Keep Me in Your Heart

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Nathan was hesitant to hear more about “those losers.” There were some things he didn’t want to know.

  Charlie always greeted him with a smile and a handshake. “You’ve settled our girl down … something I’ve been trying to do for years,” he told Nathan one time.

  “I’m thinking of pulling the plugs from her cycle and then she’ll depend on me one hundred percent.”

  That made Charlie laugh. “It’s a plan.”

  In the following weeks, Lisa came over more often, and by mid-March on a sunny Saturday morning she actually helped Nathan and his mother replant pansies in the flower beds. Karen pulled up the limp and wasted plants, hit hard by winter, and Nathan dug small holes for Lisa, who plucked fresh plants from a flat of multicolored flowers and poked them into the prepared ground. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked during a break. His mother had gone inside to make a pitcher of lemonade because the spring day had turned hot.

  “I like doing it. It makes me feel good to know that something beautiful will grow because I planted it.”

  “They’re just pansies. We’ll rip them out in May and June and plant hot-weather flowers.”

  “So? They’re pretty now.” She examined one closely, puffed a breath onto fragile lavender flower petals. “I think these are my favorites. The color’s perfect.” She glanced over at him. “Why are you smiling?”

  “Just remembering that girl on the motorcycle who used to blow me off. You’re not so tough.”

  “And you’re not so nerdy.”

  “Is that what you thought of me?”

  She gave him a look of pure innocence. “That’s my secret.”

  He grinned, decided to ask her what had been on his mind for weeks. “How come you won’t let Fuller submit your pieces in that countywide student works book?”

  “I wasn’t asked.” They were sitting on the ground, and she grabbed her knees and pulled them against her chest.

  “Sure you were. You’re number four-five-four.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “No one told me. I just know that you are. The poem about flying into the sun—I liked it a lot. You wrote it, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve always wanted to fly. Yes, I wrote it.”

  He was elated because he had figured out her identity. “I knew it was you.”

  He also knew that her poem was a metaphor for death. He got it, but just as he had learned not to ask questions about her health, he didn’t bring it up. “Submissions don’t close until next week. You should let Fuller submit it.”

  “Did you tell him he could use yours? You know, the one about loving someone from afar?”

  He grinned sheepishly—no use denying it now. “How long have you known?”

  “Since the day he first read it. You really do wear your heart in your eyes, Malone.”

  “A turnoff?”

  In answer, she leaned forward and kissed his mouth.

  “Hey, Nate, Lisa, wait up.”

  Nathan and Lisa turned at the sound of their names in the hallway as they were leaving school. Skeet and Jodie were heading straight at them. “What’s up?”

  “Have you heard about Roddy?”

  “Don’t think so. What’s happened?”

  “He’s flunking and won’t walk for graduation.” Skeet sounded downright gleeful.

  “He has to go to summer school, and a lot of college coaches have backed off from scholarship offers,” Jodie added. “I guess the term dumb jock really applies, huh?”

  “He could have studied,” Lisa said. “He thought he could coast because he could play ball.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Skeet said.

  “You’re getting far too much pleasure out of this, my man,” Nathan said, grinning.

  “It’s been a long time coming.” Skeet chuckled. “Hey, prom’s next month, and I think we should all go together.”

  Nathan hadn’t broached the subject with Lisa yet, although he assumed that they would be going. He still wasn’t a hundred percent sure of her. She was moody and could retreat into her own world without warning. “I agree. What do you say?”

  “You drinking again?” Lisa asked Skeet.

  Skeet made a face. “No way. I was hungover for two days.”

  “Prom is a rite of passage,” Nathan reminded Lisa.

  “A new adventure,” Jodie said, looking hopeful. “And it wouldn’t be the same without the two of you.”

  “Plus,” Skeet said with a covert glance around, “it’ll be a sort of celebration. Come April, I’ll be eighteen and I’m moving into my own place.”

  “What are you talking about?” This was the first Nathan had heard of this.

  “Larry and two other guys rent an apartment together and one of the guys is moving out. Larry asked me if I wanted to move in and I jumped at the chance.”

  “It makes sense,” Jodie said. “You know how his stepfather treats him.”

  “How’re you going to pay for it?” Nathan asked, taken aback by Skeet’s announcement. There was a time when Skeet told him everything first.

  “I’ve got money saved. And as soon as school’s out, I’ll get a car. My mom said she’d get me one if I graduated. Then I’m starting into the management training program at the grocery store. My supervisor asked me if I wanted to. He said I had ‘potential.’ Think of it! Winston George Andrews has potential.”

  “What about college?”

  “You’re college material, Nate, not me.” Skeet slapped him on the shoulder. “This is a cool move, man. I’ll be living on my own and collecting a full-time paycheck.”

  “I’m glad for you,” Lisa said.

  “So that’s why prom is even more of an event. We’ll be celebrating the start of my new life.”

  “A worthy cause,” Lisa said, her eyes bright with an inner light only Nathan saw.

  In late March, Lisa told Nathan that she would be out of classes for a week. “For some tests,” she said vaguely. “I’ll call you when I surface.”

