Heart to Heart

by Lurlene McDaniel

  · 25 ·

  Kassey

  I never let on to Arabeth how angry I was about Wyatt’s taking her to his “special place.” I stuffed my anger and faked having fun toasting in the sun, but as soon as I dropped her off, I hurried home, showered and changed, and drove straight to Wyatt’s. His car was gone, so I parked in front of his house and waited. And I seethed. Not since the day I’d attacked him on my front-porch steps had I been so angry. And this time I was hurt too. He had kissed Arabeth. Just like he’d kissed me.

  I’d been parked for about thirty minutes when he drove up, pulling a small trailer with his lawn mowers and other equipment. I met him on his front lawn.

  “Kassey, what’re you doing here?”

  “We need to talk.” Amazing how I could keep so calm when all I wanted to do was scratch out his eyes.

  “Can I clean up first?”

  “Whatever.”

  Inside his house, I sat on the sofa watching his twelve-year-old brother play a video game. His parents weren’t home and I was glad because I knew I was going to yell. Wyatt emerged from the shower in clean clothes, rubbing his hair with a towel. He smelled like mint soap.

  “My room,” he said.

  His brother never looked up. Wyatt’s room was a mess, heaped with clothes and paper plates and soda cans. “Excuse the dump. I shovel it out once a week,” he said, sweeping clutter off his bed for me to sit.

  I didn’t sit.

  “Okay,” he said, tossing the towel in a heap. “What’s the problem?”

  Facing him, I started to shake with pent-up fury, but I kept my voice steely. “I spent the day with Arabeth at the Six Flags water park.”

  “Okay.”

  “She told me, Wyatt. She told me how you took her out behind the airport and watched the planes take off. And that you kissed her.”

  His face reddened. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “Oh, please. You planned it.”

  He ignored my dig. “What’s your point?”

  “Is that the way you operate? Take girls to count planes and stars so you can hit on them?”

  “It wasn’t that way,” he snapped. “I feel connected to El out there.”

  I almost exploded. “So connected that you have to kiss every girl you take?”

  “Knock it off, Kassey. You don’t know what I feel.”

  I knew what I was feeling—angry, guilty, betrayed.

  “Why do you care who I take out there anyway?”

  “You were Elowyn’s guy. You belonged to her. You loved her.” I didn’t add, And you made me think I was special. But I thought how true that was.

  “She’s gone.”

  True enough, but I wasn’t going to let him off so easily. “You’re going to hurt Arabeth. You’re going to break her heart.”

  “She’s good-looking and I like her, but it’s not just about her.”

  “Meaning?” I crossed my arms.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you how she reminds me of Elowyn. You know what I’m saying. It’s uncanny sometimes. She does or says something that makes it seem like El’s in the room with me. Her expressions remind me. Her gestures. I look and listen for El when I’m with her.”

  I didn’t look for these things with Arabeth like he did, but I recognized them when it happened. Arabeth would be herself, then, like quicksilver, she’d morph into a clone of Elowyn. “She isn’t Elowyn,” I said, gritting my teeth.

  His eyes misted. “I know.”

  His show of emotion ramped down my anger. I hadn’t expected it.

  He sat slumped, staring at his hands. When he looked up, he said, “I want to show you something.”

  He rose, went to his dresser, and picked up his cell phone. He spent a minute scrolling through it with his thumbs, then handed it to me. “I’ve never shown this to another living soul.”

  I took the phone, glanced down at a text message dated the year before, the night Elowyn died. It read:

  I hate u wyatt * hate hate hate * u said u love me u don’t.…

  “Is that all?”

  “The last message she ever sent. I think she was texting when she crashed.”

  I thought about the phone call I’d gotten from her that night. She’d been sobbing hard. Hadn’t I also wondered if she’d been talking to me when she wrecked? Maybe it hadn’t been a dropped call, but instead what had contributed to her accident.

  Wyatt’s shoulders sagged. “Do you know what it feels like thinking I caused her accident?”

