The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

by Ashley Herring Blake

  They’re amber.

  Just like mine.

  My mind hums and whirls. I think back to all those entries I read in Lena’s journal, all the times she talked about S and my chest felt all warm and light, like I was loved, like I mattered.

  But I don’t think S is me. I don’t think S is me at all.

  “Mom?”

  It’s the first time I’ve ever called her Mom. The first time I’ve ever called anyone Mom. The word feels small when it falls out of my mouth, but it lands like a grenade and blows up everything in the room. Lena’s head pops up and her eyes go wide. Janesh takes Samaira, who screeches and stretches her little arms toward Lena. Her onesie is bright blue. It has little yellow moons all over it.

  “Sunny,” Lena says, hurrying toward me. “Sweetie.”

  I feel her hands close around my arms. I think I even hear her saying stuff. Stuff like It’s okay and Let’s go outside and talk and Are you all right? But all I can see is Samaira.

  S.

  She’s crying and Janesh is cuddling her, his cheek smooshed up against hers while he sways her back and forth. Lena pulls on me a little, trying to get me out of the room, but I can’t budge. There’s a baby in here. Lena’s baby. Lena’s daughter.

  “Sunny,” Lena says, “I need you to breathe.”

  I am breathing, I want to say, but I can’t get my tongue to work. And maybe I’m not breathing, because my chest feels super-tight. Like, so tight, I may not be breathing at all. It’s not the kind of ache I get when I swim or surf too hard. It’s not even the kind of feeling I get around Quinn, all fluttery and nervous. This hurts, like a billion bricks just landed right on my sternum.

  I back away from Lena, or I try to. I try to run. I try to disappear altogether, but my legs feel like they’re full of wet sand. My whole body feels like that—fingers and toes, arms and chest.

  “Lena,” Janesh says.

  “I know,” Lena says. She kneels down and looks at my amber eyes with her amber eyes and Samaira’s amber eyes.

  I squeeze mine shut.

  “Honey, take a deep breath, please.”

  “Lena, she doesn’t look good,” Janesh says. “Is it her heart? Should I call Kate?” He knows about my heart. Of course he does. He’s Lena’s… he and Lena are…

  “Just give her a minute,” Lena says.

  I sink down to the floor and I grab at my chest, because that heart that everyone knows all about is pounding like a million hammers. It’s going to break every one of my ribs and bust through my skin.

  “Sunny!” Lena’s hands tighten around my arms. Her face is super-close to mine and it’s like looking in a mirror, except it’s not.

  “I’m calling 9-1-1,” Janesh says.

  Samaira cries and cries.

  My chest bursts open, or at least it feels that way. It splits right down the middle. Zip goes the scalpel. Blood. There should be blood everywhere. There should be blood covering the whole world when your heart gets ripped right out of your body, when your whole self spills right out onto the floor. But there’s no red. No white walls and steel operating table. There are only blurry faces of a family I don’t know right before everything goes dark.

  CHAPTER

  28

  I must be dead again, because I dream about mermaids. This time, though, I’m the mermaid. My legs are gone, replaced with a graceful, sparkly aquamarine tail that matches my hair. I must’ve really kicked the bucket this time.

  But unlike my other dead-dream, Lena’s nowhere to be found. It’s just me, floating in the blue water. The bright sun pierces through the waves, making my tail shimmer like sapphires.

  Lena?

  No one answers. I twist and twirl, looking for my mermaid, a flash of black hair and that iridescent tail, but all I see is blue, blue, everywhere. Deep blue that I can’t see through. I can only see me and I’m all alone.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Beep-beep-beep.

  I open my eyes. The blue is gone, replaced with dingy white walls and a scratchy blanket over my very human legs, the familiar tug of a needle in my arm.

  I’m in the hospital again.

  Kate’s right next to me, snuggled by my side in the bed just like she was right before I was wheeled down for my heart transplant over two months ago.

  Beep-beep-beep.

  I turn my head and watch my heart rate flashing on the monitor.

