It was then that she heard the howling. A wounded animal cry, growing louder as she went. And then she saw the source of it: Ethan Sloane, hunched over, on the steps, sobbing into the sleeve of his jacket.
Lucy felt a pang in her chest for him, wished she could say something to him. But, of course, she couldn’t.
She hopped off the stairs, into the grass beside them. She ran, her hair catching wind and flying out behind her. And she didn’t stop running until she reached the road.
Back down at the truck, there was Tristan, seat back, feet propped against the dash, playing his harmonica. Lucy stood behind the fence, and closed her eyes for a moment and listened to those notes, bending. These were not ragged cries, but a mournful wail, the jagged edges smoothed into something beautiful.
Had Lucy heard this just twenty minutes before, she would have had the strange sensation she always did when listening to music that perfectly matched her mood—as though the thin wall that separated her body from the world around her had dissolved, as though she was just a sound wave vibrating in the air, weightless and part of everything. The merging power of music, it was why she loved it so much. It was why music felt like magic.
Tristan stopped playing and squinted into the dark. “Lu?”
Lucy unhooked the gate and walked out.
“You survived,” he said. “I thought maybe the poppy seeds got you.” Tristan put his harmonica back in his mouth and played a blues prompt:
Ba duuum ba dum
This was Lucy’s cue to improvise some ridiculous blues ditty like the “I’m Out of Gum Blues,” the “Where’re My Shoes Blues,” the “My Friend Tristan Won’t Stop Bluesing Blues.” Since Tristan was the only person Lucy wasn’t scared to sing in front of, she was happy to do it any chance she got.
Tristan played it again: ba duuuum ba dum. He held one hand out toward her.
But she couldn’t. Not now. Lucy shook her head as she got back in the truck.
Tristan dropped his harmonica in the cup holder. “Everything go okay up there?”
“It was . . .” Lucy stopped. “Weird.”
“How so?” He started to drive.
“Tristy.” Her voice sounded strange, like she was hearing herself from very far away. “Do you believe in magic?”
Tristan smiled. “Well, of course.” He took a lollipop out of the cup holder. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, then waved his other hand in front of it. “Poof!” He wiggled his fingers. The lollipop was gone. Then he waved his hand one more time and the lollipop was back. “TA-DA!”
It was the same trick he’d been doing for years. Usually Lucy loved it, if for no other reason than Tristan’s goofy enthusiasm. But in that moment all she could do was try and force a smile.
“Right,” she said. “Of course.” She leaned back against her seat.
As they drove, images flashed through Lucy’s head: the party, the girls in the gazebo, the smoke, Alex’s face, Olivia out there in the dark with that look in her eyes and that smirk on her lips. It certainly helps if you have magic on your side.
Lucy gasped as she suddenly realized what these words actually meant. It was so obvious she couldn’t believe it had taken her until now to comprehend it. Olivia was offering something Lucy had not even known was possible until five minutes before, something out of fairy stories, out of dreams. Olivia was offering magic.
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat as an idea began forming. What if instead of using the Heartbreaker magic to win a heart and break it, Lucy used the magic to win a heart and keep it? Not just any heart, but the one she’d had and needed back.
Lucy shook her head. That she was sitting there thinking this, considering this, was completely crazy. She knew that. But she also knew this: some of the very best ideas seem completely crazy . . . until they work.
Lucy felt herself nodding slightly as a smile she was barely aware of spread across her lips.
A couple minutes later, Tristan pulled up a few feet from Lucy’s driveway.
“Well, I’ll be out driving around so . . .” Tristan stopped. “If you want pancakes or need another toothpick or want to rob a bank and need a reliable getaway vehicle . . .”
Lucy so wished she could tell him what she’d seen up there. What she’d just decided. Instead she reached out and gave him a hug. “Thank you for bringing me there. You are the world’s best friend,” she said.
