Our Chemical Hearts (14 page)

THERE WAS NO MENTION,
the following Monday, of the events that transpired the Friday before. In fact, I don't believe it was ever mentioned again. I'd decided, over the weekend, not to solidly make up my mind about how to move forward until I saw Grace again in the flesh. I was still uncertain, leaning more toward saying “let's just be friends,” because it was stupidly complicated and rocky and I didn't know if I could deal with that.

It was senior year. Between school, the newspaper, deciding which colleges to apply to (hint: any one that would take me), and maintaining the slim resemblance of a social life, my existence was already busy and knotted enough.

And then, of course, I'd Googled the crash. It had taken a while to find the article, because Grace's name was never used, and I didn't know her boyfriend's full name. When I found it, I didn't want to read it. It felt like getting a shitty mark back on an essay and seeing a wall of text from the teacher about
everything you'd done wrong, everything you couldn't change now, so what was the point?

Still, I skimmed it, picked up quotes here and there, tried to read as little as possible because the words stung me like barbs.

Classes at East River High School were suspended on Wednesday after a junior died and a second was severely injured—

Skipped to next paragraph.

The unnamed passenger, a 17-year-old girl believed to be the driver's girlfriend, remained in critical condition Friday with major injuries to her—

Skipped to next paragraph.

The car skidded off the road and flipped several times before impacting a tree near—

Skipped to next paragraph.

It's believed that the 17-year-old driver, Dominic Sawyer, died on impact, while the passenger was rushed to—

Skipped to next paragraph.

“The car is just destroyed,” said the officer. “There's nothing left—

Skipped to next paragraph.

At East River, school counselors are on hand today to provide support to students and—

Skipped to next paragraph.

Jeffers said Sawyer “was one of the kindest students I'd ever taught. Brilliant at everything and—

Skipped to next paragraph.

Plans for a memorial service for the popular East River student are—

Closed website.

By the time I reached my afternoon drama class, I'd all but decided that we couldn't be together. We couldn't make it work. Grace was too broken. Too weird. How could you move on from that? What she needed was a friend, not a boyfriend. I could be that for her. I could be a good friend. God knows she needed one. So I sat where I normally sat in the black-walled drama room, across from the door, close to the stage, waiting
for her to arrive. Surely it wasn't too late to nip it in the bud. Feelings could be suppressed if you tried hard enough, right?

Grace got there late, as she always did, and Mrs. Beady didn't say anything, because she never did.

Nothing about her had changed, specifically. Her hair was still a mess. Her skin was still sallow. She still had guys'—her dead boyfriend Dom's—clothes on. She still walked with a limp that was in no way attractive. But the moment our eyes met across the room and her hard expression softened at the sight of me, I knew.

I knew I wanted to try.

So she was grieving and broken and it would almost definitely end in one or both of us getting destroyed. But some things were worth fighting for, right?

BECAUSE I'M A COWARD,
I didn't ask her about him. Maybe it would have been the best thing for both of us to sit down and for her to talk about him and cry about him and tell me that she still regularly visited his grave.

There were things I was curious about, of course. How long had they dated? How long had they known each other? Had they slept together?

Had she loved him?

But Grace didn't belong to me. She wasn't my girlfriend. I'd only kissed her twice. In fact, she'd asked me not to tell anyone about us, to keep it on the down-low, at least until she knew for sure what she wanted, because it was generally considered poor taste to date someone so soon after your significant other had died. I tried my best not to feel hurt that she wanted to keep me a secret, because, well, fair enough.

So it didn't feel like my place to ask about him, and I think, deep down, I kind of didn't want to know. The Grace I'd fallen
for hadn't been a girl in mourning for someone else; she'd been a mystery to be unraveled, and part of me wanted to keep it that way.

The trick to dating, I figured, was to have some kind of activity to do. Going to the movies seemed kind of lame and antisocial, but there was a new Liam Neeson action flick out, and we had the whole Liam-Neeson-improvisational-comedy in-joke thing going, so I decided to message her on Monday afternoon to see what she was doing.

HENRY PAGE:

GRACE TOWN:

•   •   •

Grace was waiting outside the theater when I arrived, hunched over her phone, unkempt as ever.

“Hey,” I said when she looked up and saw me. Was I supposed to kiss her? We'd already kissed before, but did that mean I was allowed to kiss her whenever I wanted to now? Were we allowed to be affectionate in public places, or did that break the down-low rule?

“Henry Page,” Grace said. Why had I still not kissed her? “Shall we get our tickets?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Normally, on Good Grace Days, conversation between us flowed pretty easily. There were still awkward silences sometimes, when I couldn't rack my brain for words to save my life, but tonight felt different. There was a new tension that'd never been there before, because this was a
date
date (wasn't it?). Something had shifted between us. Attraction had been acknowledged, and it somehow made everything more difficult.

When the lights went down, I tried to decide if I should hold her hand. I'd held hands with Lola at the movies once,
during the week that'd ultimately culminated with the kiss that had determined her homosexuality for her once and for all. I really hoped this would end differently.

It took until all the trailers and ads for the concession stand were over for the skin of our fingers to finally meet, slow-moving magnets drawn together in the dark.

We held hands the entire movie, Grace tracing slow circles on my skin with her fingertips. Occasionally she'd lift my hand to her lips and kiss me. I stared at the screen for two hours, vaguely aware that Liam Neeson was kicking someone's ass, but if you'd asked me afterward what the movie had been about, I would've had very sketchy details about the plot at best.

After it was finished, we walked back to the bus stop together, both of us with our hands tucked into our pockets because it was almost November and too cold to have them out. Or maybe it wasn't because of the cold. Maybe it was because our relationship (was it even a relationship?) was supposed to be a secret. It was fine to make out at dark parties and hold hands in dark movie theaters, but out in the open, out where other people could see us, Grace and I were still only friends.

“Liam Neeson,” Grace said when we slowed at the bus stop. “What a badass.”

“I know, right.”

“Best comedian in the world.”

“Too bad all his jokes are about AIDS.”

“What are you talking about? AIDS is comedy gold. Oh, look, it's your bus.”

Damn. Already? I'd been hoping Grace's bus would show up first. That, while we waited, we'd sit on the low stone wall that surrounded the city park and talk and laugh and make out.

“Rats. Well, bye,” I said. Smooth, Page. So smooth.

I leaned in. Kissed her quickly. Pressed my forehead against hers for a second, hoping this small gesture would convey what I couldn't say aloud:
I like you very much.

Then I turned and went, unsure if anything I'd done all night had been right. The caustic lights of the bus stripped away the haze of darkness I'd been in for the last few hours, and the whole situation suddenly looked far uglier. I stared out the window the entire trip home, my phone clutched in my hand, wondering if I was supposed to message her and tell her what a great time I'd had and how much I liked her. But it felt tacky somehow. Like a cheap shot at her dead boyfriend, still not fully decomposed in his grave.

And I realized then that this would never be a normal love story, if there is such a thing. Even if neither of us wanted to talk about him, Dom would always be there, a ghostly presence neither of us could escape. I'd felt him in the theater, wedged between us. I could feel him now, his half-rotten body in the empty bus seat across the aisle from me. He was shaking his head and saying, “Dating my girlfriend while my eyeballs putrefy? Dick move, bro.”

But it could get easier. Grace could get better. She could
go back to the girl she'd been before, in time. The girl I caught glimpses of sometimes.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

GRACE TOWN:

HENRY PAGE: