Everything I Thought I Knew

by Shannon Takaoka

  “I’m going to help Jenna clean up,” I say, and make my way toward the broken glass.

  When Jane finds me later, Tyler’s words are still in my head. She drops down next to me on the sofa. “Hey, shark bait, I didn’t know you surfed.” She’s slurring her words and her red lipstick is smudged. I’m not sure what happened to her flannel-wearing friend.

  I shrug. “I’ve just been taking some lessons.”

  “Wellll, Tyler and Jenna are pretty good, so if you’re keeping up with them, you must have been taking lessons a lot.”

  “Not really. And I’ve only run into Tyler once.”

  “And your doctor is cool with it?”

  “I don’t need permission,” I tell Jane. “Transplant patients can go back to whatever physical activities they want to after, like, six months.”

  But is nearly getting myself killed in waves I have no business navigating really something my doctor would be cool with?

  “It’s fine,” I add, trying to convince myself as much as her. “I’m always with someone.”

  “With who?” Jane asks.

  “With who, what?”

  Jane rolls her eyes.

  “Who are you always with? I know all the surfers at school and you definitely don’t hang out with them.”

  This is starting to feel less like a conversation and more like an interrogation.

  “He’s not someone from school. He’s just a guy who gives lessons.”

  “Where?”

  “At North Point Beach.”

  Jane leans in so close I can smell the alcohol on her breath.

  “Are you sure . . .”

  She starts laughing and laughs so hard she can’t catch her breath. Oh. She’s high too, I realize.

  “Am I sure what, Jane?”

  Jane puts her hand on my shoulder, making a face like she’s concerned for me. “Are you sure you haven’t made all this up? That this whole surfing thing is not one of those figments of your ‘cellular imagination’?” She makes air quotes when she says this, which makes it even worse, somehow.

  She’s laughing even more hysterically now, doubled over against me on the sofa. I know she’s wasted, but still. I feel like I’m eight years old again, and the mean girl from my class just said something so perfectly designed to make me cry that I’m afraid I’m going to crumple right then and there, in front of everybody.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I tell her.

  Instead, I head straight for the back bedroom and start digging through the pile of jackets on the bed. Jane can ask someone else to take her motorcycle home. Or leave it here. I don’t really care.

  But what if she’s right? I think. What if I really can’t tell the difference anymore between what’s real or in my head? What if I only think I knew the way to Sarah Harris’s house? What if the tunnel dream is just that — a dream? What if the man I chased on the street in San Francisco only reminded me of the man I saw crying in my room after the transplant, who, in all likelihood, was an anesthesia-induced hallucination? Maybe the only thing wrong with me is me. There’s nothing mysterious or unexplainable going on. There are no cellular memories. Just me. Losing my shit. Lost heart, lost mind. Not much left to lose after that.

  Jane catches up with me in the hallway and asks where I’m going.

  “Home,” I say. “I’m tired.”

  She lets out a drama-queen sigh.

  “Oh, come on, Chloe, stay. I was just teasing. Don’t be so serious.”

  “I should never have told you anything,” I say as I squeeze past her.

  “I don’t know, it seems like you’ve been pretty secretive to me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I turn around to face her.

  “I didn’t know you surfed. I didn’t know you knew Tyler and Jenna.”

  “I don’t know them,” I say. “And they don’t know me. You don’t know me either.”

  Right now, it feels like nobody does. I’m not even sure I know me.

  Out on the sidewalk, I take a deep breath of ocean air mingled with car exhaust. A line of red taillights trails down a series of descending intersections on Taraval Street, disappearing when the cars turn at the Great Highway, which marks the western end of the city and the beginning of beach. From here, it almost looks as if the cars are falling off the edge of the world.

  As I start walking west, down Taraval, I hear the door of the house opening and closing behind me. It’s Jane. She’s trying to catch up, but I pick up my pace.

  “What are you doing, Chloe?” she yells.