  Of course I did. “The rain caused it,” I said. “The cops said it was the rain and a slick road and a tree.” I sat beside him on the bed, all my anger spent. Pain and guilt seeped from his pores. There was nothing I could say to make it go away inside either of us.

  I kept to myself after that. Wyatt and I gave one another a wide berth and I told Arabeth I was working long hours. It wasn’t fair to her, but I didn’t care. It bothered me knowing she was with Wyatt on long summer nights. I couldn’t wait for school to start. I’d be a senior and I could bury myself in classes and volleyball. I’d been voted team captain again at the end of last season and I was ready to smash any opponent that came our way.

  I kept seeing Elowyn’s last text message to Wyatt in my head. Of course, she hadn’t hated him. As the official go-between, I knew she loved him. And that had been their problem all along. They loved each other, but couldn’t keep it together.

  • • •

  Days later I was hauling new flats of mums in a wagon at work when my cell vibrated in my pocket. I fished it out, saw Wyatt’s name and number in the display. This was a surprise. I answered, not knowing what to expect. I said, “Hi.”

  He said, “Arabeth collapsed. They’ve taken her to the hospital.”

  part three

  · 26 ·

  Arabeth

  I walk in a field under a blue-colored sky, the day so brilliantly bright that the landscape stands out in relief. I’m in a field of lavender, the scent sweet and heady. I’ve been transported, as if an alien spaceship has snatched me up and flown me away. I remember standing on my front porch. I remember a heavy weight on my chest, a staggering weight that I can’t shake off. I hear Wyatt say, “Arabeth! What’s the matter?”

  And I wake up in paradise. I am alone, but I’m not afraid. Nothing matters except this place, the beauty surrounding me. The lavender waves in a breeze, not hot, not cold, just steady. The lovely tiny flowers rub against me and the scent sticks to my skin. I wonder where I am and why I’m here. I look for Mom. It isn’t like her to let me go away by myself.

  In the distance I see a line of trees along the edge of the field. A man emerges from the woods and walks toward me. I stop, raise my hand to shield my eyes, squint to bring him into focus in the blinding light of the sun. He’s dressed in camouflage, the colors of desert sand and iron-stained earth. He wears a helmet and sand-colored boots. He carries a rifle, and there’s a sidearm strapped around his thigh.

  My heart beats faster. I can’t see the man’s face clearly, but I know his stance, I know how he holds his body and squares his shoulders. I know my father.

  My heartbeat accelerates. I run toward him waving, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” He waves cheerfully. I run and run, but I make no progress. He halts, comes no closer.

  I cry, “Dad, help me.”

  He watches, begins to gesture frantically for me to stop. He points for me to go back. I hear a voice inside my head say, “Arabeth, go home.”

  “I want to be with you, Daddy.”

  “Not yet,” the inside-my-head voice says. “Go back.”

  I stop running, bend over to catch my breath. Suddenly I’m very tired, very sleepy.

  I straighten in time to see my father step back into the woods and disappear like a vapor.

  The field fades and blackness descends.

  I begin to cry.

  Mom calls me out of the darkness.

  I struggle to open my eyes. My brain feels like it’s swimmi
ng in mud, thick and gooey, sucking me down.

  She holds my hand. “Wake up, baby. Please wake up.”

  My chest feels weighted. An oxygen mask covers my nose and mouth. I break through to the surface and see Mom’s face hovering over mine. She’s wearing a mask and gown. Just like in the days after I first received my transplant and I was in isolation, the days when even common germs were a life-ending threat. I groan.

  “Thank God! Oh, thank God!” she says.

  I want to speak.

  “Don’t,” she says. “Just rest for now.”

  I ignore her. “What …?”

  “You passed out.”

  “Rejection?” I manage to mouth my biggest fear.

  She nods. “But you’re being treated. You’ll be all right.”

  I’d better be. I can’t become an invalid again. I won’t.

  “Rest,” she says, patting my shoulder. “Time for questions later.”

