The Catastrophic History of You And Me

by Jess Rothenberg

  The thing is, all of the stories were funny. All of the memories were sweet. For a second, it was kind of easy to forget this was a memorial service. It didn’t feel like anyone had died. It wasn’t morbid or depressing or creepy. It was actually kind of fun, hearing how much everyone liked me. I remember feeling silly that I’d been worried about it; for thinking it was going to be too hard to watch. But the mood was light. Like some sort of celebration or party.

  And this time, I was the star.

  Then Sadie, Emma, and Tess got up from their seats. I watched them walk to the stage, hand in hand. They all looked so young. So alive.

  Pretty, petite, dark-haired Sadie, wearing the mood ring I’d given her on her thirteenth birthday. Emma’s blond hair pulled back from her face, her eyes puffy from crying. Tess a total mess of red hair and freckles, holding a single daylily in her left hand.

  My favorite flower.

  It was crazy to see the three of them up there together without me, like the universe was off-balance somehow. Our initials spelled BEST, as in, best thing ever. When we were little, Dad used to call us the Fearsome Foursome. Except now they were minus their fourth.

  They couldn’t know I was sitting on the stage, watching, just a few feet away. Wishing I could tell them everything would be okay, even if I wasn’t so sure. But the dead can’t talk, after all.

  My friends glanced at each other and took deep breaths. Then Sadie began to sing. Her voice was lonely. Beautiful.

  I will remember you. Will you remember me?

  Don’t let your life pass you by. Weep not for the memories.

  She wavered for a split second on memories, her clear soprano voice catching. Emma and Tess joined her then, linking arms. My three best friends in the whole wide world. Their heartbroken harmony echoing against the total stillness of the room.

  Oh god.

  I looked around.

  Mom had begun to cry, her body shaking. Dad, trying to be strong. Tears spilling down his face anyway. Mom’s arms wrapped around Jack. His eyes blank and staring straight ahead. Her face buried in his hair. With just those first few lines of the song, the entire room had fallen apart. Teachers, friends. Kids I’d loved, kids I’d hated, kids I’d never really known. All of them crying.

  Crying for me.

  Then I saw him. His dark hair, longish, messy. His stormy blue eyes locked firmly on the white linoleum floor. The soft, worn North Face jacket I’d snuggled into so many times. His perfect lips. The lips I’d kissed every day for eleven months. He had snuck into the back of the auditorium like a ghost. But he wasn’t the ghost.

  I was.

  That’s when I lost it.

  CHAPTER 2

  take another little piece of my heart now, baby

  When I climbed out of my wheely hospital stretcher and read my chart—the one they fill out right after you die—I saw where the doctor had scribbled down my time of death (8:22 p.m.), followed by three words I’ll never forget.

  Acute congestive cardiomyopathy.

  Otherwise known as heart failure.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but that doctor was wrong. My heart didn’t fail. Someone failed my heart.

  At first, I was so mad at myself. I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve gone to the doctor for more regular checkups, or taken medicine, or not pushed myself so hard on the diving team like I was invincible or something. Because the moment I sat up and realized I was gone, I would’ve done anything—no, everything—for a second chance. I felt like I had been lied to. They had all promised I would live a good, healthy, normal life. Dad had promised.

  But as I watched the group of doctors and nurses crowd around my chest X-ray—hung up on the wall and clipped into a lightbox—I couldn’t help feeling confused.

  All of the experts were staring. Whispering. Pointing. Arguing.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  Nobody answered me, so I made my way over to the lightbox, peeking around all their white coats and stethoscopes to get a better look for myself, at myself.

  Now, I’ve seen plenty of chest X-rays before (Dad used to bring them home to quiz me and Jack on the different sections of the heart), but this was a first. None of those other hearts on those other X-rays had ever looked like mine did right now. Something was definitely Not Right.

  And as the picture of my heart stared back at me on cold, unfriendly film, I realized that everyone was wrong. My heart murmur hadn’t killed me.

