Reckless Hearts

DP Movers—their slogan
was “You point the way, Dream Point!”—had arrived this morning at eight thirty. For the past three hours, they'd been carting boxes of clothes and books and kitchen utensils, and mostly, the carved figurines and masks and exotic musical instruments Jake Gordon's mother had collected from all over the world, into the flatbed of their truck and stacking them up in tight systematic rows. The moving truck, a pale cavernous brick of sea-foam aluminum, was almost full now. Almost ready to haul the history of Jake's life across town to the north shore, where the fancy people in Dream Point lived in their elaborate mansions, bunkered between their security gates and their private beaches.

Watching the movers sweat in the crisp December air, Jake had a hard time getting his head around the fact that he would be one of those fancy people now. He didn't feel like he'd changed at all, but his mother, Janey, had married Cameron Pendergrass, maybe the fanciest of them all. He owned the Mariana Hospitality Group, a chain of hotels all over the world, including three massive, full-service island resorts, one in the Bahamas, one in Antigua, and one on some island in the South China Sea. He was easily the richest person in Dream Point.

As the stringy tattooed guys who looked like they shouldn't be anywhere near this strong carried the last of the boxes from the house, Jake sat in a wicker-backed kitchen chair, its legs sinking into the moist soil of the front yard. He stared out at Greenvale Street and tried to distract himself from thinking how completely his life would change by wondering what would happen to all the stuff they were leaving behind. The couch, the dining room table, the bed he'd slept in since he was six years old, even the chair he was sitting in now—they were ditching all of it. The white stucco bungalow that Jake had always known as home—new people would be living in it by New Year's.

And Elena Rios, his best friend and partner in skeptical endurance of the cliquey, shallow life at Chris Columbus High, who knew all his secrets, or all but one—she'd no longer be living right next door. She'd
promised to hang out with him and watch the movers work this morning, and he'd dragged two wicker-backed chairs out onto the lawn, but the one next to him was still empty.

He'd texted her three times already, giving her status updates on the movers' progress, and all he'd heard back was one hard-to-interpret message saying,
“THESE THINGS TAKE TIME ;D.”
Tilted on the uneven soil of the lawn, the chair looked sad and lonely beside him.

“Hey, yo,” the crew captain called to him from the back of the truck, squinting under the dingy red Santa hat he'd draped over his head. “You wanna sign off on this, or what?” He wagged a tin clipboard at Jake as though he thought Jake should have been able to read his mind.

Jake wandered over to the truck. His mother had put him in charge. She had to be at Tiki Tiki Java, the coffeehouse she owned on Shore Drive, and Cameron, obviously, wasn't interested in spending his precious time coordinating with moving companies—he had employees for that. School was out for Christmas break, so it wasn't like Jake had anywhere better to be, anyway.

“Just the boxes, yeah?” the mover said. “That's some nice stuff in there. You're leaving all of it?”

“Yeah,” Jake said.

“The TV? That speaker system? Shit ain't cheap.”

“Salvation Army is coming to take it away.”

“Oh?” The guy raised an eyebrow. He was trying too hard not to seem overly curious. “When's that?”

“This afternoon,” Jake lied.

The guy ticked his cheek. He braced the clipboard on his forearm and held the pen rubber-banded to it out to Jake. “You gotta push hard to get through all three layers,” he said.

Jake signed the sheet and reminded the guy that his mother would be there to sign on the other side.

As the guy rounded up his three workers and closed the truck, Jake headed toward the house for one last look.

He checked his watch. It was almost noon. Still no sign of Elena.

She didn't usually flake like this, at least not with him. He knew she was elusive. She liked it that way. Enjoy being with me while I'm here and don't ask for more. That was her attitude. But Jake had always been the exception to this rule. He was the person she
didn't
hide from.