  When later comes, I learn that I had “died.” Clinical death is different from biological death. Often, with clinical death, the docs can bring you back to life. They put paddles on your chest, zap your heart with an electric charge, give you IV meds. You wake up. I woke up. Now I’m scared. I never expected my heart—Elowyn’s heart—to fail me.

  I grow strong enough to tell Mom, “I saw Daddy, standing in a field.”

  Her face goes pale. “You did?”

  “He was dressed like a soldier. And he was perfect, Mom. No marks, no blood on him. I wanted to go to him. I wanted him to hold me.”

  “Did he?”

  “He told me to come to him and I tried. Then he told me to go back, so I did. You believe me, don’t you? About Daddy?”

  Her eyes fill with tears. She smooths my hair. “Of course I believe you. I’m glad he sent you home. I’m glad you came back to me.”

  Dr. Chastain came to see me, carrying my medical file, already as thick as a phone book. “How are you feeling, Arabeth?”

  “Fuzzy. A little numb.”

  He nodded. “It was touch and go for you.”

  The unvarnished truth. I winced. “Why … what happened to me?”

  “You had a rejection episode.”

  “How?” This was a nightmare. I couldn’t reject.

  “You took something that set off the process.”

  “I did?” I tried to recall what I’d been doing before the pain hit me, before I passed out. I’d been with Wyatt. My mind stopped at this juncture. Did I have a seizure? Had I totally grossed him out? “I—I was with a friend,” I told the doctor. “We were talking on the front porch.”

  “Had you taken something?”

  Mom’s brows knitted over this question. She was beside my bed listening to the doctor. “Are you asking her if she took illegal drugs?” She sounded insulted on my behalf.

  “I would never do drugs,” I said, tears brimming in my eyes. “I would never hurt my heart.”

  “We found a common cold remedy in your system.”

  That hit me like a train. I’d been feeling like I was coming down with a cold and I hadn’t wanted to be all snuffly and sneezy around Wyatt. I’d taken some over-the-counter cold medication without even thinking.

  “I told you mixing medications is dangerous and that you should not take anything unless I approve it. The drugs you’re on to safeguard your heart can cause unintended consequences. You could have died.”

  I was speechless. Without thinking, I’d done this to myself.

  “I—I never thought to throw away…,” Mam began.

  “You shouldn’t have to,” Dr. Chastain said. “This will be something that you’ll have to guard against all your life, Arabeth.”

  I wished I could have slid under the sheet and disappeared. “I’ll be more careful.”

  He squeezed my arm. “I’ll move you out of isolation tomorrow, but I want you in the hospital for a few more days for observation.”

  “School’s starting in two weeks,” Mom told him. “Can she go?”

  That idea hadn’t crossed my mind. I panicked. I couldn’t stand to return to a homebound program.

  “Let’s see how she does,” the doctor said. “If she continues to improve, I don’t see why not.”

  After he left, I looked at Mom. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten about the medicine. I feel so good, and sometimes … sometimes I forget I’ve ever been sick.”

  She looked grim. “You have to always remember. I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”

  “I’ll be all right, Mom. I want to live a long, long time.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “You have a line of people wanting to see you.”

  “I do?”

  “Aunt Viv and her family. Kassey. Wyatt.” She took a breath. “And Terri and Matt Eden.”

  · 27 ·

  Kassey

  You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone—or as in the case of Arabeth, until it’s almost gone. The day Wyatt called and told me what had happened, I freaked out. I trashed my room, throwing clothes, pillows, even a lamp—good news, it didn’t break. I screamed, cried, pounded the walls. I couldn’t believe this was happening all over again. I couldn’t believe I was losing my best friend, Elowyn, for a second time.

  Mom was working so she missed my meltdown, and I cleaned up before she got home. I told her about Arabeth the moment she walked through the door. “Oh, no,” she said, tossing her purse and keys on the kitchen countertop. “Will she be all right?”

  “I’m going to the hospital to check on her.”

