The Heartbeat Hypothesis

by Lindsey Frydman

  Lub-dub.

  Eighty-six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day. How many was I wasting?

  I rolled over until the taunting noise ceased. “What are we doing tonight?”

  Kat, my closest friend since the glue incident in fourth grade, spun in her computer chair a few feet away. “We could always—”

  “No frat parties.” I leaned forward on my bed. The two of us had done everything together for years, and she’d always been my go-to person, so choosing the same college and becoming roommates was a no-brainer. Even if she enjoyed the party scene more than I did. “I can’t smell any more stale beer breath for at least…a few more days. Okay?”

  “Fine.” She pulled her legs up and spun the chair again. Since it was cheap, plastic, and cost two bucks at a yard sale, it only rotated once before stopping. “We can watch a movie, or some trashy reality TV.” Kat laughed, and it made me smile. It always did. “Have you heard from the heart guy yet?”

  “Don’t call him that. His name is Jake.”

  That nickname had to go, mostly because it made no sense. I was the one who had a heart transplant two years ago. The heart pumping blood through my body belonged to his sister, Emily. His heart had nothing to do with this.

  She waved off my comment. “Have you heard from Jake?”

  Even though it’d only been a few hours since I saw him, I’d been checking my Facebook messages non-freaking-stop. It was becoming something of a problem. “Not yet.”

  Kat leaped off the chair and lunged for my twin-size bed. She rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand. “You could always message him first, you know.”

  I pulled my computer onto my lap, leaning against a boring white wall. “He said he would message me.”

  She gave me a look that I took to mean: you poor, naive thing. “Did you get his number?”

  I tapped at the keyboard and logged on to Facebook. Again. “No.”

  “Did you give him your number?”

  “Um. No.”

  Kat only rolled her eyes, shoving her hand into the bowl of popcorn next to the bed. “You can’t wait on other people for the things you want. Especially guys. Now tell me what he said. Tell me everything.”

  She always wanted to know everything about any interaction I had with a guy, starting back in middle school, and I always obliged—not that there was much to tell. But this wasn’t the same. “It’s not like we went on a date.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. That meeting was way more important than any old date could ever be. So I gotta know, was he excited about your proposal?”

  I pulled on a piece of my hair, twisting it, inspecting the dark red strand like it held the answer. “I don’t think ‘proposal’ is the right word. And neither is ‘excited.’”

  “M’kay. Well, what’s the right word then?”

  Letting my hair fall back down around my neck, I rubbed my cheek and shook my head. “He was…hesitant.”

  “But he agreed,” Kat said, her blue eyes widening. “So obviously whatever you said convinced him.”

  I fixed my gaze on her. “Obviously.”

  She tipped her head, sending long blond curls swaying. “What did you say?”

  After giving her the shortened play-by-play, I checked my messages, just in case Facebook failed me and didn’t give me a proper notification.

  “It sounds like it went well,” she said. “You didn’t take any of the advice I gave you, but whatever, you still got Jake to say yes. Plus, he bought you coffee. Bonus, right? Now. Have you decided which done-it to do first?”

  In my head, all I could think was Cheez-It, and I tried not to laugh. “Negative.”

  “Seriously? Okay, you’re not sleeping until you decide.”

  “Whatever you say, Katarina.”

  She glared, and even with her face scrunched, she still looked pretty. “That’s a low blow.”

  I grinned. Kat stopped using her full name when she turned thirteen and demanded everyone follow suit. She claimed Katarina belonged to someone bitchy and stuck-up and that it didn’t jibe with her desire to be the nice, bubbly girl. “You might not like it. But I do.”

  “I cannot be the future ‘nurse Katarina.’ It sounds like a superhero name or something.”

  “But nurses save lives, right? I think the superhero name fits.”

  Her glare dissipated. “I never thought of it like that. It does sound…kind of badass. Shit. Maybe I should change it back.”

  Shrugging, I tapped on the keyboard. “You don’t have to decide now.”

  “You’re right. But you, my friend, do need to decide on a done-it.”

