Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things

by Jacqueline Firkins

  “I’m on it. Back in a jiff.” He gave her a quick peck on the lips and headed inside.

  Edie remembered the mountain of outerwear. Black? With a zipper? That description fit at least twenty coats. Poor Rupert would be digging half the night trying to figure out which one was Maria’s. Unwilling to play witness to what might happen in Rupert’s absence, Edie started to climb out from the bushes. Her skirt tangled around a branch and stuck her in place. As she wrestled with it, the scene to her right continued.

  “Let’s take a closer look at those goose bumps,” Henry said.

  “We’re supposed to be stargazing,” Maria admonished.

  “Do you always do what you’re supposed to?”

  “Seldom, if ever.”

  “Then can I map the stars on your skin?”

  “You can and you should.”

  “Here’s that bright one at the end of the Big Dipper.”

  “Ooh, I like that star.”

  “See that strain of Seven Sisters? One.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Two and three.”

  A giggle.

  “Four.”

  A sigh.

  “Five.”

  “Yes.”

  “Six.”

  “Hello, six.”

  “And seven, heavenly seven.”

  Muffled moaning, eventually broken by Maria’s throaty voice.

  “Let’s go find out where number eight is.”

  They ran off the patio and into the night as Edie finally yanked her dress free, teetering in her heels and leaving a chunk of fairy-like blue chiffon in the claws of the evil rhododendron beast. Goddamned dress, goddamned shoes, and goddamned shrubbery! Next weekend she was going to lounge around in her jeans and sneakers while feeding her funny cat video addiction all day, alone, no matter how much her cousins tried to persuade her to attend another stupid party.

  She trudged up the half-dozen steps to the patio, picking at the pulled threads in her skirt and praying she didn’t look like she’d just wrestled with a bush and lost. As she ducked under a low string of lanterns, Julia appeared in the doorway, panting, frazzled, and dangling a shoe from each hand.

  “Edie! Hi! Did you see where Henry went?”

  Edie froze, failing as always to conjure a credible lie under duress.

  “That way, I think.” She gestured out into the yard. The whole yard.

  “Was he alone?”

  “Well . . .”

  Julia’s face went as red and puffy as a lobster balloon.

  “I hate you, Maria Vernon!” She flung a shoe into the yard. “I hate you, Henry Crawford!” Her other shoe went flying, tumbling across the brick path, pinging against a lantern, and rolling into a bed of tulips. “Maria already has a boyfriend. It’s not fair.”

  “I know,” Edie said, at a loss for more comforting words.

  “Why does he like her more than me?”

  “Henry likes attention. Maria’s giving it to him. That’s all.”

  “I give him attention too.” Julia slumped onto the steps and began to sputter.

  Edie sat down beside her and drew her into an embrace, offering warmth and affection where words were useless. Crushes couldn’t be talked away. Julia’s infatuation would have to run its course, as would her own. Until then, at least the girls had each other, which felt pretty good, actually.

  They were still sitting there when Rupert exited the house carrying an armload of black coats. Sleeves and hoods poked out all directions. Belts and drawstrings dangled toward his toes, causing him to stumble.

  “I couldn’t tell which one was yours, so I brought anything that . . .” He trailed off. He glanced around. His posture drooped. His expression melted into something like heartbreak. “They’re not here, are they?”

  “No,” Edie confessed. “They’re not.”

  Rupert dropped the coats, letting them scatter on the porch. He plopped down next to Edie, propped his elbows on his thighs, and dropped his head into his hands, the picture of dejection.

  “I won’t bother going after them. Not if they want to be alone.” He brushed cigarette ash off the step with the side of his shoe. “I knew she was too good for me.”

  “No one’s too good for anyone,” Edie said. “Sometimes we just like people who don’t like us the same way.”

  “‘We?’” He blinked at her. “You mean you, too?”

  Edie flicked at her torn skirt, notably silent.

  “She’s in love with Sebastian,” Julia interjected.

  Edie started, shocked to hear the words aloud, and from Julia.

  “We’re just friends,” she said.

