It isn’t long before Cole charms his way into asking people a few questions on camera. I ask a few of them if I can take their photos. They all say yes, but I’m still worried they’re doing it because they feel sorry for me. I decide to use my digital camera so I can show them the photos right away. Then they can tell me if they want them deleted. To my surprise, most of them ask if they can have a copy. I take their email addresses and phone numbers and promise to make them prints.
My favorite moment is when I take a picture of Humphrey sitting in our large brown fake-leather recliner. He’s a sea of brown with a sweet floating face in an aura of fluorescent light.
I snap a few candid shots of Dad and Kelsey talking in the corner. It feels a lot like eavesdropping. When I look at the photos, of the moments captured in time, all I see is the happiness on my dad’s face.
I take some shots of Cole as he works the room too. When I review these shots, I see that I lingered over his shoulders and arms. I should delete them.
Cole sidles up to me at the end of the meeting. “You going to upload the shots to your Instagram or use them in your project?”
“I’m going to use them,” I say. “I have an idea for a kind of photo essay or mixed-media type of thing. Not sure yet, but it’s something.”
“Good for you,” he says. “Anyway, you wouldn’t want to ruin your Insta feed. It’s all photos of benches so far, right?”
I shake my head. He’s relentless with the teasing.
“So,” I say.
“So?” he asks.
I give him a look. “Earlier?”
He grins at me. “What?”
“You know,” I say.
“Nope.”
“God, you’re infuriating.”
“I think you mean adorable,” he says.
“Cole.”
“Logan.”
I take a breath. “Look, you’re not my boyfriend.”
His always-on smile falters for a second. “I know that,” he says.
We look at each other in silence. Then I try to explain.
“It’s just that—”
“It’s okay,” he says, cutting me off. “You don’t have to.”
“Cole.” I want him to understand. It’s not that I don’t have feelings for him. It’s that my feelings don’t work.
“Forget it,” he says. “I’m over it.” In true Cole style, he’s up the stairs before I can say anything.
Chapter Five
The next several Broken Hearts Club meetings are a success. Cole seems to have shrugged off the whole boyfriend/ girlfriend thing. Or, at least, he’s keeping it to himself. He keeps busy by filming the group. I’m taking lots of photos and trying to find a way to tie them all together.
We’ve been taking our Dad-mandated hosting duties seriously. We have tried to incorporate themes, like pizza night, sushi night and even a drive-in movie night. That one was a bit of a bust because no one wanted to climb into the giant cardboard car Cole built.
Things seem to be going well for Dad and Kelsey. They have been getting together outside of the meetings too. So far Dad has not called them “dates,” but I’m sure that’s to spare me. I’m fine with it, though, even if it is a little intense having Kelsey around so much.
One afternoon I walk into the kitchen after school and Kelsey is sitting at our table with her back to the door. For a half second I think it’s Mom, and when she turns around, it is all I can do not to run from the room. Sometimes I find myself wondering what Kelsey’s skin feels like. I know that sounds twisted. I don’t mean it in a weird way. I just kind of want to hold her hand for a little while.
Cole hasn’t shared his video footage with me, which is unlike him. It seems like he’s pulling away a little. He did have another great idea to help some of the Broken Hearts Club members with their problems. Cole’s need to fix broken people is intense. It turns out that my fave member, Humphrey, has a long-lost daughter, so Cole is coming over today to see if we can help him find her.
When Cole meets me in the basement, he can’t sit still. He keeps getting up and wandering the room. At one point he grabs a pen and starts stabbing a bowl of fake fruit with it.
“Did you eat a bag of coffee or something?” I ask. But he isn’t in the mood for teasing.
Humphrey has given us permission to post his photo on social media, along with a message. We note when and where his daughter was born and her first name at the time. It was Zelda, which I think is fabulous. Humphrey and Zelda’s mom had a brief affair when Humphrey was young. But then she disappeared with baby Zelda. We’re hoping someone sees the post and can reconnect them.
