My Heart and Other Black Holes (21 page)

“Thank you, FrozenRobot,” I whisper to myself. I tear the drawing out of the sketch pad. I don’t care about how angry he’ll be when he realizes I took it. I need it. I need it to remind myself that I can be this girl, that this girl is inside of me. This hopeful, strong person. I fold the drawing into a tiny square and slide it into my pocket and then carefully put his sketch pad back inside his bag.

As I pull a water bottle out of the cooler, I think about what I have to do. I have to do for Roman what he has done for me: I have to show him the person still inside of him, the person he thinks is gone and defeated. A boy full of adventure and talent, with a sloppy smile and an infectious laugh. A boy with eyes like summer grass and sunshine that see things most people don’t, and hands that create incredible sketches. I close my eyes and remember holding his hand at the carnival, how solid and tight his grip was.

I have to help him save himself. I have to.

Taking a deep breath, I muster the courage to walk over to Roman. I crouch down beside him and press the cool bottle to his forehead. “Wake up.”

“Hey!” he yelps out in surprise.

“I figured that would feel good.”

“It does, thanks. It just startled me a little.” He takes the
water bottle from me and rolls onto his side so he can gulp down a few sips before pressing it against his forehead again.

“I’m going to put everything in the car and then we can take off. Okay?”

I’m about to get up, but he reaches for my hand and pulls me back down to the ground beside him. “I wasn’t so drunk that I don’t remember last night, Aysel.”

I stare at him blankly. I can’t say what I want to say, and I figure silence is better than all the words he doesn’t want to hear. And besides, I don’t want to speak until I have the right words. The magic words. The words that will convince him to live.

He shakes his head and takes another gulp of water. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I stay silent and run my tongue over my teeth, searching for the right words.

“Aysel,” he says as he reaches for my hand again.

I grip his hand and stare down at it. The hand that drew that picture. “Jacob called,” I say.

His fingers softly massage mine. “And?”

“He gave me the name of someone I can call to get some information on my dad.”

Roman drops his gaze to the ground but keeps my hand in his. “We might not have time to visit him before . . .”

“I know, but . . .” I pause and inhale, letting the cold spring air fill my lungs. “About last night. I know you told me
not to let it change anything, and maybe last night in particular didn’t change anything, but I’m starting to think that maybe we should stop and really consider . . . everything.” I stare down at our hands.

He drops my hand and scoots away from me. I take a sharp breath. “Look, I knew it was a bad idea. It’s just you’re, you’re, you’re . . .” He sputters like a stalling car’s engine.

“I’m what?”

“You’re you. You get it. You get all of it. And you’re sad like me, and as screwed up as that is, it’s pretty beautiful.” He reaches over and brushes his hand across my face, touching my hair. “You’re like a gray sky. You’re beautiful, even though you don’t want to be.”

But he’s wrong. It’s not that I don’t want to be. But I never wanted to be beautiful because I was sad. FrozenRobot of all people should know that there is nothing beautiful or endearing or glamorous about sadness. Sadness is only ugly, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t get it. I think what he means to say is that he and I are ugly in the same way and there’s something familiar, comfortable, about that. Comfortable is different from beautiful.

I think about his drawing of me. The girl that he drew, she was beautiful. That girl wasn’t a gray sky. She had hope. Hope is beautiful.

And so I don’t want us to be ugly in the same way anymore. I don’t want to be a gray sky. I want us to find hope.
Together. I look away from him to hide the fact that my eyes are welling up. After a few moments of silence, I stand up and dust myself off. “We should probably get going.”

“Aysel,” he says, and there’s an urgency to his voice. “We should talk about this.”

“I know, but I don’t know what to say.”

He squeezes my hand and all I can do is squeeze back because I’m too scared of letting go. Of losing him.

SUNDAY, MARCH 31

7 days left

W
e’ve been driving for about an hour when I pull off the highway to stop at a tiny diner that was advertised on a billboard near the exit. Roman’s been sleeping the whole ride and he slowly wakes up as I park the car.

He rubs his eyes. “Where are we?”

“I thought it’d be good if you ate something before I dropped you off at home.”

