My Heart and Other Black Holes

  “Aysel,” Mrs. Franklin says, her voice shaking. “Is there something I should know?” She wraps her arms around herself again. “Should I be worried?”

  I don’t answer her. I check the nightstand and I don’t find any letters—no suicide note. I let out a shallow breath. “I’m not sure.”

  I crouch down and duck my head under the bed. I don’t find anything. I stand up and walk over to Captain Nemo’s tank. My heart stops when I see it. Another dish of food has been added. There used to be only one, but now there are two.

  I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. It could be a mistake. Maybe Captain Nemo was extra hungry this morning. My mind races with excuses, but nothing is as convincing as the pit in my stomach that is growing wider and wider as I watch the turtle bob up and down in the water.

  “We need to find him,” I shout, but it comes out more like a strangled whisper. I rush out of the room and gallop down the stairs. Mrs. Franklin follows me and grabs my hand, pulling me back toward her.

  “What is going on?” she asks. Her voice is breathless and her face is red.

  “I’m worried that Roman . . .” I can’t look at her. I fiddle with my car keys.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  It’s not a request; it’s a demand. I don’t want her to come with me, but I don’t know how I can tell her no. How can I tell her anything when all of this is my fault? When I should have told her days ago about our plan, our suicide pact.

  My car peels out as I back out of the driveway as fast as I can. Mrs. Franklin presses her palms against the dashboard to stay steady, but she doesn’t reprimand me for driving too fast. I speed to Crestville Pointe.

  Mrs. Franklin begins to sob. She wails. Her shoulders shudder. She pounds her fist against the passenger-side window. “This is all my fault.”

  It’s not your fault. It’s mine, I scream inside my head. My jaw clenches and I keep my eyes focused on the road. Roman always wanted me to watch the road. To stay focused.

  “He blames himself for his sister’s death,” she says.

  I know. I know everything. I stay silent.

  “But it’s my fault. I’ve told him that a thousand times. I’m the one who left him alone with her. That was too much responsibility for a sixteen-year-old. I should have never left her . . . left him alone with her. . . .” She breaks down and buries her head in her hands. “When Roman went to see a counselor, I went with him. And over and over again, we discussed how his dad and I were the responsible ones, not him, but he would never listen.”

  I don’t even nod. I can’t say anything. I park the car at the edge of the woods. I scan the area, searching for the Franklins’ red Jeep. I don’t see it anywhere. Maybe he drove it through the forest. It’s not like he would care that that’s illegal and dangerous. “I’ll be back,” I say.

  “I want to come with you.”

  I glance down at her clogs. “But . . .”

  She steps out of the car and tosses her shoes to the side. “He’s my son, Aysel. I’m coming.”

  She reaches out and grabs my hand. We run through the woods and she keeps squeezing my hand, over and over again. Her grip is so tight that I feel like any second my fingers are going to fall off from the lack of circulation. Her bare feet crunch twigs, but she doesn’t wince. She keeps up with me and we quickly reach the clearing.

  The cliff looms in front of us. I want to find Roman here and I don’t want to find him here. I want to throw my arms around his neck and pull him close, breathe in his pine-wood scent and kiss the splatter of freckles on the back of his neck. And I want to punch him in the gut, slap him in the face, for betraying me like this. For lying. For trying to die without me. But I might not get to do either if we don’t find him in time. My knees buckle.

  “You don’t think he . . . do you?” Mrs. Franklin asks, her voice hoarse from tears. I watch her staring out over the cliff. The Ohio River sputters below us, and I doubt we would even be able to see him if he was in there. In the water. His head banging against the rocks, his spine broken and flimsy. I squeeze those thoughts out of my mind.

  He’s not dead. He can’t be. I wonder if I would feel it if he was dead. If I would know it, understand it at some cellular level. If my body would be able to sense his energy giving out and fading away. For the first time all day, I squeeze Mrs. Franklin’s hand back, returning her tight grip. “We need to find him. We’re going to find him.”

