Our Chemical Hearts (17 page)

“I want
you
, all the time.”

“I know you think that. But sometimes I don't know which version of me you want. The one I am. The one I was. Or the Kintsukuroi dream girl you think I'll be a couple of months from now.”

“
You
were the one who said people can't be melded back together with gold seams.”

“That's exactly my point,” she said as she turned and started climbing, step by painful step, back up the stairs.

I typed my fifth draft of “Why Henry Page Is Single” as I followed her, dripping blood all over the floor as I went.

Draft Five

Because apparently you still have to chase girls who can't even run.

THE FIRST HALF
of the party, for the most part, was a lot like Heslin's. We went to the football field to drink, not from a bathtub this time, but from—I'm not even kidding—an industrial rainwater tank. (The bathtub had ended up on Heslin's roof. No one had claimed responsibility yet, but I very strongly suspected Murray.) The concoction this time was red-tinged and suspiciously frothy, like someone had cleaned the tank with dishwashing liquid and not rinsed it out before they'd sloshed in ten boxes of cheap wine. Still, it didn't taste as poisonous as the last batch, and after two bottlefuls I was fairly intoxicated, and so was Grace, thank God, because we both seemed to be much nicer people when we were drunk.

We slipped away from the group and made our way to a friend of a friend of someone's cousin who graduated three years ago's house, where the party was going down in the basement. We got there earlier than everyone else and Grace found us a suitably dark and secluded corner where we weren't likely
to be spotted making out, but all I could think about was the sex we were supposed to be having later, so I just kept drinking.

The music grew louder and the basement slowly filled up with zombies and witches and pirates and sexy iterations of entirely unsexy things, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a papier-mâché planet Pluto in a bikini, and Madison Carlson—for reasons I will never understand—as a slutty corncob.

Grace leaned in and kissed me quickly, then went back to watching costumed people cram into the space.

“I'm going to stop going to the graveyard,” she said quietly, her words ever so slightly slurred. “That's something I've never told you. I visit him almost every day, at the place where he's buried. I'm going to stop, though. For you.”

I was taken aback. I'd come to accept Dom's ghostly presence as a fact of life, a condition of dating Grace Town. She would always dress like him. She would always smell like him. She would always visit his grave. But here she was, giving up a small piece of him already.

“I'd like that,” I said quickly, without thinking, because now that she'd offered it, I realized it
was
something I wanted. I wanted her to stop spending so much time with her dead boyfriend, lying on the grass above his decomposing corpse, crying tears that seeped into the earth to rest upon his coffin.

“And I don't want you to feel like I'm, like, settling for you or whatever,” she continued, still staring straight ahead. “I've never gotten along with anyone the way I get along with you.”

I had to resist the temptation, in that moment, to ask her if
Dom and I were standing side by side, both whole, both alive, which one of us she would choose. Because I knew, still, that it would be him. For a long time, it would be him. Maybe always. And I felt the tear in my heart rip open a little bit more. Here she was, doing her best to declare her feelings to me, and all it did was make the hurt pierce a little deeper.

“You've been drinking. I don't want you to make any decisions tonight. Wait until you're sober. Think it over. I want you to be sure.”
I want you to be sure that you can let him go.

Grace turned to me and looked at me for a long time, her focus moving from one of my eyes to the other and then back again every few seconds.

“What?” I said after a while.

“Most guys would be assholes about all this. You've been so cool.”

“Why would I be an asshole?” I was forcing myself to be cooler about it than I actually felt, but I couldn't say that—being a dick would only make her run in the other direction. “You've been up-front about everything since the beginning.”
Except the car crash and dead boyfriend and the graveyard and the clothes, that is
.

She did the eye thing again twice more, then closed hers and leaned in and kissed me. I watched her the whole time to make sure she didn't open her eyes, like this was some kind of indicator of whether she really meant what she was saying. Grace kept her eyes closed, and when I could feel the kiss coming to an end, I jammed mine shut as she pulled away. And
I thought,
How could anyone kiss anyone like that and not mean it?