He gives me his half-moon smile and my heart feels like it’s being strangled. I can’t look at that smile anymore. I glance out the windshield. Rain pours down from the sky, and off in the distance, I hear thunder rumble.

“I like your thinking. You’re right, my mom would totally flip if you brought me home in this condition,” he says as he steps out of the car. “You’d lose your Saint Aysel status.”

I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose that if I let you jump to your death from Crestville Pointe.
I bite down on my bottom lip. Roman doesn’t react to the rain. It falls on our hair, our faces, our clothes.

We walk slowly into the diner and get seated at a booth in the back. He looks at the menu and I find myself staring at him. He catches me and I drop my eyes, reading the omelet choices over and over again. I pretend to be really interested in the difference between the southwestern and the Florentine choices.

When I’m sure he’s not looking at me, I sneak another glance. His T-shirt is damp with rainwater, his hair is soaked, and beads of water pool on his forehead. The rain—the water—makes him look younger, more alive. It’s made his cheeks redder, his skin brighter. I try to picture it on a grander scale, how he’ll look after diving from Crestville Pointe, how he’ll look after the water has drowned him. His lips turning from a pale pink to a cold blue, his skin changing from dewy to impossibly pale. I wonder if we feel those transformations, if we can sense our kinetic energy fizzling away into nothingness. I wonder if we can hear it, if it sounds like the symphony or if it sounds like screaming. I don’t know the answers to any of my questions. And I don’t want to know
them anymore; I don’t want Roman to know them, either.

I go back to silently staring at my menu. I can’t think about any of that right now. Our waitress comes over to the table and takes our order—two eggs, bacon, hash browns, and a side of jalapeño peppers for him and the Florentine omelet for me. She’s probably around my mom’s age, but her hands are much more wrinkled and her face has a lot more meat. Her hair has clearly been dyed blond and the roots are dark and greasy.

“Good choices,” she says with a smile as she scribbles our order. She looks out over her notepad at us, her smile widening. “Y’all are a cute couple, you know that? I bet you get that all the time. Anyway, I’ll be back soon with your food.”

Before we can correct her, she walks away. I pick at the booth seat’s cushion, which is splitting down the middle and oozing fabric stuffing.

“You can smile, Aysel,” Roman says. “She thinks we’re a cute couple.”

“Right. A cute couple.” I look directly at him and he drops his eyes to the table.

Our waitress returns quicker than I expect, which always makes me nervous about the food. Then again, we’re eating breakfast in the middle-of-nowhere Kentucky at a run-down diner, so I guess the quality of the food is pretty much already established.

I don’t have an appetite, so I push my omelet around on
my plate, my fork making little scratches on the dull white surface. Roman, on the other hand, shovels his bacon into his mouth, chewing loudly. It’s funny how once you like someone, even the unattractive things they do somehow become endearing.

I hate it. Also, I’m not sure how he can have an appetite at a time like this. Did he completely forget about our fight by the campsite? Did he forget that April 7 is only a week away?

“Can I ask you something?” Roman says in between chews. He’s moved on to the eggs. He’s covered them with the jalapeño peppers. He pops the peppers into his mouth, sucking down the seeds.

“Sure.” I take a gulp of the tap water the waitress brought us.

“When are you going to tell me exactly what your dad did to get himself locked up? All you’ve said is he’s in prison. . . .” He trails off.

I pause and study Roman’s face for a second. His deep-set hazel eyes have brightened since eating and he looks genuinely curious. I tilt my head down so I can stare at the metallic tabletop instead of his face. I’m torn between using his curiosity to my advantage and actually having to tell him the truth. As terrified as I am, I like to imagine he’ll understand. The boy that drew that picture I found seems like the type of boy who would understand.

“So does this mean you’re not going to tell me?”

I don’t look at him. I can’t. I close my eyes for a second and hum a familiar song under my breath. As I hear the music starting to build in my head, the part where the notes gain momentum and begin to sound like they’re reaching for something, I get an idea. I lift my chin and meet his eyes. “I’ll tell you exactly what my dad did if I can ask you something, too. Fair deal?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Okay. Here’s the question: If you weren’t going to die in seven days, what would you want to do with your life?”

