Heartbeat

I walk over to him.

  “Caleb,” I say, and he looks at me.

  I take his hand and lead him out of the room. Away from the pictures, the portraits, the pieces of Minnie’s life lying around.

  I don’t know if I should take him out of the house or not. I can’t believe he lives here, in this giant, furnished tomb. I can’t believe I never wondered why he did the things he did, why I just accepted that he was a loser and never thought about it. About him.

  “How do you do it?”

  He’s silent for a moment, looking at the floor, and then he looks at me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” My voice is shaky, cracking.

  I want an answer. I want something to help me understand why Mom died and why she’s still here. I want to know how to fix things. Caleb has survived loss. He lives with grief all around him, in him. He must know how he did it. How he does it.

  He lets go of my hand. “I’m not—Emma, I drove my dad’s car into the lake. I don’t want to be in this house, I don’t want this to be how things are. But I want a lot of things that can’t happen, that won’t happen, and that’s what I know.”

  It’s not what I want him to say, but it’s the truth. I hear it in his voice. I know it in my heart.

  Under the idea that we can all make our fates, that we have choices, is the reminder that sometimes we don’t. That sometimes life is bigger than our plans. Bigger than us.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay?” he says and I smile because he isn’t okay and I’m not okay, but what he’s saying is okay. Is right. Sometimes you want things that can’t happen. That won’t happen. And it’s just how things are.

  “There need to be more words,” I say. “Like a way to get that okay isn’t possible, but it is okay.”

  “I don’t think there can be a word for that. Do you...do you maybe want something to eat?”

  I look around the hall, back toward the rooms we’ve just been in. This quiet, strange, sad monument to a girl that exists only in her parents’ mind. “Here?”

  “No. Well, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Not in here,” he says and looks back into the house too. “I don’t—I’ve never brought anyone here before. You can see why, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I say, because I do, and we walk outside.

  27

  We eat lunch in his room.

  His room isn’t in the house.

  It’s above the garage, a small white room with a window that has no curtains. There are no rugs on the floor. No soft chairs. There is a bed, a small TV, a bathroom and, tucked into the corner, a tiny kitchen.

  “The nannies used to live here,” he says, going over to a small fridge. “And then my mom took a lot of pills after Minnie died. I started taking them too and then I found out if I took them and drank...” He looks over at me. “You know about this.”

  “I heard things.”

  “Right,” he says, pulling out a pizza box and shutting the fridge. “So there were pills and other stuff, and one night I lit my room on fire.”

  “On fire?” I hadn’t heard about that.

  He nods. “My mom was up—she doesn’t sleep much—and she put it out. She, uh—when I woke up she was just staring at me. I started to say I was sorry and stuff and she just kept staring at me.”

  “She didn’t say anything?”

  He looks at the pizza box. “Not until I stopped talking. Then she said, ‘Haven’t you done enough?’ I moved over here after that.”

  “Is that why you stopped...you know.”

  “What, getting high? You can say it. You can’t get high just from saying the word.” He blows out a breath. “Sorry. I...um...it’s not why I stopped. The first car I stole, I—I hit someone. A guy. He had this little backpack with him. He was going to see his kid, who was at her first sleepover and had forgotten some stuff. I got out of the car and he was just lying there and that backpack was lying there and I thought he was dead. That I’d done what...”

  He trails off and shifts so his hair falls forward, covering his face.

  “The guy didn’t die,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t believe it, even though he sat up after a second and started screaming at me about his leg and what I’d done. I can still see him right before he sat up and started yelling, you know? Minnie...” He shakes his head. “That’s when I stopped. Why I stopped.”

  “You hit someone with a car?” I say, and I know he just said it, but I didn’t—I knew he’d done stuff, but I didn’t know he’d done something like that.

  I knew he understood grief. I didn’t know that it had spilled out of him and into the world.

  I didn’t know he had hurt people other than himself.

  He nods. “And I—well, you know I kept stealing cars after that. My parents kept as much of it as quiet as they could—they paid off the guy I hit and managed to cut deals for the other cars up until the bus thing.”

  My throat feels tight, gummy. “Why?”

  “Because my dad wants to be a judge and he had a pretty good chance of becoming one until the bus. I did that on a Tuesday, during school, and it caused a lot of problems.”

  “I remember,” I say, thinking back. We’d all had to wait an extra hour to leave school, even the people with cars, because the bus had to be brought back, and even then the school board was afraid to use it until a group of mechanics looked it over. They ended up readjusting all the school bus routes so the kids on the bus Caleb stole could be put onto others and still get home. “You got sent away after that, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ve never told anyone about the guy. Not even the therapists at suck camp. I...anyway, my parents have plenty of reasons to hate me that aren’t about Minnie.” He pushes his hair off his face and blinks hard, looks toward the door. “You probably want to go back to school now.”

  Part of me wants to. Caleb Harrison understands me, but he isn’t—he truly can’t help me. I thought I got that before, but I didn’t.

