Beating Heart by A. M. Jenkins Page B

and sun
    tastes
    like
    salt
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    he shivers,
    standing
    in his warm
    square of sunlight

 
    E van turns to contemplate the sunny room. It feels strange and foreign to him; not like home—not yet.
    Well , he thinks, at least it’s big. No, what am I saying, it’s bigger than our whole apartment.
    He moves to the boxes piled in the center of the room and begins to unpack. The first box is his “stuff” his posters, personal belongings. He only has a few posters to put up: a video-game advertisement, a scantily clad Budweiser Girl, a football schedule from his high school. He spreads them out, but the walls are still very bare. He takes out an old framed photo of himself and his father at an amusement park; it’s always been a favorite of his, but now he’s not sure what to do with it.
    He and his father have had less and less contact since Dad left a year and a half ago. At first his father was SuperDad, coming every weekend and a coupleof times during the week, taking Evan to ball games and movies and dinner. It took Dad a little longer than it took Evan to figure out that they didn’t really have a whole lot to talk about when the movies and ball games were over. And when the awkward pauses started outweighing the fun stuff, Dad just sort of ceased to come around.
    It hurts in a way—but it also feels right. That’s because of Libby. She was hardly ever included in the father-son outings. Evan knew she was too little, wouldn’t have enjoyed it once she got there, would have whined and made everybody miserable—but still, he hated hearing her ask to come along and hearing Dad say no. It wasn’t exactly Dad’s fault; he had only so much free time, and Evan fit better into his activities. But now it feels more like Libby and Evan are equal, as far as Dad is concerned.
    Evan puts the picture aside and pulls out the shoebox in which he keeps things of sentimental value; it contains ticket stubs; notes from girls; a poem he wrote for English that he worked hard on, for once—the teacher read it to the class; a picture of himself andhis girlfriend, Carrie, at junior prom; a picture of his grandparents; and a baby toy that he doesn’t want anyone to know he kept.
    As he’s putting this shoebox in a drawer, Libby comes in without knocking. She does that a lot since Mom quit her job, but Evan says nothing; on another day he might be irritated, but today, for some reason, he almost likes the way she wants to be with him, the way she feels at home wherever he is.
    Libby walks over to the back windows and leans out, just as Evan did a moment before. “Ooh, you can see all the way down to the river from here.”
    Evan has decided that he likes this room, or rather, the size of it. He’s enjoying filling out his own space however he wants, and he’s in a better mood about the house. “Back in the old days, they didn’t have air-conditioning,” he tells her. “Rich people built their houses up here because it was cooler—see, the breeze comes up from the river.”
    â€œAre we rich?”
    â€œI wish.” He thinks how much it must be costing to get this hulk fixed up, and figures it’s a good thingLibby likes peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches better than steak. “What can you see from your window?” he asks Libby, opening another box.
    â€œThe driveway.”
    â€œCome on,” he says, “you can see more than that.”
    She’s still leaning out the window, taken by the view. “Umm, the house next door.”
    â€œThat’s not a house,” Evan informs her. “It’s a law office.” That’s another one of the things Evan doesn’t like about this place—it’s not a regular neighborhood, but the remnants of one that has been taken over by businesses. “Anyway, you can’t complain,” he tells Libby. “You had first choice of