The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C

by LeighAnn Kopans

  Matt had watched her solemnly for a few sips, and then sat back, shaking his head. It was the most incredible feeling to Amy who, up until that moment, had never had the feeling that anyone had really, truly listened to her, let alone understood her. “This world, Amy. What are we going to do?”

  That just infused more significance—and more purpose—into every word she’d just said. Matt was taking her thoughts, her concerns, and considering them for himself. Maybe she’d change his mind, open it to a new path, however small. If she could affect Matt in that way, who else could she reach? It was encouraging and terrifying all at once.

  “You know,” Matt had said after a few moments of long thought, “sometimes I think things are never going to change. Sometimes I lose faith in us.”

  Amy’s heart had started. Her friendship with Matt was easy, unladen with expectation. Something that felt like a breath of fresh air to her. “Us?” she stuttered.

  “You know. Humanity. What are we even doing? We’re letting everything go to hell, and for what? A little extra money? A sense of moral superiority?”

  Amy looked at him, her eyes wide.

  Matt shook his head. “And, yeah. Us us, too.”

  “Us?” she asked again.

  “Us. Christians. We say we want to be like Him, but what are we actually doing about it? Jesus knocked down the money changers’ tables, and it’s like we’re all picking them back up again. We’re doing the opposite of what He wanted. I mean, can you even wrap your head around that? We say we’re following Him when all we’re really doing is walking away from Him.”

  It was something startling, to see Matt there in his “Body piercing saved my life” t-shirt, hackles up, legs fidgeting, all-but-blaspheming in the middle of a coffee shop. But more startling was the fact that Amy wasn’t embarrassed at all. In fact, she felt what he was saying, deep in her heart. Not only because she’d agreed with him, but because she knew she had been one of those people who had done absolutely nothing about it.

  Amy was pretty sure she hadn’t walked away from Jesus, but maybe she hadn’t been trying that hard to follow Him, either.

  So she’d leaned forward, placed her hand gently over his, and caught his eyes. They softened immediately when they looked into hers. “You’re right,” she’d said simply.

  And he’d replied simply. “Thank you.” Their work for the rest of the afternoon was quiet, comfortable, but Amy knew something had shifted. Some of the lightness in their conversation had darkened, but so much had deepened with a new, calming strength. It was a certainty that warmed Amy whenever she thought about seeing him again.

  Standing in the middle of the sidewalk clutching the paper with the ugly red “71” scrawled at the top, Amy wondered if there had been a higher purpose to that little exchange between them. When Matt had revealed a part of himself that made her see him as more than the goofy, lighthearted guy that most of the world saw, and Amy had shown that she had understood. The fact that he had shown her something so deep maybe, just maybe, meant that she could share something deep with him, too.

  So she wiped back her tears, just because she probably looked horrible, and walked into the cafe, plunking her stuff down on the floor beside the chair that Matt always saved for her, just like she always did.

  The signature lopsided smile Matt always flashed her when she sat down quickly turned down when he caught a glimpse of her face. “Amy. Are you okay?”

  She shrugged, and made a split second decision. She reached into her bag and pulled out the test, and handed it to him across the table.

  Almost instantly, her fingers itched to grab it back. What would he think of a girl who couldn’t get a decent grade on an entry-level test, the first step in what would be a very long road to her degree?

  “Aw, crap,” Matt said, scanning the front page of the test, then quickly flipping through the others. “The first bad grade of college always sucks. What did this come to?”

  “A C minus,” Amy mumbled. “No curve. It’s just…I don’t know how I’m going to get through the rest of these classes. I have three more years full of them.”

  A look of confusion swept over Matt’s face. “What do you mean? This is about two- and three-year-old kids. You’re not majoring in stay-at-home momming, are you?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said?” A flash of anger went through Amy. “Sorry, I just—my major is Early Childhood Education. I’m going to be a preschool teacher, remember?”

  “Nope. No.” Matt shook his head back and forth vehemently. “I promise you, Amy Bauer, I have been listening intently to every word you’ve said. You’ve told me how ridiculous you and Arielle are in biology lab, and you’ve told me every marginally interesting thing about your Urban Planning class. I know more about the evolution of downtown Indianapolis than I ever thought I would know.”

  Amy smiled, looking down at her hands, which she’d folded in her lap. “Okay, but that is fascinating. Of course you remember what I said.”

  “No, the way you talk about it makes it fascinating. Which is exactly why I thought you were in the City Planning program. One of the best in the country? You’re an academic rock star?”

  “Did I say that?” Amy asked, blushing and checking his eyes to see if he was teasing.

  “No, you’d never boast like that. But I put the pieces together. Anyway, this whole Early Childhood Kindergarten major thing? There’s no way. You like buildings and cities and the way they affect society way too much for anything else to be your focus.”

  As he said the words, she ran through her memories to see if they matched his. She realized he was right. Of course he was. Suddenly, every solid feeling about studying here at Northern became splintered, mixed up, and muddled together.

  “The thing is,” she said in response to that quiet watchfulness of his that told her he was willing to wait for a response, “I’m supposed to be a preschool teacher. I’m supposed to go home, work in my old school, and—” the end of that sentence had always been ‘marry Adam.’ But she knew, deep down, that was off the table now. He’d changed so much. And now, she realized as she looked at Matt’s waiting posture, so had she.

  “Who says?” Matt asked, and Amy scoffed. “No, seriously. Who tells anyone, at the age of seventeen, what the rest of her life will look like?”

  “I did,” Amy said quietly, trying to work out whether she was ashamed, embarrassed, sad, or just as confused as Matt seemed to think she was, after all. “I wanted that to be my life. I’m the one who said that.”

  “Okay, even if that’s one hundred percent true…you’re not allowed to change your mind? You’re not allowed to fall in love and let that change the course of your life?”

  Amy’s eyes snapped to Matt’s and her heart dropped into her stomach. “I…I thought…I mean, the whole thing with Adam…I haven’t even considered…”

  “I’m not talking about falling in love with a person!” Matt’s fist pounded the table, and Amy jumped. “Sorry, I just…you love something, you’re good at something, you should let that guide you. Not anything else. That was, like, the most important thing I learned last year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know I just declared my major.”

  She nodded. She’d bought him a Francis Bean special recipe magic bar to celebrate. “Nonprofit management.” She knew what a strong Christian he was, and imagined that he would one day be the guy on the commercials, asking viewers to sponsor a suffering child in Guatemala for eight dollars a month.

  “Guess what my moms wanted me to do?”

  “I…really have no idea.” She thought of everything Matt was to her—enthusiastic, passionate, positive, supportive. Nonprofit management had seemed perfect for him.

  “Well, for starters, something lucrative. We never had a ton of money and they wanted me to have an easier time. But if not that, at least to pour my love for Christ into leading a congregation.”

  “So why didn’t
you?”

  “It just wasn’t right for me. Not big enough, maybe. Too constricted, to set in stone as just one path. And I wanted—I want—so much more.”

  Amy’s breath caught. His words shot straight to her heart, because they articulated everything she’d been thinking about the difference between the life everyone expected her to have, and the one she’d been rudely jostled out of the day that Adam had ripped it away from her.

  This was the first time she realized that she wasn’t all that sad about it. Her heart had been broken, certainly. But that was all about having a plan, about safety, and security. It had turned out that, when all that hinged on one person, when that person was gone, the rest of the dream fell apart.

  And maybe Matt was right. Maybe that meant she was cut out for something else, after all.

  “So what changed your mind? What was the final push?”

  “I’ve never really told anyone that before,” he said, his cheeks flushing just as hers had a few minutes earlier, when he’d called everything about her future plans into question.

