Unbreak My Heart

by Melissa Walker

  That day, we had afternoon cake and went for a sail, but it was kind of rough on the water. Not as rough as it is today—not anywhere close—but there were some whitecaps and we rocked a bit as we got out into the big part of the lake.

  Olive and I kept trying to convince Amanda that it was best to be above deck when you felt queasy, because seeing stable land and being able to focus on it, unmoving, was the best way to settle your stomach. But she wouldn’t come up; she just sat right here on this couch and rocked back and forth. I sat with her and stroked her hair, but I didn’t realize how bad she really felt, or I would have gotten her a sick bowl.

  Just as Olive came running down to tell us there was calm water ahead, Amanda leaned over to me and vomited right in my lap. She tried to catch it in her hands, and she did get some, but the rest splattered onto my legs. It was my first experience with multicolored vomit.

  She looked at me with wide eyes like she thought I was going to get so mad at her—we were always BFFs, but that year, middle school had kind of brought out the mean girls in us, even with each other. Still, how could I do anything but laugh? I jumped up and got a wet towel, and we had the whole thing cleaned up before Dad even noticed. Amanda was mortified. She was sure I’d tell everyone at school or start calling her Rainbow Barf Queen or something.

  But Olive and I promised right away that it was our secret, just ours. And I never told anyone. Not even Dad. When he said something smelled funny later, I told him Olive was eating Parmesan cheese that I thought had gone bad. Because Parmesan cheese kind of smells like puke. It’s true.

  “She was so scared you were going to make fun of her,” says Olive, bringing me back to now.

  “But I didn’t,” I say, feeling a sigh coming.

  “Of course not!” says Olive. “Because you’re the best best friend ever.”

  I look at my little sister, who doesn’t know what she’s saying to me, why she’s so, so wrong about that.

  “I’m not a good friend!” I snap. “And I’m probably not a good sister, either, you should know.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Olive, still smiling. She’s sure I’m joking—I can see it in her face.

  “I’m a terrible, awful friend,” I say. “I do horrible things and don’t even think about how they’ll hurt people.”

  I stand up and grab my book, needing to get away from Olive, needing my own space. But the boat pitches and I stumble into my sister, almost falling on top of her on the couch.

  She grabs my arms. “Clem, why are you so mad?”

  “This is the real me,” I say. “I’m mean and dark and angry and uncaring.”

  “No, you’re not,” she says. I can see annoyance in her eyes now, like this ten-year-old doesn’t want to tolerate me. “You’re just having a tantrum.”

  And that makes me so angry that I actually growl at her, if people growl. I make a scary noise—one that I don’t even recognize—and I stare at her with hate in my eyes.

  Then I push myself up and hurry to my room before another wave hits. I turn on my iPod and close my eyes, feeling the fury of the storm outside echo my internal state. And because I’m dorky, I think of it as objective correlative, like in English class when the environment is mirroring what the character feels inside. Except this isn’t a book—it’s my dark and stormy life.

  Later, after the wind has calmed, Olive calls to me in her singsong way to say that there’s a rainbow outside. That used to be my favorite thing. We always take a family photo in front of rainbows when we see them, which is a few times a year when we’re out on the boat.

  But I don’t answer Olive. I don’t move. And she doesn’t call to me twice.

  chapter five

  By the time we sail into the next marina, I’ve done something awful.

  I looked at the photos on my phone.

  Back when I was happy with my life, like, two weeks ago, I used to take a candid shot every day, just to chronicle daily existence, I guess. I almost put them on Tumblr, but I decided to keep them for myself—thank goodness. At least 50 percent of the shots from this spring capture moments I wish I could forget.

  I don’t know why I did this. Maybe because I’m bored out here, with nothing to do but read and watch DVDs on a tiny TV and sit on the bow while we bob along across the water. Maybe because I enjoy making myself feel like crap. A little self-flagellation is healthy, right?

  Or maybe it’s because I’ve had all this reflecting time, and I started thinking about the redheaded guy and how I felt really nice when he talked to me in the store. At first I imagined he could somehow see my true self. He could tell that I wasn’t a bad person. It felt like a Band-Aid on my broken heart.

