Every Wild Heart Page 4

  So I refused.

  Still, I was blindsided when Tyler left. Maybe those sappy love songs from work had entered my bloodstream; I was too busy being happy to notice that my husband wasn’t just annoyed—he had fallen out of love with me.

  THE DOORBELL RANG. Simone was on the doorstep. I took one of the takeout cups of coffee that she held out to me and led the way back to the living room. “Thanks for coming over,” I said, turning down the volume on the stereo as she settled into the couch.

  “The kids are at school, Damien is at work, and I don’t have to be at the studio until two today . . . what else do I have to do? It sounded like you really needed to talk.” Simone fixed me with one of her looks—droll with a soft edge of concern. Her big, brown eyes were unwavering; I felt as though she could read my thoughts. “Isn’t this the album that ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ is on?”

  I shrugged. “Busted.” I didn’t like to talk about Tyler. Most people assumed that this was because I hated him, but Simone had long ago guessed the truth, and she knew that I played the Velvet Underground when I was thinking of him.

  She stood now and walked around the couch to the wall of music. “Let’s get you back to your happy place,” she said, running a finger over a row of CDs. In a moment, Patti Smith replaced the Velvet Underground. Simone settled down beside me again. The leather patches on her corduroy pants caught the overhead light. “What do we call this thing you’re doing, G.G.? Pining?”

  “It’s been nine years,” I said. “At this point, I prefer to think of it as ‘reminiscing.’”

  “Bullshit.”

  I smiled and took a slug of coffee. “Believe it or not, I didn’t ask you to come over so we could talk about Tyler.” I told her about the offer from ZoneTV. “Obviously, I wouldn’t do it without you.”

  Her eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. “A TV show? What do I know about TV?”

  “About as much as I do. We’d learn together. What could be more fun than winging it in front of a live studio audience?” I was joking, but as I spoke I realized how excited I really was. After nine years of encouraging women to embrace change, I ached to try something new myself.

  Simone ran her hand over her head. I could practically see her thoughts forming behind her eyes. She wore her dark hair shorn close to her scalp; it made her eyes look that much more expressive. Forget Tyler’s eyes; those were the kind of eyes about which songs should be written. Love songs ruled the music charts, but it was friends who were so often more deserving of the praise.

  “Well, it would certainly be new territory for us,” she said.

  I swallowed. “A new city, too: Los Angeles.”

  “L.A.? Oh, G.G., I don’t know about moving my whole family—”

  “It’s a lot,” I said. “I know. I can hardly even bring myself to think about how Nic would handle the news. I can’t imagine putting her through such a big change.”

  “She’ll be okay,” Simone said gently. She knew Nic well, so her words meant something to me. “If you’re together, she’ll be okay.” Simone looked away then, her gaze landing on the couch, the coffee table, the collection of framed concert posters that Tyler and I had bought over our years together.

  “And a move could be really good for you. Bust you free of old habits.” Then, as though I didn’t already get her point, she leaned toward me and said, “It would finally put some distance between you and Mr. Pale Blue Eyes.”

  “And we could reach a much larger audience,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Think of how big our army would be.” This should have appealed to Simone as much as it did to me, but the way she was chewing her lip had me worried. The fact was that Simone loved radio. I knew this. As a kid, she’d spent hours listening to public radio with her grandmother, and I could tell that each time she walked into a sound booth a part of her felt as though she were stepping behind the scenes of her happiest memory.

  “It would be huge,” Simone agreed. “We could help a lot of people. You don’t need to convince me of that. It’s a big opportunity for both of us. You’d become an even bigger star.”

  I could not pretend that this didn’t thrill me. When I was sixteen, my father discovered that I had secretly gotten a large tattoo—a tangled web of thorny black roses that clung to my shoulder and crept up my neck. “If you keep going down this path, you’ll never get anywhere,” he said. He meant that I would never get anywhere in his world, a clique of society in which sameness was currency. And even though I’d hated my parents’ world and wanted no part of it, the great disappointment in his voice had stung. It seemed to me that he was saying that I could not be a girl with a tattoo and his daughter at the same time. His words had felt like a goodbye—a goodbye to the daughter he’d wanted and could have loved.

