Heartbeat

  “With what?”

  “You can buy stuff to make it curly.”

  “Like a curling iron, or stuff in a box that comes with a list of instructions?”

  “Instructions.”

  “No way. Remember the black dye? You don’t want something like that to happen again, do you?”

  “No, but I want to look...I want him to see me and think ‘Wow.’”

  “Then don’t put anything in your hair.”

  “It’s straight.”

  “It’s pretty and you’re totally at the nervous end of things right now, right?”

  “Maybe. I just—you know last year there was Pete, and it ended up being nothing and I like Roger so much more and—”

  “Pete was a jerk. He was a total party boyfriend, super nice when he was drunk and wanted to get you alone but a troll the rest of the time.”

  She laughs. “He was a total party boyfriend. And jerk. Okay, you’re right, I’m just nervous. Roger isn’t Pete. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, so I am going to be completely calm about this now. Or at least change the subject. How was the hospital?”

  “The usual.”

  “The usual?”

  “Well, Dan seemed a little upset on the way home, but—well, you know. He does his thing. I do mine. And we both wait.”

  “You didn’t see Caleb at the hospital?”

  “Nope.”

  “Something happened,” she says. “I can tell.”

  “I talked to Caleb at school. So, what happened at the orthodontist?”

  “My teeth are fine, but nice try. What did you talk about?”

  “Cotton candy.”

  “You and Caleb Harrison talked about cotton candy? Was it like something he ate when he got high? Is he doing stuff again? You know even the hard-core, have-to-get-high-in-the-bathroom-before-class fiends don’t talk to him anymore, right?”

  “He wasn’t high, Olivia.”

  “So you talked to him about cotton candy. Anything else?”

  I think of him standing on my roof. Of the things he said about where he’s been. What his parents thought he did.

  Of how he knows what being alone is like.

  “Yeah.”

  “Emma, look, that ‘yeah’ sounded like it was a lot. I think you need to come out with Roger and me on Friday. He knows a lot of great guys.”

  “Olivia, you can’t take me along on your date and I don’t need one anyway.”

  “Look, I know things are awful. I think of your mom all the time too,” she whispers. “But I don’t want you to forget about everything else, Emma. How about I talk to one of Roger’s friends and see if he—”

  “No. I can’t think about guys like that now.”

  “But you’re talking to Caleb Harrison.”

  “It’s not...it’s different.”

  “Okay,” she says, and I really can’t think about it, about dating and all the things Olivia is doing.

  But I am thinking about Caleb. About how he is nothing like everyone says he is. About how I stood on the roof with him tonight and felt more at peace, more alive, than I have in ages.

  24

  Dan is downstairs in the kitchen in the morning, like always, only today he isn’t cooking or eating. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, looking at something.

  Looking at a picture of Mom.

  I see it. I can’t not see it, and I stop when I do, frozen by Mom’s face. Her smile.

  It’s not a pregnant picture or anything. Just a picture of her.

  “Do you remember this?” Dan says.

  “Yes,” I say, because I do.

  The photo is from her last birthday, when Dan and I surprised her with a dinner-and-gift-celebration. I made a banner that said Happy Birthday, and Remember to Thank Your Banner Maker, and when she saw it, she laughed so hard she cried. The picture is of her shaking her head, wiping her eyes with a huge smile on her face.

  I watch him smooth a finger over Mom’s face, gently brushing over her smile.

  I want to touch the photo. I want to hold it, I want to look at Mom up close, see her as she was. But I don’t want to ask Dan for it. I don’t even want to think about him looking at it, or why he is.

  So I just say, “I’m ready to go now,” and start to head for the door.

  Dan clears his throat. “She was happy, right?”

  I stare at him. I want to hate him and part of me does. Part of me hates him so much I can hardly breathe because of it, but another part of me remembers the guy who came into her life, into our lives, and made things better.

  “Yeah,” I say. “She was.”

  He must hear the break in my voice, the stress on was, the anger and grief I can’t hide and won’t because Dan did this, Dan is why we are here, like this, right now.

  He must hear it because he looks at me.

  “You and I. What’s happened?” he says. “I look at this picture and all I can think about is how things were. How I’ve lost you too. Emma, I miss—”

  “I really need to get to school,” I say to stop him from talking more.

  “Will you at least tell me how to make it right?”

  “You can’t. It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I say, thinking of Mom, of how there is no chance for her, how there’s never been a chance for her, and still she lies in that hospital because of him.

  I walk outside and get into the car.

  After a moment, Dan comes out. And yet another day begins.

  “Do you want the photo?” he says when we get to school, and Dan knows me. He knows how much I love Mom and of course he saw what was written on my face when I saw it.

  Of course he knows how much I miss her.

  “No,” I say, and get out of the car.

