Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott Page A

parents kept as much of it as quiet as they could—they paid off the guy I hit and managed to cut deals for the other cars up until the bus thing.”
    My throat feels tight, gummy. “Why?”
    “Because my dad wants to be a judge and he had a pretty good chance of becoming one until the bus. I did that on a Tuesday, during school, and it caused a lot of problems.”
    “I remember,” I say, thinking back. We’d all had to wait an extra hour to leave school, even the people with cars, because the bus had to be brought back, and even then the school board was afraid to use it until a group of mechanics looked it over. They ended up readjusting all the school bus routes so the kids on the bus Caleb stole could be put onto others and still get home. “You got sent away after that, right?”
    “Yeah. I’ve never told anyone about the guy. Not even the therapists at suck camp. I...anyway, my parents have plenty of reasons to hate me that aren’t about Minnie.” He pushes his hair off his face and blinks hard, looks toward the door. “You probably want to go back to school now.”
    Part of me wants to. Caleb Harrison understands me, but he isn’t—he truly can’t help me. I thought I got that before, but I didn’t.
    I do now.
    Caleb understands me because he’s still hurting too. I thought he was a victim, that he lashed out because his parents blamed him for his sister’s death. And they did, and he did—he took all their hate and tore himself apart over it—but he isn’t innocent. He did things, awful things.
    But I look at him, standing in this tiny white room, and he is the loneliest person I have ever seen. He has nothing. No one.
    And I know how that feels.
    I get up and walk over to him. And then, like he did last night, I put my arms around him.
    He stiffens for a second and then he hugs me back, his arms wrapping tight around me. I feel him shaking and rest my head on his shoulder.
    “Emma,” he says, just a whisper, and that’s all he says. But I hear it, and I don’t let go.

28
    We drive back to school the same way we left, in silence, but his voice catches me as I’m getting out of the car.
    “Emma, I just want you to know that what I did, I wish it hadn’t happened. That’s the worst part. Because the liv—”
    “The living with it is forever,” I say, and when he looks at me, I see that he will always have ghosts.
    But I also see that he has carried them by himself and that he knows what he’s done, who he is, and he is trying to live with it. With himself, and with the world he has.
    I see that he is beautiful. Not just outside, but inside, under the mistakes and anger and grief, is a heart that beats pure and true. That loves his sister and his parents and wishes for things that can’t ever be.
    He wants things to be whole, but knows they can’t. He sees that, and doesn’t look away.
    “I’m going to fail all my classes this term,” I tell him. “I won’t do the things I thought I would, won’t go to the college I used to want to. It all seems so stupid now that my mother’s gone.” I swallow. “The night before she died, I blew her off to do homework. I thought I’d always...I thought there would be other times. But there aren’t, and that’s the worst. That’s the part I hate most.”
    I look at him, and I don’t wonder if he’ll understand. I know grades and the plans I’d made, the way I tried to build a future that would be glowing, perfect, is something he’s never thought about. He never had the time. The chance.
    But I know he understands about seeing all the things you lost, the moments you thought you’d have, the ones you were so sure of. I know he gets that there is a moment you never saw, a moment that just came, and that it’s unmade and remade you. That you can’t be who you used to be once it’s happened.
    He leans toward me and touches my hair, my nonbeautiful, noncurly hair, and looks at me. At my face, which has no trifecta, which is just a