Hummingbird Heart

by Robin Stevenson

  The room was small and neat, with a single bed along one wall, a desk and dresser on the other. Three girls and a guy were sitting on the bed; another guy was straddling a chair backward and a third was perched on the edge of the desk, holding a plastic Slurpee cup in two hands.

  The guy on the bed stood up as we entered. He grinned widely. “Hey, you made it.” He punched Jax’s shoulder lightly. “Yo, little bro.”

  “Not so little,” one of the girls said. She laughed.

  I waited for Jax to introduce me, but he didn’t. I shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other and smoothed down my hair, which was all messy from the helmet and the wind.

  Jax’s brother handed us each a beer. “You’ll have to excuse my rude little brother. He’s never had any manners. I’m Jason. Jaxon and Jason.” He made a face. “Awful, huh? Our parents thought it was cute.”

  “I’m Dylan.” I took the beer and couldn’t help smiling.

  “Shuffle over,” Jason ordered. The three girls groaned but moved down to the pillow end of the bed. They were all pretty in a casual, confident, unconcerned-about-appearances kind of way. Everyone introduced themselves, and I instantly forgot all their names. I often had trouble with names: I always got so worried about what I was going to say that I’d forget to even listen to the introduction.

  I was about to perch cautiously on the other end of the bed, but Jax sat first and pulled me down so I was sitting on his lap. I felt my cheeks growing hot, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to myself by objecting. I took a swig of beer and sat awkwardly on his legs, hoping I wasn’t too heavy.

  “So you go to school here?” I asked Jason. Duh. Obviously. Could I make myself look like any more of an idiot?

  He just smiled though. He wasn’t as good-looking as Jax—heavier, with glasses, a rounder, softer face and a goatee—but he had a nice smile. “Yeah. Computer science. I was here first actually. Jax and my parents followed me.”

  The others were all talking and kidding around now. I knew I should join in, but I couldn’t seem to do it. Twice I tried to speak, but no one heard me. Besides, I didn’t really have anything to say. I didn’t belong here. I felt prickly and antsy, like my skin was too tight. Jax’s arm was heavy around my shoulders, and it was hard to sit still. I just wanted to get away.

  “Is there a washroom around?” I asked.

  One of the girls—Courtney, maybe—nodded. “Straight down the hall. Want me to show you?”

  “No, I’ll find it.”

  Out in the hallway, I drew a deep breath. I felt like I might start crying. I just couldn’t seem to do this sort of thing. What the hell was wrong with me? I walked down the hall, and around the corner; then I stopped and leaned against the wall. I needed to talk to Toni. I hesitated for a moment. What if she was still furious with me? I didn’t think I could cope with that right now. But I couldn’t stand having this awful tension between us. I sat down on the floor and pulled out my cell.

  Toni picked up right away. “Dylan?”

  “Hi, yeah, it’s me.” I plunged forward. “Look, I’m so sorry about what I said. I mean, as soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t.”

  “It’s okay. Me too. I shouldn’t have said that about you being jealous either.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I was such an idiot. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so glad you’re not mad.”

  “I hate fighting with you,” Toni said. “I mean, I really hate it.”

  “Yeah.” We’d never really fought before, but this year, since the start of grade eleven, things had been all out of kilter. It was because of Finn, but it wasn’t exactly his fault. It was like an ecosystem—introducing some new non-native plant or animal could throw everything else off balance and end up destroying a whole world. Like the rabbits in Australia: They’d been introduced as a nonnative animal and they’d overrun the country within a few years, eating all the grass the sheep needed and causing all kinds of problems. I pictured Finn and frowned. There was something rather rabbity about his mouth.

  “What are you up to?” Toni asked.

  “You won’t believe this.”

  “Tell me!”

  “I’m at the university, at a party. With Jax.” It wasn’t exactly a party, but Toni didn’t need to know that.

  “Shut up. You, at a party?”

  “Yeah. His brother’s in residence here.”

  “Wow.” Toni was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, it was with a hint of reservation. “I thought you told me this morning that nothing was going on with you and Jax.”

