“I should go find her,” I said as I stood up.
“Yeah, you should,” said Heslin, clapping me on the back.
So our quantum superposition was over. Grace Town and I were either dead or alive, no long both simultaneously.
I wasn’t sure, yet, which one it would turn out to be.
• • •
We walked home together, drunkenly, in the dark. In my semi-intoxicated state, knowing what we were going to do, I finally had the courage to do the things I wanted to do to her. I pushed her up against a tall chain-link fence covered in creeping vines and kissed her, more hungrily than I ever had before. I kissed her down her neck, across her collarbone, ran my hands over her hips, her thighs. Grace responded with gasps, ran her fingers through my hair, grabbed tufts of it, pulled herself against me. She sank her fake teeth into my neck, enough to hurt but not to break the skin.
“Take me home, Henry Page,” she said, fake blood still smudged at the edges of her lips. And then she turned and started walking into the darkness, and I followed her, of course, my hands around her waist, kissing her all the way there. We got downstairs without waking the parentals, thank God, and then it was time to have The Sex.
We sat on my bed together and wiped away all of our makeup first. I peeled off my shirt and cleaned all the dry blood from my chest, wondering if I looked anything like how he’d looked after the accident, and if that’s what she was thinking about, or if she was thinking about me. And then we sat for a minute after that, in silence, and I contemplated turning the lamp off, because maybe it would be easier in the dark.
But Grace knew what she was doing. She’d done this before. She sidled over to me and kissed me and then she was undoing the back of her corset.
“Holy shit,” I said quietly when she took it off, because she was exquisite, and all my hesitation evaporated at the sight of her bare breasts.
We kissed some more, and then I rolled down her stockings, my fingertips grazing her scar tissue. There were two large, red rectangles cut from her upper thighs.
“From where they harvested the skin grafts,” she said as I touched them. “The first one didn’t take well, so they had to come back for more.” I pulled her stockings all the way off and threw them across the room. The worst of the scarring was on her calf, where skin and muscle had been gouged away, covered with a mesh of skin that made the flesh look like a plucked bird. This leg was about half the size of the other, thin and raw and delicate looking. Fresh bruises and welts bloomed across the unmarred flesh, a keepsake from her latest expedition to East River’s track.
It was amazing that she could walk at all.
“They’ve changed the pins once already. In a few years they might even take them out. I’m not sure. Maybe they’ll eventually put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
I leaned down and kissed the angry red skin of her calf. “You’re perfect.”
And then it began.
It wasn’t super romantic. There was no music playing or candles burning. It wasn’t like any of those rom-coms that show brief touches of skin and hands clasping crisp white sheets. It wasn’t even like the porn I’d seen. It was sweatier, quieter, more intense, more awkward. It was just me, and her, and no space in between us.
I’d spent a good part of my morning Googling “how to be good at sex,” which turned out not to be particularly helpful in the moment. I forgot everything that AskMen.com had informed me and instead went with what felt right.
And then it was over. The V card had expired. There were no extravagant gasps or anything like that, but it can’t have been too bad, because she said, “That was a thousand times better than I thought it would be,” and I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased because it’d been decent or offended that she’d been expecting it to be bad. Grace rested her head on my shoulder and I kissed her forehead and we lay together, naked in the dark, neither of us talking and neither of us able to fall asleep.
Eventually, when she thought I’d drifted off, Grace Town started to cry. I felt her trembling against me as she tried to control her breathing, felt her warm tears on my skin as they fell onto my chest. She sobbed only once, and then she wiped her eyes and her breathing calmed and she whispered, “I miss you,” and then, steadily, steadily, she dropped away into sleep.
I stayed awake for an hour more, staring at the ceiling as her tears evaporated from my skin, trying to decide if I wanted to vomit because I was drunk or because the girl I’d lost my virginity to had probably been thinking about her dead boyfriend the whole time.
WHEN I WOKE in the morning, Grace was already up, re-encasing her skin beneath layers of Dom’s clothes. A butterfly for a night, returned to her cocoon. I pretended to be asleep as I watched her gather her vampire costume in a plastic bag and stuff it in the trash can next to my desk. She left without saying good-bye.
That night, I messaged her.
HENRY PAGE:
Evening, Town. So, one night this week, I’m thinking I want to see the new Pixar movie. It’s rated PG for mild animated violence and crude humor—I have a feeling I’m going to love it. You down?
I sent the message at 7:58 p.m. Grace saw it immediately, started typing back, then deleted whatever she was going to say. Ten minutes passed, then ten minutes more, still with no reply. Was I not allowed to ask her out, even though we’d slept together? Had I overstepped the unspoken boundaries of our relationship (or whatever it was)?
I ate dinner. Checked my phone. No reply.
She’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind.
Had a shower. Checked my phone. No reply.
She’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind.
Attempted my math homework. Checked my phone. No reply.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. She’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind.
