Our Chemical Hearts

by Krystal Sutherland

  With a final grunt and wince of pain as she put weight on her bad leg, Grace straddled the top of the fence. She’d done this before. “Henry.”

  “I really want to go to college.”

  “Climb the fence.”

  “You know I’ve made it through seventeen years of my life without being peer pressured? My parents warned me about it in elementary school, but I never experienced it. I was starting to believe it was a myth.”

  “Henry Page. Climb. The. Fence.”

  “And, like, it’s a really accurate description of what it is. I’m feeling very pressured by my peer right now.”

  “Henry, haul me that goddamn loaf of bread and then get your ass up here right now!”

  “Fine!” I threw the bread over, then wrapped my hands around the iron bars and pulled myself up, which was difficult, because I could no longer feel my legs due to what I assumed was an impending panic attack. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I said over and over again as I climbed. Grace disappeared on the other side of the hedge. “I’m going to be arrested. I’m never going to college. I’m going to be a felon. My parents are going to kill me.”

  Once I reached the top of the iron bars, it became clear that there was no easy way to climb down the other side, so I kind of straddled the hedge and then rolled. It did not go well. I hit the ground, hard, lost my balance, and ended up on my knees. Grace’s cold laugh could only accurately be described as a cackle, this kind of raucous clucking more befitting of a crow than a human being.

  “You sound like a Disney villain,” I said as I stood and brushed the dirt from my clothes, which only made Grace cackle more.

  “I warn you, child. If I lose my temper, you lose your head! Understand?!” Grace said. “Congratulations, Henry. You’re officially trespassing.”

  I looked around. Apart from a few trees stripped naked from the cold—or possibly long dead—there appeared to be little more on this side than an empty field.

  “Where is this mysterious train station you speak of?”

  Grace pointed with her cane and set off in front of me. “Just down the hill.”

  And it was. Not ten seconds after we’d started walking, a small, sodium-lit building came into view, nestled away in the blackness.

  “It looks like a crypt,” I said.

  “Well, it is a crypt. In the philosophical sense. All old buildings become crypts the moment they’re finished. A shrine to a time that’s already dead.”

  “You are very weird, Grace Town.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t mind it.”

  “I know.”

  When we reached the building, we came to a tall gate made in the same elaborate design as the fence.

  “Come,” said Grace. “We’re only trespassing at the moment. Now it’s time for the breaking and entering.”

  “Grace, no, come on, that’s really—” I said, but the gates swung open at her touch and she walked through them and looked back at me and winked.

  “They haven’t been locked for years.”

  We walked through a short, dim tunnel out onto a single open platform that was, shockingly, lit from above by burnt sodium lights. The station was in a much better state than I expected it to be. It was mostly clean of graffiti and not overgrown by any kind of vegetation.

  “Uh, as far as abandoned buildings go, this one seems to be in pretty un-abandoned condition,” I said. The ceiling was a series of high arches made of frosted glass, the ground checked marble in black and white, the walls of the building eggshell and emerald green tiles. “Are you sure this isn’t a leftover set from The Great Gatsby or something?” I said as I took it all in, because it really was that beautiful.

  “It’s a historical landmark, so even though people aren’t allowed here anymore, they still try and look after it. C’mon, you still haven’t seen the best part.” Grace knelt at the station door then, an ornate piece of wood painted red, and started picking the lock with a hairpin.

  “Okay, now, that is breaking and entering.”

  “The best thing about historical landmarks is”—there was a ping as the lock clicked open—“all original fixtures. Hundred-year-old locks are child’s play.”

  “Are you aware that you’re slightly terrifying right now?”

  Grace ignored me, turned on the flashlight on her phone, and stepped into the dark. I followed her through a series of empty, pitch-black rooms, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the old building, until we came to a cast-iron spiral staircase that corkscrewed into the ground.

  “Look up,” Grace said as we started descending the stairs. Above us was another domed glass roof, but one of the panels was shattered to reveal a spray of white stars. A rare sight in the city.

  We couldn’t go all the way down the stairs because the basement was flooded. Grace sat on the second-to-last step, took off her shoes, and put her feet in the water. Then she tore off a little piece from the loaf of bread and flicked it into the water. It floated on the surface for a few seconds before I heard a bloop and it was sucked under.

  “What the hell was that?” I said, backing up the stairs.

  “Calm down, it’s only fish. Come down here. Sit really still and they’ll come up to you.”

  It felt a lot like the trash compactor scene from Star Wars, but I’d already come this far, so I did what she said. I went down the stairs. I took off my shoes. I sat next to her, close enough that our clothing brushed when either of us moved. I put my feet in the cold water. I sat still. I didn’t speak. I watched as Grace tore off more bread and let it float above our toes. A few minutes passed, and then the fish came, these small, silver streaks about the size of my palm. They darted in and out of our legs, their slick bodies brushing our ankles. Grace put out more bread and more fish came, until all the water around us was alive with silver.

  “This is awesome,” I said, but Grace hushed me so I wouldn’t scare the fish away. I fell quiet and just watched them, and watched her, and tried not to think about how soft her lips would feel if I kissed her.

