My Beating Teenage Heart Read online

  “Be careful,” I instruct, anxious again.

  “I won’t fall,” she promises. Then she knocks one of her hands against her helmet. “And I’m wearing this anyway.”

  “You could still break your leg,” I point out, joining her on top of the bars.

  “No, I can’t.” She laughs at me but it sounds nice, like a tickle.

  “So, what, you’re like super girl or something?” I kid.

  “Super Skylar!” she exclaims. In a flash she’s standing, her left foot balanced on one of the yellow bars and her right rooted to the top of the frame.

  “Skylar, don’t!” I shout, really losing it now. My heart knocks against my ribs as I reach for her. She sits down again—safe, whole—before I can touch her.

  “I’m okay,” she says calmly. “Don’t worry.”

  “But don’t do that again! If anything happened to you—”

  “Then it wouldn’t be your fault,” Skylar says. “It would be just one of those things.”

  That last part doesn’t sound like something Skylar would say and my heart beats faster. I shade my brow with my hand as I gaze at my sister. Something’s wrong here and I can’t pinpoint what it is.

  “But nothing’s going to happen,” she assures me, beaming a generous smile in my direction. “Don’t worry, Breckon. We can get down if you want. We can go on the swings.”

  The sweat’s pouring off me in buckets. I’m baking in the sun like a sweet potato but Skylar looks cool as a cucumber. I don’t understand it.

  “That’s a good idea,” I tell her. “Let’s swing.”

  We leave the monkey bars behind and settle ourselves on the swings. We pump our legs through the air, send ourselves soaring towards the blazing sun. “I wish we could do this forever without our legs getting tired,” Skylar says.

  Me too. I feel like a kid again, nearly as young as she is.

  “Higher!” Skylar calls to me. “We can go higher.”

  Higher, higher. Blue, orange and white swirl by us. I could swear that we’re flying free, that we don’t even need the swings.

  “We don’t need them,” Skylar agrees in a tone that’s pure confidence. “We never did.”

  I don’t know what she means but that’s all right, as long as we can keep flying. “Super Skylar!” I holler, making her grin and show off her missing tooth.

  t=" but t

  And then, without a moment’s warning, that perfect morning is torn away from me, the sights and sounds disintegrating into dust and silence. I don’t even have the chance to say goodbye. I open my eyes to search for her but she’s long gone, weeks gone. Broken. Dead. Buried.

  And I can’t stand losing her a second time. It’s too much to take. It slices me down the middle and spills my insides out. I jerk my head away from the bed and lean over the floor, just in time. The tears scorch my eyes. I gag on air. Shiver like something left for dead in the woods.

  This is how life is now. How it will always be.

  She’s never coming home.

  fifteen

  ashlyn

  I see Breckon hurt himself. He carves into his thigh with a pocketknife he pulled from a grooming kit in his bedside table. There’ve been times, over the past week or so, that I could’ve sworn he’s heard me, but now my screams come to nothing.

  He doesn’t stop until he sees blood.

  Once he’s still I shriek more, admonishing him for what he’s done, begging him not to do it again and to call Eva and let her help. Then I rail at whoever or whatever has abandoned me here alone with Breckon.

  I think of my time amid the stars. I long for them. I stretch my mind out to reach for them. Back across the universe to the place where my new life began. Take me back, I plead with them. I will float with you forever and never ask another question if you only allow me that peace.

  The stars’ silence is deafening. I am alone in the universe. Mute and forgotten.

  That’s not true. I know my family remembers and that they’ll miss me for as long as they live. But they’re as powerless as I am.

  “What are we going to do, Breckon?” I ask.

  He presses a facecloth to his thigh to soak up the blood and ignores me. I am useless to him and he’s a burden to me. We’re chained together, both begging, in our own ways, to be freed.

  “I’m not giving up on you,” I say stubbornly. It feels like a cheesy lie but I don’t know what else to say. When I watched Breckon with Jules the other night I was hopeful that he’d turned a corner. Running into that woman and her son, Kevin, in the supermarket bothered him, I could tell, but he seemed all right afterwards. Whatever affected him so deeply must’ve happened in his sleep.

  I revert to my knowing voice and repeat things I’ve said many times before, that Skylar wants him to be happy and that he still has so much to live for. He lies on top of his bedspread, his hand pressed down on his thigh,t=" b ti applying pressure, and gives no indication that he can sense me.

  In the afternoon his folks convince him to go over to his grandparents’ house with them. While helping his grandfather bag fallen branches in the backyard he uncovers a mauled bird. “Must be the cat next door that done it,” his grandfather remarks. “I see that thing scooting around here all the time.”

  His grandfather lights himself a cigarette and then offers one to Breckon like I’ve seen him do once before. “How’re things at school?” he asks his grandson. “And how’s that girlfriend of yours with the dark hair?”

  Breckon takes the offered cigarette and says, “Jules. She’s fine. School’s all right, I guess. Same as always.”

  Breckon’s grandfather leans forward to light Breckon’s cigarette and nods like this is to be expected. “I was never much for school myself but it’s good to be busy.”

  “So I hear.” Breckon frowns.

  Breckon’s grandfather adjusts his newsboy cap, pulling it closer to his eyes. “It’s the truth. Once you stop doing you begin to wind down like an old clock.”

  Later, back at Breckon’s house, I watch him flip through his homework like he’s prepared to give his grandfather’s theory some credence. Not ten minutes later he’s hurling his math textbook against the wall. It lands, pages splayed, on top of a lone navy sock that has occupied the same position on Breckon’s carpet for several days, and keeps it company for the remainder of the night. Meanwhile Breckon watches multiple episodes of Dexter on his laptop, writes three lines to Lily in response to a new email from her that appears in his inbox and stands in Skylar’s doorway (while his parents are downstairs and won’t notice), staring at the remnants of her life.

  At bedtime he downs a sleeping pill, drops quickly off to sleep and then heads out to school the next morning with all his homework unfinished. First stop after homeroom is economics and, although I know he slept through the night, Breckon sits at his desk propping his head up with his palm and yawning repeatedly. I’m as bored as he is. I spend most of his time at school staring at the guys and girls in his classes, trying to figure out what their stories are. The boy with the long blond hair looks like a mindless surfer or skateboarder but next to Mr. Cirelli he’s the most knowledgeable person in the class. A drop-dead gorgeous South Asian girl named Renuka is the lead singer/bassist in a secret garage band that she and her friends have dubbed Secret Garage Band Girls, and a tall white boy with deep-set brown eyes regularly spends half the class staring at her in fascination, although they never speak. These things I know just from observing and listening.

  One girl named Violet can’t make it through the period without checking her cell phone at least once and today Mr. Cirelli catches her at it and says, “We’ve been through this before, Violet. You know your cell phone is off-limits during class.”

  Violet bites the inside of her cheek, nodding. “Sorry.”

  “Bring it here.” Mr. Cirelli motions with his hand. “You can come back and reclaim it at the end of the day.”

  “I’ve turned it off,” Violet says with a pleading look.

>   “Well, that’s a start but I want it here.”

  Violet slinks up to the front of the class and hands Mr. Cirelli her cell.

  “Thank you.” He grips her phone. “Whatever you were texting can wait. It’s not more important than this class.”

  Breckon snickers, snapping my gaze back to him. He’s been holding his cheek up with his left hand for so long that I have to wonder if it’s fallen asleep.

  “You have some commentary you want to add, Breckon?” Mr. Cirelli asks in an even tone.

  Breckon shakes his head without even bothering to lift his head from his palm, and Mr. Cirelli, thinking the matter is done with, opens the top drawer of his cheap-looking beech melamine desk and drops Violet’s cell phone inside.

  “Actually, yeah,” Breckon says suddenly. “I just think it’s funny that you believe this class is more important than whatever she’s texting. I mean, you have no idea what she’s texting, do you? So it’s not like you can truthfully judge how important it is.” Breckon has shifted his hand away from his cheek so that both arms rest on top of his desk.

