My Beating Teenage Heart

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  That’s done with and not something I want to talk about but because this is Jules I stroke her leg and say, “I can’t get into playing anymore.”

  “It’ll come back to you.” Her hands skim the water, creating slow-motion waves around us. Then she lays her wet head against my chest and we’re both quiet, Jules closing her eyes as though we could stay in the moment for hours.

  We feel as close as two people can be and the pain that’s always with me hasn’t stopped but it’s not in control of me. I wish I didn’t have to go back to the real world but we can’t be in the bath together when her folks get home. Soon enough we’re drying ourselves off, putting ourselves back together and, by the time Jules’s parents return at 9:15, we’re sitting in front of the TV conscientiously doing econ homework together.

  Mr. and Mrs. Pacquette look happy, like they had a nice night out, and Jules is all smiles because of the earlier mattress gymnastics. I think even I look pretty relaxed. I feel better than I have in weeks—not great but better, stronger—and when I get home I decide this is the night to quit the sleeping pills cold turkey.

  It’s for the best. I only have a couple left and I don’t want to ask Jules for more or break into my parents’ supply and risk them finding out. Enduring a second appointment with Eva Kannan and letting her rummage around in my head so she’ll write me my own prescription is also out.

  So no pills. I need to stop.

  At first I toss and turn, working up a full-body sweat and getting tangled up in the sheets. When I do drift off, I wake up only an hour later to the eerie sensation that someone’s watching me. If I told my grandmother (Mom’s mom) that, she’d insist it was Skylar watching over me. She says she feels Skylar’s presence all the time, especially in our house, but in hers too. My grandfather fixes a detached expression onto his face when she talks like that because he doesn’t believe in ghosts but doesn’t want to argue with her. Sometimes my grandmother argues with him anyway, calling him closed-minded because of that expression.

  You imagine things when you’re overtired. Everybody does. There’s nobody watching me. I don’t even let myself turn on the lights to double-check because there’s no reason to.

  But the feeling makes it hard to get back to sleep. Ashes to ashes, I think in that strange murmur I heard in my head on Saturday night. Dust to dust. Tonight the voice doesn’t sound especially comforting and I kick off the covers and think about the two remaining pills tucked into an envelope in my bedside table.

  I’m staring at the table in the dark, telling myself to stay strong, when the other voice interrupts me. I can’t even hear it exactly; I feel it shift into a positive tone.

  It feels like calm ocean waves, a field of willow trees swaying in the wind or a crescent moon on a cloudless night. Absolute Zen. A billion blades of grass growing towards the sun. Harmony.

  I must still be half-asleep. That’s the obvious explanation (either that or someone laced the supermarket ravioli with magic mushrooms) and I don’t fight it. Sleep, the voice advises.

  Sleep on the calm waves.

  Sleep in the shade of the willow trees.

  Sleep under a crescent moon.

  Sleep, sleep, sleep.

  I can’t say where the words themselves end and the feeling surrounding them begins. Maybe the voice never actually says sleep but somehow I know that’s what it means. The weirdest things happen when you loosen your grip on the waking world. You accept things that would make you do a double take if you were wide awake.

  My grandmother’s wrong about Skylar’s presence, but the voice, whoever it belongs to, feels right. I sprawl out on my chest, bury my head in the pillow and sleep.

  On Friday my ex’s little sister, Leila, walks nervously over to me in the cafeteria line, dragging a reluctant-looking friend along with her. “Hi, Breckon,” she begins. he tle si201C;I didn’t know if you were still …” She holds up her hand to reveal a key chain attached to the world’s smallest pair of tighty whities.

  “It’s kind of stupid,” she continues, “but everybody knows how you collect key chains and Nadine says you like the weirdest ones the most.” Leila squeezes the pair of miniature underwear between her fingers and her friend and I both smirk as the tighty whities fart loudly.

  “Anyway, we were in Niagara Falls on the weekend and saw them at this novelty store so …” She hands me the farting key chain and for a second I just stare at it. People I barely knew used to come up to me with stuff like this nonstop but not since Skylar.

