Unbreak My Heart

by Melissa Walker

  “I didn’t give you the idea,” I say, kind of impressed that he remembers my name. What was his real name again? Josh? Joe? John?

  “Well, not directly, but definitely indirectly,” says Red. “I wouldn’t have thought of it if I hadn’t been explaining to you that I’m not one of those people who has bananas everywhere that go brown. We don’t let them go brown. My dad eats them too fast!”

  He pauses and I just stare at him.

  “So, yeah,” he says, finally letting the awkwardness of this entire encounter wash over him for a moment. But just a moment. Then he smiles like we’re old friends. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  “Uh … thanks.” I hide my grin because I don’t want to encourage Red, but I’m a little bit happy he told me, because I did have that thought about the bananas. And most people don’t think like I do. Only Amanda really. And Ethan.

  “Do you remember my name, Clem?” he asks me suddenly.

  “Of course.” I’m internally panicking but externally acting quite cool, I think.

  He folds his arms across his chest and blocks the narrow bridge to land.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, I might not remember your actual name,” I say. “But the thing is, I gave you a nickname.”

  His eyes widen in delight, but they’re tinged with suspicion, if I read him correctly. Which I think I do. This guy is like an open book. “Really?” he asks. “Tell me.”

  And here’s where I don’t want to admit that my nickname is so obvious and lame. I quickly scan my brain—which I usually think of as a very sharp tool—and try to come up with a fake nickname. I can’t tell him that I’ve been thinking of him as “Red.”

  “Please don’t say Carrot-Top or something awful like that,” he says, before I can answer. “Carrot tops are green, anyway.”

  He does have a point there.

  I’m still silent while he keeps going: “What is it, like, ‘Mr. Universe’? Or ‘That-Really-Smart-and-Funny-Guy’?”

  Okay, as fast as my mind is, Red’s is faster. I’m totally pressured, and I cave.

  “I was calling you Red in my head,” I say.

  So lame.

  “Hmm … original,” he says, but he’s smiling. “It’s James. James Townsend. You could go with JT, or just call me James, or even Red, if you must, though I prefer Burnt Sienna.”

  I can feel my face turning burnt sienna.

  “Cle-em!” shouts Olive. She’s peeking her head out of the dock deli and waving to me. “I need some money!”

  “I’ve got to, um …,” I start.

  He gets out of my way this time.

  “As long as we’re clear on the state of me and bananas,” he says.

  “Clear,” I say, willing myself to remember James.

  Then I walk up the dock and don’t turn around to see if James is watching me. But I think he is.

  My family spends the rest of the day cleaning—Mom says the boat needs a good once-over anyway. I’m pretty sure she says that so Olive doesn’t have to feel too bad about the toilet issue taking up a whole day of our trip, but it’s nice of her.

  James is over on his boat, Dreaming of Sylvia, and he waves to me every now and then. They’re just across the water from us on Pier 2. I guess I don’t see the harm in being friendly; it’s not as though we’re going to be hanging out for more than, like, five minutes at a dock if our boats happen to be in the same spot at the same time.

  The cleanup takes longer than I thought it would, and soon Dad has adjusted to the idea that we’ll stay at the marina overnight—the dockmaster found a slip for us.

  Around five o’clock, the sun is right in my eyes, but when I shade them with my hand I see James’s dad striding down their pier. I watch him walk across the land to our pier and head toward The Possibility.

  “I’m Bill Townsend,” he says when he reaches me. I’m the only one outside at the moment.

  “Clem Williams.”

  “I met your folks the other night,” says Bill. “And I hear you’ve met my son, James.”

  “I have,” I say. “I hear you like bananas.”

  I don’t know why I say that—it just comes out. Bill smiles, though. “I do,” he says.

  Then he continues, “Well, now that we’ve got the formalities of names and bananas straightened out, I’d like to invite you and your parents and your sister to join us on Dreaming of Sylvia for dinner.”

  My head whips up before I can stop it. “Dinner?” I ask stupidly.

  “That’s right.”

  “Tonight?”

  Man, I sound like a total idiot.

