My Heart and Other Black Holes (11 page)

He curls his lips up over his teeth, his blue eyes glossy with surprise. “Why? Do you have big plans on Saturday night or something?”

“No,” I say, bracing myself for his teasing jab.

But it doesn’t come. “How about I pick you up around ten?”

“Works for me.” I don’t have to tell him where I live; he’s picked up my sister a few times. I bet she’s going to have a heart attack when she sees Tyler Bowen in our driveway, waiting for me. The thought almost makes me smile.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say, and fold my hands in front of me on the table. “I’m just excited to go to the zoo.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 21

17 days left

T
oday is Mike’s tenth birthday. We’re all gathered in the back party room of Pirate Jack’s Laserplex. Pirate Jack’s Laserplex is exactly what it sounds like—a run-down pirate-themed laser tag facility. It’s housed in a cement-block building that has small dusty windows and stained tiled floors.

Steve always has Thursdays off, and Mom used a vacation day. Georgia and I came straight from school to help Mom decorate the room with black and red streamers, eye patches, and fake gold coins. If you close your eyes, cover your ears, and spin around a few times, you could almost
believe you were on a pirate ship, not stranded in Langston, Kentucky. Almost.

I’m currently seated in the back of the room, at a table by myself, balancing Mike’s present on my lap and holding a plastic cup of orange soda in my left hand, trying to pretend like I don’t feel ridiculous wearing a paper pirate hat. Steve sits in the front with his buddies, downing cans of cheap beer and applauding every time Mike opens a basketball or a baseball glove. Georgia, Mom, and some of Mom’s friends sit at the table next to Steve’s, gossiping about the cheer squad and lamenting how Christine Beth Thomas beat Sandra Dewitt in last month’s beauty pageant.

Every once in a while, Mom glances back at me. Like I’ve said before, she, Georgia, and I all have the same eyes, but Mom has different eyelids. Hers are dusky and weathered looking. They have a sadness to them. She catches me staring at her and I look away.

Mike’s ripped through his stack of presents like a tornado. Guess it’s my turn. I reach out and carefully place my soda on the table. A sliver of sugary orange syrup sloshes over the edge of the cup and dribbles down my hand. I wipe my hand on my shirt and grip Mike’s present. It’s light in my hands when I want it to feel heavy, significant. I walk toward him.

Mike grabs the present from me. “Hey, Aysel,” he says, his gray-green eyes lighting up. Mike looks eerily similar to Steve, a miniature version. They both have wavy blond hair,
small and beady gray-green eyes, and sharp, pointed chins.

“Hey, Mikey,” I say. “Happy birthday.”

The rest of the room has gone silent. Watching us. I wrapped my gift in E=MC
²
paper. He doesn’t seem to notice. He tears the paper away fast, and as he stares down at my gift, his small eyes stretch as wide as baseballs.

Mike squeals and waves the gift, a comic book, in the air. It’s an edition of
The Amazing Spider-Man
, signed by Stan Lee. He clutches it to his chest and beams at me. “Spider-Man? This is awesome!” He stares at the cover and traces his finger over the signature like he’s hypnotized by it. Then he carefully places the comic on the table next to him and stretches his arms out wide, pulling me into a tight hug.

My mouth feels dry and my stomach is heavy like a bowling ball. I weakly return his hug and run my fingers through his wavy hair. “You’re welcome, buddy. I hope you enjoy reading it for years to come.”

He squints at me like he knows that there’s something wrong with what I just said. The problem is that I can’t say what it is that I really want to say. I should tell him that I spent fifteen paychecks to buy him that comic book because I desperately want him to have something nice to remember me by. To think of me as kind, as cool, as caring. Not as the psycho offspring of a murderer who offed herself when he was ten.

I want to be more to him than that. I know that might
never happen, but I have this daydream where, a couple of years from now, when I’m gone and Mike misses me, he reaches for the comic book, and as he reads it, he feels better. He feels safe. He knows he can beat his demons in exactly the way I couldn’t.

“Hey,” I hear a gruff voice call out.

I let my arms drop from Mike’s waist and turn around. It’s one of Steve’s buddies. He has stringy brown hair that falls to his shoulders and he’s wearing a camouflage-print trucker hat.

“Hey,” he repeats. “Those things are expensive.” He gestures toward the comic book with the beer that’s in his right hand. “I hope you obtained it legally.” He grins, revealing his crooked yellowed teeth. His stare lets me know exactly what he’s thinking about: my father.

“No worries,” I say. “Obtained completely legally. I bought it with my own hard-earned cash.”

The man turns his head to glance at my mother. “So she takes after you, Melda?”

My mom nods stiffly and walks to the front of the room. She places her hand on the small of Mike’s back and turns to face me. “That was a very thoughtful present, Aysel. Thank you.”

I swallow down the anger I feel thrashing around in my gut.
I love my little brother. Of course I got him a nice present. Why do you have to act so surprised, Mom?
I squeeze my jaw shut, afraid
of what might come out if I open it.

Mike is the only one of them who has never acted like it was strange when I moved in. The first day I arrived at Steve’s house, Mike was waiting for me on the front steps, his grin stretched so wide I thought his face might break. My heart swelled when I saw his gap-toothed smile, and remembering it now makes me ache. When I first moved in, I used to read to him before he went to sleep on nights when my mom worked late. And sometimes he would beg me to play with him in the backyard. We’d run around, kicking our mud-stained soccer ball back and forth. But recently, I don’t have the energy for any of that.

My mom shuffles past me so she can stand behind the small table with the birthday cake. “Mike, come here and help me cut the cake.”

Mike looks at her and then back at me. He gives me another tight hug and then bounds over to my mom. He’s all energy and smiles and love. Mikey has always been that way.

My throat is dry as I walk back to my seat and watch my mom slice the chocolate cake. It has melted, droopy frosting. She encourages everyone to eat quickly since we are scheduled to play laser tag in twenty minutes.

While devouring the cake, Mike’s friends take turns examining his presents. When one of them grabs for the comic book, his fingers coated with chocolate icing, Mike moves it away from his reach. “Don’t get it dirty!”

He looks over at me and my heart seizes and I think that any second, it might explode. Sometimes I wonder if my heart is like a black hole—it’s so dense that there’s no room for light, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still suck me in. I’m going to miss Mike the most. I’m going to miss him so much, I almost can’t stand it.

I stick my fork into my slice of cake and sigh. I stand up and head toward the door. Mom walks up behind me and places her hand on my shoulder.

“Where are you going?” Her heavy eyelids sag over her eyes, like any second they’re going to snap shut so she won’t have to see me anymore.

“Just to the bathroom.”

“Okay, be back soon. You won’t want to miss laser tag.” Her words are simple. Benign. But I know what she really means is I’m not allowed to act like a mopey loser here. This is Mike’s birthday party and I need to pull it together. And the thing is, she’s right. It wouldn’t be fair for me to go into the bathroom and sulk for hours.

I want to scream at her. She never bothers to ask what’s wrong or what’s going on with me. She doesn’t want to know. Even though Mom never went through the Kentucky beauty pageant system, she’s still learned how to put on a show. She’s great at delivering a megawatt smile even when I know she wants to cry. Or speaking in a calm, measured voice even when I know she wants to scream. Sometimes I wish she
would scream. Her always acting like everything’s okay only makes me feel even crazier than I already am.

I wonder if her facade would finally crumble if I told her what I’m going to do. If she knew what FrozenRobot and I were planning. I shake that thought from my head. Telling her would do more harm than good. Nothing she has to say can save me. I need to remember that.

I walk down the hallway, staring at the specks of dirt that are sprinkled all over the tiled floor. I push open the door and head outside. I close my eyes as the cold wind smacks against my face.

I put my hands in the snow that hasn’t completely melted. My fingertips freeze.

Seventeen days left.

FRIDAY, MARCH 22

16 days left

“I
can’t believe you’re ditching me tomorrow,” Roman says. He’s sitting on the mattress, bouncing up and down. Despite his height, he can sometimes look like a little kid. I think his outfit is throwing me off, too. He’s not in his standard hoodie and track pants. His mom must have made him put on the pressed dark slacks and a cream-colored button-up shirt for the occasion. He looks a bit uncomfortable in them, like he’s playing dress-up.

