Keep Me in Your Heart (45 page)

“That girl is poison!”

“Mom … I love you.” He cut off the call, turned off his cell phone and flipped it closed. He went back into the room to be with Lisa.

T
he next morning Lisa surprised him by coming to his house with him. “You don’t have to,” he said.

“Yes, I do.”

They rode in silence and walked into the kitchen hand in hand. His parents were at the table, his father flipping through the newspaper, his mother feeding the twins. Karen looked up, and her angry expression gave way to one of surprise. The twins squealed when they saw Nathan and Lisa. Karen returned to feeding them cereal and bananas. “Sit down until I finish with the girls,” she said.

Nathan first poured himself and Lisa cups of coffee. He nodded at his father, who raised his eyebrows and returned to his paper. The tension in the room was like summer air before a rainstorm, thick and oppressive,
and except for the burbling of Audrey and Abby, no one spoke. When the girls were finished eating, Karen washed them up and carried them to their playpen in the other room, where they could be seen from the doorway. The moment she stepped back into the kitchen, Lisa said, “It was my fault Nathan didn’t come home last night. He did it as a favor to me because I asked him to.”

Karen was in no mood for either excuses or apologies. “I know you both think my rules are old-fashioned and provincial. I know you both believe that enlightened parents let their kids make the rules. I know you have freedoms that Nathan doesn’t have, Lisa. But common sense dictates that rules and safeguards are for a person’s protection, not simply an annoyance to be circumvented any way possible.”

Nathan knew she was just getting warmed up.

“What are you two
thinking
? Spending the night together? Do you believe I’m so stupid as to not remember teenage hormones? For god’s sake, what if you got pregnant? You’d ruin both your lives!”

Nathan felt heated embarrassment and anger over his mother’s tirade. He wanted to yell back at her, but Lisa spoke first, her voice calm, quiet. “That won’t happen, Mrs. Malone. I won’t get pregnant because, you see, I won’t live long enough to ever have a baby.”

She went on to tell Nathan’s parents everything about her tumor, much as she’d told Nathan. Her voice was
soft, her eyes dry, as if the fear and pain she’d felt last night in her room had vanished with the rising of the sun. At some point, his mother sat down at the table, her face a mask of disbelief. “And now the second round of radiation is over,” Lisa said. “Unfortunately it hasn’t helped much. The tumor hasn’t shrunk, but at least it’s dormant. We don’t know for how long.”

This was news to Nathan, and he felt as if he’d been punched.

“They want to try a new kind of Gamma Knife radiation, but it’s a long shot too. The tumor’s just too close to some vital brain tissue.”

“Are you going to do it anyway?” Nathan’s question turned Lisa’s attention his way.

“I want to graduate. A person needs goals and that’s mine. So if I do it, it won’t be until after school’s over.” She looked again at Karen and Craig. “I swore Nathan to secrecy, made him promise to tell no one what was happening to me. He kept that promise and I hope you won’t hold it against him. It’s my story. My life. Please … don’t … punish him.”

From the other room, Audrey wailed because Abby had bopped her on the head with a plastic block. Karen pushed herself up from the table with both hands, wavered for a moment as if she were shouldering a heavy weight. “I—I have to think about this, Lisa.”

“I understand.”

She paused at the doorway, her back to them. “I—I’m sorry that you’re sick.”

“So am I,” Lisa said.

Nathan’s father cleared his throat. “Thank you for telling us.”

“You needed to know.”

Karen said, “I had a daughter once and lost her.”

“Nathan told me.”

“I miss her every day.”

Nathan caught sight of Molly’s old drawing still stuck to the refrigerator across the room. The drawing had been laminated. A lump formed in his throat that he could not swallow.

Oddly, Nathan’s family did not talk about Lisa’s illness at his house, and the incident of his staying out all night melted away. He ran into Lisa’s mother and Charlie whenever he went over to get Lisa, and they were friendly to him. “You’re such a nice young man,” Jill would tell him if she was home. “I told Lisa she should find a nice guy and leave those losers behind.”

Nathan was hesitant to hear more about “those losers.” There were some things he didn’t want to know.

Charlie always greeted him with a smile and a handshake. “You’ve settled our girl down … something I’ve been trying to do for years,” he told Nathan one time.

“I’m thinking of pulling the plugs from her cycle and then she’ll depend on me one hundred percent.”

That made Charlie laugh. “It’s a plan.”

In the following weeks, Lisa came over more often, and by mid-March on a sunny Saturday morning she
actually helped Nathan and his mother replant pansies in the flower beds. Karen pulled up the limp and wasted plants, hit hard by winter, and Nathan dug small holes for Lisa, who plucked fresh plants from a flat of multicolored flowers and poked them into the prepared ground. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked during a break. His mother had gone inside to make a pitcher of lemonade because the spring day had turned hot.

“I like doing it. It makes me feel good to know that something beautiful will grow because I planted it.”

“They’re just pansies. We’ll rip them out in May and June and plant hot-weather flowers.”

“So? They’re pretty now.” She examined one closely, puffed a breath onto fragile lavender flower petals. “I think these are my favorites. The color’s perfect.” She glanced over at him. “Why are you smiling?”

“Just remembering that girl on the motorcycle who used to blow me off. You’re not so tough.”

“And you’re not so nerdy.”

“Is that what you thought of me?”

