Another Little Piece of My Heart

by Tracey Martin

  “Have you heard from him?” she asks constantly. My parents want to make sure I haven’t relapsed.

  But I can say truthfully that I haven’t. Jared could have died for all I knew.

  Then, six months later, rumors spread around my school that some guy from the public high school has befriended the lead guitarist of Purple Waters, the “it” band du jour. With some digging, I discover the guy in question is Jared. But I dismiss those rumors as wishful thinking until I hear about the tour invitation and the recording contract, and then I go online and discover it’s all true.

  “I just want you to be happy,” my mom says as I wander around the house, dazed and glum over the news.

  But how can I be happy when everyone is conspiring to make me miserable?

  She has information about colleges spread across the table—Yale, Cornell, Vassar and small liberal arts schools I’ve never heard of. “We need to think about your future. You’re more like me than you think. I also had a thing for bad boys and was too prone to dream when I was your age.”

  I think she’s wrong, but I don’t say it because I want her to believe I’m not so bad. But I’m furious at her. And my dad. Furious that they misjudged Jared’s talent yet were so right about him being bad for me. Furious that their dreams for me interfered with my dreams for myself.

  Then even more furious at myself for being angry with them in the first place because being angry with my mom is the cruelest, most terrible thing I can be. More proof that I’m the bad daughter.

  “Claire?” She reaches for my wrist, and her hand feels too light. Like paper. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing,” I tell her as I give her a hug. And I tell her nothing. Nothing about how strange it is that we’re talking about colleges and dream schools when my so-called loser ex-boyfriend achieved the dream they never thought he could.

  I never tell. Never yell. Never cry in front of her or my dad because there are more important and stressful things for us to deal with. Instead, I hoard all those thoughts inside and let them eat away at my sanity like my own little emotional cancer.

  Then, months later, my mom dies. And just when I could have used Jared the most, he’s singing to the world about how I’m a shallow bitch. My parents are vindicated, but my broken heart is scattered in a thousand little pieces, and I’m reduced to that girl in her red Miata, cranking Janis Joplin as she floors it down the highway, screaming at the alien gods to take it.

  Take it all.

  Chapter Three

  The day after we arrive in New Hampshire, I grit my teeth and finish braiding my hair into two pigtails. The ends barely touch my shoulders so it’s not the easiest thing to do, but it makes the orange a little less obnoxious.

  In retrospect, I should never have dyed my hair before leaving home, but ever since meeting that blue-haired music store clerk a couple years ago I’d been coveting something funkier than my boring brown. Something that makes me look like as big a misfit as I feel.

  Unfortunately, my school had a strict appearance policy. So while some students burned their uniforms at post-graduation parties, Kristen and I picked out hair dye and planned piercings. Of course, that’s all well and good for her. She’s lazing about, enjoying her summer before college. I, on the other hand, now have to go job-hunting while looking like a punked-out Pippi Longstocking.

  Brilliance, thy name is Claire.

  Still, I’m not too shabby. Plain T-shirt, clean shorts, new zebra-print sneakers—I only have to look presentable enough to find work at a coffee shop or a music store. You know, some place that might appreciate my neon hair.

  I survey myself one last time as April storms into the room. She pushes aside the old sheet that separates her half of the attic from mine.

  “Have you seen what she’s wearing?”

  April points to the far window, which provides a view of my aunt and uncle’s deck. I poke my head outside. Nikki Clay, my dad’s so-called secretary, is stretched out on a lawn chair, wearing the skimpiest bikini I’ve seen outside of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. She has a computer on her lap. My dad sits a couple feet away, rifling through papers and stealing glances at her.

  “I still can’t believe he brought her with us,” April says, totally unconcerned with being overheard. “What’s can she possibly be doing for him now that the firm is finished?”

  “Do you actually have to ask?”

  My sister screams and flops on her cot.

  There are few things April and I can bond over. Yet in the past few months, Nikki has brought us together the way no vacations, board games or other enforced family time ever could.

  Nothing says sisterly love like trying to destroy a common enemy.

  I twirl the gaudy tennis bracelet around my wrist, thinking how silly it looks to go begging for a job while wearing such a thing. “Like we discussed on the drive here, we will take Nikki down this summer, but we need time. So for now, ignore her. Go to the beach, or go exploring, or something. Don’t let Nikki ruin your summer vacation.”

  “This is not vacation, no matter how Dad tries to spin it.”

  “It’s the beach.”

  She rolls onto her side, glaring at me. “Hannah says the ocean here is cold. And it’s not vacation. Vacations are fun. We’re crashing with family because we can’t afford to go somewhere more exciting. Stop pretending to be an optimist.”

  I bite my tongue and ignore her. Seriously, what gives her the right to complain about something so trivial when I had to give up my spot in Brown’s freshman class because my college fund was empty and the deadline for financial aid had passed? If anyone has a right to wallow in misery, it’s me.

  Trust me, I can wallow with the best of them, too. After I dumped Jared and he wouldn’t return my heartsick calls, I wallowed for three weeks straight. But my future is on the line now. I have no time for wallowing. Instead, I have a plan.

