Our Chemical Hearts (7 page)

“As it turns out, forever is not as long as I thought it would be.”

Grace traced her fingers over the letters, trancelike, as though she'd forgotten entirely that I was there. “I should probably head home,” she said quietly. “Thanks for hanging out. I used to come here all the time, but it's not the same when you're alone.”

“Sure. Anytime. We can come here whenever you want.”

“I'll see you tomorrow.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah. Jus
t . . 
. old memories, you know? My mom lives in the city. I might crash with her tonight. You all right to get the bus on your own?”

“Oh my stars, Grace Town, however will I make it home unaccompanied?”

“I'll take that as a yes.”

Grace started to climb, but after taking three steps, she paused and looked back at me. “I'm glad I met you, Henry.”

“I'm glad I met you, Grace.”

Then I stood there and watched her leave, the light from her phone growing dimmer and dimmer as she was swallowed by the drowning dark, until there was nothing left of her at all, not even a sound, and I was alone in the blackness.

My feelings were like a knot inside my gut. Normally I knew exactly what my emotions were. Happy, sad, angry, embarrassed: they were all easy enough to catalog and label. But this was something new. A kind of web of thoughts that had offshoots in all directions, none of which made particular sense. A huge feeling, a feeling as big as a galaxy, a feeling so large and twisted that my poor little mind couldn't comprehend it. Like when you hear that the Milky Way is made up of 400 billion stars, and you think
Oh, shit, that's pretty big
but your puny human brain will never really be able to comprehend how gigantic it is because we were built too small. That's what it felt like.

I knew when girls liked me. Or, at the very least, I knew when girls were flirting with me. Grace Town wasn't flirting. Grace Town didn't like me. Or, if she
was
and she
did
, she wasn't expressing it in any way I was used to.

I also knew when I liked girls. Abigail Turner (from kindergarten) and Sophi Zhou (from elementary school) had been obsessions. Infatuations. Grace didn't feel like that. I wasn't even particularly sure I was attracted to her. There
was no burning desire there. I didn't want to tear off her clothes and kiss her. I just fel
t . . 
. drawn to her. Like gravity. I wanted to orbit her, be around her, the way the Earth orbits the sun.

“Do not be an idiot, Henry,” I said as I turned on my phone's flashlight and climbed the rusty spiral staircase toward the night sky, thinking of Icarus and his hubris and how appropriate the metaphor was (I was kind of proud of it, actually). “Do not fall for this girl.”

•   •   •

When I got home (Mom picked me up, bless her), I opened up the Notes app on my phone and wrote:

Draft Two

Because I have never met anyone that I wanted in my life that way before.

But you.

I could make an exception for you.

“MPDG,” SAID LOLA
Tuesday afternoon after school. She was lying upside down on my couch, boots on the headrest, head dangling off the edge, halfheartedly playing
FIFA
. “That's some serious MPDG behavior right there.”

“What's MPDG?” Murray said.

“Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I mean, she takes Henry on an adventure to an abandoned railway station filled with fish and then talks about the universe? Real people don't do that.”

“Well, she did,” I said, “and it was kind of awesome.”

“No, this is
bad
. MPDGs are dangerous territory.”

“Wait, so how do the fish live underground?” Murray said. He'd been stroking his peach fuzz with a befuddled look on his face ever since I'd mentioned them. He must have washed his hair the night before (a rare occurrence), because it had reverted to its natural state: a lion's mane with the consistency of cotton candy. It enveloped much of his shoulders and face, to the point that he'd had to borrow several hair clips from La
to keep it out of his eyes. “Is it like an enclosed ecosystem or something? How'd they even get there?”

“Probably connected to some kind of water source nearby,” Lola said. “Birds land in the water with fish eggs stuck to their legs, something like that.”

“Do you think they're edible? Maybe we should go fishing. What kind of fish were they, Henry? Trout? Bream?”

“Guys, can we focus here? I'm freaking out.”

“Why?” Murray said.

“I think I like her.” It wasn't easy for me to say. It wasn't something I'd normally admit to. Maybe, because it was senior year, I wanted some scandal. Not “contracting an STD from my shared love interest and earning the nickname the Trichomoniasis Trio” levels of scandal, but something. I was always on the outskirts of the teenage drama, always listening to Lola's and Murray's stories of love found and love lost, but I was never a participant.

