Henry Hamlet's Heart

by Rhiannon Wilde

  I watch, stunned, as he falls back on his heels with one hand still cupped in the shape of my head.

  Everyone is staring.

  The place may be on fire. (I definitely am.)

  I have never kissed anybody like that in my life. (I’ve never kissed anybody, full stop.)

  I keep looking at Len, my hampered mental function trying, desperately, to figure out what the hell just happened. He isn’t looking at me but at our audience, which has gone mum with shock.

  Slowly, he wipes his lips on his sleeve, then bows. If there’s one thing Lennon Cane does well, it’s make a show.

  Reluctantly, Clarkson claps once. ‘Jesus,’ he says loudly, looking both impressed and a little scared. ‘You’re off the planet, Cane.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ Len says.

  ‘Truly. Completely cooked.’

  ‘Told you I’d win.’ Len’s voice sounds off. It feels like we crossed a line, but I don’t know which one.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he announces.

  Everybody laughs. It’s testament to his social status that nobody sees this as anything more than a dare, another layer to the ever-shifting enigma that is Len. No big deal.

  Because it wasn’t.

  (Was it?)

  A long-fingered hand appears in front of my face. I let it pull me to my feet, the world seeming to tilt even more than it did before. Suddenly we’re face to face, my hazy eyes gripped by the storm in his.

  He smiles tightly. ‘Experiences with a capital E.’

  I want to ask, What was that? Did you feel …?

  ‘Right,’ I say instead.

  We stand for a minute, awkward. So awkward.

  ‘I hope I don’t get pregnant,’ I joke. Weird. So weird.

  He laughs gratefully and punches my shoulder. ‘Yeah. Or sick.’

  We’re back to being normal us, the friends who walked into this party an hour ago. So why do I still feel like my heart just shit itself?

  ‘You coming?’ He gestures to where the others are gathering on the creaky balcony to go back inside.

  ‘I actually think I’m gonna head home.’ I decide on the spot. ‘I mean, it’s late.’

  (I need to process whatever just happened. I need to go.)

  Len bites his lip. ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  I turn away, trying to put some space between the washing machine in my stomach and the look on his face.

  ‘Hamlet,’ he calls after me.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are you …’

  I spin back around. His face is pained.

  ‘What?’

  He takes a breath. ‘Will you be okay to get home?’

  ‘Mmhmm.’ My head pounds. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Okay. Guess I’ll see you Monday, then.’

  I’m already moving. ‘See you.’

  I push through the people with their voices too loud, and find my way to the overgrown front garden. Once I’m sure I’m out of sight, I lean against the battens underneath the house, sliding down until I’m on the ground with my legs stretched out and my elbows on my knees.

  I drop my head and let my fringe fall over my face. I lost Dad’s headband at some point. I think I saw it get tossed away.

  While I was playing seven minutes in public heaven/hell.

  With my best friend. My male best friend. Whose lip I think I just bit. Like I’m Edward frigging Cullen. Except I’m pretty certain he never kissed Emmett.

  Shit.

  What if this changes every single thing?

  It’s past midnight, late-night wind grabbing my wrists. I look up, trying to find the moon, but it’s too cold or too cloudy or too late.

  I have one of those floaty out-of-body moments where I feel like I’m watching myself. Alone on a street corner, completely lost even though I know exactly where I am.

  I pull out my phone. ‘Mum? I need you to come pick me up.’

  8

  I don’t get pregnant, but I do get sick. The kind of sick that makes you wonder what terrible things you could have done in a past life to deserve it. I wake up on Sunday morning feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck, with my phone vibrating in my pocket.

  I flip it open and wait for my vision to un-blur.

  Missed call from Emilia. I punch the call back button with my thumb.

  ‘Hen!’ she answers. ‘Where are you? I’m at the café and Len’s not here either.’

  A faint memory floats up about plans to meet today to look at the uni course books she ordered.

  ‘Ems,’ I groan into the phone. ‘I forgot. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Whoa. Why do you sound like Cher?’

