Comics Will Break Your Heart

by Faith Erin Hicks

  Weldon turned toward his uncle, surprised at the admission. It was something he didn’t think his father would ever admit.

  “You can’t believe that,” said Weldon’s aunt, staring aghast at her husband.

  Alex Warrick shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe everything in the Kendrick case was handled legally, but some of it didn’t sit right with me. I love my brother, but sometimes he is much too harsh with people he thinks are in his way.”

  Weldon watched his aunt and uncle, the anger ebbing from him. Alex Warrick had firmly rejected the world of the TomorrowMen. He’d written one issue of the comic years ago, then stepped away from the empire David Warrick had built, never to return. I guess he didn’t like how my dad built that empire, Weldon thought.

  “Anyway, none of this matters,” Weldon’s uncle said.

  “It does!” insisted Weldon’s aunt.

  “Hardly anyone knows who Micah Kendrick or Joseph Warrick are. The comic books don’t matter,” said Alex Warrick. “Millions of people will see the TomorrowMen movie that David is making, but they won’t read the comics the movie’s based on. Most people don’t care who created the TomorrowMen, they’re just looking for a movie to watch on Friday night.”

  Weldon’s aunt drew in a shuddering breath.

  “I don’t like people saying things about us,” she said. “It isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Alex Warrick with a quick shake of his head. Weldon didn’t think he was talking about the Warricks being unfairly maligned online.

  “If Weldon wants to hang out with Stella’s family, that’s fine with me. Stella’s a good person,” said Uncle Alex. He looked over at Weldon, who felt small and exposed under the intensity of his uncle’s gaze. It was somehow more intimidating than all the times his father had yelled at him.

  “What isn’t fine with me is you lying to us about it. I don’t want you to do that anymore, Weldon. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Weldon said, feeling like he was about to melt into a guilty puddle at his uncle’s feet.

  “Okay. You’re welcome in our home anytime. You’re part of our family and we love you, but if you want to live here, you don’t get to lie to us.” He looked over at his wife, who was watching the conversation with a startled expression. Weldon suspected she’d never seen this side of her husband either. “Is that all right with you, Kay?”

  Weldon’s aunt sighed, folding her arms across her chest.

  “I suppose.”

  Alex Warrick reached out and patted his wife’s shoulder in a way that was both formal and fond. A moment of unspoken communication seemed to pass between them, and she looked over at Weldon, nodding firmly. Then she walked from the kitchen, leaving Weldon alone with his uncle.

  “Does your dad know you’re seeing Stella’s daughter?” Alex said.

  “No,” said Weldon. “I mean, it’s really early, we’re just—” He remembered the feeling of Mir pressed against him, and felt his face start to get warm. “We’re just hanging out, seeing where things go,” he finished lamely.

  Alex chuckled.

  “Well,” he said, “isn’t that too damn perfect.”

  “Are you going to tell my dad?” Weldon asked.

  His uncle shook his head.

  “No, you tell him when you’re ready.”

  Alex walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs after his wife. Weldon stayed standing where he was for several more minutes, looking out of the kitchen window at his aunt and uncle’s perfectly neat lawn.

  * * *

  The weather had turned unusually hot for Sandford.

  “Is there anywhere to swim around here?” Weldon asked Mir as they walked toward the Starbucks. He was getting used to the 5:00 a.m. wake-up time, filling the hours Miriam was working with jogging and practicing his pool shot on the table in the basement. He was getting pretty good at spinning the pool ball into whatever pocket he was aiming for.

  “There are a couple beaches outside of town,” said Mir, “but they get crowded on nice days. I like the lake better, although it’s got a squishy bottom.”

  “Can we go to the lake?”

  “Why?” asked Mir, eyeing him.

  “Because swimming is fun and it’s hot out. That was literally my entire thought process.”

  “You sure there isn’t an additional ‘I’d like to see Mir in a bathing suit’ part to your thought process?” said Mir, smiling.

