My Heart and Other Black Holes (6 page)

I ignore his comments and put the key in the ignition. The engine makes a sputtering noise. I jiggle the wheel and we’re in business. I pull out of the parking lot and then look over at him. He’s staring straight out the windshield, his head tipped toward his chest. His hazel eyes are wide but empty. For the first time, I can really see it. FrozenRobot isn’t playing around; FrozenRobot wants to die.

The black slug lives inside of FrozenRobot, too.

THURSDAY, MARCH 14

24 days left

F
or a while, we drive in silence. I’m a little nervous that FrozenRobot is going to open the car door and launch himself out onto the gravel road. I’m not sure the impact would kill him, but it’d still put me in a sticky situation.

When he reaches for the radio dial instead of the door, I take a shallow breath of relief. He chooses Georgia’s favorite station—the one that plays the same top five hits on repeat. All the songs seem to be about getting trashed, wearing glittery short dresses, and dancing the night away. I make a face.

“What?” he says.

“I don’t get you. You seem like such a—”

He makes a motion, crossing his arms in the air like a letter
X
, which I take to mean “shut up” and so I do. The one thing I’m pretty good at is following orders. Wait, I guess that’s not true. I never follow Mr. Palmer’s orders, though most of the time I at least try to pretend like I do.

Roman turns the radio off. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were such a music snob.”

“I’m a nothing snob,” I say.

“Not a snob and not a soccer mom,” he says. “You have a lot going for you.”

“Right,” I say, and then test the waters. “A lot of potential wasted on April seventh.” Potential energy. I wonder if FrozenRobot ever thinks about the physics of death.

“Here’s to that,” he says, pretending to raise a drink in the air. “Cheers.” I guess the songs on Georgia’s radio station are a good fit for his interests.

We bump along the road for a little bit longer in silence. I reach for the radio dial and turn it to the classical music station. He doesn’t comment on my music choice. The landscape slowly becomes hillier. We reach a sharp curve in the road and turn away from the river, heading toward the rolling hills. The grass is still brown and dry from the winter and most of the trees are still barren. Spring is running late this year. I roll down the window a little and the moist, cool air slips into the car. On certain days, you can smell bourbon in the air, the sweet rye scent coming from a distillery that’s a
few miles away, but today, I only smell mud and damp grass. The wind slaps against my cheeks and I resist the urge to look over at him, keeping my eyes focused on the road.

“I can’t drive anymore because of something that happened last year,” he finally volunteers. “That’s why you’re always going to have to drive. I had my mom drop me off earlier at the root beer stand. She was so thrilled that I was leaving the house for the first time in months to meet a friend.” He gives me a look. “I told her you were a new friend. My mom is psyched.”

So his parents are worried about him. That’s kind of bad. That means heightened supervision. But I guess that’s why he needs me, his trusted Suicide Partner. “Got it,” I say. “Well, do you think you can at least give me directions so I know where to drop you off?”

He pauses and his bottom lip twists, like he’s debating whether to talk or not.

“What?” I prompt.

“Can I ask you for a favor?”

My first task as his partner. Something inside me sways like a rocking chair in an empty room—it’s both lonely and comforting. “Sure. What is it?”

“Can we stop at the fishing supply store on Main?”

I wrinkle my nose. “The fishing supply store?”

“Yeah. I need to pick up some earthworms.”

I blink and sneak a quick glance at him. He’s staring
straight ahead. His face muscles are relaxed, there’s no sign that he’s joking. “Um, okay,” I say. “Just tell me how to get there.”

“Stay straight on this road until it comes to the fork by the bridge. Then stay left and you’ll be on Willis’s main drag. The fishing supply store is on the right corner of the intersection between Main and Burns.” FrozenRobot’s voice is calm and steady as he delivers the directions. It seems like he’s a regular at the fishing supply store. Weird.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and try to focus on the music. The radio station is playing Mozart’s Symphony no. 40, but even the crisp, minor-key violin notes aren’t able to distract me. “Why do you need earthworms? Are you big into fishing or something?”

He makes a sound that’s something between a grunt and a laugh. “No.”

Evidently, FrozenRobot is not a man of many words. “No?”

