Paper Hearts

  Pretend he’s still Aaron, I told myself for the second time that night.

  So I opened my bag and pulled out something to write with.Before I could lose my nerve, I leaned over and grabbed his hand. The tip of the marker shook as I pressed it to his skin. I could have asked for his phone and typed my number in, but there was always the chance he’d refuse. Now he’d have to look at this little piece of me on his drive home. Alec said nothing as I printed on him in blue ink, but his hand was warm against mine. When I finished, I was surprised to find him watching me. His eyes were breathtaking, really, and I decided that gray was my new favorite color.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled. There was a small smile on his face as he inspected the tattoo I’d given him. I waited for him to move, but he didn’t.

  “Well,” I said, sinking back in my seat. “I should probably head in.”

  He nodded, still staring down at the digits on his hand. I gathered up my bag, but I wasn’t actually ready to leave. I wanted something else to happen—maybe for him to give me his number in return or offer to walk me to the door, but no such luck. His lips stayed clamped shut.

  “Okay, thanks for the ride.”

  Alec’s gaze locked onto mine. “You’re welcome.” There was an electric look in his eyes. His lips parted as if he was going to say more, and I leaned in to hear him better. But then he shook his head ever so slightly, like he’d caught himself doing something he shouldn’t, and turned his attention back to his hands. Which was a major letdown. Like reaching the top of a roller coaster and realizing there was no big drop.

  It was time to get out of Alec’s car.

  My fingers gripped the door handle, and then I noticed his black wolf mask sitting on the dashboard. He must have tossed it up there when we got in the car. After a moment of hesitation, I reached over and took it, swapping it with my own.

  “To remember tonight,” I told him when he gave me a curious look. Not that I would forget tonight, but I wanted something more solid to hold on to than a memory. Sighing, I finally climbed out of the car.

  Once I was standing on the driveway, Alec rolled down the window. “Bye, Felicity Lyon,” he said, and I blinked.

  He remembers my last name? He’d seemed upset when I’d shared it with him, so I was impressed he managed to recall it.

  “Bye, Alec Williams,” I said as he pulled away. And just like that he was gone, taillights disappearing down the road.

  • • •

  I let myself into the house. As I expected, it was silent and dark.

  Mom wouldn’t get home until late, if she came home at all. It was always like this when Dave wasn’t working. My mom’s boyfriend was a trucker, and sometimes he’d be gone for weeks, so she spent as much time with him as possible during his days off.

  I didn’t mind all that much; I liked Dave. Unlike with her past boyfriends, I could tell my mom was happy. He made her laugh, and whenever he came back from a trip, he brought her a little trinket from one of the states he’d driven through. Sometimes there was even something for me.

  I flipped on the lights.

  My feet felt like they’d been squeezed through a meat grinder, so I kicked off my heels and left them in a pile by the door. A happy sigh escaped my lips as I made my way down the hall toward my room. It had been a long day. Muscles I didn’t know I had were achy, and my whole body felt sluggish, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. My mind was still turning, trying to comprehend the events of tonight: Met cute boy. Cute boy is actually Alec Williams. It was hard to believe. Less than five minutes had passed since he dropped me off, but our time together already felt like a lucid dream. I wanted to touch his mask again, just to be sure the experience wasn’t something I’d imagined.

  At my desk, I pushed a jar of my favorite bugle beads out of the way to make room for my bag. All sorts of jewelry-making supplies were scattered across the surface—crimp pliers, spools of gold and silver wire, clasps, you name it, along with containers and containers filled with beads of every color. I lifted the flap on my bag. Inside was Alec’s wolf mask. I pulled it out to examine it more closely.

  There was a dusting of black jewels on the brow and a tiny row of silver swirls looping around the eyeholes. It was stunning, and much more intricate than I’d originally thought. Biting back a smile, I set the mask on my bookshelf with the rest of my keepsakes, between the conch shell Asha had brought back from a trip to Florida and the tiny carving of a lion my friend Boomer had made in shop class, back when he thought my last name was pronounced like the animal.

