Our Chemical Hearts (5 page)

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON,
after the final bell rang, Grace was already waiting outside my locker. How she managed to escape her last-period class early on such a frequent basis I don't suppose I'll ever know, but after that day she was always there when I walked out.

“Lift?” she said, her expression and tone betraying that she was (confusingly?) unhappy to see me, like she'd been hoping I wouldn't there today.

“Sure,” I said warily.

And so began the routine that would pattern our relationship. We walked to her house together, Grace abusing any cars that beeped at us to get out of the way. She made me wait on the overgrown front lawn while she got the keys from inside. Once she'd found them, she threw them to me and made me drive myself home. In the car, she'd either stare straight ahead, stony-faced and unspeaking, or ask me questions like:

“What's your favorite song?”

And I'd say things like: “Why are these questions so hard to answer?”

And she'd say things like: “Because right now you're trying to think of a song that's both cool and socially acceptable to say it's your favorite. Usually a minimum of twenty years old, because anything newer than that is generally considered pop trash.”

“Well, now that I know you're judging me, I'm not going to be able to pick anything.”

“That's what getting to know someone is about. Judging them.”

“So you really
are
judging me right now?”

“Always. Look, tell me a song that makes you feel something.”

“Fine. ‘Someday' by the Strokes,” I said, remembering the night I'd fallen asleep with Grace's favorite band playing in the background.

“Risky choice. Definitely not twenty years old yet, but indie enough that you might get away with it.”

“What's yours? ‘Stairway to Heaven'? ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit'? Something equally awesome and classic, I suppose?”

“‘She Will Be Loved' by Maroon 5.”

“Tha
t . . 
. is not what I was expecting.”

“What can I say? Whenever I hear it, it reminds me of being happy.”

Yikes. If that was her idea of a happy song, what did she listen to when she was sad? Funeral marches? “Where do you
hear it? Do they even
play
that on the radio anymore? Does anyone even
listen
to the radio anymore?”

“Ha-ha.”

“Not a Strokes song, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Strokes? You seem to be a big fan too.” Grace was still frowning like she didn't understand. “You have decals on your car. On your key ring. It's your phone background.”

“Oh yeah. The Strokes. Yeah. I had a friend who was a big fan. He used to listen to their stuff all the time.”

“Your friend liked the Strokes so much that you put decals on your car?”

“It's his old car, actually.”

“What about your phone?”

“It's his old phone too.”

“Right.”

After we got out of the car, I said, on an impulse, “Do you want to come in?”

Grace said, “Why?”

And I said, “Um. We could, like, hang out and stuff? I don't know, like, if you wanted?”

“I go somewhere in the afternoons.”

“Sure. Yeah. I noticed that. Well, I'll see you tomorrow, then.”

Grace sighed. “Meet me back here once the sun has set.”

“Why?”

“Don't you want to hang out?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“So let's hang out. Tonight. Once the sun has set, meet me back here. Okay?”

“Are we, like, doing something illegal o
r . . 
. ? Just the whole after-sunset thing seems very diabolical.”

Grace smiled her tired smile. “I'll see you tonight, Henry Page.” Then she turned and limped off down the street and disappeared around the corner.

For some reason, I didn't tell my basement-dwelling friends that Grace was meeting me that night. Whatever was happening between us felt very thin, very fragile, not the type of thing to be discussed and dissected by a group of people. Because, deep down, I think I honestly believed it would go nowhere and I didn't want to have to deal with the inevitable embarrassment that would come if I told my friends I very nearly almost liked a girl and it turned out she didn't like me back. So I faked feeling sick, and they begrudgingly went home to their own families to eat their own dinners instead of being freeloading succubuses (
succubi
?) like they normally were.

After they were gone, all that was left to do was tell my parents.

Now, I know most teenagers are supposed to hate their parents or at the very least think they're uncool or whatever, but I was always too in awe of my mom and dad for any of that. My parents had one of those creepy, pre-
Frozen
-Disney-movie-type love-at-first-sight stories. They met at a KFC (okay, so maybe not
quite
Disney) after school when they were
barely tweens. Dad, being the cocky little kid I assume he was, asked for Mom's hand in marriage on the spot (offering her a piece of fried chicken instead of an engagement ring—definitely, definitely
not
Disney).

You've probably read stories like that before, about old-timey folk proposing marriage on the first date and all. But this is legit. And it worked. They didn't get married for another eleven years, but they never dated anyone but each other from that day onward. They eloped in India on a Christmas Day when they'd barely finished college, each dressed in swimwear and painted in henna. I had a Polaroid photo of them feeding mangoes to elephants. So theirs was an incredible love. Speaks volumes of Colonel Sanders' secret recipe.

But it wasn't their Nicholas Sparks–esque, so-perfect-it-kind-of-makes-you-sick relationship that I loved most about them. It was the way they were. I'd seen hormonally ravaged teenagers who weren't as giddily in love as my parents, and—instead of making me dry retch, like it was apparently supposed to—I loved their love.

They'd been hippies when Suds was a kid, an artist and a carpenter living in an abandoned warehouse. Maybe the hellish experience of raising Sadie to adulthood had stripped any resistance from their systems, but they'd always been nothing but incredibly cool and open toward me.

