The Cost of All Things by Lehrman Maggie

Author:Lehrman,Maggie
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Balzer + Bray

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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It felt like I was buzzing. Like someone’d rigged up an electrical current to run through my skin and if anyone touched me they’d be blasted back a mile. Sometimes it was in my face. Sometimes my chest, my hands. Sometimes other places.

Diana.

I’d hooked up with a lot of girls before her—not as many as my brothers, as they liked to remind me, but a few—and sometimes those girls were memorable for some dirty reason, and sometimes I’d hook up with the same girl more than once because it was convenient or she had an amazing body or a crazy attitude. But I’d never woken up the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that one feeling like this. More alive.

The buzzing didn’t go away, either, even though I spent my days in the hardware store copying keys and showing people where the drill bits were. In slow moments—and not so slow moments—we texted back and forth.

How many lug nuts does one man need?!?!

Is that supposed to be seductive?

I don’t have to seduce you, I got you

Oh? I’d forgotten all about that!

I hadn’t.

Yeah. Me neither.

Gotta go help this dude with his engine starter

Sounds fun. Call me later?

Miss you

Miss us

Gross

You’re gross

And when I wasn’t doing that—when the customers wandered away and Diana had to go babysit—I talked to myself. Or not exactly to myself. It was that Win voice I heard talking back, the same one I’d been hearing for weeks. I knew it was crazy and I should stop playing pretend, but it was easier to let the voice run than to try to shut it up.

—She’s joking but she’s right. This is disgusting.

—Why?

—I’m Markos Waters.

—So?

—So I’m letting this girl get to me.

—She’s great.

—Yeah.

—She listens. She understands.

—Yeah.

—And the kissing.

—Yeah.

—Yeah.

—But I can’t be this guy.

—Why?

—It’s not in my DNA.

—That’s a weak excuse, Markos. If I were alive I’d kick your ass.

It made me think of Ari and Win together. When we were kids it was me and Win, Win and me. In middle school I started hooking up with girls but me and Win stayed the same. Then in high school, it became me and Win and Ari. Or really me-on-my-own then sometimes also Win-and-Ari. She was annoying at first because I didn’t really get it: she wasn’t a random girl, she was someone who fundamentally changed who Win was. Not in a bad way. He was more solid around her, more decisive, more purposeful. He took up more space. He was the good parts of himself, but more. Ari acted as a Win amplifier.

Once I figured that out, I didn’t really have a problem with her. I liked her. Not the way Win liked her. But like a dude. She was cool.

Win, though. It freaked me out that someone I knew so well—better than my brothers, even—could change so much just from being around another person. I’ll never change, I thought. I know who I am.

Ha. Ha.

I was straightening the paint chips when my mother’s hekamist sidled up next to me.

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