Heartbeat (9 page)

31

That night I sleep in Mom’s room. I lie in the bed she slept in, I put my head on her pillow. I knock Dan’s pillow onto the floor. He doesn’t sleep in here anymore anyway; he hasn’t since the day Mom died. He sleeps downstairs or sometimes, I think, in the nursery.

The phone rings, and neither of us answers it. I think I hear a noise on the roof at one point but I don’t get up. I just want to get through tonight, and there is no room in my heart or head for anything or anyone else but Mom.

And my anger.

I find Caleb as soon as I get to school in the morning, though, wade past the people in the halls and slip into a space next to his locker. He smiles when he sees me.

I smile back, but I know it is shaking.

“Hey,” he says. “What happened yesterday?”

“Problem with the baby.”

“Oh. Is everything okay?”

“For now.”

“Your stepdad seemed pretty wrecked.”

“He should,” I say, and hear the bitterness in my voice.

“I came by last night,” he says. “But you didn’t come out on the roof.”

“No,” I say, and Caleb touches my arm. I feel it under my clothes, under my skin, I feel his touch seep into my body, beat through me to the thrum of my blood pulsing.

“Angry or scared?”

“Both.”

“I’ll be there today,” he says. “At the hospital, I mean.” He clears his throat. “You know that already. I—uh, I really wanted to do more yesterday. I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”

And then he says, “Is it true that you and Anthony were together?”

I stare at him, shocked. “Anthony?” Why are we talking about Anthony?

“Yeah. The guy who knows everything and talks all the time. I just...I heard some stuff.”

“Stuff?” I knew Anthony would have talked—that’s what he does—he talks and talks and I bet he said, “I like Emma, but when she asked for a physical relationship, I felt that it was the wrong choice for both of us. She did understand that, eventually, although she was rather emotional about it.”

I thought I was okay with that. I really did. I certainly pictured him saying it. I just never pictured Caleb hearing it, or me caring about Caleb hearing it.

But I do. I really do.

“He didn’t want me,” I mutter. “Okay? That’s the whole story.”

“Anthony’s an idiot,” he says.

“Oh.” I know I am blushing, I can feel how hot my face is. I wish I hadn’t told him Anthony didn’t want me. Not that it matters, except it does.

“Emma?” It’s Olivia and I look around, see her staring at me and Caleb. At Caleb’s hand, which is still on my arm, and my hand, which is somehow now resting on it.

“Hey,” I say, and Olivia looks at Caleb, eyebrows raised, and Caleb sighs, not with anger, but with resignation, and whispers, “I’ll come find you later, okay?”

“Hi, Olivia,” he says as she comes up to us.

“Hi,” she says, and she’s not being mean but she definitely doesn’t look or sound friendly and Caleb vanishes into the crowd of people moving through the hall.

“Okay, you and Caleb are more than just friends.”

“We’re not.” Not really.

“Then what’s with all the staring and the touching?”

“He had his hand on my arm.”

“I haven’t seen him touch anyone in....well, forever,” Olivia says. “Look, are you sure he knows you’re just friends? I mean, he’s Caleb, you know? Druggie. Car thief.”

“He’s still a person.”

“I know, but what if he’s trying to—?”

“You aren’t going to say ‘take advantage,’ are you?”

“All right, that might be melodramatic, but—”

I cut her off. “Look, it’s Caleb, the guy who is the trifecta, right? So Caleb and me? Anthony didn’t even want me, Olivia. Come
on.
”

“He doesn’t look at you like Anthony did.”

Anthony’s an idiot.

I clear my throat, and know I’m blushing again because she’s right.

Anthony never, ever once looked at me like Caleb does.

Olivia looks at me. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“It’s not like that,” I say, and it isn’t. Not like how Olivia means. Because of yesterday, and how I learned you can break all over again even when you think you can’t. Because I’m not the girl I was, the one who looked at Anthony and saw what I wanted to see and nothing more. I had that luxury, that belief that the future could be whatever I wanted.

I know better now. I saw who Anthony was—too late, but I saw it—and I see who Caleb is. He made me see all of him, everything, and I want to keep looking.

32

Dan tries to say something to me on the way to the hospital after school.

“I was worried yesterday,” he says. “Upset. And if I scared you or made you angry, that’s okay.” He stares straight ahead at the traffic. “I know you wanted to see your mother. Please don’t think I don’t know how much you love her.”

“But you needed to see her,” I say. “Check on what’s inside her.”

“Your brother.”

“You were there to see the baby as much as her. Maybe more,” I say.

Dan shakes his head and says, “That’s not true. How can you even think that?”

