Paper Hearts

by Ali Novak

  “Okay, I don’t actually know if it counts as a real date. He didn’t use the word date…”

  For the next ten minutes, Asha grilled me about Alec’s invitation, which I assumed was comparable to being interrogated by the FBI. What were the exact words he used? Did he seem nervous or casual? What kind of party was it? Who else would be there? How about the rest of the Heartbreakers?

  Eventually we arrived at the scariest question of them all: what would I wear to the party? It made me nervous, because what did one wear to a barbecue/potential date with a celebrity where there would most likely be throngs of other celebrities? I had a feeling there weren’t fashion guidelines for this sort of thing.

  “How about that purple dress I wore for last year’s school picture? The one with the lace sleeves?” I suggested.

  Asha pushed her hair out of her face as she considered. “For a barbecue? I don’t know, Felicity. I was thinking something more summery. I wish I could come over and help you get ready Friday morning, but I-I already have something going on.”

  I frowned when she rubbed her nose and looked away from me. She was hiding something, but Boomer, who’d been sitting quietly for the recent part of our conversation, let out an impatient sigh.

  “Ladies,” he said, “as much as I would love to scrutinize every clothing option in Felicity’s closet and come up with a très chick ensemble, I think my balls are starting to shrivel.”

  Somehow, in the midst of talking about Alec, I’d completely forgotten that Boomer was sitting with us. I opened my mouth, but before a single word emerged, Asha roared with laughter.

  “It’s très chic,” she said.

  Boomer frowned. “What?”

  “Chic, not chick. French for very stylish. I can’t believe the phrase très chic ensemble is part of your vocabulary.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What you don’t know is that I moonlight as a Parisian couture designer,” he said. “But seriously, I was trying to get your attention, and obviously it worked. For the love of God, can we please talk about something other than clothes?”

  Chapter 7

  On Friday, my morning started out good. Really good. I woke up to a text from an unknown number, and I immediately knew who it was from.

  Unknown: Still up for some pain and torture?

  Grinning, I added Alec to my contacts and texted him back.

  Felicity: What if I say no? ;)

  Alec: Too bad. I’ll see you at 11:15.

  But now, things were not so good. I had exactly one hour before Alec arrived, and I was in panic mode. Yesterday, I’d gone through my closet in search of a très chic ensemble, and after trying on half my wardrobe and feeling absolutely ridiculous for doing so, I opted for my favorite blue romper—cute, comfy, and totally me. If it wasn’t fashionable enough for a celebrity-studded barbecue, so be it. I’d never been one to dress up special for a guy, not even Eddie Marks, and while I wanted to look good, I wasn’t going to start just because of who Alec was.

  The issue was, I couldn’t find the wedge sandals I’d planned on wearing. They were the cute, beachy kind that weren’t totally impossible to walk in and should have been at the front of my closet along with my Keds, flats, and flip-flops. But they were missing—poof, gone. Which was strange because they were the only heels I wore on a regular basis. Not that I wore heels regularly. Mom always said a good pair of pumps was a short girl’s best friend, but I didn’t see the point. My lack of height was obvious, regardless of a few extra inches, so why bother with uncomfortable footwear?

  After digging through my closet and finding everything I’d lost since the start of high school (a jewelry design sketchbook, my pink Delta Nu T-shirt, the swimsuit I’d accused Asha of misplacing) with the exception of my wedges, I tore apart my bedroom apart. Still, nothing. And with the combination of butterflies quivering in my stomach and the rushing back and forth as I scoured every nook and cranny, I was starting to sweat. It wasn’t a glistening-forehead situation, but full-on bullets and boob sweat. Which made me wonder if I had early-onset menopause.

  Crap, is that a real thing?

  And then, just as I was considering calling Alec to tell him I’d contracted acute hot-mess arrest or sweaty body syndrome and that I was moving to the South Pole indefinitely for treatment, my mom shouted from the kitchen.