  65… 64… 66…

  “Hi, sweetie,” Kate says. She lifts up on her elbow and rubs her eyes, which means she’s been lying here for a long time and probably fell asleep. Her arm is around my waist and she hugs me a little tighter. “How are you feeling?”

  70… 72… 75…

  I keep waiting for the numbers to start falling, for alarms to blare and nurses to rush in to try to save me.

  “Is my heart bad again?” I ask. I grip the blanket and pull it up to my chin.

  “What?”

  My body feels tired. And achy. And sick. Wait, do I feel sick? Or do I just feel tired? I definitely feel tired, like I just ran around the island a few times without stopping. I press my palms to my chest, both of them, and feel the thunk-thunk-thunk going on under there.

  “Sunny, you’re okay,” Kate says.

  “But I’m back. I’m in the hospital. Is my heart bad again? Did I ruin it?”

  “No, sweetheart. Ruin what?”

  “My heart. My new heart. I ruined it. I—”

  “Sweetie, breathe.”

  “I… am… breathing.”

  Kate sits up and turns so she’s facing me; then she takes my face in her hands and rubs my temples. “Look at me.”

  I try, but I think I’m starting to cry.

  83… 84… 86…

  “Sunshine, look at me.”

  I finally get a big gulp of air and look at her.

  My Kate.

  Blond hair, blue eyes, the total opposite of me. She’s always worried, always tired, always overreacting about my every little move, but she’s mine. She’s here and she’s never left me and she’s never laughed at me and she’s never, ever lied to me.

  I grab her wrists and she keeps massaging my temples, nice and slow, the way she knows will always eventually calm me down.

  “You had a panic attack, sweetie,” she says.

  “A panic attack?”

  She nods. “Trouble breathing, tight feeling in your chest?”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what it felt like.”

  “Your heart is fine, I promise. Dr. Ahmed checked you out and your heart is doing exactly what it should.”

  “So why am I still here?”

  “Well, you’re a heart transplantee and you did pass out, so Dr. Ahmed wanted to keep you here for observation. Just for tonight. We’ll be back home tomorrow, okay?”

  75… 77… 76…

  I relax into the bed, but only a little. Because now I’m thinking about my new heart pumping in my chest, but even though it’s healthy and new and perfect, it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough. Not for Quinn and not for Lena. Never for Lena.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Kate says, reading my mind. She does that sometimes. When I get all quiet, she knows I’m thinking and usually about not great stuff. She lies back down and tucks her chin onto my shoulder, her thumb stroking my face.

  “Did you know?” I ask.

  “No. I didn’t, I promise. But when Lena came to the hospital with the ambulance, she told me about it. Three years ago, she started giving private guitar and voice lessons in Montauk and Janesh wanted to learn guitar. That’s how they met. And then—”

  “Stop. I don’t want to know any more.”

  “Honey, I know this is a shock, but—”

  “You should be happy. Lena’s gone, poof, out of my life.”

  “Sunny. That is not what I wanted. Nothing about this makes me happy.”

  I shake my head. “She has a baby. Like, a whole person. A girl.”

  “Yeah,” Kate says, all quiet. “Len
a told me about her too. Your sister.”

  The word echoes through the room like she yelled it.

  A sister.

  I have a sister.

  I don’t even know what to say about that. It doesn’t feel real and whenever I think about it, it makes my chest ache with all sorts of anger and sadness and… something else that feels softer and lighter, but I don’t want to feel soft and light right now.

  For a while, Kate and I just lie in silence. I’m glad. I don’t want to talk about it. No way, nohow, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it either. I can’t stop thinking about how Lena’s a mom. She’s just not my mom. Not in any way that counts.

  Kate’s who counts. She always did and I was so stupid to think I needed anyone else. I snuggle in closer to her and I think Kate and I fall asleep, because when I hear a knock on the door, the room is dimmer, the light outside the window a silvery blue. Kate sits up and I open my gluey eyes to see Dave in the doorway. He and Kate glance at each other, their faces glow-y. I want to tell them that I saw them kissing, that it’s okay with me, but then Dave’s face gets real serious.

