Heart Shaped Rock (26 page)

I’ve been sitting at my desk working on my Picasso presentation for Art History for an hour when my phone buzzes with an incoming text. I yank it out of my pocket like it’s a hot potato and gasp at the words on the screen.
“No Open Mic Night. No Dean. Sheila says Dean left on road trip to San Francisco, will be back on Saturday. Hang in there. Xoxoxo Typhani.”
There’s a string of sad-face emoticons and hearts and two dancing girls with kitten ears at the end of the message.

I can’t believe it.

I can’t stand it.

This can’t be happening.

I want to hurl my phone against the wall.

I want to scream.

Why oh why is the Universe conspiring against me? What have I ever done to deserve this? Well, I mean, other than make a snap judgment about Dean that was totally unfair and then run away screaming and flailing my arms when all he wanted to do was sing me a love song? And peel out in stupid Jared’s car right in front of poor Dean, and then ignore Dean every time he reached out to me, just wanting to figure out what the hell happened? And swallow Jared’s face right in the middle of the boardwalk for the whole world to see, and leave Dean to hear about it from C-Bomb so he could twist in the wind with a rusty knife in his heart and envision a make-out session between Jared and me of epic proportions and then formulate a horrific version of reality in his head that simply didn’t exist? I mean, seriously, other than these few things, what the hell have I ever done to bring a plague of this magnitude down upon me?

A thunderstorm of emotion swirls inside me, rising, rising, rising like a tempest and threatening to flood out of me and wash me away. I put my head down on my desk and close my eyes.

“Oh, Mom,” I whisper aloud. “What am I gonna do?”

But there’s only silence.

“What am I gonna do?” I say again, this time a little louder, my words landing with a thud onto my desk.

Sing.

I open my eyes.

Sing.

I sit up.

Sing, Shaynee-bug.

I look over at my guitar in the corner.

Sing.

I get up from my desk and grab my guitar.

Without even stopping to think, I sit down on my bed and begin to play. I play all my favorite songs, from Taylor Swift to Imagine Dragons. My fingers stumble on the chords several times—it’s amazing how much muscle memory I’ve lost during my self-imposed musical hiatus—and the tips of my fingers are tender from not having pressed down on the strings like this in so long, but I sing loudly over the fumbles and the pain without stopping. And with each new song I play, I feel my hardness giving way to softness. The anger and anxiety and regret and pain that’s built up and crusted over inside my arteries during the past few weeks, or, maybe even over the past year, begin to break up and get swept along into my bloodstream. Away, away, away it goes. I play and play, and new layers of rosy-pink skin begin to emerge and replace the angry outer layers that I’ve so badly needed to slough off.

Up, up, up, up, up, and down, down, down,
down,
I think. I’m due for another upswing on the roller coaster. I just have to hold on tight and trust that the upswing will come.

The heart-shaped rock on my nightstand catches my eye, and I pick it up. I run my fingers over its smooth surface and touch the little heart-indentation in the middle. I pick up my guitar again and hold it in my lap, readying my fingers to play the song I wrote the morning after the Open Mic Night Catastrophe, when I was so sure doctors had patched me together with foam and wire and egg cartons.

I’ve got a heart-shaped rock and it does not beat. It’s a heart-shaped rock and it cannot bleed.

Huh. The song won’t come. That’s weird.

I sit perfectly still, my guitar perched in my lap.

But I don’t want to sing that song, no matter how wracked with anxiety and angst and ache and regret I feel. No, I don’t want to sing that sad song about the heart-shaped rock buried inside my chest because, I’ll be damned, those words don’t feel true anymore.

I don’t have a rock for heart.

Against all odds, my starfish body has done it again and regrown another heart-bud—and it’s flesh and blood, not stone. And it’s beating so fast, and with such ferocity, with such all-encompassing urgency, it threatens to bang right out of my chest, lurch across the room, and splat against the wall.

I love Dean. I love Dean with all my little heart-bud.

I love him whether he knows it or not.

I love him whether he loves me back or not.

And you know what else? I love my otter-faced, walking-emoticon of a brother. And Dad, too—sweet, well-intentioned, lost-but-finding-his-way Dad; and loyal, loving, jangling Tiffany, and brawny Kellan, and butt-kicking Sheila, too.