“Eh,” he shrugged, reaching for his harmonica again. “Tell it to the judge!”
She shut the door behind her and he slowly drove away, steering with one hand, playing the harmonica with the other. Lucy stood there smiling as she listened.
A second later her phone vibrated in her pocket. A text from Tristan, who had sent her a text every night for as long as they’d had phones.
Bu duuuuum bu dum, it said.
Lucy laughed and shook her head.
Then she tiptoed back inside.
Chapter Seven
On the second day of her sophomore year, there was Lucy, standing all alone out in front of her school with something written on her stomach in Sharpie marker. Two letters, the ones that wouldn’t wash off in the shower that morning even though she’d used a loofah!
M
A
She wondered if it meant something that those were the letters that were left.
My Alex. Magic Abounds.
She put her hand on where those letters were and closed her eyes. . . .
It’s early spring. Lucy and Alex are on their way to Alex’s house where Lucy has never been before. Lucy is in the middle of telling some story that she wishes she were not telling, something that she saw at lunch and what it made her think about the way people are when they are looking for a seat and how some people look so nervous, and some people don’t look nervous but you can tell they are anyway and . . . She is rambling, she knows; she wishes she could stop. She’s glad when he interrupts.
“Did I tell you about the ladder I found?” he asks.
“No!” she says. “But please do!”
“Well, I found this ladder last night. It was in the garage. The people who lived in the house before left it there.”
“It’s so good to have a ladder,” she says. Before she can cringe at herself, he smiles at her like she’s being adorable. He tells her yes, it is good, he’s really glad he found it, and he plans to use it to climb up on his family’s new roof so he can take pictures from up there. Climbing stuff and then taking pictures of whatever was down below was his favorite thing to do with his friends at his old school. “Photo safari was what we called it,” he explains. “Because we would really climb anything—trees, buildings, water towers, telephone poles. Shit, it was really crazy some of the stuff we did.” He grins and shakes his head.
Lucy is scared of climbing most things, ladders especially because she doesn’t quite trust those skinny little rungs. She is also scared of what climbing usually leads to, which is heights. But, but! When they turn onto his street and he suggests that they should go on his roof and try out the brand-new, very old ladder, she smiles and does her best impression of a casual person saying, “Fun!” And tries not to throw up.
When they get there, he does not suggest going inside. He parks in the driveway and goes into the garage and drags out a terrible-looking rusty thing that may have once been green but certainly isn’t anymore. He carries it over to the roof and leans it against the side of the house. “Hope it’s sturdy enough,” he says, and then pounds one of the rungs. Maybe he knows she’s scared and he’s teasing her a little. She forces a laugh, but it comes out sounding like a cough.
Alex starts to climb, takes the steps in twos. His camera bounces against his leg. He disappears onto the roof.
Lucy takes a deep breath and puts her flip-flopped foot on that first rickety rung. She is glad Alex is already on the roof so he can’t see her legs shaking. When she reaches the top, she is dizzy and sweating. She sits down and scoots backwards up the roof. The shingles scra
tch the back of her legs. Alex is far away, crouched at the edge, taking pictures of the backyard from up above. She watches him and feels the love chemicals pump through her. She loves watching him take pictures, the way his face looks when he squints one eye to look through the lens, the way his beautiful hands look when he clicks the shutter. After a while he stops and lowers his camera and stares out, a funny expression on his face. He looks so artistic and deep.
“What are you thinking?” Lucy asks.
“It sucks not having those guys here with me, my friends back home, I mean.”
Lucy’s heart squeezes. “But you’ll see them soon though, right?” She is trying to be cheerful and encouraging. “Like on breaks and stuff?” He nods, but she has the feeling he hasn’t quite heard her.
He wanders off, as comfortable on the roof as he is on the ground. Lucy watches as he takes more photos—the top of the chimney, a tree branch, this one spot where a few shingles have fallen off and a little bird is sitting on a rusty nail. Later he will give her a print of this bird, framed, as a gift. He will tell her that the bird reminds him of her and she will know somehow he means this as a compliment. But she does not know any of this yet; instead all she knows is that he is just over there but seems very far away right now.