I went to bed feeling like someone had opened a black umbrella inside my chest. My lungs were pushed up under my collarbones and beneath that was a gaping hole where my insides used to be. Finally, at 11:59 p.m., right as I was slipping into unconsciousness, Grace messaged back.
GRACE TOWN:
Pixar! Sure I want to see that. Lock it in. Night!
The insane rush of endorphins that flooded my system the moment my phone vibrated and her name popped up on screen was worrying. I’d never been addicted to anything before, but I thought maybe this is what it felt like to be a junkie in desperate need of a hit.
“Edward Cullen, you poor, miserable bastard,” I said as I locked my phone screen and stared at the ceiling. “I should not have judged you so harshly.”
• • •
After school on Monday, Grace and I decided to keep walking past her house and catch a bus into the city, where a fall beer and food festival had been set up in the park. I had homework to do, and essays to work on, and the newspaper probably could’ve used some serious attention, but Grace was happy and she’d brushed her hair and there was no way I was going to miss out on spending time with this version of her.
In the park, the space between the trees had been transformed into a shantytown of little white canopies, a different flavor of food and/or beer nestled beneath each one. It was a hipster’s delight: pallet furniture, antique teakettles hanging by twine from every tree branch, a decorate-your-own-hula-hoop station. The Plastic Stapler’s Revenge had even managed to get themselves hired for a gig, and their warbled acoustic tunes (none of which, sadly, were about avenging stationery) carried across the park.
“What shall we feast upon, Town?” I said, but the end of my question was lost to the shout of another.
“Grace?!” said an unknown male voice.
We both turned to find its source: a tall, not-unattractive blond guy with a bunch of tall, not-unattractive male friends.
“Lyndon!” Grace said, and th
en she was darting through the crowd toward him and he swept her off her feet/cane when she reached him, and I was thinking, as I followed her with my hands in my pockets, about how much I suddenly despised the name Lyndon and anyone attached to it.
I stood by Grace’s side for a solid five minutes while she chatted with him, before Lyndon’s eyes slid to me and Grace remembered I existed. “Oh, sorry! This is Henry. We work together at the school newspaper. Henry, this is Lyndon, my cousin.”
I shook his hand, thinking maybe Lyndon wasn’t such a pretentious name after all. Whatever monster had been scratching away inside my chest since he’d shouted her name slunk back to its cage.
Holy shit, I thought as I surveyed his features and found that, yes, they did look alike, were definitely related. Am I the jealous type? I suppose it’s one of those things you can’t really know about yourself until you’re faced with it. Like you can’t really know if you’re brave and heroic until something terrible happens and you’re forced into action. I’d always thought I’d be the fearless type, calm and controlled and Sully Sullenberger–esque. Last off the plane, go down with the ship, that kind of thing. But now I wasn’t so sure.
I thought about Tyler Durden, about him saying, “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” But how much can you know about yourself if you’ve never liked anyone before? I’d never felt so removed from myself as I did at that moment. Whose body was I walking around in? Whose brain was inside my skull? How could I be me, live inside my flesh, and still have no idea who I was?
Grace and I had come to the festival planning to get food, but Lyndon and his friends were all in their mid-twenties, so we gave them money and they bought us spiced cider and mulled wine. We all sat together under a tree, the hundreds of string lights illuminating the park growing muddled as the alcohol made its way to my head. We shared dishes from all the different food vendors—hot-and-sour soup from the Thai tent, honey-glazed mystery meat from the red-lantern-lit Chinese place, transparent rice paper rolls dipped in thick, sweet sauce from the Vietnamese vendor.
By the time Dad messaged me at nine p.m. saying Here, my stomach was full and my eyelids were heavy.
I sat up from where I’d been lying in the grass, staring at the fairy lights twinkling in the branches above me, and said good-bye to Grace, who looked outrageously beautiful in the golden light. I was keenly aware that Lyndon was watching us, so I made my farewell as casual as possible, despite the fact that we usually kissed good-bye. I even called her “dude.”
“I’ve gotta jet, dude. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. Then I said good-bye to everyone else and strolled off into the festival crowd, hands in my pockets. I looked back once. Grace was staring after me. I expected her to look away, but she didn’t, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. If I was supposed to go back to her or not. But her cousin was there and we weren’t together and whatever we were, whatever this was, the world wasn’t supposed to know about us. I worried that if I did go back and kiss her like I wanted to that it would be the wrong thing, that it would make her angry. So I turned my head and kept walking, consumed by the crowd, certain that Sully Sullenberger would’ve gone back and swept her off her feet and that I was almost definitely a jealous coward.
My phone buzzed on the car trip home, while Dad told me about his day and I tried very hard not to sound like I’d been drinking.
GRACE TOWN:
So saying good-bye sucked. You still up for the movies this week?
HENRY PAGE:
I didn’t know if it was cool for me to kiss you in front of your cousin or not, so I kind of panicked and bailed. Or if we’re still doing the whole “keep it on the down-low” thing or not . . . So yeah, sorry. But movies fo sho. Thursday night, 7:30 p.m. The theater near my place. We can chill in my room after school or get dinner or something beforehand.
