The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Lena smiles and nods. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  We go silent again and I’m glad. My mind is going a mile a minute. Behind me, I hear one of the floorboards in our entryway squeak. When I turn, I see Kate holding a cup of tea. She smiles at me and kisses her finger before pressing it to the screen door. Then she drifts away and I can’t decide if I want her to come back or not.

  “Sunny, can I ask you something?” Lena says.

  I turn back around. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Well, I was wondering if you might let me… see you a little.”

  I glance at Lena. She’s not looking at me. She’s knotting her fingers together and breathing sort of hard, but trying to act like she’s not. She’s super-nervous and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little glad.

  I let the question sit there for a few seconds, because I’m not sure what my answer is yet. Still, I don’t think I’ll say no. I’ve got too many questions. At the same time, I’m scared to ask a whole bunch of them. My hands shake just thinking of all the answers she could give for leaving me, for showing up now and acting all sorry.

  Then, the spark of an idea. There might be a way to get some inspiration for Step Three of my New Life plan and figure out some things about Lena all at the same time.

  I could never ask Kate for help with this. Never in a million years. She’d totally freak out and say I was too young, but I’m twelve and a half. If that’s not too young to have your heart ripped out and replaced, it’s not too young for anything, in my opinion.

  But Lena. Lena has tattoos. Lena wears stomping boots and torn jeans. She seems like she’d be cool with my quest. I don’t know. Either way, I open my mouth and more words fall out.

  “I have a question first,” I finally say.

  “Okay,” Lena says, turning to face me. “Shoot.”

  I take a deep breath and take the plunge. I still have a New Life plan, after all, and I’m sticking to it, come long-lost mothers or Margot or bloody noses or whatever. “What do you know about kissing boys?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Lena looks at me with one eyebrow way up in her hair. I can do that too, but Kate can’t. I guess now I know where I get it from.

  “Kissing boys?” she says.

  I nod. “I’ve never kissed anyone and I want to. Really bad.”

  Her mouth quirks up on one side and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh.

  “It’s not a joke,” I say.

  “No, no, of course it’s not.” She clears her throat. “I was expecting a different question.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like pretty much any other question.”

  “Well, I have those too, but let’s start with this one.”

  She blows out a breath through both cheeks. “Okay. Well, um, I’ve kissed a boy or two.”

  “I figured. But how?”

  “What exactly do you mean by how?”

  “Just… how?”

  “It’s not something you can really plan, Sunny. It just happens if you want to and the other person wants to. You figure it out as you go.”

  “Okay, but that’s the thing. How do I know when I want to?”

  She tilts her head at me. “Sunny, do you have a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t need a boyfriend to kiss someone, do I?”

  She rubs her eyes and takes another deep breath. I’m stressing her out, I can tell. “No. But as the adult here, I feel like I should tell you that it’s a more enjoyable experience if you at least like the person a little.”

  It’s not like I didn’t pick up on this from all Kate’s young adult novels and old movies. Romance, they call it. Swooning and feelings and flutters. That’s the key to wanting to. It’s why I want to kiss someone so bad in the first place. Because when you like someone and they like you back, even when they don’t have to? That’s kind of like magic, isn’t it?

  Only one problem.

  “But I don’t like any boys. I don’t know any boys. At least not really. I’ve been sick, remember? I haven’t really been hanging out with a lot of people lately.”

  “I know.” Her eyes go all soft and I’m sure she wants to talk about me knocking on Death’s door and her being gone and how sorry she is, but I’m not ready to go there. Not yet.

  “So what do I do?” I ask.

  She sighs and folds her feet under her legs. “I think you focus on yourself and your friends.”

  “I think that’s a super-boring grown-up answer.”

  She laughs and I like the sound. It’s kind of deep and gritty, like it’s out of practice and just getting started up again.

  “Fair enough,” she says. “How about… think about the kind of person you want to share your first kiss with, and then keep an eye out for them.”

  “Okay, that’s a little less boring, but I still need to figure out how to kiss the guy.”

  “Have you talked to Kate about this?”

  “Are you kidding?” I say. “No way. She’d probably take me to the doctor or something.”

  “I doubt it. Kissing is very normal, as long as you want to do it.”

  “When was the last time you kissed someone? Did you make the first move or did he?”

  “This is not how I expected our first conversation to go.” She presses her hands to her cheeks and I let her stew a bit. Finally, a deep breath. “It’s not something I can just tell you about. At least, I don’t think. You have to live it. Experience it.”

  “Well, I just experienced a best friend who may or may not think my whole plan is stupid. Oh, and let’s not forget the bloody nose.”

  “Bloody nose? What? Are you okay?”

  “Not my bloody nose. The boy’s.”

  Lena winces. “Really?”

  “It was like a geyser.” I mime a fountain spurting from my nose and Lena laughs. I tell her the whole story—including Quinn’s and my argument and my wild elbow and Kate’s bloody bra that I have to figure out how to sneak into the wash—and she laughs even more.

  “Wow. That is an epic first-attempt story.”

  “Epically awful.” I rest my chin in my hands, defeated.