He sets his fork down and glares at me. His eyes go from bright to stormy in all of three seconds. “What kind of question is that?”

“A curious one. But I guess all questions are curious.”

His lips wrinkle like he’s fighting a smile. “Why are you talking like the Mad Hatter?”

“You know me, always making bad jokes.”

He picks up his fork again and takes another bite of his eggs. “That wasn’t exactly a joke.”

“So do we have a deal or not?”

He gives me a mock salute. “The terms are acceptable to me.”

I press my elbows down on the table and lean toward him. “So what’s your answer?”

He points his fork at his chest. “I have to go first? How is that fair?”

“Of all people, you’re really going to talk about fair?”

He shakes his head; his signature smile has worked its way across his face again. I look away.

“Fine, fine. I’ll go first. It’s stupid, though,” he says.

“My question?”

“No. My answer.”

“Let’s hear it.” I hold my breath. I want to hear so many things, but I don’t know exactly what I want to hear. Maybe he’ll tell me something dumb like he’s always imagined owning a sporting goods store so he’d have a lifetime supply of basketballs, or maybe he’ll tell me something heartwarming like he’s always wanted to be a pediatrician so he could help sick children.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter what Roman wants to do. I’m beginning to learn that this is the exhilarating and puzzling and, frankly, the frustrating thing about love. Things that matter to the other person start to seem intriguing, even if they are actually quite trite when you really think about them.

I once read in my physics book that the universe begs to be observed, that energy travels and transfers when people pay attention. Maybe that’s what love really boils down to—having someone who cares enough to pay attention so that you’re encouraged to travel and transfer, to make your potential energy spark into kinetic energy. Maybe all anyone ever needs is for someone to notice them, to observe them.

And I notice Roman. So honestly, all I want is for him to have an answer to my question. I just need to know something about him that will make me believe that there’s even a sliver of a chance that his particles have a longing to go in a certain direction and only need a nudge.

“I’d want to go to college,” he says.

I can’t help it—my heart leaps with a surge of hope.
That’s a start.
I make a gesture for him to continue.

“And I’d want to play basketball there.”

I nod. “Even though you don’t play anymore?”

He gives me a sly smile. “Well, this all takes place in a hypothetical universe, right? I can be whoever I want to be.”

The surge of hope I felt a moment ago is gone. My insides collapse and I sink into the booth’s torn cushion.
It doesn’t have to be hypothetical.
I force myself not to give away my disappointment and say, “Fair enough. Go on.”

“What else is there?”

“I don’t know. What would you want to study?”

His face flushes and he shifts in the booth. “Ah, that’s the stupid part.”

I tap my fingers against the table. “Then it’s the good part.”

“You would say that.” I give him a look and he holds his hands up above his head. “Fine, fine. I’d want to study marine biology. I know it’s dumb, but I’d love to explore the ocean.”

I grin and I’m sure I look like an idiot, but I don’t care. “Like
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
. Like Captain Nemo.”

His smile returns. “Exactly. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of an underwater adventure. But it’s stupid since I’ve never even been to the ocean.” He stops talking and his eyes go hazy, distant. “And I guess I’ll never go.”

I bite my tongue.
Maybe not, FrozenRobot. Maybe not.
I briefly imagine us on a road trip to the coast. Maybe we’d head out to somewhere in North Carolina—that’s not too far from here. I see him walking along the beach in his UK hoodie, the waves lapping at his ankles. He’d inspect the water and I’d stay back, sitting in the sand, reading a book on the philosophy of physics or something. We could be happy. And it doesn’t have to be in an alternate or hypothetical universe.

I need to figure out how to show him that. Maybe I should buy him a book on marine biology. But that seems too heavy-handed. He’d flip out. Maybe I could propose a last-minute road trip to the beach.

I wonder if anyone on Smooth Passages would have any advice for me, but that thought makes me bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. I know everyone on that website would totally go nuts if they knew I was changing my mind. And worse, trying to convince my partner to change his mind. That’s precisely what’s not supposed to happen.