Heart on a Chain

  “Okay everyone, get ready. Here she comes.”

  I’m still grinning, but my mouth drops open when I start down the steps and see Henry. He has on a white, loose shirt that also laces up the front and some kind of black pants tucked into boots. It’s at best a loose interpretation of a medieval costume, but that doesn’t matter, because he looks amazing. Like a hero or knight stepped out of some distant time, waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me.

  “Oh, honey, you look like a princess,” Emma sighs. I glance at her and she snaps a picture. My eyes are drawn back to Henry. He’s staring up at me; the look on his face intensely powerful. As I look back at him, he slowly smiles, melting my knees again.

  Emma keeps snapping pictures as I walk down, and when I place my hand into Henry’s outstretched one, she takes a photo. She turns the camera toward me to show me the last shot. I’m looking up at Henry while he gazes down at me, both of us with half-smiles on our faces, looking as if we feel we’re the last two people on the earth.

  Henry grins at the picture, then leans down to kiss me. Before he can, Amy speaks up.

  “Did you make that one, Claire?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow, it looks really good on her.”

  “Pretty,” Christine echoes.

  I smile at them all.

  “Okay, okay, stand by each other so I can take your picture. Put your jacket on, Henry.”

  His jacket turns out to be a black and gold velvet doublet with slashed sleeves. I didn’t think he could look any better than he did, but then he puts the jacket on. He reaches out, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me in against his side, still not taking his gaze from me. Emma takes a few more pictures, followed by a round of hugs for me and Henry.

  They all follow us out to the car to wave as we drive away. Henry grins deprecatingly at me as he waves back at them. When we’ve driven up the street and turn the corner, he suddenly pulls over to the side of the street, putting the car in park. Without a word, he leans over, pulls my face to his and kisses me deeply.

  After a few minutes, he pulls back and smiles.

  “Hi,” he says.

  I laugh.

  “Hello.”

  “You look great,” he says, eyes skimming me, touching my hair first with his eyes, then lightly with his hand. “I’m gonna have to do something really great to thank the little squirt.”

  “You don’t look so bad yourself,” I tell him.

  He kisses me again, and I lose a little of the guilt over lying to be with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  At the corn maze, we meet Ian and Kaden, and another of our lunch buddies, Brock, with their dates. Their dates are dressed predictably in the prostitute-version of different things, and they’re all freezing. The guys are a vampire, werewolf, and a doctor of all things. The girls ooh and ahh about my dress, which Henry informs them his sister designed. But even while they are admiring the dress, they’re looking at me askance, and at Henry with desire.

  “Okay, here’s the plan,” Ian says. “We all have to figure out all of the clues in the maze. There are thirty numbered clues you have to find. Each post has a stamp for your paper.” He hands each couple a small piece of paper, numbered from one to thirty. “All the losers have to buy ice cream for the winners. No cheating; I know the guy who works the ticket booth and he’ll ‘fess up if someone gets the answers from him.

  “You two start at number one,” he says, pointing to Brock. “You two start at number fifteen and go backwards,” he indicates Kaden. “Henry you start at fifteen and go up in numbers, and we will start at thirty and go backward. First couple out with all the answers wins.” I’m completely confused, but no one else is, so I pretend like I understand as well.

  Henry takes the cape that he holds over his arm, and places it over my shoulders as we head into the maze. He keeps his arm around my shoulder once it’s in place. I hear the girl who’s walking with us sigh, and I glance at her to see her watching Henry with longing. I look at Henry and for the first time feel a tickle of fear in my throat.

  For whatever reason he’s chosen to be my friend, and though he likes to kiss me and touch me, he hasn’t said that we’re anything more than that. I have no rights to him—he could be kissing other girls as well. Ice shoots down my spine at the image that thought brings to mind. On the other hand, he could get tired of me and walk away without looking back. My stomach lurches.

  Henry glances at me; I had grabbed my stomach unthinkingly.

  “Are you alright?” he asks.

  I nod, wrapping my arm around his waist. Just in case he starts to wonder himself why he’s wasting his time with me, I decide I better make as much of what time I can.

  We find marker fifteen, and take the paper and pencil they had given us when we entered and write down the answer to the first clue. The other couple head right to find the next marker and we head left.

  We’re hunting for the next marker; I’m studying the map in the dim light when I realize Henry is no longer with me. I stop, turning in a full circle.

  “Henry?”

  Where did he go? I feel a hint of fear—has he abandoned me? Is this the prank I’ve been waiting for him to pull all along? It’s elaborate; I have to give him that. Tears prick the back of my eyelids, but I bite my lip to stop them. I won’t give them that.

  Then his hand shoots out of a cluster of stalks and he grabs my arm, pulling my into a private haven created by the corn.

  “Henry, wha—?”

  Then his mouth is on mine, cutting off my words and coherent thought. He wraps his arms around my waist under the cloak. I put my arms on his shoulders, dragging the edges of the cloak up with it, forming a cocoon around us.

  He draws back, bringing one hand up and using his thumb to wipe away the tear that escaped and is running down my cheek.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asks, concerned.

  I shake my head.