  I stomp downstairs, repressing a bout of frustration. Much as I want to, I can’t blame my father—or Nikki—for this mess we’re in. Whatever caused the meltdown that resulted in my dad losing his job, and most of our family fortune with it, it doesn’t sound like it was his fault. The analysts on the boring financial programs he watches are blaming it on his bosses.

  I wander into the kitchen and grab a bottle of water from the fridge. In the dining room, my cousins discuss their beach plans for the day. Slipping on my sunglasses, I head outside before they try to lure me into having fun with them.

  It’s tempting to give up on job hunting before I begin, especially since I already have two strikes against me, not including the orange hair. One, it’s late in the summer so most openings are probably filled. And two, I’m only around for a month. I’m aware that my odds of finding something are slim, but I can’t stand the thought of sitting around on my butt. Someone has to be the responsible adult around here. While my father scrolls through his phone, hitting up his contacts for jobs and monitoring his remaining investments, one of us has to make some money. My dad won’t talk about the finances in front of me, but it’s clear that even having sold the house, the family bank account is skimpier than Nikki’s thong.

  Besides, a job has an allure beyond the gas money my dad can no longer give me—it will get me away from everyone. Even though April and I finally have something in common, I can still only take her in small doses, and the sight of Nikki fills my veins with a murderous rage. She’s almost as maddening as hearing Jared on the radio.

  But I did enough reminiscing about Jared on the drive here yesterday. I don’t want to think about him anymore.

  I cross the intersection and turn the corner onto the main drag. Before me, Ocean Boulevard seethes with glistening, half-naked humanity.

  I don’t know what it is about these sorts of towns, but if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. It’s the kits
chy signs and the architecture that looks like it’s waiting for a hurricane to kiss it and bring it to its knees. It’s the peeling paint and the wood that gently creaks with age even if the building is brand-new. It’s the pizza shops, the ice cream parlors and the vendors hawking racks of cheesy T-shirts. And it’s all here in Eliot Beach.

  Familiar, cliché and oh so soothing because of it.

  I take a deep breath, catching the scents of fried dough and sunblock, and beneath it, the unmistakable aroma of the ocean. It’s a fishy reek, but one that makes me dream of the day when I’ll have nothing better to do than watch the waves roll in for hours, mesmerized by the foam and the way the breakers change color from steely blue to turquoise to black as the sun sweeps across the sky.

  It could happen. Especially if I don’t find a job, I’ll have the time. But if I don’t find a job, I won’t feel the peace I’m craving, either.

  So I take to the crowded streets, determined despite the lack of Help Wanted signs, but the same refrain meets me everywhere. No one’s hiring. As desperation takes hold, I try the pizza parlors, the ice cream and candy shops, and the tacky souvenir stands, but the answer doesn’t change.

  Sweaty and defeated, I collapse on a bench in front of a small grocery store called Milk and Honey that’s just off the main drag. My stomach rumbles as I contemplate my options. It’s been a long time since breakfast.

  A sign in the window advertises locally grown peaches and blueberries, so I go in. The place is bigger inside than it appears from the street, but it’s the smallest grocery store I’ve ever seen. If I wave my arms around, I could take down the entire produce section.

  I pick out a couple peaches and go to pay, hoping they’ll tide me over for another hour or so. There are three registers, and only one is open, but then I’m the only customer. The cashier’s talking to a guy who must be the manager.

  “I can stay till three,” she’s saying as I plunk my peaches on the belt. “But I have to watch my brother when he gets out of camp.”

  The manager is short, round and bald. He hits the off button on his phone. “This is the third time this week. I’d fire her when she gets in, but then I’d still be out of luck.” He rubs his eyes. “Only until three?”

  I fork over two dollars for the peaches. A grocery store is not high on my list of dream jobs, but life is about snatching opportunities or watching them forever disappear. The dumping-Jared fiasco taught me that.

  I clear my throat. “I can stay all day. I need a job.”

  “Eh?” The manager assesses me. Damn that orange hair. “You can? You work in a grocery store before?”

  “No.”

  “Ever work retail at all?”

  “No.”

  “What grade are you in?”

  “I just graduated.”

  “Oh.” He nods thoughtfully. “Well then, you’re smart enough to learn it by this afternoon. Congratulations, you’re hired.”

  I sigh with a mix of relief and trepidation.

  “I’m Ben,” the manager says, holding out a hand to shake. “Welcome aboard. You’ll need to fill out some paperwork for me by tomorrow, but for today, Beth will train you.”

  I assume Beth is the cashier. “Mind if I eat my lunch?”

  He glances at the peaches and beckons me along. “Enjoy.”

  Taking a bite, I follow him to a small office behind the deli-and-seafood counter. “I’m only here for a month. I guess I should have mentioned that. Is it a problem?”

  “No, no problem. Everything turns over in mid-August because of school starting. Now let’s see here.” Ben opens a closet and hands me an ugly brown-and-gold blazer like the one Beth is wearing. “Finish eating, then put that on and find Beth. I’ve got to look for the papers you need. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Claire.” My mouth’s full of peach. It’s juicy and good, and I’m making a mess.