  “Hey, Sunshine,” he says. “You feeling better?”

  I shrug. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, honestly.

  “Um… Lena’s outside,” he says, dragging his hand down his face, all nervous. “She wants to—”

  “No,” I say. “No way.”

  Kate smooths her hand over my hair. “Sunny—”

  “I said no.”

  Then I turn onto my side so I can’t see the way they look at me, the girl who’ll never be good enough. Not for Margot, not for Quinn. Not even for her own mom.

  Later, while Kate’s getting some coffee with Dave and probably making out in a stairwell or something, I sit up in my bed and try to write a poem on a napkin left over from my rubbery-chicken dinner.

  You left

  You didn’t want

  You lied

  Moms are supposed to

  Why don’t you love

  But I can’t even get a full sentence out. I ball up the napkin and throw it across the room. I’m done with this New Life. It’s too hard and too messy. I’m going back to Old Life Sunny. Old Life Sunny who only likes boys and doesn’t need a best friend and whose mom is a mermaid lost at sea.

  CHAPTER

  30

  I’m on the couch reading a comic, which is where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing for the past week since getting home from the hospital. I’ve got a blanket tucked around my legs, a big old bowl full of buttery popcorn on the end table, and absolutely no pudding in sight. Even better, this comic isn’t about kissing at all. It’s not about romance or crushes or anything awful like that. It’s about a bunch of kids on the run from their villainous parents.

  Which means, it’s basically the perfect story.

  Kate keeps pacing around the house, shooting me all these worried looks. I don’t know why, though. I’ve basically turned into a couch potato and I’m not asking her to do anything like surf the treacherous Atlantic or dye my hair some other wild color. In fact, I plan on asking Dave to take my surfboard to the dump and seeing if Kate will help me dye my hair back to black.

  So, Kate should be happy. Kate should be ecstatic. I’m all safe and sound, tucked away in my little cocoon. True, I’ve barely said a word in the past week. Like, yes and no and that’s about it. It’s hard to talk when you’re in a cocoon. But that’s better than being in the big wide world that just wants to stomp all over me.

  Still, Kate’s constantly got that wrinkle between her eyes that means she wants to talk and probably talk about Lena.

  Well, no thanks. Lena’s called and texted about a billion times since I was at her house—her house, where she actually lives with Janesh and has for the past eight weeks—but I always ignore her.

  She hasn’t texted at all today. Maybe she’s finally given up on me, which is fine by me. She has Samaira. She has Janesh. No wonder she took so long to come back and find me. She doesn’t even need me anymore.

  I rub my chest right where my scar splits me in two, which feels achy all the time lately.

  “Sunny?” Kate says.

  I keep my nose buried in the comic.

  She lifts my feet and sits down on the end of the couch, setting my legs in her lap. I glance up long enough to confirm the telltale wrinkle and then look back down at my comic.

  She sits there for a second, rubbing my feet. Behind us, the window is open, letting in the balmy air of a truly magnificent summer day. The air is warm but not stifling, and the sky is a perfect cloudless blue, the sun bright. I breathe in the salty air. I breathe it in real deep, because I also haven’t been outside since getting home from the hospital. Not even onto the porch.

  Apparently this, along with me not talking all that much and never asking to do anything fun ever, is doing the exact opposite of making Kate happy.

  “Do you want to go have a picnic on the beach?” she asks.

  “No thanks.”

  “How about a movie?” she asks. “We could drive into Port Hope and go to the theater. There’s that new Pixar out. It’s supposed to be amazing.”

  “No.”

  “Sunny. Sweetheart.”

  “I just want to read, okay?”

  She sighs. “Sunny, I know this is hard—”

  “Nothing is hard. Everything is fine.”

  “Sweetie, you love Lena. I know you do. I know it hurts that she didn’t tell you the truth about her family. I wish she’d told you too, but you have to understand that her disease is complicated.”