So when I said to my mom, Daphne, when she got home from the gallery: “Mother, I'm going out tonight and I'm not sure what time I'll be home or where I'm going exactly. I'm
not a hundred percent certain, but I may possibly be engaging in illegal activities. Is that okay?”

She just said: “An adventure, huh? Excellent. I was starting to worry about you. Sadie had been arrested three times by your age, and look how she turned out.”

“Thanks, Mom. I knew you'd support me.”

“In anything except murder and the use of prohibited substances that require injection.”

“Oh, good, 'cause I've been meaning to see if you wanted to invest in this mobile meth lab business I've been working on for the past few months.”

“Of course, darling. Do me up a compelling spreadsheet and I'll take a gander at the figures. Will you require emergency getaway transportation from your possibly illegal activities this evening?”

“I'm not sure yet. Can I keep you posted? I shouldn't be out too late. I don't want to keep you and Dad up.”

“If I don't answer my phone, just get the police to drop you home. We'll pretend to ground you for a month.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She kissed my forehead. “For real, though. Don't break any laws. And call me if you need me, okay?”

“Will do.”

The afternoon passed far too slowly after that and then, in the minutes leading up to sunset, far too quickly. All of a sudden it was dark and I was walking toward the front door, shouting good-bye to my parents, searching my thoughts for
conversation starters, questions I could ask Grace to keep the small talk going. I always got stage fright in front of her, my brain turning into a cavernously empty pothole that couldn't scrounge up useful thoughts to save itself.

Outside, Grace's car had disappeared, as it had the two afternoons she'd driven me home last week. I waited by the mailbox, shuddering against the surprisingly chilly evening breeze. Five minutes passed before I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. A small, dark figure stood at the end of my street, beckoning me into the blackness. From that distance I couldn't see their face, only the outline of their strangely wide shoulders. It wasn't the silhouette of something I wanted to follow into the dark. When I didn't move, Grace exaggerated her summoning motion so that she was using her whole arm and her cane to call me to her. I jogged over, zipping up my jacket against the cool. As I drew closer, I could see she was still dressed in her typical boyish attire, topped with a football jacket that was so large on her, she could've worn it as a dress. Had she driven home to get it and then walked all the way back here?

“Do you have a bus pass?” she called when I was within earshot. Not hello. Never hello.

“Not on me, no, sorry.”

“That's okay. I'll be your sugar mama and pay your fare.”

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

“As long as we're not, like, leaving the state or anything.”

“You'll see.”

And then instead of setting off back down my street, Grace turned and started making her way into the long grass where the street ended.

“Are you serious?” I said. “There's a gully down there. It's a storm-water drain.”

“Shortcut” is all Grace said, plunging farther into the darkness.

“I mean, are you okay with your leg and everything?” I shouted after her, not knowing if it was politically correct or not to even
mention
that I'd
noticed
she walked with a limp. “The ground is really uneven!”

“Shortcut!”

Grace started swatting the grass away with her cane then, like she was an explorer hacking her way through a jungle. I followed the trail she cut through the greenery, keeping close enough to her so that if she stumbled I'd be able to catch her, but—even though her limp was more pronounced—she never did.

We followed the drain for ten minutes, making small talk about the newspaper, until the gully spat us out on the main road near a bus stop. We sat and waited for a bus in fluorescent light, me kind of expecting it to be a Greyhound that would take us halfway across the country, but the one Grace hailed was the one that went into the city. She paid my fare like she said she would, and then we sat in the disabled seating section, which Grace said was (and I quote) “the one perk of being a cripple.”

The city at nighttime was spectacular. I'm all for mountains and forests and glass-clear rivers, but there is something about the million burning lights of a city in the dark that just gets to me. Maybe because it reminds me of the galaxy.

When we got off the bus, Grace led me straight to the closest convenience store.

“We require snacks,” she said. “My treat.”

“You are too kind to me. Keep taking care of me like this and I'll become a kept man.” I chose some M&M's and Coke. Grace picked a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips (which—I know it sounds weird—just totally
suited
her), a Vitaminwater, and a loaf of cheap white bread. Then we walked. We walked for so long, I started to think that this
was
the hanging out and that we didn't actually have an actual destination, but Grace wouldn't let me eat my snack yet, despite my protests.

Eventually she came to a stop at a tall iron fence with a thick hedge growing on the other side and said, “Ta-da.”

“It's
a . . 
. fence. I mean, it's a very nice fence. And I admire the workmanship. But it's a fence.”

“What's behind the fence is what we came for.”

“Which is?”

“I am so pleased you asked. Behind this fence is one of this city's best-kept secrets. Did you know that before the subway was built, a steam train line used to run right through the business district?”

“I did not, but now that you mention it, I suppose it makes sense.”

“Behind the fence is the last steam train station in the city. It's been permanently closed to the public for decades.”

“Then why are we here?”

Grace kept an entirely straight face as she put her loaf of bread down at her feet, held her cane in her right hand like a javelin, and launched it over the hedge.

“Oops. I'd better go get that,” she said. Then she stepped up onto the fence with her good leg and hauled herself up.

“What are you
doing
?” I said.

“Trespassing, obviously. C'mon.”

“What if someone calls the police?”

“I'll tell them I lured you here and seduced you into breaking the law.”

“Yeah. Like that's gonna work.”