  “I would never!” said Weldon, faux outraged. Yes, absolutely, I would love to see you in a bathing suit, preferably a bikini, he thought. Mir had abandoned her oversized sweaters since the weather turned warm, but her work uniform of a golf course T-shirt and shorts barely an inch above her knee was hardly more revealing. This golf course is run by damn puritans, Weldon had thought the first time he’d seen her uniform. He had started inspecting whichever of Mir’s knees was closest to him during their hand-holding sessions at Starbucks. He was startled to see both of her knees were speckled, freckles dotting constellations across her skin.

  “Swimming would be nice,” Mir mused. They had reached the Starbucks, and she paused in front of it. “Do you want to go now? Do you have a swimsuit?”

  “Mine’s back in California. I’ll buy a new one,” said Weldon, flicking a thumb in the direction of the Running Realm. “They sell bathing suits in there.”

  “I gotta go home and get my stuff too,” Mir said. “Want to meet at the lake in half an hour?”

  Weldon pulled out his phone.

  “Show me how to get there and I’ll be there.”

  Five minutes of Google Maps later, Weldon walked into the Running Realm, his brain already working in overdrive at the thought of Mir in a bathing suit. He made a beeline for the swimwear section of the store, and stood in front of a mannequin for several minutes, staring blankly. A vision of Miriam in a pink bikini floated behind his eyelids.

  “Can I help you?”

  Weldon turned and saw Ellie, her honey-colored hair hanging long and straight in a frame around her face. Weldon’s toes curled a little.

  “I’m looking for swim shorts,” he said.

  Ellie gestured with an uninterested wave of her hand toward a nearby clothing rack.

  “All of our swimwear is on that rack,” she said.

  Weldon turned and began shuffling through the hanging shorts. He could feel Ellie’s gaze hot on the back of his neck. He inspected a pair of green shorts, making a show of being interested in the lining.

  “So is that other girl giving you what you want?” said Ellie.

  Despite the air-conditioning in the store, Weldon felt a bead of icy sweat roll down his neck.

  “What does that mean?”

  Ellie’s eyes glittered beneath her hooded eyelids. She smirked.

  “I mean, you just wanted a summer distraction, right? Someone to fool around with before you skipped back to LA.”

  She was standing with her arms folded, leaning against one of the store displays. Weldon felt like his entire body was melting under her gaze. He forced himself to stare back.

  “Sure,” he said, and his voice had a snarl in it that he’d never heard before. “That’s all I wanted. From you, at least.” He pointedly held out the green shorts to her.

  “I’ll take these. I’m paying with a credit card.”

  Nearly an hour later, Weldon trudged along the gravelly back road toward where he and Mir had planned to meet. The walk from downtown to the lake should have only taken him twenty minutes, but he’d taken a wrong turn on one of the dirt roads that crisscrossed Sandford and had gotten lost.

  There was a scattering of people gathered around a thin slice of sandy beach at the lake. Two kids splashed in the shallows, pulling up clumps of mud from the lake’s bottom and flinging them at each other, shrieking. A couple was sprawled under a giant beach umbrella, skin already tan and shining from the sun. On the far side of the water, massive evergreens jutted from the shoreline, casting long shadows. Wel
don held a hand up to shade his eyes, looking for Mir. He saw her standing on the edge of the beach, her back to him. She was wearing a tattered straw hat, boy-cut swim shorts, and a bikini top. Weldon’s heart did a happy little lurch at the sight of her bare back. Totally wearing a bikini. Yessss.

  Weldon walked toward Mir.

  “Hi.”

  Mir turned, and it took every ounce of Weldon’s self-control not to allow his eyes to dip below her collarbone.

  Mir grinned, her face shaded by the hat.

  “You made it!”

  “I got lost,” admitted Weldon.

  “Google Maps, defeated by Sandford’s terrible back roads. Tell that to … um, Bill Gates? Who runs Google?”

  “Some nerds,” said Weldon. “Nerds with more money than we’ll ever see in our lifetime. Nerds with solid gold pocket protectors.”

  “Yeah, okay, nerds,” Mir said. She waved her hand at the tiny beach. “This is it! Nice, huh?”

