My Beating Teenage Heart (16 page)

019;d wan="0em">

Jordan Carroll stumbled as my fist slammed into his jaw. Stupidly, probably because I was just as surprised that I’d punched him as he was, I waited for Jordan to regain his balance, and when he did he charged into me like a bull, hurtling me back across the room. I fell to the floor, instinctively throwing my hands around the back of my head and neck because my parents had drilled into me that I had to be careful since the accident.

Jordan lunged after me, ready to inflict more damage, but in three strides Big Red was on him, hauling Jordan back by his shirt and shoulders, throwing him against the wall and asking, red-faced, “Do we have a problem here?”

“He went for me first, dude,” Jordan said, with his hands in the air like he was surrendering to the cops. “I just reacted the same as anyone would.”

Later Big Red, Ty and Jules gave me shit for not considering the cost of potential injury to myself before I swung at Jordan. I expected a lecture from Jules but not from my friends. Imagine how pissed off they’d all be if they knew the things I’ve done lately.

“Since when do you go picking fights?” Jules asked once she was sober.

“He deserved it for screwing with the drinks,” I said. “And you said you would kick whoever did its ass, remember?”

“Well, for one thing, I probably just would’ve dumped a glass of something wet over Jordan’s head, and for another, I’ve never had a serious neck injury and been told to stop playing sports. Seriously, Breckon, if you ever do something like that again I’m going to kick
your
ass.”

I got defensive, even though I knew she was right, and we started to argue about it. But the worry in Jules’s face stopped me before we got far. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. How could I fight her on that?

Anyway, the rest of the Zavi’s shift goes by fast and then it’s back home to swallow a pill and then over to school again the next day. My hand’s finally healed and I’ve peeled off the bandage and left it naked for the first time since scalding it. When Jules notices, she sandwiches it tenderly between her own two hands. Lunch period’s almost over and we’re standing in front of her locker, talking about her shitty morning. She got a flat tire two blocks from her house when she was driving her mother’s car to school this morning and her dad yelled at her for it when he showed up to put on the spare. Then Ms. Gallardo dumped attitude on her in bio worse than ever.

I know I said that everyone I know feels pointless, and sometimes, to a lesser degree, that includes Jules too. It’s like she’s standing on the other side of a canyon that neither of us can cross. I can see and hear her from my side but from where I’m standing most of the things that seem important to her aren’t even on my radar. The conditions on opposite sides of the canyon are too different for us to understand each other like before, so incomparable that she can’t even begin to comprehend how different they are, no matter how she tries.

And I know she’s trying and that I’m not, which maknotr to ses me feel bad because I still love her; we’re just different now. Mostly different, but with my brand-new hand between hers I could almost believe we’re still the same.

“Hey,” I whisper, leaning my head down close to hers. “You want to go somewhere nice tonight and try to turn this day around? What about that Italian restaurant in Bourneville we went to with your grandparents on Christmas Eve?”

It’s not cheap, but I just put in two shifts at Zavi’s and can afford to take Jules. I really want to do something nice for her.

“We could make something ourselves at my house instead if you want,” Jules suggests. “Tonight is date night.”

In the past Mr. and Mrs. Pacquette’s date night usually translated into an evening of extended sex for us (Jules went on the pill last August) but we haven’t been together like that since before …

I think Jules must be thinking that same thing because then she adds, “We can just cook some pasta or something and then watch a movie or hang out.” She shrugs like it’s no biggie. “You know, whatever.”

“Okay, sure. Meet you there about six?”

“Sounds good,” Jules says.

When I get to Jules’s place later, her parents are changing out of their work clothes, getting ready to head back out for their weekly date, and Jules and I drive over to the supermarket to buy ingredients for the ravioli recipe she wants to make. We’re searching for pine nuts in the baking aisle and she’s walking ahead of me, the pair of ultra-skinny red and black striped pants she’s wearing hugging her ass in a way that makes my mind flicker. Then suddenly my old feelings for Jules are drifting to the surface, making me forget all about pine nuts.

I used to have dirty thoughts about her almost nonstop and feeling that way again, even just for a few seconds, is so good that I hang back on purpose, enjoying the view.

