The Cost of All Things Read Online Free

Homecoming, once we arrived at the gym, Ari found her friends and went off to dance. Markos and I stood in a corner trading Markos’s flask back and forth.
    “Hottest girl in the grade?” Markos asked.
    “Ari.”
    “Come on. For real.”
    “I’m for real. What are you saying about my girlfriend?”
    He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll rephrase. Hottest girl who I could hook up with?”
    “Serena Simonsen.”
    “You came up with that quick! You sure you don’t want to go for her yourself?”
    “Dude, come on. You know I wouldn’t.”
    He saluted with the flask. “Always such a good boy.”
    Across the room I spotted Ari dancing, and I could tell she was really trying to let loose—stop counting the beats, stop spotting her turns. She wanted to fit in with the rest of us normals.The fact that I knew her well enough to know what she was thinking hit me with a pang right between my ribs, and I felt sorry for Markos that he thought being a “good boy” was a bad thing.
    “How about Kay Charpal?” I said, since she was dancing right next to Ari.
    Markos shook his head. “Too Frankenspelled.”
    “Half the girls here have had a spell touch-up. Who cares?”
    “Most of them looked fine before. You remember Kay’s old face . . .” He twisted his own into a sour expression.
    “You are such an ass.”
    “I’m honest. Not my fault if people can’t handle the truth.”
    “I’d say Diana, but then Ari would kill you.”
    “Plus I require a bare minimum of a personality.” He laughed and checked his watch.
    “Oh no,” I said.
    “What?” His eyes opened wide, as if that might make him look innocent.
    “Please tell me you didn’t plan something.”
    Markos grinned. “I’ve got a legacy to uphold.”
    Markos’s older brothers had been telling us for years about their Homecoming pranks. Brian brought a goat in a tuxedo as his “date,” Dev rigged the basketball hoop with a laser light projector that spelled out insults onto one of the walls, and Cal replaced all of the DJ’s music with the Jackson 5’s “ABC.”
    “Didn’t they do theirs senior year?”
    Markos tapped the side of his nose. “The admin will bewatching me like a hawk senior year. This is all about the element of surprise.”
    He peered into the crowd intently, and I watched the dancing, trying to see what he saw. Everyone seemed normal and happy to me. They all belonged exactly where they were. When I turned back to Markos, he’d gone. I thought about trying to find him but figured it would ruin the surprise, so I took a deep breath and elbowed my way into the crowd to join Ari. She shouted “Win!” and tucked her arm into mine, still dancing. I shuffled back and forth, trying not to step on her.
    She had on a strapless blue dress, longer in the back than the front. I’d seen her bare, slightly freckly shoulders before—in her performances—and maybe that’s why I pictured her being lifted up overhead, arching her back and soaring. I couldn’t do that for her, so I shuffled.
    When a slow song came on, she turned to face me, putting her hands on my shoulders. I placed mine on her waist and swayed back and forth. The blue material of her dress was warm from her body but so shiny I thought my hands might slide off. I was afraid to hold her too tight—not that I thought I’d hurt her, because I knew she was way stronger than me, but because it might give away how much I wanted to hold her, and she’d have to pull back, and it would become clear that she didn’t want me as much as I wanted her. Our dancing—our relationship—balanced on a seesaw. If I put my full weight into it, I’d go crashing down and she’d fly away.
    “Feel the music in your core,” Ari said in a Europeanaccent—her “ballet master” voice. “What does the music say to you?”
    I listened. “It says, ‘I am a boy-band ballad with nonsensical lyrics.’”
    Ari laughed. “How dare you. I’m thinking of getting these lyrics tattooed on my