My Beating Teenage Heart Read online

  “Sit down, Jacob.” The woman tugs at the boy’s hand.

  “Owww!” he yelps, although I can tell it didn’t hurt a bit.

  A couple of minutes later Jacob’s plowed through his Happy Meal and his mother’s finished her salad. She throws their garbage away and sets the empty tray on top of the receptacle. I see her glance furtively at Breckon and then, maybe for the sake of her son, scurry over to the table with Jacob in tow.

  “Excuse me,” she whispers, staring down at Breckon’s curly brown hair and the back of his neck. She pokes her tongue against her teeth and hovers by the table, about to attempt contact a second time.

  Breckon lifts his head to stare at her. His eyes seem bottomless and she begins to sink into them but pulls hemeightherself back just enough to ask, “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. You had your head down for a long time and …”

  Breckon glances past her at Jacob. “I know. I heard him.”

  The woman smiles apologetically. “He’s at that age where—”

  Breckon’s cell rings from his pocket. “I should get that,” he says, pulling the phone from his pocket and flipping the top up. I very much doubt he would’ve answered it if he hadn’t wanted to escape from the concerned woman next to him, but her presence forces him to mumble a guarded “hello” into the phone.

  The woman disappears with her son and I listen to Breckon defend his behavior in Mr. Cirelli’s class, framing it as though his main concern was defending Violet from overzealous criticism. “Dad, I’ll fix it, okay?” he stammers. “I’ll go back and apologize to him tomorrow, but is there any way you can just keep this between us? Otherwise I’m going to have Mom breathing down my neck about the therapist again and, okay, maybe I lost it a little but …” He scrambles for the right words. “You know what some teachers can be like, and all I did, in the end, was bust out of class.”

  Mr. Cody must be leaning towards agreeing because Breckon utters a penitent, “I know, I know. I won’t, I swear. Stuff was just … backing up on me. And then there’s my birthday coming up too and I just …” He grabs his straw and bends it over, tying it into a knot. “I don’t want to do anything for it. I want us to forget about it, okay? Just treat it like any other day.”

  This is the first I’ve heard about Breckon’s approaching birthday. Maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention. It’s impossible to stay focused during every hour of your existence. I don’t get physically tired anymore but my mind still wanders.

  Whatever Mr. Cody says next is enough to get Breckon back in his car and driving home. The first thing he does when he gets there is scour his parents’ bathroom for sleeping pills. Amongst the assorted over-the-counter pain relievers and cold remedies he discovers acid-reflux pills, various outdated antibiotics and a fungal cream. Four remaining tablets rattle around the bottom of the lone trazodone bottle he ferrets out of the medicine cabinet. The length of time Breckon stares at them tells me he suspects they’re sleeping pills. But there aren’t enough left to help him for long, and certainly not enough to ensure that his mother (it’s her name that’s printed on the label) wouldn’t suspect someone else had been dipping into them.

  The next person to arrive back at the house is Mr. Cody. He and Breckon have a powwow in the living room, Breckon sitting on the couch with his hands lost in his hoodie sleeves, nodding at everything his father says, except for the idea of meeting with Eva again. “Are you and Mom going to say I need to get my head shrinked every time I screw up now?” he asks defensively.

  “You said things were backing up on you,” his father reminds him. “I just want you to know there are people you can talk to.” Mr. Cody wearily ruodyx201bs his forehead. “There’s nothing the matter with needing to speak to someone.”

  “But I don’t,” Breckon says, eyes blazing. “I tried it. And I’m not going back. You can’t haul me out to the car and then carry me up to her office like I’m six. If I don’t want to go, I’m not going and that’s it.”

  The strain between Breckon and his father sparked by that conversation hangs in the air for the rest of the night. Most of the infrequent words spoken over dinner are Mrs. Cody’s, but it gradually becomes evident that Mr. Cody has kept his word and not told her about Breckon’s conflict with Mr. Cirelli.

  If Jules tries to call, I’m unaware of it because Breckon switches his phone off and keeps it off. In bed later he stares at the ceiling for hours but doesn’t swallow his sole remaining sleeping pill. During this time I test out my inner voice, asking Breckon if he can hear me, just like I’ve done in quiet points throughout the day.