  I nodded. It felt like a long time ago. “I know. I didn’t think he was interested, but we went out together after lunch—I ended up skipping class.”

  “You skipped? You? No way.”

  “Way. I didn’t exactly mean to.” I hesitated, wondering how much to say. “We just went for a ride on his motorbike.”

  There was a pause. I could hear a second voice—a guy’s voice—and Toni’s muffled reply. Scratchy static. “Dylan? You still there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Finn says…” She broke off. “Just be careful, okay? With Jax?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Finn says he has a bit of a rep, that’s all.”

  “What kind of a rep?” I asked. My voice sounded stiff to my own ears, and I wasn’t surprised that Toni backed down.

  “Ah, you know. The usual.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Toni spoke again. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

  I almost couldn’t answer. “Not very,” I whispered. “Um, Toni? After school today? I went to see Mark. You know. My father.”

  “Really? Shit. Does your mom know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Wow. That’s intense. So…how did it go?”

  “I don’t know.” The lump in my throat was back. “Not so good.”

  “Look, let’s hang out at lunch tomorrow, okay? And talk about it all then?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Is that okay? It’s just, Finn is here. And you should probably get back to your party anyway, right?”

  I swallowed painfully. “Don’t tell Finn, okay? About Mark, I mean.”

  Toni sounded offended. “As if I would.”

  “No. I know. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I disconnected and sat there for a minute. Then I walked slowly back down the hall to find Jax and the others.

  Jax handed me another beer. “All right?”

  I shook my head. “Fine, but I don’t want another.”

  “You sure? I already opened it.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” Everyone else seemed to think that getting drunk was fun, but the couple of times I had tried it, I’d just felt sick and giddy and spent the whole of the next day worrying about whether I’d said anything stupid. Even that party at Jessica’s—I’d only had a few drinks and I’d felt lousy afterward.

  “No problem.” He tipped the bottle up to his own lips and drank.

  “So, Dylan,” Jason said. “Jax was telling us you just met your dad for the first time. That’s pretty wild.”

  There was a roaring in my ears and a feeling in my belly like the floor was dropping away beneath me. I turned to Jax. “You told them?”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Sorry, Dyl. I didn’t know.” Jax put his hand on mine and pulled me down beside him on the bed.

  I resisted for a moment. Everyone was staring at me. I could feel their eyes even without looking up. My face felt hot. “It’s all right,” I said slowly. Maybe I had overreacted. I let myself sink down next to him. “Sorry. It’s just all kind of new. I’m not used to talking about it, that’s all.”

  Jason nodded. “That’s cool.” He looked at Jax. “You heard her, man. Change the subject.”

  “Sure.” Jax ran his hand down my back, cool and casual, like we’d been going out for ages. “What’s up for next weekend?”

  Everyone started talking
about bands and parties and clubs. I let the conversation wash over me. My thoughts were all over the place, a whirlwind of spiky fragments. Mark. Casey. Little children with big eyes and no hair. Hospital beds. Bone marrow.

  I pressed my hands against my hip bones and tried to breathe normally, but anxiety flared in my chest and rushed like acid through my veins.

  No one taught you this in chemistry, but fear was corrosive. It could eat you away from the inside.

  FourTeen

  The evening dragged on, all talk and laughter. I tried to act as if I belonged, but my mind kept slipping back to Casey and Mark.

  Jax should have known I wouldn’t have wanted everyone to know about Mark. That it was private. I leaned away from him and glanced at my watch. Christ. “It’s ten o’clock,” I told him. “I’m supposed to be home already.”

  He groaned and didn’t move.

  “Take her home, doofus. Before she turns into a pumpkin.” Jason stretched out a foot and kicked his brother. “Go on.”

  Outside, Jax put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. Then his lips were on mine. I tried to relax and kiss him back, but my crazy brain wouldn’t switch off. What if he thought I was a lousy kisser? You were supposed to open your mouth, but how much? And the whole tongue thing…it all seemed kind of weird. Did other people think about all this? I tried to stop thinking and enjoy it.