“No, I’m not into fishing.” He squirms, moving his body so he can be closer to the passenger-side door. His knees knock against the dashboard and I consider suggesting that he could move his seat back if he’s uncomfortable, but I don’t.

“Okay. Then I don’t get it. What am I missing?”

“Huh?”

I guess he’s really going to make me spell it out. “Why do you need earthworms if you aren’t into fishing?”

“For my pet turtle,” he says like I should have known all along that he had a pet turtle. Like that’s a reasonable assumption to make about people. Maybe Willis, Kentucky, is the pet turtle capital of the United States.

At first, I’m thrown off that he has a pet. He doesn’t seem like the type to have an animal, and if he did, I’d guess he was a golden retriever person or something. He seems like that all-American, basketball-playing, hamburger-eating, dog-loving type. But then my throat tightens as the fact sinks into my mind.
He has a pet.

I say it aloud. “You have a pet.”

“I have a pet,” he says, and then like he knows what I’m thinking, he looks over at me. “But don’t worry. That’s not going to stop me.”

I take a deep breath and stare at my dirty floor mat. A crunched Coke can is wedged in the back corner. Its metallic surface reflects the sunlight, making it look like it’s winking at me.

“You should keep your eyes on the road,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

“I heard you,” I say in a tight, pinched voice. “But if you want to die, why do you care whether I focus on the road?”

He sucks in his breath, and out of the corner of my eye, I see his broad shoulders slump, making him look like a moose that was just shot and wounded by a hunter. “I want to die,
but I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

“Fair enough.” I grit my teeth and stare straight ahead. I don’t tell him about the Coke can. He’d probably think that was a safety hazard.

I steer the car around the fork FrozenRobot described, staying to the left like he instructed. My car glides down Willis’s main drag. It’s full of painted Victorian-style houses that have been transformed into cutesy businesses—the Creamy Whip, an ice-cream shop; the Fried Egg, a breakfast diner; Suds and Bubbles, a Laundromat.

“What’s your turtle’s name?”

“Captain Nemo,” he says, and then adds, “I didn’t name him.”

I don’t press the issue. The anonymous person who gifted Captain Nemo his name hangs in the air like an unopened envelope. We both know a letter, a story, is inside, but right now neither one of us is brave enough to break the seal.

As we approach a blue house that has fish stickers in the window, I slow the car down. There’s a sign in the front lawn that reads “Bob’s Fishing Supply & Co.” I park in an empty place across the street.

“I’ll run in,” Roman says.

I start to take the key out of the ignition, but he shakes his head. “You can stay here.”

Before I can say anything, he’s already left the car and is slowly jogging up to the front door of Bob’s Fishing Supply
& Co. He’s moving with more urgency than I’ve seen him move all day. Back at the root beer stand, he was kind of lethargic, sluggish.

He must really love that turtle. My heart feels clogged, constricted, but slowly the feeling fades. I pat my stomach.
Good job, black slug.
As I wait for him to come back, I close my eyes and listen to the music. They’ve started playing a bit from Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake
. It’s not my favorite. It’s too light, too pretty. It has too much longing.

I don’t like songs about wanting things. I like songs about letting go, saying good-bye.

Before I know it, FrozenRobot is back, clutching a paper cup in his hands. As he squeezes back into his seat, I say, “You better not spill those.”

“Why? Because you keep your car so clean?” His lips twitch, inching into a sloppy smile. The boy really has a smiling problem. Especially for someone who has the nerve to accuse me of being a flake.

I frown. “Because it would be gross.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll make sure they don’t spill.”

I pull the car out of the parking space and continue down Main. “So where’s your house?”

Roman gives me directions and then at the end says, “How can you listen to this stuff?”

I gesture toward the radio. “This stuff? This stuff is the stuff of genius.” I wish Tchaikovsky wasn’t on and I could
defend something more powerful, like one of Bach’s toccatas, but still.
Swan Lake
is worlds deeper than whatever glittery pop ballad he’d wanted to listen to.

“There’s no words,” he says.

“That’s kind of the point, and it’s funny that you of all people should complain about that.”