  He has nothing to say in response. If he can hear me, could it be that I’ve been making things worse for him? Maybe he’s scared that he’s losing his mind and that’s partly why he’s so adamant about not going back to Eva.

  Bright and early the next morning Breckon knocks on the staff room door and apologizes to his teacher. He fixates on the ground, and then his Converse high-tops, and listens to Mr. Cirelli reply, “I spoke with your father yesterday and I think we can put this behind us. I know you haven’t been yourself lately.”

  Breckon bobs his head and quietly thanks Mr. Cirelli but brushes off Jules when she drops by his locker and tries to talk to him. “I’m not in a good head space for any relationship drama,” he tells her. “Can we postpone this for a while?”

  “What do you mean?” she asks. “Postpone what?”

  Breckon curls his fingers around his locker door and sighs. “Talking about what I’m going through and how you think you can help.”

  Jules stares at him for a long time, waiting for him to face her. If he did maybe things would be different. The way she feels about him shines so strongly in her eyes that it makes me want to cry. Breckon himself doesn’t look. He keeps his eyes safely on his locker and, after several seconds, Jules’s fingers graze against his on the locker, her black nails a stark contrast to his ashy skin.

  “You know I love you,” she whispers before doing exactly what he seems to want—lifting her hand off his and falling back into the crowd, away from him.

  sixteen

  breckon

  Mom’s parents won’t take no for an answer. They say we should at least have tifat="0" alsome kind of family dinner to celebrate my birthday on Friday, and invite us over to their place. My mother starts to get into a fight with them about it over the phone, repeating that I don’t want a birthday dinner. Mom’s raised voice is what makes me give in. I don’t want her to argue with her parents because of me; I know they’ve helped her a lot over the past month.

  My grandmother makes the blue-cheese hamburgers that were my favorite food as a kid and blueberry cake for dessert. “It’s not a birthday cake,” she makes a point of saying. “Just a cake.” My grandmother told us we could bring Moose, and because he’s not used to being here he keeps pacing around their house, looking lost. Watching him skitter around their vintage hand-painted coffee table makes some bizarre kind of statement—like he’s a small, hairy substitute for Skylar.

  It feels wrong the way everything feels wrong lately. Even the dog seems different. All of us are like those early clones that died too soon because they weren’t right inside. We look like identical matches to the original but under the surface we’re defective.

  I’m seventeen today and I don’t know how much longer I’ll last.

  Jules gave me a birthday hug in the cafeteria earlier, even though we haven’t seen each other outside of school since last Saturday and probably won’t for a while. I don’t want to drag her down and I don’t want her knocking herself out trying to cheer me up—she’ll just end up hurt and frustrated either way. On Wednesday we stood in the parking lot beside my car and had part two of the conversation that we’d started at my locker the day before. I told her, “Everyone keeps saying that I’m not myself and no one knows that better than you do. Right now I just don’t have the energy for anything extra. It’s hard enough trying to drag my ass to class—there’s n
othing left over for you.”

  Jules bit one of her black nails and said, “It sounds like what you’re saying is that you think you need to be at your best for us to be together and that’s not true.”

  “I know it’s not like that.” Even explaining took too much energy. “But imagine if you were going through something where it was all you could think about. And you needed whatever space and time you could get just to work things out for yourself.” My shoe scuffed at the asphalt. “My head isn’t in it, Jules. Us. When you’re talking about summer theater and Boleyn’s and all that. I’m just not there. I’m so far from that, I can’t imagine being there.”

  “Breckon.” She shook her head, her eyes clinging to mine in a way that would normally have made me want to pull her close. I wish it still worked like that. “I want to be with you wherever you are. If it’s shitty isn’t that all the more reason for me to be around?”

  There was a time when I would’ve agreed with her. “I need to be on my own for a while, Jules. Don’t make it harder by trying to talk me out of it.”

  I knew that what I was saying didn’t make sense to her. She thinks she can be good for me. Stiod 01D;

  want to sink.

