How to Build a Heart

by Maria Padian

  Aubrey laughs, a tad loud. It startles, like a blast from a silver cornet. Girls rushing to class aim curious glances at us.

  “I’m Izzy, by the way.”

  “I’m Aubrey,” she says. “But you know that.” Her cheeks glow a little brighter. Yikes.

  Just then, the bell rings, signaling two minutes before the next period begins. I slam my locker shut.

  “I had to leave early yesterday,” I say, “so I didn’t get a chance to tell you, you crushed your audition.”

  “Thanks.” She fixes her eyes on her shoes, but I catch a glimpse of a smile.

  “Seriously, we were blown away. And very pumped that you’ll be singing with us.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” she replies, raising her head. “I mean, pumped to sing with all of you. You guys are amazing.” We stand there looking at each other as the hall empties. I wonder if I’m wearing the same panicky grin as her. Like she can’t decide whether to hug me or run.

  “I’m going this way,” I say, pointing toward the history wing.

  Aubrey falls into step beside me. “I had to leave early, too,” she says. “Yesterday. My ride was in a super hurry to get home, so I couldn’t stay to meet everyone.”

  I arrange my expression in a way to indicate that I am not dying to know why Awful Melissa was in such a super hurry. “No worries,” I tell her. “Everyone’s really nice. After the first rehearsal, you’ll feel like you’ve known them forever.”

  Aubrey nods. “That’s what everyone kept telling me about the VCs. God. This place is so different from County!” She shudders, as if she’s a war zone survivor trying to shake off haunting memories.

  “That good, huh?” I comment. “I haven’t lived here very long, but you’re the second person I know who doesn’t love that place.”

  “Who’s the other?”

  “My stylist,” I say, winking at her.

  She laughs. “Now you’ve given me two reasons to want to meet her.”

  Even if she stalks your brother, hates all his friends, and despises the girl who picks you up after school? I manage to not say. This conversation is starting to feel a little surreal. Come to think of it, just walking down the hall chatting with Hot Sam’s sister feels a little surreal.

  Okay: a lot surreal. I’m trying not to imagine the WTF?? look on Roz’s face if she could see me right now.

  “Are you from Clayton, too?” she asks.

  I feel my shoulders stiffen. I can’t help it. Whenever people I don’t know start asking personal questions, I clench.

  Breathe, I remind myself. Keep it simple.

  Don’t slip.

  “Yes,” I say. That’s all.

  “So why’d you decide to bypass County High and come here? I mean, it’s a thirty-minute drive.”

  I give her my standard answer. “We’re Catholic,” I say. “And my mom’s a big believer in parochial schools.”

  Aubrey seems satisfied. “Do you have your license?”

  I nod.

  Aubrey groans. “I still have a year and a half before I get mine!” She looks as if this will be time sentenced to hard labor. “After that I’ll have my own car. But in the meantime, if I can’t find a ride, I’m stuck on the bus! Which takes forever.”

  I don’t know how to respond to this. I’m unfamiliar with a world in which a driver’s license automatically comes with a car of one’s own.

  It’s the sort of thing that infuriates Roz. Not just the fact of it—kids with rich parents who can buy them cars, or whatever, whenever—but the So what? of it. Like stocking the garage with cars is no different than stocking the bathroom with toilet paper.

  Chances are Aubrey Shackelton probably knows a few people who don’t get a personal vehicle when they pass their driver’s tests. But chances are even better that I’m the first person she’s met whose family doesn’t have a garage.

  Not that I’m about to tell her that.

  “You weren’t stuck on the bus yesterday,” I comment instead.

  “That was my brother Sam’s girlfriend. He was going to get me after the tryout, but he had basketball practice, so she helped out. But it’s not an everyday thing, you know?”

  I don’t, actually. I don’t know anything about any of these people, and right here, this, now, is the moment Isabella Crawford walks away. Or should walk away. Not only because the final bell is about to ring and we’ve reached the door to my next class but also because the art of avoiding slippage means saying—and doing—nothing that shows your hand. Hold your cards close to your chest and put on that poker face. It’s not as hard as you’d think. People love to talk about themselves, and if you keep directing the conversation and questions back to them, they leave the interaction with the impression you’re the absolute best. Even though you haven’t told them a damn thing.