  Jax’s hands were low on my back, sliding down, slipping over the back pockets of my jeans. A bit of a rep… I wondered what exactly Finn had heard, and I pulled away, twisting my head to one side. “Hey. We should go.”

  “Mmm…yeah. Okay.” He released me slowly and handed me a helmet. “Hop on.”

  I wondered a little anxiously if he was okay to drive. I wasn’t sure how many beers he’d had. Just two, I thought. Three, maybe. Not that many, but I knew what my mother would say: Call a cab. Mom didn’t understand though. I’d look like an idiot if I refused to get on the bike.

  I looked at Jax, who was already on the bike and waiting for me, his leather jacket and helmet making him oddly anonymous. The air was damp and cold and thick with fog. I climbed on behind him and wrapped my arms tightly around his waist. “Let’s go.” Flying down the road, my nose and cheeks and hands turned to ice in the cold wind. Jax’s leather jacket was silky against my bare forearms. I felt so incredibly alive. And yet, just like that, I could be dead. It was so strange. It just didn’t seem possible that you could be here one minute and gone the next.

  Finally Jax slowed down and started to pull over in front of my house. The living-room light was on, the car was in the driveway, and I could see the shadowy outline of my mother sitting on the unlit front porch. Still up. Waiting for me.

  I wondered if Mark had called her. “Don’t stop,” I said urgently. “Keep driving.”

  He laughed and sped up. “Where to?”

  “Anywhere.”

  He turned south, heading to the waterfront, and finally pulled into a parking spot along the grassy area where people walk their dogs. I didn’t think I’d ever been there at night. It was very dark, and I could smell the ocean. I shivered, slipped off the bike and tucked my hands inside my sleeves.

  Jax took off his helmet and looked out across the grass to where the land fell away in a steep cliff, dropping down to the rocky beach below. “It’s cool, being right on the ocean.”

  “I’m used to it.” I handed him my helmet. “It’s beautiful though. I love it.”

  The grass was soft and spongy-wet under my sneakers as we walked toward the water. Far away, a few lights moved slowly in the darkness: ships traveling through the strait. Above us, the sky was a dark milky gray, the stars hidden behind heavy cloud and damp fog. A long staircase led down to the beach, too narrow to walk comfortably side by side. I followed Jax down, listening to his feet thunking softly against the wooden steps and watching the way his blond-brown hair barely brushed the collar of his leather jacket. In the darkness ahead, I could hear the waves breaking on the shore.

  At the base of the steps, a jumbled mess of driftwood was strewn across the ground. We clambered across it, using our hands for balance on the slippery wood. The tide was high and the beach just a narrow strip of wave-polished stones. Jax sat down on a huge water-washed log and looked at me. “Hey. Come here.”

  I hesitated for a moment, picked up a rock and turned its cold smooth solidness in my hand before I tossed it into the water. I wondered if he’d brought me to the beach because he liked it here and wanted to share that with me, or just because it was more private than going to a coffee shop or something. Not that I didn’t want to be alone with him. It just made me nervous.

  “Come here,” he said again.

  I pulled my jacket down to cover my butt and sat down beside him. The log felt cold and damp under my thighs. “It’s wet.”

  “So sit on my lap.” Jax grinned at me.

  “I’m okay where I am.”

  “You’re kind of shy, hey? It’s cute.”

  I blushed. “Not really. I just, you know.” I wanted to know if he thought of me as his girlfriend, or if I was just someone he was hoping to fool around with.

  “Nope. I don’t know.”

  “Um. I guess I’m just wondering about us, you know. What we’re doing.”

  He stretched his legs out in front of him, digging two holes in the stones with the heels of his boots. “We’re sitting on a beach, Dylan.”

  “Yeah. But…”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I peeled off a wet strip of wood and watched it fall to the ground. “And?”

  He turned to face me, lifting one leg and swinging it around so that he was straddling the log. “What do you want me to say?”