I laugh and it’s so harsh and bitter it makes my own heart contract.

But it does shut Dan up.

“Thirty-three days,” I say when we get to the hospital. “That’s how I think it. Why I think it. Come find me when I’m allowed to see her. You’ll let me do that today, won’t you? Now that you’ve got the all-clear on what
you
want.”

I start to move away but Dan grabs my arm.

“Emma, instead of running away, why don’t we talk?”

The doctor comes out, catches Dan’s eye, and I hear him suck in a breath. I pull away.

I walk away.

Dan doesn’t come after me.

I don’t sit in the waiting room. I can’t. Not today, not with Dan and the empty words he wants me to hear.

I’m seventeen. I’m supposed to have my future mapped out—what college I’ll go to, what major I’ll have, what job I want. I’m supposed to even see past that, to the job I’ll get, to the life I’ll have on my own.

All that, and I can’t see my own mother. Because I’m just a kid, and Dan is her husband. I’m not an adult, I don’t have an equal say. I’ve never had one in what’s happened. Not once, and why? Dan was her husband but I’m—I was—her daughter. It’s not fair that all I’ve gotten to be is just
here.
I don’t want that.

I want someone to hear me.

I want Dan to care what I think.

No, I wanted him to care.

I can’t take this.

I head out of the hospital and walk into the parking lot. A parking lot should look the same everywhere but this one is somehow more depressing, as if all the cars are tainted by what’s inside. Sickness, or the potential of it. The worry. The waiting. The fear. Even the light reflecting off the windshields isn’t warm or comforting. It just hits my eyes and makes them sting.

I rub them, and then pinch the bridge of my nose. I will see Mom today. I will. Somehow I will make it happen—and then I see Caleb in the parking lot, standing by a blue car.

His car isn’t blue.

He doesn’t see me, and I look at him. He is staring at the car like it’s more than a car, like he sees something in it or around it. That he somehow needs it.

He rubs a hand along one window, fingers tracing down to the door handle. He pulls on it like it will open but it doesn’t.

“Hey,” I say, and he doesn’t turn away from the car. He is still touching the handle and his other hand is shaking. I can see that even from here.

“Caleb?” I say, and walk over to him.

He doesn’t seem to hear me.

“Caleb?” I say again, and he turns, his eyes wild, wide and unfocused, like he’s not really here. One hand tests the handle again and his other hand is still shaking. I watch his gaze skim over the ground, all flat and paved over except for a few places where the concrete edging has chipped away, fallen free.

I swallow. “Why this car?”

“What?” His voice is distant, like he isn’t here.

“Why do you want to steal this car?”

He looks at me then, and I look back at him steadily even though I’m shaking inside now, startled by this glimpse of a Caleb I knew about, but that I’ve never seen.

He still looks alone, but now there is anger in his eyes too.

“I...my mother,” he says slowly, like the words are painful to say, like it hurts him to say them. “She was here just now, visiting a client. I saw her in the hall. She said, ‘Try not to screw this up,’ and she didn’t even look at me. She never looks at me.” He laughs, and the sound is so fake and bitter that I get goose bumps.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to try to stop me?”

“No. Someone I—someone I like told me they couldn’t tell me how to be okay. I’m pretty much in the same place.”

He blinks, then looks back at the car. “I’d probably get sent away again. I’d be out of the house. They wouldn’t have to see me. I wouldn’t have to see them.”

He blows out a breath, and then looks at me again. “I really want to do it, Emma.”

“But suck camp sucked, remember?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But I also wouldn’t be able to talk to you anymore, and I’d miss that. I’d miss you.”

Anthony said I was lovely once, and I felt such warmth, such gratitude. I thought it was want.

It wasn’t. Want is what hits me now, and it is not lovely or even pleasant. It’s hard and fast and it hurts. My insides cramp with it, and a thousand images I didn’t know I could even think of race through my mind.

“I’d miss you too,” I say, because it is all I can say, because in my mind Caleb is not standing near me, he is next to me, twined around me, and there is no car, there is no pain, there is just us, and I—

I want a broken former car thief who still wants to steal cars but who just said he won’t because if he did, he’d miss me.

“You didn’t want to hear that,” he says, and I shake my head because it’s not that, it’s
so
not that.

But yet it is because I’ve seen what wanting does.

My mother wanted Dan and when she died, he ignored how scared she was, how she used to rub her belly with her eyes closed like she was wishing for it all to work out for what he wants. For his son.

I take a deep breath, and then I tell Caleb the truth. “You confuse me.”

I look at him and my heart, which I was so sure was dead, burned out, beats hard and fast. Beats like I’m alive, like there is life in me, like I didn’t die when Mom did.

