When the song stops, we keep moving, my head on your shoulder, yours arms holding me close.
* * *
I ask about my new heart, and you say, “I need a little more time, please.”
* * *
You’re out running errands when I creep into your workshop. My fingers shake as I remove the cloth. The heart is finished—smooth and perfect and free of scrapes and gouges. Made of bright and shiny metal, it knows no pain, no sorrow, no memories.
I lift it slowly, carefully, and it thumps steady and strong in my hands. I picture it behind my ribs, a captive bird inside a cage. But this heart is also a blank slate, and once you place it in my chest, there will be nothing left for you, nothing left of you, inside. I bow my head and cry.
When my tears dry, I touch my chest. Are the changes enough? Am I enough? After a time, I nod. This one piece, then, I will keep. All the broken shards; all the stitches holding it together; all the bruises; all the fear.
I place the new heart back on the table, cover it, and turn out the light.
* * *
We have a late dinner outside beneath a darkening sky. We drink red wine. Laugh. I slip my hand into yours. Such warmth. Such safety.
“I love you,” you say.
I answer with a kiss. My heart whispers the words so quietly you can’t hear.
* * *
I leave in the small hours of the morning. You’re fast asleep, one hand tucked beneath your cheek like a child. Will you weep when you discover I’m gone? Break things in a rage? Acknowledge that this is the only way it could have ended?
I leave the new heart behind. Not as a token for you to remember me by—I wonder, fear, how long it will continue to beat in my absence—but for me to remember where and who I’ve been.
I am afraid, unspeakably so, yet perhaps there is strength, not weakness, in this fear. And I know I could stay. I would be safe here, perhaps too safe. If I stay, I’m afraid I’ll never be anything other, more, than your creation. I was lost and you led me from the shadows—you saved me—but I have to make the rest of the journey on my own. I know I will carry you, us, inside every step of the way, but I was never yours to keep.
Still, I give one last look over my shoulder and as the air dances a melody across my skin, I wonder. Then I let it go. I let it all go. There is power in this, in saying goodbye.
I’ve been waiting for someone like me for a long time.
The Hands That Hold, the Lies That Bind
The thorn breaks through Callie’s skin, rising from her left shoulder like a small, jagged periscope. No pain, no blood, only a strange fluttery sensation whispering the length of her spine. The barb, about the length and width of a fingernail, is a shade darker than her skin, its shape a tiny shark’s fin, the skin around it slightly ridged.
She covers her mouth, holding in a laugh because it’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. She takes a deep breath, stares at the posters—The Avengers and Star Wars—on her bedroom wall for a long time, then at her shoulder again. The thorn’s still there. This time she does let out a laugh because it’s ridiculous. Lots of weird things happen when you’re twelve—pimples, boobs, shopping for bras with your mom, your dad leaving and moving to the opposite side of the country—but thorns aren’t one of them. At least they’re not supposed to be.
Her laugh stutters to a halt. She has a thorn. In her shoulder. Call Mia, she thinks. But two months ago when Callie got her period in Ms. Llewellyn’s class, Mia told everyone. More than half the girls in seventh grade—including Mia—already had theirs. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, and Callie still doesn’t understand why Mia did it; they’ve been best friends since preschool. This, though? This puts her in freak territory.
The tip of the thorn is bone hard and sharp and probably would’ve cut through the strap of her tank top if it emerged beneath it instead of right next to the edge. The shivery feel in her back returns. She bares her teeth, growls softly, then shakes her head. Growling? That makes her an even bigger freak. Tears prick her eyes, and she squeezes her lids shut to try and hold them in. This can’t be happening.
“Callie?”
Callie’s gaze snaps wide-eyed to the doorway. Her mom’s face goes still and sheds its color. Instinctively, Callie covers the thorn with a cupped palm, but it’s too late.
“No,” her mom says, her face dropping its mask, turning all flint-hard eyes and twisted lips. “Don’t touch it.” She moves so fast that Callie steps back until her thighs hit the mattress, panic flooding her mouth. She wants to get away from those eyes, that mouth, but there’s nowhere to go.
