My Beating Teenage Heart Read online

  None of my other friends were at Shenice’s birthday party, but I knew her popular friends a bit by then. We ate Chinese food and played “I Never” with M&M’s, danced and then her dad brought down the iNail machine they’d rented as a surprise and everyone did their nails with funky designs and cartoons. I went to the bathroom to check the progress of my period a zillion times but Celeste was right, it was starting out slow.

  Back at home after my dad picked me up I showed him my nails in the kitchen. My mom came home and Dad said I’d had an interesting night and loped off to leave us alone so that I could talk about the thrill (not!) of getting my first period.

  I thought, at the time, that although it was a pain to have my period, at least maybe I was getting popular—my star was rising. Sometimes I ate lunch with Shenice and her friends instead of mine and sometimes we danced to music from one of our iPods at recess (while the boys pretended not to watch) or pored over the sexy parts of romance books that Shenice had swiped from her mother. Then a new girl named Bailey joined our sixth-grade class. She had the prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen but she was fat—much fatter than me. Some of the boys in our class would make oink noises under their breath when she was around, and then Shenice and her friends started making fun of Bailey behind her back too.

  The first time I didn’t do anything to stop them but on the second I tried to say that she had really nice eyes, and Shenice’s friend Vanessa stared at me like I had horns growing out of rowstomy head. “Who cares what her eyes look like when she’s carrying that much blubber around with her?”

  “I mean, she’s not just a little chubby like you,” Shenice added. “She’s huge. It’s not healthy. You’d have to be stupid to eat that much and let yourself look like that.”

  Bailey didn’t talk to anyone but our teacher, Ms. Marinangeli, and no one talked to Bailey either, unless it was to be mean. Every time I heard someone call her a name or act like she was invisible I winced inside. I told the friends I’d had before Shenice that we had to do something about it. “Why don’t you talk to your new friends about that?” my friend Hannah asked. “They’re the ones who started it.”

  I got Shenice alone and told her how I felt about what’d been happening with Bailey. “But we never even say anything to her,” Shenice countered. “It’s the guys that are calling her all the names.”

  “But everybody knows that you don’t like her and that you say bad things about her.”

  “What can you expect, Ashlyn?” Shenice sunk her hands into her hips. “She never speaks to anyone. Whenever she has to run in gym class, she stinks. If you want to improve her life, why don’t you talk to her about basic hygiene?”

  I didn’t know what to do. If I took Bailey’s side against the boys and everyone else it could make me a target. It took me six days to decide that I would risk the consequences and become Bailey’s friend. I didn’t know the first thing about Bailey, but being her friend, even if that meant turning into a target myself, had to be better than the sadness I felt when people were mean to her. So I sidled up to her during recess and racked my mind for something to say. I had my period again then and had to carry the winged pads to school in my knapsack and make sure I didn’t leak. Thinking about it gave me a headache, and I stood next to Bailey and blurted out the first thing that came into my head. “I have killer cramps today. I wonder if Ms. Marinangeli will let me skip gym.”

  Bailey shrugged and looked the other way.

  I tried again. “So where did you go to school before this? Was it nicer?”

  Bailey’s forehead wrinkled. “It was the same.” She bit her lip. Her bright blue eyes stared piercingly into my face. “If you’re trying to dig for information for you and your friends to laugh at, you can forget it. I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  I was shocked. I’d never laughed at her or said anything bad about her.

  “I … wasn’t going to do that,” I stammered.

  “Right,” Bailey said sarcastically. “You’re not one of Shenice’s followers. I must’ve mistaken you for someone else.”

  I started to say that I wasn’t a follower, but Bailey scuffled away on me and then Vanessa troen ght="0mped over, like she must’ve been listening from around the side of the nearest portable. “You should be careful who you talk to,” Vanessa warned, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “You don’t want people to think you’re the same as her.” She poked me in the stomach. “Especially since you already need to go on a diet.”