  Grateful that she’d told him that much, he hunkered down and missed her like crazy. By the following Saturday, he hadn’t heard from her. He called her cell number, only to have some voice announce that the number was no longer in service. She hadn’t told him she was planning on getting a new cell number either.

  He grabbed his car keys and told his mother, “I’m heading over to Lisa’s.”

  At the complex, Nathan wove around to the back, parked in an available space, and jogged toward her apartment. The door was open, and when he stepped inside, he was greeted by two handymen in coveralls. A carpet steaming machine stood near freshly painted drywall. Otherwise, the place was empty.

  “Can I help you?” one of the painters asked.

  “The people who live here … where are they?” His heart hammered and he felt cold all over. Where is she?

  “I guess they’ve moved, buddy. We get called in to repaint and clean the carpets after a tenant goes. According to the front office manager, there’s been nobody here for almost a week now.”

  Nathan skirted the painters and went straight to Lisa’s room, where only blank walls and hollow echoes greeted him. The mural of the flame trees had been partially ripped from the wall and lay in shreds on the carpet like shed skin. He bent and retrieved a swatch, turned it over to see the bright blossoms, and remembered how Lisa’s hands had caressed the paper the night of the dance. A million dreams ago.

  He wadded the paper, threw it at the wall and left. He jogged across the parking lot to the front office, where he burst inside, startling the woman behind the front desk. “The people in 5193, Charlie Terry and his family … where are they?”

  The woman sized him up. “Calm down, young man.” She picked up a clipboard, turned several sheets of paper, ran her finger down a column, looked up. “They’ve moved.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Where?”

  “Even if I had that information—which I don’t—laws prohibit me from revealing it.”
<
br />   “They didn’t tell you anything?”

  She sighed. “Mr. Terry simply came in last week and said they were leaving.”

  “There must be a forwarding address! A phone number!”

  “No, there isn’t. Mr. Terry said that he’d notify us as to where to mail his deposits. Which he may not get back since he failed to give our customary two weeks’ notice.”

  “But—but …”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I have no other information for you. You’d best run along now.”

  “If—if Charlie calls, will you ask him to please contact Nathan?”

  “I’m not a message service.”

  “Please!”

  She agreed, but Nathan saw by her expression that as soon as he was out the door, she’d forget his name.

  Nathan went to Jodie’s apartment and pounded on the door. Jodie opened it, took one look at Nathan and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Where’s Lisa gone?”

  Skeet padded up behind Jodie in bare feet. “Hey, man.”

  “Lisa’s gone? I—I didn’t know,” Jodie said, peeking out the door and toward Lisa’s apartment. “Lisa’s gone,” she said over her shoulder to Skeet.

  “But you live just down the parking lot from her! All her furniture is out. They’re repainting. She’s moved. How can you not know?”

  “Hey, Jodie says she doesn’t know. Don’t be in her face,” Skeet said.

  Jodie tugged at Skeet’s arm. “He didn’t mean anything by it.” She turned back to Nathan. “I swear, I don’t know. I’m in school all day and Mom works. I didn’t see a trailer or moving van when I was home.”

  “But you’re her friend!”

  “She often doesn’t call me, especially now that Skeet and me are together. You know how she is, she keeps to herself a lot.”

  Nathan slumped against the doorjamb. “Why would she do this? Why would she leave without telling me?”

  “Oh, Nathan, I’m so sorry!” The words came from his mother. “And you had no idea they’d just pick up and go?”

  “Lisa told me she had to go through some tests.”

  “Maybe the test results showed something that needed immediate attention.”

  Nathan didn’t find comfort in that thought. “But why wouldn’t she say something to me? Why would she and her family sneak out of town? All their cell phone numbers don’t work, and they left no way to reach them.”

  Karen lifted Abby from a changing table and handed her to Nathan. She picked up Audrey and laid her on the table, fetching a paper diaper from a shelf below. “She’s a very independent girl, Nathan. She doesn’t think or act like you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Abby tried to grab his lower lip.

  “Don’t get defensive. I’ve actually come to like the girl. But she is different. You must admit that.”

  “Different isn’t a bad thing.” His mother’s analysis annoyed him.

  “No, but different is, well, different. She plays by different rules, guards her privacy like a junkyard dog, and has never made you any promises that you’ve talked about. Which leads me to think she understands her dilemma and purposefully doesn’t form attachments.”

  The truths were too much for Nathan. Lisa had made him no promises. He was the one who had made them. He was the one who had pledged his undying love and tried with all his heart to keep and protect her. And now she had vanished. “She shouldn’t have left this way,” he said, more hurt than angry.

  “I agree,” his mother said. “But remember, people have reasons for making the choices they do, and although we don’t understand them, we must accept them.”

  “But how will I know how she’s doing? How will I know when she gets really sick?”

  His mother relieved him of Abby and, balancing each baby on a hip, said, “That is the worst part, Nate … the not knowing. I’ve wondered thousands of times if Molly cried for me to rescue her from the water. I don’t know. I’ll never know.”

  He saw emotional pain etched in her face just before she turned and carried the twins downstairs. He felt for her, and for himself, both now united by grief.

