Our Chemical Hearts (4 page)

WHEN I KNOCKED
on Hink's open door the following morning before school, he smiled and waved me into his office.

“Good job with convincing Town to take the job, Henry,” he said. “That was a very nice thing of you to do. She's had a rough time, the poor kid.”

“Wait, she's doing it?” I said.

“She came to see me half an hour ago to tell me you'd changed her mind. I don't know what you said to her, but it had an impact.”

I raised my eyebrows. “She said
I
changed her mind?”

“The two of you should start planning your first issue ASAP. December seems a long way off, but it'll catch up to you. I put the fear of God into some of my juniors in English yesterday, so you should get a handful of volunteer writers to help you out. Mainly the ones who need extracurricular activities to scrape their way into college, so I can't guarantee they'll submit anything legible, but it's a start.”

“What do you mean by ‘She's had a rough time'?”

“Oh, you know. Changing schools in senior year. Always tough. Anyway, go get set up in your office. Your log-in details are on a Post-it note in front of your computer. Town's already in there. And Leung as well. You already know each other, I believe?” Hink gave me the look that people always gave me when they knew I'd been the last male to put my lips on Lola Leung's lips before she'd gone AWOL from the masculine species.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat instead of doing what I wanted to do, which was to say,
She was always a lesbian! Don't you know how human biology works?
“Lola's my next-door neighbor.”

“Neighbor. Yes, of course. No need for introductions, then. Go settle into your office and we'll have a meeting early next week to get started on the first issue.” Hink went back to whatever was on his computer screen then (fight club scheduling? haikus?) like he hadn't just dropped a Grace-sized bombshell.

I turned and walked numbly to the small office that the student newspaper staff worked out of. It was a fishbowl. The wall parallel to the corridor was all glass and the door (also glass) didn't lock, presumably to prevent any rabid teenage coitus from taking place on the furniture, a strategy that had failed spectacularly with last year's editor, who used to have sex with his girlfriend on the couch on a regular basis. There was, thank God, a blanket now covering the suspicious stains that had accumulated on the upholstery by the start of summer vacation.

Lola was sitting at the Mac reserved for the designer, her chunky-booted feet up on the desk as she browsed ASOS and sucked a lollipop. Grace was sitting at a small desk pressed up against the glass wall, away from the editor's desk. I guessed it'd been shoved in the room sometime in the last half hour, in an effort to accommodate Grace Town's sudden change of mind.

“Hey,” I said as I walked into the room, feeling a strange, unfamiliar pang of excitement at the sight of her. There was something deeply confusing about looking at Grace, like that feeling you get when you see a colorized photograph of the Civil War or the Great Depression and realize for the first time that the people in them were real. Except it was reversed, because I'd seen the colorized Grace on Facebook, and here was the sepia version—the hard-to-grasp version—ghostlike and ashen in front of me.

Grace nodded without speaking.

“Hola, hombre!” Lola said, waving her lollipopped hand in my direction without looking away from her screen.

I sat at the editor's desk. Turned on the editor's computer. Logged in to the editor's account. Savored, for a moment, the feeling I had worked for two years to achieve.

It was quickly interrupted when Grace turned around on her computer chair to face me. “I'm not going to write anything. That's the deal. No editorials. No opinion pieces. You want something said, you say it yourself. Everything else I'll help you with, but I don't write any words.”

I glanced sidelong at La, who was concentrating very intently on looking like she was ignoring our conversation. The voodoo-curse theory was starting to look more and more plausible. “I can deal with that. I'm hoping not to do much writing myself, actually. Hink said we should be able to get some juniors to volunteer.”

“I already talked to Hink. I'm going to be assistant editor. You worked for this for years; it should be your baby.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“Well, uh, I guess you should read our policies and procedures, our editorial guidelines and our charter. They're all saved in the shared drive.” Lola and I had both read them when we'd volunteered at the paper the previous year. “You get a log-in yet?”

“Hink gave me one before you walked in.”

“You're good to go, then.”

“Straight to the point. I like it.” Grace swung back around on her chair, opened the shared drive, found the documents I'd been talking about, and started to read them.

Lola did one slow, deliberate three-hundred-sixty-degree swing around on her office chair, her eyes wide and brows raised, but I shook my head at her and she sighed and went back to ASOS.

There wasn't much to do that first morning except for planning, so I put my Spotify playlist on shuffle. The first
song to play was “Hey” by the Pixies.
Been trying to meet you,
crooned Black Francis. I turned up the volume a little and hummed along to the tune as I logged into my email (thinking about how I should really rewatch
The Devil Wears Prada
now that I was editor, get some tips) until I caught a tiny movement in the corner of my eye. I looked up to find Grace Town mouthing the words.
If you go, I will surely die,
she mimed absentmindedly, scrolling through the newspaper's thirty-page policy and procedures document about topics we weren't allowed to cover (no sex, no drugs, no rock 'n' roll, nothing relevant to real-life teens in general, etc.).

“You know the Pixies?” I asked her after the first chorus. Grace looked up and over her shoulder at me but didn't speak right away.