  My heartbreak had.

  In an instant, the whole evening came rushing back, slamming into my memory like a thousand pounds of brick. The force of it sent me backward, and I tried to steady myself by grabbing on to one of the doctors’ arms. But my hand went right through him and I fell onto the floor. Not that he noticed.

  Suddenly, I remembered the last thing Jacob had said from across the table. The last words I ever heard as a living girl. The four worst words in the history of the English language.

  I don’t love you.

  That was right before everything turned a weird, sickly shade of green. Before the whole room went black. Before that terrible ripping, throbbing, searing pain shot through my chest like nothing I’d ever felt or could have ever imagined.

  I put my hand over my chest and listened. Waited. But there was no beat. There was no familiar thump-thump, thump-thump. There was nothing.

  “A heart doesn’t just spontaneously sever,” I heard one doctor say.

  Um, wanna bet?

  I would’ve sat them all down and explained it, if there had been time.

  Maybe if they had been in my shoes that night and heard what I heard, or felt what I felt, maybe then they would’ve understood how such a death could be possible. Maybe then they could’ve put their scientific facts and flashy medical school degrees aside for one hot minute and tried thinking with their hearts for once, instead of their heads.

  If they had, maybe I could’ve skipped having some expert cut me open to look inside and prove what was already staring everyone in the face, right there on my X-ray.

  “You’re all going to feel really dumb,” I said, trailing behind the doctors as they wheeled me into the elevator and hit M for MORGUE. Talk about a place nobody wants to end up. The morgue is creepy enough just by itself, but believe me, it is way creepier when YOU are the one everyone’s looking at, all cold and stiff—and oh yeah, naked—on a table.

  Not that it was really, truly, actually me. The real me was sitting on another table across the room, kicking my feet against the metal frame, biting my nails. Watching. Waiting. Wishing somebody would listen.

  “It’s right there in black and white!” I shouted. “Isn’t that enough for you people?”

  Guess not.

  I didn’t like it one bit. The whole thing felt like a giant invasion of privacy. I didn’t want some stranger cutting me up so they could look inside and find out all my secrets.

  My broken heart was my business. Not theirs.

  But it had all come down to Dad, needing to understand. My dad, the mad scientist. To him, my death was a puzzle. He couldn’t make any sense out of it, so he needed to see with his own eyes. Even though Mom begged him not to, even though she begged him to leave me in one piece. But he couldn’t bury his daughter without knowing the truth.

  Unfortunately for me, there was only one way to find out. And in the end, I’ll admit, I guess it took them slicing me open for me to really, truly believe it too.

  I couldn’t watch when the pathologist finally made his incision. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath as his blade made its slow, terrible migration down my chest.

  They opened me up. All of me. Every last cavernous piece. They looked in as deep as they could with their prying eyes. Took all of their measurements. Recorded all of their findings. Not like any of it could help me.

  But when they finally broke through my rib cage and unearthed my nearly sixteen-year-old heart, I think maybe, just maybe, their own hearts broke a little bit too.


  There it was, exactly as the X-ray said it would be. Even though their science couldn’t explain it. Even though it was the sort of thing that only happened in sappy love songs. I peered in over my father’s shoulder, over my dead body, and stared. There she was.

  My heart.

  Sleeping. Silent. And severed in perfect, equal, extraordinary halves.

  CHAPTER 3

  the cheese stands alone

  They buried me two days after my school memorial. You know that sick feeling you get when Saturday and Sunday—those perfect, blissful, totally magical two days of freedom—are just about to end? Right around the time the big 60 Minutes clock starts doing its torturous tickticktickticktickticktick, and you realize you haven’t even started your homework yet?

  This was just like that, only about fifty thousand times worse. I’m talking the ultimate Sunday Night Blues.

