The Heart Does Not Grow Back: A Novel (3 page)

That day, we didn’t hit during lunchtime. Mack complained about sore pecs, so he pulled out a dollar bill and bought us a pair of strawberry Crush sodas, then we wandered into the gym, where he soaked up the female stares trained on his every move.

“I’m thinking I’m done with Jolynn,” he said. “And now I’m thinking about the twins.”

The Carpenters—twin girls, cheerleaders, with blue eyes that could wilt any adolescent boy. Perhaps the dust of memory makes me overstate them, but when I think of those eyes, I think of polished stones in a creek bed, the water cold and clear. Identical twins with no discernible difference, but it seemed to me that one of them, Regina, was more social than the other, always laughing and chatting it up with her girlfriends while Raeanna was always on the bleachers reading a paperback while her purse rested between her feet.

He guzzled his Crush and squeezed the can into an hourglass shape before I was half-done with mine. He belched. “I’m going to let you pick.”

“Pick what?” I asked.

“Whichever one you want.”

“I’ve never talked to either one of them.” I paused, considering just what he was saying. “Why are you asking me this? You’re the one who should be picking.”

“I heard one of them likes you,” he said. “Just want to see if you can pick the one. See if it’s destiny.”

“I know you’re bullshitting. They don’t even know me.”

“It’s not about knowing you, man, you gotta learn this shit by now. You hang out with me, so you got this mysterious shit going on, don’t you get it? Use it!”

“What did you hear?”

He sat down on the empty bleachers at the end of the gym, shoulders slack, eased back, as if the school could burn down right that second and he’d just brush the ashes off his shoulder and ask who turned up the thermostat.

“One of them said you’re cute. You think they’re cute?”

“They’re beautiful,” I said.

“Fuckin’ pick one!”

“Regina,” I said, not knowing why, sealing my fate. She was the social one, but again, it didn’t matter. They may as well have been unicorns.

“Bingo.”

“You’re lying,” I said, not looking at him but looking at Regina. She was in an animated conversation among that huddled circle of gossiping girls that has always existed, from the playground to high school and then into the adult world somewhere, a lunch table or water cooler or beauty salon.

I could see those damn eyes from across the gym. She had rosy cheeks without the bumps and crags of teenage skin, chestnut hair that was shoulder length, teased up, curving into her ears and neck. She wore a wide-collared sweater, revealing naked handles of collarbone. Sometimes during lunch hour, she would practice with her cheerleading friends. She could jump and backflip, handstand and toss, her legs and calves hard with corded muscle. She was beautiful in that perfect way a girl is beautiful when you can’t ever imagine talking to her.

“So if you want to make this happen, first, you let me—” Mack began, but I walked away from him midsentence and headed for Regina.
Let me,
he said, as usual, but something like this, I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t stop him either. I had one chance to take this one for myself, before he railroaded me into something embarrassing. I was still suspicious that the girl even knew who the hell I was. Mack could have picked a name from a hat at random, manufacturing a story to get me into the mix, a grand experiment to see if his machismo would turn me into a desirable commodity, like some testosterone-laced pixie dust.

Mack grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t get all macho and blow this, you gotta be a surgeon to get her away from those other girls. It’s like she’s a tumor and you’re a doctor, and she’s surrounded by all this delicate tissue that fuckin’ hates that you’re trying to talk to her. I don’t even screw with the girl herds, man, so think about this. If you want to swing for the fences, at least wait for a fat pitch.”

“I have to say something,” I said. “Otherwise, today’s just another day of hitting Wiffle balls and making good grades.”

He looked at me for a moment and I gave him a sly smile. He nodded and took his hand off my shoulder. “Make a joke, man,” he said. “Give her some of that funny Sampsonite shit.”

I walked up to the girls and saw that they had eager smiles on their faces. They didn’t look at me—instead, they giggled or looked down at their feet or pretended to dig in their purses. All except Raeanna. I didn’t notice her until then. She sat on the highest bleacher, behind all of them. No girls were next to her. She looked at me with the same startling eyes as her sister, peering over her romance novel,
A Rose at Sunset,
complete with a sun-bronzed cowboy, shirtless, on a horse. I couldn’t hold her gaze, tucking my hands in my pockets, glancing down and saying, “Regina,” as if to start a sentence. I don’t remember what I meant to say, but the minute I said her name, every other face deflated. Maybe she really did think I was cute. Maybe they all did.