“How long do we have to wait here before we go back to your place?” Grace said.

My heart kicked into a gallop. Oh yes. The losing of the virginity. I'd momentarily forgotten about it.

“I want to see everyone first. Hang out for a bit. Wait until my parents are asleep.”

What I really wanted—what I didn't tell Grace that I wanted—was for people to see us together, to catch us, to accuse us of being more than friends with sly smiles on their faces. I wanted our relationship to have solid tethers outside of us, like the more people who knew about us, the more reasons she'd have to stay. We were in a Schrödinger's cat relationship, neither dead nor alive because we had not been observed. And maybe it was better that way. Maybe it was better to be unobserved, to be in flux, because there was every chance that being observed would kill us. I knew it was dangerous. After all, if nobody knew, then nobody would know if it didn't work out. My heartache would be private. But it was a gamble I was willing to take.

So, as the room grew loud with chatter, I kissed her. We talked and drank and flirted, Grace becoming more light and open with each sip of alcohol, and I kissed her, hoping that someone we knew would see, would point, would shout our names.

And eventually, an hour or so later, someone did.

“I knew it!” shouted Heslin, and some great coil of tension that had been sprung tightly inside of me all night was released. We had been seen. We had been observed. There was someone outside of us who could testify that we were real. That we had been here. “I fucking
knew
it!”

“Shh,” I hissed at Heslin, because even though I wanted him to know, I didn't want Grace to know I wanted him to know.

Grace pulled back from me immediately and stood up and said, “You ready to go? I'm gonna go get my things.”

I nodded and watched her weave her way through the costumed crowd to get her coat.

Heslin was still grinning at me. “How long have you been banging her for?”

“Please don't tell anyone, we're trying to keep it quiet.” It didn't seem necessary to inform him that I had not, as of yet, banged her at all.

“Your secret's safe with me,” said Heslin as he leaned down to muss my hair. We rarely spoke at school, but apparently this insider knowledge of my almost sex life somehow warranted a closer bond.

“I should go find her,” I said as I stood up.

“
Yeah,
you should,” said Heslin, clapping me on the back.

So our quantum superposition was over. Grace Town and I were either dead or alive, no long both simultaneously.

I wasn't sure, yet, which one it would turn out to be.

•   •   •

We walked home together, drunkenly, in the dark. In my semi-intoxicated state, knowing what we were going to do, I finally had the courage to do the things I wanted to do to her. I pushed her up against a tall chain-link fence covered in creeping vines and kissed her, more hungrily than I ever had before. I kissed her down her neck, across her collarbone, ran my hands over her hips, her thighs. Grace responded with gasps, ran her fingers through my hair, grabbed tufts of it, pulled herself against me. She sank her fake teeth into my neck, enough to hurt but not to break the skin.

“Take me home, Henry Page,” she said, fake blood still smudged at the edges of her lips. And then she turned and started walking into the darkness, and I followed her, of course, my hands around her waist, kissing her all the way there. We got downstairs without waking the parentals, thank God, and then it was time to have The Sex.

We sat on my bed together and wiped away all of our makeup first. I peeled off my shirt and cleaned all the dry blood from my chest, wondering if I looked anything like how he'd looked after the accident, and if that's what she was thinking about, or if she was thinking about me. And then we sat for a minute after that, in silence, and I contemplated turning the lamp off, because maybe it would be easier in the dark.

But Grace knew what she was doing. She'd done this before. She sidled over to me and kissed me and then she was undoing the back of her corset.

“Holy shit,” I said quietly when she took it off, because she was exquisite, and all my hesitation evaporated at the sight of her bare breasts.

We kissed some more, and then I rolled down her stockings, my fingertips grazing her scar tissue. There were two large, red rectangles cut from her upper thighs.

“From where they harvested the skin grafts,” she said as I touched them. “The first one didn't take well, so they had to come back for more.” I pulled her stockings all the way off and threw them across the room. The worst of the scarring was on her calf, where skin and muscle had been gouged away, covered with a mesh of skin that made the flesh look like a plucked bird. This leg was about half the size of the other, thin and raw and delicate looking. Fresh bruises and welts bloomed across the unmarred flesh, a keepsake from her latest expedition to East River's track.

