“Sure,” she said. She would’ve agreed to anything—ice cream cone, face tattoo, drowning. I filled a waffle cone with Rocky Road and handed it to her.
Diana eyed the ice cream but didn’t eat any. “I’ve been thinking a lot since you told me about your spell. Things have been so weird between us, and I didn’t know why.”
“It’s been tough for me . . . figuring out what to say and what not to.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. I think—I know things were weird between us before you did this spell. You didn’t . . . I had to call Kay. I couldn’t rely on you anymore. And I always felt like there was this Ari-Win-Markos club that I wasn’t invited to join.” She sighed. “A tiny jealous part of me thought that you wanted to keep Markos for yourself, and you didn’t want competition.”
“Diana, I promise you, I don’t think of Markos that way.”
“Then why didn’t you invite me along? The night before Win died, you went out just the three of you. Like you always did. You never included me—and not just that night. All the time.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember. I could see myself spending time with Markos, having fun—Markos teasing me, Markos getting himself kicked out of restaurants and bowling alleys, Markos singing classic rock at the top of his lungs in the passenger seat of a truck driven by . . . a blank space.
These memories seemed fun, but I saw them mostly from the outside, with no internal monologue, and they jumped and skipped and were as thin as paper. “I don’t know why I didn’t include you, Diana. I can’t remember.”
She nodded. “I figured. If you still remembered I would’ve been afraid to ask. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.”
“Was I that bad?”
“You’re not bad. You’re you. You make a decision and once it’s decided that’s the way it is forever.”
I couldn’t tell if that was true—except that the decision to take a spell to erase Win seemed to fit with it.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
She looked at the ice cream and shook her head. “You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for.”
When Jess got home from work I was lying on the living room floor. My back had started spasming during a plié and this was the only thing that stopped it. Even lying down it hurt, but at least it didn’t seize up and shake me like a rag doll. (The only thing that comforted me was the thought that Echo’s spell would save me. I had to wait long enough for Echo’s spell.) I could see Jess’s black clogs but nothing else.
“Hi,” I said.
She knelt on the ground and wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on the carpeted floor. I could smell the coffee on her clothes and the hair product keeping her short hair pompadoured.
“Hey—what are you doing?” I asked, attempting to shimmy away.
“I’m so, so sorry, Ari,” she said into the carpet.
“For what?”
“You must have been hurting so bad.”
I closed my eyes. “You heard.”
“I heard.”
“From who?”
“Some kids at the coffee shop, gossiping. Apparently they heard from Markos and his brothers.” I could imagine a group of my classmates—several groups—going over the news with relish. Everyone had seen me at the funeral. Everyone had an opinion about how awful I was. “Then I went to see Rowena. She told me you haven’t been to class all summer.”
“Oh no, Jess—”
“I should’ve gone weeks ago.” Jess let go of me and rocked back on her heels. “I should’ve paid more attention. Noticed things. I’m such an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, Jess, come on.”
Jess shook her head. “I’m supposed to take care of you.”
“You didn’t ask for this.”
“Does that mean it’s okay that I’m bad at it?” Jess rubbed her hands over her eyes. I remembered how she looked the day after I took my spell—she had been crying and wanted to talk. And I went to dance. Pushed her away. “Sometimes I think if your mom could see us now she would’ve picked someone else for this job.”
My wrist pounded and I held my breath to make the pain go away. “Don’t say that,” I said, but I’m not sure she could hear me, even as close as she was sitting.
“I’ve always been too quick to believe what’s on the surface. If something obvious is off, I can fix it. But if you look fine, I assume that you are fine. That insight—it must be some sort of mothering instinct I didn’t get. Katie had it.” Katie was my mother; I’d barely heard Jess say her name in years. “She always could tell what everyone was really thinking. But I got a different set of genes.”
“If I look fine, I am fine, Jess.”
“Yeah—even I know that’s not true.” The lines on Jess’s face around her eyes and mouth held the shadows, as if someone had drawn in the grief with wax pencil. “I made you an appointment with Dr. Pitts and I canceled the moving trucks.”
I propped myself up by my elbows. “You did what?”
“You should talk to someone, and I think I’ve proven that I’m not the greatest at heart-to-heart moments, so—”