Heart Bones

by Hoover, Colleen

  It’s a statement, but he intends for it to be followed by an answer. “I can’t leave you.”

  He shakes his head, pulling his hands from mine. He runs them over his face like he’s frustrated with me, then he grabs both my hands even tighter. “You’re going to college, Beyah. My mess isn’t yours to clean up.”

  “Your mess? Samson, what you did isn’t that bad. You were a kid who practically raised himself on the streets. How were you supposed to get back on your feet after you were released from jail the first time? I’m sure if you tell them why the fire started and why you broke parole, they’d understand.”

  “The court doesn’t care why I broke the law; they just care that I broke it.”

  “Well, they should care.”

  “It doesn’t matter how flawed the system is, Beyah. The two of us aren’t going to change it overnight. I’m looking at several years, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it, so there’s no reason for you to stay in Texas.”

  “You’re enough of a reason. How will I visit you if I’m in Pennsylvania?”

  “I don’t want you to visit me. I want you to go to college.”

  “I can go to college here.”

  He laughs, but there’s no smile attached to his laugh. It’s an exasperated laugh. “Why are you being so stubborn? This was our plan all summer—to go our separate ways when you leave for school.”

  His words are digging into me, twisting my insides. My voice comes out in a whisper when I say, “I thought things changed. You said we grew heart bones.”

  Samson’s entire body feels that comment. He sinks a little, like I’m hurting him. I don’t want to hurt him, but he’s worth more than this. He wasn’t a throwaway to me.

  “I can’t be that far away from you,” I say quietly. “Phone calls and letters aren’t going to be enough.”

  “I don’t want phone calls or letters, either. I want you to go live your life and not be weighed down by mine.” He can see the shock on my face, but he doesn’t give me time to argue with him. “Beyah. We have been alone on islands our whole lives. It’s why we connected, because we recognized that loneliness in each other. But this is your chance to get off your island, and I refuse to hold you back for however many years I’ll be gone.”

  I can feel the tears. I look down just as one falls on the table. “You can’t cut me off. I can’t do this without you.”

  “You’ve already done it without me,” he says, his voice determined. He reaches across the table and lifts my face so that I’m forced to look at him. He looks as broken as I feel. “I had nothing to do with your accomplishments. I had nothing to do with who you turned out to be. Please don’t make me be the reason you give it all up.”

  The more committed he is to the idea that he doesn’t want me to stay in touch with him, the angrier I get.

  “This isn’t fair to me. You expect me to just walk away and not have any contact with you at all? Why would you let me fall for you in the first place when you knew this was going to be the end result?”

  He exhales sharply. “We agreed this would end in August, Beyah. We agreed to keep it in the shallow end.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re the one who said people still drown in the shallow end.” I lean forward until I have his focus again. “I’m drowning, Samson. And you’re the one holding me underwater.” I wipe my eyes angrily.

  Samson takes my hands again, but this time, it’s different. There’s an ache in his voice when he says, “I’m so sorry.” It’s all he says, but I can tell this is his goodbye.

  He stands up like this discussion is over, but he’s looking at me like he wants me to stand up, too. I fold my arms tightly over my chest. “I’m not hugging you goodbye. You don’t deserve to hold me anymore.”

  Samson nods a little. “I never deserved to hold you in the first place.” He turns to leave, and I instantly become terrified it’s the last time I’ll see him. Samson doesn’t say things with that look in his eye unless he means them. He’s not going to allow me to see him again. This is it. This is where we end.

  I jump up when he begins to walk away. “Samson, wait!”

  He turns around just in time to catch me when I throw my arms around him. I bury my face against his neck. When he folds me into his arms, I start to cry.

  So many things are running through me at once. I miss him so much already, but I’m also angrier than I’ve ever been. I knew this was coming—the goodbye. But I didn’t know it would be under these circumstances. I feel powerless. I wanted our goodbye to be a choice I had a part in, but I’m not getting a choice at all.

  He kisses the side of my head. “Take the scholarship, Beyah. And have fun. Please.” His voice cracks on please. He releases me and walks to a guard standing next to a door. I feel heavy without him, like I’ve lost an entire support system and can no longer hold myself up on my own.

  Samson is led out of the room, and he never even looks back at me to see the destruction he left behind.

  I’m sobbing by the time I make it outside to my father’s car. I slam the door, angry and heartbroken. I can’t even begin to absorb what just happened in there. I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting the exact opposite of that. I thought we were going to work this out as a team, but instead, he left me completely fucking alone, just like every other person in my life.

  “What happened?”

  I shake my head. I can’t even say it out loud. “Just drive.”

  My father grips his steering wheel until his knuckles are white. He starts the car and puts it in reverse. “I should have beat the shit out of him the night I pulled him off you in the shower.”

  I don’t even try to explain that he wasn’t protecting me from Samson that night. Samson was helping me, but at this point, another explanation would be futile. I just go with a blanket statement. “He’s not a bad person, Dad.”