  ‘Sick,’ I choke out. ‘Er, Len is too. Sorry again. Raincheck?’

  ‘Don’t even worry about it. Keep those germs to yourself. Want me to bring you anything?’

  I could kiss her, if not for the fact that that’s what got me into this mess in the first place.

  ‘I’ll be okay. But thanks.’

  ‘Drink fluids,’ she instructs. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  Mum eases my door open just as I’m hanging up the phone, leaning her cheek against the frame. ‘Hey, slugger. How’re you feeling?’

  I flop back on my pillows, wincing as my brain slides around in my skull. ‘Shid.’

  She reaches down to feel my forehead. ‘Hmm. You’ve got a temperature. That’s weird – you were fine yesterday.’

  ‘Must have picked something up.’

  ‘How, though?’ She thinks for a minute. ‘Wait! Did you kiss someone last night?’

  Last night. Clarkson. Stars spinning. Len.

  Heat floods my cheeks, doubled by the chills racing over my skin.

  ‘You did!’ she guesses, reading my face. ‘Do I need to be worried? Are we about to repeat The Talk?’

  ‘Mum. It’s me. As if.’ I mustn’t sound convincing, though, because she purses her lips slyly and squeezes my arm.

  I wince again. Everything hurts.

  ‘All right, sweet. I’ll get you some Panadol.’

  ‘Don’t you have anything heavier?’ I beg. ‘Like, morphine?’

  She rubs my fiery cheek. ‘From what I can tell, you’ve got a cold. Paracetamol will do fine.’

  ‘What’s the point of having a mother who’s a doctor if she won’t hook you up with the goods when you’ve got death flu?’

  ‘I’m happy to hand deliver your babies one day,’ Mum says brightly. ‘But beyond that, I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘You do,’ I accuse. ‘You just won’t give it to me. Your firstborn.’

  ‘You’re right, I’m saving the good stuff for Ham. He just feels more likely to succeed. Got to invest wisely.’ She winks and leaves.

  Thoughts of last night start to settle like a heavy blanket over me. WhatwillhesaywhatwillotherpeoplesayJesusGodshit. I shove them to the back of my mind with as much force as I’ve got.

  Mum returns with, God bless her, the heaviest kind of cold tablets – the ones with codeine and angels’ tears in them. I gulp two down gratefully and switch on the TV, keeping my mind resolutely on the midday movie. After a while, I switch my phone off too.

  I’m sick for days, bedridden and bored out of my mind. The wet weather sticks around, blowing an arctic draft under my bones if I dare crack a window. My room ends up an incubated cocoon.

  I venture outside only to use the bathroom. Dad and Ham are too scared to come near me, so Mum brings me dinner and treats from the hospital vending machine each night when she takes my temperature. She doesn’t complain about me watching Air Crash Investigations nonstop for twenty hours, so I know she’s at least a little concerned.

  It’s cleansing, after a while. I slow down for the first time in months – just lying there and looking out at the sky bleeding from pink to blue to black and
back again.

  I start to come around on the fourth day. I’m able to stand up in the shower and shave for the first time since last week.

  By Thursday, I feel pretty much back to normal, but I avoid school anyway, deciding to give it an even seven days before facing the world again.

  On Saturday, I switch my phone on for the first time since the morning after The Night That Was. There’s a flurry of concerned texts from Emilia, a few random updates from Vince, Harrison and Ged and …

  Nothing.

  ‘The prodigal nerd returns,’ Ged cheers outside home room on Monday. ‘How the fuck’ve you been?’

  ‘Terrible, obviously. Desolate over not seeing your ugly face every day.’

  ‘Sorry if I gave it to you, mate,’ Vince says sincerely. ‘That shit was no joke.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t reckon it was you! It was just a bad bug.’

  ‘Bad is an understatement. I got so high on cough medicine one night that I sicked in my mum’s wellies.’

  Ged looks at him blankly.