  Ever since Skylar died but especially since the dream, I can’t fight it or pretend to myself that there’s some other kind of way through this for me. Jules would want me to try. She’d start off slow, but little by little work on convincing me to do things like start playing guitar again and then follow through with my idea to get up on stage at Boleyn’s and make other future plans. And all I want to do is stop breathing.

  If I was braver—and if there was a way for me to be done with this without hurting my parents and everyone else—I’d be through with it already.

  “I need to step back,” I added. From everyone, but from her the most.

  Jules’s eyes were wet. She said nothing.

  Our time at her parents’ house last week felt like a dream. I wanted to get in the car and leave her behind but there was still a sliver inside me that her tears reached. It made me say, “I still love you.” As much as I could feel anything. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

  And then we were over or on hold or whatever you want to call it but she still walked up to me today and gave me a hug, forced a closed-mouth smile and said, “You know where to find me if you need me.”

  “Thanks, Jules.” I hugged her back and wondered if I’d been wrong and whether she really could help me. The feeling had dissolved again by the time I let go.

  That leaves me right where I am, sitting in my grandparents’ light-blue dining room, listening to them coax small talk from me and my parents. My mom and grandmother are discussing natural products that can be used instead of pesticides in the garden when my grandmother turns to look at me, smiles softly and says, “Can you feel her today? She’s all around you like a greenish-blue light.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t feel anything.” Sometimes I can but I know it’s not Skylar and it’s not something I want to talk about. My parents would think I was losing it, and in a way I know I am, but whatever the thing around me is it’s not Skylar and it’s not my imagination. Whatever it is doesn’t matter anyway—it’s one more thing I don’t have the energy for. Something that can’t change the past, a gray form drifting in the dark shadows of my mind.

  “Can you feel her?” my grandmother asks, shifting her gaze to my mom, who whispers that the feeling my grandmother’s talking about is a memory.

  “It’s more than that,” my grandmother insists.

  My grandfather stares uneasily at his plate and then I hear my father say, “Sometimes I think I can feel her around me. Certain moments. Sometimes when I’m just drifting off to sleep or …” His voice trails off as his eyes land on my mother. Her face projects sadness and skepticism.

  My grandmother’s slate-gray ;s es land eyes seek mine out again. “She’s with us often, all of us.” Inner calm lights her face. “Even if you can’t sense that, I want you to know.”

  I realize my grandmother’s intentions are good but her kindness burns. She may be able to convince herself that we’re all living a fairy tale but some of us live in the real world. Skylar isn’t here and she hasn’t been in a month.

  My fingers tremble as my fork slices through the blueberry cake. Everyone’s watching me, watching the sliver of cake on the end of my fork and how I’m holding it in the air, twitching.

  And then my cell rings in my pocket. The timing’s so perfect that I couldn’t have choreographed it better myself. I’m not supposed to have my cell on at dinner but I excuse myself and answer it as I push my chair out from the table and step into the living room where no one will be able to hear me.

  “So what’s up?” Ty asks. “You still at your grandparents’?”

  I sit on their couch, pointing a cautionary finger at Moose, who wants to jump up and join me but isn’t allowed on my grandparents’ furniture. “Still here,” I tell Ty, aggravation bleeding into my voice. “And it’s a nightmare. I don’t know why I didn’t let my mom turn them down.”

  “Help is on the way,” Ty declares. “I’m in the car with Big Red. Just lay an address on me and we’re there.”

  “You know they live in Middlefield, right? It’ll take you at least forty-five minutes to get here.” I told Ty days ago, just like I told everyone else, that I wanted to ban any birthday celebrations in my honor, but if having him pick me up means facing down some birthday shit later in the night so be it; it’d have to be an improvement on this.

  “Pedal to the metal,” Ty assures me. “Shouldn’t take more than thirty.”

  I give him my grandparents’ address and hang out in the living room for another seven minutes before slipping back into the dining room and breaking the news. Everyone jumps all over themselves telling me how great and natural it is that I hang out with my friends today. It’s another one of those things that make me feel like I don’t want to be anywhere, but at least I know Ty won’t grill me about whether or not I can sense my dead sister.