  “The opposite of what you tell me to do!” I yell back.

  She doesn’t give up easily. I can hear her clomping down the street behind me in her heavy black boots.

  “But, hello? You’re my designated driver. How am I going to get the bike back to my dad’s?”

  I stop but don’t turn around.

  “You are being very un-friend-like,” she says. “Un-fun. Unfair. Uncool.” When I look back and see her with her khaki army coat buttoned unevenly, she seems like a sad little girl. Jane is pretty messed up. I noticed that she and the flannel-shirt guy had been doing shots earlier in the night. Who knows what else they got into later, when they’d disappeared into another room. What if she tries to ride the bike home without me?

  “Okay,” I say. “But I’m leaving now.”

  Although I’ve agreed to take Jane home, I’m still mad. Mad at her for being so mean. Mad at myself for being too wrapped up in my own issues to even realize that Jane is obviously going through some stuff too. Mad at my messed-up brain that won’t stop making me question whether all the things that make me me are really mine. Mad at the world, for giving all of us this unbelievable gift — life — then spoiling it with a certain, yet unknowable, expiration date. Thanks to heart disease. Cancer. Gunshots. A motorcycle crash. As I maneuver the bike through the streets of San Francisco, I suddenly realize where I need to go.

  The Broadway Tunnel. Because, somehow, I know that that’s the one. The one from my dreams. The one where my heart donor died.

  I’m going to have an exorcism.

  Just like in the dream, air rushes through the seams of my face shield. I accelerate as I approach the entrance, and it feels as if the tunnel’s mouth is opening wide, waiting to swallow me up. Bright yellow lights streak by, blurring into a single fluorescent line. The curve, treacherous at this speed, is coming.

  This is where the tree should be. This is where the tree is, every single night.

  This is where I die.

  This is where I live.

  Screeching tires.

  Die. Live.

  Broken glass. Burning rubber.

  Live. Die.

  Blood washing over my eyes.

  I lean far into the curve, feeling its frictional force pushing against my balance. The tires of the bike squeal and echo inside the tunnel. I almost skid out but miraculously manage to maintain the barest minimum of control, the bike teetering briefly before accelerating out of the turn. Then I’m racing toward the exit, which opens wider and wider and wider and wider, the lights of Chinatown beyond filling up the night.

  Jane is pounding my back with her fist. Has she been doing this for a while? I had forgotten she was even there. She’s yelling something that’s muffled by her helmet and by the sound of . . . a police siren. Shit. I see red and blue lights flashing in the sideview mirror, hear a robotic male voice directing me: “Pull over to the right. Pull over to your right.”

  I have never been pulled over by a police officer before. Do I even have my driver’s license on me? Guess it’s too late to worry about that now. I slow down and pull over to the curb in front of a dim sum restaurant, closed and dark. As soon as I stop, Jane jumps off the bike and whips the helmet off her head.

  “Jesus, Chloe! You’re going to get us both killed!”

  “Jane . . .” I see the officer getting out of his car behind us, his eyes on Jane, who is evidently not inclined to help me finesse th
e situation at the present moment.

  “I know I don’t always make the most stellar decisions, but I don’t want to die!” Jane may still be drunk, but I can also see that she’s scared. Of me. I did almost get us killed. Without giving it a second thought.

  “Jane . . .” I quickly flick my eyes toward the officer, now just steps away, in a silent plea for her to shut up.

  “Everything okay here?” he asks Jane.

  She glares at me. “Fine, officer.”

  “You’re sure?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  He turns to me. “Step off the bike and remove your helmet.”

  I do as he says.

  He gives me a hard stare. “Are you aware of how fast you were going?”

  “I’m not sure, officer,” I respond. Because I’m not. I wasn’t watching the speedometer.

  His stare is ice-cold. “Eighty. You were going eighty miles per hour in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone. You’re lucky you didn’t cause an accident.”

  I’m always lucky, I think.

  “I need to see your license,” he says. “Now.”