  “Thanks,” I tell her. “I’m glad it doesn’t make a noxious smell too.”

  “Yeah.” She wrinkles her nose. “Maybe they’re saving that for version two.”

  I watch Leila stride off with her friend, both of them holding their shoulders a little higher than they were a minute ago, and wish that people could just be real with me. Yeah, the key chain’s lame but so is almost everything else. Sometimes I wonder if everybody can see through my act and know that I don’t care about things the way I used to. I can’t decide which is worse, the people who tiptoe around me because they think I’m about to splinter into pieces or the ones who act like nothing’s changed as though I actually care what happened in last night’s soccer game or whose parents are away for the weekend and therefore might throw a party.

  After school it’s quiet at home the way it always is now. Just me and Moose wandering through the halls, waiting for time to rewind and make life livable again. When it comes down to it I’m not any smarter than he is. We’re both waiting for the same thing.

  I hang the key chain Leila gave me onto the end of the bottom rod dedicated to the collection in my bedroom, panic gripping my ribs because for thirty seconds I can’t remember Skylar’s smile. Think. One of her bottom teeth was about to fall out. She kept playing with it, pushing at it with her tongue. That detail doesn’t help me. The more I try to picture her, the fuzzier my mental picture gets until I have to stalk into my parents’ room and pick up a photograph taken of us together late last summer. Skylar’s in her baseball uniform, holding her mitt and smiling big for the camera. All her teeth are in place because that was before she started losing them. My right hand’s on Skylar’s left shoulder and I’m wearing sunglasses, which I remember my mom asking me to take off for the photo. Obviously I didn’t listen.

  I stare at the picture for so long that my head and ears begin to ache from the pressure building up inside them. How’d I ever forget—even for a second? I set the frame back on my parents’ dresser and force myself to leave the room and then the house. I could unravel down to the bone in a microsecond if I let myself but I don’t. I sit outside on the front stoop where it’s safer because people can see me—I can’t do things I shouldn’t.

  Sitting still’s impossible though. I need to keep moving. I shoot back uI sunravep and head for the garage. Our lawn looks like shit. Some of the flowers my mom planted last year are coming up in the flower bed in front of the porch but I can’t remember the last time someone mowed the lawn.

  I do it. Our front yard and then the back. Our neighbors are an old couple who never do much with their lawn either and I start in on their front yard. About five minutes in Mr. Pritchard comes outside in a black Windbreaker, smiles at me and waves me over. I cut the motor and say, “I was doing ours and thought I might as well do yours at the same time. Want me to fix up the back too?”

  Mr. Pritchard smiles more, like I’m being generous or something, and says that if I have the time that would be wonderful. I go around to the back gate before he can start talking about Skylar and then I sink the same die-hard effort into mowing the Pritchards’ lawn that other people put into taking their SATs. I’m storing the mower back into the garage when my dad pulls into the driveway at five-thirty. An extra wrinkle’s been etched between his eyes since losing Skylar and I see that line quiver when he gets out of the car and thanks me for taking care of the lawn.

  “It looks great,” he adds, but I know he doesn’t care about the grass an
y more than I do.

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him about forgetting Skylar’s smile. Then Moose barks from inside the front door and changes my mind. My parents have been through enough without me bringing up depressing things about Skylar.

  Mr. Pritchard, who’s noticed that I’ve finished his lawn, waves at the two of us from his porch. My father waves back. I watch my dad jab his key into the door, step inside and let Moose jump up against his legs. With the smell of fresh-cut grass deep in my nostrils and a dull ache still stretching along my forehead, I follow him into the house.

  Saturday I put in another shift at Zavi’s. Georgia and I are scheduled to work until closing, and because Mr. Baldassarre’s her uncle she’s the one who is trusted with a pair of spare keys. The bad thing about working with Georgia solo (Mr. Baldassarre and his wife have gone to the opera) is that she tries to suck you into all her personal drama—the ins and outs of her codependent friendships and stupid details about some guy named Austin who keeps her on the back burner while he messes around with other girls.