  A smile flits across Violet’s lips but Breckon doesn’t notice. A lone anonymous student near the back of the room claps.

  Mr. Cirelli’s eyes narrow as he concentrates on Breckon. “I’m sure Violet appreciates your concern but this doesn’t strike me as an emergency.”

  “I don’t think learning about circular flow in a market economy is exactly crucial for a lot of people here either,” Breckon says leadenly. He slips his fingers around his ballpoint pen and idly taps the desk with it. “But maybe you’re so wrapped up in it that you don’t notice the effect this class has on the rest of us.”

  Mr. Cirelli’s bottom lip twitches. He hesitates briefly before saying, “Breckon, do you want to step outside with me for a moment, please?”

  Breckon shrugs but Mr. Cirelli’s pointing firmly out towards the hall.

  He waits for Breckon to rise from his desk and follows his argumentative student into the hall. They step away from the door and Mr. Cirelli, his face pinched and his head tilting to one side, says, “I know this is a very difficult time for you and I can understand that it’s not easy to focus, but what was happening in there wasn’t productive.”

  Breckon’s head slopes up towards the ceiling. He swings his hands behind his back, locking them together as he stares silently at Mr. Cirelli.

  “Are you okay to go back in?” Mr. Ci#x2s he starelli continues. “Or do you want to take a couple of minutes?”

  Breckon shakes his head, his eyes hardening. “I don’t need to take a couple of minutes and I don’t want to go back in. It’s just going to be more of the same bullshit theory—mixed economy, global economy, market economy. Just theory bullshit with nothing real attached to it.” He shrugs again—this time like the conversation is an act of futility. “We’d get more out of running our own lemonade stands than we do from this joke of a class.”

  Mr. Cirelli clicks his back teeth together but otherwise keeps his cool. He steps closer to Breckon and lowers his voice. “You’re upset. Why don’t you drop in to the guidance office and have a chat with Ms. Harris. I can walk you down.”

  “No thanks,” Breckon retorts. “I have a better idea.” He reels past Mr. Cirelli, whips open the door to his economics class and lurches down an aisle without meeting anyone’s eyes. He stops at his desk and sweeps his notebook and textbooks into his arms.

  “Breckon?” Jules ventures, reaching out to touch his right arm.

  Mr. Cirelli, who has followed Breckon back into the room, watches him without making any move to stop him from leaving.

  Breckon swings away from Jules and retraces his steps out of the room. “Adios,” he says under his breath to no one in particular.

  He treks along the school hallway keeping his head down but I, of course, can examine his face regardless. His pupils are dull and his skin is paler than a sliced almond. He looks like someone in danger of fading away and I ask, knowing that there’ll be no answer, “Where are you going?”

  Near the gym he passes a cabinet overflowing with trophies and then a display of artwork dedicated to the theme of peace. Someone has adopted the blood-donor slogan and captioned their poster: “Peace—it’s in you to give.” The painting itself is of the traditional white dove symbol soaring against a rainbow background.

  But the poster that truly catches my eye is a black-and-white comic-book-style drawing of a long line of people of various ethnicities, genders and ages holding hands and smiling back at whoever stops to look at them. There’s a woman in a wheelchair and a man with a prosthetic leg too. Printed across the bottom of the page in itty-bitty text is the word peace in what has to be over a hundred different languages.

  La paix. Shalom. Damai. Mabuhay. Pingan. Santipap. Rukun. Heiwa. Salam. Amaithi. Der Frieden. Sulh. Ukuthula. There are countless more, but those are the only ones I have time to process as I whiz along with Breckon.

  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” I know that the same way I know Dalí and Pink Floyd. The world I passed through—and the one that Breckon lives in now—is always at war. That makes me sadder now than when I was alive. People waste their limited time on earth fighting. They squash other people under their heels, make them crawl, make them beg, make them die.