As he wandered the rooms of the house one last time, it took every ounce of his being to restrain himself from frantically bombarding Elena with the kind of needy, selfish where-are-you texts that he knew she hated getting from other people—her sister, her father, the couple of boys she'd briefly, disastrously dated.

He'd known her all his life. There was a photo of
the two of them in their diapers sitting in the dirt under the swing set in Seminole Park, reaching out to fumble at each other's chubby hands. She'd been there for him when his parents' marriage finally broke up and his father moved permanently to the Keys. He'd been there for her throughout the long saga of her mother's death of ovarian cancer and the roller coaster of chemo and radiation therapy, of hope and despair and hope and despair that had consumed her life for a year and a half. He'd watched her grow from a sassy, string-bean tomboy to a dark-haired, dark-eyed, darkly intelligent young woman whose sense of the world was as off-kilter as his own.

He adored her.

The truth was, he loved her.

He'd known it forever. Since middle school, at least, when they'd both begun to wonder why the other kids in their class seemed to always, only want to talk about LeBron James and Miley Cirus, when he'd begun to sense that Elena was the only person he knew who thought deeply about the world. She was curious, so curious that after she'd seen
Spirited Away
, the surreal, slightly spooky Miyazaki movie, she'd explored where it had come from and uncovered a whole world of Japanese anime. She didn't care if nobody else had heard of this stuff. It was interesting to her, and that was enough.

He loved that confidence he saw in her. He loved her compulsive joy, the goofy silliness she allowed herself to
indulge in. And her fiery loyalty, the way she'd leap to the fight when she felt like he, or her sister, Nina, needed defending.

But it wasn't just that. Lately, it was physical, too. Her olive skin. Her perfect toes. The way she wore her hair in that modified pixie cut, close and tight around the back, her curls swooping up over her forehead. The sweet curve of her hips and the faint strawberry mark that peeked out like a tattoo from the side of her bikini bottoms.

If she weren't his best friend, he would have admitted it long ago. Even though he was just moving across town, he felt he had to tell her now. At least then she'd know that all those songs he'd written for “Sarah,” the “girlfriend” who “lived down the beach from his dad in the Keys,” had really been about her.

If only she'd come out to say good-bye, he could say the lines he'd been rehearsing all week.

He sent her one last text.
“THEY'RE DONE. GOTTA GO IN 10.”

She responded immediately.
“LOOK OUT THE WINDOW.”

And there she was in the chair he'd put out for her, casual, in tight jean shorts crisply folded up just above her knees, sporting her favorite
Cowboy Bebop
T-shirt. She made a goofy face, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue, briefly, then returned to hunching over the
open laptop balanced on her thighs just in time to stop it from falling off.

The future—the future he'd imagined, anyway—flashed in front of Jake. Him moseying out of the house, hands in his pockets, playing it cool. Just as he reaches her, Elena looks up from the computer and something in her eyes says she knows what he's about to say. That wry grin of hers, capable of communicating both her relish in experience and her ironic commentary on how silly life can be, breaks over her face. And before he can even say, “It's always been you. I can't hide it anymore,” she's up on her tiptoes, her arms stretched out around his neck. A kiss that releases the years of longing between them into the world.

He could almost feel it electrifying his cells already.

The slow walk out of the house was the easy part, even if he could feel his hands nervously shaking in his pockets.

“Hey,” he said, from doorway.

“Hey is for horses,” she said with a wink. And there was that grin, but it didn't convey the revelation of longing he'd imagined. “Sorry it took me so long.” She patted the six-year-old MacBook that, through the strategic placement of black electrical tape, she'd made look like a monster chomping down on the Apple logo. “Technology. I had to reboot this sucker like five times this morning.”

“Shaun White's not what he used to be, huh?” Jake said. Shaun White was the name Elena had given the computer.

“Shaun White should have retired years ago.”

“Maybe I can ask Cameron to buy you an upgrade,” Jake said. He meant it, though the idea of actually asking Cameron for anything made him nervous. He'd never spent any time around super-rich people and he wasn't sure he understood the codes they lived by.