For the first time, I wanted in. For the first time, someone might be worth it.

“Oh boy,” Lola said.

Muz wiped a fake tear from his eye. “I've waited so long for this auspicious moment. Our little ankle biter finally becomes a man.”

“What do I do?” I said.

“Does she like you? I mean, could you see something happening?” Lola said.

“Well, she did take me to her secret fishpond and talk to me about death. Maybe, in her brain, that means she's super into me?”

“Not necessarily. If she
is
an MPDG, she probably takes everyone there.”

“Grace isn't a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, okay? If she were, she would wear sundresses and have bangs and ride a Dutch bike with baguettes in the basket and smile a lot. She's not quirky; she's straight-up weird. Actually, I think she might be depressed.”

“Okay, lover boy, I wasn't trying to insult you.”

I didn't tell La what I was really thinking: that Grace had turned up at school that morning in the same clothes she'd worn last night, her hair a nest piled at the top of her skull, her eyes rimmed red and puffy from a sleepless night. Girls who lied about having family in the city and occasionally slept in the streets hardly seemed capable of fitting the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype.

Murray swung his arm over my shoulder. “Look, mate. The most important thing is to not be too hasty. You get one opportunity with this. You balls it up and you'll be in some strife. Give it time. You only met her a week ago. Just assess the situation. Take note of her body language. Get to know her before you crack onto her, right?”

“That is strangely the wisest thing you've ever said,” said Lola.

“As we'd say Down Under, there's no point pushing shit uphill with a rubber fork on a hot day.”

“Are these real Australian sayings or do you come up with this stuff yourself?” I said.

“It's genetic,” Muz said, grinning. “We're born with it already in our blood.”

“And what's this crap about ‘I go somewhere in the afternoons'?” Lola said. “What does that even mean?”

I shrugged. “No idea. She gets out of the car, wanders down the street, and disappears. Two or three hours later, the car vanishes too. I don't know if she comes back for it or if someone else drives it away or what.”

“That's some enigmatic fuckery right there,” Murray said.

“Grace Town is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” I said.

“We
could
solve it. I mean, I know we ain't no Madison Carlson, but we
could
give it a red-hot go.”

“We could,” La said slowly. “Follow her. See where she goes. Suss out the sitch.”

“That's a bit Christian Grey–ish, don't you think?” I said.

“Dude, you aren't gonna sniff her hair while she sleeps. We're just gonna trail her for five minutes to see where she goes. She might be visiting her
boyfriend
or something.” I could tell by the way Murray enunciated the word
boyfriend
that he knew the mere mention of a possible lover would be enough for me to agree. He was right.

“Seventeen goddamn years without peer pressure and suddenly I get smacked down with it twice in two days. Fine. Let's get our creep on.”

Muz clapped his hands. “It's settled, then. Tomorrow afternoon, after school, we shall be parked and ready in a car outside your house to begin our stealth operation.”

“I'm the only one with a license, though,” I pointed out, “and I very much intend to be hiding on the floor of the backseat. So which one of you cretins, exactly, is going to drive?”

“Don't worry,” Lola said, unlocking her phone. “I have a brilliant idea.”

•   •   •

“I. Cannot. Fucking. Believe I let you talk me into this,” Sadie said from the driver's seat as I scrabbled into the foot well of the backseat of her SUV. Lola and Murray were already strapped in and ready to go. “I'm a twenty-nine-year-old neuroscientist and I'm aiding and abetting my teenage hoodlum brother to stalk his disabled crush. What went so drastically wrong in my life?”

“Dude, what shoes are you wearing, pointed rodeo boots with spurs?” I said to Murray as he pulled the door closed and I tried to get comfortable on his feet, which was difficult, because his shoes were trying to eviscerate my kidneys.

“They're kicks, bro, calm your tits. Stop being dramatic and sit next to me.”

“Never! I must protect my identity. La, I really wish you'd climb in the back so Grace can't see you.”

“And miss seeing this train wreck unfold firsthand? Not likely,” Lola said.

I twisted around, unable to find a spot that didn't feel like I was being filleted. “Ugh, Sadie, just drive!”

“Patience, John Hinckley Jr. 2.0, we're following a girl who walks with a cane,” said Sadie as she started the car and slowly pulled away from the curb.

I conceded to being uncomfortable for the entire trip and rested my cheek in the dirty foot well. “I swear I'm not going to shoot the president anytime soon.”