  I do now.

  Caleb understands me because he’s still hurting too. I thought he was a victim, that he lashed out because his parents blamed him for his sister’s death. And they did, and he did—he took all their hate and tore himself apart over it—but he isn’t innocent. He did things, awful things.

  But I look at him, standing in this tiny white room, and he is the loneliest person I have ever seen. He has nothing. No one.

  And I know how that feels.

  I get up and walk over to him. And then, like he did last night, I put my arms around him.

  He stiffens for a second and then he hugs me back, his arms wrapping tight around me. I feel him shaking and rest my head on his shoulder.

  “Emma,” he says, just a whisper, and that’s all he says. But I hear it, and I don’t let go.

  28

  We drive back to school the same way we left, in silence, but his voice catches me as I’m getting out of the car.

  “Emma, I just want you to know that what I did, I wish it hadn’t happened. That’s the worst part. Because the liv—”

  “The living with it is forever,” I say, and when he looks at me, I see that he will always have ghosts.

  But I also see that he has carried them by himself and that he knows what he’s done, who he is, and he is trying to live with it. With himself, and with the world he has.

  I see that he is beautiful. Not just outside, but inside, under the mistakes and anger and grief, is a heart that beats pure and true. That loves his sister and his parents and wishes for things that can’t ever be.

  He wants things to be whole, but knows they can’t. He sees that, and doesn’t look away.

  “I’m going to fail all my classes this term,” I tell him. “I won’
t do the things I thought I would, won’t go to the college I used to want to. It all seems so stupid now that my mother’s gone.” I swallow. “The night before she died, I blew her off to do homework. I thought I’d always...I thought there would be other times. But there aren’t, and that’s the worst. That’s the part I hate most.”

  I look at him, and I don’t wonder if he’ll understand. I know grades and the plans I’d made, the way I tried to build a future that would be glowing, perfect, is something he’s never thought about. He never had the time. The chance.

  But I know he understands about seeing all the things you lost, the moments you thought you’d have, the ones you were so sure of. I know he gets that there is a moment you never saw, a moment that just came, and that it’s unmade and remade you. That you can’t be who you used to be once it’s happened.

  He leans toward me and touches my hair, my nonbeautiful, noncurly hair, and looks at me. At my face, which has no trifecta, which is just a face and nothing more until he touches it, one finger sliding down my cheek to my jaw.

  And then, for a moment, I do feel different. Not beautiful, not something as simple as that.

  I feel special. I feel like there is the world, and then there is Caleb and me. Just us, a broken little party of two but it isn’t so bad, being broken. Not with someone who understands. Not with him.

  “I didn’t expect you,” he says, and then he presses his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I look at him and I understand, but part of me wants there to be more. Wants to be special beyond the understanding we share.

  Part of me just wants him to want me.

  “I should go,” I say because I have felt want and it didn’t do me any favors and Mom is dead and Caleb isn’t going to save me and I don’t know if I should trust myself because I used to believe that to have the perfect life, I just needed to study and work hard.

  And look where that got me.

  I get out of the car and head into school. I don’t look back, but I spend what’s left of the day hiding in one of the girls’ bathrooms and thinking about him.

  It’s actually a relief when the final bell rings and I go out and find Dan. I don’t understand this part of me, the thing inside me that has let me think about something other than Mom. I know that I am still living but it hasn’t—

  It hasn’t been like this.

  At the hospital, I sit in the cafeteria, a fruit cup smelling of canned pineapple in front of me.

  I see Caleb’s cart after Dan comes to get me, as I’m walking to Mom.

  I stop. I pull the package of cotton candy out of my bag, the one from this morning, put it on the cart and then I go see her.

  When I sit down, I tell her everything.

  “Are you mad?” I say, and I don’t think she would be, but she would be worried. She wanted me to be safe, to be with a guy like Dan or my father.

  My father, who died, and Dan.

  Dan, who did this.

  “Would you—?” My voice breaks, and I hold her hand tight. Will her to somehow hear me. To show me a sign. Something, anything.

  She’s silent, but her belly ripples. I swallow and close my eyes.

  29

  I see Caleb the next day, as I’m standing by Olivia’s locker before first period.

  “So you were really quiet last night,” she’s saying and I nod because I was. Olivia came over and talked about Roger and asked about Mom, and then she painted her fingernails with magic markers I bought to do a project I know I signed up for but remember nothing about.

  She’s still talking, and I see Caleb and I know he sees me and I like that I know that, that I see him seeing me, and then he is coming over.

  I am watching him walk toward me and we have talked, I have told him things I haven’t even told Olivia, but we haven’t really talked at school.

  We haven’t talked where everyone can see us.

  “Hey,” he says and his hair is in his face again. I tilt my own head back so I can see him a little better and catch his grin, slight and embarrassed, and he pushes his hair back, those cheekbones a little red. “Thanks for...you know.”