  But then I realized that was dumb.

  He doesn’t know me at all. He thought I was kind of cute, but he probably hadn’t seen a girl his age in weeks. There aren’t that many sixteen-year-old boaters out here. Red is not a redeemer come to tell the world that I’m not so bad, really. If he got to know me, he would think I’m a terrible person too. After all, if my best friend in the world—after years of knowing me—can cast me off like she has, then this stranger certainly isn’t going to like me. At least, he wouldn’t if he got to know me.

  And that’s how my self-hating voices go. They also like to look at last year’s photos and feel nostalgic for something that never should have been. It’s how they roll.

  Damn voices.

  We tie up at EastPort Marina in Peoria, and my dad wants me and Olive to come with him to get some live bait for fishing. Olive’s been excited about throwing a line in, but we haven’t done it yet because Dad really wanted to get to our first big destination. No, Peoria isn’t big. But it counts when you’re boating this superrural route.

  There’s a dock deli here, too—there is at most marinas, I’m learning—and Dad and Olive pick out some creepy-crawlies while I stand back and mope. It’s what I’m good at these days. I’m trying not to resist my parents’ requests (to eat meals with them, to help bring in the sails at night when we dock, to remind Olive that being first mate doesn’t always mean she gets to drop the anchor—especially if we’re near a strong current), but I have trouble showing any enthusiasm. I’m tired a lot too. It’s exhausting being sad.

  Today is incredibly hot, especially for June in Illinois, when it’s usually in the eighties. It has to be at least ninety-five degrees out. As we walk back to The Possibility, Olive declares: “I’m going swimming!”

  Then she looks up at me. “Are you?”

  And maybe it’s the heat, or maybe it’s my little sister’s hopeful eyes, but for some reason I say yes.

  Twenty minutes later, the swimming idea has grown into a full-on recreation day. Mom and Olive are packing up a picnic lunch to take in the dinghy—a tiny little boat called Sea Ya (ha-ha) that we can just squeeze into to go island hopping off The Possibility—and I’m wearing my red swimsuit. My room is giving me cabin fever. It’ll be good to get outside.

  We load up the cooler, fishing poles, a tackle box, towels, and sunscreen. That’s pretty much all we need. I sit up front with Olive while Mom leans against Dad in the back. We motor over to a sandy shore just around the bend from the marina, and Olive drops the little anchor. I swing a leg over the side to check the depth. The chilly water feels like icy relief on my legs. My feet hit the muddy bottom and the water’s only up to my waist, so Mom hands me the cooler and I walk it over to land. Mom and Olive follow with towels while Dad tinkers with the fishing rods.

  And you know what happens next? We have a really nice day. One of those family days that makes you think you could be in the part of the movie with the musical interlude. We eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we swim and reapply sunscreen on each other, Dad chases Mom with a washed-up fish head on a stick, and I even laugh out loud. Twice!

  As the sun starts to lower in the sky, Dad and Olive take the dinghy out a little deeper so they can do some fishing while Mom and I walk along the shore. We’re on a missi
on to find a single shell worthy of the jar she keeps secured on a shelf in the main cabin of the boat. She grew up sailing near her home on the North Carolina seashore, so the jar is full of shells from her past—lots from boating trips with my grandparents, some from our own family voyages. There’s one from her high school prom date, who gave her a shell on a string in lieu of a corsage because he knew it was more her style. And there’s one from the beach in Martha’s Vineyard where she went with her grandmother after high school graduation. They’re not all perfect or pretty, but each one has a story. And she thinks today is special enough to be remembered. I guess I do too.

  I find an opened black mussel shell with two sides still joined together. It looks like a lopsided heart, and I hold it for her to see. She comes over and peers into my hand.

  “Perfect,” she says. “You’ve got a good eye.”

  “At least that makes two of us in this family,” I say, and Mom throws her head back to laugh. It wasn’t that funny, but she and I are secretly proud to have 20/20 vision, unlike Dad and Olive, and I know she appreciates me making my first attempt at humor in about three weeks.