Her mom’s face shifts again to something with slightly less menace. “Okay. We’ll take care of this. Everything will be fine,” she says, her hands butterflying to her chest. Then she nods, as though in answer to some silent question, and grabs Callie’s upper arm, fingers digging in hard.
“Mom, let go, that hurts.” She can’t remember the last time, if ever, her mom touched her this way, or even with anything other than a brief hug. Even before Dad left.
“Be quiet and come with me.”
In the bathroom, her mother lets go and points to the toilet. “Sit.”
“Why?” Callie says, rubbing her upper arm.
“Because I said so.”
“What if I don’t want—”
“Sit. Down.”
Callie closes the lid and sits, knees pressed together, mouth dry, while her mom rummages in the medicine cabinet and pulls out antibiotic ointment, an adhesive bandage, and tweezers.
“What are you going to do?”
“What needs to be done.”
Callie covers the thorn again.
“I said don’t touch it!”
The tears return, and Callie’s heart races so fast she’s afraid it will leap from her chest. “What is it? And why are you so—”
“I said be quiet,” her mom says between clenched teeth.
“Not until you tell me—”
“Enough! It has to come out. This isn’t debatable. It has to come out now before it can take root.”
Sorrow glitters in her mother’s eyes, too, and that isn’t new—she’s been crying almost every day since Dad left—but these are different somehow. “Take root? What do you mean?”
Her mom presses the back of her hand to her mouth, but Callie hears a sob trying to escape, a strange, animalistic sound. The hardness flashes in her eyes again.
“Mom, I’m scared. Did I do something wrong?”
The harsh edges fall from her mother’s face as quickly as her hand falls. “No, no, nothing like that. The, the, it has to come out, that’s all. Everything will be fine. I promise.” She brushes hair from her forehead and takes up the tweezers.
“I can do it,” Callie says.
“No. I’ll take care of it.”
But her mom pauses, her fingers trembling, the tweezers a few inches above Callie’s shoulder. Silence hangs heavy and thick. Then her mom starts humming, a strange rhythmic sound that makes the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t respond. Puts tweezers to thorn. Callie glances away. It feels as though her mom’s pulling something out from deep inside, and it burns both fire and ice. Callie tries to hold in a cry. Tries and fails. Her mom hums louder, but Callie hears something else, something she can’t define. A voice, yet not a voice, and it’s not coming from her mom. It’s not coming from anywhere, which doesn’t make sense. Then it’s gone, and the only things she’s aware of are an ache in her shoulder and a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Eyes glassy, her mom squeezes a pearl of antibiotic ointment over the now bleeding wound and affixes the bandage before Callie can get a closer look. “Thankfully, it was a small one. It shouldn’t even leave a scar,” she says with a smile so artificially bright and cheery that Callie recoils.
Her mother seemingly pays no attention. Callie reaches for the thorn, now discarded on the edge of the sink, the wider end spec
kled with blood, but her mom gets to it first. Their gazes lock and hold. Again, the false smile.
“What is it?” Callie whispers.
“It’s nothing. We don’t need to talk about it. Everything’s fine now.”
“It isn’t nothing. It was inside me, and I don’t even know—”
“No one, not even Mia, can know about this.” She grabs Callie’s arm again, gives it a small shake. “Do you understand?”
“But—”
“Do. You. Understand?” Her fingers dig in deeper with each word.
Callie nods. “Will it happen again?”
Her mom flinches but leaves the bathroom without answering, taking the thorn with her. Callie rubs her arm, where her mom’s grip left bright red fingermarks, and then her shoulder. She nudges the bathroom door shut with her foot and peels one end of the bandage free. The wound, already beginning to scab, looks normal, as far as scratches go. What scares her more than the unanswered questions, the strange anger, or what she thinks she heard, is that her mom was upset and angry, but she wasn’t surprised. Not completely.