“Got ’em,” Jules says, grabbing a bag of pine nuts from the shelf. “But we still need to pick up some goat cheese.”

I don’t care about goat cheese or ravioli. My mind’s started to race with snapshots of what I want to do to Jules and what I want her to do to me. I want to lose myself in those thoughts like I used to, bury myself so deep inside them that I forget everything else, and I picture Jules blowing me right here in the aisle, my fingers in her hair as she looks me in the eye. It’s one of those things we’d never really do, like with Rory and the streaking, but it gets me going so bad that I can’t think what to say to her.

I didn’t know it could still be like this.

After a moment or two I drive my fingers through my hair, lick my lips and say, “You know, we could buy something to heat up in the deli section—it would taste just as good and cut down on a lot of work.”

Jules turns to look at me with a glint in her eyes likn h just ae she’s beginning to wonder if I’m having X-rated thoughts about her in the middle of the supermarket. “We could do that,” she says. “It’d be faster.”

“Faster is good,” I confirm in a husky voice. The way I feel now, I can hardly stand to wait another minute to be alone with her. To be with Jules like I used to. Nothing held back.

Jules smiles at me, reaches out to lay her right hand along my waist, under my shirt. She feels for my belly button and dips her thumb inside. “Sometimes slow is better.”

I grin back and tell her that I don’t even think I’m hungry anymore.

“I am,” she says, slipping her hand out of my shirt. “And you will be later.” She locks her fingers around mine and pulls me along to the deli section where we buy premade ravioli and potato scallion bread.

Back at her deserted house, we don’t even make it to her bedroom. We dump the ravioli on the kitchen counter and kiss wet and long, our bodies jamming together hard. I yank off her pants and then her yellow bikini underwear, breathing heavy. Jules pushes my jeans down and dips her hands into my boxers to smooth her palms over my ass. I grab hold of her black T-shirt, pull it up over her head and throw it to the floor. We’re speeding faster than we’ve ever done before and it’s still not fast enough. I struggle with her black bra and normally I’m good with the hooks but now my hands feel as clumsy as paws. Jules reaches back and unhooks herself and then she’s tugging my boxers down, saying how much she wants me.

And it’s going to happen right now because I feel exactly the same.

I lift her onto the counter and she slides to the edge, reaches for me and guides me inside her. The ravioli and foreplay can happen later but in the moment there’s no such thing as slow. We grind together as though it’s the most important thing we’ll ever do, my hands clinging to her breasts, thumbs flicking over the nipples and Jules tugging at my hair and clamping her hands to my ass, trying to push me deeper still, bridging the canyon between us.

thirteen
                            
ashlyn

At first I
can’t take my eyes off them. I watch the urgent way their bodies move together and can almost feel the heat roll off them in waves, warming the air around them. Seeing them like that, oblivious to everything but each other’s skin, nearly makes me imagine that I can feel my body, a phantom body the way some people sense an absent limb. A body that longs for another body. I would’ve wanted to experience what Breckon and Jules are feeling at least once before I died. I envy them so much that it feels like a poison eating away at what’s left of me and that’s what makes me stop and offer them the privacy they already believe they have.

I retreat into the dark, muffled place where I’m barely aware of Breckon’s existenn h j"0ece.
This moment is for them
, I tell myself.
Don’t peek
.

But they’ll never know
, another side of myself replies.
This is as close as I’ll ever get to life now, witnessing someone else live out his
.

Equally forceful, the two opposing parts of me wage a mental battle that neither can win and neither can lose. I become the kind of person who would watch the scariest moments of a horror movie from behind her hands, periodically parting them to allow the shocking images inside her mind before slamming her hands together again.

I see Breckon and Jules move upstairs to her room after they finish in the kitchen. I see Jules hold him tight and I see Breckon kiss her lips like she’s the most precious person in all the world. I hear the joy in their whispers, and a live demonstration of naked skin, shifting positions and relentless craving unfolds while I open and close my eyes, ashamed at myself for looking but unwilling to entirely stop feeding the compulsion.

