Our Chemical Hearts

by Krystal Sutherland

  So Lola just messaged me and told me she was very pleased with our modeling skills. Definitely one for the resume.

  Naturally.

  I believe I was even cut from one picture in favor of “Grace, copied three times.”

  Lola has excellent taste.

  Sometimes I wonder if there’s more to life than being really, really, really ridiculously good-looking.

  We’ll have to test out your Blue Steel next time.

  Exactly.

  *looks at pagination*

  What is this . . . a newspaper for ants?

  HA.

  People on the bus now think I’m a crazy person because I laughed out loud.

  I’m okay with it.

  PS. Principal Valentine dropped by the office this afternoon. Woman is scary as balls. I had to pretend like we’ve actually settled on a theme. I told her we want to keep it a secret because it’s going to blow her mind. Need to decide ASAP.

  How long were you at the office for? Sorry I wasn’t at school today.

  I’m on my way home. Present tense. I spent most of the afternoon at Murray’s, editing one of Galaxy’s pieces about the disappointing texture of chicken served at the cafeteria. A truly riveting article.

  Yikes.

  I suddenly feel deep sympathy for Miranda Priestly. (Might have watched The Devil Wears Prada last weekend.)

  How did one person edit the newspaper all by themselves in the past?

  Amphetamines?

  Makes sense.

  We should organize some speedballs for print day.

  From what I hear about him, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kyle kept a stash somewhere in the office.

  I’m sure those business cards Hink gave us have some decent residue on them. Maybe give ’em a lick?

  Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark!

  Business class. It’s the only way to fly.

  Maybe instead of getting into hard drugs, we could become tortured alcoholics? More appropriate for writers. I think we should start drinking in the office every afternoon. Let’s get a mini fridge and fill it with beer.

  We can hide it under Lola’s desk. She’s small. She probably won’t even notice.

  “You can’t sit there, sorry, beer sits there.”

  “We have no designer this year because we replaced them with beer.”

  #BeerBeforePeople

  Sounds like a government campaign.

  Hillary Clinton, 2016: Beer before people.

  Only Hillary could pull that off.

  Damn straight.

  I’d vote for that.

  As would I. Anyway, have a nice night. Lift tomorrow afternoon?

  Yeah, for sure. Catch you on the flip side, kid.

  And then, on Thursday, like a miracle descending from the heavens, there came news of The Party. (Much like World War I, it only became known as The Party later on in the year. Before it had actually occurred, The Party [i.e., WWI] was known as Heslin’s Party [i.e., the Great War].) Heslin’s Party/The Party began as a rumor that escalated to a lunchtime conversation topic that escalated to a full-fledged event when James Heslin made it Facebook official less than twenty-four hours after the initial speculation had begun. The whole year was invited, along with half the juniors (the hot, female half, naturally). Us seniors, despite the occasional personality clash, generally all got along pretty well. Maybe we were an anomalous bunch, or maybe high school movies have been lying to us all along, but all I know is that the “jocks” sometimes hung out with the “nerds” and that most people were nice to most other people most of the time.

  Anyway, The Party, to be held on Friday night, was all anyone was talking about for the rest of the day. Lola and Murray were going, naturally. La’s girlfriend, Georgia, was even driving over from the next town to attend. I wasn’t much for parties normally, but this one. This one.

  I wanted desperately for Grace Town to go and I wanted to sit with her all night while music thumped through my chest, away from the quiet, fishbowl room that was our office and the quiet, boyish room that was Grace’s car.

  I opened the Notes app on my phone, and under the second draft I wrote:

  Draft Three

  Because I never realized that you could fall in love with humans the same way you fall in love with songs. How the tune of them could mean nothing to you at first, an unfamiliar melody, but quickly turn into a symphony carved across your skin; a hymn in the web of your veins; a harmony stitched into the lining of your soul.

  “I AM GOING to The Party,” I announced to her on Friday morning before class. (In retrospect, I probably said “Heslin’s Party” at the time, but I digress.) Grace looked up from her computer screen, where she was scrolling through Tumblr, as per usual.

  “You’re definitely going?” she said.

  “I’m definitely going,” I answered. I put my things down and turned on my computer and watched her as she turned back to her screen. Now was the moment of revelation. Either she really liked me or she didn’t. Either she felt for me how I felt for her, or she didn’t. A minute ticked by, and then a minute more, and right when I thought I’d be stuck going to some shitty party by myself—I had to go now, you can’t just announce that you’re going to a party and then not go—Grace said, without looking at me, “I think I’ll go too.”

  I knew then. Grace Town, beautiful, mysterious, damaged, and thoroughly, thoroughly weird, liked me. The shaky body language and the lack of flirting meant nothing, because she was coming to the party and parties meant alcohol and dimly lit rooms and maybe after a drink she would lighten up a little and then we could talk about the cemetery and the car crash and everything.

  Grace wasn’t looking at me, so I watched her without blinking and said, “Cool,” in the most casual voice I could muster.

  “Are you going to drink?” she said.