  Something sparked inside me when she touched me. I got in her face and shouted at her to keep her hands to herself. Vanessa looked around to see what kind of audience we had and, spotting three boys playing handball not far away, yelled back, “I don’t want to touch your blubber, girl! You got more rolls than a bakery.”

  I lunged forward and pushed her. She fell in a dirty puddle from the morning’s rain and her jeans got soaked at the butt. The teacher on recess duty rushed over before Vanessa could get up and smack me back. I got detention and Vanessa, because she was the one with the muddy pants, didn’t get punished at all.

  If real life was like the movies, Shenice and her friends would’ve started terrorizing me on a daily basis after that, but that’s not how things went. The next morning at school Vanessa sashayed over to my desk and called me a bitch. She shot me dirty looks for the next two weeks. I didn’t eat lunch with them anymore and Shenice stopped speaking to me. I didn’t become friends with Bailey either but pretty soon most people got sick of picking on her and by June she was hanging out with a girl named Jess who’d cut her hair short and started dressing like a boy.

  When Jess changed some kids said mean things to her too, calling her a lesbo and a dyke. One time she punched a boy and made his nose bleed, and maybe that was wrong, but I was glad she’d done it and told her so. After that when I saw kids bugging her I’d shout nasty things back at them. Sometimes they called me fat, ugly and a lesbo too but sometimes more kids would take our side and the other ones would have to stop.

  In junior high I began to acquire a reputation as someone who stuck her nose in when someone was being bullied. And not just that but someone who was a good listener and could keep a secret. In eighth grade I met a girl who told me, after we’d been talking on the phone for two and a half hours one night, that the uncle who was staying with her family was sneaking into her bedroom at night after everyone was asleep and touching her. I told her what had happened to me when I was eight and that she needed to tell her mom what was going on, but she was scared and made me swear not to say anything.

  I promised but three days later I caved in and told my parents and they called the school and her uncle got arrested. I’d wanted to help that girl so badly but I was in over my head. I needed my mother and father to take charge for me. I have that same feeling now with Breckon. My parents would know what to do to help him but I’m stumped. Sometimes I shout in the darkness in frustration until I can’t stand it anymore and want to cry.

  Considering how lost I am, adrift in a universe that recognizes a flea’s existence more than it does my own, maybe it’s ridiculous to think that something as simple as singing “I Say a Little Prayer” in front of the mirror could make me feel better, but I know it would help some and, as I watch Breckon come apart at the seams, I run through the lyrics in my head in Aretha Franklin’ankould makes voice until they sound like a prayer themselves.

  eighteen

  ashlyn

  As the sun comes up on Saturday morning Breckon and his friends, still too drunk to pass a Breathalyzer, call a cab to take them to Big Red’s house. It’s a bloodred sunrise but no one mentions how spectacular the sky is. Breckon, Ty and Big Red look half-dead as they spill out of the taxi and I wonder, did I ever, in the last year or so of my life that I’ve yet to remember, get wrecked like this with my friends?

  I can’t really understand why anyone would want to. Dancing, eating, playing video games and making out with someone you’re into all seem like thin
gs that are just as much fun when you’re sober, and as far as I can see being drunk only makes you loud and/or dumb. I don’t think Breckon even remembers putting on that Bill Clinton mask and stripping off half his clothes. I guess, for a minute or so before he passed out, that he thought he’d get a jump on his friends’ idea and do some streaking himself. Lucky for him he lost consciousness before he could make it out of the car.

  Breckon and his friends part ways at Big Red’s house. From there Breckon heads for home, wandering onto a bike path shortcut, and as he nears his house I see him take in the sunrise at last. He stops in his tracks and gazes up at the brilliant deep-orange sky. The sun streams golden from behind a slash of dark red clouds. The neighborhood hasn’t sprung to life yet. Newspapers lie untouched on porches. The only noise on the air is of birds singing.

  There’s a kind of peace in the stillness of the moment that I wonder if Breckon feels.

  That’s all I do with him, watch and wonder. If I was still alive and knew him, would I be able to do more?