  In school, I don’t look for Olivia. I can’t handle seeing anyone, even her. I just walk around, step one two three four through all the halls, and end up by the vending machines. There are people waiting in line to buy caffeinated water and juice, our school’s “healthy” answer to soda.

  There are people buying candy bars too—a couple of years ago, they put in fruit instead, but sales dropped so low the candy came back.

  I see a few people I know from class, and I see them glance at me and then turn away. I’m like Sara Walton was two years ago, the girl who would and could and did until she had a nervous breakdown.

  Sara and I both went from being the person to beat to being the story of how you could—can—screw up, and I used to think Sara should have been stronger, that she should have focused on what was important: on getting the right grades, on doing everything possible to get into the absolute best school.

  Now I get how she felt. How you see everything you’ve done and think, Why? Why bother? Why— I feel the tears welling and dig around in my bag, find some change and hold it tightly in my fist, the coins digging into my palm.

  There is no why. That’s what Sara figured out, and that’s what I know now.

  Things just happen and sometimes you wake up one morning and go to school and your mother dies.

  I buy a bag of cotton candy when I’m finally in front of the vending machine.

  “Emma?”

  “Hey, Olivia,” I say, and slide the candy out and into my bag, move aside so the next person can get what they’re waiting for.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Walking around.”

  “Around school? Why? Are you looking for Caleb?”

  “Olivia, no. I’m just—this morning wasn’t so great, okay? Dan had a picture of Mom and started talking about her and then said he felt like he’d lost me too, and I just couldn??
?t handle it.”

  “Oh.” The bell rings and she looks at me.

  She looks at me and I see pity. I know she loves me, but she also feels sorry for me and I don’t want that, not now.

  “I gotta go to class,” I say and smile at her before I walk off. I turn around at the end of the hall and see her watching me. I wave to show I’m okay, and she waves back and then disappears.

  The halls empty fast and there I am. Here I am.

  I am Emma, seventeen. I live with my stepfather. My mother is dead. Inside her is a baby.

  I close my eyes. I do not want to think about this. Not about Mom or Dan’s choice. Not any of it, but it is what I am—all I am—and how can I get away from myself?

  I go outside. Just like that, I leave school. It’s easier than I thought it would be. The part of me that tried so hard, that wanted all those A’s and worked so hard—that part is truly gone.

  But I’ve still never left school unless Mom—or Dan, after he and Mom got married—had to take me to the doctor or the dentist or I got sick. I’ve never just walked out. It seems so strange that you can do it.

  But you can.

  Outside it is quiet, the school a low hum behind me, voices from classrooms carrying, bleeding out through the walls, out into the air around me, but softly, softly.

  It’s sunny. I don’t remember when I stopped noticing stuff like that.

  I look up at the sky. There’s the sun, bright and yellow. Clouds, white and fluffy.

  It shouldn’t be like this. The sun shouldn’t be shining. There should be no weather, there should be nothing, but that’s the worst thing about Mom dying. Nothing else stopped.

  Only she did.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Caleb. I look away from the sky and see him standing nearby, looking at me.

  “I don’t know. What are you doing out here?”

  He runs a hand through his hair, sends it sprawling over his face. “I saw you come out and...I don’t know. I guess I know the look on your face. I’ve just never seen it on someone else.”

  I look at what I can see of his face. “How does it look?”

  “Bad.”

  I think of the people from my classes that I saw before, and how they looked at me and turned away. I think of Olivia and the pity in her eyes.

  “It’s all bullshit anyway,” he says, gesturing back at the school, and then takes a step toward me, shoving his hands into his pockets. His hair parts enough that I can see his eyes.

  He is looking at me, right at me. He sees me, and there is no pity in his eyes. He just sees me.

  “You want to get out of here?” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

  25

  Caleb has a car, which surprises me. He sees my face and laughs, not at me but—well, it sounds like he’s laughing at himself. And it’s not a happy sound.

  “By special permission,” he says with a flourish. “My parents are too busy to drive me around, so I got to keep my license. It pays to be a lawyer who knows everyone around here.”

  Maybe I should be nervous about getting into a car with him, but I’m not. As weird as it might sound, I trust Caleb Harrison. He’s not—who he was isn’t who he is now.

  I get that.

  He drives us to the rich part of town, the part where all the houses are practically piled on top of each other, separated by slivers of immaculate lawn to pretend there is space. They all look alike too, massive brick structures that stretch up and out and line streets with names like Park Avenue Lane.

  He drives slowly, carefully, and I know which house is his the moment we turn onto Royal Crescent Court. It’s huge—the largest house on the street—but it is also the loneliest-looking house I’ve seen besides the one Dan and I share. It’s like the house itself knows something is missing. That someone is gone.

  He pulls into the driveway, turns the car off, and then looks at me. “Inside is—there’s stuff. My parents really loved Minnie.”

  I think of Dan, holding the picture this morning.

  “Lots of photos?”

  “Sort of,” Caleb says, and his voice is strained.