  “Felicity! I’m off to work.”

  I opened my door and called back to her. “Bye, Mom. Have a good day.”

  “You too, honey. I love you. Remember I’m staying at Dave’s this weekend! There are leftovers in the fridge.”

  The front door slammed, signaling her departure, and that was when it hit me. I knew where my wedges might be. Mom and I had similar-size feet, and sometimes she could squeeze into my shoes. Maybe she borrowed my heels for a date night with Dave and forgot to put them back.

  “She better not have stretched them out,” I grumbled as I crossed the house in the direction of her bedroom.

  After opening the door and turning on the light, I took a moment to wiggle my toes in the plush throw rug that covered the floor as I admired the space around me. I absolutely loved my mom’s room. It was glamorous in a way that reminded me of old Hollywood, decorated with a crystal chandelier she rescued from our OC house and the lighted vanity mirror where she did her makeup.

  I glanced down at my watch: fifty minutes until Alec would get here. Another jolt of nerves made my heart flutter, and I jerked toward the closet. When I opened the door and a stack of boxes toppled out, I heaved a sigh. Though I only owned a few pairs, Mom had a shoe addiction. It took me nearly fifteen minutes to go through all the boxes and the plastic organizer hanging from the door, but my wedges were still MIA. Just as I was about to accept defeat, it occurred to me there could be a few more boxes under the bed.

  There weren’t.

  What I found instead was both confusing and intriguing.

  There, pressed against the baseboard, was a lone guitar case. That was strange. Mom didn’t have a musical bone in her body, and my dad never played an instrument—at least not to my knowledge. Which I suppose wasn’t saying much, considering I didn’t know the guy, but still. If it was his, why had she held on to it for so long? She’d purged all other remnants of him during the move.

  I knew it was none of my business, but I knelt down and slid out the case. I don’t know what I expected to find—probably an actual guitar and other musical items, like a tuner and picks—but the bundle of letters and postcards tied together with ribbon weren’t it.

  Maybe they’re old love notes from when my parents first started dating.

  I untied the ribbon to examine the letters more closely—

  And my name was scrawled across the front in handwriting that I recognized. Impossible… My gaze shot to the left-hand corner where the sender’s address was printed:

  Rose Lyon

  27 Seawall Street

  Galveston, TX 77551

  Rose. Rose. It was from ROSE!

  I stared at the letter in shock. Neither I nor my mom had heard from her in four years. And yet here was proof otherwise, tucked away like it didn’t exist. The time stamp was from last year—on my birthday. I turned the envelope over and pulled out a single piece of stationery. With trembling hands, I unfolded the page and read:

  April 3rd

  Dear Felicity,

  Today is your birthday. HAPPY 16th! Only two more years until you can legally engage in scandalous bedroom activities and other thrilling adult stuff like voting and applying for credit cards! I must have subconsciously been thinking about you, because you will never guess what happened. YOU were in my dream last night! We were at the park Mom used to take us to when we were little, lounging on a blanket with Elle Woods and Bruiser, drinking margaritas and playing Candy Land. LMAO, isn’t that ridiculous? I remember when you were in love with that movie.

  An
yway, it was the best dream I’ve had in ages, all because I got to spend time with you. I wish I could see you, even if it was only for a day or an hour or a minute, so we could do sister things together again, like paint our nails or argue over who gets to use the bathroom first in the morning. I know it’s impossible, at least until you graduate, but the thought still makes me happy. God, I probably sound like a rambling idiot. The point is, I miss you.

  In other news, Nicoli tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time. To say he hated it was an understatement. He thinks American food is disgusting, which doesn’t bother me because it means he does all the cooking! Also, I’m switching characters for my final summer season. I’ll be Rapunzel instead of Cinderella, which is way cooler because her costume has this beautiful flowered wig.

  I stared at the paragraph. Nicoli tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time. I’ll be Rapunzel. Nicoli and Rapunzel. Sandwiches and flowered wigs. Rose was talking (well, writing) like she hadn’t been missing for the past four years. Like we spoke on a regular basis and I knew what was going on in her life. But who the hell was Nicoli, and what did she mean by switching characters? My whole chest felt tight.

  After a minute, I was able to pull myself together and finish the letter.

  Again, happy birthday, Fel. I wish I could give you a better gift than these words, but I take comfort in the fact that Mom will spoil you rotten. I heart you more than Starburst and salsa.

  xoxo,

  Rose

  “Heart you more than Cool Ranch and blueberry shakes,” I whispered out of habit.

  A tear rolled off the tip of my nose before I realized I was crying. Not monster, body-racking sobs, but a silent stream of tears. When another drop fell, hitting the page and making the blue ink bloom beneath it, I wiped my eyes before any more of Rose’s words could be ruined. She might not have thought so, but her letter was more than a gift. It was hope. The kind of hope I’d searched for when I’d stared up at her paper hearts, praying she’d come home.

  But along with hope, a fire ignited inside me. Why hadn’t I seen these letters before now? If Rose missed me, if she wanted to be part of my life the way her letter suggested, then why did she stay away? And why hadn’t she contacted me in some other way?

  I plucked the bundle of letters out of the guitar case and shuffled through them. Each one was from her, the oldest dating back to a month after she left. There must have been more than fifty pieces of mail. Some were fat envelopes, while others were colorful postcards, but they were all addressed to me. It didn’t take me long to notice every one had been sent from someplace different: Mexico, Jamaica, Brazil, even one from Italy! It was as if Rose was constantly on the move, unable to settle down.

  Suddenly, I felt as if I’d been awake for weeks. There was something exhaustingly sad about finding these letters, and I felt like the universe was intentionally poking the bruises of my heart. Leaving the bundle and the guitar case of the floor, I went back to my room for my phone and called Asha. My call went to voice mail, so I left her a message.

  “Hey, it’s me. I know you said you had plans, but you need to get over here. It’s an emergency. Bring Boomer.”

  • • •

  By the time Asha and Boomer arrived at my house, I’d read ten more of Rose’s letters. Each one was already open, and they were identical to the first: chatty and full of warmth, but without the answers I was searching for. The more I read, the less everything made sense. Because while I discovered who Nicoli was (Rose’s boyfriend from Italy) and why she was rambling on about Rapunzel (she worked as a character on Disney cruises), I was still no closer to understanding the important details, like her reason for leaving or why she wouldn’t come home.

  “Felicity, you here?” Boomer called from the front hall. “It’s me and Asha!”

  My voice cracked as I shouted back, “I-I’m in here!”

  I glanced at my watch. Only half an hour had passed since my SOS, which was surprising. Boomer lived on the other side of town. There was no way he could pick up Asha and drive to my house in thirty minutes, even if she’d called him right after listening to my voice mail.

  With a creak, the door swung open, and light from the hallway spilled into the room.

  “How’d you guys get here so fast?” I asked without bothering to look up. It was hard taking my eyes off Rose’s letters. Part of me was afraid that if I did, they would disappear like she had.

  “I was at Asha’s” was all Boomer said.

  That was enough to startle me. Asha and Boomer were good friends, but their relationship was the result of their connection to me. It didn’t hurt my feelings that I wasn’t included in whatever they were doing today, especially considering I had my own plans, but I was confused. The two never hung out alone, and trying to picture it was so…strange. I turned to Asha for further explanation, but she jammed her thumbs into the belt loops of her shorts and looked at the carpet, the walls, anywhere but me.

  Before I could ask exactly what was going on, Boomer cocked his head and squinted at me. “Why is your face so blotchy?”

  Asha’s gaze snapped to me. “Felicity, were you crying? What’s wrong?” The sight of my tearstained cheeks must have been alarming. She knew how much I disliked crying. My mom cried enough for both of us, so I figured at least one of us needed to be strong.

