Free The Cost of All Things by Maggie Lehrman

didn’t like to have my words thrown back at me—“you’re beautiful” could be turned into some nuclear-level shit.
    Diana ran a hand through her newly red hair, worrying the ends of it. She smelled good—shampoo and suntan lotion, even though it was dark out.
    “I dyed it,” she said. “I’ve wanted to for ages but I never did—afraid, I guess, though it sounds dumb to be afraid of a hair color. I thought if I dyed my hair I wouldn’t know who I was anymore, but the exact opposite happened. I feel . . .” She looked up at me, as if she’d forgotten who she was talking to, or as if she’d heard her words coming out of someone else’s mouth. “Um. Well. You look exactly the same.”
    That was blatantly not true, I mean not only on a physical level, because I had lost ten pounds in the last month, but on a deeper level, too. My insides were a mess, like the wrapped present you shake so hard it breaks the toy inside, so there’s nothing but shards of plastic rolling around. Even this July third beach bonfire, which I had been going to since I was seven, when Brian threw the first one, felt different.
    “Let’s take a walk,” I said, which in bonfire-speak means make out, at a minimum. Diana froze.
    “Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand.
    We walked down the beach, not talking, passing couples making out lying in the sand or standing ankle-deep in the waves. The ones in the waves were always the ones deeply in love. Soulmates splashing each other and carrying their shoes.
    I spotted Ari talking to my brother Cal. She didn’t see me and Diana. Something seemed off about her, and I realized she wasn’t standing up straight. She slouched. I don’t think I’d ever seen her like that. Some automatic gut response made me wonder what was wrong with her, until I remembered what was wrong with us both.
    But she didn’t want to talk. Okay. I should be more like Ari. I should be able to handle this on my own.
    “I think everyone misses Win,” Diana said. I pointed to the frolicking couples and she shook her head. “I think they do, inside. In their way.”
    “I miss him,” I said.
    “Of course you do.”
    “Just because I’m not sobbing my guts out doesn’t mean I don’t miss him.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “Wait,” I said.
    I stopped walking, dug my heels into the sand. Diana stopped walking, too, and looked up into my face. I had the urge to be mean to her. Like, really mean. Her hopefulness and sensitivity were there, right in front of me, and if I wanted I could stomp her down until she understood what the rest of the lobotomized horde didn’t: this was all pointless.
    Maybe that was why I brought her out here after so many years of ignoring her. Maybe I could tell that it was within my power to make her feel as shitty as I felt all the time. It would be so fucking easy. As easy as kissing her would be. She had nodefenses at all. I could be a bastard—laugh at her, as I’m pretty sure I’ve laughed at her before—or a dream come true, giving her a romantic memory to treasure forever. Well, not forever, since there’s no such thing. Till the end.
    I sank onto the sand and Diana sat next to me. If she came any closer I would have had to choose—bastard or dreamboat—but she didn’t. She looked out at the dark ocean and waited.
    I breathed in through my nose. My heart was beating like I’d run up the dune. I told myself to calm down, but the panic only got worse. The ground tilted like I was going to be thrown off the planet.
    “We’ll be seniors soon,” I said. It was by far the stupidest thing I’d said all day, and if any of my brothers had heard it they would’ve laughed so hard they hurt themselves, but of course Diana didn’t make fun of me for it. She seemed to almost understand my need for stupid chatter, because she didn’t say Win’s name again.
    We talked. About her hair and her cat and her babysitting job, things she cared about. About my brothers and the bonfire