  After pulling on my pajamas, I grabbed my phone and flopped into bed. I sent two quick texts to Asha.

  Felicity: You’ll never guess what happened tonight!!!

  Felicity: PS you’re going to die of jealousy.

  Then I tossed my phone on the nightstand and waited for her response. I couldn’t contain my grin. This was the best Desertion Day I’d had in four long years.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning, I woke to the sound of a dog barking. Not fully awake, I nestled further into my pillow without opening my eyes. The barking continued, but I chose to ignore it until there was a knock on the window.

  Was someone outside?

  No way, I decided. Not when there was a giant thorny bush to crawl through.

  Another impatient rap sounded on the pane, and I groaned.

  Go away, I thought, but the knocking continued, so I turned over in bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Last night, I hadn’t fallen asleep until the early-morning hours. Thoughts of Alec had kept me up and—Holy mother!

  I shot up in bed as everything came rushing back to me. I, Felicity Ann Lyon, had hung out with an actual member of the world’s most famous boy band. I glanced at my bookshelf, and proof that I hadn’t dreamed the encounter was sitting right on top of the copy of Endless Origami:1,000 Step-by-Step Designs that Rose had given me.

  There was another knock, and it sounded angry enough to shatter the glass. I spotted Asha crouched outside in the bushes. She motioned for me to unlock the latch.

  “God, you sleep like the dead. I rang the doorbell for literally ten minutes,” she complained, after I dragged myself across the room and pushed open the window. “I’m pretty sure your neighbor thought I was trying to break in.”

  She passed her dog through the opening for me to take. I’d always been a canine lover, but Lord Pugton was an exception. The wrinkly nine-year-old pug farted so often I was starting to wonder if Asha only fed him refried beans. He peed in my shoe during a sleepover once, and every time he looked at me, I was convinced he was giving me the stink eye. In fact, his bulgy little eyes were focused on me now, sharp and suspicious, as I reached out and took him from Asha.

  “I’m watching you,” I whispered when I released him on the floor. Lord Pugton made a mad dash toward my bed. He disappeared underneath it, most likely to hunt for another shoe to destroy as part of his reign of terror.

  Asha hoisted herself onto the sill and climbed into my room. “Holy amazeballs,” she said, wiping her brow as she straightened up. “It’s like Canada in here. I’m moving in until this heat wave is over.”

  I quickly shut the window so none of the heat could seep in. “Battle of the AC still waging?”

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “It’s in full swing. My dad is relentless.”

  Asha’s parents had been fighting about the electrical bill since the start of the heat wave. Her father was a frugal-living penny-pincher who deserved his own show on TLC. He reused everything from coffee grinds to dental floss, and one time when we went to the movies, Mr. Van de Berg dug through the trash for a large popcorn tub so he could get the free refill. His biggest money-saving trick? No air-conditioning. Normally Mrs. Van de Berg put up with her husband’s strange antics, but she refused to melt to death in her own house—which, she’d complained, was currently hotter than summert
ime in Mumbai.

  “You know you’re welcome to stay, but before you even think about sitting on my bed,” I said and handed her a towel, “you need a shower. Pronto.”

  From under my bed, Lord Pugton grunted as if in agreement.

  Asha was glistening from her daily run. I never understood how anyone could enjoy running. There were those awful feelings of burning lungs and Jell-O legs, but Asha had fallen in love with cross-country during our freshman year and had been racking up miles ever since. It was two miles from my house to hers. While that was a piece of cake for Asha, I often wondered how Lord Pugton handled the distance. This heat was deadly, and she was absolutely insane for running in it.

  “Thanks.” She took the towel and wiped the sweat off her face. “I feel like I jumped in a pond. A scummy, disgusting pond. I have so much boob sweat that someone could do laps in my cleavage.”

  “Asha,” I said, “someone could go swimming in your cleavage regardless of the sweat.”

