My Beating Teenage Heart

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  That’s what she would want, a voice inside my head repeats, and once again it doesn’t feel like mine. Hold on, it begs. Hold on tight.

  It should freak me out, hearing a voice otheg aeel lir than my own inside my mind, but somehow it doesn’t. Maybe because although it’s not exactly my voice, it doesn’t seem like someone else’s either. I don’t know how to explain it.

  “At Denny’s?” my mom says, looking disconcerted.

  “Outside—in the parking lot. It was pretty funny. He was dancing around and everything with no pants on.” I stare at my mother, knowing she’s as hollowed out as I am and that it’s unlikely that she’ll find anything funny. It doesn’t feel funny to me anymore either but I’m glad I woke her up. Talking to her makes me feel a little closer to okay than I did just a couple of minutes ago.

  “It’s a bit cold for that, isn’t it?” she says, looping one of her fingers through the teacup handle and twirling it gently on the coffee table.

  “I guess.”

  And without warning my mother’s eyes begin to leak. She brushes the fattest tears away but she can’t brush fast enough to catch them all. The strays soak her face, turn the corners of her eyes pink until she squeezes them shut, her mouth dropping open.

  I slide down beside her and slip an arm wordlessly around her shoulders. It hurts to see her like this but not in the knife-twist-to-the-gut way it did a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I’ve gotten used to a steady level of pain and only notice it when it spikes, like it did in the car. I feel spent. Empty, inanimate. If I could stay numb forever the way I am right now I might be able to get through this.

  But numb might as well be dead, because what’s the difference? Just a beating heart, and that, like other people’s good intentions, isn’t worth shit on its own.

  Hold on tight, the voice murmurs to me, soft but sure of itself. Don’t let go. You’ll wish you hadn’t.

  “She’s always with me,” my mom says, a sob lodged deep in her throat. “It’s as though she’s just somewhere I can’t find her, but not gone. I feel that if I only look hard enough …” She drops one hand into her lap and lets the tears flow uninterrupted. “But I don’t know how … and those feelings.” She shakes her head, spreads her other hand along her forehead and kneads her temples. “They’re a lie. A trick.”

  I know. And I don’t know what to say anymore or how this will ever be better than it is right now. There’s nothing to grab on to that will make it stop.

  Moose doesn’t need words. He jumps onto the couch with us and licks my mother’s hand in her lap. She forces herself to chuckle through her tears. “That would mean more if it wasn’t just about the salt,” she says to him.

  My mom bends over Moose, hugging him to her, her hair dropping over him like a curtain, partially obscuring him from view. She plants a kiss on the top of his head, and predictably, he swings around and slurps at her face.

  Normally that wouldllyn t make me groan but not tonight. Mom makes fresh tea for herself and we watch the rest of the black-and-white movie that neither of us saw the first half of, Moose’s head resting in my mother’s lap.

  On Sunday my grandparents (Mom’s parents) come over for lunch. A set of grandparents either drop by or have us over every couple of days and Lily calls constantly. She emails me too and then complains about my lousy response rate. Last time she wrote, “You’re allowed to avoid other people over the age of thirty and roll your eyes about them but I’m supposed to be your cool aunt! Also, I fully intend to continue pestering you until I begin to hear from you on a more regular basis so you might as well start typing now.” I sort of smiled at that one but I still haven’t emailed her back.

  I don’t want to go to class any more than I did last week—I feel like I’m in a daze most of the time while I’m at school—but I show up and stay because if I don’t my parents will get on my back about Eva again. That’s not the only reason I stay; I need to avoid the rock-bottom place I hit on Saturday night. While I don’t want to talk to people much lately, their presence is a safety net. I know there’s no danger that I’ll do anything bad to myself when anyone else is around.

  Not that I would anyway but … I mean, I won’t. I know I won’t, but it can’t hurt to have that extra safety mechanism.