“You know,” I say as I finish uploading, “baby Zelda’s got to be, like, sixty or something by now.”
“Not a baby,” Cole says in a faraway voice, his face sad.
“You okay?” I ask.
He takes a deep breath. I’m freaked out by how weird things are between us. He has never been this awkward. “I want to go to the spring dance and I want you to go with me. And not in an ironic, let’s-go-as-friends-and-make-fun-of-all-the-eager-dancers kind of way. In a sincere way. As in for real.”
I stare at him, caught off guard. “You want to take me to the dance?”
“Yes. I do. Please don’t say something sarcastic right now, Lo, because I can’t handle it. I’m serious.”
What is he thinking? Under any normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be caught dead at a school dance. It’s a nightmare in the flesh to me.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Say yes,” he pleads. “Choose something good, something healthy. Live a little,” he says. He cringes, realizing it is the wrong thing to say.
“I’m sorry, Cole. I can’t,” I say.
“You can. But you won’t. You can never do anything for me. You’re completely selfish, and you just use me for…I don’t even know what.” He slams his laptop lid shut, and I jump.
Who does he think he is?
“You know what?” I say, feeling a buried anger surfacing. “I’d rather eat glass than go to that stupid dance.”
The look of hurt on Cole’s face shocks me, but I’m committed now. And these feelings of anger are seductive. I’ve been numb for so long that even rage feels delicious. “I can’t think of anything worse.” I can’t believe the words coming from my mouth.
“I’ll ask someone else then,” he says, firing back. “Maybe Sienna,” he says. Sienna is a very gorgeous, very blond, very talented girl from our Media Arts class. She is the polar opposite of me.
“Fine,” I say. “Ask her. What do I care?” It’s a surprise, these feelings. I’m jealous when I imagine Sienna saying yes to his invitation. Why wouldn’t she? I imagine how they will laugh and dance and feel joy together. All things I can’t seem to do.
“I will ask her,” he says. “At least Sienna is nice to me. Do you know how long it has been since someone said something nice to me? Sienna isn’t the type of girl I go for, but maybe that’s a good thing. So far my ‘type’ hasn’t been good for me.”
He stands up to leave but then sits back down in shock when he sees the tears running down my cheeks. I wipe them away.
“Snapshot, Lo,” he says. “You’re freaking me out.”
“No, you don’t get to do that,” I say.
“Yes, I do,” he says. “Snapshot, Logan. You tell me what’s going on here, what’s going on with us. What do you see? I’ll tell you my snapshot. I see my beloved friend wasting her life because she’s afraid.”
I can’t speak. That tidal wave of emotions is about to make landfall. Cole continues to talk, and all I can do is listen in pain.
“Sometimes I think if we didn’t live so close to each other we wouldn’t be friends,” he says. “I know it has been hard. My mom didn’t die, but did you know that my parents are probably splitting up?”
I look up at him. I had no idea.
“They’re broke and fighting all the time. I didn’t say anything to y
ou because I thought you couldn’t handle it. You have so much going on. But I thought with this stupid Broken Hearts Club, we could find a way to get it to help you too. Maybe you would start to see things for the way they are again.”
“See what?” I manage.
“I’m in love with you, Lo,” he says. “You know that.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s all doomed.”
“What do you mean?” Cole asks. He is frustrated. “It doesn’t have to be like that. You’re grieving. Depressed. I think you need some help.”
“That’s not it. That’s not the problem!” I shout at him.
“It is!” he shouts back.
“Stop it! Stop trying to make me love you!” I’m aware of footsteps on the stairs as we yell at each other.
“Why, Logan? Why?” Cole pleads with me.
“Because I’m going to die.” The words come out as a wail, distorted from the lump in my throat and the tears that flow now. “I’m going to die and you’ll have to watch and you’ll never be the same again.”