Elena shot him a look that said,
Yeah right
. “I'd never let you put yourself in that situation.” She focused on the screen for a second and tapped the touch pad a few times. “I mean, he didn't even come help you pack up.”

“He's a busy guy.”

“I know. I'm just saying,” she said, protectively defending him.

Elena locked eyes with him for a second, and as her face softened and seemed to reach out to him, he knew she'd seen through to the part of him that was scared about all the change that moving into Cameron's mansion on the beach would create in his life.

“Come look at what I made you,” she said.

Jake sat in the chair next to her, conscious of her body heat, not getting too close with his elbow or knee for fear of touching her—if he touched her, he'd melt.

“Come on, Jaybird,” she said. “You have to be able to see the screen.” And she threw her arm over his shoulder
and mussed his hair, like a buddy, like she was about to give him a noogie. “You ready?”

She adjusted the volume and clicked play on her video-editing program.

First came the music. “You've Got a Friend in Me” from
Toy Story
. Then the delicate, slightly nervous script she always used in her animations.

For Jaybird
, it said.

Jake immediately felt the emotions swell in his chest.

The animated characters that always represented the two of them in Elena's animes—Electra, the tough girl with spiky hair of black flames, heavy kohl eyes, padded, studded leather armor, and jet-flight platform shoes; and Jaybird, tall and skinny with knob knees and a constant bewildered expression on his face—performed a choreographed dance to the music. A backbeat kicked in, and Electra grew larger and larger, her mouth opening until the darkness inside swallowed up the screen.

As Elena's voice rap-talked over the
Toy Story
song, stylized freeze-frame images of the two of them floated in and out of the frame—highlights from their years of friendship: the day they raced their bikes all the way to the Seminole monument in the middle of town and then climbed triumphantly to the top and sat on the Native American warrior's back; the time Jake's mom took the two of them to Disney World and they spent the whole day pretending they weren't having as much fun as they
really were; the moment when Jake played his guitar in front of an audience for the first time and Elena was right there clapping from the front row. Image after image of the two of them sharing each other's lives.

The song, or poem, or rap, or whatever Elena was calling the spoken word she'd layered over the images explained what was happening in them. She talked about the day her mom died and the long walk Jake had taken with her, not speaking at all, because what was there to do but be there, a presence by her side, ready when she needed him. She talked about the day he found out his parents were splitting up, how they'd snuck into the recycling center on the west side of town after dark and let out all their rage by shattering bottles against the wall, bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle, until they were giddy, until they'd almost forgotten how sucky the day had been.

“Most boys only want one thing,” she said at one point. “But Jaybird's different. Jaybird sees the all of me.”

The anime ended with another scrawled fragment of text.
Jaybird, don't you ever change!

Jake was devastated. Not because he was sad but because he was so deeply touched by her work. He stared at the screen, frozen on the final image of the two of them holding hands, and he couldn't help but wonder if she'd be saying all these things if she knew how much he wanted to be more than friends with her.

“It's just a rough cut, but . . . what do you think?” she said, the look on her face betraying a real and desperate need to know he thought it was good.

“I love it,” Jake said, trying to twist his lips into an earnest smile so she'd think he was telling the truth.

Her elegant eyebrows were arched in expectation, her whole face open, waiting.

“Should I post it to AnAmerica? You wouldn't mind?” AnAmerica was a web forum where Elena and other anime-obsessed kids from all over the country shared their animations with one another.

“Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, you should post it. It's great.”

But part of him was disappointed, too. No way could he confess his love to her now. Because what if she rejected him? What if she said,
Sorry, I love you, man, but I don't love you like
that? Better to be with her, even as friends, than to lose her friendship because he wanted more out of it than she did.

He rubbed his hands back and forth across his jeans, unsure what to do. “It's time,” he said. He stood, dazed, and picked up his chair.