It actually stops.
I make the oddest noise, the slightest oooh, as I lose the beat, my hands clamping to my chest as if I can reset the metronome there with my fingers. Heath is at my side, hands tight on both arms now, forcing my arms deeper into their sockets, my collarbone protesting. I can’t speak, can’t tell him to stop. My heart has left me. I felt it go, slipping down the hall to follow Isaac. Like a rubber band stretched too far it comes back to me, slamming into my rib cage just as I crumple to the floor.
One beat.
Two.
A thread of regularity.
“I’m fine,” I say to Heath, who came down to the floor with me. “Not enough to eat this morning, I think.”
He digs in his pocket and pulls out a package of granola, which should be some kind of heroism in this moment but instead all I can think is that he’ll be a great dad and somehow that’s unsexy as hell right now.
“Just get me off the floor before anybody sees me,” I say, waving away the granola. He’s a gentleman, hand on my elbow, counting to three, saying “careful,” as I come to my feet.
Heath holds the door to the band room open for me, and I get to my chair without falling, snapping together my clarinet and trying to reclaim the steps of this day, the ones that need to accumulate to get me through the week, the month, the year. Everything that needs to pass to land me where I deserve to be—the first clarinet chair in a bigger room than this, surrounded by real musicians.
Isaac Harver is not going to distract me from that.
And if my heart stops first, I’ll find a way to keep going without it.
I monitor my pulse throughout the day, slipping my fingers onto my wrist and counting, well aware that if I collapse again Heath will call 911 and I’ll spend my evening explaining that my heart travels with Isaac Harver now. Which is just as ridiculous as it sounds, even taken symbolically.
How he got my number I don’t know, but I definitely didn’t give it to him, I reassure myself as I pull the cuff of my sweater back down over my wrist in sixth period. My pulse is right where it’s supposed to be, my heart behaving instead of traipsing toward certain doom. Lilly flops into the seat next to mine, her hair ballooning up into a mushroom cloud that carries nothing more lethal than an overdose of lavender vanilla.
“Hey,” she says. “When you get a chance I need a baby picture for the yearbook.”
I’m still counting heartbeats, so she clarifies.
“The senior baby pictures?” she goes on. “Cole Vance gave us one of him in the tub, but you could totally see his dick. I had to photoshop some bubbles in. They were really small bubbles. But I guess he was a baby then, so he gets a waiver on that one. Although, maybe it matters even on babies? Do some boy babies have bigger—”
I stop her with my hand in the air.
“You need a baby picture of me?”
“Yes.”
“For the layout of senior baby pictures?”
“Yes.”
I nod. “Got it. Stories of Cole Vance’s prepubescent penis not necessary.”
“Brooke thought it was funny,” she huffs.
“Brooke would,” I shoot back. “Just give me the bare minimums of what I need to know. I’m operating on overload as it is.”
And while this is certainly true, I don’t know why it’s suddenly getting to me. Pressure is my environment, like a creature three miles underneath the sea. If you took all the expectations away, the shock would kill me, my lungs flattening and refusing to reinflate.
“You okay?” Lilly asks.
I’m not used to hearing this question. I am always okay. That’s when I realize both my hands are to my chest, shielding my heart from an unseen threat.
“I’m fine,” I snap, dropping my arms to my side.
I love Lilly but Charity Newell is her cousin, and I can’t say for sure that she was entirely happy for me when I defended first chair successfully. She might actually care if I’m okay. She might be checking for cracks in my veneer.
“Did you finish?” I ask, waving Great Expectations in the air to change the subject.
“You bet,” she says, flashing her phone with highlighted SparkNotes.
“Nice,” I say. “Slacker.”
Lilly shrugs. She’s always been this way, smart enough to skate by but not really caring. She’ll be married in five years, have three kids before thirty and call herself happy.
Great expectations, indeed.
Her eyes are glued on Cole as he walks in the room, and I’m guessing her mind might still be on baby pictures, but probably not mine. I roll my eyes and schedule a reminder in my phone to ding the second I walk in the door. If I don’t grab Mom as soon as I get home, I’ll forget. There are bigger things on my mind, and the last thing I need is Lilly hassling me about it if it slips through the cracks.
Heath comes in and gives me a smile, but takes his usual seat at the front. I study the back of his shirt, the precise cut of his hair—always even because he gets it trimmed on schedule. Next to me, Lilly is teasing Cole about bubbles. Legs crossed, body at an angle, eyes cast upward, fingers twisting in her hair. Everything about her is screaming at him to notice her and it’s working.
Meanwhile I’m ramrod straight staring at Heath’s back, well aware that he’d be irritated if he knew his tag was sticking up.
I don’t tell him.
three
All the stupid people I know are happy.
A fresh set of nails. The release of a new video game. Mascara that doesn’t run. Shiny rims on a car. These are the things I hear people gushing about as I walk out of school, their momentary elation at the simplest things serving as a reminder that I have higher ideals, bigger goals, a reward in my sights that won’t chip, wash off, wear down, or become boring. Sometimes I think I should borrow Dad’s earplugs to get through the day.
I drive home, ignoring the ache of my hands as they clench on the steering wheel. I’m squeezing more than necessary, thinking about Cole and Lilly in English. A cloud of pheromones surrounded them by the time Mrs. Walker started class, their eyes on each other’s mouths when they talked, straying to other body parts as if they lacked the willpower to control their gaze.
Heath and I aren’t like that, never have been. There’s a calm assurance in our relationship: he is my boyfriend; I am his girlfriend. We’ve been together since eighth grade, a slow escalation from texts that held nothing more than casual information (I’m home. Going skiing. Your hair is pretty.) to mild groping in his parents’ den that came about more from curiosity than passion. We make out because we’re supposed to. That’s what couples do.