It was amazing that she could walk at all.

“They've changed the pins once already. In a few years they might even take them out. I'm not sure. Maybe they'll eventually put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

I leaned down and kissed the angry red skin of her calf. “You're perfect.”

And then it began.

It wasn't super romantic. There was no music playing or candles burning. It wasn't like any of those rom-coms that show brief touches of skin and hands clasping crisp white
sheets. It wasn't even like the porn I'd seen. It was sweatier, quieter, more intense, more awkward. It was just me, and her, and no space in between us.

I'd spent a good part of my morning Googling “how to be good at sex,” which turned out not to be particularly helpful in the moment. I forgot everything that AskMen.com had informed me and instead went with what felt right.

And then it was over. The V card had expired. There were no extravagant gasps or anything like that, but it can't have been too bad, because she said, “That was a thousand times better than I thought it would be,” and I wasn't sure if I should be pleased because it'd been decent or offended that she'd been expecting it to be bad. Grace rested her head on my shoulder and I kissed her forehead and we lay together, naked in the dark, neither of us talking and neither of us able to fall asleep.

Eventually, when she thought I'd drifted off, Grace Town started to cry. I felt her trembling against me as she tried to control her breathing, felt her warm tears on my skin as they fell onto my chest. She sobbed only once, and then she wiped her eyes and her breathing calmed and she whispered, “I miss you,” and then, steadily, steadily, she dropped away into sleep.

I stayed awake for an hour more, staring at the ceiling as her tears evaporated from my skin, trying to decide if I wanted to vomit because I was drunk or because the girl I'd lost my virginity to had probably been thinking about her dead boyfriend the whole time.

WHEN I WOKE
in the morning, Grace was already up, re-encasing her skin beneath layers of Dom's clothes. A butterfly for a night, returned to her cocoon. I pretended to be asleep as I watched her gather her vampire costume in a plastic bag and stuff it in the trash can next to my desk. She left without saying good-bye.

That night, I messaged her.

HENRY PAGE:

I sent the message at 7:58 p.m. Grace saw it immediately, started typing back, then deleted whatever she was going to say. Ten minutes passed, then ten minutes more, still with no
reply. Was I not allowed to ask her out, even though we'd slept together? Had I overstepped the unspoken boundaries of our relationship (or whatever it was)?

I ate dinner. Checked my phone. No reply.

She's changed her mind, she's changed her mind, she's changed her mind.

Had a shower. Checked my phone. No reply.

She's changed her mind, she's changed her mind, she's changed her mind.

Attempted my math homework. Checked my phone. No reply.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. She's changed her mind, she's changed her mind, she's changed her mind.

I went to bed feeling like someone had opened a black umbrella inside my chest. My lungs were pushed up under my collarbones and beneath that was a gaping hole where my insides used to be. Finally, at 11:59 p.m., right as I was slipping into unconsciousness, Grace messaged back.

GRACE TOWN:

The insane rush of endorphins that flooded my system the moment my phone vibrated and her name popped up on screen was worrying. I'd never been addicted to anything before, but I thought maybe this is what it felt like to be a junkie in desperate need of a hit.

“Edward Cullen, you poor, miserable bastard,” I said as I locked my phone screen and stared at the ceiling. “I should not have judged you so harshly.”

•   •   •

After school on Monday, Grace and I decided to keep walking past her house and catch a bus into the city, where a fall beer and food festival had been set up in the park. I had homework to do, and essays to work on, and the newspaper probably could've used some serious attention, but Grace was happy and she'd brushed her hair and there was no way I was going to miss out on spending time with this version of her.

In the park, the space between the trees had been transformed into a shantytown of little white canopies, a different flavor of food and/or beer nestled beneath each one. It was a hipster's delight: pallet furniture, antique teakettles hanging by twine from every tree branch, a decorate-your-own-hula-hoop station. The Plastic Stapler's Revenge had even managed to get themselves hired for a gig, and their warbled acoustic tunes (none of which, sadly, were about avenging stationery) carried across the park.

