I thought of my mom’s panic at the mention of the spell money. She really didn’t want me talking about it. So it was perfect. I didn’t know if the money and the spell were for Cal—or what the spell was for at all. But it was just awful enough to throw in his face and see if it stuck. Rag on Cal and piss off Mom, all in one shot.
“It’s probably not just a cold,” I said. “I bet Mom finally ran out of cash and didn’t get you your spells this month.”
“My what?”
“Your spells, dummy. It’s Sunday, isn’t it? So maybe you’ll get your spells today. All six-thousand-dollars-a-month’s worth. Are they to make you smarter? Because you should up the dosage.”
Cal’s face filled with confusion. “I don’t take any spells.”
“Bullshit,” I said, almost cheerfully. “Every month Mom pays for them. I’ve seen the money—stolen it, too. Maybe your spells make you less of a loser. I’d believe that, because you seem sort of desperate. Before she kissed me, you should’ve heard what Kay said about—”
He lunged across the room at me, arm bent, forearm across my throat, other hand pulled back to punch me in the face. But I didn’t grow up with three older brothers for nothing. I relaxed my neck—it hurts worse if you try to brace for it—and waited for the snap and the sting.
When it didn’t come, I opened an eye and saw Cal’s face twisted in concentration, his punching arm shaking with effort. He grunted. But he couldn’t make the arm connect with my face. Even the forearm over my neck seemed to be pulling back involuntarily, as much as he pushed forward with the rest of his body.
“Well, that answers one question,” I said. I raised my hands and pushed him away. He stumbled but didn’t come back at me.
He couldn’t.
His face drained of blood. He was the one being spelled. Lucky guess. The spells wouldn’t let him hit me, or probably anyone. He looked at me, bewildered, as if I was the one who’d just hit him.
I wished I could tell Diana.
And that was the moment—the shock making me weak-willed—when I thought her name and saw her in my mind and remembered how it felt to sit across from her at the diner or next to her in the car and I missed her, oh god I missed her. I missed Win, too, but there’s a different way you miss a dead guy, and not only because I wasn’t hooking up with Win. I missed Win stupidly and pointlessly, because part of me understood the situation, which was that death is permanent and life finite and there are no angels, etc., etc. But Diana. I missed Diana like being punched repeatedly in the stomach, because she was out there walking around, talking to people, touching her hair, and worst of all probably miserable and broken because of something I did, because I cut her off completely and I made out with Kay and I did it all knowing I shouldn’t.
All this time, Cal was still in the room. Screwed-up Cal who didn’t even know he was on horse tranquilizers or whatever.
“Are you crying?” he asked, and I didn’t answer, because he had to be able to see for himself, and the question was asked to poke at me.
“I did a stupid thing,” I said.
When I looked up I expected him to nod, but he was staring at his hands, turning them over and balling them into fists. He pinched the inside of his left wrist with his right hand, frowning.
“Doesn’t matter about your spell,” I said. “You don’t need to beat the shit out of me because I’m punishing myself plenty.”
Cal shook his head. “I can’t believe Mom would do this to me.”
“She said she was looking out for you.”
“For how long?”
“A couple years. At least.”
Cal didn’t bother trying to cheer me up anymore. He left, and I was alone in the living room again.
But I could never be alone enough, because my brain kept whirring.
—This sucks.
—Yeah.
—I mean it sucks A LOT.
—Never leaving the living room probably makes it suck more.
—But I like it here. It’s safe.
—Safe?
—Yeah, safe. Protected.
—Huh. Is it?
I didn’t know what else to do, so I went to work at the Sweet Shoppe like normal. But the rhythm of the scooping felt off, and the cold didn’t make me numb—it made me shudder.
When Diana came in, I braced my hands along the glass of the display case and thought of Echo’s promised spell. If it could let me dance, I could leave for New York as planned—in one week. Everything would be back on track. I could survive one more week if I could dance at the end of it.
“I got your message,” she said.
“Thanks for coming by. I wanted to apologize—I know Markos found out about the spell. I didn’t have a chance to tell him first.”
She shrugged. “You were never going to tell him the truth. You only told me you would to shut me up.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s okay, Ari. You were right about Markos. We weren’t in love. Let’s just go back to the way things were.”
I hated the way her voice sounded, toneless and careful. I hated that Markos had done this to her, and I especially hated that it was exactly what I predicted would happen.
“Do you want an ice cream?” I asked.