  “No time like the present!” says Bill, laughing at me a little.

  Just then, Dad comes out of the cockpit and saves me. He and Bill shake hands and proceed to make plans for this dinner date. I keep hosing off the side of the boat absentmindedly, eavesdropping on them.

  When Bill leaves, Dad says, “Well, that was nice.” Then he goes down below to tell Mom.

  I lean against the side of The Possibility and look back toward the Townsends’ boat. James isn’t outside at the moment, and I wonder briefly if he sent his father over, if this was his idea.

  I fold my arms across my chest and resolve to be cordial, but not overly friendly, at dinner.

  This is the Summer of Me, when I figure out who I am and who my friends are and how to fix the things that happened last year. I’m not one of those girls who finds a guy and gets happy. Besides, with my track record, James is probably someone’s boyfriend anyway.

  As nice as it is to talk to someone my own age, someone who makes me laugh, even, I am still in self-punishing mode. And all I see is dumb distraction with James. Dumb distraction and a so-cute smile. Ack.

  chapter eleven

  Dear Amanda,

  Sometimes it seemed like you were hiding

  things from me too. Like you didn’t tell me

  everything anymore …

  “Ethan’s boxers, holiday themed?” I said. “That’s not a fair item.”

  “Everything’s fair,” said Amanda. “I didn’t make the list—Henry did.”

  Henry loved creating scavenger hunts for us to do on the weekends. Bishop Heights is a small town, so creative minds tend to run our lives, and Henry was definitely our most adventurous and inventive friend.

  “How does Henry even know that Ethan has holiday-themed boxers?” asked Renee.

  “He does,” said Amanda. “I can vouch.” She was sitting on the army-green shag carpet in Henry’s basement, fingering the edges of her favorite sparkly blue ballet flats. Amanda was good at being coy.

  “So are you guys officially dating?” Renee leaned forward and stared at Amanda intensely, and I was glad she was asking pointblank. I’d asked the week before, but Amanda just confessed to a kiss in the parking lot—she wouldn’t use the word boyfriend. Yet.

  “Maybe,” said Amanda, her grin growing.

  “So why isn’t Ethan here?” I asked.

  “I invited him, but his grandparents are in town.” Amanda stuck out her lips in a pout. “His mom insisted on a family night.”

  “Good,” said Aaron. “One more would have thrown off team numbers.”

  The teams were me and Aaron versus Renee and Amanda—mainly because Aaron and Renee both had early fall birthdays and already had their licenses—with Henry acting as Director of Scavenge and Official Point Tallier. The list looked like this:

  EASY (1 point):

  1 tip cup from Ben & Jerry’s, minus the tips

  1 bag of orange candy circus peanuts—extra points

  for eating them upon reconvening

  1 official traffic cone

  MEDIUM (2 points):

  1 buoy from Dilby Lake

  1 size-6 vintage shoe (ladies)

  1 pair of Ethan’s boxers (holiday themed)

  HARD (3 points):

  1 signed note from Henry’s mom saying she’ll allow him to stay out all night for prom

  1 family p
ortrait from Principal Sullivan’s house

  1 (used) hairnet from a Wendy’s employee (with signature on a napkin attesting to its authenticity)

  No team could get everything on the list in our two-hour time frame, obviously, but the idea was to get at least one Hard-level thing, because they were worth the most points. If you went for all Easy stuff, you’d never be able to win.

  “I think we should beat Amanda to Ethan,” I said as soon as Aaron and I got in his car. He has a speedy little Jeep that he always drives for scavenger hunts because it has an obnoxious horn honk—it plays “La Cucaracha”—and he likes to tease the other team with it.

  “It would definitely make her mad … ,” said Aaron, smirking. “Let’s do it!” Then he peeled out of Henry’s gravel driveway, spraying some rocks for effect. He hit the horn, too, a signal that the hunt was on.

  We sped to Ethan’s house. Amanda’s car was nowhere in sight—she and Renee must have gone after something else.

  “I’ll go.” I bolted from the passenger seat and ran up to Ethan’s front door.

  I knocked three times. I was already laughing in anticipation when Ethan opened the door. He smiled this huge smile.