“Say what you will, but if you book flights to Washington and start watching a lot of Jodie Foster movies, we
will
report you to the NSA,” Lola said.

“What's happening?” I said as the car rolled to a slow stop. “Can you see her?”

“Yeah, she's right up ahead. Just picked a few flowers from someone's front garden. Freakin' MPDGs.” I could practically hear Lola shaking her head. “Don't worry, I don't think she's gonna shake us.”

“I'm more worried about her
seeing
us than shaking us.”

“If we get busted, we'll tell the cops that Sadie is obsessed with Grace and made us come along for the ride so she could slaughter us all in some kind of violent Satanic ritual.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” Suds said. “I hate you all, bunch of little weirdos.”

“Sounds like something a Satanist would say. Do you
frequently have congress with the beast or is it on more of a casual basis?”

Sadie mussed Lola's hair. La laughed and swatted her away.

“Damn, she's taking a shortcut,” Murray said. “Where does that alley lead?”

“Only thing on the other side of the alley is the cemetery,” Sadie said.

Murray jabbed me in the ribs. “I flippin' knew it! She goes to a boneyard every afternoon? We're dealing with some kind of genre fiction here for sure. Anybody wanna stack bets? What do we think? Is she a vampire? A ghost? One of those new age zombies that can love?”

“I'll wager ten dollars on fallen angel,” Sadie said. “They're so hot right now.”

“I'm gonna go out on a limb here. What's mermaid paying, Muz?” Lola said.

“Mermaids don't live in graveyards, you bloody drongo.”

“Fine. Demon mermaid from hell who haunts the cemetery swamp that floods whenever it rains. What are the odds?”

“One hundred thousand to one.”

“Excellent. Put me down for ten. Can almost taste dem dolla dolla bills.”

“What about you, lover boy?” Murray said, leaning down. “What do you think your girl is? Witch? Alien? Werewolf
? . . 
. Weredropbear?”

“Weredrop what?” Lola said.

“Real problem back home. Sydney's bloody infested with 'em. Everyone walks 'round with Vegemite rubbed behind their ears to keep from getting mauled. It's a flippin' tragedy, the amount of good blokes and sheilas we've lost to weardropbearism.”

I lifted my head from the foot well. “Would you all please shut up and remember that we're on a very serious intelligence gathering slash stalking mission? Suds, go around to the end of Beauchamp Road—we can catch her on the other side.”

“Way ahead of you, pipsqueak,” Sadie said as I felt the car cut a wide U-turn onto the appropriately yet unimaginatively named Cemetery Drive.

“There it is,” Lola said. “The dead center of town.”

“I hear people are dying to get in,” Murray said.

“I don't know about that,” I said. “I hear everyone inside is pretty stiff.”

“There she is,” Lola said, smacking my shoulder. “Henry, get up, she's far enough away that she won't see us.”

Murray yanked me up from the foot well by my coat and—with much effort and grunting—I eventually sat up beside him. Grace was a little ways away, walking along a row of headstones, the cluster of motley garden flowers grasped in her left hand. She'd taken her knit cap off and let her hair out so that the breeze caught it and it reflected the afternoon light and took on the color of sour buttercream. She stopped and tucked a wayward strand behind her ear and knelt at a grave that was already garlanded with dozens of blooms in various stages of
decomposition. And then she sunk down into the grass on her stomach, her head resting on one arm, her fingers twirling blades of grass, her feet kicked up behind her. Even at this distance I could see her lips moving—Grace was talking, singing maybe, to an invisible someone beneath the earth.

All of us sat transfixed for a minute, sedated by the stillness that comes with seeing an intensely private moment that doesn't belong to you. Then Sadie shook her head and put the car into drive. “We weren't meant to see this, Henry. This wasn't for us.”

I nodded. “Take us home, Suds.”

•   •   •

I sat on the front windowsill all afternoon, reading a book and watching a storm roll in, waiting for the mystery of the disappearing car to be solved. Just after sunset, when the sky was bruised with a lightning storm, a car slowed in front of our house. I watched through the glass as a short bald man got out of the passenger side and ran through the rain to Grace's Hyundai. As he opened the door, he looked up, saw me looking at him, and raised his hand. I mirrored his gesture. The man nodded and got into the car and turned it around and drove off into the bucketing downpour, his brake lights like a demon's eyes in the darkness.