That misconception was warm while it lasted, but it didn’t last long.

“I hope this is good news,” she said.

“I guess it depends,” I said, stalling, not knowing what she was talking about.

“Well? Did he send you over?” she said, stressing the
he
in such a way that meant Mack. Hence the busted smiles from the rest of them. But screw it, I was all in.

“No, but we were talking about you because I think you’re absolutely beautiful, and even though I don’t say much to many girls around here, it’s not because I’m shy or nerdy or anything like that, it’s just that you’re the first girl I’ve ever thought was really worth saying something to.”

The rest of the girls giggled at this, and I couldn’t stop the red from flooding my face, the hot pinpricks of embarrassment swelling in my cheeks, but I kept looking at her and only her because I knew she liked what I said. But Mack was right. Her friends were there.

“Sorry, but you’re wasting your time.”

I stood there and took the full brunt of it. The other girls kept laughing—except Raeanna. She bent a sympathetic wince into a half smile and I almost cried. I just shrugged and told Regina, “Well, I still mean it. It would just be nice to talk to you more, but I understand what you all must think of me.”

With that, I walked away, enduring the catcalls of “Crash and burn!” and “Return to sender!” but I kept my head up, battling the urge to sob that built in the upper parts of my lungs, rising up through me and knocking at my eyes. I saw the curtain ripple as a ball struck it from behind the stage, and knew where Mack was, but instead of going to join him, I slipped into the empty boys’ locker room. I cranked the plastic lever on the towel dispenser, plucking two fistfuls of rough, brown paper, then sat in a stall and cried them wet.

THREE

As a freshman, Mack was by far the best player on the team and the upperclassmen hated him for it, at least at first. He could crack eighty miles an hour with his fastball and he also had a wicked slider and knuckleball that I’d seen in my backyard hundreds of times. I always hit him rather well, figuring he was taking it easy on me, but for everyone else in the conference, the task was about as impossible as it was to keep him off base. The first game of his career was against the conference champions, a powerhouse team, the Brownstown Bombers. They had a senior-stacked lineup that was poised to repeat their domination. Then Mack happened. He allowed one hit, struck out a dozen, and went five-for-five with two jacks in a blowout win.

Once it was clear that Mack was the key to getting that elusive trophy, the hazing and jealousy started to soften. He was the only freshman invited to parties I didn’t want to attend in the first place, and I regularly turned them down even though he tried like hell to get me to go. The one time I did tag along, it was me, Mack, Guy Cain, and Kevin Braddy piled into the back of Clint Phillips’s truck. I had no idea what we were headed out to do that night. We sailed along black country roads. We drank beers on an abandoned bridge. Guy and Kevin were seniors, and I could tell that they were cool with Mack, and suffered his alpha-male bravado with the same casual distance I’d achieved over the years. Clint though, was something else. He was a cold, leering hombre, and while the others had come to terms with the talent gap between Mack and themselves, Clint was conceding nothing. He only chimed in to minimize Mack’s accomplishments—if Mack recounted how he approached an at-bat that resulted in a homer, Clint would quickly counter with “Wind was blowing out, though.” I didn’t think Mack had it in him to brush it off, but he always did—probably because fighting meant missing baseball games.

When we were done with the beers, I was told that the loose baseball bats in the back of the truck were for that grand backwoods tradition of bashing mailboxes. I’d like to say that I was mature enough to not enjoy the fuck out of it, but it was fun as hell. I found something therapeutic and hilarious about watching a mailbox crinkle and dent in the floodlights of Clint’s pickup.

Mack, of course, took it a step too far. He urged us all to “watch this shit.” He took the gas can out of Clint’s trunk and doused a sturdy-looking Rubbermaid mailbox with a few splashes. Then, he lit it on fire. He had a lighter on him but didn’t smoke—I guess he’d planned this ahead of time to impress the seniors. He started whaling on the mailbox, but not with the full brunt of his strength. I could tell he was waiting for something—and that thing turned out to be the owner of the house. L. Lewis, according to the letters on the box.