  “Clem!” he said. “I thought you guys were—”

  His gaze went to Aaron’s car behind me.

  “Uh-oh … I’m not on the scavenger hunt list, am I?”

  “Nope,” I said. “But your boxers are! Holiday themed, specifically.”

  “Ethan, who’s at the—?” Ethan’s mom appeared behind him. “Well, is this Amanda? She’s even prettier than you said!”

  I turned red instantly. Please let her not have heard me say boxers.

  “No, this is Clem,” said Ethan. “She’s a friend of Amanda’s. I mean, she’s my friend too. She’s … Clem.”

  He looked so cute as he got flustered in front of his mom.

  “Hi, Mrs. Garrison,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was an innocent-and-winning way.

  “Won’t you come in, Clem … Clementine, is it?” she asked. “Such a lovely name.”

  “Um, yeah, thanks,” I said, glancing back at Aaron, who was gesturing wildly, urging me to come back to the car, to abandon the mission. We were losing time and had to keep going, but I wasn’t going to give up on this one. I gave him a palm that meant “Wait,” and I headed into Ethan’s house.

  Once inside, Ethan disappeared while I met his dad, his grandparents, and a visiting uncle. It was like a family reunion.

  Just as Grandpa Garrison was launching into a round of “Oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’ …” and I was thinking I was going to face an epic fail on the underwear quest, Ethan saved me.

  “Clem needs to pick up this stuff for history class,” he said, thrusting a thick red three-ring binder into my hands. “She has a big project due, so she has to get going, but I’m sure you’ll meet her again another time.”

  He looked over at me and smiled. “She’s one of my best friends at school.”

  I felt my heart pitter-patter then, and in a burst of energy I stood on my tiptoes and hugged him quickly before I headed for the front door, calling “Good night, everyone!” as Grandpa Garrison kept humming my namesake song.

  When I got back to the car I was holding the binder to my chest. I jumped in and held it up to show Aaron, who was shouting that I’d taken forever.

  “Score!” I said, opening up the binder. Inside was a pair of red boxers with candy canes all over them, and a Post-it from Ethan.

  That silenced the shouting.

  “Nice!” said Aaron.

  He pulled out of the driveway and headed for Ben & Jerry’s as I looked at the note.

  “C, I certify that these are mine,” I read out loud. “Please return them soon. Heart, E.”

  “Heart?” asked Aaron. “He wrote H-E-A-R-T on there?”

  “No, he drew a heart,” I said.

  “I think you read that as love,” he said. “Because obviously he loves you.”

  “Totally.” I knew Aaron was joking, but I still felt excited about that heart. I stuffed the note in my pocket.

  When we returned to Henry’s house at the end of the night, we’d managed to get six of the nine items on the scavenger hunt list. We presented each thing one by one as Henry diligently tallied the score on his official scavenger hunt clipboard.

  “It’s looking good for Team Clemaron!” shouted my partner.

  Then Amanda started taking the orange circus peanuts they’d bought out of the bag. As she chewed each one slowly and deliberately with her rosebud mouth, I tried to do the math in my head.

  “Wait a minute,” I said after she’d already swallowed almost the entire bag (math takes me a while), “even if you eat all of those you’re still a point under us.”

  “Ha!” said Renee. “Not with these.”

  She opened up Amanda’s tote and pulled out a pair of boxers. They had little snowmen on them. I wondered briefly if they were decoys, or if all Ethan’s underwear was patterned in this cutesy way, or if he had some serious briefs tucked in his drawer somewhere and these were just the for-show versions we were seeing.

  “You went over there too,” Aaron said.

  “Did Grandpa Garrison sing to you?” I asked.

  “I didn’t go over there said Amanda. “I just had these at my house.”

  I looked at her with a question in my eyes, and she smiled back at me. Then, when everyone else looked away she mouthed, “I’ll tell you later.” I could see her eyes shining with excitement as she popped the last orange circus peanut in her mouth, winning the scavenger hunt. And I felt a pang in my chest. Ethan had been at her house. He left his boxers there. Maybe they had been naked together.