  He hesitates by the front door. I can’t see his face through his hair and, on impulse, reach out to move it back a little. To see his face.

  It’s soft, not stiff with stuff like Anthony’s or slick like Olivia’s with the cream she rubs into hers every morning to make sure it doesn’t frizz.

  It’s just hair, I know, but touching it sends a shock through me, a spark that makes my fingers tingle, sends my thoughts scattering, and when Caleb looks at me, I see he feels it too, whatever it is. I pull my hand away.

  My fingers still tingle.

  Then Caleb opens the door.

  26

  I have seen cemeteries. I should have seen one many times by now, over the past thirty-one days. I thought I would see Mom there, that I’d sit by a stone with her name carved on it and wish she was here.

  Instead, everything went sideways, upside down, strange, and I have never ever seen anything like Caleb’s house.

  At first it looks ordinary. There are rooms. There is furniture. There are rugs. In the hall where we stand is a place to put umbrellas and a coatrack.

  There is also a painting of Minnie. It hangs on a wall directly in front of us. It is as tall as I am, maybe taller. It is all that is on the wall.

  Minnie, grinning, one hand raised like she’s saying hello. Asking you to come closer.

  There’s more. In every room Caleb and I walk through—living room, dining room, kitchen, four other rooms that are filled with furniture but that I don’t have a name for, there is Minnie. She is in little-girl things turned into art, a pair of sneakers resting on top of a table in a glass box, a set of barrettes mounted into a frame and put on an end table. She is in drawings, yellowed and curling at the edges all over the fridge, her name scrawled in the corner.

  She is in paintings too. In every room, there is a painting. None as large as the first one, but they are the first thing your eye is drawn to. Among the furniture and the rugs and the things that make a room, a house, she is there, a girl in a picture, smiling.

  She is blond and tiny, and behind her are grass and trees and bright, bright sky.

  She is always smiling.

  We stop in a room that I think is maybe another living room. A sitting room, maybe? A sofa and some chairs are placed by a fireplace with tiny pink ballet slippers on the mantel. A few photos sit on an end table. The windows look out onto what I guess is Caleb’s backyard, a bit of grass and then a room of his neighbor’s house. The curtains are green and match the rug. The sofa is soft-looking, the chairs wide.

  It is like being inside a tomb. Everything about the room, the house, is about loss. It screams it without words. It scares me.

  I reach out blindly and touch Caleb’s arm. I move my hand down, touch it to his.

  His fingers are cold and I look at him. He is staring at the portrait of Minnie and I see what people at school see when they look at me. I see why they turn away.

  I see what grief does, how it strips you bare, shows you all the things you don’t want to know. That loss doesn’t end, that there isn’t a moment where you are done, when you can neatly put it away and move on.

  It never leaves you.

  I look at the portrait. I don’t remember Minnie that well, but I don’t remember her as blond and tiny.

  “I thought Minnie’s hair was darker.”

  “It was,” Caleb says, and his hand, in mine, is shaking a little. “And she was...my mother used to worry about her weight. She put Minnie on diets. The first one was when she was four. I remember that because Minnie cried. She didn’t do that a lot. But she cried whenever Mom told her she was f
at.”

  He looks at me. “But they wanted to remember her like she was....” His voice trails off, and I see he is looking at the end table. I walk over to it, his hand still in mine, and pick up one of the photos.

  There are three people in it. The moment I see it, I can tell Caleb has his father’s eyes and his mother’s hair. They are standing together, smiling stiffly, and in front of them is a little girl—blond and tiny, just like the paintings —who is holding her arms out for someone. I see a hand reaching toward her, the edges of fingers, and one single blond curl.

  “When she was little,” he says, “she was beautiful. Everyone said so. People used to stop my parents and tell them how pretty Minnie was. Then she got older and people didn’t say it.”

  He takes the photo out of my hand, moving away from me, our hands no longer joined, and puts it back down. “I wish...”

  He falls silent and stays that way, looking at the photo.

  I look at his back. At the way his shoulders are hunched.

  I look at him.

  “You’re in it. The picture.”

  He looks over his shoulder at me.

  “I was.”

  “Your parents took you out of it?”

  “No, I did. My mother cried about not having any photos after the funeral, and I wanted her to have some. But we only ever took family photos on vacations. They didn’t—there weren’t any pictures of just Minnie.”

  “So you made some.”

  “Yeah,” he says and turns away, looks back at the photo again. “I made some.”

  “Are there any of you?”

  “No. I’m here. They have to look at me every day. That’s more than enough for them.”

  I think of him taking his dad’s car. Of how he watched it sink into the lake. The lake near where his sister died.

  I think about what he said to me last night.

  It’s lonely.

  He didn’t just lose his sister. He lost everything. He’s alone.

  He’s been alone for years and he’s still here. He carries ghosts and blame that shouldn’t be. He got twisted all around but never broke.