  ‘Gumboots,’ a voice explains from behind us.

  I turn around, but my organs stay put.

  ‘Good to see you’re still alive,’ Len says.

  He looks the same as always – morning-pale in the sun wearing against-the-rules purple socks – except he’s standing slightly further away than usual, like I’m contagious even though he’s already had it.

  Inside my head is kaleidoscopic: lips-tongue-teeth.

  (Normal. Be normal.)

  ‘Ha! Yeah,’ I near-shout at him. ‘Um. Only just.’

  ‘You must have been munted, mate,’ Vince continues obliviously, steering me towards the classroom. ‘You look like a POW.’

  I turn away from Len’s forehead, which has creased down the middle.

  ‘Don’t ever say that again, I beg of you.’

  Len sits so far on the opposite side of home room that I’m almost looking forward to assembly afterwards, until Martin smells blood in the water.

  ‘LOOK WHO DECIDED TO SHOW UP!’ he calls once I’m at the auditorium door.

  ‘Jeez, Finch.’ I wince. ‘Can you just—’

  ‘Can I just what, Hamlet? Not exist?’

  ‘No, just—’

  ‘Because someone has to tell you we missed the deadline for formal in the ballroom.’

  ‘What? How?’

  Martin rolls his eyes upwards, pretending he has to think about it. ‘Maybe the fact that the person in charge of it was incommunicado for a week with The Consumption?’

  I almost swear out loud, but he’s already doing impeachment eyes.

  ‘That,’ I admit, ‘is not ideal.’

  Students are starting to file in.

  ‘You reckon?!’

  ‘But weren’t we just going to do it in the gym anyway, originally?’

  Martin kicks the mic stand like it’s my face. ‘We’ll still have to hold an emergency year level meeting to vote on it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Yes, I just said okay.’

  The Not Normal actually intensifies, after that. I feel like I’m unravelling with everything else, walking around in a daze for the rest of the week, worrying that people will talk about what happened. (They haven’t, as far as I can tell.)

  Len talks to me, sort of, when we’re with The Boiyss, but we bolt if we’re ever left alone together. I can’t figure out whether that means he’s thinking about it too, or that he’s decided to forget it, and I’m weirding everything up by being me.

  He gets this look on his face sometimes – a frowning echo of his expression when I ran away from the Shack. It’s … embarrassment (I think). It’s the same look that’s on mine.

  I wrote a story once about a first kiss. There was some magical element I can’t remember, lips touched, then the girl went to sleep forever because she’d tasted perfection or something equally dramatic. It was full of unnecessary adjectives, and all the things I didn’t know.

  I want to go back there now: not knowing. Kisslessness. I envy that girl – eternal slumber sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

  This … isn’t like that.

  It’s waking up.

  Every time I have to get a book from my locker and he’s at his, it’s a defibrillator shock.

  I can’t stop picturing it – every time I see him, even when it’s in my mind – his fingers gripped into my shirt. My skin.

  I tell myself it must be normal to remember your first kiss. To attach meaning to it, even when there isn’t – can’t be – any.

  Anything else is surely just a proximity thing. A phase. We’ve been too close for too long, and just need some space for a while.

  I’m thinking about it, the proximity thing, when we’re working on our English monologues on Thursday afternoon. We’ve been looking at the way inciting incidents can bulldoze into everyday life. Gatsby wouldn’t even have a plot if the two central characters weren’t neighbours.

  It’s stiflingly warm in the period six light, and the air conditioners are all still switched to heat. We’re meant to pick our topics today, but Vince is still only a few chapters in and Nick is pissing him off.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he complains. ‘All this guy does is go on and on about how great Gatsby is. Why don’t you just marry him?’

  I’m half-watching Len and Ged brainstorming outside and am hyper-conscious of every muscle in my face. ‘Mmm.’

  Vince snaps his book shut. ‘How’re we gonna spin a whole monologue out of that, then, duck face?’

  Len looks up and catches me looking.

  Blood explodes in my cheeks and the space between my collarbones.