  “Here,” I say, handing the shell over to her. She palms it carefully and slips it into the pocket of her cotton shirt.

  We start back down the beach, and I look out at the water to see Olive pulling in a little sunfish. I smile.

  “Clem?” says Mom, and my heart sinks. I can already tell she’s going to ask me about Amanda. She’s got this tone. It almost sounds like she might cry when she uses it, and I recognize it instantly.

  “Mom?” I respond, annoyed, already getting defensive. I was having such a nice day.

  “Have you thought about maybe writing Amanda a letter?” she asks. “Just putting everything out there … explaining …”

  “Explaining what?” I ask. “Explaining that I suck, I’m selfish, and I’m obviously a bad person who doesn’t deserve her friendship?”

  I take a breath.

  “Is that what I should explain, Mom?”

  “No,” says Mom. Then she looks away from me and out to the water. “Well, maybe Amanda …”

  “Amanda and I are not friends anymore,” I say, quietly now, as I struggle to swallow tears.

  “But if you tried to tell her …,” says Mom.

  “Just shut up about it!” I scream. Dad and Olive hear me and turn in our direction, but Mom waves at them so they won’t worry.

  “I guess you’re not ready yet, then,” she says, under her breath.

  I hate it when parents say stuff like that, because it’s like they think you’ll eventually reach some unchartable point of emotional maturity when you will be ready to do something the way they think it should be done—writing this cure-all letter, for example. But the truth is, a letter to Amanda is a stupid idea. And besides, it’s not like I didn’t think of that. I’ve been trying to write one every night for three weeks, but when I reread my drafts I just hear how whiny I sound. It’s pathetic. I can’t make the words mean anything.

  I sit down in the sand for a minute, just to catch my breath. I still feel like there’s a lead weight on my chest every time I think about last year. Can’t Mom see that I don’t want to talk about it?

  “Oh, honey.” Mom sits beside me and rubs my back, making gentle circles with her fingers just like she did when I was little and couldn’t sleep. I start to calm down, slowly.

  “Mom, can we just leave it alone?”

  She stays quiet.

  “And another thing,” I say. “I’m avoiding guys. Forever.”

  “Forever?” she asks.

  “Well, forever this summer, anyway.”

  “Okay,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

  “Fine.” I’m still bothered, but I try to shake off the mood that overtook me so quickly.

  “Really,” says Mom. “Let’s drop it.” She’s smiling and acting like herself again. “Today isn’t the day.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “But I do have one more question.” I look up at her and see that she’s wearing that young-looking smile again, the one that means she’s about to make fun of me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Is this ‘no guys this summer’ thing why you aren’t waving back to that boy from the EastPort Marina over there?”

  I look out and see the redheaded guy on a boat called Dreaming of Sylvia. He’s obviously the first mate for his father, or whoever the older guy at the captain’s wheel is. Red is unfurling the jib, and in between rope pulls, he’s waving in our direction. They’re out in the river beyond Dad and Olive, passing by and not coming into our inlet, but I can clearly make out his fiery hair.

  “How do you know he was at EastPort?” I ask, wondering if Mom was spying on me when I had my run-in with Red.

  “I talked to his father there,” says Mom. “They’re from Turnerville. They’re making the same Great Loop we are.”

  Mom waves back, and so do Dad and Olive, but I don’t.

  Now that I know we’re on a parallel route—and that he’s from Turnerville, which is, like, forty minutes away from Bishop Heights—I definitely don’t want to encourage more interaction. Red met me; he likes me. And in order to keep things that way, I’m going to stay as far away from him as possible.

  chapter six

  Dear Amanda,

  I wish I could tell you about the summer so

  far. Olive is being clingy. Dad is being cheesy.

  Mom is being nosy (about us and our fight).

  I wish …

  Rip. Another page for the trashed-letters drawer.