* * *
Callie bounces the eraser end of her pencil on the kitchen table. Her homework is long finished, leftovers warmed and eaten. Working late, her mom’s text message said. Callie wanted to talk to her this morning, but she was already gone when Callie woke up. As if that wasn’t suspicious at all.
She runs her index finger across the bandage. What if another thorn pops out? What if it happens in school? What’s she supposed to do, run out of class before anyone notices? Right.
She’s already looked online. She found a couple of books with the words girl and thorn in their titles, including one she already has—and it has nothing to do with random thorns popping out of anyone’s skin—and a bunch of tattoo pictures. She didn’t really expect to find anything saying hey, here’s what you do when thorns start growing out of your skin, but it would’ve been nice to find something.
If her dad were still here, she knows she could talk to him about it. He wouldn’t brush her off or treat her like a little kid (or pretend a thorn was nothing major, nothing to talk about); he never did. Chest aching, she rests her head atop folded arms on the table, thumbing the edge of her open sketch pad. She misses the way he hugged her at night before bed, the way they’d sit next to each other on the sofa reading. She misses hearing his voice, misses hearing him call her punkin. She doesn’t miss the fights he had with her mom, or the way he worked late a lot, and maybe he didn’t talk to her as much when things got really bad, but that wasn’t her fault. You don’t divorce your kids. You don’t.
She cocks her head closer to the wound. Listens. After a few minutes, she makes a face. What was she expecting anyway? Whatever she thought she heard was probably her imagination. She pulls off the bandage, digs her thumbnail in, and hisses in pain as she scrapes off the scab. No matter what her mom said, she wants a scar. There should be a scar.
When her mom finally comes home, she’s wearing her I-had-a-bad-day-at-the-office-and-hate-everyone face, and her eyes are still draped with the hard, flinty veil, so Callie keeps her mouth shut. Even though she worked late, her mom’s makeup is perfect and her clothes aren’t wrinkled. She’s all high cheekbones, sharp comma collarbones, and fair hair where Callie’s is round-cheeked, soft and dark, her eyes a touch too far apart, her mouth a little too wide. Maybe not ugly, but not pretty, not like her mom. She doesn’t really resemble her dad either. One time he joked that she was the mailman’s child, and her mom got mad and didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day. Callie thought it was funny but knew better than to say so.
* * *
Hi, Dad, it’s me, Callie. Um, school’s going good I guess. I hope your new job is too. Is it really warm there? Do you get to go and swim in the ocean? Probably not because you’re so busy with work, but I would if I were there, even if I were super busy. Anyway, I wanted to say I love you and I miss you. Call me back soon, okay?
* * *
Callie sleeps late on Saturday morning, and when she goes downstairs, her mom’s outside, still in her pajamas and robe, smoking a cigarette, something she only does when she’s really stressed.
“Mom?”
She exhales a plume of smoke before she turns around. “What?”
“Can we talk about the, the …” Callie lifts her shoulder, tips her chin in its direction.
Her mom shakes her head. “No.”
“That’s what you said last night and the night before and the night before that, you wouldn’t even talk to me. Why can’t we talk about it?”
“It’s gone, isn’t it? Go inside, Callie. There are waffles in the freezer.”
“But I thought I heard—”
“Enough!”
She turns away but not before Callie sees her face twist into the angry mask. Callie stomps inside. All she wants is to know what’s going on. Why can’t her mom tell her the truth? She digs under the bandage again, not even wincing when she peels off what’s left of the scab.
* * *
The wound leaves a small pink scar. Callie wears tank tops and keeps her hair in a ponytail, but if her mom notices the mark, she doesn’t say a word. Not that she’s said much of anything at all lately.
The house is way too quiet with only the two of them, as though her dad packed all the conversation in his suitcases and tucked the laughter and smiles in carefully taped boxes. Callie told her mom that once; she pursed her lips and said it was better than all the arguments.
Callie would rather have all the fighting in the world than the empty space where her dad should be.
