Heartbeat

  So there we were, writing about chemical reactions, talking about them, and Anthony said, “I hope you realize I’m still going to get the best grade.”

  “I realize you think you will.”

  “I like your conviction,” he said. “That’s not supposed to be a seven, by the way.”

  “It isn’t a seven, it’s a one. I guess I can’t say I like your ability to read handwriting.”

  “I have other qualities,” he said.

  “Please,” I said, and felt so....well, this is humiliating, but I felt so flirty. Sexy, even. Like everything around us was charged.

  “You’ve got moxie,” Anthony said, and only he could say something like that with a totally straight face.

  “Well, jeepers,” I said, and he grinned.

  “You’re lovely.”

  Lovely. No one had ever called me lovely. My mother said I was cute, which everyone knows is mother code for “you look like a regular girl, sweetie,” which is fine except regular is boring, regular gets you to seventeen without any boyfriends and a few nothing kisses at various parties.

  “Lovely?” I said.

  “Everything about you is lovely,” he said and I—though I wish I hadn’t now—kissed him. Just like in the movies, I moved in and kissed him and he kissed me back and the experiment got ruined but I got felt up on a lab table and went home with the memory of Anthony saying, “Well, I can’t say I regret this outcome” as he tucked in his shirt. I practically floated all the way there.

  The next day, he acted like nothing had happened. When I first saw him, he was talking to a bunch of people about the need to promote student government awareness (the popular people won the elections, but Anthony was always treasurer and was always convinced everyone cared as much about how much money the yearbook got as he did) and he waved at me. Like he did to everyone else who walked by.

  “He’s distracted,” Olivia said. She’d heard what had happened, of course, and after a millisecond of silence had said, “Wow! That’s...Anthony! And you! Anthony and you!”

  Except it wasn’t. In English, when we got our latest papers back, he said, “Look at this,” and then motioned for me to show him mine.

  I wanted more than grade comparing. I wanted kissing. I wanted talking, and not just about who had the better grade. I wanted into his heart.

  Still, he acted like nothing had happened.

  I cried and I talked to Olivia. I told Mom, and she said, “If he’s acting like a jerk, he probably is one,” and I told her I was telling things wrong, that it wasn’t like that.

  She said, “Emma,” like only she could, with so much love in those four letters, and that was it.

  After three days, I finally worked up the nerve to talk to him. I did it at the end of the day, went over to his locker after most everyone had left and he was talking to two freshmen, telling them that extracurriculars were important, but that they had to be the right ones.

  “Anyone can sign up for drama,” he said. “Debate, now, that’s different. That’s an art form, and one colleges love. Do you like discussing issues?”

  “I don’t know,” one of the freshmen said and Anthony said, “See, debate helps with that. You’ll know things. You’ll be able to talk about anything. Trust me.”

  “I mean, I don’t know about public speaking,” the freshman said and Anthony said, “Well then, why would you want to sign up for drama? That’s public speaking.”

  The freshman said, “No, I mean...” and then trailed off as Anthony said, “Look, you clearly need to think about it. It’s your future, though.”

  He turned to me after they left and said, “Emma, what brings you by? Worried about the new assignment in history? I think you’ll do fine.”

  “No,” I said. “I—the other night.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I don’t really need the extra credit now, but I can come in and help you if you can reschedule. I just can’t make it on Thursday nights anymore because I’m starting to volunteer to deliver meals to old people. Did you know mileage for that is tax-deductible? Or would be, if I paid taxes.”

  “Right,” I said, as my joy, which had already shrunk considerably, shriveled into nothing. “You do remember that we made out, right? And you said I was...you said I was lovely.”

  “Of course,” he said, smiling at me. “It was a very memorable moment and you are lovely. You know I adore you, Emma. I mean, you must know that. You’re intelligent enough, after all.”

  “You—” I said, but coming right on the heels of the declaring, he’d turned back to his locker and was grabbing his bag like everything was over, said and done.

  “You adore me?” I said, and he shut his locker, put an arm around me and said, “Of course. What’s not to like? You’re sweet and you’re quite smart. How could you not have a place in my heart? Plus you find me attractive, which is always a nice thing to know.”

  “I—”

  “I can tell I’ve upset you. Will you walk with me?”

  I did, and he said, “I’m focused on college,” as we stepped down the hall. Our footsteps were perfectly in sync. “And being with someone—well, at our age, can we really understand what a true relationship is? Do you feel you understand it? I know I don’t.”

  I’d heard Anthony say lots of things. Interesting things. Smart things. Some stupid things.

  But never this kind of crap, and I stopped walking.

  “I understand you said I was lovely so I’d let you feel me up,” I said, and he stopped too and blinked at me.

  “You’re angry.”

  “Yes,” I said, and then, oh, then my voice cracked and I said, “I thought we—I thought what happened meant something.”

  “It does,” he said, taking my hand, walking again and I walked too, watching my hand in his as he talked. “It did, and it does. But one moment doesn’t mean everything. It can’t. If it did, we’d be letting one act define who we are and you’re bigger than that. I’m bigger than that. We both want the same things, Emma. We can talk about this more if you want, as I’ve always found the connection people make between physical action and emotion fascinating.”