  And she hadn’t told me.

  chapter twelve

  I wake up to a soft knock at my door. When Olive peeks in, she’s wearing a headband with a purple bow on top of her short hair.

  “What’s the occasion?” I ask, rubbing my eyes. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but now that I’m waking up, I’m glad I did. Naps are the best.

  “We’re going out to dinner,” says Olive.

  “We’re wha—?” I start. But then I remember. Red James, his father. Dinner on their boat.

  I cover my head with a pillow.

  “Where’s James’s mom, anyway?” asks Olive. “It’s just him and his dad on the boat, right?”

  “Do I look like James’s biographer?”

  Olive frowns like she’s thinking hard.

  “And don’t bring it up tonight, Livy,” I continue. “That’s not something you can ask about. Maybe they’re divorced or something. We have no idea.”

  “I am not a social moron,” says Olive in a matter-of-fact way that makes her sound twenty years older than she is.

  Then she becomes ten again. “I think James likes you,” she singsongs.

  I sit up and face her. “Just because he was talking to me doesn’t mean he likes me,” I say. “He’s the kind of guy who talks to everyone. He’s maniacally happy.”

  I think about his big smile then. It’s true—he’s always so upbeat.

  “What are you smiling at?” asks Olive.

  I straighten my mouth. “Nothing. Now get out of here so I can get dressed.”

  “Wear something pretty!” says Olive as she shuts the door behind her.

  Hmph.

  I look at the clock and realize we’re supposed to be over there in ten minutes. No time for even a navy shower. I take off my clean-the-boat sweatshirt and jeans and put on a short-sleeved cotton sweater and slightly better dark-wash jeans. It’s not like I have actual nice clothes on the boat with me. I don’t even have any accessories; how did Olive think to pack things like headbands? I run a brush through my hair and twist it up into a loose bun, hoping that will do. I even swipe on some lip gloss—my first makeup in weeks. Then I pinch my cheeks for color and smile. I’m surprised at how easily my mouth turns up; I’ve been having to work at smiling lately. But tonight it feels almost natural.
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  Our family of four steps out onto the dock in the fading sunlight. Dad’s in khakis and Top-Siders. Mom’s wearing a white V-neck T-shirt and blue linen pants, Olive’s got her bow, and I’m in lip gloss. We must look like the cover of Boating Life magazine.

  Earlier, I was dreading tonight, but now I feel kind of … I don’t know, hopeful? I’m determined to be normal. To stop thinking about Ethan. To see if I can get some of my old self back.

  “Welcome aboard!” says Bill when we arrive at their slip. I notice that he’s changed into a button-down and practically the same khakis as my dad, and I’m glad I fixed myself up a little. Then James ducks out from under the mainsail. He’s got on a royal blue polo shirt that makes his eyes look like the ocean.

  “Hey,” he says, holding out a hand to help me step aboard. I take it, but not because I need it.

  “That shirt really makes your hair stand out,” I say. I don’t know why I said that. I think I want to avoid telling him his eyes are, like, the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “Uh, thanks.” He runs a hand over his head. “Oh, I got us something.”

  He goes down below and comes up again a few seconds later carrying three root beers with straws. They’re those old-fashioned glass-bottled root beers.

  Olive claps her hands together. “Those are Clem’s favorite thing!” she says.

  James leans over so Olive can take her drink, then he hands one to me.

  “Cheers,” he says, and the three of us clink root beers.

  I stare down at the thick glass lip as I finger the striped bendy straw (also a favorite). I can see the sunset colors in the glass—pink, orange, yellow—and for a moment, I feel fizzy and content, with nothing else on my mind.

  I take a long sip and look over at my parents. They’re lifting mugs of foamy beer in a toast while they smile at James’s dad. Maybe this’ll be a good night.

  At dinner, Bill tells stories about his at-sea adventures, and he and Dad laugh loudly together as they try to outdo each other with nautical talk. I mostly have no idea what they’re saying, but it doesn’t matter, because their energy is contagious. Mom intervenes to correct Dad on details sometimes, but Bill just tells her that he would never want the truth to get in the way of a good boating story.