“So I guess I’m not taking this car,” Caleb says, and lets go of the handle. “And just so you know, you confuse me too.”

“I know,” I say, and when he smiles at me I want things to be simple, I want him to be a guy, a regular guy, and I want to be a girl who knows she will go home to her mother and a stepfather she knows and loves but—

But that’s not how things are.

It’s not how life is.

I feel his smile then. I don’t just see it anymore. It crawls inside me, curls up alongside all my grief. Confuses me, just like I said.

“We go inside now, right?” Caleb says, and we do. Silent, together but not, walking side by side but not touching.

He takes the elevator up to the floor where Mom lies, and I look at him when I get off. He starts to wave, and then pushes his way off, stands next to me.

“Your mom,” he says. “How is she?”

“I haven’t seen her yet.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want—can I wait with you?”

I look at him and we smile at each other.

And so we sit in the waiting room, his foot pushing the cart I saw so much significance in that first day, back and forth.

“Do you need to go to other floors?”

“Yeah,” he says, but he doesn’t leave and I’m glad. It’s nice not to be alone.

Dan comes in, looks at Caleb, and then says, “You can see her, Emma, but just for a minute. She’s tired.”

Caleb gets up when I do and Dan looks at both of us. Says, “Emma, I haven’t really met your friend.”

“This is Caleb,” I say, as Caleb nods at Dan and walks out. “And Mom isn’t tired. She’s dead. You know it. I know it.”

I head toward Mom, and Dan follows me. I hear him breathing.

“Her body is tired, Emma,” he says, and he sounds weary, on the edge of tears. “The baby is still in trouble and things aren’t as good as they could be. The risk of infection is even worse now and the doctors...”

He keeps talking but I ignore him and sit next to Mom. She is even thinner now. I look at her belly. It’s still swollen. Round.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, and take her hand. It lies heavy and cool in mine. “I missed you yesterday. I know you’re gone, but when I see you I can...” I trail off, look over at Dan.

He doesn’t leave.

“Dan’s here,” I say. “He’s watching over what you worked so hard for. I still remember what you told me that time you had to go on bed rest. How you hated the thought of having to lie still. Of how trapped you felt. You wanted to go downstairs but Dan wouldn’t let you. He was okay with you moving around after you got the clot taken out but once you were pregnant with his baby he...”

Dan leaves then and I blow out a breath.

“Mommy,” I whisper. “I need you. I don’t understand anything anymore. Yesterday, when the doctor said something to Dan I thought you were gone. I forgot that you are.” I press my forehead to hers and pretend there are no tubes, no machines, that the skin under mine can feel my touch.

It’s easy to. I want some part of her to be here. I hadn’t realized how much.

And even though she’s gone, I don’t want to let her go.

I don’t know if I can.

33

“You know that I respect your privacy,” Dan says on the way home. “I let you lock yourself in your room all the time. But today, with your mother—look, everything is very fragile right now.”

“You mean with the baby,” I say, and it costs me to get that last word out.

“Why do you do that?” Dan says. “Your brother is fighting for his life, and you talk about him like he’s not real. I don’t like that.”

When I don’t say anything, he looks over at me, a quick, incredulous glance. “You were excited about the baby, I know you were. Don’t you see that he’s family? That he might have your mother’s eyes or her smile, that he’ll be a way for us to always remember her?”

“I know,” I say, and I want to sound calm but I don’t, I hear how high my voice is, I hear how angry it is. “I know she’ll live through him. I heard you back when you made your choice.”

“It’s not just my choice.”

It was, and it is, and we both know it.

“Emma, it really wasn’t and isn’t just my choi—”

“Shut up,” I say, and I’m screaming now, I feel the vibration of the words roaring up my throat and out of me. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I am so tired of you talking. I’m so tired of you.”

“Tough, because I’m not going anywhere and you don’t get to talk to me like that.”

Dan pulls into the driveway.

“Yeah, I do,” I say as I open my door and get out, not caring that the car isn’t even stopped, that I fall as I do, that I tumble onto the ground. I just want to be away from him. He stops the car, gets out and calls after me but I’m already in the house, running up the stairs and into my room, bolting the door closed behind me.

Let him call the police and have them come break down the door. Let him try it. I’m ready. I sit on my bed, fists clenched, waiting.

Dan knocks on the door.

“Emma, I know you’re angry, but it can’t be an excuse anymore.” I hear the Dan I used to think I knew, the one who sat with me after Olivia and I went to the eighth grade dance and Olivia got asked to dance three times and I didn’t get asked once. Dan didn’t say things would be better in the morning or lies like that. He just hugged me and then served ice cream for breakfast, telling Mom, “It’s got calcium, and sometimes people deserve something fun because they’re special.”