  Mom asked Sadie to pick out my favorite dress and shoes for the big occasion, since she’d basically been my stylist from second grade on anyway. The dress was a deep lilac and made of the softest, flowiest fabric. It had a hidden pocket on each side and a simple ribbon that tied in the back. The shoes were ballet flats in basic black, but I loved them because they sparkled in the sunlight. (Uh, not that they’d be doing a whole lot of sparkling where I was going.)

  They decided to leave my hair down, spread out around my face. (Very Ophelia.) I’d nearly chopped it off over the summer, but seeing myself all laid out like that, I was glad I hadn’t.

  Last but not least, the girls asked my mom and dad to bury me wearing my heart-shaped gold charm necklace—one of four we had all bought together at this cute little store in San Francisco called Rabbit Hole, the summer before high school.

  I remembered the day so vividly.

  The four of us had been discussing the results of our very official and important Which Disney Princess Are You? quiz, marveling over how Scientifically Exact the results had turned out to be.

  Exhibit A: Sadie was so obviously Princess Jasmine. She was both gorgeous and exotic (her mom was Israeli, plus a former model on top of that), and she could belt out “A Whole New World” like nobody’s business.

  Exhibit B: Emma turned out to be Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, which made perfect sense, since she was a) blond, b) a serious nap-aholic, and c) so genuinely sweet that birds, like, actually started to chirp wherever she went.

  Exhibit C: Tess got Ariel, which couldn’t have been more perfect, given her long red hair and absolute obsession with the only kid in our class named Eric. Not to mention, she even had a pet hermit crab in elementary school. Does it even get more Ariel than that? (Answer: I don’t think so.)

  And then there was me.

  Exhibit D: Belle.

  Exactly zero percent surprising, since I’d been into guys with big, fluffy hair ever since Big Bird had come into my life back in the preschool days. Also, I was a major bookworm, and had been planning a pre-college European backpacking trip for the four of us ever since we graduated middle school.

  I mean, come on. There so has to be more than this provincial life.

  Once we’d each had a chance to belt out our respective Disney solos, the girls and I stumbled across Rabbit Hole, a literal hole-in-the-wall shop smack in the center of the Mission District that carried all sorts of knickknacks and vintage clothing, like lace gloves, old straw hats, antique jewelry, and porcelain teapots. Things you’d probably never go looking for, but definitely couldn’t leave behind once you saw them.

  Things like our necklaces.

  Our chains were all pretty similar—delicate gold, not too long, not too short—but each of us had a different charm. Emma’s was a hummingbird (see above, chirping birds), Tess’s was a mermaid (you want thingamabobs? she’s got twenty!), and Sadie’s was a simple gold star. Her big dream was to go to Juilliard and become a famous actress, and I had a feeling she would probably get there too. She was just one of those people who made you feel incredible by knowing her. With Sadie, everything was bright and everything was easy. I loved Emma and Tess like sisters, but my connection with Sadie was just one of those things you can’t describe. She was so much more than a best friend or a sister. She was like my soul mate.

  My charm, in the meantime, was a small golden heart, because I was by far the biggest, cheesiest, sappiest romantic out of all of us—the one who believed that everyone would find their perfect someone, no matter what.

  I couldn’t wait for my happy ending. (Oh, twisted irony.)

  And in the end, I was really, really glad to have my necklace with me. It reminded me of my friends and of being home. It was comforting and made me feel safe. Especially when they closed my casket.

  “. . . earth to earth . . .”

  Wait.

  “. . . ashes to ashes . . .”

  Please.

  “. . . dust to dust . . .”

  No, please, stop.

  “. . . give her peace . . .”

  Good-bye, rosy glow of the PCH auditorium. Good-bye, twinkling lights. Good-bye house, good-bye breathing, good-bye touching and feeling and hugging and living.

  This was lights off. This was lights out.

  Suddenly, I was scared.

  Then the crowd parted and Jack made his way to the front. He tugged on the minister’s coat. “Can I talk?”

  The man nodded. Funny to have some guy I’d never met sending me off into the oblivion.