There is a brief silence, and a soft voice, Kelsey’s, floats over the room. “Time to go home now, Cole,” she says. The kindness in her voice, coupled with the warmth of her hand on the back of my shoulder, is my undoing. I sob like I haven’t in a year, not since the moment I woke up to a world without my mother.
Cole leaves.
Kelsey sinks onto the couch next to me. We stay like that for a long time before I realize that my dad is halfway down the stairs. I can see the tears on his cheeks.
Kelsey puts her arms around me, and I let her.
Chapter Six
If I thought being numb was difficult, and that having my feelings on mute was its own kind of purgatory, then I had no idea what fresh hell it would be to have my emotions come flooding back all at once. Waking up the morning after my fight with Cole is like waking up with all my skin scrubbed off. Every nerve and feeling seems brand new.
My mom always said that the truth is the key to freedom, and what I said to Cole was the truth. It seems like it was the thing that allowed my feelings to unleash, even if that truth is ugly and even if it’s a truth that none of us wants to acknowledge.
I might have Huntington’s disease.
Here’s a snapshot of what the disease is like. It attacks your brain, causes you to lose all control of how you move, how you feel and how you think, until there’s nothing left of what made you you. Many of the symptoms are similar to those of so many other diseases. Mom was depressed, but maybe that was because she knew she had the disease. She was irritable, but wouldn’t you be? She couldn’t control all these sudden jerky movements that came out of nowhere, and that made her self-conscious.
One time I heard Mom talking to Dad about it. She said the worst thing was not being able to learn new stuff anymore, and that her decision making was getting so bad that she couldn’t even be responsible for her own child.
It wasn’t long before Mom couldn’t walk. Speaking took great effort. At the very end she couldn’t swallow, and she was so thin I could lift her in my arms.
If I have Huntington’s, I could make it to forty before all this happens to me. Is that long enough to live a life? It’s more than some people get. Or I could get an early-onset form of the disease. I do have some mental issues, hello. But I’m not clumsy, and I’m not slurring my speech, so I’ll take that as a good sign. My school performance, not so much. If I do have the juvenile version, I’m looking at ten decent years, tops. Oh, and here’s a delightful tidbit. Because my mom had it, if I have it too, then something horrible called “anticipation” can occur, which means the disease appears even earlier.
The only way to know if I have it is to take a genetic test. So take it, right? Well, if I take it, and I find out I have it, then whatever future I have left will appear through the lens of terminal disease. A life of pain and decline. Sounds delightful, right?
Or I can live my life not knowing my status, keeping hope alive. But then I’ll be afraid whenever I experience something that could be mistaken for a symptom. For example, something called blunted affect is an early sign of Huntington’s. What’s blunted affect? It means your emotions are not registering. Yeah.
At least I can take my feelings roaring back as a good sign. But man, I’d forgotten how much this hurts. I don’t know if this is progress or what, but Dad and Kelsey say I’m on the right path. So far they’ve both just let me be this crying, leaking mess. Dad keeps leaving tissues and cups of tea around, and he’s hovering. But he’s also avoiding talking about Huntington’s. He doesn’t want to deal with it at all.
As for Kelsey, well, she’s around too. I’m not sure I noticed it happening, but she’s always here. She doesn’t live here—Dad would ask me about that first—but she might as well be. If someone had told me several months ago that Dad would have a new girlfriend, I would have told them they were high.
One thing Dad has not given me a break on is school. But there’s no Cole showing up bright and early to drag me there. It’s just my sorry self and my own feet getting me there. Not being with Cole is weird, but it’s a relief. I can’t be what he wants me to be right now.
Walking to school is kind of nice. It feels like an eternity since I looked at my neighborhood. The spring air is fresh, and everything is coming alive—birds, trees, the well-tended gardens of my neighbors. Today as I walk down our street, I notice that each home has its own little maple tree at the end of the drive. Some are taller than others and budding with fresh growth. Others are stunted and still bare. I pull out my Pentax and snap some shots of the dark brown branches against the bright, light-blue sky. But I know the black- and-white exposures will look like dark shots of lightning against a blown-out background. For the first time in a long while, I consider switching back to color film.