  “Right. And I can wear purple.”

  “You can wear purple.”

  “No, I can’t. I’m not a winter.” Julia held up a fistful of her auburn hair as if it proved her point. “Anyway, I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

  Edie cringed. She didn’t think anyone had noticed. Anyone except Henry, of course, and, okay, probably everyone but Sebastian. Lacking further rebuttal and knowing she was in good company, she turned to Rupert and mustered a sympathetic smile.

  “Yeah,” she conceded. “Me too.”

  “Me three.” Julia blew her nose into her cardigan.

  “We’re quite a trio,” Rupert noted, markedly stutter-free. “Sitting here with all these coats and all these stars but feeling like we’ve been left in the cold and in the dark.”

  Julia sniffled. Rupert sighed. Edie tried to stop thinking about Sebastian’s eyes, Sebastian’s hands, and Sebastian’s quote. I envy my words once spoken.

  “I do love her,” Rupert said.

  “I know,” Edie assured him.

  Another sniffle. Another sigh.

  For they’re closer to your ear, closer to your heart than I am.

  “I wish the Crawfords would move out of Mansfield,” Julia said. “Things would be so much better without them.”

  “There,” Edie said, “I completely agree with you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  Edie sat cross-legged on her bed, barefoot and dressed in her comfiest clothes. She scribbled lyrics into her notebook while reeling from the events of the party and wondering if everyone had gone home yet. Julia was nestled in her own bed, hopefully sound asleep, but when they’d left Rupert’s about an hour ago, Maria and Henry were still exploring the links between astronomy and anatomy while Claire and Sebastian were off doing their own version of stargazing, which probably involved very few stars and very little gazing.

  Edie kept trying to get the image of the two of them out of her head, but it refused to vanish. It sat there like granite, cold, heavy, and hard, a monument to her stupidity. She thought back to her old coping strategy. Think it. Don’t say it. It seemed like such a simple, straightforward philosophy, and it’d saved her from some impulsive outbursts with both Norah and Maria, but she was starting to wonder if sometimes her thoughts were just as problematic as her words. After all, thoughts led to actions, such as trying to attract the attention of someone who wasn’t available, and accepting that attention when it was offered, even if it would ruin a friendship.

  Still uncertain how to fully explain her choices to herself, let alone to Shonda, Edie turned her attention back to her songbook, hearing a melody form as she wrote.

  I dwell in Blue. Deep, dark, almost indiscernible blue.

  The kind of blue that hides in a shadow, the way I hide.

  The center of the sea as it swallows a storm,

  The way I am sometimes swallowed.

  The underside of a thundercloud waiting to burst,

  The way I wait.

  The way, one day, I too will burst.

  If I stay here too long in Blue.

  With a heavy sigh, Edie opened the drawer in her nightstand and slipped her notebook inside. Her eye caught on Henry’s box, sitting there in its brown paper packaging, daring her to resist it. After what she witnessed tonight, resistance was no longer an issue. She didn
’t want anything from Henry. His moral compass was set on the South Pole. His ego was the size of the Titanic. He was more presumptuous than . . . something really presumptuous she couldn’t think of in that moment.

  Edie snatched up the box, marched over to the dressing table, and pitched it into the nearby bin. She sat on the bed. She returned to the waste bin. She sat on the bed again. She looked to her mom’s photo, silently seeking advice. What was worse: pining after a guy who preferred someone else or accepting the attention of a guy who was kind of an asshole? Or doing both?

  Edie’s mom simply smiled, leaving Edie to make her own choices, alone.

  Tired of torturing herself, Edie clambered up and retrieved the box. She tore open the packaging and looked inside. She sank against the dressing table. Henry hadn’t given her jewelry. He’d given her guitar strings. The gift was thoughtful, personal, and sort of perfect, actually. Crap.

  As she carried the box over to the bed, she heard a soft knock on her door.

  “Edie?” Maria whispered through the door. “Can I come in?”

  Edie froze. If she was really quiet, maybe Maria would go away. It was late, Edie’s brain was spinning, and the last thing she wanted was a play-by-play of Maria’s tête-à-tête.