  “I made you cry, though.”

  “No, just scared me a little.”

  “I’m sorry.” His apology is full of remorse.

  I shake my head again.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it does, I would never purposely do anything to make you cry.”

  Afraid his words will make me cry more, I tilt my head up for another kiss, to which he obliges. We’re sheltered by the corn stalks, but we can still hear others walking by, laughing or talking.

  “Come on, we’d better get going.”

  With reluctance, we leave the cove and continue on our way. This time I keep my hand firmly in Henry’s so he can’t disappear again. We make occasional stops in various private pockets in the stalks whenever we can find them, which makes it difficult to solve the clues with my thoughts all muddled. For that matter, the stops make it hard to even care about solving the riddles—free ice cream or not.

  As we get closer to the thirtieth marker though, I start to notice some disturbing sounds. Creaking and groaning, something that sounds like a chain saw, but the worst is the screaming. I look at Henry and he doesn’t seem to notice anything, so I decide maybe it’s my imagination.

  When I hear another scream and jump, drawing closer to Henry, he glances down at me and smiles. I try to smile back, but my heart is pounding. We walk through an archway and find ourselves in a foggy, nearly dark area. The creaking and groaning are louder now; we walk around the corner there’s a girl lying on a table, screaming for help while some man with wild, gray hair in a blood smeared apron stands over her with a knife dripping red, getting ready to hack into her bleeding abdomen.

  My feet freeze in place. I looked at Henry with panic and see to my shock that he’s looking at them with a smile. Just then someone else in a white mask and blue jumpsuit jumps out at me with the chainsaw I’d heard earlier.

  I cringe against Henry, ready to flee, panic filling my head. He glances down at me with a laugh, holding me tightly in place. Henry wants to kill me? I think with horror. That??
?s what this is about? Then his face changes from laughter to a panic nearly reflective of my own.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  I can’t answer. It feels as though all the blood has drained to my feet and I couldn’t move if my life depended on it—which it does when the boy with the knife starts towards us. Henry grabs my shoulders and shakes me a little.

  “Kate!”

  And then he’s scooping me up into his arms, striding back the way we had come, all the way out the entrance until we’re in the parking lot. He sits down on a hay bale with me in his lap.

  “Is she okay?” I hear someone ask.

  “Get her some water,” someone else says.

  I never take my eyes from Henry’s face, which is alarmed, and he never takes his eyes from my face, even when someone gives him a cup of water, which he presses to my lips.

  I pull his head down, placing my mouth next to his ear.

  “You have to get someone to help that girl,” I whisper urgently.

  He pulls back to look at me. “What girl?”

  “You saw her—that guy was hurting her!”

  “What? You mean—” He breaks off, letting out a relieved laugh. He pulls me close, hugging me tightly.

  “No, Henry, you have to—”

  “It’s not real.” He says this low so that no one else can hear.

  “What?”

  “It’s not real, Kate. It’s fake. Haven’t you ever been to a haunted house before?”

  I shake my head slowly, realization dawning of what he’s telling me.

  “You mean, they’re just…?”

  “Just pretending, Kate. It’s not real. You thought…?”

  As his words sink in, my face flames with mortification.

  “Not…real?”

  He smiles, relief evident on his face. I glance to the side, seeing the crowd there, curious, concerned looks on their faces. Henry follows my look.

  “Hey, can you guys just back up a little? She just needs some air,” he calls out.

  “She okay?” someone asks.

  He looks back down at me, and I’m glad to see there isn’t any mockery on his face.

  “Yeah, she just got a little sick, a little faint.”

  “Scared, huh?” one of the workers asks. “We get at least one a night.”

  I bury my face in Henry’s shirtfront, and he hugs me tighter. Everyone loses interest when they see that there isn’t anything exciting happening, and eventually they leave.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” I mumble into him.

  He laughs softly. “You scared me to death!” I just burrow in deeper. “You really haven’t ever been to a haunted house or anything like that before?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. If I would have known I would have warned you. I can only imagine what that must have looked like…”

  I picture it again and shudder.

  “You know you’ll make those actors happy, right?”

  I peek up at him. “Why?”

  “That’s what they work for, to scare people. Yours was probably the best reaction they’ve had all night.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  He shrugs. “Think of it as a charitable act.”

  I sit up a little more, looking at him questioningly, a wry smile in place.

  “Sure,” he says, “they don’t make squat for working here; their only reward is in the reactions they get from people. So you gave them what they wanted. Charitable.”

  “That’s warped,” I tell him, smiling.

  “I do what I can.” He smiles back. “Do you want to go home, or should we wait and get ice cream with the others?”

  “Let’s wait.”

  It’s some time before the others return. I move to sit next to Henry on the hay bale, and we sit there talking, waiting.

  “So, why don’t you play football?” I ask him.

  He looks at me, surprised at the question.

  “I mean, you’re big, built like the rest of them.”

  He shrugs, “I missed tryouts. They were done when we moved back.”

  “You played before?”

  “A little,” he says, and I get the impression it was more than a little. I’m glad he’s not—otherwise he’d probably be dating a cheer leader and not hanging out with me.