“Ditching you?” I pace around his room. It’s simple, kind of what I pictured, not that I spend a lot of time imagining Roman’s room. With its beige walls, mandatory University
of Kentucky Wildcats Basketball team poster, and maroon trim, it could just as easily be any other high school boy’s room.

On his nightstand, I see a picture of a toothy little girl; her mouth is wide open in a smile and she’s sticking her tongue out at whoever was taking the photograph. She has the same color hair as Roman, same deep-set hazel eyes. The girl must be Madison.

Roman’s mom is downstairs cooking dinner, her attempt at Turkish cuisine. Should be interesting. His dad’s still at work but supposedly is going to make it home in time for the Big Event. I’m kind of surprised Roman’s mom is cool with us being in his bedroom alone. It seemed like she thought something was brewing between Roman and me, but maybe she’s smarter than I give her credit for. Though she did tell him to leave the door open, so there’s that.

“Hey.” I spin around to face him. “Why did you let your mom go through with this?”

“This?”

I shrug. “This fake dinner thing. Don’t you feel kind of bad that she’s slaving away down there?”

He stops bouncing on the mattress and looks down at the ground. “Sort of, I guess. But it has to happen.”

I scrunch my face together in confusion.

“I need her to really believe that we’re getting close,” he explains slowly. “So she’ll let me be alone with you on April
seventh. It’s not like she’s going to let me wander off with a complete stranger on the first anniversary of Maddie’s death. She’s too smart for that.”

So I’m a pawn in your game.
I guess I’d already figured that out. That’s why he needs a Suicide Partner, after all. And really, he’s a pawn to me, too. A means to an end. Or rather, the means to The End.

I go back to snooping around Roman’s room. He has a signed baseball that’s been strategically placed inside a Cincinnati Reds cap. “My dad got that for me,” he says. “We went to a game when I was little.”

I nod and keep fingering his things. I wonder if it bothers him. Me, searching for his secrets while he watches. I look over my shoulder at him and he’s flopped out on the bed, his chin tilted toward the ceiling. If he does mind, it doesn’t show. Maybe that’s a side effect of knowing you’re about to die: none of your secrets matter anymore. After you’re gone, they’ll all be discovered anyway. Pored over by other people.

I don’t like the idea of other people poring over my secrets. I don’t even know if I have any secrets. Besides FrozenRobot. And the secret I’m keeping from him: what my dad did.

“So you’re going to the zoo tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I say, flipping through his copy of
Journey to the Center of the Earth
. It’s almost cute that he seems to have a slight obsession with Jules Verne. I slide it back onto the shelf and pull out
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
.

“I used to like those books when I was younger.”

“Uh-huh.” I turn the page, staring at the black-and-white illustrations. It’s a nice copy of the book, like the kind you pay extra for. A collector’s edition or something like that. A creepy-looking sea creature stares back at me with its grapefruit-sized eyes. I slam the book shut. When I do, loose pages flutter out of it. I grab for one of them. It’s a pencil sketch of a small turtle. The picture is drawn so well, it looks three-dimensional. Even though it was sketched in charcoal pencil, you can still get a sense of the turtle’s leathery neck and his smooth shell. But there’s something different about it, too—it’s almost like staring at a turtle through a blurry lens. There’s a surrealist quality to the picture. The markings on the turtle’s shell are overly emphasized and his front paws are elongated and thinned.

I flip through the other drawings; most of them are of the same turtle, but I find one that looks like it’s a rendering of Madison. Her eyes are wide and expertly shaded, and the sketch has captured her toothy smile. But even though Madison is smiling, there’s a sadness to the picture, like the artist knows her ultimate fate, even if she doesn’t. I can’t stop staring at the drawing. It’s haunting.

FrozenRobot jerks up and scoots to the foot of the bed. “Those are stupid. Don’t look at them.”

I thumb back to the first sketch of the turtle and take a step toward the glass aquarium that houses the famous Captain
Nemo. Right now, the turtle is bobbing up and down in the shallow water, paddling with his leathery feet. “These aren’t stupid. They’re actually really good.” I compare the sketch with the real-life Captain Nemo. It’s almost dead-on, minus the fantastical quality of the sketch. The turtle Roman drew seems sad, almost like he’s in mourning. His beady eyes are dark and his back feet look too heavy and swollen to be used for swimming. “You drew these?”