The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

by Ashley Herring Blake

  It’s my thank-you poem to my heart donor, the one I sent out into the ocean my first day back on the beach.

  “What… where did you find this?” I ask.

  “On the beach down by our cottage.”

  “When?”

  “The day after we met.”

  “Did you… did you read it?”

  She smiles a little and nods. “Yeah. I figured, it’s a message in a bottle and it’s supposed to be read, right? I’ve never found one and I thought it was amazing. So, yeah, I read it. I didn’t know it was you, though. I promise, I didn’t.”

  “How do you know it’s me now?”

  She swallows so hard I hear the gulp. “After I found out about your heart transplant, I wondered, because of what the poem talks about. But then… well, I found another one.”

  My eyes go wide. “You did?”

  She dips back into her bag and pulls out a piece of paper. It has writing on it. Familiar writing. So familiar it makes my heart swell into my throat like a balloon. I take it from her and smooth it over my lap.

  I woke up smiling

  because I fell asleep

  with your voice in my ear…

  It’s the poem I wrote about Quinn after we talked on the phone all night along. At the time, I was just writing about my new best friend, but now, after I tried to kiss her and know that I like like her, my words make my palms sweat.

  “I found it that day we went to the pool,” Quinn says. My stomach flip-flops, just thinking about being with her under that waterfall. “After you left,” she goes on, “I walked around the pier and ended up by that humpback whale statue.”

  “And you just… took it?”

  She winces. “I’m sorry. I was climbing up on the whale and I saw a piece of paper sticking out of its mouth. I remembered you’d been standing over there when I got to the pool, so it made me wonder, you know? So I took it out and read it. I figured, if you put it there, you must not mind if someone reads it, right?”

  I don’t say anything, because, yeah, that’s exactly why I put it there. Except I never imagined someone would turn out to be Quinn.

  “Anyway,” she says. “When I got home, I compared it with the poem from the bottle and the handwriting looked the same.”

  I glue my eyes to the poem, speechless.

  “I wanted you to know I found them,” she goes on. “Because… because I wanted you to know that someone read them. And someone loved them. A lot.”

  I glance up at her and she’s staring right at me. Her eyes are kind of shiny and I try not to feel about her the way I felt about her a few days ago, but I can’t help it. It’s all still there, swirling in my chest and my gut.

  “Okay,” I say, and look away from her. Then I scoot away from her a little too.

  “There’s a couple more,” she says, as she pulls out a few more sheets of paper. I spy my handwriting again, scrawled over the ripped-out notebook paper, the poems I wrote after Kate said I couldn’t see Lena for a while.

  I wish I was a mermaid.

  If I lived in the sea, I’d never get out…

  “And… and this one,” Quinn says, her voice so soft I barely hear her.

  “Are you serious?”

  She doesn’t answer, but dips back into her bag and brings out—

  Oh god.

  —a bright blue flyer advertising the Fourth of July bonfire tomorrow night.

  “I came by your house that morning after we dyed our hair,” Quinn says. “I wanted to… I don’t know… talk, I guess, but no one was here. Now I know you were in the hospital, but I waited on your porch for a while and I saw something blue stuck in a low branch of that big oak in your front yard. The other ones were in your bushes.” She talks really quiet, like she’s afraid I might explode.

  And I just might.

  I take the papers from her, but all I see is that bright blue flyer, my messy handwriting filling up the whole back. I remember writing it—panicked, scared, sad, mad—right after I tried to kiss Quinn and she left.

  She left me sitting there all alone.

  And then after that, everything else fell apart and now I’m still alone and scared and sad and mad.

  “Just go,” I manage to say. My fingers tighten on the paper and I’m trying not to lose it. I really am. That would just be the cherry on top, wouldn’t it? To start bawling right there in front of the girl I tried to kiss and scared away who’s now trying to tell me, all sweet and soft and stuff, that she doesn’t like me like that. That she never did, that she never could.

  It’s too hard to love a broken heart. Lena proved that.

  “Sunny,” Quinn says. “Please, just let me—”

  “Just go!” I yell it this time and silence settles between us. Quinn’s breathing hard, but she doesn’t move. I wait… wait… and sure enough, Kate pops her head out of her room.

  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  I take a deep breath to try to get a grip. Then I nod, even though, no, everything is not okay. Everything is falling apart. Everything keeps falling apart.

  Kate doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t go back in her room either. Instead, she wanders into the kitchen and starts getting stuff out to make tea.

  Quinn is frozen next to me. I steal a glance at her and her cheeks are wet. I look away.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” she says quietly, and finally, finally stands up and pulls her bag over her shoulder. I sit there, staring at all the papers left on the couch. I can’t look at her. I won’t.

  “I’m really sorry,” she says again. Then she puts a new piece of paper I don’t recognize on the coffee table in front of me. It’s folded up into a neat square, just like that first note she gave to Dave inviting me to go on the boat with her and her mom. There’s nothing but a little drawing of a bright yellow sun on the front.

  After that, she leaves and I can finally cry and cry and cry.