  I don’t know why I say it. It’s more of a wish than a promise. She drops my hand and reaches out to pull me into a tight hug. She smells like cupcake batter and vanilla. “You’re an angel.”

  I lose it when she says that. I am not an angel. I am the opposite. I could have stopped this. Should have stopped this. I’m about to tell her that when a thought hits me. “You said you gave Roman the keys to the car?”

  She nods.

  I run back toward my car and Mrs. Franklin follows. I don’t even put my seat belt on and I slam on the gas pedal. We roar away from Crestville Pointe. The eight-minute drive feels like centuries. When we reach Roman’s house, I pull on the emergency parking brake and jump out of the car.

  I dash toward the detached garage. I can smell the exhaust slipping through the bottom crack and I hear the faint hum of a car’s engine. I pull at the door, but I can’t get it to open. I kick it.

  Behind me, I hear Mrs. Franklin scream and run toward the house. I keep banging on the garage, but it is useless. Mrs. Franklin returns, wildly waving the garage-door opener over her head. She presses the button again and again and the door lifts and we see it.

  The red Jeep is running. The garage is full of exhaust. Through the smoke, I can see Roman in the driver’s seat. He is folded over the steering wheel and his big, beautiful eyes are shut. He’s not moving.

  My legs go weak and something inside me bursts. My heart.

  FRIDAY, APRIL 5

  2 days left

  I’ve been sitting in the hospital waiting room for hours. I stare up at the pulsing fluorescent white light, trying to get the image of Roman’s limp, unconscious body out of my head. The waiting room smells like burnt coffee and disinfectant and salty tears. You never think fear or sadness has a scent until you spend a long time in a hospital.

  I wonder if guilt has a scent—a stinking, foul odor that Roman’s parents can detect. I’m sitting between the two of them and they haven’t said anything to me, except to periodically ask if I’m okay. How can they still be worried about me? Don’t they know that I was a part of the problem, in on the plan? I’m sure they’d hate me if they knew the truth.

  Both of them have been back to visit Roman. Thankfully, he’s stable. He floats in and out of consciousness. I guess he hasn’t had a chance to tell them what a traitor I am, to him and to them.

  I squirm in my chair. The plastic seat is damp from my sweat and sticks to my thighs. I should have worn jeans instead of shorts. As I pick at the skin around my fingernails, I find myself getting more and more angry at Roman. Maybe I am a traitor, but he is, too. He went ahead and tried to die without me.

  Roman’s mom puts her hand on my shoulder, pulling me back into reality. “Sweetheart, the nurse says Roman should be awake soon. I explained who you are and she said that you can go visit him in a few minutes, if you want.” Her voice is soft, almost like a lullaby. “I told her how you are the one who saved Roman’s life. If it weren’t for you . . .” She pulls me into a hug to suffocate the sound of her own tears. “We’re so grateful for you.”

  She lets me go and gives me a sad, small smile. “How will we ever repay you?”

  My breath catches in my throat. I can’t find any words—it’s like my mouth is full of quicksand and every word I want to say gets pulled back into the pit of my stomach.

  “It’s okay, sweetie.” She pats the back of my head with her perfectly manicured nails. “You don’t have to say anything. I know this is a lot to handle.” She tilts her head so she can look me in the eye. “You do want to see Roman,
don’t you?”

  I make myself nod. I want to see Roman. I really do. It’s all I want.

  But at the same time, I don’t know how I can face him.

  I sit with Mrs. Franklin for a few more minutes. Mr. Franklin returns from the hospital cafeteria with a coffee for her and a cookie for me. I place the cookie on the side table beside me. I don’t touch it again.

  Eventually, a nurse with hair the color of cinnamon approaches us. Mrs. Franklin gestures toward me and the nurse nods. As I stand up, my legs stick to the leather cushion of the waiting room chair. It’s like the chair is begging me not to go, warning me not to go.

  The nurse leads me down the tiled hallway to Roman’s room. I study the cards and words of encouragement that have been taped on the other doors. One door has a whole bunch of yellow balloons tacked on it. I wonder if I should have brought balloons. That’s probably a stupid thought. This doesn’t seem like an occasion for balloons.

