My Beating Teenage Heart (29 page)

“Just a guy,” I rasp. A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and mixes with tears. I’m still warm from whatever happened out there. “Jules … I’m out on the Bourneville Water Bridge.”

My call waiting beeps and I let it. A BMW honks at me as I near my car.

Jules says, “What are you doing on the bridge? Did your car break down?”

I shiver. I’m hotter than hell and I can’t stop shaking.

I open the car door and climb in. I can’t drive like this. I can’t do anything but
stay
. All my energy’s clinging to that one thing, that and the shock that I almost didn’t make it. My ananheart’s beating as fast as a hummingbird’s. I’m running circles around my own mind. Tripping, falling. Alive.

“Jules, I almost jumped.” I slouch in my seat, my eyes closing in relief because I’ve confessed. I’m done pretending. “I couldn’t do it.”

“You …” Jules’s voice breaks. She tries again. “I’m coming to you.” I can hear that she’s scared but I hear her strength too. “Don’t do anything.
Don’t do anything
. Promise me!”

“I promise.”

“Okay, look, I’m getting in the car right now but I’m staying on the phone with you.”

I don’t argue. She could get pulled over by the cops for that but I want her with me. I pushed her away before and now I can’t stand to be apart from her voice for fifteen minutes. “That’s … good,” I stammer, “but I don’t think I can drive, Jules. I’m too …”

I don’t have to explain, Jules gets it. “Okay,” she says slowly. “What about if I pick up Ty to come drive your car home? He’ll … you know … he’ll understand.”

I know he will. It’s fine, let him come.

“But the only thing is, I’ll need to get off the phone with you for just a second to call him,” Jules continues.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Call him. I’ll wait.”

She’s gone for less than a minute before my phone rings again. This time it’s Ty and he says, “We’re on our way, man. You sitting tight there?” The way his voice bends lets me know I’ve scared him shitless and I can’t believe it’s come to this. I still can’t believe Skylar’s dead and gone and that my life will never be the same. The shocks explode in my head in quick succession. Gone, gone, gone.

But I’m still holding on. I’m going to fight after all. Skylar would approve.

Jules and Ty pull up behind my car on the bridge soon enough. I open the door and get out. Jules runs into my arms, crying, which makes me cry again too. Ty, who before April had never seen me cry at all, watches us shuffle towards him. When we get close he grabs me and hugs me until it feels like my bones will snap. “You know, I tried to call you just before Jules called me,” he says. “I don’t why. It was like … just a feeling, a hunch.”

Somehow I’m not surprised. It has something to do with that voice inside my head and maybe Skylar too. I can’t explain it in any way that won’t sound delusional. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully figure it out, but two people called me at the moment when I was ready to dive off a bridge tonight. That can’t be coincidence.

“I’201at the mll be right behind you guys on the way back,” Ty adds. “We’ll talk more after.”

And so I get into Mrs. Pacquette’s car with Jules. After everything we’ve been through she’s still here, and when things get better I need to make it up to her. “I’m sorry about everything,” I tell her. “What happened at the party …”

Jules shakes her head. “That doesn’t even matter, Breckon, you know? That’s for some other time.”

I know. When we get to my house I’ll tell my parents everything. I won’t argue about Eva Kannan, I’ll volunteer to see her. Let’s face it, I need help—maybe even more than once a week, maybe pills that I won’t have to buy illegally, whatever I can get that will stop me from crawling out onto bridges.

I will never stop missing Skylar. That’s a fact. But I need to learn to live with it. Even as I think that to myself I feel like I should apologize to her, as though dealing with something is the same thing as forgetting.

It’s not. She’d know that and think I was being stupid, apologizing for the wrong thing when what I should’ve been sorry about was trying to kill myself.

Jules keeps eyeing me from the driver’s seat, like I’m going to spontaneously combust. I can’t really blame her. In fact, I’m as glad to be with her as I could possibly be about anything at this moment and I have one more thing to ask her. “Do you think … do you think you and Ty could come in with me when I talk to my parents?”

My phone rings before Jules can reply. It’s my home phone number, my parents calling. Three calls in the last few minutes—what are the odds? I don’t pick up. We’ll be home soon and then I’ll explain everything. My parents have enough problems without this, but I need them to know the truth.

Jules is tearing up again. She reaches out with her right hand, her fingernails digging into my shoulder, and whispers, “Yeah, of course.”

“Thanks.” My voice is small. I owe my friends so much—and that extra voice inside my head, whoever it belongs to. I clear my throat and repeat myself, louder,
“Thank you,”
so that it will know it hasn’t gone unnoticed and that I’m grateful. I should have said something before now.

Inside my head Aretha Franklin sings “I Say a Little Prayer.” Gold stardust sprinkles behind my eyes as I remember the serenity and love that I felt out on the bridge. And I’m not sure what I believe or how exactly I’ll get through this but I’ll welcome a little prayer in my favor any day.
Thank you
.

twenty-three
                            
ashlyn

Breckon Cody w201atont coalks
to his front door with his friends close by his side. His father opens the door before Breckon can reach for his house key. Mr. Cody surveys the trio, his eyes steeped in a relief that mutates swiftly into unease, the wrinkle between his eyes deepening. I watch Breckon step inside the front door, Jules’s fingers intertwined tightly with his, and I know he’s in good hands. He can manage without me for a while.

