Heart to Heart (7 page)

Mom sent me to stay with my grandparents the summer before I became a junior. It was really hard to find a summer job so I was willing to go. “Better than moping around the house,” she told me.

Not by much. I missed home. I missed Elowyn. As it turned out, my grandparents comforted me because Grandma taught me how to bake all kinds of pastries and Grandpa taught me how to use a table saw. Together we built a new deck in their backyard. They didn’t ask me to talk about Elowyn, respecting my desire to keep my feelings to myself. Only once did Grandma mention something I didn’t want to talk about, and it wasn’t about Elowyn. We were rolling out dough for pie crusts one morning when
she said, “Your mom told me that your father has begun making back support payments.”

I stiffened. “Yes, she told me too.”

“She says he wants to get reacquainted with you.”

I shrugged. Sunlight streamed across the table, puddling on the flour and the cream-colored dough, turning them ghostly pale.

“You don’t want to?”

“He left when I was really young. I barely remember him.”

“Steve was a nice man. An engineering major. Got a good job right out of college too. Your mother was happy at first. But the drugs—well, they got a stranglehold on him and he couldn’t break free.”

“I don’t do drugs, Grandma.” I balled up the dough and restarted my roll-out.

“I never thought you did. This isn’t about drugs, Kassey. It’s about your father. He’s the only one you’ll ever have. He’s reaching out finally.”

“Mom could get married again,” I said stubbornly.

“That’s true. But Steve will always be your real father. Don’t be so tough on him. He’s trying to get his life back…. Consider giving him a chance to get to know you. It’s never too late.”

Irked, I pounded the dough ball to stretch it, and it split. I mashed the two pieces together with attitude. “I’m not interested in getting to know him. He left us.
I just lost my best friend. I’ve got a hard year of school ahead. I’m not ready for a hugfest with a father who left us.”

The refrigerator hummed in the quiet room. Grandma rolled her circle of dough expertly until it was paper thin, tossed it gingerly from hand to hand, and spread it gently across a pie plate filled with fresh blueberries. Without looking at me, she said, “Be careful with that dough, honey. Handle it too rough and it turns tough as nails.”

On the first day of school, I walked in the front doors, and my heart took a nosedive. In the “Noteworthy Student” glass case on the wall beside the front office was an eight-by-ten photo of Elowyn bordered in black. Below the picture were her obituary and a tribute written by one of the faculty. My vision went teary and I couldn’t read it.

“Didn’t expect this,” a voice said next to me.

I turned to face Wyatt and for a second I lost my composure. “I miss her.”

“Me too.”

He’d grown taller, and looked tan and fit. “You still mad at me?” he asked.

I turned toward the glass case. “Guess not.” I heaved a sigh. “Sorry I beat up on you. I was just really angry. I know what happened wasn’t your fault.”

“No problem.” He gave me a sideways glance. “I’ve taken worse on the basketball court. Besides, you hit like a girl.”

I snapped, “I drew blood.” He grinned and I backpedaled. “Good thing for you I’m a girl. Otherwise I could have destroyed you.”

“I carry the scars.” He touched his forehead.

The tide of incoming students had thinned and except for a few stragglers, we were alone in the front vestibule. “It isn’t fair,” I said. “Her dying.”

“Not one bit.” His voice sounded thick.

The thread of Elowyn’s memory held us together for a moment longer. We blinked in unison and the thread broke. We turned and hurried off down separate hallways and away from the smiling photo under the cold hard glass.

The memories turned out to be our glue. She linked us. Other kids remembered Elowyn, but Wyatt and I were the most affected by the loss of her. We sort of fell in with each other, at first just saying hi in the halls, then occasionally eating lunch together in the cafeteria. Then we began showing up at each other’s games and going off afterward when the mood struck. We talked and texted and hung out. No big deal. We were like two spheres who intersected whenever we needed to exorcize Elowyn’s ghost. It comforted me in a way that
sessions with the grief counselor never had. The shared memories, the inside jokes between us, the stories we told about our times with her bound us together. We laughed and sometimes we cried, but the time I spent with Wyatt talking about Elowyn soothed me like cuddling with my baby blanket had when I was a little girl.

One night after Alpha had won a blowout volleyball game, I was freshly showered and dressing in the gym when Patti Aymon strolled over to me. “Wyatt’s outside waiting,” she said.

“I know. I’m hurrying.”

She didn’t go away.

“You need something?” I said.

She cocked her head. “You and him got a thing going?”

I whirled to face her. “What?”

“You and Wyatt. You’re together a lot. People are talking.”

“People should mind their own business.”

She threw up her hands. “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. It’s just a question. I mean, everyone would get it. He’s cute. He was your best friend’s guy.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Nothing.” She said it in a way that meant “something.”

I gritted my teeth. “I don’t like being talked about. And I don’t like your insinuations. Wyatt and
I are friends. Just friends. We have someone in common that we both cared about. Neither of us is over her dying. Now take a hike and don’t you ever gossip about me again. I don’t want my best friend’s boyfriend. I want my best friend.”

I grabbed my jeans and sweater and finished dressing in a bathroom stall.

There’s an advantage to attending an all-girls school—there’s no pressure to impress boys. There’s also a disadvantage to attending an all-girls school—there are no guys to impress. The yin and yang principle. But there’s a bigger negative too. Everybody already has their friendships and cliques cemented in concrete. I’m not the only new girl this year, but there aren’t very many of us, so we stand out. During the second week of school, after gym class, someone noticed the top of the scar that runs from my breastbone to my navel.

“What happened to you?” asked the girl.

I clutched my shirt to my throat. “Surgery,” I mumbled.

“What kind of surgery?”

I fiddled desperately with the numbers on my locker dial.
Let it go
, I begged silently. I didn’t want it
all over school that I’d had a heart transplant. “When I was younger,” I said evasively. “No biggie, but it left a scar.”

The girl was looking at me like I was a freakazoid. Which was just what I didn’t want. My mind flashed back to standing in the hall with Monica telling me she had new friends, implying that these friends were more fun than sitting around a playhouse with a sick girl like me. “Got to run,” I told the nosey girl staring at me. I scurried off.

Later, when I told Mom about the incident she said, “Why not tell the truth—you had a heart transplant that saved your life.”

She didn’t get it. “I’ll be an insect under glass. What if they talk about me?”

“Because you had a transplant? That’s a stretch, Arabeth.”

“They’ll have a ton of questions I can’t answer. Like who was your donor? How does it feel to have someone else’s heart? Is it icky? I don’t want to be some science experiment.”

Mom looked shocked. “I thought you were grateful.”

“I am. But talking to girls is different. I just don’t want it spread around.”

Mom sighed. “I don’t see your problem.”

You’re not a fifteen-year-old girl wanting to blend in
, I thought.

“I guess the only people who need to know are in the front office,” Mom said. “And your teachers.”

“And they already know and they’re not supposed to talk about it,” I said.

Before she left the room, Mom said, “You’re different, Arabeth. Ever since the transplant, you’ve been different somehow, not like yourself. Not all the time, just sometimes. That’s not a criticism,” she added quickly. “Just an observation.”

I’d felt it too, but I didn’t dare confess it. I didn’t dare tell her about the essay I’d written with my left hand or how I’d practiced ever since to do it again and couldn’t. Of how holding a pen in my left hand felt awkward and weird and that any letters I managed to make looked like a four-year-old had drawn them. “Maybe I’m different because I’m older and for the first time in years, I feel good.”

“Yes, you’re growing up,” Mom said, looking wistful.

And growing away
, I thought, but didn’t say.

“Maybe that’s it,” she said, without sounding persuaded.

We wear uniforms to Athena—navy or ivory golf-style shirts and khaki skirts or slacks. I was disappointed at first, but then I realized that the uniforms made all the girls equal—no over-the-top clothes, no designer
labels and I’m-richer-than-you posturing. Sometimes wealth and privilege show up in the purses they carry, or in their computer bags—who knew Chanel made computer bags out of genuine crocodile hide?