  CHAPTER

  31

  Of course, I can’t start weeping on the couch without Kate noticing, but she doesn’t rush over and yank me into her arms. Well, she does rush over, but then she just sits down next to me and rubs my back, pulling her gentle fingers through my still-blue hair while she waits for me to calm down.

  Her eyes roam over the papers, but she doesn’t touch them and she doesn’t ask. I’m glad. I wouldn’t know what to tell her anyway. I mean, I’m sure eventually, I would’ve told her that I think about girls sometimes, the way most girls only think about boys. But I was going to tell—

  I was going to tell Lena first.

  The thought brings on a fresh wave of tears. For the first time ever, I really feel like a motherless kid. Before Lena showed up, I hardly ever thought of myself like that because I had Kate. Because Lena was just some picture that I looked at every night. She wasn’t real. But deep down, way deep down, I know that I missed her. I missed Lena, even though I barely remembered her, and I was so, so mad at her.

  But now I can’t go back to not remembering her. I can’t go back to pretending everything is the way it was before I got my new heart.

  It’s not.

  I’m different. I’m not motherless. I never was, because I’ve always had Kate. And now I’ve got Lena and Kate. And even though I love Kate a ton and would never, ever want to be without her, there’s all this… this… Lena stuff in my heart now and I don’t know what to do with it. Everything is messy and tangled up, and now there’s a sister in there who I can’t stop thinking about. I keep seeing her wild black hair and her eyes that look just like mine and I keep wondering what it would be like to hold her and read her a little board book and say things like My sister is so funny. My sister is the cutest thing. Even something like My sister is so annoying sounds amazing, because I never thought I’d ever get to say anything like that.

  Sunshine and Samaira.

  Samaira and Sunshine.

  Kate keeps on rubbing my back, her hand making a soothing shhh sound over my tank top. I don’t want to talk yet. I can�
�t. So I let myself look over all my poems, all my words. I read over them and slowly, slowly, I get my breath back. Slowly, slowly, my eyes dry up a little.

  But my heart keeps on beating.

  I gather all the poems in a pile. It hurts to look at them. All of them. It hurts to think of all the other ones I wrote that are still stashed around the island or with some person who’ll never know I wrote them. They all make my chest ache.

  But.

  There’s a kind of… calm under all that ache. Like I’m looking at a really pretty painting that makes me feel sad and happy all at once. Because it’s all here, right in front of me in my own handwriting.

  My thoughts.

  My heart.

  My story.

  My family.

  Me.

  I don’t want to, but I love these poems. I loved writing them and I love reading them right now, even though they scare me. Even though they make me sad. Even though.

  Because this is what it was all for.

  All that patience and daring.

  It was to… live.

  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from knowing Lena, from wanting to kiss Quinn, from having Margot stomp all over my heart, it’s that living is messy.

  But it’s beautiful too. Like sitting on a surfboard in the calm water while the morning sun streaks the sky orange and pink. Like listening to Dave’s super-whiny songs and eating butterscotch pudding. Like dreaming about kissing and love and best friends. Like Kate’s hand on my back right now, sure and steady.

  I’m not ready to give up the life I write all about. Even if it’s messy and weird and even if I’m mad at Lena and even if Quinn doesn’t like me. I don’t want to go back to Old Life Sunny. Not one bit. This past week has been terrible. I’ve tried to bury myself in books and movies and hide myself in my little reef of a room, but my heart wants out.

  My heart wants to live.

  Kate sits quietly while I pick up the soda bottle from the coffee table. I pull out the cork and turn it upside down. It takes me a second to get the paper out, but finally I get hold of a corner and slide it free. Slowly I unroll it and read over the words. Then I read it again and again. I wrote this one so long ago, right after my surgery, I’ve almost forgotten what it said. And I shouldn’t. I can’t. I can’t ever forget what this poem is all about.

  I hand it to Kate. I want to send my poems out into the world, after all. I want someone to read them and love them as much as I do.

  She takes the paper from me and spreads it out on top of her legs. I link my arm with hers and lean my head on her shoulder while she reads.

  Because of you, I woke up this morning.

  Every time it happens, I’m a little surprised.

  I lie in bed and feel my heart

  thrum-thrum-thrum.

  I hear the ocean outside my window

  slide across the sand.

  I see my room get brighter and brighter

  and feel my tiny self turn-turn-turn

  with the earth in space.

  I like this time of day,

  when everything is new

  and smells like lemons and salt.

  Sometimes, I look at myself

  in the mirror and wonder.

  I wonder, wonder, wonder,

  about all the pretty things my eyes will see

  and all the people my mouth will talk to.

  I wonder about the music my ears will hear

  and the soft, rough, sharp, smooth things

  my fingertips will touch.

  I wonder about the way my heart

  —your heart—

  will skip and sing when I see someone I like.

  How it will twist and turn when

  I let someone read my words for the first time.

  How it will slow down while I sleep,

  steady like a lullaby,

  and then gallop like a wild horse

  when I run down the beach.

  I think about the way my heart

  —your heart—

  will hurt sometimes.

  It’ll get scared and sad,

  worried and angry,

  tired and confused.