  “Would you tell me? Since, you know, it might be crucial for me making this life decision?”

  “It’s…kind of a long story. With a simple message. But, long story short, it was a volunteer gig that really changed my heart.” He stopped there.

  Amy just watched him, trying so hard to be patient, kind, and open as he’d been for her.

  “I’m actually heading there now. Would you…I mean, you definitely don’t have to, and it’s pretty unconventional…and I know for a fact that most people don’t want to get involved in this kind of thing…”

  “I think I just discovered that I’m not most people,” Amy interrupted, speaking slowly enough that he’d understand how sincere she was. “I’d love to come along.”

  Matt sighed and shook his head back and forth slowly, a look of wonder in his eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Amy had said, suddenly unable to tear her gaze from his. “Surer than I’ve been of anything for a long time.” She didn’t really mean the gig—she had no idea what kind of volunteer work it was. But what surged through her now was clearer and purer than anything she’d ever felt—it was a belief in Matt, in his goodness. A trust that she’d never felt for anyone before, besides her mom and dad when she was little. Even that had long since crumbled.

  The two of them packed up silently, and when Matt stood, he held his hand down for her, even though she didn’t need the help getting up. She took it, and followed him out.

  They drove quietly for about ten minutes, and in settled a strange peace. For the first time in a very long time, Amy felt like she was in the right place, with the right person, doing the right thing—even though she had no idea where she was going.

  Soon, after they got off a highway exit and wound through the streets behind a nondescript white-walled office park, it became clear that that feeling had been completely and totally wrong.

  The building, square and stark with windows high off the ground and a solid metal door, could have housed anything. It was only the complete lack of any signage that set Amy on edge. That, and the fact that at 2:00 in the afternoon there were only two cars in the parking lot. Outside of one stood a girl with a long, blond French braid, not much younger than Amy, wearing worn blue jeans and a long button down shirt. She looked out past the building where cars whizzed down the highway, blinking the harsh wind out of red-rimmed eyes. She looked alone, resigned as she leaned against her rusting car. She was the picture of hopelessness.

  Amy’s heart broke for her even before the third car got there. Three people piled out—a younger teenager from the back, a man in jeans and a black suit jacket, and a woman in a turtleneck sweater from the front. The woman reached in the back seat and pulled out two posterboards, the man clutched a stack of thin leaflets and a small leather-bound book.

  Amy’s mounting sense of dread was confirmed when the boy flipped around his sign and it read, “In God’s court abortion is murder.”

  The other sign, held by the woman Amy presumed to be his mom, read the slightly milder, “Abortion harms women.” Amy braced herself for the gruesome images she’d first seen when her shaking fingers had searched “abortion” on the computer six months ago—she’d later found out that they were computer manipulated, but that hadn’t scrubbed her brain of the image of raw, bleeding miniature humans, murdered by selfish girls.

  Girls like her.

  “Dammit!” Matt swore, throwing the car into park and wrenching his door open. “We tried to feed them a fake schedule, but it looks like they’re getting smarter. Dammit,” he repeated before hoisting himself out of his seat, slamming the door shut, and doing a quick jog to the front of the clinic.

  Amy’s mouth gaped in horror as she watched. This wasn’t Matt. He wouldn’t hurt someone so vulnerable on purpose, would he? He hadn’t even brought a sign, but people like this probably had an extra in the trunk. Had he decided not to waste time and just follow the girl to the front door instead? She shook her head back and forth, silently praying that this wouldn’t be too horrible to watch, wondering what in the world she had gotten into by dating another guy who was so very, very religious.

  But then Matt did something nothing short of miraculous, something that sent one fat tear cascading down Amy’s cheek. Mid-stride, he shrugged out of his jacket, swung it around the arms of the girl, and started to walk her into the building.