  I fumble in my coat pocket and am relieved to find that I do have my license, at least. I hand it over to him.

  “This is a driver’s license.”

  Jane is looking down at the ground.

  “Yes, is there a problem?” I ask.

  He looks at me as if I’m the biggest idiot he’s ever met. “You need a Class M1 motorcycle license to operate this vehicle, which you should know from the training course.”

  “Umm . . . there’s a course?”

  “A mandatory safety course.” He prints a citation from the device he’d been entering details on and thrusts it at me. “You’re either going to have to call someone who is licensed to ride this vehicle to come pick it up or I’m going to have to impound it.”

  “She’s licensed.” I point to Jane. “I was just giving her a lift home.”

  He turns back to Jane. “You have a license?”

  Jane shakes her head no. “I don’t have a license, sir. This is my father’s bike.”

  Not a gift, I think. Liar.

  An hour and a half later, we sit in silence as the Uber that picked us up at the impoundment lot stops at a traffic light on Divisadero. Tattoos. Drunken parties. Hacking medical records. And now a $500 fine and summons to appear in traffic court. Jane and I are on quite a streak.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quietly.

  Jane looks at me. “What are you doing, Chloe?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are you really doing with me?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “Are we? Or are you just using me to explore your wild side?”

  “Jane, no.”

  “Do you think I’m glad that I flunked my senior year? That I didn’t graduate? You have a good reason, but me, I just didn’t go to class. Smoked way too much pot. Partied all the time. And nobody noticed. My dad certainly didn’t. He doesn’t even notice when I steal his spanking-new Ducati right out of his garage. And my mom’s too focused on her do-over family. But, believe it or not, I was trying to get my act together before you came along. I know what everyone says about me at school — that I’m wild and don’t give a shit about anything, and I’ve done a pretty good job of proving them right. But tonight really scared me. I don’t want any more run-ins with the cops, and I sure as hell don’t want to get brain damage from crashing a motorcycle. So if that’s what you’re looking for, maybe you should find someone else to rebel with, okay?”

  “Jane, come on, that’s not how it is.” I can feel a knot forming in the base of my throat. “Don’t —”

  “Save it,” she says as the car pulls over in front of her dad’s building. She opens the door and hops out, leaving me with one final thought: “Sort your shit out!”

  But what she doesn’t know is that in some weird, not-sure-I-can-really-explain-it way, that’s exactly what I was trying to do. I only hope it worked.

  Jane and I haven’t spoken since the night I nearly killed us in the Broadway Tunnel. She’s not answering my texts. And she’s avoiding me at school, which takes effort, since only four classrooms and the library are even open during the summer session. There aren’t many places to hide.

  I stop by the room where kids can get tutoring help. Jane is in the corner with a skinny, red-haired guy who I recognize from Math Club. He represented our school at the International Math Olympiad this year.

  Jane ignores me and pretends to be riveted by the quadratic equations spread between them. Equations I could have easily helped her with, I notice.

  Math Olympiad is the first to acknowledge me.

  “Hi,” he says. “Are you tutoring too?”

  Could he be the one person at school who doesn’t know about my heart transplant? Who doesn’t know to make a concerned face and ask how I’m feeling? I feel, for a minute, like I’ve stepped into an alternate reality.

  “Nope,” I respond, “just working toward my GED.” He laughs like I’m telling a joke. I ignore him and nudge Jane with my foot. She looks up and stares at me, her face blank.

  “Do you want to get lunch?” I ask.

  “Can’t today,” says Jane. “Me and my friend Dave here already have plans.”

  “Drew,” he says, looking equal parts bewildered, thrilled, and terrified by this development.

  “Drew,” she says, her blue eyes locked on mine. “Drew’s my lunch date.”

  Drew’s pale face goes pink at the word date.

  “Okay,” I say. “Maybe later this week.”

  But she’s already turned her attention back to the equations, focusing hard on freezing me out.