  Drown in it even. My best friend was curvy in a Marilyn Monroe sort of way, all bust and butt with a waist so small it was like she was born wearing a corset.

  I’d always been a little jealous of her for it, starting in the third grade when she pulled aside the collar of her shirt and showed me the pink strap of her first training bra. When I’d gotten home from school that day, I’d begged my mom to let me get one too, but she’d laughed and said, “All in good time.” But that time never came. While Asha blew through cup sizes, shedding bras like leaves in autumn, I was stuck with the chest of a little boy. Nowadays, most of the guys on our high school wrestling team had bigger boobs than me.

  Asha grinned and shimmied at me before disappearing down the hall. A minute later, the water pipes groaned when she turned on the shower. While I waited for her to return, I changed out of my pajamas—a Harry Potter T-shirt that read My Patronus Is Pizza and a pair of baggy flannel pants that had seen better days—and attempted to make my bed. As I was arranging my pillows, Big Blue, my stuffed brachiosaur that I’d had since I was little, fell on the floor. Lord Pugton shot out from the dark space below the bed, snatched Big Blue between his slobbery jaws, and escaped before I could save my favorite stuffed animal.

  “Get back here, you little shit!” I dropped to my knees and crouched over so I could peer under the bed. Two reflective eyes stared back at me. Even when I lay down on my stomach and stretched out my arm, Asha’s dog was parked an inch beyond my fingertips. “If you don’t come out right now,” I warned him, “I’m going to kill you. Seriously. I’ll make an ugly little hat from your pelt and everything.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I straightened up quickly, smacking my head on the bed frame in the process. Asha was standing in the doorway wrapped in a towel, her long, dark hair dripping down her back.

  “To that demon you call a dog.” I rubbed the lump already forming on the top of my skull. “He stole Big Blue.”

  She laughed and walked over to my dresser. The bottom drawer was hers, and she rifled through it before pulling out athletic shorts and a fresh T-shirt. “He’s doing you a favor then,” she said, but after tugging on her clothes, she called Lord Pugton out from his lair and rescued Big Blue from the clutches of evil. Blue’s long neck was soggy where it had been chewed, but it was nothing a trip to the laundry room couldn’t fix.

  “So,” Asha said, plopping down on the end of my bed. Her fingers wrestled her thick hair into a braid. “You totally left me hanging last night.”

  “I did?”

  “Um, hello? You can’t send me a vague, yet equally intriguing text and never respond. That’s cruel.”

  “You messaged me back? I don’t think I got anything.” In fact, I remembered staring at my ceiling unable to fall asleep, waiting for Asha to respond. I’d needed to tell someone, to unload the excitement that had built inside my chest, but I never heard the telltale buzz of an incoming text.

  Stretching out across my mattress, I reached for my phone on the nightstand. “Crap,” I said when the screen refused to light up. “It’s dead. I must’ve forgotten to plug it in. Sorry, Asha.”

  “It’s fine. Just tell me what happened. Otherwise, I’m going to die. My gravestone is going to read, ‘The Suspense Actually Killed Her.’”

  “Okay, okay! So after you went to get us drinks…”

  I told her everything. From Alec spilling his soda on me to listening to music in the garden. Everything, that was, except for Alec’s real name. I saved that bit for my grand finale.

  “He offered you a ride home?” she asked when she thought I was finished filling her in. My best friend was a hopeless romantic, and she heaved a long sigh, just like she did every time we finished watching The Notebook. “God, that’s the cutest.”

  “That’s not even the best part.”

  “There’s more?” The dreamy look in her eyes cleared, and she sat up straighter. “Don’t tell me! Aaron has a twin brother I can date, doesn’t he?”

  “Nope,” I said slowly, enjoying Asha squirming in anticipation. “Better.”

  “What’s better than two cute boys?”

  I leaned in and paused. Exciting things always happened to Asha. She was some kind of magnet for luck, like the time she accidentally dialed a radio station during the middle of a contest and won a weekend getaway to New York City. Or there was the time the van ran out of gas, and who came along to give her a lift to the nearest station? Eddie Marks, soccer captain extraordinaire and man of my dreams. But this experience was all mine, and I was going to savor the moment.

