Heart Thaw (4 page)

“But, Mom, that was important. That shows how shitty his character was.
Is
.”

I take a furious gulp of the tea and scorch the roof of my mouth.

“See? And you figured it out without me having to tattle on him.” She bites a wreath-shaped cookie in half and watches me glower into my tea. “Babydoll, here’s some news for you, okay? Your mama is a little tacky.”

I raise my head to argue, but she holds one finger out and shakes her shaggy hair. “It’s okay. I know it. I’m like Dolly Parton, sweetie. I know who I am, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks. But you’re in a little bit of a different world now. And people looking in, they’re going to comment on things you just think are normal.”

“Don’t say that.” I put my head in my hands. “You make it sound like I’m turning into a stuck-up asshole. If that starts to happen, you better go all Ella on my ass. Don’t just let me be a dick.”

Mom smoothes my hair back and scratches my head with her fingernails.

“Baby, growing past where you came from isn’t the same as being a dick. You have a good heart, but you’re not like Ella. She’s happy here, okay? Not you. You’re interested in other things, and you might have to cut some ties to get where you need to go.”

I press my head more firmly against her hands.

“That’s crazy. I don’t need to cut you guys out to impress assholes like Jace. God, I just can’t believe he said that.”

I’m so pissed I’m shaking just imagining my mother’s face falling when she overheard that arrogant blowhard. What the hell was I
thinking
dating a jerk like him?

She kisses my forehead. “Ooh, I don’t like how hot you feel. Up to your room. Drink that and get to bed, no arguments. I don’t need you sick for Christmas.”

I give her a tight hug, then I leave my big-haired, long-nailed, high-heeled, tightly-dressed mother humming along to Elvis in her cozy kitchen, decorated to the hilt with plastic snow globes, crocheted Santa and Mrs. Clauses, bobble-head reindeer, and lavishly embroidered dishcloths and oven-mitts.

My fury at Jace gets even hotter when I realize he has a point.

My mom’s taste is undeniably tacky.

What the hell’s wrong with tacky anyway? I happen to
love
tacky.

I slurp down my tea and crash on my old lavender bedspread that, somehow, no matter what detergent I use or how I air it out, always smells like baby powder and dust.

Thoughts of Jace and his too-white, fence-post-straight teeth and over-tanned face jumble with images of Trent’s long, sinewy body and smoldering smile. My sister’s barbed hisses and overly accurate observations stir with my mom’s painful theories about where I’m going and what I have to cut out of my life to get there. And over it all is the silence that echoes between me and Georgia.

When I wake up, my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and my eyes itch. I catch a glimpse of the fire-engine clock numbers and hate that they tell me it’s only three in the morning.

I’m up. So completely up. Damnit.

There’s no turning back, no resting my head on the pillow that was—
one second ago
—cradling my head as dreams poured fast and fragmented over my brain.

I’m completely, undeniably up for good.

It’s before dawn on Christmas Eve. The house is dark, cool, and silent as a school on Sunday afternoon. I tiptoe down to the living room where the sweet piney tree, with its fake-snow-frosted and tinsel-covered branches, invites me to sit and admire its mesmerizing glow until my butt goes numb. I wander to the kitchen and nibble on some chocolate-coated cookies. I consider flipping some Elvis on, but his songs would be empty filler without my mother here to sway her hips to his low croon.

It’s dark and damp, but I pull a thick hoodie on and shrug into my down coat to combat the chill. I open the door with a quick push of my shoulder at just the right height to keep it from creaking, and I’m popped into the star-bright, moon-dominated late night/early morning.

I walk away from our yellow-with-black-shutters, half-dilapidated farmhouse and find the train tracks. My soles round over the iron bulge of the cross-ties and settle into the gravel in between. I follow the tracks down to the bridge that leads to town and stop short to stare at the overpass.

It’s always been there, the delineation point between the spattering of houses south of town and the sprawling, busy commotion of the suburbs. Rusty red, industrial, made of metals I can’t name, it was a sober, utilitarian monument devoted to transportation, and dividing the commerce and industry from the skateboards, tumbling fences, blushing rosebushes, and holiday decorations of so many quiet residences.

But now it’s changed.

Someone painted the overpass.

It’s dark, so I have to rely on the moonlight and the few lamps that stubbornly shine their light down, oblivious to the beauty that’s above them.

It is undeniably beautiful.

My major is art history, so I’m studying all different kinds of art from books or in museums on a constant basis. Art always makes me feel alive, makes me feel awestruck, but this…

This makes me feel like there’s the thrill of possibility where I least expect it.

It’s art outside the walls of my classroom or any museum, and that’s strangely shocking for me. It’s also smacking me right upside the head in my own hometown, bold and incredibly alive.
Real.
 

A parade of hooded monsters like something out of a deranged Maurice Sendak piece jump, leap, and gyrate in vibrant splashes of color. The background is a collection of graffiti tags that I can’t even begin to decode. Underneath the dancers lap patterns of boldly outlined waves, and the snapping, white teeth of sharks.

It’s dark and ominous, joyful and strange, upsetting and thoughtful...it locks me where I am and makes me want things I can’t even put my finger on.

I spend long hours at the campus art museum with lithographs and sculptures from masters who’ve lived and worked the world over, and
nothing
has ever made me feel shaky and alive like this does.

I take my phone out and frame the trestle to take a picture, even though I know an image of this living piece of my hometown landscape will be a watery substitute at best.

But something in the still frame moves. It waves in an arc and shades the underside of a shark fin with the quick, sure strokes of a genius who knows his medium.