  We were outside and I looked at him, at this guy I’d let shove his hands inside my shirt, and realized he believed everything he said and what had happened between us was...

  Nothing.

  I pulled my hand free of his and said, “See you later, Anthony.”

  I was proud of that, of how I just pulled away and walked off.

  I didn’t cry until I got to Olivia’s house.

  “One moment, my ass,” Olivia said after I’d told her everything. “Who else would ever even go near him? He should be kissing your feet and thanking you for touching his funky self.”

  “If that’s true, then why did he blow me off?”

  “Because he’s an ass. And he’s a—what do you call it? Obsessed with yourself.”

  “He’s not a narcissist,” I muttered, sniffling, and then dragged myself home, heart battered and self-confidence shot. I’d really thought he liked me, but it turned out he liked someone else more.

  Himself.

  Olivia was right. Anthony was—and is—a narcissist, and as time passed I saw it. All of what I thought was banter was really him worrying that I had better grades. All of him offering to help out and acting like someone out of a really old movie and speaking like it was 1850 was his way of reminding himself and everyone else that he was special.

  And the making out happened because Anthony was just a guy and I’d launched myself at him. Why would he turn that down? He was, after all, him, and to Anthony, he was pretty amazing.

  “So, your paper?” he says again to me now, and I look at him.

  “You win,” I say. “You’re the king of grades, the prince of GPAdom, the duke of whatever.
Valedictoriandriandom, let’s say.”

  “If you ever want to talk,” he says, getting a handkerchief—of course he would have one—“you know I’m here.”

  I take the hankie. “What should we talk about?” I look at him and I know he sees my haunted eyes. My empty, furious smile.

  I know he sees that I don’t give a crap about my grades, about school, about all the stuff that used to matter so much to me.

  He blinks at me, opens his mouth, then closes it. I hand the hankie back.

  He doesn’t say another word to me.

  I look at him and try to remember that person I was not so long ago, but she seems so far away. She seems gone.

  14

  Caleb Harrison stares at me again at lunch.

  I don’t see him at first. I’m sitting with Olivia, picking at the fried rice in front of me, which is basically rice and limp broccoli, and then I...I don’t know.

  I feel it. Him.

  I look up and there, across the cafeteria, in a corner by himself, is Caleb Harrison. And he’s looking at me.

  I elbow Olivia who says, “Oof!” and then follows my eyes.

  “Wait, you said nothing happened yesterday.”

  “Nothing did.”

  “But he’s—oh, never mind. He’s looking out the window now. Remember how popular he was in middle school? And then he was all freaky drug guy and then stealing cars guy and now he’s really screwed-up loner guy who puts cars into lakes. Scary.”

  No, I think. Sad.

  Caleb Harrison is sad.

  I don’t know why he is, or how I know it. I just do.

  I look at him.

  He’s looking at me again and I feel it, actually feel him looking at me, like from all the way across the cafeteria he’s somehow able to see into me. That there’s something in me he wants to see.

  I take a sip of my soda and he’s watching. I am hyperaware of it, of him, of how I suck a drop that’s clung to my lower lip off, pulling it into my mouth for a moment and how I open my lips a little to breathe, because it’s strangely airless in here and I want to ask him why but when I picture that, my walking up to him and saying, “Yeah, hi, I think you have a problem,” he’s standing up too and moving in, so close his hair brushes my face, so close his mouth is right next to mine and we’re touching without saying a word, just standing there, close enough to kiss with his hands cupped around my waist, one sliding up, the other down and my hands are doing the same and he’s breathing into me and I’m breathing into him and—

  “Hey,” Olivia says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Bell rang. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” At least, that’s what I wish I’d been doing. Thinking.

  “Your face is red.”

  “It’s hot in here.” He’s gone now. Thank goodness.

  “Not really. You sure you’re okay?”

  I nod and get up. I tell her that I’m fine. I go to class. I meet Dan after school. I go to the hospital.

  I am not okay. I am not thinking about just Mom, like I have been for days, weeks.

  I am thinking about something else. Someone else. Someone I don’t even know and I pictured—

  “Are you all right?” Dan says as we’re heading to where Mom is. “Your face is a little red.”

  “It’s from all the sex I’m having at school instead of going to class. It’s tiring, but way more fun than trying to conjugate the past perfect tense of ‘I see my dead mother every day.’”

  “Emma!” Dan looks shocked and a little scared.

  “Oh, relax. I won’t do it in your bed when you’re in Florida ruining someone else’s life. When is that, by the way? I’ll need to stock up on condoms.”

  “I’ve been worried and now I’m really concerned. I think you need help.”

  “Really? Well, talk it over with Mom and see how she feels about it. Oh, wait, she can’t talk. You were concerned about her too, right? So maybe you can see why I’m not all that interested in your so-called concern.”

  “Emma,” he says, sputters really, but I ignore him and head into the waiting room.

  Where Caleb Harrison is standing with a magazine cart, having just heard everything I said.