  Jack faced the crowd of friends and family members; their sunglasses on, their tissues everywhere, their shoes sinking into the sandy earth. Compared to them, Jack looked so small. A little man in a little suit. I wanted to go to him. Throw him over my shoulder piggyback-style and run all the way home.

  He started to cry. Dad rushed up and helped him through the speech he’d written for me, titled “Dear Cheddar.” (Just one of many cheese-themed nicknames I’d acquired over the years.)

  I took one last look. Mom, Dad, and Jack. Three ducks all in a row. Three ducks where there should have been four.

  I looked down.

  This is really happening.

  A girl-sized hole where I used to be. A girl-sized hole where there used to be life. A girl-sized hole in the hollow, quiet ground.

  Oh god.

  I really, really, really didn’t want to go in there.

  But in I went.

  CHAPTER 4

  excuse me while I kiss the sky

  I was falling. Falling through time and space and stars and sky and everything in between. I fell for days and weeks and what felt like lifetimes across lifetimes. I fell until I forgot I was falling.

  When I landed, the world stretched out for me like an endless bed—an ocean made of the softest sheets and warmest blankets and featheriest pillows. I slept in a vacuum of dreams and memories. I zoomed across cities and canyons and photographs of family trips, birthdays, scraped knees, Christmas mornings. Best friends, ballet recitals, Rollerblades. First dates. First kisses. First love.

  Then, from somewhere buried deep in my chest, I felt a dull, throbbing ache. A strange sort of emptiness. An ache where, Once Upon a Time, my heart had been.

  I opened my eyes.

  PART 2

  denial

  CHAPTER 5

  the long and winding road

  Everything was dark. Everything was flying by me at a million miles an hour. Trees and cliffs and ocean streaked with tiny flashes of light, all whizzing past on automatic like when you change the channel too fast. My face was smashed hard against the cold glass, all humming and rattling. The seat was bouncy, every little bump sending jolts up my back.

  Bounce, bounce, bounce.

  I sat up. Slowly peeled my face off the window.

  Whoa.

  My whole body felt sore. Like I’d just run a half-marathon or gone to my mom’s cardio kickboxing Class of Death five times in a row.

  I touched my cheek and felt something wet.

  Oh, gross. Did I totally drool all over myself?

  I rubbed my
eyes, lifted my arms high above my head, and stretched. My stomach let out a wild grumble as I flopped back against the seat and took a look around.

  “Last stop, five minutes,” crackled a deep voice over the loudspeaker.

  I glanced up and saw an old man in a big rearview mirror. Thick glasses. Super-bald, super-wrinkly. Dressed in a navy Windbreaker type of jacket. He looked about a hundred and fifty. Definitely too old to be driving a bus.

  Wait a second.

  What am I doing on a bus?

  I did a quick scan. Okay, weird. I was the only one on the bus. Rows and rows of empty seats surrounded me. I started to feel anxious, like my pulse was racing or my heart should’ve been beating extra-hard. Except it wasn’t. I put my hand over my chest and didn’t feel a thing. I felt empty. A strange sort of hollow.

  “Uh, excuse me?” My voice was scratchy, so I cleared my throat. “Sir? Where am I please?”

  “NoCal Transit.” Shadows flashed across his face as we sped down the highway.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Big Sur to Coyote Point Park.”

  Coyote Point? That was, like, twenty minutes from my house. I glanced through the chilly glass and tried to make sense of the scenery, but it was too dark outside and we were moving too fast. I wiped away some of the fog on the window, but it didn’t help.

  “How’d I get here?”

  He laughed. “You’re asking me?” His voice sort of reminded me of my grandpa Frank. Sarcastic—sweet. Even though I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Wait a second.” I squinted out the window again and thought I saw something familiar. Was that a lighthouse in the distance? Maybe even Pigeon Point, where Dad used to take us to play Frisbee? I pressed my nose against the glass.

  It is! Isn’t it?