The Anatomical Shape of a Heart (16 page)

“His mother?” she mused. “Oh, that's right. There was that break-in.”

“What break-in?”

Mom shrugged absently. “A couple of years ago. It was in the news. Someone broke into the mayor's house. His wife went to the hospital—injured by the burglar. Maybe Jack was traumatized. Some people can't handle seeing blood after witnessing something shocking. Acute stress disorder, it's called. Over time, it can develop into PTSD.”

First of all, I thought PTSD mainly affected soldiers. And second, I sort of remembered hearing about the break-in, but seeing how Jack's status as the mayor's son was only a couple of hours old to me, I hadn't really had time to think about it.

Mom sighed. “Why didn't you tell me about him? Jesus, Bex—the mayor's kid?”

“I know.” Or, rather, I
didn't
, but no way was I admitting that now.

“How serious are you two?”

“The smallest amount of serious you can imagine—like, not even a teaspoon. We haven't even kissed. You've gotten further with him than I have, unbuckling his belt. Or he could be more into Heath than me for all I know.” Okay, that definitely wasn't true, but minimizing my mother's curiosity about my romantic life was of the utmost importance to me at that moment.

“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said. “He's completely into you. He couldn't keep his eyes off you during dinner.”

“All hail the power of the Roman orgy shirt,” I said with a smile.

She closed her eyes. “God help me make it through the summer.”

You and me both, Mom.

 

 

The next morning, a day before Jack's movie party, I got ready to work a full nine-hour shift at the market—a rare thing for me. Nothing like last-minute holiday grocery shopping. As I was preparing myself to clean up corn silk and heft organic seedless watermelons across the scanner, I checked my email and stilled when the words
Telegraph Wood Studio
appeared in my inbox.

Dear Miss Adams,

 

Thank you for your email inquiry. Your artist's mannequin was made in house by one of our master wood-carvers, Ben. He greatly enjoyed working on the project, which was, indeed, commissioned. Unfortunately, we do not give out clients' names over email. But if you could make time to visit our shop in Berkeley, I think you'd find Ben a rather talkative conversationalist, and perhaps you'd be able to get answers to your questions. Let me know what date and time would be best for you, and I'll gladly arrange an appointment. Perhaps next week after the holiday?

 

Happy 4th,

Mary Spencer

I reread the email several times. I should've expected this. Anything connected to my father is always complicated. If I wanted to know more, I guessed I'd have to make an effort. Taking a BART train to Berkeley wasn't a huge deal, but it would eat up an entire afternoon, and I'd have to lie to Mom. And was it worth it? Did I really want to pick open a wound that had already healed and been forgotten? I honestly wasn't sure. I'd have to think about it.

And I had more important things to worry about, like Jack.

After he left our house, I went online and skimmed a few news articles about the break-in Mom mentioned. They were all vague, mentioning only that Mrs. Vincent was injured and treated at the hospital and that no one else in the household was hurt. All the articles included the same handful of quotes from the mayor: that his wife was doing fine, that she'd returned home in good spirits. He requested that the press respect his family's privacy.

Nothing was particularly interesting … until I clicked on a local blog run by the opposing political party, which not only theorized that there was something more to the break-in that the mayor's office was trying to keep quiet, but also mentioned that the mayor's teenage daughter had been sent overseas to boarding school in Europe.

Jack had a sister.

Why hadn't he mentioned her? I wondered if they were close or if he ever saw her. But if I asked him about it, then he'd know I'd been stalking him online. Not cool.

I started poking around in the comments section to see if there was any mention of either the sister or his mom's schizophrenia, but reading the first few nasty remarks not only pissed me off, but also made me feel guilty for snooping into his family's life. Like they were disposable celebrities and not real people. So I decided that if I was going to learn anything more about the break-in and Jack's mom and his faraway sister, I'd avoid the toxic gossip online and just wait to hear it from Jack himself.

