Beatless

  I doubted that was true. I wasn’t even the first to know about Randall.

  It took a few more minutes of talking before I got up from my bed and closed the bedroom door. I didn’t want to whisper, but I spoke quietly, unsure if Sam could hear me from wherever she was in the house.

  “Mom? I know you keep saying you can’t leave Texas. But I think something’s going on with Sam. She looks like she’s sick and she keeps saying she thinks she’s coming down with a cold, but I’m not sure. She’s acting weird, too . . .”

  “Don’t worry so much. You know my sister has always been . . . a little different. She operates in her own hemisphere. I’m sure it’s just the divorce. People react in different ways. And, you know, she got laid off. So she doesn’t have anything to do all day. Usually, if someone experiences more than a couple life changing events, it can lead to being a little depressed. But I think you being there with her keeps her spirits up, you know? It’s good that you’ve had this time together.”

  Whatever made her feel better about the situation.

  After we hung up, I stood in the middle of my room, slowly turning in a circle to get a good look at everything that surrounded me.

  And with one final decision, I walked over to my closet door and took every single picture down.

  It was time to suck it up.

  Holding my head high, I threw all of them in the bathroom trash can. I ended up taking down my little tree and placed Tucker’s present back in my closet. It was becoming clear I would probably never have the opportunity to give it to him. And it was just as well. The personalized sheet music was for the person I once knew. Not the one he’d become.

  Afterwards, I turned off the light, and went downstairs to find my aunt.

  She was sitting in the kitchen, still in her pajamas, a cookbook open in front of her as she looked down at it, with glassy, unfocused eyes.

  “Hey. Do you want me to cook something?” I slid the book my way, checking out the picture she was staring at. ]

  She shook her head a little and focused on my face before giving me a smile. “No, kiddo. I’ve got it.” A look of confusion marred her features. “I’m just trying to remember what that thing is called. You know. It’s glass and has the red marks on the side? I need it to add milk to the soup.”

  “A measuring cup?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Yes. That’s what it’s called. Where do you keep it, Myra?”

  I snorted because clearly she was inferring that I sounded like my mother. “Who’s being the smartass now?”

  She frowned and leaned over the counter top. “Watch your mouth, young lady.”

  “Okaaaay.” I retrieved the cup and slid it slowly to her.

  Sam took it in her hands and went to the fridge, only to stand and space out in front of it.

  “Seriously. Go lay down. I can do this.” I gently pulled her away from the refrigerator and pointed her in the direction of the couch.

  Sam dropped heavily on the cushions and after a second she looked at me and smiled like she just realized I was there. “Hey. I was going to make some soup. Do you want some?”

  “I said I would make it.”

  “When?”

  “Just now, Aunt Sam. Are you messing with me?”

  Recognition lit up her eyes and she chuckled lightly. “Of course I am.” She smoothed her hair from her face and grabbed the remote from the table. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”

  “I don’t think you have.” I could hear her moving through the house at all hours of the night. It was one of the reasons that I ran my bathroom fan while I slept: to drown out her noises.

  “I’ll get some sleeping pills from the store,” she said, zoning out in front of a television show, leaving me to finish what she’d started.

  ***

  My birthday came and went, and as I suspected, my father didn’t even call. Mom did and she said when she got home she would take me shopping or something, but I didn’t even care. Sam, as usual, was the only person I could rely on but the sad looking cupcake with the slightly bent yellow candle on top did nothing to lighten my mood. So I went to bed early and became a zombie in front of my television until I fell into a dreamless sleep.

  I spent New Year’s Eve with Sam, watching the ball drop in a city I’d never been to before. I made a mental note to add it to the list I’d started making of all of the things I wanted to do after I left. Visit New York City for New Year’s Eve was suddenly at the top of my list.

  She held my head in her lap and played with my hair until about eleven thirty. Then she nudged my shoulder and when I turned to glance at her, she was smiling. It had been like that for a while. She’d be sullen and snappy and then a few minutes later would be back to some semblance of the Sam I’d always known.

  “I got us a couple surprises and completely forgot about them until just now. We don’t have much time. Come on.”

  I followed her to the garage and she rummaged in the trunk of her car, appearing again with a couple flat rectangles. “Lanterns,” she said excitedly. “We write the stuff we’re letting go from this year on the inside and then at midnight, we’ll release them into the night sky.”

  I looked at her sideways. “Seriously?”

  “What? Is this an old people thing?”

  I shrugged.

  “I . . . don’t care. You’re doing this with me. Let’s get rid of some baggage.”

  In the kitchen she handed me a marker and I thought long and hard about all of the things I needed to be free of. I began with the names of my friends. Each one was written inside on the fragile paper. I then moved on to the shit my parents had left me with. I started to puff out the paper when Sam stopped me.

  “You have to add one wish to the outside.”

  “Are you making this up as you go?”

  “Maybe. So . . . do it.”

  I glanced at Sam’s lantern and could only make out one word on the inside. Her handwriting was erratic across the front, and I leaned in to see what she’d written. She pulled it back with a playful look on her face. “You know better than to look at someone’s wishes.”