  Georgia’s nice and all but I just don’t give a shit that Austin called her up last night and said, “You’re so perfect for me. It’s, like, I just need the time to realize that in my heart.”

  In my heart. You’d think that phrase would set off an asshole alarm in your head, but nope, Georgia thinks if she hangs on long enough this guy will have a revelation, fall to his knees and reward her with undying love.

  Bullshit. And I’ve tried to tell Georgia that before but she doesn’t want to know. She’s clinging to obliviousness like it’s a light in the wilderness.

  I was out of patience with her weeks ago and now I’m running on fumes. I try to change the subject, and when the new one won’t take I trot out the first excuse that springs into my head. “Hey, I need to make aneet she coffee run. You think you can hold down the fort here for a couple minutes?”

  “Pick me up a latte?” Georgia asks.

  “No problem.”

  There’s a pretty grungy coffee shop along the next row of stores but I don’t go there, nobody goes there. The only way they’re making anything from it is if the business is a front for a money-laundering scheme. I follow the sidewalk down to the grocery store, taking my time about it, and buy a latte and an Americano at the coffee stand beside the fruit and vegetable department. I’m holding two paper cups of scalding-hot coffee in my hand when I turn and narrowly miss colliding with Skylar’s best friend, Kevin Solomon, and his mother.

  “Breckon!” Mrs. Solomon exclaims, her fingers reaching for my shoulder.

  “Oh, hey,” I say. “How are you?” I’m talking to her but I can’t stop looking at Kevin. He used to be over at our house a couple of times a week. Skylar and Kevin were two of the three kids on her coed baseball team last year who weren’t a disaster. They both got the exact same remote control car for Christmas and had to stick S and K stickers on the hoods so they could tell them apart. I must’ve nearly tripped over those cars half a dozen times when they were racing them around the house.

  It’s bizarre that I’ll never see Kevin anymore unless I’m bumping into him in the supermarket. Next to my family he probably knows Skylar better than anyone else does.

  “I’m fine,” Mrs. Solomon says, her voice dropping an octave. “I’ve been meaning to call your mother and drop in. Would you mind telling her I’ll give her a call?”

  “I’ll tell her. She’d like that.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Solomon were both at the funeral but not Kevin. Looking at him’s not the same as seeing Skylar’s ghost but it’s about as close as you can get—like peering into the eyes of a small part of her that’s still here. He just keeps staring up at me with his mouth open. I have no idea what to say to him.

  Then Mrs. Solomon surprises me by springing forward to clutch my shoulder again. She bows her head, strands of brown hair streaming down over her face as she blinks back tears. “God. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I mumble. I’m not sure whether she’s saying she’s sorry about Skylar or apologizing for getting choked up.

  Mrs. Solomon nods somberly and puts a braver face on. Kevin looks from me to her and jiggles one of his loose upper teeth the way I know a million kids do every day but it only reminds me of one.

  “I have to get back to work,” I tell her, holding up the coffees as evidence that someone’s waiting for me.

  “Say goodbye to Breckon,” Mrs. Solomon instructs Kevin.

  “Bye,x20em" align01D; he says dutifully.

  “Bye, Kevin,” I say.

  I go back to Zavi’s, drink my coffee and do my job, but memories of Kevin and Skylar edge their way into my head during spare moments, making me wonder if I’ll have to take a pill tonight to get any sleep.

  Just before nine-thirty Ty and Rory stop by and want me to go to the lake with them after work. I text Jules and ask if she wants to meet up with us there later. All anyone does by the lake at night is hang out on the promenade (some of them drinking or acting up) until the cops show up and tell everyone they’re being too loud (even the people who aren’t) and should leave the area. Because it’s boring and kind of a waste of time none of us go there much. It’s a Plan B place and tonight there’s no Plan A.

  Georgia and I close Zavi’s up for the night around ten. Then I sit around with Ty, Rory, Jules, Cameron and Renee at the lake until four assholes on skateboards whiz by breaking bottles on the concrete and the cops make everyone disappear.