  Now, after every meeting with my accountant, I fought the urge to send my parents a copy of my bank statement. My radio show and my book, Number One Single, had made me a lot of money. A television show would make me even more.

  And more was something for which I would always be ravenous—more experiences, more challenges, more reach, more success, more life.

  Lost for a moment in these thoughts, it took me a beat to realize that the house phone line was ringing. No one ever called our landline. Except Nic’s school. Kirke had the number in case of emergencies. I sprang up from the couch and raced toward the kitchen.

  “Yes?” I said, yanking the phone from its cradle.

  There were stifled noises on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?” I said. “Who is this?”

  The caller’s breathing was oddly loud. Whoever it was wanted me to know that he or she was right there, listening. I immediately remembered the wet breathing and threats of the woman who had called in to my show the night before.

  “Who is this?” I demanded. The breathing continued. I hung up. Then I walked to the front door and slid the deadbolt into place.

  “Who was that?” Simone asked when I stepped back into the living room.

  “Wrong number,” I said, and hoped that I was right.

  Chapter 4

  Tuesday was Community Spirit Day at Kirke and this meant that at two o’clock Nic dragged herself down the school’s main hall to Dr. Clay’s Freshman Connection class. Dr. Clay, the school psychologist, had reportedly created the class five years earlier in the wake of three Kirke freshman suicides. Dr. Clay believed that increased academic pressure had pitted kid against kid, destroying the school’s sense of community. The best weapon to fight isolation? Connection. Nic and her freshmen classmates spent an hour each week engaged in bonding games, team-building exercises, and what Dr. Clay called “Character Education Experiences.” Dr. Clay’s insistence on moving the desks into a circle made Nic pine for her other classes in which she could at least discreetly stow herself in the back row.

  Nic hated to be the first or the last student to walk into any classroom; each alternative brought with it a level of attention that she felt desperate to avoid. She usually arrived a minute or two early for class and then lingered in the hall, pretending to tie her shoe or lose herself in a book until she’d seen at least a handful of students enter the room. But on that particular day she was dreading Freshman Connection so much that she miscalculated and walked too slowly. The hall outside of room 114 was empty when she arrived. She glanced at the hall clock and saw that she was three minutes late. Her stomach flipped. She’d have given anything to fast-forward through the next hour until the moment when Roy picked her up and drove her to the barn.

  Instead, Nic took a deep breath and pushed open the classroom door. There was a hiccup in the buzz of chatter as all eyes in the room swung toward her. She hurried, cheeks flaming, to the one remaining empty chair—next to Dr. Clay, of course. As she sat down, Lila shot her a sympathetic look from across the room.

  “There you are, Nic!” Dr. Clay said in her tirelessly upbeat voice. Black reading glasses were perched on top of her head, half-lost in the tangle of her c
urls. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t miss today’s class,” she said. This sounded ominous, and when Dr. Clay winked, Nic’s panic spiked. “That right, everyone, it’s finally Buddy Day!”

  Buddy Day. Nic had completely forgotten. Freshmen were to be matched with seniors for even more bonding games, team-building exercises, and CEE (Character Education Experiences). Freshmen would share their feelings and their senior buddies would comfort them by admitting that they, too, had once felt overwhelmed by the social and academic pressures of high school. No one was alone in the struggle! Connections would be made, pressures relieved, suicides prevented. Also, everyone would make a new friend!