I’d told Mom about the dance too, and she’d rubbed my back and told me she loved me and it had been nice. But Dan really made me feel like everything was okay. Like I was okay. Like I was special.

I miss him. I hate that.

I grit my teeth and go out onto the roof just in time to see someone—Caleb?—walking toward the edge of it.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

“Olivia?”

“Hi,” she says, turning around and coming back. “I was up here when you came in. Should I go?”

“Why?”

“You got out of a moving car, Emma. You looked pissed as hell and you ran into the house and I figured you and Dan would be talking.”

“We’re not.”

“Oh,” she says. “So, do you want me to stay?”

“Yeah. You know you don’t even have to ask that.”

Olivia sits down. “You sounded like maybe you wanted someone else to be out here.”

I clear my throat. “Did I?”

She looks at me. I rub one foot along the shingles, hear the scrape against the bottom of my shoe. “All right. I saw Caleb at the hospital and I thought for a second that he was here. But I am glad to see you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say, and she bumps her foot with mine. “What happened today at the hospital?”

“Mom’s...well. You know. But there are some problems with the baby and Dan wasn’t even going to let me see her by myself.”

“Why?”

“Stress. As if she can be stressed. It’s like he forgets she’s gone, and yesterday I realized I have too. I mean, I know she is, but I can see her, and...” I wipe my eyes. “I’m so tired of crying. Tell me something. Talk about you. Please.”

“But—”

“Olivia, I need normal. You don’t know how much I need it.”

“Well my parents are both working, of course, and both coming home late—server problems again. Or something. I try not to absorb the tech talk. Oh, and Roger and I made out after school.” She says the last bit with so much glee she’s practically vibrating with it.

“Where?”

She blushes. “My car.”

“Your car? What happened?”

“Well, we were talking after the last bell rang and he said he was going to get a ride home with his friend Ivan and I said, ‘Oh, I can give you a ride home,’ and he smiled at me like I was the last day of school and once we got in the car, stuff just happened.”

“In the parking lot?”

“A little bit,” she says, blushing. “And then I drove him to his house and we might have made out some more. Until his little brother came home and found us.”

“He didn’t!”

“Yeah, he did. But Roger was so great about it. He was nice to his brother but also got him to, you know, go, and then he said he’d call me and that he wanted to see my phone. I’ve told him about it.”

“So, he wants to see your room.”

“He said
phone,
” Olivia says, but she’s grinning. “It was just the most amazing afternoon.” She looks at me. “You can’t really want to hear this. I sound so shallow.”

“You sound happy. Normal, remember?”

“But—”

“Nope. You sound happy and I’m glad you are and that you told me about it. And I want more updates, especially if room viewing is involved.”

“You sure?”

“I need this. I don’t want to forget that people have actual lives.” It’s what I don’t have, and hearing about Olivia washes over me like rain, covering the thing I limp through every day, the thing that passes for a life but isn’t one.

“Well, then I promise you’ll hear if there’s any room viewing. Which there won’t be because I want more than just a thing, you know? I’d like an actual boyfriend. Not that I’m ruling out room viewing, but it’s way down the line and...okay, now I’m totally wondering what he’d think of my room. And what it would be like to have him in it.”

She leans back, shaking her head. “How am I supposed to be picking out which colleges I’m going to apply to when I just want to see if Roger is willing to go out with me this weekend. And next weekend. And also make out with me. Argh! I need to do something to get my mind off him.”

“No haircuts. Or dying of hair.”

“I wasn’t going to do that. I could get bangs though, right? Bangs aren’t a haircut.”

“No bangs! You so need a different stress outlet, and no, I don’t mean new eyeliner.”

“I already bought some,” she says and when I give her a look says, “What? I was a little wound up after I left Roger’s house. Do you think he’ll call tonight?”

“If he looked at you like you’re the last day of school, then yeah, he’ll call.”

“I thought getting a guy to like you was the hard part,” she mutters. “But it’s just as hard after that. How come no one ever tells you that?”

“I think there’s a lot of things that no one ever tells you,” I say, and Olivia puts an arm around me, pulling me close.

We sit in silence until she says she has to go.

“Thank you,” I say when she gets up, and she says, “Oh yeah, you thank me. I haven’t shut up, and all I’ve talked about is Roger.”

“Thank you,” I say again and she hugs me, hard, before she starts to climb off the roof. I watch until she’s gone.

Until I can’t see anything.