“We could go visit them,” Lucy calls out. “You know, like a road trip!” Only he is too absorbed in that nail, that bird, and doesn’t respond.
Lucy feels an intense, sickening sense of loneliness, of missing him even though he is only ten feet away. A hot, creeping ball of jealousy scampers up her back on its pokey little legs and burrows into her. She is, she realizes then, jealous of his friends back home. Jealous because he misses them and is wishing he was with them even though he’s there with her. But her jealousy takes hold and starts leaking outward. And suddenly she is jealous of that little bird even, because he is looking at it the way he looked at her that first time at the park. And because he is talking to it in the quiet, gentle voice she thought was just for her. “Aren’t you pretty? Aren’t you a pretty little thing.”
Later, she will grow to find this feeling familiar—this jealousy toward whatever his camera is pointed at that isn’t her. But in that moment it shocks her and fills her with shame. To be jealous of a bird, well, that is just the most pathetic thing in the world.
Eventually when that bird flies away, Alex comes to her. Lies back on the roof next to her, arm behind his head, one knee up, staring up at the sky. She lies back too and leans her head against his chest and it kind of makes her neck ache but she stays like that. And he says, “Hey,” and smiles at her as though he’s only then realized she’s up there with him. But that he’s glad she is. “Come here,” he says in that voice. And she snuggles in closer. He puts his hand on her stomach, rests it there absentmindedly. His fingers are against her bare skin where her shirt had come up a little bit and she could cry with relief now that he’s touching her. She imagines that her skin is dissolving and that his hand is becoming part of her, that he is part of her. They stay there like that for Lucy has no idea how long. They stay there until Alex says suddenly, “Did you know that when they decided to move they didn’t even consult me?” She knows he must mean his parents. His voice sounds strained. And that is new. “They kind of just told me as an afterthought. Like for practical reasons since they needed me to pack up my stuff.”
Lucy is shocked out of her bliss, but her shock is quickly swept away by an overwhelming wave of tenderness toward this boy whom she loves so much. And anger at anyone who would ever hurt him. There is so much that she wants to say. But the words get caught in her throat.
“You are too wonderful to ever be anyone’s afterthought,” she says finally.
He does not answer, but pulls her close to him and hugs her in a way that feels different from any hug they’ve ever shared before. She holds on tight to him and to this moment. But after a while she can feel him float away again. Alex sits up, coughs. His voice is back to normal; he says they have to get off the roof because it’s getting dark and they might never be able to get down if they don’t do it now. And she thinks, Stay up here forever, that might not be so bad, that might not be so bad at all. But she is silent as they make their way back down to the ground.
Lucy opened her eyes, she pressed her chest for all she’d lost. And all that she planned to get back . . .
She watched the mass of bodies moving toward her, making their way up from the parking lot toward the school. There was a heart beating inside each one of those bodies. Lucy imagined that she could see each of them beating through their chests, a messy, red muscle, pushing their blood around, making them go.
She focused on the faces one by one and for the first time since she laid eyes on him, she begged the universe to keep Alex away, afraid that if she saw him before she truly had a plan to get him back, the mere sight of his beautiful face would cause the deep, black hole of her heart to open right up and its vast emptiness would devour everything.
Instead she asked the universe to please, please bring her one of the Heartbreakers first.
A second later, it did—the giant, gorgeous, scary one. But a few feet behind that girl there was Alex with his hands in the pockets of his green camo pants.
The universe has nothing if not a sense of humor.
Lucy tried to take a deep breath. But her lungs would take no breath at all. She knew what she had to do.
She walked over to the sidewalk and stood there as the people passed. They were fifteen feet away, ten feet, five feet.