“What shall we feast upon, Town?” I said, but the end of my question was lost to the shout of another.

“Grace?!” said an unknown male voice.

We both turned to find its source: a tall, not-unattractive blond guy with a bunch of tall, not-unattractive male friends.

“Lyndon!” Grace said, and then she was darting through the crowd toward him and he swept her off her feet/cane when
she reached him, and I was thinking, as I followed her with my hands in my pockets, about how much I suddenly despised the name Lyndon and anyone attached to it.

I stood by Grace's side for a solid five minutes while she chatted with him, before Lyndon's eyes slid to me and Grace remembered I existed. “Oh, sorry! This is Henry. We work together at the school newspaper. Henry, this is Lyndon, my cousin.”

I shook his hand, thinking maybe Lyndon wasn't such a pretentious name after all. Whatever monster had been scratching away inside my chest since he'd shouted her name slunk back to its cage.

Holy shit,
I thought as I surveyed his features and found that, yes, they did look alike, were definitely related.
Am I the jealous type?
I suppose it's one of those things you can't really know about yourself until you're faced with it. Like you can't really know if you're brave and heroic until something terrible happens and you're forced into action. I'd always thought I'd be the fearless type, calm and controlled and Sully Sullenberger–esque. Last off the plane, go down with the ship, that kind of thing. But now I wasn't so sure.

I thought about Tyler Durden, about him saying, “How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?” But how much can you know about yourself if you've never liked anyone before? I'd never felt so removed from myself as I did at that moment. Whose body was I walking around in? Whose brain was inside my skull? How could I
be
me, live inside my flesh, and still have no idea who I was?

Grace and I had come to the festival planning to get food, but Lyndon and his friends were all in their mid-twenties, so we gave them money and they bought us spiced cider and mulled wine. We all sat together under a tree, the hundreds of string lights illuminating the park growing muddled as the alcohol made its way to my head. We shared dishes from all the different food vendors—hot-and-sour soup from the Thai tent, honey-glazed mystery meat from the red-lantern-lit Chinese place, transparent rice paper rolls dipped in thick, sweet sauce from the Vietnamese vendor.

By the time Dad messaged me at nine p.m. saying
Here
, my stomach was full and my eyelids were heavy.

I sat up from where I'd been lying in the grass, staring at the fairy lights twinkling in the branches above me, and said good-bye to Grace, who looked outrageously beautiful in the golden light. I was keenly aware that Lyndon was watching us, so I made my farewell as casual as possible, despite the fact that we usually kissed good-bye. I even called her “dude.”

“I've gotta jet, dude. I'll see you tomorrow,” I said. Then I said good-bye to everyone else and strolled off into the festival crowd, hands in my pockets. I looked back once. Grace was staring after me. I expected her to look away, but she didn't, and I wasn't sure what that meant. If I was supposed to go back to her or not. But her cousin was there and we weren't together and whatever we were, whatever this was, the world wasn't supposed to know about us. I worried that if I
did
go back and
kiss her like I wanted to that it would be the wrong thing, that it would make her angry. So I turned my head and kept walking, consumed by the crowd, certain that Sully Sullenberger would've gone back and swept her off her feet and that I was almost definitely a jealous coward.

My phone buzzed on the car trip home, while Dad told me about his day and I tried very hard not to sound like I'd been drinking.

GRACE TOWN:

HENRY PAGE:

•   •   •

On Wednesday, I woke up to Grace calling me at six a.m.

“What's wrong? Are you okay?” I said, jolting upright as soon as I saw her name on my screen. It should've been a sign, how constantly worried I was about her. It should've been a sign, because I knew she was depressed and reckless and there was always that voice in the back of my head that was scared her grief would get the better of her. Not that I ever thought she'd hurt herself or anything like that. It was more like I thought she might spontaneously dissolve on purpose, her atoms scattered away on the breeze.