  When the bread was gone, Grace leaned back against the stairs with her arms behind her head, so I did the same.

  “Have you ever had a girlfriend, Henry?” she said.

  The question kicked my heart into overdrive. “Uh, no, not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “I . . . Um . . . Shit, I’m really not good at this sharing business.”

  “I noticed. Why is that? I thought you were a writer.”

  “Exactly. I’m a writer. I could go home and write you an essay on why I’ve never had a girlfriend, and it would be awesome. But I . . . kinda suck at telling stories when they’re not on paper.”

  “So you draft everything? Filter everything?”

  “Well, it sounds depressing when you say it like that, but yeah. I guess.”

  “That sucks. You lose the rawness, the truth of who you are if you pass everything through a screen first.”

  “I guess you’re right. If rawness is what you want, at least. I struggle to get the exact message I want across unless I write it down.”

  “Why don’t you try?”

  “How?”

  “Give me the unedited draft of why you’ve never had a girlfriend. Blurt it out.”

  “Because . . . So many reasons. Because I’m seventeen. Because I don’t mind being alone. I like it actually. I’ve been surrounded by teenagers who are always in and out of these dramatic, toxic relationships and that’s never held any appeal for me. I want what my parents have. Extraordinary love.”

  “You understand that you’re missing out on a lot of awesome stuff by choosing to be that way, though, right? Sometimes you don’t know things are going to be extraordinary until they are.”

  “Well, yeah. I mean . . . I guess.”

  “As long as you’re aware. T
hat was a decent first draft, by the way. You can revise your answer and give it to me again in text form if you feel the need.”

  “I’ll keep you posted. I might send you an essay sometime in the next few days.”

  “Okay, Henry Page, I have asked you three questions now. The magic number. It’s your turn to ask me something.”

  “What should I ask you?”

  “Asking what to ask me kind of defeats the purpose of the game. Ask me something you want to know.”

  “What happened to your leg?”

  Grace turned her head to face me. We were only inches apart. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my lips. “That is a boring question.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the answer has no relevance to me as a human being. Here I am asking you very deep stuff about your favorite color and song and singledom, and you go straight for the obvious physical stuff.”

  “I can ask something else if you’d like.”

  Grace looked toward the stars. “I was in a car accident like three months ago. It was bad. The car flipped hood to trunk seven times. I spent about a month in the hospital afterward, getting pins and skin grafts and stuff in my leg. For a week I was mostly unconscious, for a week I wanted to die to end the pain. And then I started to get better. I learned to walk again. I have a series of gnarly scars. No, you cannot see them. Did I cover everything for you?”

  “That sucks.”

  “It really does. But everything happens for a reason and all that jazz, yada, yada, yada.” She rolled her eyes.

  “You don’t believe everything happens for a reason?”

  Grace snorted. “Look up at that, Henry. Look up at that, honestly, and tell me you believe that our lives are anything more than a ridiculous cascade of random chances. A cloud of dust and gas forms our planet, a chemical reaction creates life, and then all of our cavemen ancestors live just long enough to bone each other before they die awful deaths. The universe is not the magical place people like to paint it as. It’s excruciatingly beautiful, but there’s no magic there, just science.”

  I stared at the stars for a little while longer, mainly thinking about caveman sex. “How’d you find this place anyway?”

  Grace sat up a little, opened her chips, and started eating them. “A friend brought me here years ago, when we were kids. We were both troublemakers and breaking in here made us feel like rebels. We used to come here all the time and talk for hours. Now I come here whenever I want to be reminded of how insignificant I am in the grand scale of the universe.”

  “Sounds like lots of fun.”

  “Space is the best cure for sadness that I know.”

  “Feeling insignificant isn’t exactly a great cure for unhappiness.”

  “Hell yeah it is. When I look up into the night sky, I remember that I’m nothing but the ashes of long-dead stars. A human being is a collection of atoms that comes together into an ordered pattern for a brief period of time and then falls apart again. I find comfort in my smallness.”

  “I don’t think you’re on the same page as the rest of humanity, Town. You’re supposed to be terrified of oblivion, same as the rest of us.”

  “The best thing the universe ever gave us is that we’ll all be forgotten.”

  “Oh, come on. Nobody wants to be forgotten.”

  Grace leaned back again and looked up at the sky. The quote “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night” came to mind. My spine shuddered slightly as I watched her. “I kinda like the idea,” she said. “That when we die, despite any pain or fear or embarrassment we experienced during our lives, despite any heartbreak or grief, we get to be dispersed back into nothingness. It makes me feel brave, knowing I’ll get a blank slate at the end. You get a brief glimmer of consciousness to do with what you will and then it’s given back to the universe again. I’m not religious, but even I can appreciate that that’s redemption, on the grandest scale. Oblivion isn’t scary; it’s the closest thing to genuine absolution of sin that I can imagine.”

  “Jesus. No wonder Hink wanted you on the newspaper.”

  “See? Good things come out of first drafts sometimes.”