  I’ve left my life behind me and I don’t understand the greed and cruelty any better from the other side. The other side, what a massive, knee-slapper of a joke on me. All the other side is, it seems, is the flip side of a mirror. I’m Ashlyn Through the Looking Glass without the benefit of the Red Queen or Humpty Dumpty for my amusement. I’m clueless and useless. No one has explained the through-the-looking-glass rules to me and I’m floundering. No, not floundering, more like failing … I’m failing him.

  Jules catches up with Breckon about fifteen feet beyond the peace art. I’m relieved to see her but not surprised.

  She must’ve dyed her hair on Sunday. It has thick purple streaks through it that weren’t there when Breckon hung out with her on Saturday night. The nose ring she’s wearing today is a tiny cluster of three periwinkle-colored stones. They match the T-shirt Jules is wearing under her black-and-white-striped overalls dress.

  “Where are you going?” she asks, her cheeks rosy from rushing after him. “What did Cirelli say to you out in the hall?”

  Breckon shakes his head. Their eyes connect for a second before he looks away. “Not much … Jules, just go back to class, okay? I don’t want you to get in shit for this.”

  Jules stands her ground. “You didn’t say where you were going.”

  “Because I don’t know.”

  “So … we could hang out together and when Cirelli calms down you can probably talk what happened through with him.” Jules folds her arms in front of her and leans back against the wall. “You know he can be pretty cool.”

  Breckon presses his eyelids shut like he’s making a statement. When he opens them again he says, “Look, thanks for the concern but I’ll handle it how I want, okay? Just …” He waves her away. “I don’t need you a step behind me for everything.”

  “That’s not how it is,” Jules counters. “I’m just checking on you. It’s not like you to pick up and leave in the middle of class. Cirelli was stunned. His face hit the floor.”

  “Like I care.” Breckon’s tone sharpens. “Anyway, I’m on my way out. And we’re not conjoined twins, you know. I don’t have to account for everything to you.”

  “O-kay.” Jules coils a strand of her purple-black hair around her finger and drags it back behind her ear. “I hope you know that you’re being an ass right now.”

  Breckon’s face is as emotionless as stone. “You can call it what you want. But leave me alone.” He resumes his stride down the hallway and doesn’t look back at her, but I do. Jules stands with one shoulder against the wall, watching until he disappears out the doors to the school’s west parking lot.

 
Itȁtifatc9;s a beautiful May day outside and I crane automatically up to feel the warm rays on my skin. Not for you, Ashlyn, I remind myself bitterly. It’s not your sun anymore.

  Breckon tosses his books into the backseat of his car and starts the engine. He heads north, towards cottage country, zipping up Highway 400—the very same highway my family motored up on their way to Farlain Lake—and I begin to wonder if we’ve developed some kind of psychic link and he’s reading my mind without knowing it, heading for the place I used to spend the summer years ago.

  But then he pulls into a rest stop with a McDonald’s in it and orders medium fries and a large Coke. They sit, untouched, on the formica table in front of him as Breckon rests his head in his arms, facedown. I wish I knew where he was going, what the plan was.

  “You should turn back,” I say gently. And then, for the umpteenth time, “Where are you going, Breckon?”

  I cheat and peek at his face from under the table. His eyes are closed and the sound of his breathing is like someone ripping out a set of brand-new stitches.

  No, no, no. “Let’s go home,” I advise. “Please, Breckon. Listen to me.”

  “Fuck you,” he whispers in a voice so quiet that probably only dead people and dogs can hear it.

  Was that … was that meant for me?

  Exhilaration surges through me, my worries for him momentarily pushed aside.

  A long-haired boy of about five in a Toronto Maple Leafs T-shirt with a squiggly line of ketchup down the front is leaning over the back of the booth that adjoins Breckon’s. “Is that man sick?” he squeaks, his eyes shifting to his mother next to him.

  “Shush, honey,” she commands. “Don’t stare. That’s rude.”

  “But maybe he’s asleep and we should wake him up,” the boy says, loud enough for Breckon and anyone in our section of the restaurant to hear. “Or maybe he needs to go to the hospital.”