  My father puts the car back in park. He faces me, his expression unyielding. “I don’t know where I went wrong as a father, but I did not raise a daughter who would defend a guy who lied to her the entire summer. You think he cares about you? He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”

  Is he serious?

  Did he actually have the audacity to say he raised me?

  I glare at him, my hand on the door handle. “You didn’t raise a daughter at all. If anyone is lying in this scenario, it’s you.” I open my door and get out of his car. There’s no way I want to be stuck with him all the way back to Bolivar Peninsula.

  “Get back in the car, Beyah.”

  “No. I’m calling Sara to come pick me up.” I sit down on the curb next to the car. My father gets out of the car while I pull out my phone. He kicks at the gravel and motions toward the car.

  “Get in. I’ll take you home.”

  I wipe tears from my eyes after I dial Sara’s number. “I’m not getting in your car. You can leave now.”

  My father doesn’t leave. Sara agrees to come pick me up, but my father sits patiently in his car until she arrives.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It’s been an agonizing week with no news from Samson. Nothing at all. I’ve tried to visit him twice, but he refuses to see me now.

  I have absolutely no way of communicating with him. All I have to cling to are the memories of the time we spent together, and I’m worried those will start to fade if I don’t at least get to hear his voice.

  Am I really just expected to move on? Forget about him? Go to college like he didn’t force me to become a completely different, better version of myself this summer?

  I stopped talking about Samson to anyone in this house. I don’t even want his name brought up because it just leads to arguments. I’ve barely left my room all week. I occupy my days with mindless TV shows and visits to Marjorie’s house. She’s the only one I’ll speak to about him. She’s the only one on my side.

  I’ve been alternating between the two shirts that were in Samson’s backpack all week, but they no longer smell like him. They smel
l like me now, which is why I’m snuggled up to his backpack, watching a marathon of a British baking show.

  I don’t know what to do with his things. I doubt he cares to keep toiletries, and there wasn’t anything of value in his backpack other than the poems his father wrote to him. But I don’t want to give them to Marjorie to get to him because I feel like they’re my last connection to him.

  They might one day be the only excuse I have to get him to speak to me.

  I’m going to have to move on at some point. I know this, but as long as I’m still here and he’s still in jail, I can’t focus on anything else.

  I readjust the backpack in my arms to use it as a partial pillow, but something hard pokes at my temple. I open it up to see if I missed an item, but I see nothing. I move my hand around inside the backpack and find a zipper I didn’t catch before.

  I immediately sit up and unzip it. I pull out a small, hard-bound notebook. It’s only about four inches in length. I flip it open and it’s full of names and addresses, and what look like grocery lists.

  I flip through several pages, unable to make sense of any of it. But then I get to a page with Marjorie’s name and address on it.

  Marjorie Naples

  Date of stay: 02-04-15 to 02-08-15.

  Ate $15 worth of food.

  Repaired roof. Replaced two pieces of siding on north side of house damaged by wind.

  There are several more names and addresses that follow Marjorie’s, but I need to know the significance of the dates. I pick up my phone and call her.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s Beyah. Quick question. Are the dates February fourth to February eighth this year of any significance to you?”

  Marjorie chews on that thought for a moment. “I’m almost positive those are the days I was in the hospital after my heart attack. Why?”

  “Just something I found in Samson’s backpack. I’ll bring it over later so you can give it to Kevin.”

  I tell her goodbye and end the call, then I start skimming through all the other things he’s written down. The most common address is the one next door for David Silver. There are several dates listed. Most of them between March and last week. Beneath David’s name is a list of repairs.

  Tightened several loose slats on bedroom balcony railing. Replaced a broken fuse in the breaker box. Sealed leak in pipe in outdoor shower.

  The lists go on. There are odd jobs he’s done for people, and how much he got paid for each job, which explains how he sometimes had money for things like dinner and tattoos. There are also lists of people he’s done work for that he didn’t take pay from.

  Every day for the past seven months is accounted for. Every item of food he ate from someone’s refrigerator without their permission. Every repair he made to someone’s house. He’s been keeping track of all of it.

  But why? Did he feel like repairing these properties for free was balancing out the fact that he was staying in them without permission?

  Could this possibly be the proof the court needs to know he doesn’t deserve all the charges being brought against him?

  I rush downstairs and find my father and Alana on the living room sofa. Sara and Marcos are together on the loveseat. They’re all watching Wheel of Fortune, but my father mutes it when he sees I’ve come downstairs for the first time today.

  I hand the notebook to my father. “This belongs to Samson.” He takes the notebook from me and begins flipping through it. “It’s a detailed list of every place he’s stayed and how he repaid them.”

  My father stands up, still flipping through the notebook.

  “This could help him.” My voice is full of hope for the first time since he was arrested. “If we can prove he was trying to do the right thing, it could help his defense.”