  I wasn’t much of a drinker. I’d been truly drunk only once before, when I was sixteen. Murray had coerced me into drinking tequila with him, to test the legitimacy of the “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” theorem. Over the course of the evening I discovered that “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” is wildly inaccurate. It’s more like one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, vomit all over your clothes, cry while your father puts you in the shower, vomit some more, cry and ask your mother to cook you “salmon eggs,” whatever that is, be put to bed by your mother, decide you’re going to escape your parents’ totalitarian regime, vomit in the garden while escaping, be put back to bed by your father, floor.

  Not quite so neat and tidy as the saying would have you believe.

  But I said, “I might have a drink or two,” because I had a feeling Grace would be drinking and I wanted to do that with her, to watch her as she sipped her alcohol and observe the way it changed her. I wanted to know what kind of drunk she was. Angry? Probably. Flirty? Probably not. Sad? Almost definitely.

  “I can get us drinks,” Grace said, and I said, “Cool,” again and then the bell rang and she packed up her stuff and left without another word.

  One thing was clear: only five short weeks after I’d met her, Grace Town was already stuck on repeat in my head.

  • • •

  Fall had kicked into high gear by the time Friday afternoon rolled around. The sunshine had a hazy quality to it, tinted by the gold and orange leaves that sifted down from the trees whenever the breeze blew. Everything for the party had been organized: the booze, the location (Heslin’s parents were out of town for the weekend—so cliché, but whatever).

  All there was to do was tell my parents my plans for the evening, which went something like this:

  Me: “Father, I intend to engage in illegal underage drinking again tonight.”

  Dad: “Good lord, Henry. It’s about time.
Do you need a ride?”

  • • •

  Someone had decided it was a good idea, and our rite of passage as seniors, to drink on the school football field before migrating to Heslin’s for the party. By the time I arrived, around sunset, half a tub of punch had already been consumed by the stumbling attendees. And when I say tub, I mean a legitimate bathtub that someone had bought or stolen from somewhere and filled with a concoction of cheap vodka, even cheaper wine, and “fruit drink” (high schoolers don’t have the cash for actual juice).

  Grace was there when I arrived, sitting cross-legged by herself against a tree at the edge of the field, her cane resting across her lap. There were two plastic bottles in front of her, one empty, the other half-full of some strange pastel yellow liquid.

  “Henrik,” she said when she saw me. I don’t remember at what point we’d assigned each other Germanic/Russian nicknames, or why, but we had, and I loved it.

  “Evening, Grakov,” I said.

  “I procured you an instrument of intoxication.” She handed me the empty plastic bottle and nodded toward the tub of punch, from which Murray was drinking with his bare hands while he gave a demonstration to a small crowd of onlookers on the correct safety technique of drinking from crocodile-infested billabongs. When attending public gatherings, he tried to wear as much “safari clothing” as possible, in an effort to evoke Steve Irwin and support the notion that he was some kind of bushman. Tonight his hair was tied up in a messy bun and he wore a large tooth on a necklace. A lot of girls looked very impressed.

  “So when you said, ‘I’ll get us drinks,’ you actually meant, ‘I’ll search through my trash for a used bottle’? I feel betrayed.”

  “Two used bottles, my friend. It took me all day to track down these babies. Plus I scored this,” she said, pulling a silver flask from inside her bra (lucky flask). “Now go get a beverage.”

  The punch was already a little worse for wear. Several bugs had come to a tragic yet poetic end in it, not to mention the log Muz had floated in its sickly yellow depths to represent his reptilian nemesis. But I didn’t care. I sank my empty bottle in and waited for the bubbles to disappear. I took two huge gulps—almost half the bottle—then sank it back into the punch again for a refill. I didn’t want to get “salmon eggs” wasted, but I wanted the alcohol to loosen me up a little.

  Lola came bounding over to me as I screwed the cap back on my bottle of hooch, her girlfriend, Georgia, at her side.

  “Touch me, Henry Page,” Georgia said, grabbing my free hand and pressing it to her cheek. This was her standard greeting, which tells you pretty much all you need to know about Georgia McCracken except that she a) was a pocket-sized redhead with a spray of freckles across her pale face and b) somehow had the lilted remnants of an Irish accent despite never having lived in Ireland.

  “Hey, G,” I said, hugging her loosely because she was so small, I feared a real hug would snap her spine. “How’s small-town life treating you?”

  “Watch Swamp People. It’s pretty much a documentary on my life.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Oh boy. It’s gonna be an interesting night,” said Lola, taking a long swig of her drink, then nodding at something behind my shoulder. I turned to spot Murray talking to and clasping the hands of a very unimpressed-looking Indian girl. Sugar Gandhi. “That boy does not know when to quit.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Somebody set their alarm for a one-a.m. emotional breakdown. La, I believe it’s your turn to provide support? I handled the last one.”

  “Fuck” is all Lola said, which meant she knew it was her turn. She took another large swig of her drink, entwined her fingers with Georgia’s, and said, “Let’s intervene now before he starts singing Bollywood love songs to her again.”