  I sigh and let my book drop in my lap. A bunch of words crowd into my mouth and I let them loose. “I’m so tired of complicated. Grown-ups are always saying stuff like that, like kids can’t handle anything, but really, you’re the ones who can’t handle it. You’re the ones who are scared.”

  It’s more than I’ve said in days and it leaves me all out of breath.

  Kate sighs. “Yeah. You’re probably right about that.”

  I stare at her and she stares at me.

  “But we’re all trying here,” she says. “I worry that you—”

  But whatever she was going to say is cut off by the doorbell. My whole body goes tense, just like it has every time my phone has buzzed in the past two days, because it’s always Lena.

  Kate gets up to answer the door and I throw the blanket off my legs, ready to bolt to my room and lock myself inside. I’m halfway to the hallway when I see a flash of purple.

  Lavender, to be exact.

  I freeze and look back toward the front entryway.

  “Hi, Quinn, how are you?” Kate says.

  “I’m okay, Kate, thanks.” Quinn shifts from foot to foot. She’s got on a gray tank top with little rainbows all over it, and a cute navy blue bag with a big aquamarine whale on it hangs from her shoulder. “Is it okay that I’m here?”

  “Of course, honey.”

  Quinn smiles and nods. “Is Sunny here?”

  I mean to tiptoe all the way to my room and then pretend to be asleep, but my feet won’t move. For real, they’re glued to the hardwood.

  “She is. She’s just on the—”

  Kate sees the empty couch and looks around. I’m not hard to spot, because, as I said, I’m cemented to the floor right near the hallway. Quinn sees me at the same time and does this awkward finger-wiggling wave thing.

  “Hi,” she says.

  I blink at her.

  Her shoulders slump.

  Kate looks back and forth between the two of us and then clears her throat. “Well… I’ll be in my room if you need me, okay?” She squeezes my shoulder and then kisses the top of my head before starting toward her bedroom.

  I want to grab on to her and make her stay, but I don’t. I just stand there, my heart pounding and my eyes already aching from tears building up. I didn’t think it would feel like this to see Quinn again, but it’s terrible. Awful. I’m mortified and I’m pretty sure my cheeks are bright red and
I’m so, so tired of feeling like this.

  Of feeling wrong and weird and like I’ll never be good enough for anyone.

  “What’re you doing here?” I ask. It comes out sharper than I meant it to, but then again, maybe it comes out exactly the way it should.

  Quinn takes a couple more steps into the living room. “I heard you were in the hospital. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I heard about Lena too. That she, well, you know…”

  “Has a whole new family?”

  Quinn winces and looks at me all sad. I hate it.

  “How did you hear that?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Small town, I guess.”

  “Great. That’s just great.”

  “That must’ve been hard. Finding out that she—”

  “Look, I really don’t want to talk about this.” And I really, really don’t want to talk about it with a girl I tried to kiss. My cheeks go all warm just thinking about it. I want to dive under my bedcovers and never come out.

  Quinn frowns but nods. “I came by because I wanted to show you something. Is that okay?”

  “I guess.”

  She walks over to the couch and sits down, setting her bag at her feet. I don’t budge. Instead, I lean against the doorframe, still halfway in the hall. She watches me for a couple of seconds, but then I guess she figures out that I’m not moving.

  “Okay, well…” she says, and opens up her bag. “I just… I wanted to show you…” She gulps some more air and stares into her bag. “Look, I’m really nervous. I’m worried you’ll be mad and I know I already messed everything up.”

  Her voice is all trembly and soft and it makes me take a tiny step closer. Just a little one.

  “Anyway,” she says. “Okay, here goes.” Then she digs into her bag and pulls out a clear soda bottle with a cork stuffed into the top.

  It has a piece of rolled-up paper inside.

  My heart just about pops out the top of my head. Before I can think, I’m across the room and on the couch, sitting right next to her. I take the bottle in my hands and turn it this way and that. I can see my handwriting peeking through a corner on the paper inside, written in dark purple ink.