  So I go to school and stay there, even though everyone around me and everything they say and do feels pointless and/or stupid, like it doesn’t matter whether they say/do it or not. Whatever whatever WHATEVER whatever whatever WHATEVER. It’s not their fault that they don’t matter but that’s what it feels like: Whatever whatever WHATEVER whatever whatever WHATEVER whatever whatever whatever whatever.

  And then the single thing in my life that feels real continually bursting through the bullshit like an aftershock that will never end: the paramedics checking for a pulse I knew they wouldn’t find.

  But I keep going because this is what everyone would want, especially Skylar. For me to hold on.

  On Monday I stick around after math class to ask Mrs. Reynolds if I can retake the test that I just finished messing up, and she says yes and do I have a date in mind when I think I’d be ready? I have no clue so I just blurt out “maybe sometime next week,” and she says that’s fine and that if I want we can set up a tutoring session beforehand to make sure I have a good grasp of the material.

  Mr. Cirelli is just as helpful about the econ group assignment I’ve blown. He tells me he’ll take the assignment out of consideration for my final grade and balance it with work I’ve done/will do over the semester.

  On Wednesday I put in another shift at Zavi’s, just me and Mr. Baldassarre because Wednesdays are usually slow. His wife Zavi drops by partway through the night and hugs me so hard that I practically feel my shoulders crunch. She looks at me with the kind of soppy sympathetic expression I’ve begun to hate while I pretend that I can’t see what’s in her eyes. Things are better when she leaves again and Mrs ae usually. Baldassarre and I can go back to making small talk and throwing together subs. He loves old movies, like the one my mom and I watched the end of the other night where a guy tries to make his wife think she’s going insane. “Gaslight,” Mr. Baldassarre notes when I start to tell him about it. “With Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.”

  “Ingrid Bergman—she’s the one in Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, right?” I haven’t seen it but it’s one of those old movies you sort of know about by osmosis.

  “That’s her,” he confirms. “One of the most beautiful, graceful ladies Hollywood’s ever seen.”

  She did have a nice smile. But most of the time she just seemed really frazzled. “I guess I should watch that one too—Casablanca.”

  Mr. Baldassarre cocks his head. “You mean you’ve never seen Casablanca? What have you been doing with your life, Breckon? This is essential stuff.” He’s about to say something else when Toby, one of the tattoo artists from next door, saunters in to order the same veggie sub on whole wheat that he always orders and starts telling us about a first-timer who passed out on him, then came to and threw up the pad Thai she’d eaten earlier, mostly on herself and the floor, but he got splashed too.

  “Occupational hazard,” Toby comments, absently rubbing the mermaid tattoo that runs from just underneath his elbow all the way down to his wrist.

  His story about the Thai food reminds me of the time that someone spiked all the sodas at Lorenzo Casaccino’s Halloween party and Jules puked up moo shu pork and rice on her white Abba pantsuit costume. She went to rinse out her blond wig in the bathroom and got sick again. I held her real hair back in my fist so it wouldn’t get puked on too, while trying not to look at what she was spitting into the toilet.

  “If I find out who fucked with the drinks they’re getting kneed in the balls,” Jules said between heaves.

  Because Jules hardly drinks, her alcohol tolerance is negligible and she felt so dizzy that I had to call my dad to pick us up early (this was before I got my license and car). While we were waiting for him to show, this girl Cassandra
from my French class told me she saw well-known asshole Jordan Carroll messing with the drinks earlier. I went over to Jordan and asked him straight-out if he did it. “So what if I did?” he asked with a moronic grin.

  I told him in that case he owed Jules and a bunch of other people apologies for being a dickhead, and he stopped smiling. “Look who’s talking,” he said. “You’re the biggest dickhead here. It’s a party, dude. Drinks get spiked.”

  I drew my right arm back and punched him in the jaw. It’s the only time I’ve ever thrown the first punch. Normally I’m not a violent person but 1) I’d had three beers and at least as many spiked 7-Ups and wasn’t thinking clearly and 2) Jules isn’t the type of person who’d want me to fight over her but I hated seeing her look so sick, and when someone crosses the line with her they’re guaranteed trouble from me.

