The Girl with More Than One Heart

by Geringer Bass, Laura;

  I didn’t have my hat. Daisy still had it.

  Be your own, said my Dad heart.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “Mom would never . . .”

  Tina gave me a funny look. “Talking to yourself?” she asked. She scanned the room for rivals. No one made a move. Wouldn’t Tina be surprised if . . .

  Slowly, I raised my hand.

  Be YOUR Own

  Mr. Woodman wrote Tina’s name on the blackboard. Under it, he wrote mine. What was I doing? I couldn’t run.

  “Mr. Woodman!” I called out. “I . . . I . . .”

  Be your own, repeated my Dad heart.

  Tina glared at me. Her ears had turned red.

  “I nominate Daisy,” I said.

  There was a stir in the back of the room. Al sat up straight and clapped Daisy on the back. Jon ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up on end.

  “Daisy, do you accept?” asked Mr. Woodman.

  Daisy gave Mr. Woodman two thumbs-up and grinned at me. “I do,” she said.

  Tina sprang from her seat. “Daisy can’t run,” she said. “It’s against the rules. She’s Art.”

  “An artist has never been editor in the past,” said Mr. Woodman. “But there’s no rule against it.” He turned and wrote “Daisy” under my name on the board.

  “Mr. Woodman,” I called. “I’m not running.”

  “Are you sure, Briana?” he asked. “If you’re not on the ballot you can’t be assistant editor. Unless someone writes you in.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. Mr. Woodman erased my name. I had messed everything up from the moment I had walked in and sat down next to Tina. I should never have come. After the election, I would never come again.

  Tina tore a piece of paper from her notebook and scribbled furiously. Keeping an eye on Mr. Woodman, she passed it to me. “Come to Reena’s party tonight,” it said. “Bring Neil.

  “Okay, let’s vote,” said Mr. Woodman, passing out ballots. Tina was busy with another note. Mr. Woodman handed me a ballot. His arm bumped into Tina’s as she passed me her second message.

  “Oops,” said Tina. She giggled and cupped her hand over her mouth.

  “No electioneering at the polls, Tina,” joked Mr. Woodman, moving on down the aisle. I waited until he was in the back of the room. “P.S. In case you’re wondering, Peter is going with Sarah M. Eat your heart out. ” I read. A stabbing pain shot through my hearts. Why hadn’t Peter told me?

  “May I be excused?” I asked Mr. Woodman.

  “Almost ready for the count, Briana,” he said. “Hurry back.”

  Hastily, I scribbled “DAISY” on my ballot, handed it to Mr. Woodman, and made for the exit. My eyes stung. I felt sick. I ran down the hall. I was going to throw up. Oh God, I hadn’t reached the bathroom yet. I doubled over, panting and leaning against the wall.

  Move, said my Dad heart.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  Move, it repeated. Be your own.

  Before Aaron, things had been so simple. I had Dad and Mom. I had Grandpa Ben. Tina was my friend. Peter was my best friend. Now, Mom wasn’t Mom anymore. Home wasn’t home. Our family wasn’t our family. Tina was my enemy. Peter wasn’t Peter. He had secrets. I had secrets.

  “I hate Tina,” I said. “She thinks Mom’s crazy. She thinks I’m crazy.”

  I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. I paced up and down in front of the bathroom. I took a deep breath. I would just stop in for a second to wash my face.

  Move! boomed my Dad heart.

  I ran down the hall to Mr. Woodman’s room. I stood in front of the door. I breathed in and out, in and out, in and out.

  Be your own, my Dad heart insisted. I pushed open the door.

  “Just in time, Briana,” said Mr. Woodman. “The count is in.”

  I walked quickly past Tina and threw myself into a chair next to Daisy in the back. Daisy leaned over and squeezed my hand. Mr. Woodman held up the tally.

  “It was almost a tie,” he announced. “With one write-in vote for Briana. And one for Al.” He came down the aisle.

  “Congratulations to Daisy,” he said. “Our new editor in chief!” He turned to Tina. “And Tina, congratulations to you. You’re our runner-up.”

  Mr. Woodman handed Daisy his piece of chalk. “Please pick your assistant, Daisy, and write his or her name on the blackboard,” he said.

  “Isn’t the runner-up automatically assistant editor?” asked Tina.