  She lets me brood for a few seconds and then comes out with a real zinger.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you about my first kiss. Are you ready?”

  I turn so I’m facing her, tucking my legs underneath me to mirror her. “Yes, I’m so ready.”

  She grins and takes a shaky breath. I take a shaky breath. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m finally getting a first-kiss story that doesn’t involve Margot saying how amaaaaazing it was and making me feel like I’m about five years old or because it’s Lena. Maybe a bit of both.

  “It was your dad, actually,” she finally says. She says it so super-quiet that I almost don’t hear her. She looks down at her hands and picks at a callus on her forefinger. “I was around your age.”

  “You met my dad when you were twelve?” I ask.

  “We were ten when we met. But we didn’t kiss until we were almost thirteen. His family came to Mexico Beach every summer for vacation.”

  “You only saw him during the summer?”

  She nods. “But we wrote to each other a lot during the year. We even talked on the phone some.”

  “Did Kate know him too?”

  “She knew him more when we were older, but when we were kids, it was mostly just him and me. His family rented a house right next to mine and… well, it was pretty much love at first sight.”

  “At ten?”

  She laughs and shrugs. “When you know, you know.”

  I chew on that for a second. I definitely knew something when Quinn suggested I kiss Sam, but it was that I one hundred percent didn’t want to kiss him.

  “So, how did you end up kissing?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer right away. For a second, I think she’s going to change her mind about telling me. For a second, I think I want her to change her mind. My heart is beating like a wild horse, but then a tiny smile
pulls at one side of Lena’s mouth. She glances at me and grins a little wider.

  “Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure he planned the whole thing.”

  “He did?”

  She laughs and nods. “Like I said, we were almost thirteen and it was our third summer together. Our town had this really big bonfire on the Fourth of July and everyone camped right on the beach—”

  “Hey, Juniper Island does that too.”

  “Yeah? It was pretty fun.”

  “I didn’t get to go last year. Or the year before that.”

  She nods, her eyes instantly sad. “Maybe this year.”

  I shrug, but secretly, I think, Yes, please, ugh, let me go. “So what happened?”

  She tells me about how she and Kate and some of their other friends met Ethan—that’s my dad—on the beach and they roasted marshmallows for S’mores by a fire, and how Lena had started playing guitar the year before and she’d brought it to the bonfire because she wanted to show Ethan how cool she was.

  “You wanted to impress him?” I ask.

  “So much.”

  “Did you?”

  She grins. “He asked me to show him some chords. I still remember my heart was beating so fast because I had to get kind of close to him to help move his fingers and I couldn’t breathe.”

  I swallow hard, because my throat kind of aches. My mom. This is my mom telling me about my dad. My mom, who I’ve wondered, wondered, wondered so much about every night for so long.

  “So what happened?” I ask, desperate for more.

  “He asked me to go for a walk while the fireworks were going off.”

  “And?”

  “And I did and during the big finale he asked if he could kiss me and I said yes.”

  “He asked you?”

  She nods. “Never kiss a boy who doesn’t ask, Sunny.”

  I file this away for later, because all I can think about right now is that my parents kissed for the very first time ever when they were thirteen while fireworks exploded in the sky.

  Suddenly, my stomach hurts. Not in a bad way. In the kind of way it used to hurt when I would lie in bed, my ankles swollen and my breathing super-loud because my lungs were trying hard to make up for what my heart couldn’t do, and I’d want, want, want a new heart so bad, everything ached. It’s the same kind of ache I get when Dave sings his whiny kissing song and I read a kissing scene in one of Kate’s young adult books under the covers. It’s the ache of wanting your dreams to come true. I definitely didn’t have that ache today when I saw Sam, but I know it’s possible to have it with a real person.

  Just like Lena did.

  I glance over at her and she’s smiling down at her hands, her eyes all hazy like she’s remembering stuff.

  Remembering my dad.

  It hits me like a lightning bolt. Or, actually, like a firework, fast and bright, exploding with a pop and then spreading through my whole body like a sunburst.

  My mom. She’s my mom. And she’s talking about how it all started. My family. Our family.

  “Sunny?”

  I flinch, Lena’s face swimming in front of me.

  “You okay?”

  I nod.

  “You sure? You look pale.”

  I press my hand to my chest, my heart jackhammering underneath. If you cracked me open right now, I’d bleed questions all over the place. But before I can ask any of them, Kate opens the screen door and pops her head out.

  “How are things out here?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure,” Lena says. She tilts her head at me, a question in her eyes. But all I do is stare at her because I’m noticing this itty-bitty mole right under Lena’s eye and how I have the same one. I’m noticing that our hair is the color of a midnight sky and both of our bottom lips have a little dip in the middle like a peach or a cherry. I’m noticing that she has flat, square fingernails just like me and she picks at her cuticles just like I do. I’m wondering if my dad’s hair was really straight, just like mine and Lena’s, and if he liked my name or thought Lena was a little bonkers for naming me after a giant ball of gas in the sky. My curiosity is on fire. It’s always been there, a little spark every night while I ran my fingers over Lena’s photo-face. But now it’s an inferno. I want more stories about my parents, about Lena, about my dad.