  We obviously lose since we didn’t even finish, but everyone comes back laughing and out of breath from running from the chain saw guy. I’m glad to see that fright is normal, though I suspect their fear is put on, rather than real, as mine had been.

  We go to the Ice Castles Ice Cream Parlor. It’s fun pretending to be normal, though I don’t say much, mostly just sit quietly and observe. I have to watch Brock’s date watch Henry, but also have the joy of being the center of his attention so completely that by the end of the night she’s alternately pouting and glaring daggers at me.

  When Henry finally drops me off, it’s much later than I had planned, and I walk home with the familiar dread. I sneak in my bedroom window, unsure if my mom’s asleep or awake, but I’d seen the glow of the TV through the window. I decide my story will be that she’d been sleeping when I came home, which is entirely feasible, and so I had gone to bed. I’ll probably get a smack or two, or maybe an insult, but she won’t have much proof otherwise, and won’t be able to recall clearly if she’d seen me come in or not.

  I guess there’s one advantage to having a mom gorked on drugs.

  Chapter Twelve

  Since that night, Henry’s thrown out my ruling about not letting anyone see us together. He always either holds my hand or has his arm around me, walking me to classes and kissing me when dropping me off. And I no longer care to try to get him to stop—no matter the threat from Jessica.

  Most weekends I’m able to get away one night to see Henry, and sometimes during the week as well. At home, I’m as beyond reproach as much as possible, though she still manages to find fault; but since her dinner date with my dad, there’s a slight change in her.

  She isn’t ideal by any means, but sometimes she tries a little bit, by asking about school or even allowing me some dinner. She and my dad aren’t fighting quite so much; I haven’t seen a bruise or fat lip on her since their dinner date.

  October rolls into November, and snow begins to fall. At first, it only lasts a day or two and then melts, but the week before Thanksgiving a heavy snow falls that seems determined to stay for a while.

  Because of how happy I am in my life with Henry, and because of the calmer atmosphere at home, I become somewhat content and hopeful—hopeful that there might be a chance for us to become a real family—maybe not as good as the Jamison’s, but at least a shadow of them.

  I decide to make us a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Usually Thanksgiving passes unnoticed as do most holidays. In the past, I would pathetically prowl the streets to watch families gather in their homes. Not this year. This year I’m determined that our family be the one having a happy, laughing meal together. Maybe the laughing, happy part won’t happen, but I’ll settle for together.

  I know of a place where I can go get food provided by the food bank. I’ve been there a few times previously out of desperation when there was seriously no food in the cupboards at home, and no money to buy any. Of course, I have to tell my mother that the money came from the pitifully thin grocery funds she places in a can. She hates charity.

  They provide a small turkey, some potatoes and dressing, some noodles, two cans of veggies and a can of cranberry jelly—all expired, but at least still edible. It’s not the elaborate layout I’m sure they’ll be having at Henry’s house, but it’ll have to do. It’s better than we usually have.

  Thanksgiving morning I get up early to start the turkey cooking. I follow the directions on the box and stuff the turkey. After it’s cooked a few hours, and the house is filling with the mouthwatering aroma, I go into the kitchen to start the potatoes.

  By four o’clock the mini-feast is ready. I’ve set the tab
le for three as fancy as I can with what we have, including a few late fall leaves I’d found on the back porch under the eave, miraculously not completely dried out. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself—it’s nothing like Claire’s table, but not bad.

  My father had come home quite late last night, and I heard him get into the shower twenty minutes earlier. I sit at the table, waiting for him to come down the stairs, and then I’ll go into the living room and bring them in for my surprise.

  I hear his footsteps on the stairs, and almost immediately my mother starts in on him about having been out all night. He begins yelling and within minutes it escalates into a screaming match. I sit at the kitchen table, hands vainly over my ears, tears running down my face as my plan unravels. Then I hear the tell-tale sound of fist meeting jaw—a sound I know better than most sounds—then his car pulling quickly away.

  I don’t move, looking at what I’ve done. What a fool I am.

  “What the hell is this?”

  I look up at my mother, hulking in the doorway. Her face is filled with rage above her swelling jaw.

  “It’s Thanksgiving,” I tell her lamely.

  “Where did all of this come from?” she screams.

  “I got it,” I murmur, fear threading its way through my veins.

  She takes a step toward the table, looks at the perfectly cooked turkey, lying on the plate, waiting to be carved.

  “Did you steal from me again, or is it charity?” her voice is low, more of a warning than her screaming. I blanch. She knows I steal from her? I can’t answer, frozen in my terror.

  She touches the turkey, then in a quick movement picks it up, plate and all, and hurls it at my head. I duck too late, the heavy glass platter glancing off my eyebrow. Immediately blood begins spilling down my face from the cut it leaves there. I dive sideways off the chair, cowering where I fall. She strides over, kicking me in the ribs. I try to protect myself, but this only angers her further, and the kicks come more frequently and harder. That isn’t enough to vent her anger, so she picks up the chair. She swings it down towards me, and I put my arm up in unthinking defense. I feel my wrist snap as the wooden spindles break.