The next afternoon, Mom left for her holiday-pay shift at the hospital, and for once I didn't have to concoct some elaborate story about where I'd be. She was completely fine with my going to Jack's house, and even said, “Maybe you'll make friends with some of the other youths.”
Youths.
Like it was some sort of church group.

It definitely wasn't.

Jack had offered to pick me up at seven, but Mom was still getting ready for work, and I didn't want her to give him the third degree about the fainting thing. Besides, just because he had a car didn't mean he was obligated to chauffeur me around town. That's what I told him, but after standing for the better part of an hour on a packed train, I regretted it. Holidays plus mass transit equals disaster.

Jack texted me directions to his house. It wasn't a long walk from the Muni stop, but I was already an hour late, it was all uphill, and I'd stupidly worn my tall gray boots over my jeans in an attempt to fake coolness for his rich friends. Huge mistake. Blisters would haunt me later. But after several minutes of schlepping past million-dollar homes, I finally spotted Ghost. The vintage Corvette was parked in front of a three-story wood-shingled house tucked away on a side street.

Like everything else on the block, the house was jammed right up next to its neighbors and at first glance didn't have much curb appeal, with nothing to show but a two-car garage and a fancy copper street number. Lilac vines dripped like frosting over the garage, where a semiprivate entrance hinted at the wealth within. To get there, you had to enter an arched redwood gate and go up a steep flight of steps. You also had to pass under two Big Brother security cameras. Did his dad have Secret Service around here, too? Or was that only for DC politicians? I really had no clue, but the cameras weirded me out.

I texted Jack:
Do I need clearance to enter this place or what?

A few seconds later, rubber soles slapped against stone, the gate swung open, and there he stood, filling up the redwood arch: pompadour, black boots, black snap-front shirt with silver koi fish over the front pockets, and, heaven help me, that 4-H belt buckle.

His slow gaze swept from my boots (the blisters were a small price to pay) all the way up my tasteful (yet boob-flattering) shirt to my face. “Happy Fourth,” he finally said. “Or is that ‘Merry Fourth'? What's the standard Independence Day greeting?”

“I think you're supposed to salute the flag while imitating the mournful call of a bald eagle.”

“Is that like using a turkey whistle at Thanksgiving?”

“Exactly the same.”

He stepped closer. “I can't believe you're actually here.”

“You're not going to faint on me again, are you?”

“Am I ever going to live that down?”

I shook my head.

“I figured as much,” he said with a smile. “You're in color.”

“I am?”

“Red,” he said, pointing to my head.

Breaking my long-running cycle of grayscale fashion, I'd tied a red bandanna around my head
à
la Rosie the Riveter (“We Can Do It!”) and went with one loose fishtail braid that I'd wound up and pinned underneath. “Holidays bring out my daring side.”

“Good to know,” he said with a teasing smile. “Come on. We're back here.”

17

As I walked under the arch, I glanced up at the camera and felt his fingers slide around mine. “Hi,” he said in a softer voice. God, he smelled nice, all woodsy and clean.

Someone yelled out from behind the house. “Keep your pants on,” he called back. Up-tempo guitar-and-drum music grew louder as we walked side by side down a stone path between his house and a crazy high wooden privacy fence. Tree branches from the neighbor's yard curved over the fence to create a shaded green canopy, and the farther back we went, the darker and more heavily wooded it became.

There were zero trees on our my block. In fact, about two yards of dirt and broken cement patio sat between the back of my house from the one behind it.

But not the Vincents'.

Within the castled defense of their soaring privacy wall, a series of terraced decks rose from the wooded property, separating Jack's house from those of the surrounding neighbors. We stood on the most expansive deck, which started at the back door and fanned out to other, smaller decks—one behind a waist-high stone wall and another that sat behind a small guesthouse in the corner. Modern stairs zigzagged to a fourth, loftlike deck above us, where a bridge led to a door on the second story.

“Is M. C. Escher your architect?” I asked.

“My dad built all this when he won the first election.”

“Are there cameras back here, too?”