  I’m crazy good at this game. And I’ve had years of practice. So what I say next makes no sense.

  “Your brother’s name is Sam? You know, I think I met him. At that little country store, Four Corners?”

  Her face lights up. You’d think I’d just offered her a Pez from a Santa dispenser. “That’s right near our house! Do you live out there, too?”

  The bell rings. I should go. Retreat, escape into class. Quit while I’m ahead.

  But some people, even when they’re literally being “saved by the bell,” can’t help themselves.

  “No, we were just stopping for gas,” I tell her. “I met him by the snack rack. Tall, right? Brown hair, blue eyes?”

  “Goofy grin? Chipped tooth?” she adds with a hint of glee. Like a true kid sister.

  “He said his name was Sam and he had a sister at St. V’s,” I say. “I didn’t make the connection until just now.”

  Flat. Out. Lie.

  I am so going to hell.

  Okay, not really. But it’s definitely a sin. And I’ll pay. Somehow.

  Meanwhile, Aubrey is backing down the hall toward her next class.

  “Oh my god!” she enthuses. “Small world, right?”

  “Right,” I agree, hand on knob. Too small, maybe, I don’t add.

  As I swing the door open, Aubrey tosses one last comment my way.

  “Hey, Sam’s picking me up today. We could totally give you a lift.”

  I should say no. I should pretend I didn’t hear her, and head into class. I should say, Oh, that’d be great, but I need to stay late today. I should say pretty much anything but what I do say:

  “Sure. Thanks!”

  Aubrey does this little skip, waves at me, then disappears down the hall. I step into class, where, luckily, my teacher is having trouble with his overhead projector and is too busy futzing with it to fuss at me for being tardy. I slip into my seat, pull out my notebook, and try a deep, calming breath.

  But I’m anything except calm. My heart races.

  What am I doing?

  8

  I am the World’s Best Secret Keeper. But even I don’t know how I’m going to not tell Roz that I drove home in Hot Sam’s Jeep Cherokee.

  For anyone who wants to fight me on my World’s Best Secret Keeper status, I would show them this: a four-by-six photo of my father, Charlie Crawford, which I stow in an envelope, tucked between the pages of my journal, at the back of my night table drawer. In spite of years of moves and objects broken, lost, and tossed, I’ve never misplaced that photo.

  And I’m the only one in our family who even knows it exists. I’m like Frodo, in The Fellowship of the Ring. I’ve kept it secret, and safe.

  I’ve had it since I was ten. It came in the box with my father’s stuff after he died. They do that. Send the widow the “personal effects.” I remember the box arrived not long after the memorial service because my Tía Blanca was still with us and she answered the door for the deliveryman. Mami wasn’t expecting anything, so she and Tía Blanca cu
t right through the packing tape to see what was inside.

  As soon as they looked, Mami made this choking sound and ran from the room. Tía Blanca followed, leaving me alone with it. Of course, I peeked.

  I remember thinking it was strange to see my father’s clothes folded in a cardboard box. Even stranger were the sheets of colored-pencil drawings at the top of the heap: galloping horses, sandy beaches with blue oceans, gnarly trees studded with round red apples. Why were the pictures I had drawn for Daddy and mailed to him . . . here? The last time we’d Skyped, he’d told me he decorated the walls right next to his bunk with them. He said all the guys told him I was going to be a great artist.

  Kids aren’t stupid. I wasn’t stupid. They’d told me my father wasn’t coming home again. They’d said the word—“dead”—and I knew what it meant. I’d seen dead birds and car-smushed squirrels. The boy who lived next door had a dog that died. But the idea that my daddy had left the world forever and was never again going to walk through that door booming Where’s my Izzy? was still so fresh.

  I tried to take the drawings out of the box, but they wouldn’t stay in my hands. Like they were mine . . . but not. They floated from my fingers, scattered like colorful leaves on the floor. And as they fell, something that had been tucked between them slipped out. The photo.