  While she searched Emily’s Tumblr on her phone, I scrolled through Jake’s Facebook page, hunting for something I didn’t already know. He shared little about his personal life. Basic info filled out. A few pictures of himself. No status updates aside from his photography and a link to his Instagram. He was a junior at Colorado State—where I was a freshman. He didn’t like smiling for pictures. Or maybe he simply didn’t like smiling.

  Kat leaned against the wall beside me, thumbing the screen. “This pie thing…where people nominate you to get a pie thrown in your face, and then you do it and nominate someone else? I wanna know who the hell came up with that crap. There must be an easier way to raise money than pies to the face and buckets of ice-cold water dumped on your head.”

  “Sure, but something easy wouldn’t be entertaining.” I shut my laptop and shoved it onto the bed. It wasn’t doing anything besides making me crazy.

  “How old do you think she was in these last posts?”

  “In her teens, I would guess.”

  “So…right before she died?”

  “Probably.” I frowned, trying not to think too hard about it.

  “I still want to know how she died,” Kat said.

  I shook my head slowly. “It was probably a car accident. It’s the leading cause of death for teenagers, right?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Six months ago, I decided to learn more about the girl who gave me this second chance. I wanted to know who she was. So I Googled her, and there was nothing that Google did not know—well, almost nothing.

  Eventually I stumbled onto her Tumblr account. The photos were breathtaking, and each event was something unique, something meaningful to only her. They had to be meaningful—why else would she broadcast those things she’d done for all the world to see? All of the images listed a done-it, and a few even had quotes or short notes. Oh, but they all came with a ridiculous number of hashtags.

  It was weird to me, to see these clichéd tags like #bluehairdontcare combined with a deep quote about life, love, or the stars coming from a sixteen-year-old. I’d scoured every bit of Emily’s internet presence, but still couldn’t get all the pieces to fit.

  Emily, to me, was a juxtaposition I wanted to understand. Most girls her age used social media to showcase selfies, coffee pictures, and cute clothing. And even though she seriously abused the ridiculous hashtags, the rest of her online presence was deep, presenting herself as older and wiser than the typical teenager.

  Kat’s voice snapped me out of my blank stare and back down to reality.

  “There you go,” she said, holding my own phone out to me.

  Confused, I pulled it from her hand and glanced down. My Facebook page filled the screen, and a slimy feeling slithered its way into my gut. “What did you do?”

  “I helped you out. You’re welcome.”

  I opened the messenger app and read the message sent from me to Jake—the one I didn’t write.

  Me: When’s our first appointment?

  Shaking my head, I glared at her. “You bitch.” I stared at the message, and a buzzing electricity surged through my veins, creating an unexpected panic in my pulse. “This seems awfully forward.”

  She snorted, chomping on popcorn. “What, are you afraid he’ll change his mind?”

  “He could, but I don’t think he will.”

  “Then w
hat’re you afraid of?”

  My phone vibrated in my palm before I could answer her question.

  Jake: I’m free Tuesday after 5.

  Kat pulled the screen closer, grinning madly. “See. Being forward gets you somewhere.”

  She nudged me with her shoulder, and I laughed halfheartedly.

  Six months after I’d gotten out of the hospital, I wrote a letter to the Cavanaughs acknowledging their loss and expressing my gratitude. I’d been warned that I might not receive a reply, but a few weeks later, I did. My simple paragraphs didn’t feel like enough. And it wasn’t until I’d decided on CSU and discovered Jake went to school here, too, that my plan to re-create Emily’s done-it list began to form. The universe had given me a sign, or so I liked to believe, and I couldn’t just ignore it.

  College was supposed to mean freedom, and freedom was supposed to be awesome. The life every teenager dreamed about, right? No parents. Away at college. No rules. (Okay, maybe some rules.) I should’ve been jumping up and down, planning to stay up all night and make terrible decisions.

  Instead, I thought about the heart in my chest and how it wasn’t always mine, how it used to belong to a girl with a name and a face, a family and a life.