  Breckon starts walking again—along the sidewalk, up his driveway, through the front door and up to bed. An hour later Mr. Cody peeks in on him to make sure he’s arrived home safely, and when Breckon wakes up at quarter to two in the afternoon the first thing he does is reach for his iPod and listen to Aretha Franklin sing “I Say a Little Prayer.”

  The moment I wake up …

  Three times in a row.

  Sweet Jesus. He knows I’m here. There’s not a shadow of a doubt.

  I’ve been quieter with him than usual over the past few days. Since he seemed to address me at McDonald’s I’ve begun to worry that I could be doing him more harm than good (wouldn’t hearing a voice in your head make you wonder if you were crazy?), but I can’t stop my private thoughts. I don’t know how many of them are sifting through my consciousness to his and how that could affect him. I remain silent as best I can, thinking it all through, but maybe he can hear my silence too?

  ankous bBreckon says nothing. And I say nothing.

  Later he puts in a shift at Zavi’s, stays up most of the night watching movies on his laptop and sleeps late. Sunday’s a late night too. He thrashes in bed, battling with the covers and his personal demons. I can hear it in his breathing, know what he wants to do and can’t keep quiet any longer. Please don’t, I whisper. It’s not your fault and it won’t change anything.

  Breckon gives no indication that he’s heard me, and I think, with more vehemence, What do you think Skylar would say if she could see you? Wouldn’t she be horrified? Wouldn’t she ask you to stop?

  I watch him cut himself again, a sharp line up the middle of his other thigh. It hurts, I can see that. But not as much as just breathing.

  I don’t think it’s possible to spend over a month watching every hour of someone’s waking life and not care about him. Not unless he was bad to the core, and that’s not Breckon. I’ve seen every inch of him now, even the parts I probably shouldn’t have. The image of his smoky blue eyes is burnt into my brain. I’ve spent more time staring into his pupils than anyone else’s.

  This is not what I thought would become of me. As a child you think you have an entire lifetime ahead of you. You think you’ll travel to far-flung places, be recognized for something you’re good at, maybe have your own family one day or maybe not, but at least find love. Even if it doesn’t last. Even if it breaks your heart.

  Deep down I know I’ve never had that. I can’t explain how I sense that when I’m missing a year-plus of experiences, and I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t believe so.

  I think I’ve come to love Breckon. Not like a boyfriend and not like a brother either but in some way I’m not wise enough to put into words.

  He needs to be okay. And I can’t do that for him but I want to help, if I only knew how.

  At school on Monday morning Breckon sits in his car watching the parking lot like he’s staking someone out. Then a skinny white guy with a face full of freckles pulls up on a mint-green Vespa. Breckon gets out of his car and intercepts the guy before he reaches the school door.

  “Hey, Carl,” Breckon says. “You got a minute? I was hoping you could help me with something?”

  Carl casts a wary look at Breckon. His spiky hair remains motionless in the face of a wind that sends Breckon’s curls billowing out behind him. “I don’t know you.”

  “No, I know. But you’ve done some business with Cameron Sykes, right? He can vouch for me.”

  Carl turns and steps away from the door, which is being enveloped by heavy-lidded students trooping towards their lockers and homeroom classes. Breckon follows Carl to a more sparsely populated scrap of lawn near the track field.

  Carl skims one of his fingers over his right eyebrow. “If therare’s anything I can do for you, that has to happen first. So get Cameron to text me and then we can talk, okay?”

  Breckon nods quickly. “Sure.”

  Carl’s shoulders swivel like he’s about to break away from Breckon. Then he spins back towards him and says, “Want to give me a vague idea of what we’re talking about?”

  “Sleeping pills,” Breckon replies, more mouthing the words than uttering them.

  “Okay. We can get more specific later.” Carl drops his mask of aloofness for a second. “Sorry, man. It’s nothing personal. I just need to take certain precautions.”

  “No problem, I get it,” Breckon says as he begins to stride off.

