My Beating Teenage Heart Read online

  “Go on, sit down,” the first woman adds, leaping over her original question. “I won’t be a second with the eggs.”

  Dawn bobs her head and trudges towards the table, where she stops and studies the apricot-hued wall behind it. What appears to be a recent school picture of Brforicture eckon hangs next to an empty hook and then a family portrait. I study the photos along with her, confirming that Dawn and the man who sat on Breckon’s bed last night are his parents. I haven’t worked out who the woman making breakfast is yet, and there’s a girl in the family portrait—young with white-blond hair cut as short as a boy’s—who has yet to make an appearance.

  “Oh,” the woman at the stove remarks, her mouth drooping around the word as she notices where Dawn’s stare has landed. “I have to drop by the funeral home and pick up the photos. I’ll do that later today.”

  Oh. I feel the sting of the implications behind that syllable too and I hope I’m wrong. The girl in the family portrait is much too young to die. In the photo she can’t be older than six. But the woman’s reference to a funeral home could mean anything—an older relative’s passing. It’s only a dream anyway, I remind myself. Nobody’s died, not really.

  Breckon’s mother sits across from him at the table. They nod at each other but remain quiet. The sole sounds in the kitchen are of a wall clock the shape of a sunflower ticking and the woman at the stove scraping a spatula against the bottom of the frying pan.

  “Lily?” Breckon says, breaking the silence.

  The woman with the ponytail turns to look at him. “Hmm?” she says, tilting her head.

  “I’m going to hit the shower,” he tells her, already on his feet. “I’ll have the eggs when I’m finished, okay?”

  “Sure, honey.” Lily’s face is gilded with sympathy. “Whatever you want. I’ll keep them warm for you.”

  Breckon glances down at his mother. Her eyes are blue too, but brighter than his, and she points to her feet, where Moose is sitting on the tile floor, dazedly watching the three of them. Dawn’s mouth flaps open as she struggles to formulate her thoughts. “He’s been so—”

  “I know,” Breckon cuts in. He turns abruptly away and makes for the stairs, taking them two at a time like he can’t escape the kitchen quickly enough.

  “Breckon,” his father calls from the top of the stairway. Breckon’s shoulders curl towards his chest as he looks up at his father. “I heard your cell ringing in your room just a second ago,” his dad continues, hands dipping into the deep pockets of his navy-blue robe. His face radiates the same unhappiness that everyone’s inside this house does. And still no sign of the little blond girl, I note. But can’t people change their dreams if they want to?

  If I concentrate hard enough, imagine the face from the family portrait and wish her into being with all my might, will she materialize in front of us, white-blond hair still mussed from being flattened against her pillow? Can I create a miracle in my sleep?

  They call that lucid dreaming, I think, but either I’m doing it wrong or it’s a phony concept in the first place, because nothing hapoo, nothinpens when I envision the little girl in the hallway with us. Absolutely nothing.

  “I’ll …” Breckon’s fingers dive into his curls. “I’ll check messages when I get out of the shower.” He squints as he continues his climb, maybe remembering the same thing I am—didn’t he switch his phone off last night?

  Breckon passes his father on the stairs and lurches through the second-floor hall and into the bathroom, where I watch him tear off his T-shirt and sweatpants. He leaves them in a heap on the floor and reaches, naked, for the shower tap. Inside he stands under the stream of water, bowing his head and letting droplets run down his face. He closes his eyes and hooks his fingers into his armpits. His shoulders begin to shake. His face crumples. He cries quietly into his own chest as the tremble takes hold. Breckon’s face is red with agony. He quakes and sobs under the sound of running water, and the sound of that undercover weeping is worse than his tormented breathing, though I can still hear that too.

  If I’ve ever seen anyone cry like this, I can’t remember it, but I’m certain that even in my waking life, I won’t forget, and with the pain of that thought, finally, finally my brain changes gears and starts to release its hold on my dream world and let me go. Not through the roof and stars the way I came, but with a simple fade to gray and then black, Breckon dropping away from me as I fall into pure, blessed silence.

  two

  Something has gone horribly wrong. Panic sets in as I thrash around in the darkness. Just try to thrash without a body and see where that gets you. Frustration and fear with no form. Indistinct half-thoughts tumbling in a void. Grasping, without hands, for certainties that don’t exist.