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  Jordan Carroll stumbled as my fist slammed into his jaw. Stupidly, probably because I was just as surprised that I’d punched him as he was, I waited for Jordan to regain his balance, and when he did he charged into me like a bull, hurtling me back across the room. I fell to the floor, instinctively throwing my hands around the back of my head and neck because my parents had drilled into me that I had to be careful since the accident.

  Jordan lunged after me, ready to inflict more damage, but in three strides Big Red was on him, hauling Jordan back by his shirt and shoulders, throwing him against the wall and asking, red-faced, “Do we have a problem here?”

  “He went for me first, dude,” Jordan said, with his hands in the air like he was surrendering to the cops. “I just reacted the same as anyone would.”

  Later Big Red, Ty and Jules gave me shit for not considering the cost of potential injury to myself before I swung at Jordan. I expected a lecture from Jules but not from my friends. Imagine how pissed off they’d all be if they knew the things I’ve done lately.

  “Since when do you go picking fights?” Jules asked once she was sober.

  “He deserved it for screwing with the drinks,” I said. “And you said you would kick whoever did its ass, remember?”

  “Well, for one thing, I probably just would’ve dumped a glass of something wet over Jordan’s head, and for another, I’ve never had a serious neck injury and been told to stop playing sports. Seriously, Breckon, if you ever do something like that again I’m going to kick your ass.”

  I got defensive, even though I knew she was right, and we started to argue about it. But the worry in Jules’s face stopped me before we got far. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. How could I fight her on that?

  Anyway, the rest of the Zavi’s shift goes by fast and then it’s back home to swallow a pill and then over to school again the next day. My hand’s finally healed and I’ve peeled off the bandage and left it naked for the first time since scalding it. When Jules notices, she sandwiches it tenderly between her own two hands. Lunch period’s almost over and we’re standing in front of her locker, talking about her shitty morning. She got a flat tire two blocks from her house when she was driving her mother’s car to school this morning and her dad yelled at her for it when he showed up to put on the spare. Then Ms. Gallardo dumped attitude on her in bio worse than ever.

  I know I said that everyone I know feels pointless, and sometimes, to a lesser degree, that includes Jules too. It’s like she’s standing on the other side of a canyon that neither of us can cross. I can see and hear her from my side but from where I’m standing most of the things that seem important to her aren’t even on my radar. The conditions on opposite sides of the canyon are too different for us to understand each other like before, so incomparable that she can’t even begin to comprehend how different they are, no matter how she tries.

  And I know she’s trying and that I’m not, which maknotr to ses me feel bad because I still love her; we’re just different now. Mostly different, but with my brand-new hand between hers I could almost believe we’re still the same.

  “Hey,” I whisper, leaning my head down close to hers. “You want to go somewhere nice tonight and try to turn this day around? What about that Italian restaurant in Bourneville we went to with your grandparents on Christmas Eve?”

  It’s not cheap, but I just put in two shifts at Zavi’s and can afford to take Jules. I really want to do something nice for her.

  “We could make something ourselves at my house instead if you want,” Jules suggests. “Tonight is date night.”

  In the past Mr. and Mrs. Pacquette’s date night usually translated into an evening of extended sex for us (Jules went on the pill last August) but we haven’t been together like that since before …

  I think Jules must be thinking that same thing because then she adds, “We can just cook some pasta or something and then watch a movie or hang out.” She shrugs like it’s no biggie. “You know, whatever.”

  “Okay, sure. Meet you there about six?”

  “Sounds good,” Jules says.

  When I get to Jules’s place later, her parents are changing out of their work clothes, getting ready to head back out for their weekly date, and Jules and I drive over to the supermarket to buy ingredients for the ravioli recipe she wants to make. We’re searching for pine nuts in the baking aisle and she’s walking ahead of me, the pair of ultra-skinny red and black striped pants she’s wearing hugging her ass in a way that makes my mind flicker. Then suddenly my old feelings for Jules are drifting to the surface, making me forget all about pine nuts.