  “I bet your writing is incredible. Why’d you stop?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual cliché. Post-traumatic stress disorder, I suppose. Very boring, plot wise.”

  I wanted to say You’re kind of extraordinary—I mean, seriously weird, but also extraordinary, but instead I said, “What sins does a seventeen-year-old girl need absolved?”

  “You’d be surprised.” Grace sat up, a small, mischievous smile on her face. “Do you want to know a dark secret from my past?”

  “Oh God, I knew it. You buried a body down here, didn’t you?” I said as she stood and held out her hand and pulled me to my feet. “Who was it? A random homeless person? A teacher from your old school? Is that why you transferred?”

  We walked together, slowly, her still holding my hand, halfway back up the spiral staircase, where she crouched to show me something scratched into the metal.

  “I was, once upon a time, a vandal.” Grace moved her hands aside to reveal a set of crudely engraved letters. It read G + D 4evr. “Voilà.”

  “You did this?”

  “Yep. When I was, like, ten.”

  “Grace Town. I don’t know how I feel about you anymore. What’s the D stand for?”

  “A boy.”

  “Was he your boyfriend?”

  “More of a crush, at the time.”

  “Forever, huh? You guys still together, then?”

  “As it turns out, forever is not as long as I thought it would be.”

  Grace traced her fingers over the letters, trancelike, as though she’d forgotten entirely that I was there. “I should probably head home,” she said quietly. “Thanks for hanging out. I used to come here all the time, but it’s not the same when you’re alone.”

  “Sure. Anytime. We can come here whenever you want.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Just . . . old memories, you know? My mom lives in the city. I might crash with her tonight. You all right to get the bus on your own?”

  “Oh my stars, Grace Town, however will I make it home unaccompanied?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Grace started to climb, but after taking three steps, she paused and looked back at me. “I’m glad I met you, Henry.”

  “I’m glad I met you, Grace.”

  Then I stood there and watched her leave, the light from her phone growing dimmer and dimmer as she was swallowed by the drowning dark, until there was nothing left of her at all, not even a sound, and I was alone in the blackness.

  My feelings were like a knot inside my gut. Normally I knew exactly what my emotions were. Happy, sad, angry, embarrassed: they were all easy enough to catalog and label. But this was something new. A kind of web of thoughts that had offshoots in all directions, none of which made particular sense. A huge feeling, a feeling as big as a galaxy, a feeling so large and twisted that my poor little mind couldn’t comprehend it. Like when you hear that the Milky Way is made up of 400 billion stars, and you think Oh, shit, that’s pretty big but your puny human brain will never really be able to comprehend how gigantic it is because we were built too small. That’s what it felt like.

  I knew when girls liked me. Or, at the very least, I knew when girls were flirting with me. Grace Town wasn’t flirting. Grace Town didn’t like me. Or, if she was and she did, she wasn’t expressing it in any way I was used to.

  I also knew when I liked girls. Abigail Turner (from kindergarten) and Sophi Zhou (from elementary school) had been obsessions. Infatuations. Grace didn’t feel like that. I wasn’t even particularly sure I was attracted to her. There was no burning desire there. I didn’t want to tear off her clo
thes and kiss her. I just felt . . . drawn to her. Like gravity. I wanted to orbit her, be around her, the way the Earth orbits the sun.

  “Do not be an idiot, Henry,” I said as I turned on my phone’s flashlight and climbed the rusty spiral staircase toward the night sky, thinking of Icarus and his hubris and how appropriate the metaphor was (I was kind of proud of it, actually). “Do not fall for this girl.”

  • • •

  When I got home (Mom picked me up, bless her), I opened up the Notes app on my phone and wrote:

  Draft Two

  Because I have never met anyone that I wanted in my life that way before.

  But you.

  I could make an exception for you.

  “MPDG,” SAID LOLA Tuesday afternoon after school. She was lying upside down on my couch, boots on the headrest, head dangling off the edge, halfheartedly playing FIFA. “That’s some serious MPDG behavior right there.”

  “What’s MPDG?” Murray said.

  “Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I mean, she takes Henry on an adventure to an abandoned railway station filled with fish and then talks about the universe? Real people don’t do that.”

  “Well, she did,” I said, “and it was kind of awesome.”

  “No, this is bad. MPDGs are dangerous territory.”

  “Wait, so how do the fish live underground?” Murray said. He’d been stroking his peach fuzz with a befuddled look on his face ever since I’d mentioned them. He must have washed his hair the night before (a rare occurrence), because it had reverted to its natural state: a lion’s mane with the consistency of cotton candy. It enveloped much of his shoulders and face, to the point that he’d had to borrow several hair clips from La to keep it out of his eyes. “Is it like an enclosed ecosystem or something? How’d they even get there?”

  “Probably connected to some kind of water source nearby,” Lola said. “Birds land in the water with fish eggs stuck to their legs, something like that.”

  “Do you think they’re edible? Maybe we should go fishing. What kind of fish were they, Henry? Trout? Bream?”

  “Guys, can we focus here? I’m freaking out.”