Finally she breathed in and as she exhaled she said, “Hi!”
They both looked up. That girl started to smile; her mouth looked huge. Alex was staring at Lucy. “Lu . . . ,” he began.
His voice made her stomach hurt but she forced her eyebrows up, as though somehow bumping into him at the school where they both went was the most unlikely thing in the world. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you!” No one had ever sounded faker.
Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest, it was like it was trying to escape her rib cage and squirm its way to him.
Lucy turned toward the girl, her back to Alex. “Uh, could I talk to you for a second?”
The girl was still smiling, and Lucy felt grateful for that, felt her insides start to uncoil. Maybe this was a good thing, actually, maybe Alex would see her talking to this girl, this cool, older girl, who was smiling right at her, and be impressed. Think, Hmm, maybe there’s more to Lucy than I thought.
The girl said, “Of course, baby.” She stepped off the sidewalk and started walking toward a tree on one of the grassy dividers that split the parking lot into sections. Lucy turned and followed.
She could feel Alex watching her; her skin warmed as though his eyes were the sun.
They stopped; the girl crossed her arms. Lucy’s heart was hammering.
“Yesterday,” Lucy said, “I made a mistake.”
The girl stared at her. She was nodding ever so slightly. “Go on.”
Lucy felt her throat start to close, like it was trying to squeeze back all the lies she was about to tell. Lying, she knew, was bad enough, but lying to a girl who would be scary even if she didn’t have magic powers, which she did, seemed completely and utterly insane. But here Lucy was, about to do it. Do broken hearts make you brave or do they just make you stupid?
But what choice did she have?
She couldn’t tell the truth, of course, and it’s not like she could get him back on her own.
It was a miracle that Alex had liked her in the first place. He was the first boy who ever had.
Still standing there out in the bright early morning sun, Lucy felt even more confused about what she’d seen the night before, about exactly what had happened. But she knew what she needed to say, which was this:
“I made a mistake yesterday. When I didn’t take you guys up on your offer to teach me, you know, about the . . .” Lucy spoke slowly, hoping the girl would fill in what Lucy wasn’t saying. But the girl jus
t stood there looking at her, a little smile on her lips. Lucy could not tell what type of smile this was. So she just went on. “I was overwhelmed and I kind of wasn’t sure if you guys were kidding or not—ha-ha—but I need to learn. I mean, I’d like to learn”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“to win hearts, so that I can . . .” win back the one I want, “break one.” Lucy looked up. “Please.”
The other girl was fully smiling now. “I hear what you’re saying there. I totally see how all of that could have happened.” She nodded. Lucy felt a flood of relief. “The reason it happened . . . ,” the girl continued. She held up her hand—her very large and very strong-looking hand—and raised one very big finger and beckoned Lucy close, closer. So close their noses were almost touching, and then she tapped Lucy on the tip of her nose, as though Lucy were a little baby bunny. “. . . is because you’re a fucking idiot.” The girl smiled again, even wider but so sweetly. “Yesterday you won the lottery.” She put her arm around Lucy’s shoulders and pulled Lucy in. “And then you took the winning ticket and you threw it in the trash. So my question for you is this: why on earth would we want to team up with someone who has such poor judgment? I mean, who would do a thing like what you did?” She squeezed Lucy’s shoulders. Her hands were so strong it felt like she could squeeze straight through to the bone. “A fucking idiot, that’s who!”
Hot panic crept up the back of Lucy’s neck. She pressed her palm against her stomach where her hangman game had been. She needed the perfect string of words that would make this girl change her mind, make her reconsider. But all she could think to say was: But I didn’t understand then! And I made a mistake!
“Oooooh, I would neeever want to do that,” she whined. “It’s wrong. It’s croooooo-well!” She balled her fist and stamped her feet like a tantrum-y toddler. She laughed until she abruptly stopped. “You don’t understand much, do you, Lucy?” And then she turned and walked away.