  “Come on, spill!” she begged, bouncing up and down on my mattress so that she nearly fell off.

  I laughed. “All right, all right!” I said.

  And then I told her the truth, Alec’s name gushing from my lips in an excited whisper.

  Asha’s eyebrows furrowed into a V. “Aaron knows Alec Williams? Like from the Heartbreakers?”

  “No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Aaron is Alec Williams.”

  • • •

  At first, Asha didn’t believe me. It took more than five minutes to convince her that Aaron No-Last-Name was a bona fide member of the Heartbreakers, and when she finally accepted my story as truth, she was upset I didn’t get a picture of the two of us. Apparently I needed proof. As if I’d lie about something this monumental.

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t ask for one,” she whined.

  “Because,” I responded, chewing on my fingernail. I was struggling to explain myself. “That would have ruined everything.”

  “But it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Asha stared at me as if I’d lost it, and maybe I had…

  Then again, she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t heard the strain in Alec’s voice when he admitted who he was, or seen the look on his face after the woman asked for an autograph. I’d wanted to go to the ball for a Cinderella-esque night, a few magical hours where I could put on a mask and pretend to be someone else. And I’d gotten the impression that Alec did too. The masquerade had given him a chance to be a regular guy instead of a teenage heartthrob, and asking for a picture or an autograph would have spoiled that for him.

  “It wasn’t worth it,” I responded and shrugged.

  Asha sighed. “But—Alec Williams.”

  She was still shaking her head in disappointment when my mom knocked on the door. “Felicity?” she asked, stepping inside my room. Dave must have just dropped her off, because even though she’d already slipped into her bathrobe, there was a Starbucks to-go coffee in her hand. “Oh, morning, Asha. How are you, dear?”

  “Hi, Brenda. I’m good. Thoroughly enjoying the comfort of your AC.”

  “Wonderful,” my mom answered, but I could tell she wasn’t listening. “Do you mind giving me and Felicity a moment? There’re muffins on the kitchen table.”

  “Ooh, muffins!” Asha
was out the door without another word.

  I watched as my mom took a spot on the end of my bed. There was a funny look on her face, and I had a feeling she was still upset about our conversation yesterday.

  “Felicity, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” she said, confirming my suspicion.

  “I have something super exciting to tell you too,” I exclaimed, hoping my enthusiasm would warrant a subject change. I didn’t want to revisit Rose or her birthday. That was supposed to be something I only had to deal with once a year.

  “Does it have anything to do with this?” Mom pulled a newspaper from behind her back and tossed it between us. Only it wasn’t a newspaper. It was one of those daily celebrity tabloids filled with scandals and gossip.

  “Holy shit.” With a trembling hand, I picked up the tabloid. The front page was a picture of Alec helping me into his car. I quickly flipped to the article inside.

  Alec Williams Spotted with Look-Alike of Rumored Girlfriend Violet James

  Alec Williams, bass guitarist for the Heartbreakers, was seen leaving the Children’s Cancer Alliance charity ball Saturday night with an unidentified woman. What has Hollywood buzzing is not that Williams’s date was a mystery, but her resemblance to his rumored girlfriend, Immortal Nights actress Violet James. Williams, 18, and James, 20, were first romantically linked after the Heartbreakers filmed a stint on the hit TV show, and then when the two were photographed together at a Malibu restaurant earlier this month. Reps for Williams and James did not respond to a request for a comment.

  Everything suddenly made sense: Why Alec noticed me in crowd. Why he brought up Violet. Why it seemed like he knew her. I scanned the rest of the article, which recapped how we left the masquerade together and called me a less-pretty version of Violet.

  Ouch. That definitely stung.

  “Are you listening to me, Felicity?”

  “Huh?” My gaze snapped from the picture to my mom. Her face was pinched.