  “Why? What’s more romantic than a little casual racism?” said Georgia as Lola dragged her toward Sugar Gandhi, who was now glaring at me like I was somehow accountable for Muz’s terrible behavior. I shrugged and tried to look apologetic and then walked back over to Grace. By the time I sunk to the ground next to her, I’d downed another quarter bottle of punch and could feel the strange yet familiar warmth of intoxication radiating from my chest down to my thighs.

  “It’s going to be a good night,” I said. I leaned back against the tree, my shoulder pressing into hers, my words sparkling on the tip of my tongue, my mouth already feeling a size too small for my face.

  I was sufficiently drunk by the time we walked to Heslin’s, so I don’t actually remember how we got there or who carried the bathtub (with Murray in it).

  I also don’t remember exactly how Grace and I ended up sitting next to each other at a patio table in Heslin’s backyard. Some kind of musical chairs occurred. Someone got up to go to the bathroom, someone else got up to go get a drink, someone sat down in someone else’s spot, until no one was where they’d started, and Grace Town was next to me. Close to me. So close, our legs were touching. She was at least a bottle and a half of punch down by now, and already more casual and affectionate than I’d ever seen her before. She laughed when people told jokes. She smiled at me. She engaged. Even when no one was talking and she didn’t realize anyone was looking at her, there was a light behind her eyes. She sat up straighter. The body language she lacked when she was sober was there in spades when she was tipsy. She looked—despite being moderately dirty and unkempt—quite beautiful.

  People noticed her in a way they never had before. People noticed how pretty she was. People noticed that she was there. As fucked up as it is to say, alcohol made her come alive.

  When we brainstormed the newspaper, we always sat together. Accidental touches were unavoidable at such close range, but when she hadn’t been drinking, Grace always pulled back from them. Always sat so close that they would happen, then pulled back from them. Like she wanted me to touch her until it happened, and then when it did, she suddenly changed her mind. But there was none of that tonight. The casual grazes of skin only got more frequent, until I was telling a story and Grace was laughing at me and saying, “Stop, stop, you’re embarrassing yourself.” Grace put her hand over my mouth in an effort to silence me, and I mock fought her, both of us giggling at the struggle. My hand on her waist, her hand on my knee, our bodies pressed closer together than they had any need to be.

  “Henry! It’s our song!” she said as a cover of “Someday” started playing. I was surprised she remembered my favorite song. I was even more surprised she referred to it as our song. Not my song. Our song. Grace threaded her fingers through mine and pulled me to my feet and led me to the crowded makeshift dance floor (i.e., the hardwood floor of Heslin’s living room). As the beat dropped, she started moving in the most thoroughly un-Grace-like fashion. All I could do was watch. Under the gold lights of the chandelier above, time shifted, a portal opened, and I could suddenly see the girl she’d been before I knew her, the girl from her Facebook profile pictures.

  As she danced, she took off the oversized flannel shirt she was wearing and tied it around her waist, leaving her in only a fitted white tank top and jeans. Under all that clothing, there she was, lean and angular and lovely. There was something sharp about her shoulders and collarbones and jawline, like she didn’t quite eat enough. And there was something about her sunken eyes and hollow cheekbones and blunt, self-cut hair that meant she would always look at little bit like a heroin junkie.

  But the way she moved. God, the way she moved. The way she closed her eyes and bit her lip, like she could feel the music pulsing in her blood.

  “Henrik, you’re not dancing,” Grace said when she noticed, and she took my hand in hers again and kind of shook me, as if this would somehow imbue me with the power of rhythm. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I was here with her, and I was drunk, and she was incredibly beautiful, and I wanted so badly to kiss her for the first time while “our song” was playing. So I pulled her against me, and when the beat dropped again an
d all the people around us screamed in delight, I danced with her.

  Grace kept touching me, kept finding excuses to run her fingers over my skin. All I had to do was find the courage to lean in and put my mouth on hers. One moment of extraordinary courage.

  “Henry! Grace!” yelled a familiar voice. A second later, Lola was there, hugging the both of us, dancing between us, Georgia at her side. I could’ve killed her. Then the song was over and the next one began and we were all dancing together, jumping up and down to the beat, me silently mourning what could have been.

  Three songs later, Grace took my hand. “I need a drink,” she said.

  “We’ll come with you,” Lola said.

  I shot La an “I’m going to strangle you later” look, but she didn’t see it, so I gritted my teeth and followed the girls off the dance floor back into the yard. What remained of the tub punch was now a suspicious brown color and had one of Murray’s shoes floating in it. (I’d seen Muz only once since we arrived at Heslin’s, inexplicably dressed in a pirate costume and drinking out of a yard glass with a curly straw. God love him.) Grace still had the flask of vodka in her bag, so we split it four ways, topped it up with the only available mixer (Barq’s Red Creme Soda), and sat down in the dark by the garden to drink.

  “Actually, I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Grace said, handing me her cup.

  “Oh, me too,” Georgia echoed.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, I turned to Lola. “I don’t mean for this to sound harsh, but please, for the love of all that is holy, you need to fuck off immediately. I think something is happening with Grace.”