  “Sunny?” Lena asks, glancing at me.

  I rub my temples, my head twirling like a baton.

  “Let’s come on in, all right, Sunshine?” Kate says, holding her hand out to me. I get up and grab her fingers.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “I know, sweetie,” Kate says, but she doesn’t sound like she knows it at all. Still, I’m exhausted. Between the Sam debacle and Lena, my brain feels like a roller coaster.

  “Yeah, I need to get going,” Lena says as she stands, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “But before I go… Sunny, have you ever been surfing?”

  “Surfing?” Kate says before I can answer. “No, she absolutely has not.”

  Lena keeps her eyes on me. “Would you like to?”

  “Surfing?” I say. “Like with a surfboard on the ocean and stuff?”

  Lena nods. “It’s something I started doing the past few years.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Kate says.

  “I wouldn’t have her riding actual waves,” Lena says. “Just paddling out, talking through the basics.” She turns back to me. “You can invite a friend if you want to. I can’t go tomorrow, but I’d love to take you out on Monday.”

  “Out of the question,” Kate says.

  “We’d go over to the east end of the island,” Lena says. “I’ve heard it’s good for beginners. But like I said, we won’t do anything dangerous.”

  “Surfing is dangerous,” Kate says.

  “Katie, come on.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I listen to them argue back and forth.

  Surfing. Real surfing in the ocean. My heart nudges me again, a curious little knock against my ribs. Surfing would go right along with Step One of my New Life plan, in which I do awesome amazing things I’ve never done before. Plus, I could get more stories out of Lena. Maybe I’ll get enough stories to understand why she left me.

  Maybe I’ll get enough to actually forgive her.

  “I want to go,” I say, loudly enough that Kate and Lena stop arguing.

  “Sunny—” Kate starts, but I cut her off.

  “It’s my choice, Kate,” I say. “You said you didn’t want me to regret anything and that you’d support whatever I decided…” I trail off, not wanting to say about Lena right in front of Lena, but Kate knows what I’m talking about.

  She stares at me and I stare back. Lena is still as a statue. Finally, Kate looks down and nods, her jaw tight. She waits for me while Lena and I exchange numbers, but the air around us is all fizzy, like a shaken-up soda can.

  “Thank you, Katie,” Lena says to Kate after she puts my number into her phone. “Thank you for this.”

  Kate doesn’t answer. Instead, she laces her fingers through mine and leads me inside without another word.

  Later, after Kate stuffs me full of pills and broccoli and Ensure, she snuggles into bed with me. This is our thing, our tradition every night for as long as I can remember. We turn off all the lamps and leave on the little white lights around the canopy, and the whole room looks like we’re floating under an ocean beneath a starlit sky.

  But for the first time ever, I just want her to leave.

  I need to think.

  I need to think and think and think.

  And I can’t think and think and think with Kate whispering all these words against my hair every five seconds.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to talk about Lena?”

  Breathe in.

  “If you change your mind about surfing, that’s okay.”

  Breathe out.

  “She should’ve asked me first. Then I could’ve talked to you about it. Prepared you a little. I called Dr. Ahmed
and she said you should be fine as long as you take it easy, just like swimming.”

  In.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk?”

  Out.

  “Sunny, I know you. I know what it means when you get quiet.”

  “That I’m super-tired?” I finally say.

  She slides her thumb down my cheek and sighs. Apparently the time for joking has passed. “That you’re overwhelmed and you’re worried and you think you can handle it all on your own.”

  I huff a breath. “Maybe it just means that I need to think about stuff a little before I talk about it.”

  “Okay, that’s fair. But, honey, you just talked to Lena for the first time ever. I know you must be feeling—”

  “You don’t know how I’m feeling at all.” My words come out like a whip on a horse’s back. Kate feels the sting and flinches. She’s always saying this kind of stuff—I know how you feel. I know this is hard. I know, I know, I know. But she doesn’t get it at all.

  “Sunshine—”

  I turn over and face the window, focusing on all the dark outside, all the hidden stuff. Kate lies there for a minute, but finally, she whispers a soft “Okay,” and squeezes my shoulders once before she gets up and leaves.

  I flop onto my back and glare at the ceiling for a good ten minutes, waiting to feel excited about surfing, about talking to Lena and that amazing story she told about her and my dad. And I am excited, but it’s all mixed up with other stuff too. I feel mad and like I want to cry and maybe even scream a little. Everything aches, like I’m all bruised up. It’s like before I got sick, when I would run really hard down the beach and my whole body would get all tingly and relaxed, but the next day my legs would be so sore I could barely walk. But the only thing that would make me feel better was to run again, harder, until all that pain was gone.

  I roll over and grab my phone off my nightstand, along with the picture of Lena out of the drawer, and open up my music app. I type Lena Marks into the search bar. One album pops up. It’s called Shallows and she made it before I was born. I don’t listen to it all that often. It’s too hard. Music is too full of feelings. Staring at a picture, I can think whatever I want about Lena, but listening to her voice, right in my ear, singing about love and stuff… well, that’s harder.