Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

He grabs my hand again and starts us walking. His hand in mine is looser now, not exactly slack but almost. And…I don’t think he’s going to answer.

“You don’t have to,” I say. “Tell me.”

“My dad’s elbow. He tripped and went backwards while I was helping him up the stairs. He’s a drunk.”

I blink at the track in front of us, blindsided.

“Listen, I’m just trading secrets. He started drinking when I was in sixth grade. He went to detox, and I think that’s where he got introduced to tranquilizers. He’s got a pill habit, but it’s not like how it sounds. Most nights he just passes out. He’s harmless. Old man is old and out of shape.”

His mouth moves like maybe he’s trying to smirk, but his lips flat-line. “Anyway,” he says after we walk a few more steps, “it doesn’t matter.”

Yes it does. My hand squeezes his. He squeezes back before his fingers disentwine from mine.

“Secrets, right?” He’s asking—like he isn’t sure I’ll keep his.

“Secrets,” I promise.

The bell peels from the loudspeakers at the corner of the school’s roof, and we both jump.

And that’s how it all starts.Chapter ThreeElise“That’s your boy right there. You see him, number thirty-two?” My friend Dani points toward the football field, where a bunch of guys in purple jerseys and tight gold pants are jogging onto the grass.

“Yeah,” I murmur, which is pointless. There’s no way Dani can hear me, as everyone in the bleachers is cheering. My friends and I follow suit. I let my gaze touch Luca; then it falls to my feet. And as we sit back down, it flits back to Dani. Her smiling brown eyes dance over the rim of her concession stand hot cocoa. She takes a swallow and lowers the paper cup, revealing a huge grin.

I roll my eyes, and she elbows me.

“Ow.” I wrap my hands around my own warm drink and try to keep my features neutral as I trace the white lines on the grass with my eyes.

Dani leans toward me. “He’s tall. I didn’t really realize.”

I nod, biting the corner of my lip as our other bestie, Sheree, leans around Dani, slapping my leg.

“Oh my God, he’s stretching!” Dani half shouts. Now it’s my turn to elbow her.

She’s still flailing around like a cracked-out Muppet when I hiss near her ear, “Dani, you are killing me. That’s his friend Leon in front of us.” I nod at the guy with dyed green dreads, sitting with a bunch of skater guys and their girls two rows below. “And look, Max and Franco are right over there.”

“Sorry,” she hisses. “This is your first…thing.”

“It is not my first thing,” I hiss back—from behind my hand. “I’ve had other things.”

She gives me side-eye. “Girl, you won’t touch that funnel cake.”

I look down at the greasy delight in my lap.

“I know you, I know you love your funnel cake,” Dani continues. “I also know you can’t eat before piano recitals or surgery or hospital procedures.” She means procedures for Becca. “You’re okay before a test, before confession, before those jazz dance recitals that we used to do in fifth and sixth grade. But he’s not even here sitting with us, and you won’t touch your favorite food of all time.”

I give her side-eye as the “welcome to Friday night football” message starts over the loudspeaker. “That’s not true.”

I tear a piece of yellowish cake off, pop it into my mouth, and lick the confectioner’s sugar off my lips. “I’m going to eat all of this.”

Spoiler: I’m not. Naturally, Dani is right. We’ve been friends since third grade, after her parents decided to pull her out of private school and she became the new kid in Mrs. Moore’s class. So, she knows me well.

She rests her head on my shoulder, and I feel her cheek round out as she grins. “Sorry, goldfish.”

I sigh. “You are such a beta.”

Our nicknames are from sixth grade, when everyone in our friend group was fighting all the time, so I ghosted on them for a few weeks. Ree called me a goldfish in a tank of bully betas, and it stuck.

She leans around Dani now. “What am I missing? I can’t hear over all this…” She waves her hands in front of her.

Dani straightens, smiling. “This shit is what we’re here for, Ree. The game stuff.”

Game stuff. I shake my head at that. None of us knows the first thing about football. Our school has a winning team, but Dani, Ree, and I are more into arts and crafts and other geekery. We’ve been knitting booties and beanies for babies on Friday nights lately. My mom helps organize the Battery Park March of Dimes Gala, and our knitted goods are going to be auctioned there next month.

Dani’s boyfriend Ty does online gaming tournaments on Friday nights, and Ree is perpetually single like me. Although in her case, it’s because she likes “only melanated girls with round asses, small tits, big brains, good with a pan and a spatula, likes crime shows, and no one wanting to get married till we’re at least thirty.” Which, in Sheree-speak, means she’s a total closed door. Her mom died suddenly we were all in fifth grade, and I think Ree hasn’t moved past it. Very understandably.