  I used to have dirty thoughts about her almost nonstop and feeling that way again, even just for a few seconds, is so good that I hang back on purpose, enjoying the view.

  “Got ’em,” Jules says, grabbing a bag of pine nuts from the shelf. “But we still need to pick up some goat cheese.”

  I don’t care about goat cheese or ravioli. My mind’s started to race with snapshots of what I want to do to Jules and what I want her to do to me. I want to lose myself in those thoughts like I used to, bury myself so deep inside them that I forget everything else, and I picture Jules blowing me right here in the aisle, my fingers in her hair as she looks me in the eye. It’s one of those things we’d never really do, like with Rory and the streaking, but it gets me going so bad that I can’t think what to say to her.

  I didn’t know it could still be like this.

  After a moment or two I drive my fingers through my hair, lick my lips and say, “You know, we could buy something to heat up in the deli section—it would taste just as good and cut down on a lot of work.”

  Jules turns to look at me with a glint in her eyes likn h just ae she’s beginning to wonder if I’m having X-rated thoughts about her in the middle of the supermarket. “We could do that,” she says. “It’d be faster.”

  “Faster is good,” I confirm in a husky voice. The way I feel now, I can hardly stand to wait another minute to be alone with her. To be with Jules like I used to. Nothing held back.

  Jules smiles at me, reaches out to lay her right hand along my waist, under my shirt. She feels for my belly button and dips her thumb inside. “Sometimes slow is better.”

  I grin back and tell her that I don’t even think I’m hungry anymore.

  “I am,” she says, slipping her hand out of my shirt. “And you will be later.” She locks her fingers around mine and pulls me along to the deli section where we buy premade ravioli and potato scallion bread.

  Back at her deserted house, we don’t even make it to her bedroom. We dump the ravioli on the kitchen counter and kiss wet and long, our bodies jamming together hard. I yank off her pants and then her yellow bikini underwear, breathing heavy. Jules pushes my jeans down and dips her hands into my boxers to smooth her palms over my ass. I grab hold of her black T-shirt, pull it up over her head and throw it to the floor. We’re speeding faster than we’ve ever done before and it’s still not fast enough. I struggle with her black bra and normally I’m good with the hooks but now my hands feel as clumsy as paws. Jules reaches back and unhooks herself and t
hen she’s tugging my boxers down, saying how much she wants me.

  And it’s going to happen right now because I feel exactly the same.

  I lift her onto the counter and she slides to the edge, reaches for me and guides me inside her. The ravioli and foreplay can happen later but in the moment there’s no such thing as slow. We grind together as though it’s the most important thing we’ll ever do, my hands clinging to her breasts, thumbs flicking over the nipples and Jules tugging at my hair and clamping her hands to my ass, trying to push me deeper still, bridging the canyon between us.

  thirteen

  ashlyn

  At first I can’t take my eyes off them. I watch the urgent way their bodies move together and can almost feel the heat roll off them in waves, warming the air around them. Seeing them like that, oblivious to everything but each other’s skin, nearly makes me imagine that I can feel my body, a phantom body the way some people sense an absent limb. A body that longs for another body. I would’ve wanted to experience what Breckon and Jules are feeling at least once before I died. I envy them so much that it feels like a poison eating away at what’s left of me and that’s what makes me stop and offer them the privacy they already believe they have.

  I retreat into the dark, muffled place where I’m barely aware of Breckon’s existenn h j"0ece. This moment is for them, I tell myself. Don’t peek.

  But they’ll never know, another side of myself replies. This is as close as I’ll ever get to life now, witnessing someone else live out his.

  Equally forceful, the two opposing parts of me wage a mental battle that neither can win and neither can lose. I become the kind of person who would watch the scariest moments of a horror movie from behind her hands, periodically parting them to allow the shocking images inside her mind before slamming her hands together again.