Something about my promise to Echo got twisted up in my brain and I started to think that eating the sandwich would be the same as killing myself. It would kill, permanently, the real Win. I’d be some new happy Win—the Win I saw in yearbook pictures I didn’t remember taking, smiling and holding up my glove, or the Win dancing with Ari at Homecoming in the soapy, sparkly dark.
Plus, I hadn’t paid Echo yet. It didn’t seem fair to take the spell until I did.
Even if I didn’t take it, I wanted to pay Echo, help her and her mom, in whatever weak way I could. She’d already put in the effort, after all. And so a couple days after Echo gave me the sandwich, I made my first and only attempt to ask Ari for the money.
I picked up Ari and Kara from the dance studio. Everyone else in the pickup lane was a middle-aged mom, and I imagined—or maybe saw, but I can’t trust myself on that—them glaring at me suspiciously through their rearview mirrors. I started to shake. My hands rattled the steering wheel and my torso vibrated against the seat and my teeth chattered in my head. They for sure would’ve stared at me if I’d gotten out of the truck and run for the ocean, which is what the shaking was telling me to do, that or throw up all over the dashboard and smash my head against the steering wheel, and I couldn’t hold on—the car was shaking and I was shaking in it, so hard we had to be coming undone. And then Kara opened the passenger door and climbed into the back and a second later Ari sat in the front seat and gave me a kiss that I didn’t feel and I put the truck into drive.
Ari and Kara talked to each other, which spared me for a few minutes. I could feel Ari giving me looks, though. Side-eyeing me as we stopped at red lights.
Ari was smart and she noticed things about me, which was scary sometimes. You seemed mad at lunch. You laughed at that show—must’ve liked it. What are you worried about? Things I hadn’t noticed myself yet. She’d noticed the shaking for sure. She probably wouldn’t be surprised when I asked her for the money; she’d only be surprised when I couldn’t tell her why I needed it.
We dropped off Kara at her friend’s house. She made smoochie faces at us and Ari stuck out her tongue at her. It amazed me sometimes how Ari could do that—be so free and easy with Kara, laughing, teasing, sticking out her tongue. I had to think it all through, even how to say goodbye to my sister.
“What do you want to do?” Ari asked.
I kept my eyes on the road, but it blurred.
Ari was so happy. It radiated off of her. She didn’t even know she was doing it, and that was the weirdest part. She simply was.
“Whatever you want to do,” I said.
She stretched her arms over her head, overextending the elbows. “I’m a mess. I should probably take a shower before we do anything.”
“Okay,” I said, and turned toward her house.
She grinned at me. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
If I hadn’t been thinking of how to bring up five thousand dollars, I would’ve racked my brain for what I was missing. But all I could do was blink.
“It’s our anniversary. One year.”
“Oh man.” I rubbed my eyes. Last May seemed like a thousand years ago. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Be lucky you have such a cool girlfriend who doesn’t care about stupid stuff like anniversaries.”
“I am lucky.”
I stopped at another light and she kissed me on the cheek. I believed her when she said she didn’t care. But she remembered. If I’d remembered . . . what would I have done? Would it have made me feel any better? Or would the pressure of an Important Day hanging over me be just as bad?
I wouldn’t be planning on asking her for a huge sum of money, that was for sure.
The truck shook again. Slightly. Maybe this time it was the wind.
“I can’t hang out tonight,” I said into the silence. “I’m such an ass. I’m sorry. I think I’m getting a migraine, and—my mom’s working the night shift, and Kara—”
“Really?” Ari said. She didn’t look disappointed yet, only surprised. But the disappointment would come soon.
“And you know, tonight’s not our anniversary,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not. You’re calculating from that night we were at Markos’s. We talked, and walked in the garden? But I’m positive it wasn’t until after midnight that we kissed.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m serious. I’ll be ready tomorrow. I’ll feel better, and we’ll have a really good time, and it’ll be the actual anniversary. I mean you wouldn’t want to jinx it by celebrating on the wrong day, right?”
We pulled into her driveway. She touched my knee. It could’ve been someone else’s; it even looked far away. “It really doesn’t matter about the anniversary, Win. You don’t have to feel bad or anything. We’re good, you know?”
“It’s just a headache,” I lied.
She reached up with her other hand and touched the line of my jaw. She studied me, and I noticed her hair pulled tight into a bun, the freckles by her ear, the light brown flecks in her dark brown eyes. I noticed it all, familiar as always. I didn’t understand how I could be numb to the entire world, including her hand on my jaw, like a ghost, but I still knew I loved her, knew I didn’t want to hurt her.