  Now I had her heart. Her life.

  A debt I’d never be able to repay.

  “This is the one you should do first,” Kat said, shoving her phone into my line of sight.

  I looked at the last photograph Emily posted. The last done-it she ever did. God, that really does need a better name.

  “If you’re going to re-create them all, you may as well get the painful one out of the way. Plus, Jake needs to know you’re serious.”

  I cringed at the idea, but as usual, Kat had a point. Nothing says serious like a tattoo.

  Emily’s sixteenth done-it was a blurry cell phone photo, clearly taken by one of her friends. Some guy with two full sleeves and neck tattoos hovered nearby as she showed off the new blue flower on her ankle. She beamed at the camera as though she were the winner of a game show, and not in any pain at all. Below the image, a succession of curious hashtags followed a short quote.

  We live with the scars we choose. #FirstTattoo #FlowerTattoo #NoPainNoBeauty #ForgetMeNot #JakeTakesBetterPhotos

  I’d sent Jake the address and told him to meet me Tuesday night at six. At five forty-five, I walked to the front doors of Twisted Image Tattoos and Piercings to find him already there, leaning against the brick building as though he were a decoration. A fluttery sensation filled my gut and I bit my lip, unsure whether the fluttering was a good thing or not. But the sight of him calmed the nervous adrenaline I’d been carrying around all day at the thought of how painful getting this tattoo might be.

  His brows raised as I approached, and though half a smile pulled on his lips, he didn’t exactly look happy. “You’re not serious.”

  “Actually, I am.”

  Jake rocked back on his heels, his voice turning rough. “What I mean is, there’s no way Emily had a tattoo. She wasn’t even eighteen.”

  “I’m sure there’s ways around that. Didn’t you see it on her blog yesterday when I showed you? She definitely had a tattoo.”

  He cocked his head and laughed, low and taut. “I definitely didn’t take a photo of any tattoos.”

  I smiled. “Nope. Not yet.”

  My distraction and nerves about meeting with Jake again had been enough to override any thoughts I had about letting someone pierce my skin with a thousand tiny needles. Now the entrance was one foot away, the Open sign lit up a neon-green in the window, and a slow burn started in the center of my chest.

  “I’ve, uh…never gotten a tattoo before,” I said, crossing my arms. “But this is probably going to suck, huh?”

  He pushed off the wall, took a step forward, and then shoved his hands into his pockets. “Nah. There’s a lot of things more painful than a tattoo.”

  I laughed, though I was hardly amused. “Not sure if that makes me feel any better.”

  “I only have one. It didn’t suck that bad, but then everyone’s different.” His shoulders lifted. “I don’t want to lie to you.”

  With a nod, I looked at the grayish-white door, my chest still burning. Guess I could appreciate the honesty.

  Suck or no suck, I wasn’t going back to the dorm without the ink I’d spent days thinking about. I breathed in once, and then again before steadying my shaking hands against my jeans.

  Jake strolled forward, casting a sidelong grin at me, then gave the door a substantial yank. “After you.”

  Thirty minutes later, I sat in a stiff chair, admiring the heavily festooned walls as a guy named Alex tattooed my left wrist. At first it felt like a blowtorch against my skin, but after ten minutes my arm went numb, and now all I felt was warmth, like I was sitting too close to a fire.

  Alex was short and had equally short hair. Not a chatty guy, but I was okay with that. If he didn’t talk, maybe he’d finish faster.

  “You doing okay over there?” Jake said, and I could hear the amusement threaded into the question.

  “Uh…huh.” I glanced over, planning to send him a scowl, but his cheeky grin kept my witty retort locked inside. My lips pressed together while my pulse sped up. Maybe I should’ve picked a first done-it that wasn’t so…embarrassing. If I didn’t make an ass of myself in the coffee shop, I was certainly doing it now.

  “What did she have a tattoo of?”

  “A flower.”

  He frowned. “Don’t tell me she got it on her ankle.”

  “What’s wrong with ankle tattoos?”

  “Nothing really. I didn’t think my sister was that clichéd.”

