Authors: Melissa Walker
Unbreak My Heart (21 page)
“Whoa, Crazy Olive!” says James as Olive goes first and lights her marshmallow on fire, totally scorching it.
“I like it when the outside gets all black,” she tells him, arranging a square of chocolate on her cracker and topping it with the poor marshmallow and another cracker. When she bites into her s’more, she gets melty goo on the sides of her mouth.
“Hey, Crazy Olive, you’ve got a little …” James points at the edge of his mouth, but Olive just stares at him, smiling and content with her dessert, not appreciating what he’s telling her.
“Wipe your mouth, Livy,” I say, reaching below deck and grabbing a tissue. I’m still processing what James told me. Why is their boat still named
Dreaming of Sylvia
if James’s parents are divorced? I’m trying to act normal, but I’m staring at my mom, who’s talking animatedly with Mr. Townsend about the moon cycles. She is so far from her law office right now.
“Clem, how do you like yours?” James asks me.
“Huh?” I ask, tuning in to him slowly.
“Your marshmallows?” he asks.
“Oh, golden brown,” I say. My voice comes out soft and quiet. James seems as cheerful as ever.
“May I?” he asks, spiking a marshmallow on his metal stick.
“Sure,” I say.
He approaches the flame cautiously, turning the marshmallow at a slow and steady speed, making sure each corner gets heat and rolling the stick in his hand. After a minute, he pulls the stick from the fire and blows lightly on the marshmallow.
“Is it right?” he asks.
“It’s perfect,” I say, impressed by the even tone he got.
“Here,” he says, putting it down on my waiting cracker-with-chocolate.
He makes one for himself, too, and I wait to eat mine until he’s done. Then we crunch in together.
“Hey!” says Olive. “You have chocolate on
your
faces now!”
She sits back with her arms folded across her chest, satisfied that we’ve gotten what we deserve after calling her out.
James and I look at each other and start to laugh. I hand him a tissue and take one myself, but I don’t feel self-conscious, and the sadness of what he told me about his mom being gone is fading. He’s here, in the moment, and he’s okay. So I can be okay too.
Just before James and his dad step off the boat to leave a little later, he pulls me aside with a touch on the small of my back.
Mr. Townsend is telling Mom and Dad what a good time he had. Olive is licking her fingers from her fourth s’more.
James whispers in my ear, “Come swimming with me tomorrow?”
I turn to face him, my mouth just inches from his, and I say, “Yes.”
“Want to see George Washington?” asks James.
“Uh … I’m not sure,” I say. Everything he’s said to me today has been a lead-up to a joke, so I’m smiling but wary.
“Sure you do,” he says, and then he dunks his head underwater and pops up backward with all his hair in front of his face. He folds it over onto his head so it looks like a crazy old wig like they used to wear in, well, George Washington times.
“That’s a new one for me,” I say. “But can you do five flips in a row?”
I spring into action and start my underwater flips, knowing I can hold my breath for five, sometimes six, and feeling the water swirl all around me as I speed through the movements.
I emerge into the air and breathe in deeply. I spin around to find James, and he flashes a giant smile.
Then, without a word, he takes off underwater. I count seven rotations.
“Show off,” I say when he emerges with a cocky grin.
“Always,” he says, water dripping down his face. I smile back, and suddenly he puts a hand on my waist, pulling me closer to him.
“Clem?” he says.
“Yes?” I feel every nerve in my body stand on end. His hand is touching my bare torso. We’re in the water, wet, and practically naked.
“Thanks for hanging out this summer,” he says. “I’d be so bored without you.” He pauses, and I think for a minute that he might lean in. But he adds, “And Crazy Olive, of course!”
Then he pushes me away and yells, “Race to the shore!”
He takes off like a bullet, and I’m left still feeling my heart beating in my stomach. But I snap out of that quickly and jump into action. I can at least avoid humiliating myself by keeping up.
He beats me by a few seconds, and we end up lying on the muddy shore, panting for breath. I feel the sun warm my wet skin, and I look up at the blue sky, listening to James’s laugh, his utter joy. We haven’t talked about his mom at all today.
“How do you do it?” I ask.
“Do what?” He sits up on one elbow and turns toward me.
“How do you act so happy?”
“I am happy,” he says.
“But, I mean, how do you …,” I start, but I’m not sure how to ask him. “Don’t you feel sad about the divorce and everything? Don’t you miss your mom?”
He sits up all the way now, looking out at the water.
“Yeah, I think about her,” he says, slowly, carefully. And when he says it, his hand moves toward his heart. It seems involuntary, sad, sweet. But then he moves his hand to the ground and digs into the mud a little bit. “It was her choice to leave, though.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.” I sit up and look in his eyes to see if I’m upsetting him.
He grimaces. “Oh man, I’m not going to be that ‘sad child of divorce’ to you now, am I?”
I smile at him. “No way,” I say.
“Good. Then maybe we can discuss how today is, like, the best day ever.” He turns to the lake and opens his arms to the sky. “Look at that sun, look at the water, look at you.”
When he faces me again, I feel my heart speed up.
James leans in, and when his lips touch mine, they’re still a little bit wet, and we hold the softest, most perfect kiss for a few beats. I want to enjoy the moment, but I’m already narrating what I’m going to write in my journal later:
Best. Kiss. Ever
.
