“No!” Ari’s voice dripped scorn.
“I cry enough for both of us,” Diana said.
“Crying’s not as bad as it sounds. I cried in India for a week. Around the third or fourth month, I was totally overwhelmed with the trains and the weird hostels and everyone looking at me like I should know Hindi, and I missed home. And then I’d feel guilty for being annoyed, because I’d made it, I was out, not sick, living my dream, so who cared if I was uncomfortable, right? But you can’t go around peaceful and grateful and zen every second of the day. It’s just not possible.”
“I love that you guys are talking about letting yourselves cry,” Diana said, and I could hear the tears in her voice, as if talking about crying was enough for them to spring to life. “Like there’s a moment in your lives when you say ‘oh, I’m so upset, but I think I’ll not cry, not today.’”
“Diana!” Ari said, and there was scuffling and laughing, and I could tell that Ari had thrown herself into the hammock with Diana. The sky was completely dark now. I’d been hiding way too long; they should have at least wondered where I’d gone by now. But they hadn’t.
I pushed the chair I was holding, which clattered to ground, and rushed onto the deck. Diana and Ari looked up from the hammock where they lay head to toe. Mina sat in a deck chair, the lights from the house glinting off her eyebrow piercing. I started talking before she could make another sound. “Hey guys, sorry about that. Oh, Mina, what are you doing here?”
“Just saying hello.”
“Well, hello. We were kind of in the middle of something, though.”
“No we weren’t,” Ari said. “Mina, are you back for good or just home for the summer?”
Mina leaned back in her chair, making herself comfortable. “Finished my freshman year at University of Michigan this May. Should be a junior, but chemo slows you down on the APs.”
“As does backpacking around the world,” I said, but they all took my cheery tone at face value. Mina, who should’ve known what I meant, smiled at me.
“I wasn’t aware there was a schedule in place,” she said, completely missing the point for the millionth time.
Here’s the point: it wasn’t just cancer that could take people away from you. Sometimes it was fucking India, too. Mina got better and then she left me. That’s all there was to it.
“Who was at the door?” Mina asked.
“Cal.”
All the muscles in Diana’s face stopped moving. “Are you still dating him?”
“You were dating Cal Waters?” Mina asked.
“No—I mean, yes, maybe we were, but we’re not anymore.”
“Oh my god, Katelyn, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“Nothing to tell.” Except that I kissed his brother, Diana—sorry about that.
“So what did he want? You didn’t break up just now, did you?” Mina asked.
“No, of course not.” They all looked at me, expecting for more detail. But how could I explain that he was sick and didn’t know why but had to see me? “He . . . he said Markos tried to punch him.”
“What? Why?” Ari asked. Diana looked as if she wanted to melt through the hammock and into the ground.
“He said Markos was sulking. Maybe . . . maybe he misses Di. That would be good, right? Because he cares?”
Diana’s face crumpled, and she turned it toward the ropes of the hammock.
“Cal came over here to tell you that Markos misses Diana?” Ari asked.
“Um . . . yeah.” I knew that didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t think of anything else that would. “Hey, so, listen—you all are coming out for my birthday dinner, right?”
“Jeez, Kay,” Ari said.
“What?”
“Sensitivity.” Ari pointed at Diana, who had started crying silently. For a moment I felt awful, like a failure of a human being, but then I thought of the spell and how it was working fine and how it didn’t care if I was good or bad and I felt better.
“I’m definitely coming to your dinner,” Mina said.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not invited.”
“Sure I am,” Mina said. “You just said ‘you all.’ I’m part of ‘you all.’”
“Yeah,” Ari said, grinning. “She’s ‘you all,’ too. Right, Diana?”
Diana wiped her eyes and gave Mina a shaky smile. “She’s as ‘you all’ as I am.”
I took a deep breath. Birthdays used to be our thing, me and Mina. We would eat cake and do each other’s makeup. She would write me a story that made me laugh, and she’d read it to me, doing all the voices. Even when she was sickest. Even the year she gave me four stories and told me that if she wasn’t there next year I should read them one a year and pretend she was doing the voices, and she apologized for not having time to write more but she was too tired, and we cried and fell asleep in her bed.