  He sleepwalks through his morning classes. Cameron’s in humanities with him in the afternoon and Breckon grabs him on the way out of class and tells him he needs a favor. He fills him in on the details as they inch along the crowded hallway. “I need to keep this quiet,” Breckon adds. “I don’t want Renee or Jules to hear about it, okay?”

  “I hear you. And I’ll text Carl.” Cameron pushes up his sleeves as they walk. “But you need to be careful. Those things can get you hooked if you don’t watch it.”

  Breckon’s eyes scream indifference. “Thanks for the warning.”

  He has his pills by the end of the night. Forty of them, to be exact.

  He swallows one before getting into bed and another the next night. I don’t try to discourage him because (a) I don’t think I can and (b) the pills work and I know long nights make him feel worse.

  On Wednesday Breckon has economics last period and he and Jules arrive at the classroom door at the exact same moment. They were so good together that I can’t believe he broke it off, and what’s just as surprising is how civil they’ve been able to remain in the aftermath. If I was in Jules’s place I know I wouldn’t be handling things as well as she is. Since it happened they haven’t been speaking much but they always at least acknowledge each other, and on Monday Jules said she hoped he’d had a good weekend.

  Today is different. Today Breckon says, “Hey, Jules. How’s it going?”

  Jules’s black eyeliner can make her almost look mean but when she smiles you immediately know better. But not today. Today she refuses to look him in the eye and retorts, “Fuck you, Breckon” as she slips into class.

  Breckon’s eyes flick repeatedly over to her as Mr. Cirelli shows a PowerPoint presentation on business and the environmental revolution. When the end-of-period bell sounds, Breckon’s up in a shot and out the door where he lies in wait.

  Jules’s face swells with bitterness as she exits the class, Breckon locked in step with her. “So now it’s my turn to say I don’t want #x2ify">Jto have anything to do with you,” she says.

  “I never said that.”

  “No, no, you said”—she cups her chin and strikes a mock-contemplative pose—“that you didn’t have the energy for anything extra.” Her long black hair whips through the air as she shakes her head. “And I believed you. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? You playing me like that when I really thought we had something?”

  “Jules,” Breckon pleads. “We did, you know we did. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Jules stops in the middl
e of the hallway and burrows her hands into her hoodie pockets. “And the bullshit doesn’t stop! You’re unbelievable.” She glares at him with such contempt that it takes Breckon’s breath away. “Lauren Harvey told Renee that she saw you having sex with some girl against a car in her neighborhood on Friday night. Is that specific enough for you?”

  Breckon hangs his head. His frame literally seems to shrink under the weight of his navy T-shirt and gray cords.

  “I thought so,” Jules concludes, swinging away from him.

  “No, Jules, wait!” He latches on to her arm as they whisk along the corridor.

  “Let the fuck go,” she warns in a voice that sounds like a hundred bee stings.

  Breckon releases her but keeps pace. “That’s not what happened. There was a girl, okay? But we didn’t have sex. I was so trashed that I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t even know her name.”

  Jules laughs in a way that says this isn’t remotely funny. “So, if you were that trashed maybe you did fuck her. Or would that have required too much energy?”

  “Jules, c’mon. Please stop.” He reaches for her hand and roots himself to the spot. “I know how it sounds.”

  Jules, who has stopped too, dangles her hand from her arm like it’s an inanimate object.

  “Did you or did you not have your hands up her skirt?” she asks. “Do you remember that much?”

  “I remember,” Breckon says. “But can I explain what happened? Ty, Rory and I were at this party Anya was having. You remember me telling you about Anya?” He waits somberly for confirmation that doesn’t come and then continues anyway. “I didn’t want to be there—I just needed to get away from the dinner at my grandparents’ house. And I drank too much, way too much. I think I even blacked out at one p—”

  Jules wrenches her fingers from his. “I’ve heard enough. You’re free to do whatever you want. I just wish you’d had the guts to own up to what that was so I wouldn’t have been sulking around like a loser, trying to give you space while worrying myself to death about you.”