  This was awful. I couldn’t answer that. I just wanted to end the conversation. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to say anything.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Okay.”

  He shrugged. “So.”

  I felt like we’d just had a fight or something—awkward and uncomfortable and not sure what had just happened. “Jax…”

  He stood. “Let’s walk.”

  I walked in silence beside Jax, my feet slipping and sinking in the loose stones. I didn’t know what my problem was. I’d just ruined what should have been a nice moment. If I’d just sat down on his lap, I’d be back there, kissing Jax. Instead I was walking along the beach and wondering what he was thinking. Probably he was wishing he’d picked some other girl to hang out with.

  Jax kicked a piece of driftwood aside. “My dad, you know, my mom’s husband, he’s not really my dad.”

  “He’s not?” I wondered if telling me this was his way of apologizing for telling Jason and his friends about my dad.

  “My mom and him split up when Jason was a baby, and she got pregnant by this other guy she got involved with. They got back together a couple of years later.” He didn’t look at me. “Technically, Jason’s my half brother.”

  I thought of Casey. “But you guys grew up together, right? So that’s what really makes you brothers. Like Karma. She’s not related to me at all and she only moved in with us three years ago, but I still see her as my sister.” More than Casey anyway.

  “Yeah? Your mom adopted her or something?”

  “Our moms were best friends in high school. Karma’s mom put my mom in her will as her kid’s guardian, just in case anything happened to her. My mom did the same.” I still had trouble believing this, since Sheri had been a drug addict who’d spent most of Karma’s first eight years couch surfing. And my mom thought she’d be a good guardian for me? Mom said she always meant to change that part of her will, only she never got around to it. She probably still hadn’t changed it.

  “What happened to her parents?”

  “Her mom died in a motorbike accident,” I said briefly. “And her dad wasn’t part of the picture. So, did you ever meet your real dad?”

  “Yeah. A few times, when I was younger.” He made a face. “Brent. He used to work
with my mom, but he lives in New York now.”

  What was it with mothers and their secrets? I looked at Jax’s face and wondered who he looked like, and whether he ever looked in the mirror and thought about that himself. “You don’t think of him as your dad?”

  “Nah. My parents got back together when I was two, and I’ve always thought of them as Mom and Dad. I couldn’t care less about Brent.”

  I nodded and turned away, squinting into the opaque darkness ahead. Just ahead of us, washed by the breaking waves, something was lying on the beach. A lump of gray, a solid shape. I squinted, focused, and the image sharpened, like a camera zooming in. A seal. Sleek and inert. Dead. My chest tightened. It suddenly felt intensely important—crucial—that Jax not see it. Seeing a dead seal together would be a terrible omen. It would ruin everything, spoil every possibility.

  I stopped walking and stepped behind him, so that he would turn away from the dead body. “Jax!”

  He looked at me, startled.

  Out of the corner of my eye, the seal’s body shifted slightly, pushed by the force of the waves. I wondered why it had died and thought of the city sewage pumped out into the sea every day, the floods of bacteria and detergent and the countless toxic chemicals surging through the dark water. There were a million reasons the seal could have died.

  “Come here,” I said, my voice breaking. Jax turned to me, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. I stepped in close, lifted my face toward him, reached one hand up to touch his shoulder and pressed my lips against his. His mouth was so warm. I wondered if my lips felt ice cold to him. Jax touched the back of my neck, his fingers sliding under my hair.

  I closed my eyes, but I could still see the seal. I could picture the milk-clouded eyes, the heavy weight of it. My stomach felt tight and my whole body ached with a deep, bone-grinding anxiety. Jax unzipped my jacket and slid his hands inside, under my sweater, across the skin of my back. I shivered, but I didn’t stop him. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to do this, but it was definitely easier than talking about Mark.

  Jax slipped off his jacket and spread it out on the beach, pulling me down to lie beside him. One of his hands caressed my ribs and slipped under my sports bra. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Toni did this kind of thing all the time. Lots of girls did. It was no big deal, I told myself. But it was to me. I felt like someone else. Some other girl.