  Mr. Woodman shook his head. “The choice is up to Daisy,” he said.

  Tina slid down in her seat. Daisy stood and went up to the blackboard. She didn’t look at Tina or at me. She gave Al the victory sign. He raised his fist in the air. She would choose him.

  “Go, Daisy!” he yelled.

  Daisy blushed. “Thanks for voting for me,” she said. “Everyone who voted for me, that is. And everyone who didn’t, thanks anyway. Artists rule!” There were cheers.

  Daisy turned and wrote a big capital A on the board. I knew it. She had to pick Al.

  Her next letter was an N. Then another A.

  ANA?

  She drew three more letters and a fancy exclamation point. She had been writing backward. “B R I A N A!” Everyone had their heads together, whispering and glancing over at Tina, who had shrunk even smaller into her seat.

  “Do you accept, Briana?” asked Mr. Woodman.

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. A leftover sob got stuck in my throat. I gave a loud swallow and shuddered.

  “Briana?” repeated Mr. Woodman.

  “Yes,” I croaked. “I accept.”

  “Congratulations,” said Mr. Woodman. The whispering died down. I walked up to the front of the room and stood beside my friend. Daisy hugged me. She did a little dance of victory.

  Tina glared at me. I looked away. I couldn’t think about Tina now. I couldn’t think about Peter. Or Dad. Or my Dad heart. Or Mom. Or Aaron. Or Before Aaron. I would think about all that later.

  For now, Daisy had won. I had won. Together, we had won.

  FREE

  I stood by the door of Mr. Bergman’s history class, waiting for Peter. He was late. There was a flurry in front of the room. Kids started filing out like the animals in Noah’s ark, two by two. Mr. Bergman had announced a free period.

  Suddenly, Peter was there by my side. He stood in the stance he might have taken if he were about to lean down like a giraffe and kiss me on top of the head. Of course, he wouldn’t do that. Dad was the one who kissed me that way. It was Dad’s signature goodbye.

  “What’s up?” asked Peter. He didn’t look guilty.

  “Bergman’s sending us to the library. To do research,” I said. Peter groaned.

  “I hear . . .” I stopped. “Tina says . . .” I stopped again. Peter’s blue eyes searched my face. “Are you going to Reena’s party tonight with Sarah M.?” I asked.

  Peter didn’t need to answer. His face said it all. “I guess,” he said.

  “Tina invited me today,” I said. “She told me to bring Neil.”

  “Are you going with Neil?” he asked, puzzled.

  “No, dummy!” I said, backing away from him.

  “Meet you in the library?” asked Peter.

  I loved the library, but I couldn’t meet him there. Or anywhere ever again. He had lied to me. The rush of triumph at being picked by Daisy had disappeared. I felt sick again.

  “I have to go,” I said. I turned and strode down the hall, toward the stairs.

  “Wait!” called Peter. “Briana!”

  He could have caught up with me, but he just stood there like a big dope, staring after me. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of the building, far away from Peter but not home to Mom. Where then?

  Grandpa Ben lived a few stops uptown on the Seventh Avenue line. The thought of seeing Grandpa Ben without Aaron cheered me up. I might miss my last class, but it was only P.E. I’d be back in plenty of time to pick up Aaron.

  I raced down the hall toward the side exit
. There was no desk monitor. Security was all at the front entrance. Daisy and her friends sometimes cut out of school early and went to the park, but I had never done anything like that. I was too good, a good girl. I was sick of being good! I was sick of listening to Mom. I was sick of listening to my Dad heart, too. Be your own? Okay, watch me.

  I threw my weight against the bar of the metal door. It opened. I waited for alarm bells to go off and a hall monitor to come running. I would be sent to the headmaster’s office. I would get detention. They would keep me after school. Didi would have to call Mom to pick Aaron up. Mom would go, but she’d be mad at me forever . . .

  Nothing happened. I stood still on the steps, breathing. Air rushed into my lungs.

  I stumbled into the schoolyard. The door slammed shut behind me. The sun warmed my face.

  I was free.

  POTATOES

  “Grandpa?” I called, pocketing my key. No answer. I made my way past stacks of mail piled in the foyer into the living room, swept bare except for Grandpa Ben’s big old leather recliner, his reading lamp, and a broken coffee table propped up with empty CD cases. “Grandpa?” I called again.