  “It is,” said Weldon, turning to look at the lake. Mir turned to look as well, and Weldon slid his eyes toward her, his face still aimed at the lake. Her bikini top was red-and-white checkered, not pink, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the curve of her waist above the belt line of her blue swim shorts, the way the skin on her lower back looked so pale, like parts of her hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time. He remembered the feeling of her body pressed against his the night she had hugged him. He almost felt light-headed.

  Mir’s head started to swivel back toward him, and Weldon shifted his eyes frontward, making a show of looking out over the treetops on the other side of the lake.

  Mir pointed at his Running Realm bag.

  “You want to change?”

  “Sure,” said Weldon.

  Mir pointed at a small wooden structure at the tree line behind them.

  “That’s the public washroom, only place to change around here. It smells kinda bad, but it’s not so horrible if you can change quickly.”

  “I’ll be super fast,” said Weldon, and trotted toward the washroom. It was a small, two-door structure, one bathroom for women, one for men. Weldon walked into the men’s side and dressed quickly, holding his breath as he stripped off his T-shirt. He stuffed his clothes into the Running Realm bag, and paused as he caught a glimpse of himself in the cracked mirror above the bathroom’s lone sink.

  You just wanted a summer distraction, right? Ellie’s words rang in his mind.

  “It’s not like that,” Weldon said out loud. He leaned his forehead against the door frame of the bathroom, feeling queasy. But what is it like? I like her, I think she likes me. Am I going to screw this up and hurt her? My family’s already taken her inheritance.

  He pushed back from the bathroom door frame and walked out into the summer sunshine. Mir turned to look at him as he walked toward her. She smiled, her face shadowed by the floppy brim of her hat. Weldon pushed the last echoes of Ellie’s voice from his mind, and smiled back.

  Mir swam for a grand total of fifteen minutes, then climbed out of the lake and fell asleep on her towel on the sliver of a beach. Weldon considered lying down as well, but instead decided to swim across the lake. It took ten minutes of an easy front crawl to reach the other side, and fifteen minutes of back-stroking to reach the beach again. Mir was still sleeping, white smudges of sunblock covering every inch of exposed skin. Weldon sat next to her for a while, feeling foolishly happy, then wandered back into the lake, practicing underwater handstands. After his twelfth handstand attempt, he noticed Mir was awake.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking embarrassed as he trudged out of the lake. “I’ve been trying not to take naps because they mess up my sleep schedule, but I’m tired all the time. Getting up at five every morning will always be the worst.”

  “No worries,” said Weldon, plopping down beside her. She’d brought a towel for him, a tattered white-and-red beach towel with a Canadian maple leaf emblazoned on it. It seemed both patriotic and a little disrespectful to put his wet butt on it.

  “It is so nice out,” Mir sighed, sitting up. “I could stay here forever. Nice days are like unicorns in Sandford.”

  “Every day’s like this in Los Angeles,” Weldon said. “Always sunny, always gorgeous out.”

  “And I bet no one appreciates it,” said Mir, smiling at Weldon from under her giant hat. “Would you appreciate a unicorn if they were as common as horses?”

  “That’s a very strange analogy to make,” Weldon said.

  “I like seeing the seasons change,” Mir said. “It’d be unnatural to have this kind of weather in January.”

  “You like all the snow? What is it with Canadians and snow?”

  “No,” said Mir, “it’s not that we like it. I mean, some people do. People who ski or play hockey and stuff. But it just feels wrong not to have it. It’s a renewing process we go through every winter. We hibernate, waiting out the cold, and when spring comes, it’s like we’re reborn into the world.”

  “Amazing,” said Weldon, meaning it.

  Mir laughed.

  “No, it’s silly. Canadians are just stubborn. This is where we’ve decided to live, so we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re okay with our terrible winters. We’re good, really, we are! Look, we’re playing hockey in backyard rinks. Everything’s cool! Get out of here with your good weather, Californians.”

  Mir leaned back on her towel, stretching her arms above her head. Weldon hoped he was doing a good job of not being obvious that he was staring at her.

  “Hey,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s something kinda personal. I don’t want to pry, really.”

  Mir looked up at him, curious.

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, if you don’t want me to know—”

  “Weldon, just ask,” Mir said.

  “Okay,” said Weldon, “your last name is Kendrick, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Mir.