  “She was probably trying to hide it from your parents. And in that case, her ankle is the perfect place. Seems like she was being smart, not clichéd.” I lifted my brows, hoping my expression said I’m right and you know it.

  Jake smirked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “It was pretty, though,” I said. “And blue. That’s unique.”

  “Don’t get many requests for blue flowers,” Alex said, his words lazy and his voice calm.

  “See.” I smiled at Jake, though the longer I sat, the harder it was to do anything but grind my teeth and pretend I was somewhere else. “She gets points for being original.”

  His dark eyes assessed me slowly, and his beautiful frown returned. I breathed in the scent of something orange and woodsy and aimed to steady my pulse.

  Jake rubbed one hand across his jaw, breaking eye contact. “A five-petal flower with a yellow center? Darker blue on the outside, lighter blue on the inside?”

  “What, now you remember the photograph from her page?”

  “No, I… It’s just a guess.”

  I narrowed my gaze, but Jake was staring at something—anything—that wasn’t me.

  One hell of a guess.

  Maybe Emily drew flowers like this all the time, or maybe she had a bedspread with blue flowers that was her all-time favorite. Maybe it was her preferred flower. Whatever it was, that wasn’t a guess, and Jake clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

  “So.” I cleared my throat, then winced as Alex dug into a sensitive spot. “You can just take the picture and leave. I mean, you don’t have to stay through the whole thing if you don’t want to.”

  “Don’t you want a picture of the finished tattoo?” he said, eyeing his shoes.

  “I only need one picture. You’re the photographer. You decide what kind of shot you want.”

  He nodded an agreement and finally looked at me with a twisted smile that was phony and obviously forced. But he didn’t pull out his camera and hightail it out of there like I expected. Instead, he sat silently with his elbows still on his knees.

  Time passed slowly, and I’d spent so long staring at a framed Marilyn Monroe photo that I could draw it from memory—if I had any talent for drawing. But I could either study Marilyn or study Jake, and I was self-conscious enough already. />
  “All done,” Alex said in a dry monotone. He wasn’t as happy about this as I was.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you. I lifted my arm, wiggling my fingers around in hopes that the numbness would fade. “It’s…” I inspected the deep purple and black ink that I chose for the largest portion of the tattoo: the old-school pocket watch displaying the time as 10:24. The date of my heart transplant. The date that Emily died. Running artfully across the center of the two-inch tattoo was a thin red line—the sharp peaks and valleys of a heart rhythm. My skin burned and tingled, but the end result was stunning.

  I looked up, grinning like an idiot, and Jake’s attention was focused on the back of his camera. I hadn’t seen him pull it out of the bag.

  “What’s the verdict?” he asked, raising his gaze to meet mine. “How much did it suck?”

  “A lot.” I laughed, light-headed and giddy. “But it was worth it.” My endorphins would eventually fade and my wrist would feel like a terrible sunburn, but right now I felt like I’d done something right. I was going to bask in that warm and fuzzy feeling for as long as I could.

  With a small smile, Jake lowered the camera into the bag. “Good.”

  Alex cleaned off my wrist and wrapped it up. When he was done, I inspected the tattoo again, then looked up at Jake. “You got the shot?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can I see it?”

  He shook his head and stood, pulling the camera bag over his shoulder. “I’ll send it to you. Don’t worry.”

  “Tease.” I stood, too, ready to say thanks, pay, and get out of the tiny, overly decorated room that smelled like a candle gone wrong.

  Half a grin showcased his charming dimples. “I think someone once said something about patience and virtues.”

  “I think you made that up. I’ve heard no such thing.”

  “You’re probably right.” Jake stuck his left hand into his pocket and took a slow step toward the exit. “Pick up some unscented lotion on your way home. Some Tylenol, too. You’ll thank me later.”

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter Three

  A little after midnight, while I was rubbing lotion on my tattoo, my Facebook messenger pinged, and Jake’s profile picture popped up on my cell. With my whole body tingling, I opened the app to see what he said.