  But it’ll keep going

  and I’ll wake up the next morning.

  When it turns dark and wants to hide,

  when it forgets what you gave up

  so it could keep me alive,

  I’ll take it to the ocean—

  I’ll take us to the ocean—

  And I’ll show us the sun.

  I know when Kate’s done reading it, because she lets out this big breath and starts wiping at her eyes, which are leaking all over the place. Then she really does yank me into her arms. I let her. It feels good and, hey, no shame in admitting I’m crying a little now too.

  “I love you so much,” she says, then pulls back to look at me. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah. I know. I love you too.”

  She smiles and wipes the tears off my cheeks. “I know you do.”

  After that, I let her read the poems Quinn found. She cries again. I do too. She squeezes my hand extra hard and then I tell her all about Quinn. About how I like her. About how I think I might like girls and boys and how Margot made me feel when she laughed at me and told all my secrets.

  I don’t know why I thought I needed to tell Lena first. Kate’s my Kate and I’m her Sunny.

  “I’m so, so proud of you,” she says as she wipes away her tears and mine. “You’re so brave and so beautiful. You’re my hero.”

  I cry some more and let her hold me. I let her love me.

  Later, when we’re both all wrung out, she finds an eight-by-ten picture frame in the hall closet. It’s really pretty, all distressed wood painted, of all things, aquamarine. Kate bought it from a local craftsperson at the Port Hope farmers’ market about a year ago, but she never had a picture big enough to fit.

  Now she takes the back off and gently fits in my message-in-a-bottle poem. The poem isn’t on regular notebook paper. No way. It’s on a piece of stationery I got from Kate’s desk. It’s a light gold color and is textured to look like parchment from the 1700s or something.

  When Kate flips the frame back around, my poem on that fancy paper—a little crinkled at the edges from the salty sea and being rolled up for so long—it looks like… art. Real, honest-to-god art.

  “Can we hang it in my room?” I ask.

  “We can hang it anywhere you want,” Kate says.

  She grabs a nail and the hammer from a toolbox in the laundry room and before I know it, my words are up on the wall by my window.

  On display.

  For the whole world to see.

  Or maybe not the whole world.

  Just my own little corner of it.

  It feels weird, looking at my heart up on a wall. But weird is just doing things out of the ordinary. And if there’s one thing I’m pretty sure my life is, it’s the exact opposite of ordinary.

  “What about this?” Kate says when she’s put the tools away and I’m just standing in my doorway, looking at my poem. She holds out her hand and in her palm is a square of paper with a little yellow sun on it.

  Quinn’s letter.

  I take it from her, but I don’t open it. I already know what it says.

  I’m sorry.

  Can we still be friends?

  I just don’t feel that way about you.

  And you know, all that’s okay. But I’m still not ready to read it.

  But I am ready to talk about it. About that… and a whole lot more.

  “Kate?” I ask as she curls the strand of white lights around the frame so it lights it up, all white and glow-y.

  “Yeah, sweetie?”

  I set Quinn’s letter on my nightstand and take a deep breath. “Will you go with me to see Lena?”

  CHAPTER

  32

  When we get to East Beach early the next morning, Kate slathers me in some SPF 40,000,000,000 and I let her. After she’s done,
we sit in the sand and wait. A week ago, I probably would’ve begged her to leave, but today I don’t. I need her here. She’s my Kate and I’m her Sunny and no new heart or Lena or wondering about kissing girls is ever going to change that.

  “So, the other night…” I start, because now that I’m thinking about kissing girls, I’m thinking about Quinn, and then I start thinking about that little folded-up letter on my nightstand and I need to think of something else.

  Something happy.

  “Yeah?” Kate asks.

  “I saw you kissing Dave.”

  She makes this weird choking sound in her throat. “You… you what?”

  “The night I dyed my hair. You were kissing on the couch.”

  She covers her face with her hands. “Oh my god.”

  “It’s okay. It’s good. Isn’t it?”

  She peeks at me between her fingers and I can tell she’s smiling. “I don’t know.”

  “He loves you a lot.”

  She sighs and drops her hands. “He does.”

  “And you love him.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “Kate.”

  Nothing.

  “Katie.”

  “Okay, fine, yes. I love him.”

  “So… keep on kissing, then.”

  She laughs and nudges me with her shoulder. “We’ll see.”

  “What’s to see? Is he a bad kisser?”

  “What? No, I just…” She blows out a big breath and gazes out at the sea. The wind whips all over the place, stirring up the waves.

  “I don’t know, honey,” she finally says. “It’s just scary. Loving someone that much.”

  “But you love me that much.”

  “Yeah, I do. And it’s scary sometimes.”

  “But you still do it. It’s worth it, right?”

  Tears fill her eyes. “Sunshine. You are worth every minute I’ve ever spent happy or worried or scared.”

  “Well… so are you,” I say. “Maybe love isn’t really love unless it’s a little scary.”

  She wraps her arms around me and I lean my head on her shoulder. This. This right here. No matter what happens with Lena, Kate is my mom. I don’t have to call her that for it to be true, and I’ll never doubt it again.