  My father sighs before he even makes it a few pages into the book. He closes it and hands it back to me. “It’s a detailed list of everything he’s done wrong. It’ll hurt him, not help him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Beyah, he’s only being charged on two counts of breaking and entering. If you take that to the police and show them how many more houses he broke into, they’re going to use it to add to his charges, not take away from them.” He looks frustrated as he takes a step closer to me. “Please let this go. You’re too young to let a guy you barely know consume your life like this. He messed up and he has to pay the consequences for that.”

  Alana is standing now. She grips my father’s arm in support and says, “Your father is right, Beyah. There’s nothing you can do but move forward.”

  Sara and Marcos are still seated on the loveseat, looking at me in a way that makes me feel pathetic.

  All of them think I’m pathetic.

  None of them care what happens to Samson. And none of them believe in what we had. For once in my life, I had someone who actually cared about me, and all four of them think I’m incapable of knowing what true love is.

  I know what love is, because I spent my whole life knowing what it isn’t.

  “My mother died.” It feels like all the air in the room is sucked out after I say that.

  Alana’s hand goes over her mouth.

  My father shakes his head in disbelief. “What? When?”

  “The night I called you and asked if I could come here. She overdosed because she’s been an addict for as long as I can remember. I have had no one in my corner. Not you. Not my mother. No one. I have been all alone my whole goddamn life. Samson is the first person who ever showed up and cheered for me.”

  My father walks over to me, his face contorted into both confusion and sympathy. “Why would you not tell me something like this?” He runs a hand down his face and mutters, “Christ, Beyah.”

  He tries to pull me in for a hug, but I back away.

  I turn around to head toward the stairs, but my father calls after me. “Wait. We need to discuss this.”

  Now that my rage has surfaced, I feel like I’m drowning in it. I need to get it all out while I have the chance. I spin around and face my father again.

  “Discuss what? Everything else I kept from you? Do you want to know about how I lied when I met you at the airport? The airline didn’t lose my luggage. I never had anything at all, because every penny you ever sent Janean, she kept for herself. I had to start fucking a guy for money when I was fifteen just so I would have food to eat. So fuck you, Brian. You aren’t my father. You never have been, and you never will be!”

  I don’t bother to wait for any of their reactions. I stomp up the stairs and slam my bedroom door.

  My father opens it about thirty seconds later.

  “Please leave,” I say, my voice completely devoid of emotion now.

  “We need to talk about this.”

  “I want to be alone.”

  “Beyah,” he says pleadingly, stepping into the room. I stomp to the bedroom door, refusing to let the look on his face get to me.

  “You’ve spent nineteen years being an uninvolved father. I am not in the mood for you to finally get involved tonight. Please, just leave me alone.”

  So many things pass through my father’s eyes in this moment. Sadness. Regret. Empathy. But I don’t allow any of his feelings to affect my own. I stare at him stoically until he finally nods and backs out of my bedroom.

  I close the door.

  I fall onto the bed and pull Samson’s notebook to my chest.

  To them, this notebook may be a list of everyone on this peninsula he’s wronged, but to me, it’s further proof that his intentions were good. He tried to do the right thing with nonexistent means.

  I flip through the notebook again, reading every page, touching the words with the tip of my finger, tracing his sloppy handwriting. I read the address of every place he’s ever stayed. Half of the notebook is filled with pages of his handwriting. It’s choppy and hard to read in places, like he’d write these things in a hurry and then close the notebook before he got caught.

  I flip toward the end
of the notebook and pause on a page that’s different from the rest. It’s different because my name is at the top of the page.

  I pull the notebook flat to my chest and close my eyes. Whatever he wrote was short, but that was my name.

  I breathe in and out very slowly several times until my heart rate returns to normal. Then I pull the notebook away from my chest and read his words.

  Beyah,

  My father once told me love is a lot like water.

  It can be calm. Raging. Threatening. Soothing.

  Water will be many things, but even in all its forms, it will always be water.

  You are my water.

  I think I might be yours, too.

  If you’re reading this, it means I’ve evaporated.

  But it doesn’t mean you should evaporate, too.

  Go flood the whole goddamn world, Beyah.

  It’s the last thing he wrote in the notebook. It’s like he was afraid he’d be arrested before he could tell me goodbye.

  I read the note several times with tears falling onto the page. This is Samson. I don’t care what anyone else believes. This is who I’m going to hold on to until the day he’s released.

  This is also the reason I refuse to leave. He needs my help. I’m all he has. There’s no way I can just walk away from him right now. The thought of leaving this town before knowing his fate is a selfish move. He thinks he’s doing me a favor, but he has no idea what his decision is doing to me. If he knew, he’d beg me to stay.

  There’s a light tap on my door. “Beyah, can I come in?” Sara peeks her head in, but I’m not in the mood to argue. I’m not even sure I have the strength to say that out loud. I just clutch the notebook with his words to my chest and I roll over and face the wall.

  Sara crawls into the bed with me and wraps her arm around me from behind.

  She says nothing. She just quietly slips into her role as a big sister and stays with me until I fall asleep.