  “Now I know you are all dying”—Dr. Clay hesitated, coloring, and cleared her throat—“very excited to find out who your senior buddy is, but I thought I’d make things extra fun this year by adding a trust exercise right into the buddy reveal!” She stood and began walking around the inner circle formed by the desks, handing each student a bandanna as she passed. “I want each of you to blindfold yourself. I’m going to check to make sure you can’t see anything. No cheating! Once you’re all blindfolded, I’ll let the seniors into the room and connect each one with his or her buddy. It’s a beautiful day, and you all know I’m a big fan of bonding outside the classroom environment, so I’ve asked your buddies to guide you from the classroom to the soccer field. It might still be a bit wet from last night’s storm, but the sun is out, and I suspect you will all find a way to make it work.”

  Pressure built in Nic’s eardrums as the room swelled with excitement. She watched her classmates tie bandannas around their eyes. Something in her stomach felt as though it were curdling. By the time she brought herself to lift her own bandanna to her eyes, she almost welcomed its promise of darkness.

  “I’m facilitating this trust exercise,” Dr. Clay said, “because I want you to learn that when you feel alone, and maybe even a little scared, there will always be a member of the Kirke School community who will step up to guide you. There are no strangers here. We are not on our own. You can all depend on one another. And it’s okay to feel vulnerable. Vulnerability is a beautiful thing! Let’s celebrate it today! Right now!”

  Despite the sunshine and rainbows and utter lack of rasp and grit in Dr. Clay’s voice, the spirit of this talk reminded Nic of her mother. She could tell that Dr. Clay, like Nic’s mother, felt driven to do something big with her life, to leave a mark on people. Even as a young girl, Nic had sensed this hunger, this desire to be extraordinary, in her mother. It had never faded or faltered. She wondered if living with that everlasting need was exciting or simply exhausting.

  “Nic.” Nic flinched at the sound of her teacher’s voice. Dr. Clay could not have been more than a few inches from her desk. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see anything,” she answered. Her voice came out surprisingly strong. It was easier, not seeing anyone. Knowing no one saw her, no one could catch her staring or blushing. Nic felt a funny surge of affection for Dr. Clay.

  Dr. Clay’s footsteps retreated. The door hinges creaked. Cool air from the hall brushed Nic’s cheeks. She heard the footsteps of the seniors entering the room. A fresh surge of whispers and giggling surrounded her.

  “Okay, I’m letting in the seniors now. Seniors, I want you to stand next to your freshman buddy. No peeking, freshmen! I’m putting A LOT OF TRUST in my seniors and I know they’re going to guide you CAREFULLY out to the soccer field.”

  Nic wasn’t aware that her fingers were wrapped around the sides of her desk until she felt someone tap her wrist. She pulled her hand into her chest with a start, then flushed with fresh embarrassment. Easy, she told herself. The voice in her head was the same one she’d use with a horse who had spooked, mistaking a twig for a snake.

  “Sorry,” a voice said. A boy’s voice. An amused boy’s voice. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  The warmth that Nic had felt briefly for Dr. Clay disappeared. How was she supposed to feel comfortable with a senior boy? It would have been difficult enough to feel at ease in front of a seventeen-year-old girl. It was suddenly very hard to believe that Dr. Clay had ever been in high school. Nic wondered if she could excuse herself to use the bathroom and hide there until—

  “Okay, seniors,” said Dr. Clay, interrupting her thoughts. “Hands on freshmen elbows for guidance, please. Let’s keep the physical contact RESPECTFUL.”

  When her buddy spoke again, his voice was near her ear. “This way.”

  They walked together in the direction of the door. Nic kept her hands out in front of her. The senior kept a steady grip on her elbow, steering her through the rush of moving students. In the hall, she could feel space opening around them. Their footsteps echoed through the school’s marble foyer and then they were outside, the sun’s warmth pouring down onto her shoulders and making the edges of the dark bandanna glow.

  “We’re at the top of the front steps now,” the senior said. “There are four stairs. Ready for the first one?”

  Nic nodded. She would need to speak sooner or later, and she knew that her silence was probably getting weird, but she was afraid her voice would come out in a nervous croak.

  “Okay,” he said. “Second step.”

  She took the steps slowly; the thought of tripping and falling, blindfolded, right in front of the school and this boy and all of the other seniors helping their buddies down the stairs had her nearly paralyzed. If it wouldn’t have been even more embarrassing to drop to her knees, she might have taken the steps crawling.