  The three protesters swarmed her, shouting things that Amy couldn’t decipher through the car window she didn’t dare roll down. It didn’t matter. All she could hear was the sounds of her memories, anyway. Memories of parishoners from the church about twenty miles away from the clinic, which, thank God, was another hundred miles away from her house. The fact that she’d dressed so differently than usual, her fiery hair stuffed in a knit cap, so that nobody would recognize her, didn’t take the sting out of the words that bombarded her as she quick-stepped into the clinic. “Don’t kill your baby! Abortion is murder! Mommy, mommy, don’t hurt me!”

  Matt pulled the jacket in closer, pushed the girl to move a little faster, using his own body to shield her from the people brandishing signs at her, so wild-eyed they looked about ready to foam at the mouth.

  Amy barely saw the woman nudge the boy, and he pulled a small silver square out of his pocket, then held it up to his eye. Quick as lightning, Matt stopped in his tracks, pulled his jacket over the girl’s head, spun her around, and put her at his back. Between being able to see the movement of his mouth and his voice being louder than all of them, Amy heard the words he shouted—“NOT TODAY.” And he shoved his hand in front of what, it was now clear, was a camera phone.

  What a nightmare.

  Amy had read about cameras, that some people used them to record and publicize the identities of all the girls who had killed their poor innocent babies. Even though Dad rarely went online, and Mom barely knew how to use a computer, she hadn’t doubted for a second that word would get back quickly if her face showed up on the Internet. She had stupidly hoped the heavy makeup she’d put on, plus the tucked-away hair and sunglasses, would be enough to disguise her.

  Luckily, there had been no cameras on the day Amy walked into the abortion clinic. But there had been the posters, which would haunt her memories just as long as her image online would have haunted her reputation, at least in Tripp Creek, forever.

  Her mascara had bled down her face in mean black streaks when she’d sat in the abortion counselor’s office, weeping and repeating that there was no other option, that if she carried the baby she wouldn’t be able to go to college, that her father would kill her. Even though she knew he wouldn’t literally kill her, the shame she knew would be on her would feel worse than death, anyway.

  For her, on that day, there had been no Matt, appearing seemingly out of nowhere to take her into the scariest, most sorrowful, shameful place on earth. As though her suffering weren’t bad enough. But watching him do the same thing
for this girl, it was like something aligned between his spirit and her heartache, like pins in a combination lock connecting at the perfect point. He may not have been there for Amy on that terrible day months ago, but his heart had done something no boy from home, not even Adam, would have done for her in that dark, dark moment.

  When Matt saved that girl from some small measure of pain and humiliation, he became Amy’s champion.

  The door shut behind him, and she watched the girl’s silhouette fade into shadow as the heavy door sealed them safely inside. Amy leaned her head against the car’s sweaty window, watching the raindrops roll lazily down the outside, each taking its own slightly varied path.

  Some scatterbrained searching on her phone’s browser confirmed that they were, in fact, at an abortion clinic—or, rather, the Carmichael County Womens’ Services Center. Her tears picked up, each one carrying another ounce of the weight of everything she’d been ashamed of for the last six months. The only stronger feeling was the realization that Matt, this friend who had grown more important to her than she ever would have expected, wouldn’t think she was a horrible person if he found out.

  After another minute, her tears started to plop on her phone, so she let her vision drift outside again. Somehow, she missed the wavy outline of Matt returning to the car. The door opened with a hard whoosh, sucking the steamy air out and blasting her with a chill that took her breath away.

  “I’m so glad I caught her. I wasn’t late, I swear, she was early.”

  Amy’s mouth gaped, shocked at his seeming apology toward her.

  “I…”

  “I know, it’s horrible, I’m sorry I didn’t explain to you what was going to happen. I thought we’d have more time,” he said, shoving the heel of his hand against the steering wheel on the last word, almost growling when he said it. “It just didn’t feel like something I wanted to have my attention divided on when we were driving. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken you today, I just wanted to show you…you don’t have to be like everyone else. You can follow your gut, and still do good things. Still be good. You know? “