  “I can see your light on,” Maria insisted.

  Edie rolled her eyes at her mom’s portrait. Her mom smiled back, as encouraging as ever. Family’s family, she could hear her mom saying. You have to love them, but you don’t have to like them. Resigned to the inevitable, Edie slipped Henry’s gift into the drawer and opened her bedroom door.

  “Thank god you’re awake.” Maria swept past Edie. “I need to talk.”

  “Can’t it wait till morning?” Edie begged.

  Maria plopped herself down on the edge of the bed.

  “It is morning. Besides, you’re up anyway. Better to talk to me than to spend all night reading The Miserables.” She held up Edie’s book and slapped it down on the nightstand. “Yawn-fest. How are you not asleep after, like, two pages?”

  Too tired to argue about a book Maria would probably never read, let alone pronounce correctly, Edie shut the door and climbed onto the bed near the mountain of pillows. She tucked her knees inside her XXL WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA T-shirt, settling in for the conversation she was too polite to refuse. Oblivious as always to her intrusion, Maria fell backwards and sprawled out like a pinup girl: face to the ceiling, arms spread wide, one leg bent, the other dangling toward the floor.

  “Well?” Edie prompted. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay, so, did you ever, like, make a decision, and that decision felt really right? It wasn’t even a decision. It was just something you did, like putting on deodorant or picking olives out of your mom’s disgusting vegan lasagna. But after you fell into this decision, another option came along and you started to question everything?”

  “An option named Henry Crawford?”

  Maria scooted onto her elbows.

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m not blind, Maria. Neither is Rupert and neither is Julia.”

  “I know, I know.” Maria smoothed out the air bubbles in the duvet. “But I told Rupert everything and he forgives me. And Julia has to forgive me because she’s my sister, so stop staring at me like I’m a horrible person. God! We just kissed a little.”

  “A little?”

  “Okay, we kissed a lot, but that’s all we did. I love Rupert. I do, but . . .”

  “But?”

  Maria’s eyes lit up as she fell back against the pillows.

  “But kissing Henry was amazing! I know you think he’s slimy or something, but seriously, I’ve never been kissed like that, and believe me, I have been kissed. This was just”—Maria let out an emphatic groan—“you know?”

  “Um, okay?” Edie grimaced, struggling to conjure any sympathy while she pictured poor Rupert slumped in a pile of coats, wrestling with rejection, and Julia blubbering over the loss of her Prince Romeo. Edie’d made some questionable choices herself recently, but still . . .

  “Seriously, Edie, have you ever really been kissed?” Maria’s eyes widened. Her cheeks flushed. Her body shifted about, restless and ecstatic. “Like, toes curling, knees buckling, and just, oh my god? Where all you know are his hands and his lips? Where you can’t breathe but, like, who cares because you’re about to spontaneously combust anyway?”

  Edie tucked the hem of her T-shirt around her toes as she wrestled with the acute awareness that her only kisses had been awkward, bashful, and kind of mushy. Her latest kiss had lasted only a few seconds and its only real impact was the demolition of a friendship. Sure, Edie’d imagined the kind of kisses Maria described, ones that looked and felt like Rodin sculptures of entwined lovers. She couldn’t deny that she wanted to be kissed like that, but what if she simply wasn’t that kissable? Especially to the guys she wanted to kiss? That sounded awful but maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, at least until she got to college. After all, she was focusing on her education.

  Mostly.

  Maria rolled over, leaning forward until she caught her reflection in the mirror. She combed a hand through her hair, erasing the evidence of her writhing.

  “Compared to Henry,” she said, “Rupert’s too . . . dependable.”

  “Dependable’s bad?”

  “It’s boring. Every kiss is the same. It’s like working through a to-do list. You lean this way. I’ll lean that way. Your hand goes here. Mine goes there. Step one, step two, step three.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Henry’s different. He’s exciting, he’s mysterious, and he’s sooo sexy. I mean, wow, he can do this thing with—”

  “Stop!” Edie frantically waved her hands. “I don’t want to know what Henry can do with his anything.”

  Maria sighed as she toyed with the lace duvet, mirroring one of Julia’s most frequent fidgets. Maybe the habit ran in the family. Maybe Norah kept lace in the guest room for a reason.

  “I’m only eighteen,” Maria said. “I don’t know what else is out there yet.”

  “So?”

  “So tell me what to do!”

  Edie blew a sigh toward her forehead, making her cowlicks flutter.

  “You really want my advice?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then make a choice and be honest about it.”

  “I don’t want that advice.” Maria got up and walked over to the standing mirror, where she adjusted her boobs and pushed in her stomach.

  Edie swiveled to face her.

  “If you want to kiss Henry, kiss Henry. God knows he doesn’t care if you’re dating someone else. Just don’t do it behind Rupert’s back.”

  “But Rupert would break up with me if I kept kissing Henry.”

  “Probably.”

  “And I don’t think Henry wants a relationship.”

  “Unlikely. No.”

  “So I’d be alone?” Maria sank in on herself, wilting like time-lapse cut flowers, no longer the prettiest girl in the room, or a sexy siren, or a practically engaged future owner of a summer house in Maine and a prize-winning pair of spaniels. Just a lost girl, desperate to be somewhere someone other than she was. Desperate to be loved.

  Edie turned toward her mom’s photo, uncertain what to feel now that her anger and annoyance had been yanked away by a pair of sad eyes and slumped shoulders. Eight years hadn’t dimmed the memory of the day her mom stormed out of this house, Edie in tow, after Norah’s lecture to the girls on how to avoid ending up a single mother like Frances: unloved and poor, trying to follow some ridiculous pipe dream about being a musician instead of growing up, anchoring to someone, and accepting her responsibilities. The words single, alone, and unloved had been thrown like daggers, working their way through even the toughest skin.

  Yes, Maria was selfish and thoughtless, but maybe she was doing the best she could with what she knew. Maybe she was living in her own Blue, as ready to burst as Edie was. And ma
ybe it was high time Edie took her own advice.

  She scooted to the edge of the bed, took Maria’s hand, and gave it a squeeze.

  “You’re clever, you’re beautiful, and you exude a kind of confidence that makes people want to be around you. You wouldn’t be single for long. Besides, you have friends and family. You’re not alone.”

  Maria straightened up, her face full of hope.

  “You think?”

  “I do, but whatever you decide, please talk to Julia. She’s worth a thousand Henrys. Even if kissing’s off the table there.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Maria gave Edie a big hug. Then she spun on her stiletto and strutted to the door. “You know, you’re pretty smart.”

  “I’ve been told that. One of these days I hope it feels more like a compliment.”

  Maria blew her a kiss and slipped out into the hall.

  Edie let the conversation settle as she pushed her toes through the carpet and thought through everything that’d happened since her first day in Mansfield, and in the week before she left Ithaca. She considered the choices she’d witnessed and the ones she’d made. Then she got out her phone and typed an email.

  Shonda,

  Here it is. Full disclosure. No more excuses. No more evasions. No more blaming James. Just the truth. You’re right. I knew, even though I told myself I didn’t know. I couldn’t bear to think of myself that way. No one had ever wanted to kiss me before. I guess I wanted to be wanted so badly, I didn’t care who wanted me. And I didn’t stop to think about what that meant for all of us. It was all so abstract until it actually happened. But it did happen. I know that now.

  I stayed behind on purpose. I sat there in silence while James tossed out a couple cheesy lines I was too keyed up to hear, but I got the gist. I watched him lean over the gearshift without discouraging him. I waited till his lips met mine and I didn’t tell him to stop. I just sat there like a horrible, horrible person, making no choice except to not make a choice.

  I did betray you. I betrayed myself, too. I’ve never regretted anything more in my life, and that includes the great marshmallow/microwave experiment back in fifth grade. And that time I freed the school hamster too close to the bus stop. And moving to Mansfield. I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I’ll never stop trying. It was my fault. I’m so, so sorry.