  Nothing. And that goes on forever.

  Nowhere. Except for the spot you wanted to leave behind. That place still exists: the boy, Breckon, sobbing in the shower. I can hear him in the distance, as though he’s standing at the opposite end of a long tunnel, when I tune my ears in to the sound. Apparently I’ve switched off visuals the same way I turned down the audio on his breathing earlier. It happens that I’m capable of blocking his world out entirely with no trouble.

  The problem is, when I switch off that noise and matching pictures, there isn’t anything else to replace it. Just some weird essence of me in the blackness.

  This is no regular dream. I would’ve woken up by now. Try again, I tell myself. Maybe you haven’t really tried with everything you’ve got. So I thrash harder. I rail against the darkness, fighting for my consciousness like my life depends on it. Maybe it does. Maybe I’m in a coma in a hospital somewhere. That would explain my amnesia. Brain damage. Some kind of head injury or a high fever.

  Scream, I advise myself.

  Let the nurses and doctors know you’re still in here.

  Advising myself is well and good but in practice the ="0=screaming proves exactly like the thrashing. While I don’t have the use of my body, I suppose it can’t be any different. All I can do is try in the exact same way.

  What if I don’t ever wake up? What will become of me?

  Don’t think like that, I command. You can’t lose hope. That might make things worse still.

  I don’t even know what I have to lose; I don’t know who I am. A few very select personal details have bobbed up inside me and made themselves known while the real world goes on without me. Hoping for more, I concentrate on those details by keeping the lifelike vision of Breckon and his mourning family at bay. Alone, turned inward to delve for information about myself, my dream world temporarily ceases to exist. This is what I imagine being blind and deaf is like.

  Silence isn’t golden, it’s like being the last person on earth, but it helps me think. To review, this is what I now remember to be true:

  1. I like orange juice.

  2. I’m female (a fact I only realized when I watched Breckon take off his sweatpants and climb into the shower, but that somehow didn’t come as a complete surprise).

  3. There’s a good chance I haven’t seen a guy naked before (I gratuitously lingered on certain parts of his anatomy while simultaneously feeling self-conscious about that, even in my invisible state).

  Breckon’s dog is a Pomeranian. (I didn’t recall the breed name when I first saw him but now I remember it along with others—cocker spaniels, beagles, Great Danes, bloodhounds, chow chows.) I continue listing them in my head for so long that it leads me to the next detail, which is:

  4. I’m a dog person, not a cat person.

  5. I don’t like snakes or big creepy crawly things, though the smaller ones don’t bother me.

  6. I like songs you can dance to (but I can’t conjure any specific examples).

  7. I don’t like sad songs except when they’re breakup songs (not one of which currently resides in the near-blank slate that is my mind).

  8. My favorite color is aqua.

  9. I’m right-handed (I think). I imagine reaching out to open a door, and in my imag
ination my right is the first to extend itself.

  But what else? Who are the people closest to me—my friends and family? When they call my name what is it they say? When they look at me who do they see?

  On those matters my brain sputters, stalls and refuses to budge. I’m like a novel with all personal references methodically cut out, leaving only inconsequential words like “the,” “that,” “from” and “said.”

  I have no plotline, hardly enough information about myself to form the most basic character. When I wake up will Dawake up I even be able to feed and dress myself? And if not, who will be around to help me?

  The only people who exist in my memory are ones I don’t know. Salvador Dalí, the members of Pink Floyd (and I don’t know their names either). Who else? Think. Musical groups. Painters. Which ones can you remember? Leonardo da Vinci! Mona Lisa smiles her enigmatic grin in my mind. Vincent van Gogh. He lopped his own ear off. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  The Beatles sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Marvin Gaye: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Tina Turner: “River Deep, Mountain High.” But these are old songs, aren’t they? Somehow I sense that, although I can’t recall what year it is out in the real world. So what’s the last song I heard? And what’s my very favorite song?