  I recognized him right off. He was wearing desert-colored cammies and posing with a few other guys dressed the same way. You can’t see his green eyes because he’s wearing sunglasses, or his blond hair because he’s wearing his helmet. But he’s grinning that Big Charlie Crawford grin, that I-am-so-up-to-no-good cute-guy expression that you just know broke a million hearts before he fell, head over heels, for my mother.

  That “Hey, Mom’s working late, let’s eat Cocoa Puffs for dinner” grin that made me fall head over heels for him.

  I love that he’s saved, in that moment, looking like that. Not unsmiling and uncomfortable in the formal picture Mami displays. Not like he ended up. His vehicle tripped an IED planted in a road outside Ramadi. All the guys with him died. Grandma Crawford got the flag at the memorial service, folded into a stiff triangle by robotic Marines in perfect uniforms. Mami got the box with all the stuff from his bunk. And I got that picture. Because before Tía Blanca returned to the room, I decided it was mine. As if Charlie Crawford himself had hidden it between the pictures I had sent to him. Our little secret. Like Cocoa Puffs for dinner. Six years ago I claimed it, and haven’t shown it to anyone.

  Compared to that, a lift home is nothing. But it will be way harder to hide.

  For one thing, you can’t stick it in a drawer.

  To my credit, I try to stop it from happening. I wait a full five minutes following the dismissal bell, the last possible second I can wait before the late bus to Clayton pulls out of the St. V’s lot. Any longer and I’ll be stranded. They’re gone now, I think, as I race for the exit. Aubrey will assume I’m not coming, and she and her beautiful brother will drive off into the sunset.

  But no such luck. The moment I step outside, the Hallelujah Chorus of Aubrey—which, from any normal human being, would be yelling—reaches my ears.

  “Izzy! Woo-hoo! We’re over here!”

  Woo-hoo? God, help this kid.

  There’s no pretending not to hear her: everyone in the parking lot can hear her. She’s standing alongside Sam’s Jeep, which is idling near the exit, in front of the line of buses poised to pull out. Smart move. If you get stuck behind the buses, you wait. And kill brain cells breathing diesel exhaust.

  This is the moment. The point of no return. I can choose: wave them on and climb aboard the usual bus, the predictable bus, the bus of rejecting Aubrey’s friendly offer and thirty minutes chatting with her and Sam and having to figure out how I’ll tell Roz later . . . or step into the what-if of that Jeep Cherokee.

  I go with what-if. And damn if Aubrey doesn’t swing open the front passenger-side door as I trot toward them.

  “You sit here,” she says, smiling like someone who knows she’s letting you have the biggest piece of birthday cake. With a whole frosting flower.

  “Ooh, shotgun,” I say before slipping in. “Thanks.”

  And there he is, with that lopsided smile. His hands grasping the steering wheel, Clayton County High letterman’s jacket partially unzipped, foot on the brake. Twelve inches between his shoulder and mine. I concentrate on not staring at his knees and the angle formed by his long legs, folded into the space between the gas pedal and the driver’s seat.

  “Hey,” I say, as casually as any semihysterical person can.

  “We meet again.” He smiles at me with his perfectly aligned teeth.

  What chip was Aubrey talking about? Give me a break. He’s Adonis. Gods don’t have chipped teeth.

  Oh help. Help help help.

  Aubrey climbs into the back and slams the door shut, and Sam takes off. Just in time. The buses are starting to move.

  “So, Sam remembered you, too!” she starts right in. “I told him one of the VC girls met him at the Four Corners market, and he was like, ‘Izzy with the green eyes?’ And I was like, ‘Yes! That’s her!’”

  Oh my. Oh my oh my. Did your socially awkward little sister just reveal to this girl you don’t know that you noticed, remembered, and commented on her eyes, Sam?

  Moments like this are rare in my life. I decide not to waste this one. So I shoot Hot Sam a sideways glance that says in no uncertain terms: Gotcha. Aim these emerald orbs at him and watch as that signature Shackelton blush ignites the base of his neck and slowly creeps north. Who knew a tendency to insane blushing was genetic?