* * *
Mia’s mom brings them glasses of apple juice and grilled cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off. When she leaves the bedroom, Callie and Mia both roll their eyes, but it doesn’t stop them from eating or drinking.
Mia flops on her stomach, crumbs stuck to her lower lip. “Did you see Vivica today?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Her cousin pierced her cartilage, here.” Mia points at the top curve of her ear. “Her mom apparently had a fit and grounded her for forever, but she let her keep the earring in. Isn’t that dumb?”
Callie shrugs. “It’s Vivica’s ear. If she likes it …”
“My mom would kill me, and yours would kill you, too. Hey, what’s this?” She pulls a sheet of paper out of Callie’s math book. “Did you draw it?”
“Yeah, but it’s nothing really.” Callie says, pinching the inside of her cheek between her teeth. The drawing shows a girl with thorns on her shoulders and arms. Thorns big enough to impale someone with.
Mia traces the figure’s outline. “She’s cool. Is she a superhero or a villain? Are those things part of her costume or part of her?”
“I don’t know. She’s just something I made up. I wasn’t really thinking about it.”
“She looks bad-ass, like Black Widow, only better. You should totally draw more. Maybe make a real comic with her, and the spikes should be part of her, not just her costume.”
“Whatever. Can I have it back? I need to get home.”
“But it’s early.”
Callie tucks the drawing in her book. “Yeah, but I told my mom I’d do some laundry before she got home.” She keeps her eyes downcast so Mia won’t see the lie within.
“Bor-ing.”
“Better boring than my mom pissed off,” Callie says.
She takes her time walking home, not that it matters much; Mia only lives two streets away. Callie passes a bunch of little kids playing on a front lawn, their mothers watching from the porch. On her street, Will Brecht is riding his bikes in lazy figure eights from sidewalk to driveway. He’s her age, but he goes to private school. Their dads were friends, but their moms, not so much.
Her phone buzzes and as she’s pulling it out of her pocket, it slips and tumbles into the grass. Insects dance from neck to tailbone, and the tip of a thorn emerges on the inside of her wrist.
“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh, no.”
<
br /> It doesn’t hurt, but it’s bigger than the first one—half the length of her thumb and nearly as wide—and it looks sharper, too. The creeping in her back grows stronger, radiating out to her shoulder blades.
“Callie, you okay?”
She blinks in the sunlight, hears a low sound coming from deep in her throat. Will is on his bike in front of her, his face screwed up in confused amusement.
She blinks again and shivers. “Just dropped my phone.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Will bikes away, casting several glances over his shoulder that she pretends not to see, and she forces herself not to run. Once safely inside her house, she drops both phone and backpack on the kitchen floor and half-sits, half-falls, into a chair, shaking. Pinching the thorn between finger and thumb, she gives it a tug. Hisses in a breath. A tiny drop of blood appears at one corner, but the thorn stays put.
Freak, freak, freak, she thinks. But another part of her, a secret voice deep inside, says, no, not a freak. Something else. Something different. Maybe even something better. She barks a laugh. Right.
She texts her mom: It happened again. Will Brecht almost saw it. Now will you talk to me?
I’ll be home as soon as I can, comes the reply. Stay inside until then.
What does she think Callie’s going to do? Run around showing it off to the neighbors?
When her mom rushes in and sees the thorn, her face turns inscrutable. (But at least it’s not angry.) Callie has the tweezers, a bandage, and the ointment already on the table. Good little soldiers awaiting their mission.
Her mom starts humming. This time, Callie watches the whole process. Her mom doesn’t yank the thorn out straight, but bends it a little to the side, pulling hard enough that her knuckles turn white. Callie swallows the pain and hears the not-voice again. It’s as quiet as the echo of a whisper, but it’s definitely not her imagination. As soon as the thorn is completely out, it falls silent.
“Mom, what is that? What’s wrong with me?”
Her mom exhales sharply, wipes away the blood, and applies ointment. “Nothing’s wrong with you,” she says, but the words sound as though she’s choking on them.
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