  15

  Caleb sits down when I come in, sprawls on a chair with the cart in front of him, moving it back and forth with his feet. He doesn’t look at me but then he doesn’t need to, does he?

  We both know what he just heard.

  I know my face is red—it’s so hot I can feel it—and I brace for another stare or a snarl like yesterday or something even worse, something crude that will make me feel just as bad as Dan sounded. (And looked too, but I don’t trust Dan anymore. I wish I’d never trusted him.)

  “Your mom’s dead, right?” is what he says instead and it’s so not what I expected and so blunt, so not covered in all the softness of I’m sorry and terrible to hear that now I just stare at him.

  “I couldn’t really tell yesterday,” he says. “But that’s what I figured. I remember hearing something about it. About how there’s a ba—”

  “She’s dead,” I say before he can finish his sentence. “But she’s pregnant. So they’re keeping her breathing and feeding her and everything else until she’s twenty-five weeks along.”

  “They can do that? I mean, if she’s dead—”

  “Yes,” I say, the word bitten off, sour and angry. “My stepfather wanted...it’s what he wants. So it’s happened. You can be brain-dead and kept alive on machines. It just doesn’t usually happen when there’s...there’s no hope for her.”

  He pushes the cart with his foot again. I find looking at it easier than looking at him, but when I dare a glance he’s looking at the floor.

  “How many weeks is she now?” he says after a moment where the only noise is the cart squeaking.

  I swallow. “Almost sixteen.” A little past twelve that final morning, the morning she went to get toast and fell down and didn’t get back up. A little past twelve weeks pregnant the morning she died and that was it, should have been it except it wasn’t, isn’t.

  “So she’ll just...” He trails off. The cart squeaks again. He’s frowning, but not like he’s angry. Like he’s thinking.

  If he’s thinking about my mother—just my mother—that would make, as far as I can tell, two of us who do that. Who’ve really done that.

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice tight. “If she makes it to thirty days the way she is now she’ll just lie there, dead, for another ten weeks. Then Dan gets what he wants.”

  “Dan?”

  “The guy in the hall. My stepfather.”

  “Oh,” he says, and pushes the cart again. “That’s pretty screwed up.”

  I sit down then, not facing him but not turned away either. High school teaches you lots of stuff, but one of the most important things is that you don’t ever act like what someone’s said has gotten to you, even if it has.

  That’s pretty screwed up.

  Yeah, it is. It really is, and I know Olivia gets it, and I love her for it, but no one else has said it. No one. Sorry is all apologies but it isn’t what this is about. No one’s said the truth, the raw wound of what happened. What is happening.

  Not until now, when I’m sitting here with Caleb Harrison who takes drugs and steals cars and who gets that what’s happened to the family I used to have has exploded into something huge and very, very screwed up.

  I miss Mom all over again then, wish she was here, that I could know I’d be able to walk into the house and it would be home. That I’d see her. The real her. I’d see her smile, push her hair back. Rub her forehead if she’s had a bad day and asks for an aspirin, kicking her shoes off. She’d always ask what was for dinner, kissing my forehead before she’d turn to Dan and say, “Well, Chef,
what’s on tap?”

  “You don’t talk much,” Caleb says.

  I look at him, and I see that understanding in his eyes again. I don’t get it, and I don’t know if I like it. It’s scarier than pity or Dan’s beseeching stares. Pity I get. Dan wanting me to want what he does—it’s Dan, so I get that too. But what do Caleb Harrison and I have in common? What could he understand about this? His parents are both alive and apparently dedicated to keeping him out of jail in spite of everything he does.

  If there’s one thing I learned from Anthony, it’s the power of questions. I swallow, and hope my face isn’t still as red as I’m afraid it is. “Why were you staring at me today?”

  “Because I saw you with your mom yesterday.” A magazine starts to fall off the cart and he reaches up, pushes it back in place. “Do you miss her?”

  I look at the ceiling. My eyes are burning. I wish I knew how to make things better. Or even bearable. I’d settle for that. For just being able to breathe without feeling like it hurts.

  “I get that. Missing someone, I mean,” Caleb says, his voice quiet.

  He knows and now I don’t get it, I don’t get it at all, and when I look at him I can’t see how he understands. I just see him, so blond and pretty, so safe from everything he does because he has his parents. He has them doing everything for him.

  “Oh, so you know what it’s like to have a dead mother being kept alive so her so-called husband can get what he wants more than anything else?”

  “No, but I know what it’s like to live with a dead person.”

  “Your parents are both still...” I say and trail off as I remember that there is a dead person in Caleb’s life.

  His sister.

  And then we just look at each other and I don’t care that he’s screwed up and gorgeous. I care that someone really does get what’s going on. Sees it.

  And I think he feels the same. Although I don’t fall into the gorgeous category.

  “I—” I say, and then Dan comes in and looks at Caleb, then at me. “Emma, you can go in now.”

  I get up, glancing at Caleb.

  Dan sees it. “I’ll just talk to your friend....” he says and Caleb snorts, gets up and pulls the magazine cart past both of us, out into the hall.