I devote a whole page to the kiss. I cannot include enough adjectives to get this feeling down. It involves fireworks, shooting stars, and sparklers on the dock, and it doesn’t even feel like an exaggeration. Then, I write:
James is having such a hard summer, and he
still laughs. He still makes everyone around
him feel happy and important. My problems
with Ethan and Amanda seem tiny next to
his. It’s not like having your mom leave or
something. Why can’t I figure out how to
deal with things like James does?
I have trouble sleeping because I’m still feeling buzzy about the kiss. It’s an almost-perfect feeling, like there are thousands of tiny happy bubbles inside me, making me warm and fizzy. But there’s something missing: sharing it with Amanda.
Being Amanda’s best friend was my favorite thing. Sometimes people would mix us up because we were always together, so when they’d talk about us, they’d say our names really quickly and end up with something like “ClemandAmanda.” Eventually, we became “Clemanda.” It had to happen.
There was this one Saturday last year when Amanda and I went for coffee. Or, I should say, we went for coffee dessert drinks, because we both have a sweet tooth and cannot steer clear of seasonal, foamy, flavored steaming beverages. We sat down at the table in the window of the café in the strip mall near my house and watched people pull in and out of the parking lot. It was probably March or April. I know it was rainy, because Amanda was wearing her light blue trench coat and yellow rain boots. She always knew how to be the cutest girl in the room, in a good way.
I had on black rubber Hunter boots, which I’d heard were cool somewhere. I still thought Amanda’s yellow ones were the best—they had little sunshines on them.
And on that day, we didn’t talk about Ethan.
“The book I’m reading has such a scary cover that I have to turn it backside-up before I go to sleep,” said Amanda as we grabbed a table by the window.
I blew on the top of my steaming cinnamon latte. “I did that with an R.L. Stine book once. The demon cover was taunting me.”
“Terrifying.” Amanda shivers and smiles. “Oh, wait, did you see Paul Kantor’s epic status updates last night?”
“He always has a steady stream of hilarious things to say—he’s even funnier online than he is in real life. It’s like, go become a professional comedian already.”
“I know! My updates are so blah.”
“No they’re not!” I said.
“Nice of you to say, but when everyone who comments on your updates says something better than your actual update, you know you’re just not that good at one-liners.”
“I hate that!” I almost knocked over Amanda’s mocha cappuccino with my hand. I get really animated sometimes. “It’s so much pressure if someone’s comment is smarter and funnier than your actual update!”
“Especially when you spent, like, twenty minutes crafting the update to be really good,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “And are you supposed to respond? Who can keep up that level of wit?”
“Paul Kantor,” we said simultaneously, before erupting into laughter.
“Well, I love your updates,” said Amanda.
“Thank you.” I smiled at her. “Ditto.”
“Speaking of updates, I talked to Grandma Rose yesterday,” said Amanda. Grandma Rose is her ninety-two-year-old grandmother who used to take us to the movies and make us leave halfway through because it was “too darn loud!” Nevermind that she’s nearly deaf. She’s a sweet lady, though—she always bought us ice cream afterward.
“How is G-Rose?” I asked.
“I think she’s okay,” said Amanda. “I’d rather just go visit her, though. You know how it’s hard to talk to older relatives on the phone?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “They can’t hear you, and they get confused about who you are and stuff?”
“Exactly. So I’m shouting, ‘It’s AMANDA! Your GRANDDAUGHTER!’ And that’s basically the whole conversation. Forget any sort of interesting exchange.”
I laughed into my foam.
“Yeah, visits are better,” I agreed. “But still, the phone calls probably mean a lot, even if they do kind of suck.”
“Definitely,” said Amanda. “I will always, always talk to Grandma Rose when Mom calls her.”
“Of course!” I said. “Because one day you’ll
be
Grandma Rose, and who wants to be old and alone with bratty grandkids who won’t even call you?”
“Not me!” declared Amanda. “The karmic value of those calls alone is worth it.”
When Amanda finished her last sip of latte, I snapped a phone photo of her with a foam mustache. It turned out supercute, so I showed her the screen.
“Isn’t it extra special that I look especially good in candid photos?” she asked through the foam, giving me a sideways smile.
“Totally extra special,” I said, taking our cups to throw them away by the door.
“We are awesome,” she said, standing up and joining me at the exit. And even though we were being mock conceited and ridiculous, it was just in the company of each other, when we could do things like that.
Then we opened the double glass doors simultaneously and linked arms. We jumped through puddles all the way home, just because we wanted to. It was stormy and gray, but Amanda said, “Ooh! I bet there’ll be a rainbow later.”
And that’s how being with Amanda made me feel, once upon a time.
At the next marina, I’m perched on the bow of the boat with the binoculars. I’m pretending to look at birds across the river, but honestly? I’m scouting for
Dreaming of Sylvia
. I can feel sweat beading on my forehead as I sit out in the sun—it’s intensely hot today. I pat my face with a towel and look through the binoculars again. James told me they’d definitely be here when we arrived, but there’s no sign of them yet.
I’ve been thinking a lot about James. About his mom just up and leaving, about his father’s hidden pain, about how he doesn’t have a big support system—just his dad—to help him if he’s feeling sad. About the kiss.