  I think he means yesterday but he could also mean the cotton candy or both, but I feel people looking at us and I know I have to say something. “Sure.”

  His grin grows wider but his eyes get serious, and now I know what he means. He means yesterday. His house, his life. The truths he told.

  How I stayed after I heard them.

  He moves a little, his hair starting to fall forward, and I reach out and touch one side of it, the curls sliding over my fingers.

  We both still and I feel the same jolt I did yesterday, only now it’s stronger.

  It’s stronger and it’s confusing but I don’t want to turn away.

  He stares at me and I am staring back and he leans in a little, leans in toward me, and I could touch his face, I could slide my hand so it would rest on the line of his jaw, like he touched me before. I could—

  “Emma?” Olivia says, and she sounds beyond surprised.

  Caleb shakes his head, like he’s surfacing from underwater, and his hair falls over his face as my hand slides away.

  “See you later?” he says.

  I nod.

  “What was that?” Olivia says after he goes.

  “Talking.”

  “Uh-huh. You touched his hair! What’s going on? Are you and Caleb hanging out now?”

  I think of him asking me if I wanted to go yesterday. Of how he shook when I held him. Of how he’d whispered my name.

  “Yeah, we are.”

  “You sure you want to?” Olivia says, and when I don’t say anything, she sighs. “I know everything with your mom is terrible, but Caleb? He steals cars!”

  “There’s more to him that that. He gets everything that’s going on.”

  “And I don’t.”

  “You do, but not like he does. He gets how it feels. Everything with the baby, it’s—”

  “He. You know that the baby is a boy, but you don’t say that. Why?”

  I don’t say, because then it’s not just about what Dan did. How he never even asked me, just made his choice. “He, he, he. There. Better?”

  “No because it’s like you don’t think about anything but what Dan did and well—it’s weird how you don’t talk about how you’re going to have a brother, you know? And now Caleb Harrison?”

  “You don’t even know how well I know all about it. About him. It’s all about him, and you don’t have to sit in the hospital and look at your dead mother every day.”

  “Okay, okay, sorry,” Olivia says, her mouth trembling. “I just...I don’t know. I want to make things better for you.”

  I put my arm through hers. “I know you do.”

  But the thing is, she can’t. Not like she wants to.

  No one can make things better, but Caleb...Caleb gets it in a way no one else does.

  30

  The afternoon drive to the hospital is the same as always, but the visit isn’t. There is a doctor waiting for us when we get to the floor where Mom is, and I see Dan stiffen.

  There is only one reason a doctor waits to see you.

  “Mom?” I say, my voice breaking. “What’s wrong with Mom?”

  I know she’s gone, I do, but I’ve gotten used to seeing her, to touching her even if she can’t feel it, and I suddenly don’t want what I’ve been so sure I do. I don’t want to hear that she’s gone forever and ever, that the machines stopped holding on to her, that she slipped away and all that’s left is the ground and the goodbyes all over again but without her there, without me seeing her every day.

  “No,” Dan says, “oh no, no, no,” and I realize the doctor is talking, t
hat he’s saying, “Lisa’s holding steady,” and then I know it’s the baby.

  Mom’s belly, her swollen, fluttering belly, and what’s inside, what Dan wants, what he’s done, and the doctor is still talking but I’m not listening because Mom is still here, I can still see her. She’s here, right here.

  I start to walk toward her. I want to see her now, I have to see her now, but a nurse touches my arm and steers me behind Dan, and the doctor is still talking, saying, “fetal distress” and “fluid levels” and Dan is crying.

  “What’s going to happen?” he says, and all the talk afterward drifts over me because I forgot what I realized the day I was in Caleb’s room, when I learned he wasn’t going to save me, that he couldn’t make all my pain go away.

  Under the idea that we can all make our fates, that we have choices, is the reminder that sometimes we don’t. That sometimes life is bigger than our plans. Bigger than us.

  I look at Dan, who is still crying, and I reach over and touch his hand. He grabs my fingers and holds on, tight.

  I don’t try to pull away.

  We wait, first with the doctor and then in the waiting room.

  “Thank you, Emma,” Dan says. “Thank you for being here.”

  “I—” I start to say, and then the doctor comes back in. He is smiling now and then Dan is standing up, crying again but hugging the doctor and saying “Thank you” over and over again.

  “We’re still not out of the woods,” the doctor says. “But you can go see her now. Just one visitor, though. We still are monitoring the baby very closely.”

  “The baby,” Dan says, grinning, and then he turns to me and says, “I’m so glad you understand now. This is really what Lisa wanted, and now our son—”

  “I want to see her,” I say, and Dan, Dan who was just hugging me, who held my hand, who I once thought loved Mom more than anything, who I thought would put her and me first because he said he would says, “Emma, I have to see her.”

  I walk out of the waiting room then. I watch Dan come out. I watch him walk toward Mom’s room. He looks at me before he does and I stare back at him until he turns away.