And I love Mom. Oh, how I love Mom. Forever and always. And I know, down deep inside this new heart-bud of mine, that she’s still with me. And she loves me back. Forever and always.

My little heart-bud’s bursting with the torrent of love inside me. In fact, even as I sit here with these thoughts clanking around inside my head, I can feel my little heart-bud growing and expanding and filling the empty spaces inside my chest cavity, reaching and aspiring to become the size of a normal heart.

I put my guitar down, a smile animating my face, tears streaming down my cheeks.

There’s no way a girl with a rock instead of a heart could feel this much love.

There’s no way a robot-girl patched together with chicken wire and plaster and Styrofoam could ache and yearn and
desire
quite like this.

And there’s no way a teeny little heart-bud could bang with this much ferocity inside my chest.

Nope, my sad song just doesn’t feel like the truth anymore—because there’s absolutely no way in hell a badass like me could have anything other than a big ol’, full-size, beating heart.

Chapter 27

Even though I’ve been counting the minutes until Saturday, I’m still somehow surprised when it arrives precisely on time. I’ve been a homework-producing machine since late Thursday night, and now, on Saturday mid-afternoon, I’m finally all caught up in every single class. I’ve even read ahead to the next chapter in American History, just to give myself a little cushion for the coming week. It’s a huge relief. Having my schoolwork back on track makes me feel like my life is back on track, too. It makes me feel like me again.

There’s a knock on my bedroom door.

“Come in,” I call out.

Lennox enters. “Hey,” he says. “Whatchyadoin’?”

“Just finishing homework.”

“Wanna make a music video with me?”

“Sorry, Tiff’s coming over. We’re going out tonight.”

Lenn shrugs. Apparently, he wasn’t expecting me to say yes. He looks around my room. “What’s this?” He picks up my rock.

“I found it on the beach.”

“It’s so cool. Wow. You
found
it? Just like this?”

I nod.

“It looks like someone made this, like for a souvenir shop or something, doesn’t it? It totally reminds me of Mom. Hey, you should write a song about it.”

I look at Lennox quizzically. “You think Mom had a heart of stone?”

“Yeah,” Lennox says, beaming. “Mom’s heart was like a rock, you know, rock solid. I always knew she loved me, no matter what.”

I grab the rock out of Lennox’s hands and look at it up close. I’d never thought of it that way.

“Shaynee,” Dad calls from the front of the house. “Tiffany’s here.”

I leap off my bed and run into the family room. Tiffany’s standing there with a small duffel bag, a makeup case, and a bag from Nordstrom. “Hi Cinderella,” she sings out. “Your fairy godmother has arrived.”

Tiffany flitters and flutters and flurries around me, primping and plucking and straightening and mani-pedi-ing me, and, as she puts it, “maximizing” and “actualizing” me in every conceivable way.

“Okay, we’re getting close,” Tiffany finally declares, sighing and stepping back from her creation. She gives me the once-over and turns to the Nordstrom bag. “And now, the crown jewel.” She pulls out a flowing, yellow peasant blouse from her bag. “I saw it, and I just had to get it for you.”

“Oh my God,” I squeal. “It’s perfect.”

Now she turns to her duffel bag and pulls out a pair of black combat boots. “Wear that shirt with your cut-off denim shorts and
these,
and you’ll be the belle of the ball.”

I’m swooning as I pull the soft blouse on over my head. And when I bend down to put on the boots, I squeal with excitement. Wow, it’s nice having a personal shopper who knows me so well.

“Okay, Shay,” Tiffany says when I’m done lacing up my new boots. “Remember what I’ve told you—sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got, and fifty percent what you
think
you’ve got. God and I have both done our parts here, and now it’s time for you to do yours. You’ve got to
believe
.”

I throw my hands up in the air like I’m at a gospel revival. “I believe!” I laugh. “Hey, Tiffy, shouldn’t you be singing ‘Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo’ or something?”

“I don’t need to. You’re already perfect.”

Two hours later, Tiffany and I are primped to perfection and standing in a massive line in front of The Beach House after gobbling down burritos bigger than our heads at Roberto’s and taking a brief detour to spy on Kellan at work.

“Wasn’t Kellan cute in his little mariachi shirt?” Tiffany squeals as we stand in line. “And I love watching him carry that heavy bin from table to table
.
It makes his arm muscles bulge.
”

“Hey, girlies.” It’s Delaney with Juliette, plus Chaz and a couple of his friends. The whole lot of them joins us in line, much to the obvious annoyance of the people behind us. “Did you get your tickets already, I hope?” Delaney asks, her face the picture of concern. “Because the show’s totally sold out.”