The screen door opened and the laughter stopped. A deep voice hollered, “What the fuck you sons of bitches doing out there!”

“Your mailbox is on fire!” Mack screamed. “I’m trying to put the motherfucker out!”

With his obviously rehearsed line out of the way, he jumped into the bed of the truck. Clint didn’t hit the gas. “Come on, man!” Kevin yelled, smashing his palm into the rear-window glass. L. Lewis got closer. He had a shotgun in his hands. Everyone was pleading with Clint to drive. The dome light was ticked on, and I saw him in the rearview mirror. I saw the glee in his face, letting the situation unravel to the point of desperation. Lewis fired the shotgun, and I’m still not sure if it was rock salt or the pellets from a shell that hit the side of the truck, but the sound was thunderous and everyone sank into the gritty bed of the truck, the swill of beer and rainwater flowing in the little channels of the plastic bed liner. I was down there with everyone. I heard Kevin crying. Guy screamed until his voice was hoarse. Mack grabbed me by the arm. “We gotta run for it,” he said, and we both scrambled to jump out of the truck when Clint mercifully slammed the accelerator. The tires sprayed gravel and the back of the truck fishtailed, but once the tread bit down on the street, we blasted off, the engine screaming.

We stopped in the grain-elevator parking lot where we originally met. Clint got out, his eyes watering from wicked, ugly laughter. He could barely seem to catch his breath. Mack pinned him by the neck against the side of the truck, his right fist coiled, his knuckles trembling.

“Let him go,” I said. I knew what the price was if he hit him.

“Fuck you,” Mack said. “I ever get the chance, you’re done, you little shit.”

“Do you always do what your boyfriend asks you to do?” Clint said.

I got between them. Guy and Kevin were already getting into their own trucks, pissed and shaken. “He’s not worth it,” I said.

Clint was still laughing. Always laughing. The door closed. He dropped his truck into gear. The giggling wasn’t for show. Bashing mailboxes wasn’t perilous enough for him, it wasn’t enough of a high. It took more for him to get a rush. I wondered what he was like when he was alone, the things he did for those kinds of kicks, and decided I didn’t want to know.

*   *   *

A few weeks later, the baseball team was opening up the spring portion of the season against Carsonville. I wanted nothing more than to marinate in my Regina-related failure by zoning out in my bedroom, but Mack insisted I come watch him pitch.

He struck out the side on a pale spring day. The infield was black with moisture, with soggy patches of Diamond Dry surrounding all the bases. The wind was blowing in from left. The American flag mounted high above the center-field fence rippled loud enough to hear from home plate. I remember these details because I was sitting in the front bleacher behind home plate when Regina sat down next to me wearing a Gap sweatshirt and a smile.

I looked up at her and couldn’t muster a word.

“Why did you say that the other day?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you really like me?”

Did I? Mack had put me on her scent and suddenly I was in love. I had no legitimate reason to give her.

“Mack said you—”

“I don’t care what he said,” she said.

“You looked disappointed when you realized he didn’t send me over, though. Like you were hoping that I was carrying a message from him.”

“You’ll just have to figure that part out for yourself.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Here.” She handed me a piece of notebook paper, with little bits loose from where she took it off the spiral, folded three times, and I brushed up against fingers smooth with lotion.

“Sometimes you just like someone,” she said. “I can’t fault you for that. Rae’s the same way.”

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You never had a girl slip you her phone number before?”

“No. I thought this stuff was done with cell phones, anyway. Not that I have one.”

“My mom won’t get me one until this crapola town gets a cell phone tower. Besides, notes are a little more meaningful, don’t you think?” I nodded. “Well, there you go,” she said.

“You want me to call you?”

The question was stupid, but she looked like she expected it, perhaps even feared it. She waited for a long while and said, “For the record, you seem like a sweet guy.” She got up and left without even staying for the game.

She had come specifically to give me a piece of paper that had her phone number, just seven digits, forgoing the formality of an area code. She hadn’t written anything but numbers, yet it was still that perfect handwriting reserved for only girls, with each number’s shape nearing geometric perfection.