  I have no idea. I make a mental note of what I know about the world and try to measure it against my personality and history.

  The world is round, not flat. The earth revolves around the sun. Those are facts they teach you in school, but I don’t know precisely who taught me them. Something even simpler then—do I like the sun?

  10. I do. I like the sun and

  11. snow too.

  What do I do in the snow? Do I skate? Do I ski?

  Memories of lacing skates and slipping boots into skis flit effortlessly through my head. No people. Just skates and skis.

  12. I can do them both but I’m not sure how well.

  13. Swim too.

  14. And stand on my head.

  So what do you like besides orange juice? What do you eat?

  15. Ice cream, but then doesn’t everyone? So what flavor? Orange, of course! But also chocolate, butter pecan, bubble gum, black cherry, cookies and cream and Ben & Jerry’s pumpkin cheesecake.

  So it sounds like I’m fond of ice cream. There are an infinite number of flavors swimming in my head and none of them seem unappealing. Images of various scoops—strawberry, coconut, mint chocolate chip, raspberry ripple—flash through my unconscious. My hand, holding dripping cones. My hand.

  The image of it is still in my memory. My hand is darker than Breckon’s, more of an olive tone. My God, if I can see that, there must be more. My body, my age, my name.

  There’s a part of me that remains me even without that knowledge, I’ve discovered. And that part is racing through the darkness without moving, searching for the countless parts of myself I’ve mislaid. Reaching … Remembering …

  Yes.

  I’ve got it. No doubt Breckon’s still crying in the distance, if I bother to listen, but that barely matters. I’m reveling in my trdiving in ue identity, dancing in the dark.

  I’m me and no one else. I love orange juice and ice cream and someone from the real world will find me and bring me back any moment now.

  I’ll open my eyes, dance in the sunlight, cry out my name at the top of my lungs and make people I don’t know stop and stare. Their eyes on me will make me laugh and shout until I’m all out of voice. I’m me! I’m me and no one else!

  I’m almost sixteen years old and my name is Ashlyn.

  three

  breckon

  When I get out of the shower I feel shaky, like I could fall down and throw up at the same time. I sit on the floor next to my T-shirt and tilt my head down towards my knees. I don’t want to pass out. The last thing my parents need right now is to have to take me to the hospital. It doesn’t matter how much medication they’re on, that would push them over the edge completely. My aunt Lily would be the one who’d have to bring me. If there was something really wrong with me, her girlfriend, Sunita, would fly back from Ottawa to keep Lily from falling apart.

  But I know there’s nothing wrong with me that anyone can do anything about. I slide myself along the tiles and lean over the toilet. I let myself cry too much; I can’t do that. When I lose my grip it’s too hard to get it back. Stupid.

  I envy Skylar for being dead. I’d trade with her anytime.

  Shit, here it comes. I throw the lid up and heave liquid into the bowl. I haven’t had breakfast yet and I can’t remember if I ate anything last night. It looks like there’s nothing but spit for me to lose.

  Okay, I need to get it together. I’ve already been in here too long. Lily will be downstairs watching my eggs get cold and worrying about me—about all of us.

  I haul myself up, stomach still churning, and stare at my reflection in the mirror. I look red and shriveled. If I was bald I bet people would think I had cancer.

  Breathe, asshole. Get your shit together. You can’t go anywhere looking like this.

  I run the tap and splash cold water on my face. There’s just my toothbrush left in the toothbrush holder now. Someone has already packed Skylar’s away. It’s a shock to notice it missing, the same way seeing her school picture missing from the kitchen wall came as a shock to my mom. There’s a new shock every sixty seconds. She’s gone. BAM. You’ll never in your life see her again. BAM. They just keep coming.

  I know she’s gone and everywhere she isn’t still comes as a shock.

  I grab my toothbrush and brush so hard that my gums begin to bleed. I spit the blodo od into the sink. It leaves a weird, metallic taste in my mouth but I don’t care.