  I contemplated what my heart wanted the most, and it was so obvious that I felt foolish even writing it down. But it couldn’t hurt to send a wish to the heavens. Especially if it made Sam happy.

  At eleven fifty eight we walked out into the bitter cold, and I stared up at the moon, slightly hidden behind tissue paper clouds. The gray eclipsed the brightness a little, and I hugged my arms around my chest, honing in on the one star I could see. I squeezed my eyes shut and repeated my wish, just in case once wasn’t enough.

  Sam lit the small cotton ball beneath her lantern and held it above her head as the heat made it swell and begin to lift from her fingertips. And then she turned to me to do the same. We watched as they began to rise into the sky, the red of hers and blue of mine glowing bright as they lifted towards the trees.

  And about seven feet in the air . . . they caught on fire.

  “There go our dreams,” she noted with wide eyes. “Up in flames. Seems fitting. I just hope they don’t get caught in any trees.”

  She shuffled back into the house and I was left alone to watch the flaming paper drop back to Earth.

  ***

  Returning to school wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be. Meeting everyone for our first rehearsal on the other hand . . .The day we got our scripts, I sat off to the side and opened the pages, my eyes scanning how large of a part I would have. I kept my face down and didn’t look at the front of the theater where Mr. Hanks was sitting with Tucker.

  I read through some of the lines and frowned, then raised my hand and Mr. Hanks pointed my way.

  “Yes, Miss Durham?”

  I held up the script with the pages splayed open. “Umm . . . Is this right?”

  “What?” He leaned forward, crossing one arm over his chest and tapping his chin.

  “My character dies by throwing herself into a live volcano?”


  His eyes went wide and I saw Tucker’s shoulders bounce a little. When the older man looked at him for an answer, he appeared remorseful.

  “I apologize, Mallory. You must have received an original copy of the script. I’ll get you a new one.” Tucker reached into his back pocket and held out a rolled up copy. I stood and confidently marched to where he was leaning against the piano. My name was already printed on the script and I glared at him with every ounce of hate I had in my body.

  “You suck,” I muttered.

  He laughed darkly. “Come on, now, Mallory. Don’t make my comebacks so easy.”

  ***

  Sam sat across from me at the dining room table, her chin resting on her hand. I’d made a copy of the script for her to read so that I could start practicing my lines immediately. There was a lot riding on this and I wanted to prove every single person who had ever doubted me wrong.

  She read through the script once. Then twice. “This is pretty good.”

  “Yeah. As much as I hate to say it, you’re right.” A little part of me had hoped it was shitty, but it was really good. And we hadn’t even started the music portion. Knowing that Tucker had written the score would only ensure that it was amazing.

  “So . . . the story is about a couple kids who were close when they were younger - but one moved away and they wrote letters to each other for a while and lost touch. Then they meet up as teenagers and fall in love, only to break up over something stupid. Which ends up with them reconnecting as adults and finally figuring their shit out?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s the gist of it.”

  She nodded and flipped the pages open. “Pretty heavy stuff.” Her eyes flicked up from the page to mine. “The plot sounds a little familiar. Talk about a grand gesture.” She waved the script my way.

  “Whatever. It’s not exact.” I didn’t mention that Tucker had told me that they revised it after what happened between the two of us. And I had wondered when Tucker had time to help write this thing, and my powers of deduction brought me to the conclusion that he had been doing this on his off days when I had assumed he’d been studying for his classes. Instead, he was writing a play with Bastian. Bastian who wanted to be a screenwriter, but was a bit obsessed with Broadway productions. This musical was something he was going to put on his resume.

  I ignored her description of the two main characters finding their happy ending later in their adult years.

  It felt too much like hope.

  After running through the first act, Sam was yawning and I told her try to get some sleep while she could. She shrugged and said something about a short nap, but she never came back.

  Up in my room, I checked my email, which was pretty much empty. Then, against my better judgment, I logged onto Instagram. My initial instinct was to look in the same places I always had. I hadn’t deleted anyone, even after everything that went down before Thanksgiving. But I ignored the people that I didn’t want to see.

  Except him.

  It didn’t surprise me one bit when I logged in and searched his name that it didn’t show up. When I did a wider search, his account was locked and a new picture appeared as his avatar. From that small box, his face peered back at me, smiling like he always had. And in the other half, a girl with crystal blue eyes looked up at him adoringly.

  I closed the laptop.

  And with that final nail in the coffin, I closed my heart, too.

  Mal,

  The world is full of really awful things. It’s one of the reasons I don’t watch the news. I’d rather keep it safe and repeat the same movies over and over again. I know how they end. Most of the time. Sometimes they surprise me because I’ve forgotten and I get the chance to fall in love with them and experience it all over for the first time again.

  It occurred to me that I don’t have any first times left. Well, I have one first left. But I envy that about you. You have so many firsts that are going to come along. Take a chance to stop and enjoy each one. Like they say, today is the youngest you’ll ever be. But it’s not the best it will ever be. That’s to come.

