Ari
It is not that the pain disappears, or that the alchemy gets any easier.
But true to Mr. Rudra’s words, true to the adaptive nature of the human body, Ari finds that each time he works with the elements, he is more and more accustomed to accepting the agony that washes over him.
Gradually, he begins to be the alchemy student who scores well on exams, who turns in his essays first. He answers before Zan. Dominique occasionally asks him for help. Isla spends more time with him, tutoring him now in individual subjects. The organic chemistry of the human body. Differences in the neural networks of human and animal brains. Psychology. Immunology.
He learns too about sand, the white pill he’s seen Mr. Rudra take. His mother would frown, undoubtedly; his father would tell him it is a sin to pollute your body with such a drug. But as much as Ari tries to resist the temptation, he secretly wonders when he might be allowed to use it. Maybe his parents would think differently if they knew what sand was: a substance of divine illumination. The physical path to moksha. As Isla puts it,We make sand because everyone deserves a chance at perfection.
Or maybe he’s wrong altogether about how his parents would react. After all, it’s been years, and they could have changed drastically. He’s not even sure he would recognize them on the street; when he closes his eyes now, he has trouble picturing the details of their faces or recalling their voices.
A year passes, then another. His body acclimates as he grows taller and stronger, his shoulders broadening and firming, his figure transforming into that of a young man. But one thing never changes: the sense of loss that hits him each time he performs a transmutation, the fragment of his soul he sacrifices. Isla says that the soul can heal itself to some degree, but that over many years, with extended use, it withers, breaking down. When he has practiced particularly hard, he finds himself famished, devouringsecond and third helpings at dinner as if his body cannot replenish itself quickly enough. He always sleeps as if a part of him has died.
At school, more and more girls talk to him. He’s never very good at knowing what to say, not like how he instinctively knows with Sam, but the girls don’t seem to mind. Boys follow suit, as if gaining the approval of the girls is somehow the gateway to popularity, and before he knows it, he’s getting invited to a birthday party, to hang out at the coffee shop after school, to go out for dinner sometime. He turns down the invitations, knowing Mr. Rudra would disapprove. His refusal to partake in popularity makes him even more popular, as if he is a luxury purse too exclusive to buy, and people clamor for him, hungry for what they can’t have. Girls gossip about him in the halls. Who turns down an invite to Bobby Artagh’s birthday? Why does Ari always get picked up in a black car? Is he the son of someone famous? Are his parents ambassadors? Has he slept with anyone at school? Is he good? Does he like boys? Is he seeing that recluse, Sam? No one knows, so their fascination with him intensifies.
Ari improves at conversation, learns how to make people giggle and blush, starts to understand things like innuendos and sex and others’ attraction to him. But no matter how loud their constant hum of attention gets, it fades away the instant he is with Sam. Sam never treats him like an object of fascination. She only treats him like Ari, like a kindred spirit, like someone else with a shadow trailing behind them, understanding each other without understanding at all.
Like she needs him too.
One day in junior year, Sam asks Ari, “Are you going to the spring formal?”
His heart lurches with excitement at her question—then drops almost immediately.
“I—” Ari shakes his head regretfully. “Sorry, I can’t.”
“Oh,” she says, squinting out at the lot. “That’s okay. I don’t dance, anyway.” She lets out a laugh that seems too cheerful. “I bet you’re getting asked by everyone.”
It’s true—he has already declined other offers—but he still shakes his head, both too modest to share and too shy to confess that he’d only ever want to go with her. Confused by his emotions, he says at last, “It’s just a party.”
Sam’s shoulders fall a little, and he hates himself for his answer. “Agreed,”she replies quickly, tilting her head at him in a way that makes him feel warm. “I’d rather read one of your letters.”
He smiles at her. “I’ll write you something really good tomorrow.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she says. Then her bus pulls up, and she’s walking away from him. “Bye, Ari,” she calls over her shoulder.
He calls back, but she’s already lost in the crowd, and for once, he can’t pick her out of it.
That night, he starts a new letter to Sam. He finds himself aching, as ever, to tell her about his alchemy training, as if letting her in on his secrets might make up for him turning her down. And how bad would it be, really, if she knew? Even if she decides to tell others about it, no one would believe her anyway. But the bigger this corner of his world grows, the heavier it weighs on his chest, until he thinks it might crush him entirely. Before he knows it, he has written pages and pages, rambling on about why he’s always picked up by a black car after school, why he never speaks about his personal life, here are the transmutations I’ve learned so far, here’s what I’m struggling with, and I’m lonely because I can’t talk to many about it, and I miss my family so much it feels like part of my heart has been cut from my body, and I think about you all the time, I think I might be in love with you, I’m so sorry, I hope that’s okay to say, I hope we can still be friends.
He stops at last, an hour later, realizing he’s gone on for a dozen pages. They read like the ramblings of a madman, and as he goes back over it, he’s paralyzed by an overwhelming wave of shame for dumping all of his grief and insecurities on his truest friend. He stares at the last sentences he wrote, confessing his love for her.
Then he shreds each page by hand, balls the paper up, and tosses it all in the trash.
The next morning, he gives Sam a letter that only reads:
I would have danced with you.
One night, when the light has already disappeared behind the mountains and Ari is, as usual, the only person left in the gallery, he hears a commotion downstairs.
He looks up from where he’s studying on the second floor of the rotunda. It’s his favorite spot, this set of mahogany tables tucked snugly between themarble railings and the book stacks. From here, no one downstairs can get a good view of him, but he can see the full glory of the circular space below.
The sound of muffled sobbing catches his attention first. He blinks, looking up in a daze from a book on the chemical makeup of the plantAchillea millefolium. At first he thinks he’s making the noise up. Then he hears the sound of boots echoing against the tiles out in the hall. Instinctively, he lowers himself against the table so that he’s entirely hidden from view, then peers down at the ground floor through the railings. Seconds later, the double doors to the study fly open with a bang—and Ari sees Mr. Rudra come in with Zan, his hand so tight around the boy’s arm that the skin around his grip has turned blue.
Zan is the one sobbing, and the sound is so foreign to Ari’s ears that for a second he thinks he misheard it. But the boy’s face is streaked with tears, snot dribbling from his nose, and for the first time, his expression is not one of condescension or cruelty—but of terror so stark that Ari feels the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
Mr. Rudra yanks Zan hard enough to throw him off his balance. Zan stumbles and falls ungracefully, sprawling for a second on his knees before catching himself with his free hand. Mr. Rudra pulls him to his feet with a look of disgust.
“Shut up and walk faster,” the man says. “I don’t have all night.”