“‘You met me at a very strange time in my life,'” she said eventually. When I said nothing, she cocked her head slightly and said, “
Fight Club
? ‘Where Is My Mind?'?”

“I know. I got it.
Fight Club
is, like, one of my favorite movies.”

“Me too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Why are you so surprised?”

“Most girls—” I began. Lola snapped up her hand.

“Be
very
careful what you say next, Henry Page,” she said. “Very few good things come out of sentences that begin with ‘Most girls.'”

“This is true,” Grace agreed.

“Uh. Well. I was
going
to say that a lot—not most, but a lot—of the girls I know don't like
Fight Club
.”

“I like
Fight Club
, you bigot,” Lola said.

“Most girls don't like intelligent films?” Grace said. “Or girls that
do
like
Fight Club
are special snowflakes and therefore better than the rest of the womenfolk?”

“Oh God, no, that's not what I meant. The girls here—they probably haven't even seen
Fight Club
, you know? They've never even watched it.”

“I am a female and I have seen
Fight Club
,” Lola said.

“There you go. Of the two women in the room, one hundred percent of them have seen
Fight Club
. Your ‘most girls' statistics might need some reevaluating.”

“I'm going to stop talking now,” I said, “lest more of the patriarchy vomits out of my mouth.”

Grace grinned. “We're teasing you, Henry.”

There was a beat of silence—these would become a constant fixture in our conversations—in which I tried desperately to keep the conversation going beyond its natural point of death.

“Why'd you change your mind?” I said quickly.

Grace stared at me, the remnants of her smile fading. “I don't know,” she said finally. Right at that moment, the bell for first period rang, and—even though we technically didn't have to go to it because it was designated newspaper time—Grace Town stood up and packed her things and left the room.

“Did you hear that?” I said to La after Grace was gone. “She likes the Pixies
and Fight Club
.”

“Pretty sure I like the Pixies and
Fight Club
, you giant bag of dickweed.”

“Yeah, but you're a devious lesbian who steals boys' first kisses and then forever emasculates them by coming out of the closet two weeks later.”

“Speaking of, I forgot to tell you something. Madison Carlson legit asked me the other day how bad a kisser you must be to turn a girl off mankind forever.”

“I hope you politely explained that sexual orientation is predetermined and that you were already a lesbian when you kissed me.”

“Oh no, I told her you have a crooked penis and that after I saw it I could never contemplate seeing another.”

“Thanks, bro.”

“Anytime,” Lola said as she, too, stood and packed up her things. At the doorway she stopped and glanced back at me, her head cocked in the direction Grace Town had left in. “I like her, Henry. There's, I don't kno
w . . 
. something about her.”

I nodded, and said nothing, but because Lola was my best friend, and because we'd known each other all our lives, she smiled. Because, even without speaking, even without words, she knew exactly what that nod meant:
I like her too.

THAT AFTERNOON AFTER
my last class, when the bell rang, I walked out of the classroom and—shoving my books into my bag—almost ran headfirst into Grace Town. I didn't realize until later that she must've asked Lola where my locker was. I'd certainly never told her, and the only other human I'd seen her speak to was Mr. Hink, who didn't know either.

“Henry,” she said.

“Hello,” I said slowly.

“Do you want a lift home?”

“Okay.”

“You still have to drive yourself, though.”

“Uh. Sure?”

Grace turned without another word and made off down the hallway without checking to see if I was following (I was, of course). When we made it to the football field, she sped up, which made her limp much more pronounced, her movements slightly wild. It was a stride I could only accurately
describe as Mad-Eye Moody–esque. I jogged every fifth step to keep up with her. At the edge of the school grounds I looked back to where Lola and Murray were waiting (as always) in the bus line to catch a ride to my house. I waved. They both raised their right arms and saluted me in unison. Grace Town did not see, thank God.

Out on the street, the silence was broken only by the occasional passing car and the steady click of Grace's cane against the road, until she eventually spoke. “So what's your story, Henry Page?” she said. There was, once again, an undercurrent of anger that I didn't understand, like Grace was disappointed in me for some reason. “Give me all the gory details.”

“I, um. Well.” I got stage fright. “I like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?” I said weakly.

“Don't you find it strange that whenever anyone asks you to describe yourself, you draw a blank? It should be the easiest thing in the world to talk about—I mean, you
are
you—but it isn't.”

“Yeah. I guess. Although it's kind of like asking someone, ‘How was Europe?' after they've spent three months there, you know? There's a lot to cover.”

“This is true. Shall we narrow it down? Let me ask you a question.”

“Okay.”

“It's going to be intensely personal, so feel free not to answer if you don't want to.”

“U
h . . 
. Okay,” I said, steeling myself for questions about
my sexual orientation or my unnatural predilection for wearing my father's black coat even in the heat, which seemed to be, when meeting strangers, the two most popular courses of inquiry.

“What's your favorite color?”

Not what I was expecting. “U
m . . 
.” I'd never really had a favorite color. Or maybe I had too many to list. All colors were created equal as far as I was concerned. “I don't give colors preferential treatment? What about you?”