  He was sitting in his armchair, with the fringed blanket Mom had given him for his birthday wrapped around his knees, looking out the window at the park across the street.

  “Briana? Is that you? What time is it?” he asked, getting up slowly and shuffling forward. The blanket dropped to the floor. “I was taking a nap.”

  “Hi, Grandpa. Sorry I woke you,” I said. I was afraid he’d ask me why I had left school early.

  He shook his grizzled head, his blue eyes hazy with sleep, his lids droopy. “I’m happy you’re here. Just a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  He hobbled to the bathroom. He trailed his hand along the flaking wall, feeling his way. When he was babysitting Aaron at home he looked less like an old man. He said Aaron and I were his Fountain of Youth. That’s why he didn’t have to go to Florida looking for it like the explorer Ponce de LeÓn. Most people Grandpa’s age had been to Florida at least once, but Grandpa never had.

  When Grandpa Ben came out, he looked more awake, but a stray drop of water he had forgotten to wipe glistened on his chin. He settled back in his chair. I sat on the footstool.

  “Grandpa,” I said. “I’m assistant editor of the school magazine. It doesn’t have a name yet.”

  “That’s wonderful, honey.”

  “What did you do after school when you were a kid?” I asked.

  “I was a punk,” he said. “I was in a street gang. We had grudge fights.”

  Grandpa Ben leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “That’s how my nose got broken. Do you think I was born with a nose this big?” he asked. I giggled. “My best friend Seno broke it,” he said. “Knockout punch.”

  “What did you and Seno fight about?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Who remembers?” he said.

  “Girls are different than boys.” I sighed. “I think I’ll always remember the mean things Tina said to me today . . .”

  “What mean things?” asked Grandpa Ben. He was wide-awake now.

  Suddenly, I wanted to tell him everything. About Tina, about Sarah M., about Peter, about my Dad heart. “Tina said Mom is crazy,” I began.

  Grandpa Ben’s blue eyes turned a shade darker. “Your mom is a little crazy right now,” he said. “It’s her right to be crazy for a while. I was—after your grandma died. She’ll be okay.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “That’s no excuse for Tina though,” said Grandpa Ben. “She’s your best friend. Shame on her, she should know better.” My eyes filled with tears.

  “She’s not my best friend anymore,” I said. “She’s not my friend at all. I don’t need her, and I don’t need Peter either.” I started to cry. Grandpa Ben took a white hanky out of his pocket and handed it to me. He always had a white hanky.

  “Are you mad at Peter, too, sweetie?” he asked. “Sounds like you had your heart broken today.”

  I wiped my eyes. “Lucky I have more than one,” I sniffled.

  Grandpa Ben gazed at me searchingly. “What do you mean, more than one?” he asked.

  “Just joking, Grandpa,” I said, but then I raced on. “I was reading about how in India they’re using silkworms to grow hearts from stem cells. They use these disks the size of pennies from cocoons, and the heart cells stick to them and grow. And they’re growing heart cells on spinach leaves, too. And my friend Daisy says soon they’ll be able to print a heart with a 3-D printer, with the blood and everything. Maybe soon everyone will have a second heart. In case something goes wrong with the first.”

  “Maybe,” said Grandpa Ben, studying me.

  It was too late for Dad but not for Grandpa Ben. “You should get an extra heart, Grandpa,” I said. “You know, just in case.”

  “You’re saying I should look into having more than one heart in case the one I have stops?” asked Grandpa Ben.

  I hesitated. Should I tell him about my Dad heart?

  “Wasn’t there a fairy tale you were going to tell me the other day in the park?” he asked. “Something about a girl with more than one heart?”

  “It wasn’t a fairy tale, Grandpa,” I said, reddening. “It was about a real girl like me.”

  “Now I remember,” said Grandpa Ben, chuckling. “Aaron called her a worm girl.”

  “She wasn’t,” I said. “Her extra heart talked to her. Sometimes it sang . . .” I trailed off. It all sounded lame.

  Grandpa Ben leaned back in his recliner. He closed his eyes. “Did it sing ‘Leena Is the Queena Palestina’?” he teased.

  “No,” I said. “It sang songs Dad liked. Songs he used to sing to me.”