  “Bye!” Drew calls behind me as I retreat, oblivious to my disappointment. Jane doesn’t even look up.

  Well, that confirms it, I think as I exit into the empty hallway, where my squeaky Vans echo on the polished floor. Jane’s still mad at me. And I suspect it’s not just because I put her life in danger. What are you really doing with me? she’d asked. I have been dragging her back to the life she’s been trying to leave behind, I realize with a flush of guilt. Jane really does want to get her act together, pass trigonometry, and graduate. And I’d been so wrapped in my own drama that I hadn’t even noticed that she was struggling too.

  But she’s wrong if she thinks that I’ve only been hanging out with her because of her reputation as a party girl. Jane’s smart, even if she doesn’t believe it. She’s funny. She’ll happily binge-watch The Walking Dead with me and not once get grossed out. She’s a talented artist. She doesn’t post obnoxious selfies on Instagram; she posts beautiful, ultra-close-up photos of things most of us pass by every day and never notice — tree bark, a fern, a spider spinning a web. She let me borrow all her favorite manga comics, including the ones that are rare and hard to find. She is my friend. I want us to stay friends. But maybe that’s not what she wants, or needs, anymore.

  I head down the stairs that lead to the front lobby. On the “things I haven’t totally screwed up” front, I did turn in my physics paper. Which means that, barring any further emergencies, I will finally graduate in a few weeks. Alone. There won’t be a ceremony. I won’t have a party. Even if I wanted one, nobody would be able to come anyway. Most of my old friends, Emma included, are already gone — attending freshman orientations, moving into their university dorms, moving on.

  In the lobby, I hesitate in front of the glass case that houses a bulletin board, still pinned with announcements about graduation-week activities that are now past. Cap and gown pickup. Awards night. Senior picnic.

  I think about that question I had asked myself when I was studying all those mind-bending theories about alternate universes a few weeks ago. Do I really want to go back to the life I had before I got a new heart?

  All those months ago. Back when everything in my life was supposedly on track, when everything was going according to plan, back before I knew that anything was wrong with my heart
: Sunday nights were always the worst. I recall that feeling I’d get in the pit of my stomach as I mentally prepared for the five overscheduled days ahead. Cross-country practice every day after school, an English paper due, two tests. I would lie awake in my bed, unable to relax, debating whether I should review chapter fourteen in my chemistry textbook just one more time, in case of a Monday morning pop quiz. I would stress about the essay question that had appeared on the previous Friday’s history test, the one I hadn’t anticipated, about how the Polish Solidarity movement impacted the trajectory of the Cold War. I would turn everything over and over and inside out in my mind. What if? I agonized. What if I blew it? What if all the studying, all the preparation, wasn’t enough? Because when one test could mean the difference between an A in history and a B+, and that B+ the difference between a 4.1 and a 3.97 GPA, and a few tiny fractions of a percentage the difference between getting into a top school and one that was “lesser than,” there was no room for error. You couldn’t blow off studying to watch a movie with your parents, or get the flu, or even just go to bed early and catch up on some sleep. There was too much at stake.

  Or at least it seemed so then. Things look different now. Now that I understand how little one history test or a chemistry pop quiz matters when the stakes truly are life or death. All that worry and preparation and anxiety. I wasted so much time and energy trying to be perfect, believing I had to be perfect. But it’s so easy to see now — after: my life wouldn’t have been over if I didn’t get into a top school. Not even close.

  I only have one other class to attend after lunch. I decide to blow it off. I’m already passing, which, I decide, is good enough.

  I push through the double doors of the school lobby and into the sunlight, smiling at the irony of me skipping the final class of the day while Jane toils over quadratic equations with Drew. Maybe she’ll come around. But for now, I may as well just go home. There’s nothing else for me to do. Which is weird. And exhilarating.

  I’m lying on the hammock in the backyard, moonbathing.

  My dad and I used to do this on full-moon nights, back when the number-one item on my Christmas list was a telescope.