“Alice in Wonderland's dress blue.”

“So, like, sky blue?”

“No, not at
all
. I hate sky blue and baby blue and periwinkle, but Alice in Wonderland's dress blue is perfect.”

“Is that the technical name for the shade, then? Is that what they put on the color wheel?”

“Well, I guess you could also say it's vintage fifties car blue, but Alice is easier. I can handle cornflower blue in a pinch.”

“You've thought about this a lot.”

“I like to have answers ready when people ask me about myself. I mean, if I don't know who I am, how is anyone else ever supposed to?”

I racked my brain, trying to pull something out of the black void it seemed to become when Grace Town was within a ten-foot radius. “Green. Green is my favorite color.”

“That's utterly boring.”

“Fine. The kind of faded, acid green color of my sister's
eyes when she's in sunlight. My nephew has exactly the same shade. That would have to be my favorite.”

“Better.”

A beat. “Are you going to ask me anything else?”

“No. I don't think I will.”

“That was the strangest game of twenty questions I've ever played.”

“It wasn't a game of twenty questions. I only wanted to ask you one thing.”

When we got to Grace's house, we performed the same routine as yesterday. I waited outside on the lawn while she slipped inside and collected her keys. I drove her car to my house, said good-bye, then watched her walk away in the wrong direction, down a road that would lead her to nowhere. As soon as I walked in the door, I hated myself for not inviting her inside. As soon as I walked down the steps into the basement, I remembered why that would be a bad idea.

“Well, dig a ditch and bury me in it,” Murray said, clapping me on the back at the foot of the stairs. “If you haven't gone and got yourself a frother.”

“She just drove me home,” I said.

“Oh my actual God,” Lola said as I dropped my backpack and slumped onto the couch. “There's definitely something brewing there, Page.”

Murray bounded into my lap, his obscene muscle mass crushing my legs as he threaded his arms around my neck
and pressed his forehead to mine. “Are you sure there's nothing going on? Because we may have spied on you from the grimy basement window and seen you staring deeply into each other's eyes.”

“Guys, you both need to chill out,” I said as I tried to detach Murray, without much success. “She's a total weirdo. I think she's lonely and she hasn't made any friends yet, so she's latched on to me because I was nice to her.”

“You weren't nice to her, though,” La said, frowning. “You chased her across a field while screaming obscenities at her.”

“That's quite an embellishment.”

“It's his fiery passion that she's fallen for,” Muz said, his hair bouncing as he pressed his fists to my heart. “His vehement hunger for life.”

“She hasn't
fallen
for me. I don't think she even really likes me. She glares at me a lot. It's really confusing.”

“Ask her to come hang out Monday afternoon after school,” Lola said, stroking her chin. “Bring her to the lions' den. Let
us
be the judges of that.”

“As long as Murray promises not to pull this shit.” Muz was now rubbing his hair all over my face and chest and arms. “Can yo
u . . 
. Ugh, Murray. C'mon, get off!”

“I'm scenting my territory!” he insisted. “I can't lose you!”

I looked at Lola. “This is why I'm single.”

La shook her head. “I promise you, it's not.”

So I went limp and let Murray anoint me with his greasy
mane, certain that if Grace ever witnessed the weirdness that went on in this room, she'd run the other way.

Which seemed like a good enough excuse to never, ever,
ever
invite her over.

•   •   •

Later that night, when the rabble had left, I pulled up Grace Town's Facebook profile on the iMac and let the mouse pointer hover over the “Add Friend” button for about ten minutes before I finally shut my eyes and clicked. My heart beat wildly at the sight of the “Friend Request Sent” notification, but I only had to wait a handful of seconds before I got a response.
Grace Town has accepted your friend request. Write on Grace's timeline.

Naturally I stalked her page, but everything, barring those few publicly available profile pictures, had been bleached from her timeline. No status updates. No check-ins. No life events. No tagged photos. Apart from her 2879 friends (how does anyone even know that many people?!), Grace Town was a virtual ghost.

After Grace had left the office that morning, I'd started emailing PR companies around town, seeing if any of them would let any of the shitty junior writers from the
Westland Post
, as the paper had been dubbed when it started back in the eighties, interview some of the shitty bands they represented. It seemed like a good enough reason to start a conversation with her.

HENRY PAGE:

GRACE TOWN:

The conversation ended there. Grace was still online for another hour, but I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I left it at that.

There were, of course, methods of finding things out about people from other schools if you were so inclined. Madison Carlson, in particular, seemed to run an interschool goods and information trading service so large and complex that she could've given the Silk Road a run for their money. Madison's boyfriend went to East River, which apparently gave her unparalleled access to the lives of the East River elite (I made a mental note to ask her to write a
Gossip Girl
–style column for the newspaper). But what Madison Carlson giveth, Madison Carlson taketh away. If I so much as breathed a casual inquiry about Grace Town's past life, the rumor that I kind of, maybe, sort of liked her would be known school-wide within a day.

Grace Town, for now, would have to remain a mystery.