If I knew Breckon and Jules in the living world and somehow spied them together like this they’d
know
because I wouldn’t be able to look at them in the same way again.

I’ve never seen Breckon more in the moment and I’m happy for him, like when I watched him with his friends at Denny’s, but what I feel is more complex than that. Watching Breckon and Jules floods me with a jealousy for what I’ll never have. The discovery runs deeper still, triggering an old Ashlyn melancholy, restoring secrets I would rather have left forgotten.

Intimacy. Its boundless potential and its warped, manipulative opposite.

I remember
.

I remember what happened after Farlain Lake—all the good and bad things up to and including the day I wanted to subtract from my memory: the surprise birthday party my father threw for my mother and how she was so happy she kissed him on the lips in front of all of us, her palm pressed into his chest; the second-grade teacher, Ms. Peltier, who I worshipped as though she were a deity; the rabbit Celeste and I convinced my mother to buy us—we called him Honeysuckle and he died after just three and a half weeks, leaving us to wonder whether we’d failed him somehow.

But the thing itself, that memory doesn’t hurt anymore, not the Ashlyn who I am now. It’s the Ashlyn I was then who I wish I could’ve protected. Was anyone there for me that day like I’m here for Breckon now? Did they watch and try to warn me?

I don’t remember sensing anyone else with me. Just a feeling of rising dread, like a bad smell that makes you want to turn your back and walk away but he won’t let you. He knows you sense it but he talks smart, smarter than you because you’re so young and you suddenly know that although no one’s hurt you before, that’s now a real possibility. You didn’t think about being safe or not safe because you just
were
and now that’s over.

It began with Garrett and what seemed like a cold, but then he began having trouble breathing and my mother took him to the hospital, leaving Celeste and me with my dad. My father called around to try to find someone who could one Cewatch us for a while so he could be with my mother and Garrett at the hospital. Celeste had a friend named Daisy who lived a few blocks away and her mother said she would be happy to babysit us for a few hours while my father went to see about Garrett.

I’d been to Daisy’s house once before. Her mother’s name was Bernie and she wanted everyone to call her that instead of Mrs. Hobson. The Hobson house was full of clutter but it was clean clutter and the place smelled like soup mixed with room deodorizer just like it had the last time I’d been there. The Hobsons had two budgies that lived in a cage in the kitchen and looked the colorful way I imagined all birds looked in fabulous places I’d never been, like South America or Australia. I liked the way the pretty budgies sang and the funny way they’d bob their heads sometimes but mostly it was boring at the Hobsons’ house. Celeste had Daisy to play with but I didn’t have any of my usual books or toys to keep me occupied, and Daisy’s little brother Aidan was teething and kept wobbling over to me to try to bite my leg.

“Bite him back,” Bernie said with a big smile. “Then he won’t do it again.”

But of course I couldn’t bite a baby and I think I probably just looked at Bernie like she was a bit crazy, which made her laugh and ask if I wanted to watch
American Idol
with her.

Mr. Hobson was away on a business trip and so it was just the five of us—Bernie, Aidan the baby, me, Celeste and Daisy—and I kept thinking, while I watched people dance and sing, about how Garrett had wailed when a nurse had taken his blood at the doctor’s office and that he would probably wail even more at the hospital. After the show my father called and told Bernie that Garrett had suffered an asthma attack but was doing better and that he would come to pick us up in about an hour while my mother stayed with Garrett.

Bernie went to tell Daisy and Celeste that we’d be leaving soon and Daisy said that they hadn’t had a chance to play on the trampoline in the backyard yet. “Well, hurry up then,” Bernie said. “You have an hour or so before Celeste’s dad gets here.”

It was a warm Saturday night in May and Bernie took Aidan out into the backyard and played in the sandbox with him while Daisy, Celeste and I jumped on the trampoline. Celeste and Daisy could flip all the way over because they’d had more practice than me, but I was getting better with every minute and I had it in my head—now that I knew Garrett was going to be okay and that I didn’t have to worry about him anymore—that I wanted to do a backflip before I left. The thing was that I really had to pee too and maybe I’d be able to concentrate better once I had, so I told Daisy and Celeste that I was going to the bathroom.