She gave him a look of pure innocence. “That’s my secret.”

He grinned, decided to ask her what had been on his mind for weeks. “How come you won’t let Fuller submit your pieces in that countywide student works book?”

“I wasn’t asked.” They were sitting on the ground, and she grabbed her knees and pulled them against her chest.

“Sure you were. You’re number four-five-four.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one told me. I just know that you are. The poem about flying into the sun—I liked it a lot. You wrote it, didn’t you?”

“I’ve always wanted to fly. Yes, I wrote it.”

He was elated because he had figured out her identity. “I
knew
it was you.”

He also knew that her poem was a metaphor for death. He got it, but just as he had learned not to ask questions about her health, he didn’t bring it up. “Submissions don’t close until next week. You should let Fuller submit it.”

“Did you tell him he could use yours? You know, the one about loving someone from afar?”

He grinned sheepishly—no use denying it now. “How long have you known?”

“Since the day he first read it. You really do wear your heart in your eyes, Malone.”

“A turnoff?”

In answer, she leaned forward and kissed his mouth.

“Hey, Nate, Lisa, wait up.”

Nathan and Lisa turned at the sound of their names in the hallway as they were leaving school. Skeet and Jodie were heading straight at them. “What’s up?”

“Have you heard about Roddy?”

“Don’t think so. What’s happened?”

“He’s flunking and won’t walk for graduation.” Skeet sounded downright gleeful.

“He has to go to summer school, and a lot of college coaches have backed off from scholarship offers,” Jodie added. “I guess the term
dumb jock
really applies, huh?”

“He could have studied,” Lisa said. “He thought he could coast because he could play ball.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Skeet said.

“You’re getting far too much pleasure out of this, my man,” Nathan said, grinning.

“It’s been a long time coming.” Skeet chuckled. “Hey, prom’s next month, and I think we should all go together.”

Nathan hadn’t broached the subject with Lisa yet, although he assumed that they would be going. He still wasn’t a hundred percent sure of her. She was moody and could retreat into her own world without warning. “I agree. What do you say?”

“You drinking again?” Lisa asked Skeet.

Skeet made a face. “No way. I was hungover for two days.”

“Prom
is
a rite of passage,” Nathan reminded Lisa.

“A new adventure,” Jodie said, looking hopeful. “And it wouldn’t be the same without the two of you.”

“Plus,” Skeet said with a covert glance around, “it’ll be a sort of celebration. Come April, I’ll be eighteen and I’m moving into my own place.”

“What are you talking about?” This was the first Nathan had heard of this.

“Larry and two other guys rent an apartment together and one of the guys is moving out. Larry asked me if I wanted to move in and I jumped at the chance.”

“It makes sense,” Jodie said. “You know how his stepfather treats him.”

“How’re you going to pay for it?” Nathan asked, taken aback by Skeet’s announcement. There was a time when Skeet told him everything first.

“I’ve got money saved. And as soon as school’s out, I’ll get a car. My mom said she’d get me one if I graduated. Then I’m starting into the management training program at the grocery store. My supervisor asked me if I wanted to. He said I had ‘potential.’ Think of it! Winston George Andrews has potential.”

“What about college?”

“You’re college material, Nate, not me.” Skeet slapped him on the shoulder. “This is a cool move, man. I’ll be living on my own
and
collecting a full-time paycheck.”

“I’m glad for you,” Lisa said.

“So that’s why prom is even more of an event. We’ll be celebrating the start of my new life.”

“A worthy cause,” Lisa said, her eyes bright with an inner light only Nathan saw.

In late March, Lisa told Nathan that she would be out of classes for a week. “For some tests,” she said vaguely. “I’ll call you when I surface.”

Grateful that she’d told him that much, he hunkered down and missed her like crazy. By the following Saturday, he hadn’t heard from her. He called her cell number, only to have some voice announce that the number was no longer in service. She hadn’t told him she was planning on getting a new cell number either.

He grabbed his car keys and told his mother, “I’m heading over to Lisa’s.”

At the complex, Nathan wove around to the back, parked in an available space, and jogged toward her apartment. The door was open, and when he stepped inside, he was greeted by two handymen in coveralls. A carpet steaming machine stood near freshly painted drywall. Otherwise, the place was empty.

“Can I help you?” one of the painters asked.

“The people who live here … where are they?” His heart hammered and he felt cold all over.
Where is she?

“I guess they’ve moved, buddy. We get called in to repaint and clean the carpets after a tenant goes. According to the front office manager, there’s been nobody here for almost a week now.”

N
athan skirted the painters and went straight to Lisa’s room, where only blank walls and hollow echoes greeted him. The mural of the flame trees had been partially ripped from the wall and lay in shreds on the carpet like shed skin. He bent and retrieved a swatch, turned it over to see the bright blossoms, and remembered how Lisa’s hands had caressed the paper the night of the dance. A million dreams ago.

He wadded the paper, threw it at the wall and left. He jogged across the parking lot to the front office, where he burst inside, startling the woman behind the front desk. “The people in 5193, Charlie Terry and his family … where are they?”

The woman sized him up. “Calm down, young man.” She picked up a clipboard, turned several sheets
of paper, ran her finger down a column, looked up. “They’ve moved.”

He gritted his teeth. “Where?”

“Even if I had that information—which I don’t—laws prohibit me from revealing it.”