When I get to the end of my street and turn the corner onto the one that leads to my school, I notice the other students walking, the cars zooming by on their way to work. There’s a whole world I’ve been blind to for months. It’s like I had put on an emotional blindfold after Mom died. And the fight with Cole ripped it clean off.
With my camera in my hands and so many potential subjects all around me, I can’t help but snap shots. I take sharp-focus, high-speed shots of people walking. I play with the depth of field so that the background is blurry and the people are in heightened detail.
I take close-ups of flowers peeking through cracks in the sidewalk. I manage to take a pretty detailed shot of a large black beetle stuck on a wad of gum.
“I know how you feel, little buddy,” I say before nudging it to safety.
I hear the loud rumble of a motorcycle coming up the street, and I change my shutter speed to bulb—that’s the setting that opens the shutter for as long as you have your finger on the trigger. It can let in a ton of light or a little, and the effect can be ghostly or blurry. In this case, once the motorbike comes into view, I press the shutter button and then pan the camera to focus on the bike as it rides by, releasing the button as it goes. If all works out, the shot will look as though the motorcycle is traveling at a hyper-fast speed, with trailing tracers of light and shadow coming from it. Now I really wish I had color film in my camera—the red taillight on the bike would have made such a cool effect. I vow to look for a roll of color film in my locker as soon as I get inside.
As I step onto the school grounds, I see the other students milling around, meeting friends, carrying their giant backpacks full of homework, sporting team jerseys and other uniforms and looking like real people. How did I not notice them before?
I’m acutely aware of Cole’s car too. His dented white Toyota, unmistakable with its rust spots and single blue passenger door (the result of the donut fiasco), sits in the staff parking lot. He got here early today. Is he driving someone else around now? I put the idea out of my head. He has the right to do that if he wants. Still, I find myself eyeing his car as I walk past, trying to see if he’s in there with s
omeone. He’s not. It’s empty.
He’s not leaning against my locker door when I get there either. I open it, gazing around the hall at the throng of students hurrying to first class. There’s no sign of him, but his locker is on the other side of school from mine. I shuffle through the mess of my locker, past all the empty film canisters and scraps of paper, and grab my art notebook. Today I might have something to show Ms. Mill.
I notice my backup camera bag on the top shelf. Maybe there’s some color film in there. I grab it and take it with me, slamming my locker door behind me. My arms are full, and I hurry down the hall to class.
I walk in before the bell and take my usual spot at the large table in the back. I dump my folder and camera bag on the table with a thump. Several people look up, but Cole, sitting near the front today, doesn’t turn my way. Okay.
Ms. Mill walks in with her giant travel mug of coffee and overflowing briefcase and waves hello. “Workshop,” she says, and I sigh in relief. She’s giving us some free time in class to work on our projects. Was her weekend rough too?
I take the opportunity to search for a roll of color film in the camera case. I unzip it. My backup camera is a manual Leica, an old one. It’s the camera I learned how to shoot with. Mom found it for me at an estate sale, and the owner didn’t know how desirable these old Leicas are to true photographers. It needed work—it was missing a lens, and the inside seals were crumbling. But we fixed it up, and it has served me well, even if the shutter gets a little sticky at times.
I lift the compartment flap where I keep my film and see two empty canisters and one roll of color film. Success!
I pull out the camera to load it and notice that it still has Mom’s Aztec-print camera strap attached to it. I had forgotten about it. How could I forget something like that?
“Hey,” says someone with a sweet-sounding voice. “Cool camera. Leica, right?”
I look up and see that Sienna is talking to me from across the room, her golden hair cascading over the back of her chair. Cole glances over with a guilty look.
The Unbroken Hearts Club Page 3