  “Sing one to me,” said Grandpa Ben, his eyes still closed. “Go on, honey. You have such a sweet voice,” he begged, yawning. He reminded me of Aaron, begging for a story before bed. If I sang him one of Dad’s songs, I might cry again.

  “Grandpa, don’t fall asleep,” I said. “I have to go soon.”

  “Why so soon?” asked Grandpa Ben drowsily, keeping his eyes closed.

  “We got off early,” I lied, “but I have to get back to pick up Aaron.”

  Grandpa Ben didn’t question me. He seemed to have forgotten he had asked me for a song.

  “The night Seno broke my nose,” he said, “our gang met behind Tony the Ice Man’s shed. We built a fire to bake mickies. We speared the potatoes with pointy sticks, peeled them with our fingers, and ate them half burned and half raw.” Grandpa Ben paused, licking his lips. He looked as if he were tasting the hot cinders on his tongue. “When did we get too old for mickies?” he asked. “When did we start to eat potatoes buttered and mashed the way the grown-ups ate them?”

  “I know, Grandpa,” I said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m turning into a grown-up, or if I’m a grown-up already.”

  “You’ve got a lot on your shoulders, honey,” said Grandpa Ben, “but you’re still a kid.”

  A bio research team in Texas had discovered how to tease a heart into fixing itself by growing new cells. Some fish could still do it. Some amphibians could, too. Even babies before they’re born could do it. But grown-ups had lost the knack. Maybe that was it. Grandpa Ben was right. I wasn’t a grown-up. I was still a kid, a kid who remembered something most kids forget. I had grown a whole new heart. Like Aaron, I was special. My Dad heart proved it.

  Grandpa opened his eyes, patting my shoulder. “Why am I telling you about potatoes?” He laughed, shaking his head.

  I touched his face and lightly traced a long deep line on his cheek with the tip of my finger. Mom once told me that when I was a baby, Grandpa Ben would sit as still as a statue for hours if I fell asleep in his arms. He didn’t want to wake me by putting me back in the cradle. He was a good grandpa.

  I rested my head on Grandpa Ben’s shoulder. I closed my eyes and matched my breathing to his. I was a little girl again, coming home from Grandpa Ben’s house on the sub
way, falling asleep on Dad’s shoulder. Dad was snoring. Or was it the sound of the train? I sighed. I was safe. I was on my way home.

  Estrellita, rumbled my Dad heart. Little star. I can’t live. Can’t live. Can’t. Live. Without. Your love.

  LOVE U

  Something was ringing, ringing.

  I startled awake and reached for my cell phone. Grandpa Ben grunted and moaned in his sleep. Oh no, it was past four o’clock, and I was still at Grandpa’s. I had forgotten Aaron!

  “Mom?” I answered.

  “Briana?” Mom quavered. “Where are you? What happened?”

  “I’m at Grandpa Ben’s. I forgot . . .”

  “At Grandpa’s? Are you okay? Is he okay?”

  “I’m fine. He’s fine. He’s asleep. I fell asleep, too. We’re fine.”

  There was silence on the other end. I heard a sob. Mom was crying in that horrible way she did sometimes at night when she thought I wasn’t listening. I waited.

  The blinds were down in Grandpa Ben’s living room, but the late-afternoon sun was getting through, cutting his pale face into stripes. There was a slanting pattern on his mouth and chin. I remembered walking in and seeing Dad the morning he died. The blinds had been up. The light had been bright like today.

  “Why are you at Grandpa’s?” Mom asked.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I lost track of time.”

  “You lost track . . . ?” said Mom. She blew her nose. “Why did you leave school? Why did you go up to Grandpa’s in the first place?”

  “So I could see Grandpa,” I said. “Without Aaron.”

  “I didn’t know where you were,” said Mom. “I called your cell, no answer. I called Grandpa, no answer. I was about to call the police.”

  “I forgot, that’s all,” I said. I should have felt guilty for making her worry. Instead I felt a ripple of triumph. Mom was awake at four o’clock in the afternoon. And she was worried about me.

  “Come home,” said Mom. “Why didn’t Grandpa call me? Put him on the phone, please.”

  “I can’t. He’s still asleep,” I said. I looked over at Grandpa Ben. His breathing came in puffs, softer than snores, swelling his lips. He looked like a kid blowing a toy trumpet.