  I dripped on my sweatpants and T-shirt after climbing out of the shower. They’re pretty wet but I throw them on because I forgot to bring in a change of clothes. Once I’m back in the wet stuff I make a beeline for my bedroom to check phone messages that I don’t care about either.

  My cell’s lying facedown on the carpet where it’s turned itself on. If Skylar were here she’d probably say a ghost did it. Two months ago I made the mistake of letting her watch a documentary with me about a haunted house in Connecticut and she’s been obsessed with ghosts ever since. Scared too sometimes but she wouldn’t admit it. Well, not to me.

  I only know because I caught shit from my mom for letting her watch the thing. A couple days after we’d seen it, my mother said Skylar was having trouble sleeping because of it and didn’t I realize she was only seven years old?

  It would sound like I was making excuses if I said that sometimes with Skylar you can forget, but I’ve seen it happen with other people too. She can hold entire conversations with adults (or people my age) about their day and you don’t have to dumb things down for her. Other times she’ll break herself up with her own homemade jokes and sing in a loud, on-purpose off-key voice that will make you want to clap a hand over her mouth.

  Another thing you can almost forget about Skylar sometimes is that she’s a girl. She scowls at Bratz dolls and anything pink and hasn’t let my mom put her in a dress in almost three years. She keeps her hair short because she says she hates when it whips around in the wind and that long hair makes her head feel heavy. Her favorite toys are the race-car track she left laid out in the family room for all of March and a bunch of action-figure explorer and wilderness sets that come with stuff like tiny weapons, boats, little tents and canned food for the ranger figures to cook over a campfire.

  About a month ago Moose swallowed the miniature pair of binoculars that came with one of the sets, and Skylar’s so hung up on all that explorer gear that for the next twenty-four hours she kept checking out his shit to see if she could find them. She never did. They could still be parked in his intestines. With any luck the binoculars will go septic and kill him in his sleep. Then the dumb dog could stop wandering around the house looking for Skylar like we’ve hidden her away behind a fake bookshelf or something.
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  I pick my cell up from the carpet and it would be warm and fuzzy for me to say that it was Skylar’s ghost that threw it there but anyone who would think that is just deluding himself. I didn’t answer my phone once yesterday so there are a bunch of messages. Some of the people I go to school with have texted their condolences. The girls send lots of “xoxoxoxo” and “((hugs)).” The guys mostly just say “sorry.”

  Lots of them were at the funeral yesterday too but I made sure that I hardly spoke to anyone. I heard some of the girls from my school crying when the church started playing “Bright Eyes.” My grandparents picked the song because my parents and I couldn’t come up with one. I couldn’t remember the name of a single song when the minister asked me for suggestions, but it would’ve been C201one. I hbetter if they hadn’t played one at all. Some other people were crying during “Bright Eyes” too but the girls from school wailed the loudest. I wanted to tell everyone to shut up. Most of those girls never even met my sister.

  Aside from the texts there are a few voice-mail messages from closer friends asking me to let them know if there’s anything they can do. One of them is from my best friend Ty. In his message he sounds like someone stomped all the air out of him. He says call whatever time I want, even if it’s four a.m.

  Jules has called multiple times. In the first message she says she loves me and that she’s been thinking about me, the others just say, “It’s me again.” I throw on a pair of pants that I haven’t worn since all this happened, a clean T-shirt and a checked long-sleeve shirt over it. When Jules sees me wearing it she likes to say that I’d look like Kansas farm boy Clark Kent in it if I had straight hair. Superman’s the only superhero either of us likes, so it’s a compliment.

  I pick at the stitching on my sleeve and think about returning Jules’s call but in the end I switch the phone off again and go downstairs. Lily heats up my eggs for me and toasts two pieces of whole wheat bread. Then Mom, Dad, Lily and I sit ourselves in front of the TV until my grandparents (Dad’s parents) and Mom’s mother (her father came down with bronchitis and coughed during the entire ceremony yesterday) show up. The grandmothers itemize the meals other people have brought over, squishing their own contributions into the fridge along with them. Then they wash the few dirty dishes in the sink (one of my grandmothers complaining how hot the water is) and clean things that don’t really need cleaning.