefinger around my left wrist, holding the pain in place. “That’s not true. I’m telling you now. Not Jess or Kay or anyone else. I trust you.”
Diana stopped, facing away from me. “So you spent Markos’s money on a spell.”
“Yes.” Diana wouldn’t face me. I couldn’t guess her expression. “Win must’ve hidden it in my closet, but I didn’t know where it came from—I only found out later it was his, and that he’d gotten it from Markos. The problem was, Win owed it to someone. That person told me that if I didn’t pay what Win owed, she would tell everyone I don’t remember him.”
Diana turned to me. Her eyes were bright and fierce.
“So did you pay her?”
The air leaked out of my lungs. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Diana so angry. “No. I followed her. . . . She might leave me alone for a while.”
As if she were deflating, Diana sank to the floor next to the bed, anger melting away into despair. “Oh god. What am I supposed to tell Markos?”
“You don’t have to tell him anything.”
She glanced up at me, her eyes big and full of disappointment. “But you’ll tell him yourself soon, right? Before this blackmailer comes back and tells for you?”
I didn’t answer, but I moved from my desk chair to the floor across from Diana. We’d spent hundreds of hours of our life here in this room. But this felt different, as if we’d been acting before, and now we were real.
Diana didn’t say anything else for a long time. She leaned her head back on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. I tried to follow her gaze and see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there.
“You might not remember Win,” she said, finally, “but you should still remember that you and Markos were friends. You gave him a hard time, but you were friends. Now I think he misses you. And it’s not fair lying to him like this.”
I reached for Diana’s hand and held it, even though she looked down at my hand as if it repulsed her. “Please tell me you forgive me, Di. Please.”
She stared at my hand holding hers. But then, after a long moment, she nodded.
I nodded back. “I’ll tell Markos soon. I promise.”
But if I told Markos I’d have to tell everyone, and the girl I used to be—the dancer, the girlfriend, the good person—she’d be gone, replaced by this liar, rotten to the core. So rotten my best friend could barely stand to talk to me or look at me. I thought if I told Diana the truth we’d be close again, the way we always were before. But seeing how I looked through her eyes—seeing that look in everyone else’s expression, forever— I didn’t know if I could do it.