  In the end I go home to bed and lie there, restless and hot, fighting the instinct to take a sleeping pill. I must win because when I open my eyes it’s morning. The sun’s storming into my room in the form of a white light that’s as blinding as the night is dark. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to focus, and when they do I see Skylar sitting on my bed, cross-legged, with Moose in her lap and her bike helmet on her head.

  “Can you take me out on my bike?” she asks as soon as she notices that my eyes are open.

  I can’t breathe. I’m like a fish flapping around on the floor of a boat, dying. And she’s here. Staring right at me and waiting for me to say something.

  “This isn’t real,” I croak.

  “What’s not real?” she chirps. “Can you pleeease get out of bed so I can go out on my bike?”

  I sit up and stare at Skylar’s hands, then her missing bottom tooth. I point at it and say, accusingly, “Your tooth.” It was loose the last time I saw it, not gone.

  “I pulled it out.” Skylar slips her pinky finger into the space. “I’ll put it under my pillow tonight.”

  “So where is it now?” I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I can’t believe she’s here and God, why is it so bright? “This can’t be happening.”

  “Stop saying that,” Skylar lectures. Moose, snuggled in her lap, has his eyes closed, one side of his face pressed against Skylar’s pant leg, and I know if there was a scientific way to measure happiness he’d score at the top of the list in this very moment. “Want to see the tooth?” she asks excitedly. “I can get it.” She reaches down to move Moose but I get up too. I’m not letting her out of my sight for a second.

  I follow Skylar into her room and she plucks the tooth from her dreh fting her sser and hands it to me. It looks and feels real, just like a seven-year-old’s baby tooth, and I can’t figure out what’s happening. She was gone, wasn’t she? My brain’s in a fog, cocooned. I can’t remember. I just know I need to stick with her.

  “Wow,” I say as I study the tooth. “That’s weird.”

  Skylar shrugs like I’m acting too impressed. “It’s just a tooth.”

  I look at it in my palm. Skylar’s tooth is a little bloody at the bottom where it used to be attached to her jaw. I hand it back to her and she dumps it back onto her dresser.

  “So let’s go then,” I say. I haven’t had a bike since mine got busted up in the accident. When I want to take one out, which isn’t often now since I mostly drive, I use my dad’s.

 
I don’t know what my parents are going to do when Skylar’s old enough to go for a ride without them. There are going to be a lot of years between that day and the one when she’ll be old enough to get a driver’s license. My folks don’t even like her cycling now but at least they can keep an eye on her.

  I borrow Dad’s helmet along with his bike and let Skylar ride ahead so I can keep an eye on her. She comes to a full stop at stop signs and is careful about waiting for cars to pass but I still feel antsy watching her. We ride up the sidewalk until we reach the nearest park—the place she found the frog that day. It’s so insanely bright outside that the sun brings tears to my eyes. I can’t remember the last time it was this dazzling, and that should probably worry me (what’s happened to my memory?) but it doesn’t really—my only worry is watching Skylar.

  She drops her bike in the sand that cushions the playground area, bending to let the sand sift through her fingers before she runs for the monkey bars. I drop my dad’s bike too and say, “The sun’s burning my eyes. Do yours hurt? Maybe we should go back and get shades.”

  “We can’t go back yet,” Skylar says with absolute certainty. She’s funny that way. She’ll come out with random stuff with such assurance that you have to wonder if she has some secret source.

  “Just for a second—to get the glasses.”

  Skylar shakes her head, climbs up the ladder and swings onto the first bar. “It’s not that bright,” she says. “Come on the monkey bars with me.”

  I’m too tall, my feet drag on the ground. I have to bend my knees and while I’m doing that, from four bars behind her, I realize that I never changed out of my green plaid pajama bottoms. One more thing that I forgot, I guess. There seem to be so many of them now.

  I trail Skylar over towards the opposite end of the monkey bars, my hands shifting my weight between the yellow bars, and she pulls her feet and legs up over the final bar, hauling herself skyward so that she can sit on top of them. “Up here,” she beckons. She slides along the top of the monkey bars to make room for me.