  Your life is spread out before you like one of those maps that your grandma used to keep in her car because we didn’t have a GPS or a smart phone to get us to our destination. She’d have to follow red lines. Black ones. Look for lakes and alternate routes. That was the adventure - not knowing where we’d end up, but confident that, even if it wasn’t where we were headed, it would be somewhere.

  I have no idea where your future is going to take you. But I hope you have nothing but red and black lines to lead you there. And that your eyes are wide open, even if the destination doesn’t match your original intent. Because even though the world has a lot of awful in it, there’s beauty, too. If we just take a second to see it.

  Sam

  ~*~14~*~

  Some of the Plastic Hearts cast members started eating dinner after rehearsals, and once I was asked to join, I didn’t look back. I kept everyone at arms’ length, unsure of whether I wanted to get involved. They were all great in their own way. I just wasn’t invested.

  Mercy Horowitz had been cast as the younger me: Girl. It was kind of weird how much we looked alike. She was a sophomore at Brookwood and was cast due to how young she appeared. Her audition was so impressive that they didn’t want anyone else. And that reminded me of Lassiter. I just hoped Mercy was a nicer person and the fame wouldn’t ruin her, too.

  The guy who’d been cast opposite me was Landon Pope, an unconventionally attractive guy that was in my Art History class. He sat next to me at the dinners, talking incessantly about his future plans to start in off-Broadway shows and then, once he had a few of those under his belt, he’d go for the big time.

  “New York is on my list of places to see.” I bit into my bread and chewed while I mulled it over. “Maybe I’ll get to go, and while I’m there, your name will be up on a marquee.”

  He grinned like I’d just said the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. “We’ll keep in touch. I’ll give you my phone number.” I looked away, like my plate was the most fascinating thing in the entire world. “Actually, we should exchange numbers, anyway.”

  I glanced up, surprised.

  “You know, for the play.”

  “Oh, right, of course.” He handed me his phone and I typed in my number. He pressed send and my phone vibrated in my pocket while he waved his phone in my face. “Now you have mine.”

  At the next table, I saw Tucker take in the entire exchange. He stood up, pushing his chair back before grabbing his jacket and stomping toward the door.

  It shouldn’t have mattered to me.

  He had someone else, right?

  Of course he did. I’d seen it with my own two eyes.

  When Landon walked with me to my car, I gave a short wave, wondering why my chest suddenly felt so tight.

  ***

  We finally received our copies of the music and I concentrated on my one solo and two duets with Landon. Mercy and Reagan, cast as Boy, had one duet. And one song, the finale, was sung by everyone else as Landon and I were to be standing center stage, surrounded by their voices.

  I knew, as much as I knew anything, at least two of the songs Tucker had provided for the musical, were directly about me. It was so obvious that it was almost comical. Except it wasn’t funny at all. It was unbearably painful.

  What made it easier to swallow was hearing the words coming from someone else’s mouth.

  Jotting notes on the margin of my script, I crossed stage left as Bastian had directed. “Walk straight across and stop right in front of him. There, on the X.”

  My toes barely grazed the glow in the dark tape.

  “Too fast,” came Tucker’s warning from the piano. “Do it again.”

  I tried my best not to roll my eyes.

  “You have to be in time with the piano. It’s not my fault you’re in a rush to get to him.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered and turned to start again. My shoes hit the tape once
more and the music stopped.

  “Are you even trying?”

  “Yes, Mr. Scott, I am. Would you like to come show me exactly how fast or slow you’d like me to be?”

  He stood up from behind the piano and I pretended not to have a reaction to him staring at me from beneath the faded stage lights. Sara was sitting next to him, trying not to acknowledge his outburst.

  Landon turned from his spot and held up his script. “I think her timing is fine.”

  “No one asked you, Landon.” Tucker stomped up the stairs and crossed the stage to face me. Taking my wrist he led me back to my original marker. He stepped behind me, placing his hands on my hips. I pursed my lips together to fight the familiar feelings they stirred in my chest.

  Sara began the song again and Tucker mimicked the notes, the sounds thick in his throat while he hummed and took a step forward, pushing me from behind. “Like this.”

  I allowed him to lead my feet, one in front of the other, across the stage until I was directly in front of Landon again.

  “Got it?” Tucker asked. His voice was flat and uncaring.

  I shook my head and averted my eyes. “I think we should do it one more time.”

  He sighed and walked back over to where we’d started. I crossed too, but this time I faced him. He looked my way and then over my shoulder again.

  “Seriously. How long are you going to do this?”

  “School’s over in May, right?”

  “Stop punishing me for something . . .”

  “Turn around and do your part.”

  “No.”

  He finally looked me in the eye. “You don’t want it? Because we didn’t cast an understudy, but I could find a replacement.”

  “Stop. Just stop. You won’t even talk to me.”

  I took in everything about him in that minute between us. How red his ear was. How unkempt his hair had become. How his shirt fit, snug around his arms, tucked haphazardly into the top of his jeans.

  “Can’t talk to someone who doesn’t exist, Mallory. You are on this stage to do a part. That’s all.”