Page 23 of The Wrong Heart

Biting into my lower lip, I can’t help but glance over at him again, an invisible force drawing our eyes back together. He’s still staring. Still poking around my burial grounds.

Still digging.

He doesn’t blink or smile. His eyes are beryl and brimstone, unwavering, his jaw shadowed in stubble, cheekbones high, eyebrows dark like his hair. Like his clothes.

Like his stare.

Part of me wants to storm over to him and demand he back off, quit exhuming me. I feel vulnerable and exposed, laid out, shaking and bare. Thenerve. The nerve of this man—this intruder. And yet, I can’t seem to do anything but stare right back at him.

Our hold is eclipsed when a voice startles me, causing me to blink and cower against the plastic seatback, a feeble attempt to hide. A tension releases inside me, and I think that means he finally tore his eyes away.

“I’m Amelia.”

There’s a young woman standing in front of me, and I recognize her from the prior week. She sat between me and the dark stranger, quiet and timid, nearly blending into the background. She looks young, possibly still a teenager, and her hair is jet black with purple highlights. Her porcelain skin is studded with piercings and silver hoops, and her lipstick is black to match her hair. A soft smile upstages her harsh exterior. “Hi. I’m Melody,” I respond, forcing my own smile to the surface. The smile that has always sucked people in.

It must still hold some power, because Amelia’s shoulders relax as she approaches, taking the seat to my left. Her softness lingers. “You don’t look like you belong here.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You remind me of sunshine… it’s too cold for you here.”

My body stiffens at the analogy, the one I used to adore. The one that would spill from Charlie’s lips like a summer breeze, the perfect complement to the sun.

Parker’s eyes find me again. I can see his head turn towards me, just a blur in my peripheral, but I keep my attention on Amelia. “Appearances can be deceiving,” I reply gently, then decide to change the subject. “Have you been coming here long?”

Amelia twists her thin, stringy hair over one shoulder, her knees knocking together beneath a black shirtdress. “This is my fifth week. My parents enrolled me after I tried to hang myself inside my mother’s greenhouse. She always seemed to like it more than me, so it felt poetic somehow.”

My mouth goes dry at her blunt confession. “I’m sorry to hear that. How old are you?”

“I’m almost twenty.”

Twenty. At twenty years old, I was falling in love with Charlie, making plans, envisioning a bright and fruitful future.

She’s so young.Tooyoung.

But I suppose grief doesn’t take age into consideration—it just takes what it wants when it wants it. Grief is the most selfish thing in this world.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I tell her through the lump in my throat. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

Amelia shrugs. “I didn’t. My dad and his mistress came barging in to screw or something. She started screaming her head off when she saw what I was trying to do.”

Her honesty startles me, stealing a response from my lips. I have no idea what to say as I watch Amelia nibble on her chewed-up fingernails, her demeanor casual, as if we were discussing something insignificant like the weather.

“Who would like to start us off today?”

Ms. Katherine’s kind voice slices through my somber haze, and I straighten in my seat with a choppy exhale.

Amelia responds first. “My hamster, Nutmeg.”

Starting points. Little things we would miss about the world if we chose to leave it. It’s a powerful concept, something I couldn’t stop thinking about all week. Everyone has something big, something important they would leave behind, but what about those little treasures we walk past every day, such as ant hills in the sidewalk cracks, or butterflies with tangerine wings, or the way water laps at a sandy shoreline?

What about the smell of deep-fried delicacies at a street festival, or buttered popcorn when you walk into a movie theater?

Ms. Katherine’s eyes drift to me, so I speak next. “The sound of violins.”

I’m not sure why I look at him after the words escape me, but I do, and I’m not surprised to find him watching me.

“Such a sad instrument,” Ms. Katherine replies, her tone tender. “But so very beautiful.”

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