Sounds good. I don’t really know what’s going on.
We’re hopeless, you and me. I’m amazed that Hink put us in decision-making positions.
• • •
On Wednesday, I woke up to Grace calling me at six a.m.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I said, jolting upright as soon as I saw her name on my screen. It should’ve been a sign, how constantly worried I was about her. It should’ve been a sign, because I knew she was depressed and reckless and there was always that voice in the back of my head that was scared her grief would get the better of her. Not that I ever thought she’d hurt herself or anything like that. It was more like I thought she might spontaneously dissolve on purpose, her atoms scattered away on the breeze.
“Chill out. I can’t sleep, that’s all. Do you have anything important to do at school today?”
I had an (unfinished) (FML) English assignment due, I had a newspaper progress meeting with Hink, and Hotchkiss had been asking after my math homework for a week, but they seemed far less important than spending time with Grace, so I lied and said, “No.”
“Good, ’cause I’m outside your house. We’re going to have an adventure.”
“You’re here?”
There was a tap at the basement window. Grace was crouching on the other side of the grimy glass, looking tired, still dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday.
When Mom came downstairs to wake me an hour later, I pretended to feel sick while Grace hid under my bed. After the Birthgiver had gone to work, I begged Dad to let me spend the day with Grace while already knowing he’d rat me out to Mom as soon as he could. He finally, reluctantly agreed, on the condition that he was allowed to play GTA V in my room all day, and I was forbidden from telling anyone.
I was shocked to find Grace’s car parked in its usual spot outside my house.
“You drove here?” I said.
“Surprise.”
“First time since . . . ?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why. I woke up in the middle of the night and decided it was time. After all, I’m never gonna make it into Fast and Furious 11 if I don’t get back into drifting.”
I smiled and Grace said, “Henry. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you can see the gold veins forming before your eyes,” she said, but it was playful, not accusing. “I’m still not a bowl.”
“Not a bowl. Duly noted.”
We drove north to the outskirts of the city, and then through the national park for over an hour, slowing at all the lookouts but never stopping. Out here on the coast, it barely looked like fall. The slips of beach visible through the forest were bleach white, and although most of the trees were stripped of their leaves, there were evergreens among them, palms and shrubs. We drove with the windows down despite the cold, my face numb and my ears ringing with the speed.
Eventually the open coastline was swallowed by a forest, still as colorful as a jewel box despite the approaching cold. The traffic signs said things to the effect of SLOW DOWN, WINDING ROAD AHEAD, but Grace ignored them. In fact, she cranked the music so loud that she couldn’t hear me even if I’d been screaming, and then she sped up. My knuckles blanched of color at every hairpin twist in the road as I scrabbled desperately to keep myself from being thrown around the front seat. Grace braked, accelerated, smoked the tires, drifted around each bend. And then, instead of slowing down and readying herself for the next one, she’d speed up in between turns.
I held on and prayed to deities I didn’t believe in that I wouldn’t die today. Not like this. Not like him. Over and over again, visions of crashes replayed in my head. The impossibly hard crunch of a car slamming into a tree, crumpling around it like a paper fan. A body—mine—wrenched from the vehicle, tossed through the windshield, a rag doll of blood and bone. Skin sloughing off against asphalt. Limbs snapping, the splintered ends of bones piercing through skin.
Grace was a decent driver, if not maniacal. I trusted that she had control
of the car, but at these speeds, her reaction time would be negligible. All it would take was an animal on the road, an overcorrection, a pothole. And then, still, there was the lingering voice at the back of my head, the one that reminded me over and over again to worry about her safety.
I’d never felt so close to death before. Never been so afraid of my own mortality as I was in a car with her at the wheel.
Did things like this matter to her at all? Grace saw the world as little more than a temporarily ordered pattern of atoms. Dying only meant that the atoms briefly allotted to your human form were to be redispersed elsewhere.
Finally, finally, she brought the car to a stop at a lookout and turned the music off. She grinned at me and stepped out into the brisk coastal breeze. It was an odd kind of day. The sun beat down warmly, but the wind carried in a chill from the ocean.
“What the hell was that about?” I said as I slammed my door closed. My legs and hands were physically shaking, and not from the cold. I tried not to let her see how unnerved I was, because a small part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, she was trying to screw with my head on purpose. I sat down on the barrier fence that separated the lookout from the wilderness beyond it and rested my elbows on my knees, trying to steady my breath. Grace sat down next to me—sometimes the way she positioned herself around me felt as platonic as a sister—her scarf half covering her face.
“I used to drive along this road all the time, even before I got my license,” she said, her words muffled. “I know it like the back of my hand. Actually, I know it better than the back of my hand. I could draw it from memory. I don’t really know the back of my hand at all. I wonder why people say that?”
“You can’t fucking drive like that after nearly dying in a car accident.”
“I wasn’t the one who veered off the road, if you want to know. That was Dom. I loved this drive before he died. I should be able to love it again.”
Our Chemical Hearts Page 14
