I pocketed my phone, with its messages from Cal. I hadn’t actually talked to him or seen him in much longer than three days, but I got his texts and voicemails, and I assumed that was enough, or the spell would shove him my way. The longer it went since I’d seen him, the less I wanted to, especially since his texts had started to get super weird.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s the middle of summer. Let’s go do something.”
Diana swung in the hammock silently, and Ari adjusted her neck. “We’re not in the mood,” she said.
“You guys are depressing,” I said. “So Ari lied about her spell and Diana had a secret boyfriend. Now we know about the spell and Markos is gone. So what?”
Ari raised her head halfway. “Nice, Kay. What do you want from us?”
“I want you to snap out of it!” I said. Diana sighed deeper into the hammock and Ari rolled her eyes. “Ari, you once said to me that you were awesome, and you weren’t friends with anyone who wasn’t awesome, too.”
“I don’t think I put it like that. . . .”
“All I’m saying is, you’re still Ari Madrigal and Diana North. So act like it.”
They didn’t answer, but before I could press them to get up and do something, the doorbell rang six times in a row, as if someone was leaning his or her whole weight into it. I left them on the deck and ran through the house to get it.
Cal stood on the front steps, with gray skin, sunken cheeks, and hair so greasy it looked like ink. “Oh, hey, Kay,” he said when he saw me, then sank down onto the top step.
I closed the door behind me and sat across from him. “What happened to you?”
“I’ve been sick. Where have you been? You haven’t answered any of my texts.”
“Oh.” Maybe the spell needed me to actually answer him. Whoops. “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t know who else to talk to. I stopped eating at home for now, which means I’ve been sick and starving, until I realized I could just go grocery shopping and keep the food locked up, but that’s not even the problem.”
He spoke normally, as if I should understand the words, but I didn’t. I glanced back into the house. “So what is the problem?”
“It’s my head. And this spell.”
I sucked in a breath and scrambled to my feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He laughed, which turned into a bitter cough. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, either. I thought it was just that I couldn’t hit Markos, but things are shifting around in my head, like the paint’s running, or dirty windows are smashing up, and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s—”
“You tried to hit Markos?”
“He’s sulking. I think he wanted me to hit him. I might be able to now. I haven’t tried.”
“What spell are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. A spell. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
I backed toward the door. “Well, I don’t know either. But you’ll feel better now, okay, Cal? We’ll talk later. You can call me in the middle of the night, I promise to pick up.”
Cal shook his head. “That’s the other thing. I’ve been sleeping right through the night.”
“Good!”
“No, not good. I always thought I had insomnia. . . .” He shook his head, almost angrily, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t know why I came here. I won’t bother you anymore.”
I watched him walk away, clenching my teeth as he went down the steps, expecting to see him trip and fall. Then I unhooked the worry and hung it up with all the rest of them; they were not useful to me. Cal didn’t trip, anyway. He walked away fine. He was sick, but he’d be all right now that we’d talked.
On my way back through the house to the deck, I could hear laughter. Maybe my pep talk had worked; maybe Ari and Diana were ready to let bygones be bygones and go back to normal. Then, as I got closer, I heard three voices instead of just two. And I knew the third voice.
“—found that it was totally different, and scary sometimes, and crowded and unfamiliar. I was lonely, too.”
“But it was worth it?” Ari’s voice.
“Oh, yeah. It’s good to be lonely. You get to know yourself.”
Tears stung the back of my eyes and I clamped my hand over my mouth. Mina didn’t know anything about being alone.
“I sound like such a cliché when I talk about it, but I don’t think I understood before how big the world was. And how old. I saw forts that had been around for centuries. Mountains that had been there for eons.” She laughed a little bit. “It was sort of comforting to be around all these places and people who didn’t care that I’d been sick, and who didn’t look at me as if I were about to die.”
“I know what you mean,” Ari said. “Not that people think I’m going to die. But my whole life—everyone’s looked at me like I’m fragile. Like I might start sobbing my guts out any second.” She paused. “Except when I’m dancing.”
“I don’t look at you like that,” Diana said.
“And that’s why I love you.”
I knew I should stop listening and walk out there. The spell wasn’t supposed to bring me my friends so that Mina could hang out with them. But I leaned on a kitchen chair and held my breath.
“Did you ever actually sob your guts out?” Mina asked.