  Nathan couldn’t concentrate at school, and after a week he considered asking his mother to supervise him for the final two months of high school. The twins were older and maybe she could handle his schooling like before. Maybe he could even test out and receive his diploma in the mail. Crestwater was just a big, indifferent institution as far as Nathan was concerned, and he wanted out. Certainly except for himself, Skeet and Jodie, no one seemed to notice that Lisa wasn’t there. “She came and went a lot,” Jodie told him. “People got used to it.”

  “And she didn’t exactly go out of her way to make friends,” Skeet said.

  Those things didn’t matter to Nathan. Lisa was gone and there was a hole in his life large enough to walk through. Even his guitars brought him no comfort. His music had dried up. He felt empty of song.

  Fuller called Nathan up to his desk before Easter break. The final bell had sounded, the room had cleared, and in his raspy voice he said, “I wanted to tell you that your poem has been selected for the countywide book that will be published in the fall. Congratulations.”

  There was a time when the news would have elated Nathan. Now it was just information.

  “The competition was stiff,” Fuller went on to say. “Thousands of entries, but only two hundred chosen, plus sixty-five student art projects. Nice job, Mr. Malone.”

  “Were any others picked from Crestwater?”

  “One more. At the last minute, student four-five-four allowed me to also submit their work, which surprised me. I’d thought persuading this student was a lost cause.”

  “The Icarus poem.”

  “That was the one. How did you know?”

  “I asked the author about it, and she told me she had written it, and I told her she should let you submit it.”

  “So then you know everything?”

  “Yes.” Nathan’s gaze held Fuller’s. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to the author, do you?”

  “Sadly, no. The only message a teacher gets from the administration is that a student will no longer be in class and has left our area.” He shook his head. “Pity. She was quite gifted.”

  Nathan’s brief flare of hope that Fuller might know something about Lisa’s whereabouts dimmed. “Thanks,” he said dully.

  “Mr. Malone, you too are talented. Also, you’re a good student, and if you ever need faculty recommendations on college applications, I’ll be glad to write one for you.”

  “Thanks again.” Nathan scooped up his books and went to the door.

  “You aren’t alone in missing student four-five-four, Mr. Malone.”

  Skeet and Jodie hung with Nathan over the break and worked hard to raise his spirits. They were playing a video game in his basement one morning when Jodie asked, “Do you know why Lisa was so secretive about her personal life? I’ve always wondered.”

  “She never told you anything?” This surprised Nathan because he figured girls shared every morsel of information they possessed.

  “Do you know something?”

  Now that Lisa had fled, there was no reason to keep her secret. It might also help his two friends realize that his sense of loss wasn’t just the pinings of a lovesick puppy. He set down his game controller and without any buildup told them all he’d known for the past many months. Jodie’s expression turned to shock, then she cried. “Cancer? Lisa has brain cancer?”

  Skeet went slack-jawed. “Get out.”

  “It’s true. All those months she skipped out of last period, she was going for radiation treatments.”

  “I—I remember she’d sometimes get headaches,” Jodie said, blowing her nose. “She told me they were migraines.”

  “Much worse,” Nathan said.

  “So I guess she got worse?” Skeet ventured.

  “The first question I’ll ask, if I can track her down before …” He couldn’
t finish the sentence.

  Jodie said, “Tell me again how you’ve tried to find her.”

  Nathan went down his list. “All dead ends.”

  “Did you go to the construction company where Charlie and her mom worked?”

  Nathan sat upright. “No. I didn’t.”

  “People get final paychecks. If they left quickly, the place may have a way to reach them.”

  “You’re a genius!” Nathan jumped up, renewed hope surging through him, followed swiftly by disappointment. “I don’t know where they worked.”

  “I do,” Jodie said.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jodie said. “I have an idea, so let me handle this. Besides, I think a curious friendly girlfriend trumps a desperate hysterical boyfriend in this instance.”

  Eventually they drove to the site where Jodie knew Lisa’s mother had last worked, and parked across the street. Before Nathan and Skeet could get out of the car, Jodie stopped them. “Sit. It’s best I go alone.”

  “But—” Nathan started.

  “Tie him up if you have to,” she told Skeet. Taking her purse and a shopping bag, she crossed the street and entered the construction trailer.

  Time dragged and Nathan thought he’d jump out of his skin from the suspense. “What’s taking so long?”

  “It’s only been fifteen minutes, dude. She’ll come through,” Skeet said. “This girl’s outstanding.”

  It seemed as if an eternity had passed before Jodie emerged from the trailer and came back across the street. She scooted into the backseat.

  “Well?” Nathan demanded. “Don’t make me go postal.”

  Jodie grinned and handed him a folded slip of paper. “Charlie Terry’s new cell phone number.”

  Nathan snatched it. “You did it, Jodie! Man, you’re terrific!”

  “I told you so!” Skeet reached around and hugged her. “How did you do it?”

  “I went to the only woman in there. She’s taken over Lisa’s mother’s job, and I said that I was Lisa’s best friend and that she’d left before the yearbooks came out and that I had to make sure she got hers because it is her senior year … blah-blah-blah.” She pulled a book from her bag and grinned. “I cried too. Real tears.”