Not all the girls at Athena were silver spoon queens. Some were on scholarships or were recipients of special grants. Maybe some were like me, beneficiaries of Social Security and military government funding. I thought about that sometimes—that my father dying in action a world away enabled me to attend such a prestigious school. I’d trade every bit of this education to have him back.

Athena was growing on me, but I never really felt as if I fit in, as if I belonged. I was definitely going to go for public school next year, no matter how much Mom tried to talk me out of it.

On the one-year anniversary of my transplant, Mom splurged and took the two of us out to dinner at a really fancy restaurant in downtown Atlanta. She ordered a glass of champagne and said, “To your good health,” and let me take a sip.

“The bubbles tickle,” I said.

She set the glass down and looked at me. She looked as if she had something to tell me.

“What?” I said.

“I’ve been in communication with your doctor about your heart.”

My last labs were good. I wasn’t due for more tests for a couple of months. “Is he recalling it?”

She laughed. “No, silly. He said he’d been contacted by the transplant center. He said that in rare occasions, if all parties are willing, they allow donor families and recipients to meet. They used to keep them apart, but research showed that often the two parties want to meet. That it was healthy for them to know one another. The donor family gets to see the value of donating their loved one’s organs, and the recipient gets to express their gratitude.

“He said there are Web sites where recipients and donors search for each other. So the medical people sometimes facilitate the meeting. If everyone wants to. If—if the recipient is still alive. That’s why they wait at least a year. It’s an adjustment period.”

Her words tumbled over me like a waterfall. When the flow stopped, I asked, “Are you saying that her family wants to meet me?”

“Only if you’re willing.”

I sat back in my chair, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. Hadn’t I always wanted to tell them thank you? Hadn’t I been wanting details about my donor? “Do you think I should?” I asked.

“It’s your choice, Arabeth. In this case, I won’t tell you what to do.”

Great. She usually told me exactly what I should do. The heart in my chest picked up its pace. I had
the chance to have so many questions answered. I had the chance to meet the family who had given me renewed life. How could I refuse?

“You can think about it. You don’t have to make up your mind tonight,” Mom said.

“I’d like to meet them,” I blurted. “More than anything.”

Misty-eyed, Mom reached over and clasped my hand. “I’ll tell your doctor. He’ll make the arrangements.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m so proud of you, honey. And your dad would be too.”

The heart in my chest settled down into a steady rhythm.

“Can you come over?” Terri asked me on my cell. “I have something for you.”

I hadn’t seen her since November when I’d run into her at the mall. Now it was January and almost a year since Elowyn’s death. “Sure. When?” I was dreading going over to the house, but Terri had asked me to come over ages ago and I hadn’t. I never told anyone about seeing Matt attacking El’s wrecked car, but I knew I’d never forget that image.

“Tomorrow afternoon?”

Tomorrow was Saturday and I had no other plans. “After lunch?”

“See you then.”

•    •    •

I pulled up in front of the Edens’ house, half expecting to see the rusty hulk of Elowyn’s mangled car, but the side driveway looked clear. I got out of the car, walked to the front door, and rang the bell. Terri answered and hugged me instantly.

“You look wonderful,” she said.

I stammered, “Th-thanks.”

She looked thin, and tinier than I’d ever seen her. We stood at the front door and talked. She asked me a few general questions that I answered politely. Finally she said, “Do you want to see her room? How we’ve changed it?”

No! “Um—sure,” I said.

My heart was hammering hard when she opened the door to Elowyn’s old bedroom. It had been totally transformed. Gone was any reminder that the room had once been a bedroom where Elowyn and I held countless sleepovers. The French decor had been replaced by cream-colored walls and built-in work surfaces, a sewing center, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Terri said, “This is my hobby room now—where I sew and do my scrapbooking. We kept the door shut for eight months, until Matt said it was time to change things. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t come in here without falling apart. We thought about selling the house and moving, but I couldn’t do that either.”

I felt sorry for her. As much as I missed Elowyn,
I had school and volleyball and hanging out with friends to keep me busy. Terri and Matt had only memories. The look of Elowyn’s room might have changed, but its purpose was still to honor her life.