“Only over the back door,” he said. “But the house is off-limits tonight. Surprise—my dad doesn't want unsupervised party guests trampling his polished wood floors. Though I don't spend a ton of time in the house anymore. I moved into the guest house last year.” He gestured toward the small building in the corner of the yard. “My parents used to have people stay over a lot, but not anymore.”

Before the conversation got too sad, I said, “The guesthouse is private, which is cool. And now I see how you're sneaking out for your midnight expeditions. Except for the cameras.”

“Willie taught me some tricks with those.”

“Panhandler Will?”

Jack grinned. “He's sharper than you'd think.”

We strolled beneath the stairs. A dozen or so people were lounging around the main deck. A couple of towheaded boys out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad appeared to be divvying up the contents of a flask into several plastic cups on a long table crammed with food and soda. A guy with a Mohawk was hanging up a white sheet on the wall of the guest house, and another was setting up a digital projector.

There were only three other girls. One of them was piggybacking on Jack's friend Andy. He rushed toward us and tilted back to drop her onto her feet. She landed with a breathless laugh.

“Hi, again,” Andy said, grinning as the girl he'd been carrying ducked into the crook of his arm. A very familiar girl with asymmetrically cut hair streaked purple and pink.

Sierra.

“Oh, wait. I know you. It's
her?”
she said to Jack. And because of the fairylike pitch of her voice, I couldn't tell if her words were condescending. But what I could tell was that Jack was uncomfortable, because he was squeezing my hand harder and drawing me ever so slightly away from Sierra.

With his arm slung around Sierra's shoulder, Andy said, “You two have met?”

“A couple of weeks ago,” I said.

“I accidentally dumped tea all over her,” she told Andy with a little laugh.

So funny. Yuk, yuk. Before she could elaborate, I asked, “How do all of you know each other?”

She leaned into Andy. “I met Jackson when I was staying at the Zen Center. I was going through some stuff at home, and they gave me a place to sleep and fed me in the student quarters for a few weeks until I got my shit together. I'm back at home now.” Then she added, “He helped me, so I helped him.” I had no idea what this meant, but from the way she was biting her lower lip, it was 100 percent salacious. “And now I'm helping Andy.”

Andy looked mildly horrified by this statement, but she just laughed it off.

Super. Just when I'd abandoned my nightmare visions of Jack getting it on with some hospital candy striper, I could now replace it with the image of Sierra the Runaway sleeping in some sort of weird cultlike housing, where she met Jack and exchanged sexual favors for enlightenment and pluots.

If Sierra was clueless to the unease radiating off me, Andy sure wasn't. From the inside of his mouth, he wiggled his labret stud around with his tongue. “The extension cord isn't long enough for the projector,” he told Jack.

“I'll find a new one in a minute.” Jack steered me around Andy and Sierra and apologized under his breath as soon as we were out of earshot. “I didn't know he was bringing her tonight. I guess she called him after she saw us in the tea lounge.”

“Are they seeing each other?”

“Sierra's … a free spirit.”

Loving her more and more.

“Let's go meet everyone else,” he said.

He herded me around the decks, and as dusk began falling and small golden lights lit up the tiered backyard, he introduced me to the partygoers. They included his rich friends from school, his poor friends from the Zen Center, his quirky friends from judo class (news to me that he knew judo, but maybe it explained all those muscles), and some nerdy kid who lived down the block, David, who was painfully shy and had busied himself with setting up the projector. And it was the pressing matter of the too-short extension cord, along with the request from—get this—catering-service people for Jack to sign off on their work order so they could leave, that left me standing alone in the middle of these motley strangers.

At the far end of the main deck, facing the white sheet, a gas fireplace built into a stone wall was roaring, and around it was an L-shaped bank of bench seating. Sierra stood in the middle, removing all the cushions from the seating and tossing them in a pile on the deck. She saw me watching her and smiled. “Those benches are super-uncomfortable. We can all stretch out on the floor.”