  It’s not like we were each other’s only friends. There were a group of us—me, Amanda, Henry Choi, Aaron Blake, and Renee Hartwell. Amanda and I were like the core, somehow, always tighter than the friends floating around us, but the five of us definitely had a unit.

  “The lighting isn’t working,” said Henry, staring at Renee pointedly. “Amanda looks splotchy.”

  “Maybe Amanda is splotchy,” said Aaron, raising his eyebrows in a mock-serious gesture.

  “Shut up!” Amanda threw a small couch pillow at him.

  “Excellent use of the ‘throw pillow,’” I said, using air quotes to emphasize my joke.

  Aaron cracked up. Amanda smiled.

  Henry frowned. “Renee, fix the lighting?” he said.

  Renee shifted her weight, struggling to move the spotlight while also holding up the giant microphone rig that was her charge during this student-film experiment.

  Henry really wanted to go to a film school program in California over the summer, and he had to turn in a three-minute short with his application. We all agreed to help him shoot it over an early fall weekend, but I think Renee was less than thrilled with her role, which included major behind-the-scenes physical labor.

  She’s the tomboy type—always wearing jeans or shorts and a T-shirt, hair in a ponytail, very casual. I thought that was cool about her, the way she didn’t chase guys. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have her eye on someone; it was clear to everyone who looked twice that she totally loved Henry. You don’t work hot lights and hold a heavy microphone boom on a Saturday for just anyone.

  Amanda and I were cast as two women in our early forties dealing with infertility, who meet in the waiting room of our mutual doctor, played by Aaron.

  “Remind me again why we have to be forty-somethings,” I said, wiping at the brown makeup that was supposed to make my face look shadowy and older.

  Henry shaped his hands into a rectangle and looked at me with one eye closed. He was always doing things like that, which I think he saw in the movies, ironically. I’m not sure he even knew why film people did that.

  “Everyone and their sister is going to turn in movies about coming-of-age and young love and blah, blah, blah CW crap,” he said. “But I am going to turn in a thoughtful exploration of middle age.”

  “Is this because your parents have been watching DVDs of that old show thirtysomething?” a
sked Amanda.

  Henry sighed. “It’s a good show.”

  Amanda and I looked at each other and started laughing.

  “Can we get this scene done, please?” Henry sounded like he was about to lose it, so we settled down.

  He didn’t have one of those official black-and-white clapboard things that you crack, so when we all got back to our places, Henry just yelled, “Action!” from behind the camera.

  “I haven’t tried intravenous yet,” said Amanda in a very serious voice, leaning in to me conspiratorially.

  I looked at her and burst out laughing again.

  “In-vitro!” shouted Henry. “It’s called in-vitro fertilization.”

  “She could just say IVF,” said Renee. “That’s what my mom’s friend kept calling it.”

  “Fine, IVF,” said Henry. “Okay, let’s start again.”

  We ran the scene six more times until Henry was satisfied that he had the right pieces to cut together. Then we had to film it from another angle. It was a long day, but a really fun one, and I remember looking around and thinking it felt like being with family.

  After everything happened, it wasn’t like Renee and Aaron and Henry vandalized my locker or threw eggs at me or anything dramatic like that. They just, kinda … weren’t there. Renee sent me a message saying she needed to “figure things out,” which I guess meant she wasn’t ready to talk to me. Henry and Aaron asked if I was okay at school, but they didn’t, like, make any real effort to make sure that when I said “Yeah,” I was telling the truth.

  And, honestly, I had tunnel vision: all that mattered was Amanda. And of course, it was natural that everyone sided with her. I was the one who did something wrong.

  chapter seven

  “Another one!” Dad whisper-shouts, pointing toward the dark night sky.

  He and I are in the cockpit, each stretched out on a cushioned seat, looking straight up at the stars. Mom and Olive have gone to bed—they’re the morning people on this vessel. Dad, a night owl like me, heard about a meteor shower tonight, and we’ve been hanging out here for half an hour or so, watching shooting stars. I’ve seen six and Dad claims to have seen eleven—twelve counting this latest one, which I didn’t catch. I think that’s impossible.