  “So … um, isn’t that your mom’s last name?”

  Mir peered at Weldon, confusion on her face. Suddenly she got it.

  “You want to know why we’re the Kendricks and not the Joudrys.”

  “Joudrys?”

  “It’s my dad’s last name,” said Mir. “When they got married, he took my mom’s name.”

  “Oh,” said Weldon, feeling relieved at the simplicity of the answer. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Mir’s parents seemed pretty nontraditional; it made sense they might use Stella’s last name instead of Henry’s.

  “I don’t know why, though,” Mir said, her tone thoughtful. “Maybe it had to do with…” She paused, frowning. “My dad told me recently that my mom didn’t want to stay in Sandford when they started talking about getting married. Maybe him taking her name was, I don’t know, a trade. Something he could give her in exchange for staying here for him.”

  Mir rubbed her arm, looking pensively down at the sand.

  “I didn’t know she wanted to leave,” she said. “She never told me. Even when I was, y’know, freaking out about what I wanted to do next year. Whether I wanted to stay or go.”

  “She probably didn’t want to influence your decision,” Weldon said.

  Mir nodded absently, sifting her fingers through the sand.

  “Yeah,” she said, “probably.”

  Mir looked up at the lake. Afternoon sun was reflecting off the water, blindingly bright.

  “This time next year, everything will be different,” she said.

  Weldon reached out to brush his fingers across the back of her hand.

  “Different is good,” he said. “Scary, but good.”

  “Yeah,” said Mir, and leaned toward him, resting her chin on his bare shoulder.

  “Whatever happens, I think it will be okay. I’ll be okay. I think.” And she turned her head toward Weldon’s, bumping the tip of her nose against his cheek. He felt her lips lightly brush against his jawline and froze, not sure if he should turn his head to meet her
. But she pulled back, tucking her chin against his shoulder again.

  They stayed like that a long time, until the sun dipped below the tree line beyond the lake and the evening turned cool and crisp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Mir kept wanting to reach out and touch Weldon. The safest option seemed to be to keep her hands by her sides. It was easiest when they were at Starbucks, because then her hands were occupied by his, and there were people around to spoil the mood. When Weldon had suggested they go swimming, she had almost turned him down, nervous at the thought of him only in swim trunks and equally nervous about him seeing her in a bathing suit. But she’d agreed, because the weather was scorching and the thought of diving into a cool lake was appealing. And maybe a tiny part of her wanted to see Weldon with his shirt off.

  At home she’d stripped off her clothes, changed into her swim shorts and bikini top, and stared at herself in the mirror in her room. The parts of her that had been exposed to the sun by the golf course uniform had freckled a bit, and she peered at her knees and elbows, feeling almost giddy. She put her hand on her stomach, then imagined Weldon’s hand on her bare skin and had to quickly leave her bedroom in a flurry of activity. Sunblock, a towel, an extra towel for Weldon, and sunglasses went in her canvas beach bag. She tried to shove all thoughts of Weldon and his hands touching her out of her head.

  Mir was relieved when she’d gotten to the beach ahead of Weldon. It allowed her time to spread out her towel, smoothing out the pebbly sand so it was comfortable to sit on. And then he’d appeared, sweaty and annoyed over getting lost. He’d changed into his swim trunks and it had been fine. She hadn’t exploded in a confetti burst of hormones, although she’d very much wanted to reach out and slide her hand up Weldon’s neck from his shoulders to where his hairline began on the back of his head. That whole area of Weldon looked like it would be very nice to touch. She kept her hands firmly by her sides, in case they might mistakenly wander toward him.

  Mir wasn’t sure if Weldon was looking at her while they sat by the lake. Sometimes she thought she saw his eyes slide in her direction, but whenever she turned toward him, he seemed to be looking some other way. Feeling bold, she lay down on her beach towel and reached her arms over her head. She saw Weldon’s head turn toward her, his eyes flickering downward. Then he seemed to freeze, staring straight ahead at the lake in front of them. The thing in Mir’s chest gave a happy little jump, and she tucked her arms behind her head, trying not to smile too much. He wanted to look at her and he was trying his best not to.