  “Good, Claire’s a nice name. You can grab a paper towel from the registers to wipe your hands.”

  “Okay.”

  I meander through the rest of the store on my way to the registers: there’s six aisles of food and paper goods, plus the dairy and frozen-food cases, and another half aisle devoted to books, magazines and beach toys.

  I don’t pay much attention to magazines usually, but one photo snags my eye. Jared’s made the cover of Entertainment Weekly. I scowl at his smiling face.

  Even after all this time, a hollowness opens in my gut when I see his picture. It’s not because I miss him. All the lies he sings about me have made it clear that dumping him was the best decision I ever made, despite what it felt like at the time. But there’s something else I miss—the happiness. We were insanely happy together, and I haven’t felt that sort of happiness since.

  The cover photo is a good one. Jared looks hot with strands of hair falling over his face and a half smile stuck to his lips. Never mind that the critics love his album, I’m convinced that half of Jared’s popularity is simply because he’s good looking.

  Lost in these thoughts, I’m only vaguely aware of footsteps approaching until someone addresses me.

  “Hey, ’scuse me,” says a guy. “You work here, right? Can you tell me where’s the sunblock?”

  Oh yeah, the blazer. Guess I do work here now.

  “Uh.” I spin around, certain I saw it during my self-guided tour. Before I can conjure where, though, all words vanish from my mouth. Possibly from my brain.

  I’m looking past the guy who was speaking to the person behind him. A person with the same pair of beautiful blue eyes that I’ve just been scowling at. I blink, and my brain argues with me because I totally cannot be seeing what I think I’m seeing. My heart lurches.

  Then those blue eyes lock onto my gaze, opening wide with recognition, and an expression of panic spreads across their owner’s familiar face.

  Chapter Four

  I stare. I can’t help it. How is it possible that almost exactly two years to the day after I made the hardest decision of my life, I’m here locking eyes with Jared in an aisle of a tiny grocery store in a town I’d never heard of in a state I’d never been to until yesterday?

  Is it a wild coincidence, or did the alien gods think it would be funny to give me a metaphorical ass kicking? I sure know which of the two it feels like.

  Jared’s face suggests he’s pondering the same question. He’s got his sunglasses perched on his head, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. I remember every pore in his chin. I can tell he hasn’t shaved since yesterday morning—that’s how well I remember. He still wears that plain silver band on his right thumb, and that black leather cord around his neck. Only now the cord has a small leaf on it. Once, he wore a silver Buddha, a charm I gave him for his birthday. Guess he got rid of it when I got rid of him.

  I jab my nails into my palms until the pain clears my head.

  “Sunblock?” I repeat. I wait for the floor to swallow me up. For the ceiling to part and a thousand angels to point and snicker. Any of it seems about as likely as this.

  The guy who asked the question glances between me and Jared. He thinks he’s had an epiphany.

  “He’s not who you think he is.” The guy punches Jared in the arm. “They just look alike.”

  It’s not a bad attempt on the guy’s part. If I was merely some crazy fan girl, maybe it would even work. But I’m not. I’m inhaling Jared even now. I spent enough time with my face pressed into that soft spot of skin where his neck meets his shoulder, enough time wrapped in his sweatshirts or my face buried in his pillow that his Jared-scent is unmistakable. I’m having a hard time breathing because of it.

  It’s the shock, I tell myself. It’s only the shock of running into him this way. It’ll pass. My lungs will reinflate.

  “Sorry, I’m new. I think I saw it—”

  “C
laire?” Jared’s staring at me.

  I cross my arms. “Jared.”

  A dumbfounded expression sweeps across question-boy’s face. “Oh, so you guys know each other?”

  “Knew each other,” I say pointedly. “A long time ago in a state far, far away.”

  Damn the Star Wars reference. Jared was a huge fan of the original trilogy, and it just slipped out. He catches it, too. His lip twitches as he looks between me and his friend. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you guys met at some parties back in high school.”

  I throw question-boy a cursory glance and come up empty. Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t. Maybe if I could really see his face, I’d remember. But I can’t. All my brain can focus on is Jared. His friend is just a blur of human-like features.

  Jared stuffs his hands in his pockets, as though trying to make sure we share as little common air as possible. “So how are you?”

  Ready to pass out? My emotions run the gauntlet from confused to furious, then back again with occasional forays into something that feels a lot like grief. It must be the shock.

  “Fine.” I make sure to put some anger into my voice, or try to. I’m not sure how successful I am. “I think the sunblock’s—”

  “What are you doing here?” His gaze sweeps around the store and lands on my blazer.

  I could ask the same question of him. Why is he here, in this town, in this market, making my already screwed-up summer even more screwed up? What did I do to deserve this? But I don’t ask because I don’t want him to think I care.

  Scratch that. I don’t care. I’m not the least bit curious about the jerk who made himself famous by singing lies about me to the whole world. Nope, not at all.

  My inner monologue needs to stop protesting so much so I can believe myself.

  I take a deep breath, fighting for control. “I’m working. What does it look like I’m doing? I think sunblock’s down the next aisle with the shampoo.”