  At the bottom of the short flight of stairs there was a circular drive that would fill with cars at the end of the school day. By now, Roy had surely deposited her mother at the radio station and was on his way to Kirke. Nic released a deep, involuntary breath.

  The senior led her along the driveway, and then veered off it. The pavement below her shoes turned to grass.

  “If we walk a little further, there’s a tree on the edge of the soccer field that we can sit under.” Nic nodded, and they continued walking. “Okay, we’re here. Ready to sit?”

  As Nic lowered herself to the ground, she felt some part of the boy’s body graze her knee. She might have sat down too quickly; sparks appeared behind her eyelids. A cold seep of moisture rose from the dirt below the dry grass. The seat of her pants would be wet when she stood, but it was too late; the damage was already done. Her only hope was that all of the other kids on the field would be in the exact same predicament. But what if everyone else was kneeling? Wet knees were infinitely preferable to looking like you’d wet your pants.

  “Sh-should I take off my blindfold?” she asked. Her voice came out exactly as she’d feared, croaky and nervous and, to her horror, with a hint of her old stutter.

  “Sure,” he said. Then his voice lowered and he said in a pretend sexy voice, “Or you could leave it on.” His laughter sounded strained. Was it possible that he was nervous, too?

  The anxious flip-flopping feeling in Nic’s stomach slowed. “Maybe I will,” she said. There was no stutter in her voice now, no extra saliva soaking her words. Where did that come from? She pulled off the bandanna and blinked into the bright sun. Lucas Holt sat in front of her. Lucas Holt. He had a dramatic face, thick swipes of eyebrows, and an intense gaze. When he smiled, she saw that his teeth were perfect. She felt the urge to lean forward and lick them.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Lucas.”

  His thatch of dark hair and his dark eyes and eyelashes made Nic think of wood blackened by fire. She realized she was staring. With effort, she pulled her gaze from Lucas’s face and saw that he had led her to a far corner of the soccer field. The other freshman-senior pairs sat closer to the school, and Nic was relieved to see that everyone was sitting on their butts, just like her. Dr. Clay seemed to be admiring a bed of orange flowers near the edge of the field; her shoes dangled from her hand. Nic turned back to Lucas, leaning away from him at the moment her eyes met his. His physical beauty felt like
an impossible barrier; it insisted on a measure of distance between them.

  “I’m . . .” she said finally. She couldn’t seem to finish the thought. Nic thought her own face very plain, her paleness an outward marker of her inner timidity. “I’m, um . . .”

  Lucas watched her, the smile falling slowly, so slowly, from his face. “You’re Nicola,” he said, finishing her sentence for her. “Nicola Clement. I know.”

  He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, smoothed it on his knee, and handed it to her. At the top were typed the words “Your Freshman Buddy is”: and below that Dr. Clay had written Nic’s name. Her school photograph was stapled to the bottom. Their school photos had been taken on the fourth day of school. Nic’s was epically bad. Her eyes were half-closed and something about the lighting made her skin, even her lips, look paler than they usually did. She looked like a vampire who hadn’t tasted blood in days.

  “Nice picture,” Lucas said.

  “It’s horrible.”

  He shrugged and shoved the folded paper back into his pocket. He had an agitated energy; Nic found it hard to look away. There was something about his face that she didn’t understand and she longed to study him, to feel his skin, the shape of the bones below. He was so much more of a guy than the boys in her class.

  “You’re definitely more lifelike in person,” Lucas responded finally. His eyes hinted at a smile.

  It was an opening, and Nic desperately wanted to respond in some witty way that would impress him. Something that would compress the impossibly huge three-year age gap between them. Her mind took the opportunity to go completely blank. Trying to come up with a clever comment felt like blindly slapping the walls of a pitch-black room looking for the light switch that she knew must be there somewhere. She dug her fingers into the grass and began to rip it up.