  He does a sort of wave, lifting his hand halfway. I freeze.

  It’s so awkward I think he actually winces a bit before turning away.

  ‘Hello?’ Vince snaps. ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Nothing!’ I burst out. ‘I’m just … I’m thinking.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Thinking about what?’

  ‘Thinking … that’s kind of a valid reading.’

  He pulls a goofy disbelieving face. ‘What, that it’s secretly a bromance?’

  (Why is it so hot in here?)

  ‘Er, yeah. I’m pretty sure there’s a whole theory that Nick was, like … into Gatsby.’

  Vince digests this for a minute. ‘Hmm. Bit gay, isn’t it?’

  (I’m sweating. I can feel it on my top lip.)

  ‘Um, we could link it to the love theme.’ My brain clicks into gear despite itself. ‘Gatsby’s pretty much the only character Nick actually cares about.’

  Vince still looks doubtful. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Think about it,’ I say, my own thoughts coming faster. I check none of the guys around us are listening. ‘He’s barely interested in Jordan, except to describe her as if she’s a horse, but Nick’s obsessed with Gatsby. It’s almost like … I don’t know. Like he’s only made real through Gatsby, or something.’

  ‘Interesting ideas, Henry!’ Ms H exclaims. She was walking around the room, but she stops behind us. ‘Because of—’

  ‘The elevator scene!’ I finish too loud and too fast.

  She smiles down at me. ‘Good to see someone was listening to me talk about subtext.’

  ‘Swot,’ Vince hisses under his breath when she leaves.

  He slumps back in his seat for a minute, blowing out a breath, then picks his copy of Gatsby up again. ‘Fine. Where’s that bit?’

  ‘Here – I bookmarked it.’

  9

  In debating at the end of the week, Martin gives us each a stapled folder of research and a breakdown of our time between now and finals, which are only a few weeks away.

  We’re up against St Ads, so everything is very us vs. them and school pride-y.

&nb
sp; ‘Is this necessary?’ I flap the thick folder in my hand. ‘I already found us two case studies.’

  ‘Yes, Hamlet!’ he erupts. ‘We have to beat the girls if we want the cup again.’

  I set everyone working on their own arguments so we don’t have to talk. We’re doing a more complex model than usual, but I can’t focus on mine.

  Len is sitting right up the back, writing rapidly with one cheek resting on his splayed fingers. I can’t help watching him – every tiny mannerism.

  I pull out my notes just to look busy, and don’t absorb a word.

  I pack up ten minutes early and wave goodbye to everyone (Martin frowns), then bolt out the school gates as quickly as possible.

  Mum’s working tonight, Gran’s got Ham and Dad’s head’s in the clouds, so it’s just me and the moon. Proximity may be the enemy, but my imagination is almost as big as my boots, which are size eleven and a half.

  As soon as I get up to the safety of my gabled room, I’m a swarm of scenarios for how this could play out long term – none of them good.

  Option 1: I sit on whatever this is as hard as I can until it goes away.

  Option 2: I try kissing someone else, just to see what happens (unlikely, given Spew Grant).

  Option 3: I talk to him.

  This is the best worst option, because it’s exactly what I’d do if things were different. If it was just me worrying that I’d kissed someone. Not him.

  I try to sleep but can’t. My eyes roam the dull dark, until they reach the row of photos on my desk. It’s terrifically ironic that the biggest one is of me and Len, at the beach last summer.

  There’s so much history in his face. The square set of his jaw, the golden brows, the way his teeth grip the right side of his bottom lip. I can picture him when we were five, when we were eleven, when we were sixteen.

  How can I think of him like this?

  (How can I not?)

  I make up my date with Emilia in the morning to keep from being alone with myself. It’s uni open day season, and trying to focus my runaway brain on the future feels like as sound an avoidance strategy as any.

  She picks me up at nine, and I fold my legs into the front seat of her Fiat while she steers us carefully towards the city and we listen to my emo mix CD.