  The answer to her first question was obvious, so I only bothered with the second. “Look what I found,” I said, gesturing to the letters fanned out on the floor around me.

  “Let me guess,” Boomer said, peering over Asha’s shoulder at the mess I’d made. “Your mom is writing an erotic novel and reading the manuscript traumatized—Ow! Son of a…”

  “Could you not right now?” Asha snapped.

  He grumbled a few choice words under his breath, rubbing his stomach where she’d jabbed him with her elbow, but Asha ignored him and crouched down at my side. I didn’t say anything as she picked up the nearest letter to examine. Her gaze slid over the first few words, but then cut down to the end to see who had sent it.

  “Holy crap!” she gasped. “It’s from Rose.”

  “What? Give it here.” Boomer snatched the page from her hands.

  “They’re all from her,” I said. “Apparently she’s been writing to me since she left.”

  Asha frowned. “And you’ve never seen these before now?”

  I shook my head, and the lump in my throat bobbed as I swallowed back my lingering shock.

  “Well, where the heck did they come from?” she asked.

  “The letters were in there.” I pointed at the guitar case. “It was under my mom’s bed.”

  My friends exchanged glances, and Boomer said, “So…she was hiding them from you?”

  “No,” I fired back, hating that way my voice had risen. “That’s not possible. If Rose contacted us, my mom would’ve told me.”

  There was a long pause. Asha thumbed her ear, and after a few more drawn-out seconds, she asked, “Are you sure?” It was obvious from her tone that she was skeptical, that she thought my mom was behind this.

  But Asha was wrong. Wasn’t she?

  She had to be.

  I shook my head again, trying to dislodge the doubt that was creeping into my thoughts. “My mom would not hide something like this. You don’t understand what it was like for her when Rose left. First her husband, then her daughter. It was as if our whole family was leaving her one by one.”

  “Okay,” Asha said, showing both her palms. “But how did the letters end up here?”

  “I don’t know. There has to be some sort of explanation.”

  “Like what? Magical letter-bearing elves?” Boomer said, and Asha elbowed him in the side for a second time.

  I tugged my lip in thought. He has a point.

  There didn’t seem to be a plausible answer for how the lette
rs had ended up in my mom’s room other than the obvious one, but I refused to believe that she had anything to do with it. That she’d been hiding my sister from me.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Asha suggested as I continued to wrestle with the mystery of it all.

  Duh, Felicity.

  I felt stupid for not thinking of that myself. The only way to know for sure was to confront her about the letters, so I punched in a number I knew by heart and waited. My mom was pretty good about answering her phone, even when she was at work, but today my call went straight to voice mail. There didn’t seem to be a proper way to phrase my question in a message, so I sighed and hung up.

  “No luck?” Asha asked.

  Shaking my head, I said, “It doesn’t make sense. Even if my mom is lying to me, how could she intercept every letter Rose sent? I’m the one who collects the mail.”

  “Look at the recipient address though.” Boomer pointed at the envelope. “It’s a PO box.”

  He was right. All the envelopes had the same address printed in Rose’s loopy script, a box at our local post office. Why would she send letters to a place where I’d never receive them? I was about ready to throw my hands up at the absurdity of the situation, but as I stared down at the mess of paper spread out on the floor, it occurred to me there was another way to get my answers.

  “The letters,” I said and shuffled through the pile. “Help me find the most recent one.”

  We spent a minute searching through the mail.

  “Here,” Asha said, holding up one of the thicker envelopes. “Sent a week ago.”

  “From where?” I asked. There were so many different return addresses that I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn I saw one from California. The chance that it was her latest letter was slim to none, but…

  “San Francisco,” she answered.

  “Yes!” After gathering up the rest of the letters and shoving the guitar case back under the bed, I shot to my feet. “This is perfect. Rose might be right here in California. I’m going to go find her.”