  “Do you need me to come with you?”

  A year and a half ago I had needed her with me, but not this time. “I’ll call you when I know something.”

  She kissed me. “Be careful.”

  Arabeth was in isolation, so I couldn’t get in to see her, and I was surprised to run into Terri in the waiting room. She looked pale and anxious. She put her arms around me. “Kassey, this is so horrible.”

  “How is she?”

  “Alive. They brought her back in the ER. You know … with the paddles.”

  “Wyatt told me she wasn’t breathing when the EMTs first came to the house. That her lips were blue and … and …” I couldn’t finish.

  “Wyatt was with her?”

  I glanced around, but he wasn’t in the waiting area. “Yes, he was. How did you find out about what happened?”

  “I had called the inn, just to chat with her, ask her if I could take her to lunch and go shopping. We had such a nice time when we stayed the week. Anyway, a woman, I think her aunt, answered the phone and told me. She’d just returned from the ER to take care of inn guests.”

  “Have you talked to anyone since you’ve been here?”

  “Her mother. She told me Arabeth was resting now.” Terri paused. “And that the doctors say she had a rejection episode and it caused her heart to fibrillate and … and … stop.”

  Terri’s face looked tortured. I understood because I was feeling the same sense of déjà vu. We were reliving Elowyn’s last days, the roller-coaster ride between hope and despair. “She’s going to make it,” I said shakily. “Elowyn won’t let her die.”

  Terri buried her face in her hands. “I miss her so much,” she whispered. “Every day. Sometimes I forget. I see something I know she’d like, and I get excited and say, ‘El, look at this.’ But of course, she can’t. Just knowing that her heart lives on inside Arabeth has kept me sane. It’s my living link to her.”

  A knot wedged in my throat. Wasn’t this what all of us—me, Wyatt, the Edens—had felt? As long as Arabeth was alive, so was Elowyn. And the freaky coincidences when Arabeth mirrored Elowyn’s characteristics and personality kept us bound to the idea. I cleared my throat. “Where’s Matt?”

  “He came and stayed awhile, until we knew Arabeth was alive. He told me he couldn’t do this again. He can’t just sit and wait. It’s too painful.”

  “Arabeth will be all right,” I said. “She will.”

  Once she was moved to a pri
vate room, I could visit Arabeth. She appeared to be all right, except that her face looked puffy. “Steroids,” she explained. “I’m back on massive doses of the antirejection drugs. I hope to look normal by the time school starts.”

  “You decide which school you’re going to?” I knew about her wish to attend Roswell High. After the day we’d spent at the water park, I knew many things about her. I was feeling ashamed that I hadn’t kept in closer contact since that day.

  “I’m going back to Athena. Why not? I know the place, the teachers, what’s expected of me. And it’s free this year.”

  “But you told me you wanted to be around boys.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  I would have asked why, but just then Wyatt entered the room. He stopped. “Kassey, you’re here.”

  I felt out of place and seeing him bumped up my heart rate. I hadn’t seen him since the day of our fight or talked to him since the night he’d called from the hospital. “I—I can come back.”

  “No,” he and Arabeth said in unison.

  Her face had reddened and she looked uncomfortable. Not at all like a girl excited about being with her boyfriend that I had expected to see. “It’s okay,” she said. “I can have two visitors at a time.”

  Wyatt said, “Stay. I have something to show you both.” He carried a file folder and walked it over to Arabeth’s tray table, which was pushed across her bed. He picked up her water jug and set it on another table and opened the file folder, fanning out several pieces of printed paper.

  “And this is …?” I asked, baffled.

  “My research. I spent hours surfing the Web last night. It took me a while to figure out how to search, but I eventually came up with the term ‘cellular memory.’ ”

  He looked pleased with himself and as if we should have caught right on to what he was talking about. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. What’s ‘cellular memory’?”

  “It’s what’s been happening to Arabeth. The episodes of being like Elowyn.” He stared at Arabeth. “You know, the weird things you do that are her and not you.”