I feel him shift his weight in the seat again. His legs bump against the side door. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you just don’t seem like a big fan of words yourself. So I thought you’d appreciate the lack of lyrics.”

He cranes his neck to look at me. I can feel his eyes on my face—they’re still soft, no burn—but I can feel them nonetheless. “I like other people’s words. They fill me up.”

“Like words about getting trashed and grinding on the ladies?”

He snort-laughs. “No. That’s just noise. I like that, too, though. Helps me forget.”

“Forget about?”

“It. Why I want to die.”

We enter his neighborhood. It looks similar to mine, same old frame houses, except the yards in his neighborhood look better maintained. There’s no spotty crabgrass or dandelion patches.

“I don’t get you.” And it’s true. It might be the most honest thing I’ve said to him all day. I don’t get why he’s looking to be filled up, looking to find things in music. When I listen
to music, I’m searching for a place to hide, a place to escape my emptiness.

I can see him fiddling with the earthworms. They bounce up and down in his lap and he tries to keep the cup as steady and secure as possible. I wonder why he bothers to be so careful with creatures that are about to die.

He doesn’t say anything, so I push it further. “I don’t understand why you want this, why you want to be a part of this.”

“Are you asking why I want to kill myself or why I don’t want to do it alone?”

“Both,” I say, chewing on my bottom lip. “Honestly, I don’t really care why you want to kill yourself.” That’s a lie, but I don’t want to tell him why I want to die so it seems only fair not to make him spill his reasons. “I just need to know you’re not a flake.”

He lets out a cold laugh. “Oh, so now you’re concerned about flakes?”

“I saw all your friends. I need to make sure this isn’t some sick prank.” What I don’t say is:
I need to make sure this isn’t a setup since you know Brian Jackson
.

“Friends?” He spits the word out in disgust. “Those people aren’t my friends.”

“I’m not really an expert, but they sure seemed like friends.”

“Look, you don’t know what you’re talking about so you
should shut up,” he says. The sun is hanging low in the sky, splashing light inside the car, making his hazel eyes glow golden. I wish they would go back to being greener. He didn’t look so mean, so angry, when they were green.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

He tilts his chin upward, as if to signal that he’s not going to apologize. “Take a left here.” He motions toward a small street off Southwind, the main street in his neighborhood. “It’s the red house on the right.”

It’s a rickety old house like mine, but the wooden siding looks better maintained and someone’s clearly been gardening in the front yard. There’s a freshly mulched flower bed, and even though nothing has bloomed yet, I imagine that come June, it’s going to be full of lilies and marigolds. A butterscotch-colored mailbox sits at the end of the driveway and there’s a sign affixed to it that says
FRANKLINS
’.

“Cute,” I say.

“My mom tries,” Roman says as he gets out of the car, balancing the cup of earthworms in his left hand.

I guess all moms try. “Wait,” I say. “So are we going to do this thing or not?”

He walks around to the driver’s side. I roll the window down all the way.

“Yeah. I’m in, if you are,” he says.

“I’m definitely in,” I say. “But I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you need me.”

As if on cue, the front door to his house opens. A short, plump, middle-aged woman skips down the front steps. Her hair is the same chestnut color as Roman’s, but it’s graying. She’s wearing a cooking apron and flower-print clogs. If I were making a tourism brochure for Willis, Kentucky, which thank God I’m not, I’d put this lady on the front cover. She’s the human embodiment of the town.

“Roman!” she says, giving us both a little wave. It’s a beauty queen pageant wave. Most of the older women around these parts have perfected that move—stiff wrist, slow turn. “Roman!” she repeats. “Introduce me to your friend.”

My whole face burns and my stomach clenches and unclenches like a fist. It’s not like I feel guilty—after all, it’s not my fault her son wants to kill himself. But I didn’t exactly want to meet his family. This is the soccer mom problem I was trying to avoid. Two strikes against FrozenRobot—a pet turtle and a loving mom. If I were pickier, I’d say he had too much baggage. But considering my situation, I’m in no position to be choosy.

“Um, Mom,” Roman says, his voice uneven. He takes a few gulps of air, his Adam’s apple visible in his throat. “This is Aysel.”