  Finally, we reach Roman’s room. The nurse turns the metal knob and walks inside. I stand out in the hallway for a few moments, squeezing my hands together, taking deep breaths, humming Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 15.

  “In here, darling,” the nurse encourages. I wonder if she deals with this all the time. Visitors who can’t bear it, who can’t face reality.

  The sight of Roman lying in the bed makes my heart stop. His tall, lean body is too big for the hospital bed—his toes hang over the edge. The hospital lights make his skin look almost translucent, and there are big dark circles under his hazel eyes. They don’t look golden at all now. Just a muddy dull green.

  “Aysel,” he says. His voice is hoarse and strained.

  The nurse gives me a hopeful smile and reaches out to touch my shoulder. “I’ll be right outside if you guys need anything.”

  I look around the room because I can’t stand to look at him. I see his mom brought his collection of Jules Verne novels and his sketchbook, and there’s a vase of marigolds that’s been placed at the side of his bed. No Captain Nemo. I guess that makes sense. Hospitals probably don’t let you bring in your pet turtle.

  But besides the flowers and the books and the sketch pad, the room is sterile. Nothing like Crestville Pointe. It’s not like the place he imagined he’d die in. He can’t die in this place. He can’t die at all.

  “Aysel,” he repeats. This time his voice is louder, but it still sounds impossibly sore.

  I blink back the tears that I can already feel building in my eyes. “How could you?”

  “You didn’t want to,” he says. “I know you didn’t. And I didn’t want you to. I care about you too much to watch you die. I want you to live, Aysel. So I did it alone because I wanted to save you.”

  I jut my chin out and look him straight in the eye. His face is so pale. I can see his veins. He looks too fragile, like any second his body is going to give out on him. “Save me? If you were at all worried about me, you wouldn’t have done this.”

  I move closer to the side of his bed but keep standing. I watch him try to shake his head. He can barely move his neck. As I get closer to him, I can see that his throat is bruised. Purple and swollen. “I had to do it, Aysel. I’m not like you. I don’t deserve to live.” He lets out a heavy breath. “I can’t live with myself. Not when I know I’m the reason Maddie’s dead.”

  “But what about April seventh? And dying in the water?”

  This time it’s his turn to refuse to look at me. “I didn’t want to jump from Crestville Pointe without you. It seemed wrong. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t right for me to die on the same day as Maddie. Or in the same way. It would be like I was taking something from her.” He tries to shake his head again. “I don’t know why I picked the car. I just got this feeling in my stomach that if I didn’t do it now, I was never going to be able to.”

  I lower my face so he can’t see my eyes, pressing my chin against my chest. I suck in the sound of my sobs, but the tears still dribble down my cheek in silence.

  “Don’t cry,” he says. “Come here.”

  I don’t move.

  “Aysel, come here.”

  I take a deep breath and sit down in the chair next to the bed.

  He puts his hand out and I grab it. His grip is weak and loose, unlike when he squeezed my hand at the carnival. And this time, I can feel my hand. I can feel everything. And I want to keep feeling everything. Even the painful, awful, terrible things. Because feeling things is what lets us know that we’re alive.

  And I want to be alive.

  “I can’t lose you,” I finally manage to say.

  “Don’t say that,” he whispers.

  “No, it’s true. I can’t lose you. Roman, you have to decide to live. I know that nothing can ever erase what happened to Maddie, but you can’t give up.”

  He moves his face to make a frown. It looks painful. I can practically see his muscles aching under his skin. The skin around his eyes looks so dark and bruised, like someone punched him repeatedly in the face.

  “I’m not asking you to live for me. Even though that would be nice because I’m in love with you. And yeah, yeah, you can tell me I’m misusing that word, but I don’t care. That’s how I feel. But this isn’t even about me, or how I feel about you. I want you to live for you because I know there’s so much more waiting for you. There’s so much more for you to discover and experience. And you deserve it, you might not think you do, but you do. I’m here to tell you that you deserve it. And I know I sound cheesy as hell. Believe me, six weeks ago, I would’ve slapped myself for saying shit like this, but knowing you . . .” I trail off for a moment. “Knowing you has helped me see things differently. See myself differently. And all I want is for you to see yourself the way that I do.”

  After I say all that, I feel drained, deflated. I know most people use “deflated” in a negative way, but today, I feel deflated in a positive way. Like I’ve kept all these secrets inside of me for so long, and now, I’ve let them all go. I feel lighter. I feel free. I told Roman I loved him; I put that positive charge out into the universe. And now I’m just waiting to see if it sparks—if it puts us in motion.

  Roman makes a sputtering noise like he’s about to say something, but then his eyes close and his breathing steadies. He’s fallen asleep. I sit there for a while, my left hand still holding his right. I feel creepy watching him sleep, but I can’t help it. I’m scared that if I take my eyes away from him, he’s going to disappear.

  His chest rises and lowers. He looks so frail, but he’s still alive. And that’s what counts. As I stare at him, I find myself wishing that I could see through his skin, see inside him. See if there’s only emptiness, darkness, or if there’s more.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 7

  0 days left

  Today’s the day: the anniversary of Madison’s death. I almost didn’t work up the courage to come to the hospital, but I knew that if I didn’t come, I’d never forgive myself.

  For the first time in three years, I’m wearing something other than a gray striped shirt and jeans. I borrowed a simple black dress from Georgia and washed my hair and pulled it back into a French braid. It’s not like I think Roman cares at this point what I look like, but I care. And I’m trying to show that to him.

  The silver flats I also borrowed from Georgia make a pitter-patter sound on the tiles as I walk down the hallway. Once I reach Roman’s room, I peek inside and see his parents gathered at the foot of his bed.

  “Oh, Aysel,” his mom says. She gives me a cheery smile. I’m starting to believe that Roman’s mom’s warmth isn’t a facade like he says; she really has that much love inside of her.

  Mr. Franklin has his arm wrapped around her, and when he sees me, he draws Mrs. Franklin closer to him.

  “Come in,” he says. His voice is less effusive than his wife’s, but it’s not cold either.

  Roman looks at me. He doesn’t say anything. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear that his eyes light up a little. The skin a
round them is still bruised, but it’s less startling than it was on Friday.

  “I’m hungry, are you?” Roman’s mom says to his dad. His dad looks confused for a second, but then he gets the clue.

  “Oh yeah,” he says. “Starving.”

  Mrs. Franklin turns to me. “Hon, do you mind watching Roman for a few minutes while we go get a bite to eat?”

  “No problem.” I smile at her to let her know I appreciate her kindness. To thank her for letting me still see Roman, for putting me on the approved visitors list and treating me like family.

  Mrs. Franklin kisses Roman’s forehead, and once both of his parents are gone, I take a seat in the chair next to his bed.

  “I should be at her grave,” Roman finally says. His voice is still strained, but it’s stronger than Friday. “Today, of all days, I should be there.”

  “She doesn’t need you to be at her grave to know that you care.”

  He squints at me. “You really believe that?”

  I nod. “I do, Roman. She might not physically be here, but she’s still here. And she wants to see you happy. I know she does.”

  He’s silent for a few moments. The sheets are pulled up to his chin and he’s completely motionless. We stare at each other quietly until he asks, “When I get out of here, will you go with me?”

  “To her grave?”

  His lips twitch and I interpret it as a yes.

  “I’ll go anywhere with you.” My face burns. I’m not used to saying things like that, but when I see him slowly smile, all my embarrassment goes away. “Look at me, still being cheesy as hell.”

  He lets out a low, gravelly laugh.

  “And speaking of that,” I say, and reach into my bag. I pull out the book I bought about North Carolina’s beaches. I place it on his food tray so he can see it. “I thought maybe when you get better, we can go here.”

  He stares at the book and his eyes brighten. They turn from the muddy green to a dark gold.