“Chill out. I can't sleep, that's all. Do you have anything important to do at school today?”

I had an (unfinished) (FML) English assignment due, I had a newspaper progress meeting with Hink, and Hotchkiss had been asking after my math homework for a week, but they seemed far less important than spending time with Grace, so I lied and said, “No.”

“Good, 'cause I'm outside your house. We're going to have an adventure.”

“You're here?”

There was a tap at the basement window. Grace was crouching on the other side of the grimy glass, looking tired, still dressed in the same clothes she'd been wearing yesterday.

When Mom came downstairs to wake me an hour later, I pretended to feel sick while Grace hid under my bed. After the Birthgiver had gone to work, I begged Dad to let me spend
the day with Grace while already knowing he'd rat me out to Mom as soon as he could. He finally, reluctantly agreed, on the condition that he was allowed to play
GTA V
in my room all day, and I was forbidden from telling anyone.

I was shocked to find Grace's car parked in its usual spot outside my house.

“
You
drove here?” I said.

“Surprise.”

“First time sinc
e . . 
. ?”

“Yeah. I don't know why. I woke up in the middle of the night and decided it was time. After all, I'm never gonna make it into
Fast and Furious 11
if I don't get back into drifting.”

I smiled and Grace said, “Henry. Don't look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you can see the gold veins forming before your eyes,” she said, but it was playful, not accusing. “I'm still not a bowl.”

“Not a bowl. Duly noted.”

We drove north to the outskirts of the city, and then through the national park for over an hour, slowing at all the lookouts but never stopping. Out here on the coast, it barely looked like fall. The slips of beach visible through the forest were bleach white, and although most of the trees were stripped of their leaves, there were evergreens among them, palms and shrubs. We drove with the windows down despite the cold, my face numb and my ears ringing with the speed.

Eventually the open coastline was swallowed by a forest, still as colorful as a jewel box despite the approaching cold.
The traffic signs said things to the effect of
SLOW DOWN
,
WINDING ROAD AHEAD
, but Grace ignored them. In fact, she cranked the music so loud that she couldn't hear me even if I'd been screaming, and then she sped up. My knuckles blanched of color at every hairpin twist in the road as I scrabbled desperately to keep myself from being thrown around the front seat. Grace braked, accelerated, smoked the tires, drifted around each bend. And then, instead of slowing down and readying herself for the next one, she'd speed up in between turns.

I held on and prayed to deities I didn't believe in that I wouldn't die today. Not like this. Not like him. Over and over again, visions of crashes replayed in my head. The impossibly hard crunch of a car slamming into a tree, crumpling around it like a paper fan. A body—mine—wrenched from the vehicle, tossed through the windshield, a rag doll of blood and bone. Skin sloughing off against asphalt. Limbs snapping, the splintered ends of bones piercing through skin.

Grace was a decent driver, if not maniacal. I trusted that she had control of the car, but at these speeds, her reaction time would be negligible. All it would take was an animal on the road, an overcorrection, a pothole. And then, still, there was the lingering voice at the back of my head, the one that reminded me over and over again to worry about her safety.

I'd never felt so close to death before. Never been so afraid of my own mortality as I was in a car with her at the wheel.

Did things like this matter to her at all? Grace saw the world as little more than a temporarily ordered pattern of
atoms. Dying only meant that the atoms briefly allotted to your human form were to be redispersed elsewhere.

Finally, finally, she brought the car to a stop at a lookout and turned the music off. She grinned at me and stepped out into the brisk coastal breeze. It was an odd kind of day. The sun beat down warmly, but the wind carried in a chill from the ocean.

“What the hell was that about?” I said as I slammed my door closed. My legs and hands were physically shaking, and not from the cold. I tried not to let her see how unnerved I was, because a small part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, she was trying to screw with my head on purpose. I sat down on the barrier fence that separated the lookout from the wilderness beyond it and rested my elbows on my knees, trying to steady my breath. Grace sat down next to me—sometimes the way she positioned herself around me felt as platonic as a sister—her scarf half covering her face.