I squint, but there’s no way I can identify who it is from so far away. I crouch low and scuttle along the tracks until the gravel turns to scratchy grass that snatches at my ankles and twists over my shoes. I climb the stairs that lead to the pedestrian walkway over the metal bridge and try hard to make no noise at all as my soles come down on the steps.

I hear the rhythmic click-clack of a spray-paint can being shaken, and, when I lean over the metal safety rail, I can see the black hood, the glint of two focused eyes, a bandana tied tight over his mouth and nose. His hand directs the nozzle of the paint can and adds short, distinct bursts of color.

The chemical nip of the paint punctures the night air, and my brain registers the smell as familiar. I grip the banister of the bridge as I puzzle over the long-fingered hand of the graffiti artist, wrapped confidently around the can, and, suddenly, the eyes, the shape of the shoulders, the height, the stance— they’re all details I know well.

He stops with a practiced, calculating glance in all directions, pockets the can, leaps an impossible distance, arms waving, lands on unsteady feet, and breaks into a run.

I chase him without thinking, tripping down the steps two at a time, hurtling over the grassy breaks in the scattered gravel and maneuvering around the dips and sharp-edged cans that litter my path, trying desperately to keep up. But it’s been years since I ran an obstacle course like this, and my foot gets trapped in a shallow hole. I hurl forward, throwing my hands out at the last second to break my fall.

“
Holyshitfuck
!” I scream on the way down.

The ground smells dank and dirty, but the one thought that overwhelms my brain is,
I hope I didn’t break my ankle
. I lift my leg, and twist my foot back and forth. It hurts, but I know the pain isn’t severe enough to indicate anything more than a bruise or two.

“Sadie?”

Trent’s footsteps thud quickly back to where I sit, rubbing my ankle. He kneels next to me, the bandana sucking in and out with every gasp.

I pull the pointed corner of the dark cloth down and expose his face, drawn and tired except for the glint of wild energy in his eyes. Just how beautiful he is shocks me. He’s all eyelashes and cheekbones and a wide, strong jaw. His lips are parted because he’s breathing so heavily, and I can’t help but think,
I know what those lips taste like. I know how they feel.

And I want them all over me. Now.

I feel a nervous stutter in my heart at that thought.

I need to stop fanning those flames. No matter how gorgeous the fire between us was. Because it burned.

Damn, did it burn.

“What the hell were you doing?” My voice is a rough scratch around my surprise.

“Good question. Right back at you. Why are you wandering around this fucking dump at this hour? Do you have any idea the kind of tweakers and asshole fuckups who hang out around the tracks?”

He pushes his hood back and rakes a hand through his shiny hair, making it stick up at odd angles.

I want to fix it.

I stop myself.

“Asshole fuckups, huh? Like you?” I stand up and wince slightly when I put weight on my foot.

He scrambles to his feet after me, wraps an arm around my waist. For a second we both stare at each other through the clouds our ragged breath makes in the bitter cold. His arm pulls tighter, closing around my back, and I want to be locked in his arms again. I want to let go of all the worries, all the fear, and just melt against him.

But I can’t. I know all the reasons, and there are too many to count. So I pull out of his grasp, and he lets me go.

It’s stupid, but I wish he wouldn’t let me go.

“Don’t try to be cute, Sadie. I’m serious. There’s a reason our moms beat the crap out of you guys after they caught you guzzling peach Schnapps down here back when you were in high school. And it doesn’t have anything to do with your shitty choice of beverage.”

“You remember that?”

I squint at him. It’s like my tongue can still taste the sticky sweet alcohol Georgia and I chugged next to the tracks. By the time our mothers came to find us—Georgia’s mother’s blue Beetle careening over the broken bottles and mounds of cigarette butts, its headlights blinding us—we were too drunk to do anything except vomit out the window and apologize through our miserable sobs. Our mothers were ferociously angry.

How much of that crazy, awful night did Trent see? He was only an eighth grader then, pimply with greasy hair and too-big feet.

“I was always around. And you guys were older, so that made you automatically cooler. Even if you did drink lame shit like peach Schnapps.”

He nudges me in the direction of my house, careful not to touch me possessively, the way he did before. I’m disappointed, but I hide it by looking around for his bike.

“Where are you parked?”

His boots crunch the gravel as he marches me forward. “I walked. Let’s get you home.”

“You live in the opposite direction. And I know my way home.” I push him to the side. “Go. Juvenile delinquency turns into criminal mischief once you’re eighteen, you know.”

He stops and I stop with him, expecting a good-bye hug.

“You...you saw what I did? The...” He looks over his shoulder, back to the images on the bridge, and his voice strangles out like it’s being squeezed by a vice.

“You did the whole thing?” I clarify.

It’s amazing. Beyond amazing. The work, the artistry. But this is Trent, and it’s also illegal. I don’t want him getting in trouble.

“Yeah.”

He flips one paint can out of his pocket and shakes it back and forth absently. The metallic jingle echoes in the cold night air.

“I…” I clear my throat. “Yeah. I saw it.”

It’s a huge freaking understatement.

It shook my aesthetic expectations. It expanded my definition of beauty by a thousand percent. It sucked the wonder away from the stars and transformed the steel and rust of my youth into something vibrant.

But I don’t say any of that to Trent.

Yeah. I saw it.

I want to tell him—

“You saw it, and your only thought was ‘criminal mischief’?” He sticks the can and his hands deep into the front pocket of his hoodie and frowns with solid disappointment. “That’s it?”

God, no. Not at all. But I’m afraid to say anything that will encourage him. I know what’s at stake for Trent.

“Didn’t you get busted dealing your junior year?” I probe, and his frown deepens into a scowl.

“How did you know about that?” He unknots the bandana at his neck and yanks it down.