“It’s a madhouse down here,” Juliette chimes in.

“And everyone’s all pimped out in their RCR T-shirts,” Delaney adds. “I guess Red Card Riot’s super popular, huh?”

“I had no idea.” Tiffany laughs. “Dean never talks about any of this.”

“Sounds like Jacket Boy’s ‘prone to humility,’ you might say,” Juliette says.

Why didn’t I at least Google Red Card Riot before coming down here? Or before blabbing to the entire school about how “awesome” they are? I guess I just thought Red Card Riot was some sort of neighborhood garage band or something. It didn’t occur to me that Dean’s band might actually have some sort of following.

Delaney shoves a piece of paper into my hand. I look down and see it’s a show flier. “Is
this
Jacket Boy?” she shrieks, pointing at a picture of Dean. He’s standing in the center of the band, wearing his now-famous leather jacket. He’s smoldering. C-Bomb stands next to Dean, his tattooed arms crossed over his chest. The two other guys in the band lean casually on either side, staring at the camera without smiling.

Tiffany looks over my shoulder at the flier and answers for me. “Yep, that’s him.”

I can’t take my eyes off Dean’s face in the photo. It’s grainy, and black-and-white, and on cheap paper, but I feel like Dean’s intense stare, even in a low-resolution picture on a flier, is searing holes into my flesh. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, willing my pulse to slow down to a normal rhythm again.

“He’s
so
hot,” Delaney screams. “Like, crazy-hot. Why didn’t you tell us Jacket Boy’s an effing rock star, Shaynee?” Delaney swats my shoulder. “You were holding out on us.”

I smile and shrug, too embarrassed to admit I didn’t mention it because I had no idea.

“Lemme see that,” Chaz says, snatching the picture out of my hand. He squints as he looks down at the paper. “Well, well, well. I’ve got to tip my hat to the guy. Even
I
think he’s a good lookin’ dude. Nice work, Shaynee.” Chaz flashes me a look of approval, clearly intended to induct me into the Chaz-Alvarez-Officially-Thinks-You’re-Cool Club. I roll my eyes. I don’t give a crap what Chaz Alvarez thinks of me. But Delaney really seems to like him, so I shoot him a half-smile to thank him for his generous endorsement.

Tiffany grabs the flier from Chaz and surveys the picture. “He truly is a good lookin’ specimen, isn’t he? Just like you are, Shaynee.” She winks at me.

I try to smile at her, but my stomach flip-flops. All I can think about is what Dean might say when we finally see each other again.

Tiffany grabs my hand and leans into my ear. “Our entourage might be standing here, Peaches, but it’s just you and me, okay? I’ve got you.”

Finally, the line to get into the club starts to move.

Oh God, my heart feels like a hummingbird on caffeine.

By the time Tiff and I enter the front doors of the club and step inside, shoulder-to-shoulder people have already packed into the area immediately in front of the stage. The only semi-open space is off to the sides or in the back.

“Do you wanna try to work our way up close?” Tiffany shouts over the loud din of the club.

I scan the already-rowdy crowd down front and shake my head. “No,” I shout back. “Too crowded.”

I’m so nervous, so anxious, so excited, so deliriously and hysterically yearning to see Dean, I’m not sure I’d be able to withstand standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an amped-up crowd. And, truth be told, I don’t want Dean to catch a glimpse of me in the club before our back-door encounter. If, God help me, he wants nothing to do with me, then taking him by surprise will be my only chance to make him hear me out.

My mind floats forward to the moment when I’ll get to see him after the show. What the hell am I going to say to him? “
I’m sorry. I’ve been an idiot. Please forgive me. I love you.”
Ugh. I’m running out of time to get my speech just right, and yet, nothing I’ve come up with sounds even remotely right. I can only hope I’ll say something earth-shatteringly perfect in the moment. My heart leaps as I imagine Dean finally standing in front of me. He’s somewhere in this building right now, I realize. I’m so close, yet so far. I take a deep breath to steady myself. Soon, for better or worse, I’ll be able to tell him exactly how I feel. All I can hope is that he says he feels the same way.