  I decide to toss this Shackelton a lifeline as well.

  “Well, I’m glad you remembered me as Izzy-with-the-green-eyes instead of Izzy-with-the-crash-and-burn-brother,” I say.

  Before Sam can reply, Aubrey pounces. “Oh, do you have a brother, too?” She’s right up near our heads.

  “Bree, buckle up,” Sam orders.

  She flops back, and he looks at me and rolls his eyes. Not in a mean way. More in a see-what-I-put-up-with? way.

  Hot Sam is also an All-Star Older Sib.

  I twist in my seat to face Aubrey. “I do,” I tell her. “Little brother. He’s six. He met Sam, too. Actually, it was more like a head-on collision. I’m afraid he’s a menace.”

  Sam laughs. “Nah. He’s just got a lot of energy,” he says. “I was that kid.”

  “Still are,” Aubrey says.

  “Hey. Let’s not give Izzy here the wrong impression,” Sam counters, smiling at her through the rearview mirror.

  “Oh? And what impression would that be?” I ask her.

  Aubrey takes the bait. “Well, Sam’s not exactly a menace,” she begins.

  “Hey!” he repeats. But there’s a smile in his voice.

  “But he is hyper. I mean, when we were growing up? Our parents couldn’t keep him busy enough. Sometimes he’d be signed up for three different sports at once! It was insane.”

  “I needed outlets,” he explains.

  “Kind of like the human version of an electrical plug?” I suggest.

  They both burst out laughing.

  “Pretty much,” he says.

  “What sports do you play now?” I ask. “I mean, that’s a letterman’s jacket, right?”

  “Basketball,” Aubrey chimes in. “And he’s a cocaptain. And their team is in the playoffs.”

  I try to look like this is all news to me. “So. You don’t suck,” I say to him.

  “I don’t suck,” he admits, grinning. “But enough about me. Aubrey says you sing?”

  “Not like her. Your sister has an amazing voice.” Quick pivot.

  “Hey. Hear that?” Sam shoots her another rearview glance. “That’s what we’ve been telling you. Maybe now you’ll finally believe it.”

  “What about you, Captain Sam?”
I continue. “Do you sing, too?”

  “He’s completely tone deaf!” Aubrey exclaims. “It’s, like, the one thing he can’t do!”

  I feel my eyebrows arch, Mami-like. My mother can pull a pretty skeptical expression. I’m a close second to her. “One thing?”

  “There are lots of things I can’t do,” he assures me.

  “Such as?” I ask.

  He hesitates, for just a second.

  “Oh my god. You can’t think of anything. How do you live in the same house with such perfection, Aubrey?”

  “It’s superhard, let me tell you. Sam is good at everything. He’s even the best at being tone deaf. No one sings as badly!”

  He nods. “You should see me do karaoke,” he says. “I get standing ovations. It’s world-class awful.”

  The three of us laugh. I can feel myself falling in like with the Shackeltons.

  There isn’t a trace of asshole-ishness about them.

  “So. Where are we taking you, Izzy Green Eyes?” Sam asks.

  I turn my head to the passenger-side window. I don’t want him to see my own cheek-glowing reaction to his teasing. “Could you drop me at the hospital? My mom’s shift is almost over and she can give me a lift from there.”

  “Is your mom a doctor?” Aubrey asks.

  “Nurse,” I reply, conveniently leaving out the “aide” part.

  The rest of the ride flies by. It’s the quickest thirty minutes I’ve ever spent in a car and possibly one of my best efforts at redirecting the conversation away from myself. By the time Sam pulls into the circular drive at the hospital entrance, I’ve heard all about Frank (“You have a dog? I love pugs!”), their mom’s pasta-party lasagna (“She hosts the entire team? Really?”), and what chance his basketball team has against the opponents next weekend.

  “You should come,” Sam says as I open the door. “Friday night at seven. We need all the fans we can get.”

  “Oh, would you?” Aubrey exclaims. A hint of begging. “Otherwise I’m stuck sitting with my parents.”

  Sam frowns. “You know you could always sit with Melissa and her crew.”