  Ty and Big Red roll up in just over half an hour, like Ty promised, and my grandmother offers them blueberry cake. “I’d love that,” Ty says politely, “but we’re meeting up with some other friends in Strathedine and I don’t want to keep them waiting.”

  My grandmother chops the remaining cake in two and places the bigger half in a cookie tin with skating penguins on the lid. “So you can eat it wherever you boys end up,” she says, handing it to me.

  Dad tells me to call him if I need a ride later. “No matter what time it is,” he adds pointedly.

  Three mitifmy nutes later we’re in the car. Rory has pried the cookie tin open and is scooping his fingers into the cake while Ty warns him not to eat it all because he wants his share. Since Big Red called shotgun first, I’m in the backseat and I notice an orange plastic bag shoved down in front of the seat next to me. A flesh-colored bump of vinyl something is sticking out of the top and I reach in and tug at the side of the bag to find out what it is. A grinning full-head Bill Clinton mask, that’s what. I set Bill’s head on the seat and pull out the masks underneath it: George Bush Junior, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan.

  “What the fuck?” I ask. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ty says, looking over his shoulder at me. “That’s not for tonight. You weren’t even supposed to see that.”

  “We just picked it up before we dropped by your grandparents’ place,” Big Red adds. “We found this cool costume store in Bourneville.”

  “I wanted to get the Hillary one too but Big Red said it wouldn’t go with the presidential theme,” Ty tells me.

  Rory drives one of his hands through his red hair. “They didn’t have any Beatles masks and it’s better to have four of the same type. Besides, wouldn’t it be a little too freaky to see the Hillary mask on a dude’s body?” He shudders at the thought.

  I throw all the masks back in the bag, leaving Bill Cl
inton’s for last. Whoever designed it gave him enormous cheeks and a mammoth chin, but the smile sort of looks like his. I’ve already stopped caring about the masks and the streaking stunt but Ty says, “We’re going to pull it off with Brett and Kostas. We didn’t want to bother you with it. I know it probably seems … I mean, we know you’re dealing with more important things and now with Jules—”

  Rory faces me in the backseat. “Dude, I can’t believe you broke it off with Jules. What happened?”

  Ty groans. “Can we maybe not talk about this on his birthday?”

  “I don’t want to talk about my birthday either,” I growl. “I just want to get hammered.” The path of least resistance. I haven’t been plastered since New Year’s and never enough to black out. That’s going to change.

  “Hell yeah!” Ty howls. “I’m down with that plan.” He tells me that he and Big Red were on their way to Anya’s when they called. I know that he’s hooked up with her a couple of times since they met that night at Zavi’s but I haven’t seen her since. “Her parents are out of town so she’s having a few of her girls over,” he explains. “They’re knocking back vodka coolers as we speak.”

  Girls. Shit. Just because I want to get loaded doesn’t mean I want some random drunk girl trying to ram her tongue down my throat. But I go with the flow and we drive over to Anya’s place, which is one of the last houses on a quiet cul-de-sac in Cherrywood.

  Her house has a historical society plaque on it that reads: “John Forester, Merchant, 1879.” There are only three cars in her driveway and one parked against the curb, and I can’t hear any music until we’re standing directly outside her front door. Then some shitty generic pop song that makes me frown harder than I already was spits in my ear.

  Anya opens the door and throws her arms around Ty, then Rory and then me. “I’m so glad you guys are here!” she cries. Her legs are bare and she’s wearing a frilly pink dress that Jules would roll her eyes at. She wraps her right arm around Ty’s waist and leads us through the foyer and into the family room where six other girls (some who look familiar from that Saturday night at Zavi’s) and three guys are hanging out amongst leather couches, a massive flat-screen TV, plastic cups and bowls of tortilla chips and pretzels. Two of the guys are Wii boxing in the center of the room while four of the girls dance to the bad music and the remaining two huddle on the couch, whispering into each other’s ears. The leftover guy’s sitting in an armchair, texting with one hand while dropping tortilla chips into his mouth with the other.