So now it’s my turn. I broke free from the chains binding me to Breckon out on the bridge when I sped to the people who currently surround him. I no longer have to shadow his every move.

Where I go now is up to me. All it takes is one thought.
Home
. And I’m through the front door, no need to wipe my feet on the taupe area rug my mom bought on sale at Home Depot last summer. The house is dark but I can feel how it’s changed in the air. Because of me, my death. I’ve left a hole and I need to tell them—Dad, Mom, Celeste and Garrett—that they don’t have to worry about me. My heart stopped beating but I haven’t ceased.

But even now something tells me I won’t be able to stay, not with my family and not with Breckon either. This is an in-between time. My journey’s not finished and leads elsewhere, maybe the place where Skylar lives now. The universe has begun to peel back its secrets. Light streams in where previously there was only darkness. In the distance unseen voices murmur. Others like me. Within reach.

Soon I will go to them. Soon I will know whatever there is to be known, but I’m not finished here quite yet.

Up the stairs I fly, into my parents’ bedroom where Curtis and Cythnia sleep, my mother curved onto her side and my father stretched out on his back, one of his feet poking out of the covers. Like the house itself, my parents look the same as before I left them but feel different. Grief is in the slope of my mother’s shoulders, the slackness of my father’s jaw.

This is not what I want for them but I understand loss, from my time with Breckon, in a way I couldn’t before. It doesn’t stand still. This is only a moment, like a single link in an endless chain. In time my mother and father will move forward, not away from me but towards life. That is my biggest hope.

I hover over their bed, marveling at the sight of my parents and bursting with love for them—every last thing they are and every piece of themselves they gave me. Hands for me to hold. Praise and encouragement sung loud. The timbre of my father’s voice when he called me “baby girl.” My mother, stroking my hair when I felt sick or had a childhood nightmare, her hand rubbing tender circles into my back. The knowledge, right at the core of me since before I could speak, that there was nothing they wouldn’t do for me. Their love will never end.

I’m more myself than I have ever been, and from here, Curtis and Cynthia feel almost like children. My wishes for them are those a parent has for their kids—that they be safe and happy and that their future be filled with peace. I kiss their fretful foreheads with my phantom lips and pray that they can feel it in their sleep.
I’m free
, Mom and Dad.
Don’t be sad for me
.

Live
.

Next I go to Garrett, my beautiful baby brother, just twelve years old, who will have to do the rest of his growing up without me. Baseball trophies, plaques and ribbons line the shelf next to his bed. He was always so proud of them. So smart too, and infinite pride for him wells up inside me as I slip further into his room. My brother will be whatever he wants in life, I know he will. There’s no limit to what he can do. He rolls over as I approach, burying his face in his pillow so that all I can see is a fraction of his cheek and chin until he flips onto his back again. Then I kiss him too.
I’ve missed you, Garrett
.

Of all my family, only Celeste is awake, home from university for the summer, her face drawn and her body thinner than I remember. I watch her sitting hunched over in the same bed she’s had since she was thirteen, scribbling in a tiny leather notebook—the one that I kept in my purse but had never written in. I glance at the page beneath her pen, only for a few moments because it’s my sister’s face that I really want to see. It doesn’t take long to realize every word on the page is meant for me, a letter intended to reach across the divide. She wants me to know that I’ll never be forgotten, that she is always thinking of me, carrying me with her.

My sister
. She’s the first person I wanted to be like, the first and best friend I ever had.

I remember every minute of those days at Grandma’s, Celeste. Dancing with the smell of fresh baking all around us. I remember the bedtime stories you read me, sitting next to me with your legs stretched out on top of the blankets. And years later, the way you let me creep into your bed when I’d had bad dreams about Dylan.

You never stopped watching out for me. I haven’t forgotten. I remember
everything
. And I want everything for you that you would’ve wanted for yourself before I left. You can want those things and still remember. I hope you know that.

I wrap my arms around Celeste’s shoulders, kiss her temple and radiate warmth.
Feel this
, I tell her.
I’m here and I love you
. Celeste puts down her pen and leans back against me. We sit on her bed together until she drifts off to sleep. I sing into her ear, wish I could stay with her and Garrett and my parents forever, wish I could have turned sixteen.

But there are the secrets and the others and I long for them too.

I reach towards the light and tug back the curtain, still singing to myself, still Ashlyn Baptiste. And this time I do not have to fall. I soar.

acknowledgments

Special thanks to my husband, Paddy, for reading, believing and always being there. How did I get this lucky?

Many thanks to writers Courtney Summers and Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson for listening, understanding and offering sage advice. I appreciate it more than you know.

Thank you, Shana Corey, for being the kind of editor I always dreamed of having.

My gratitude goes out to all the Random House folks involved with this book and the ones that preceded it. In particular I want to thank editor Amy Black for her faith in this novel, Nicole de las Heras for her stunning cover designs, and Emily Pourciau for being such a pleasure to work with.

Thanks to my brother, Casey, for reading my first draft of this book and for sharing his thoughts.

Finally, thanks to my agent, Stephanie Thwaites, for accompanying me down this path and for her guidance over the years.

about the author

C. K. Kelly Martin is the critically acclaimed author of
I Know It’s Over, One Lonely Degree
, and
The Lighter Side of Life and Death
. She began writing her first novel in Dublin and currently lives in greater Toronto with her husband. She’s perpetually working on new novels and redesigning her website and blog. Visit them both at
ckkellymartin.com
.

Table of Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication