Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

A quick trip through the house reveals that everyone is sleeping, which is good since I forgot to wrap my presents.

I fish the items out of the back of my closet and sit on the scarred floor, surrounded by gifts, tape, and wrapping paper. As I unroll some paper, I think of Elise. I wonder if she’s sleeping, if her house is all dressed up for Christmas. Would it be the kind of place that has a twenty-foot tree? I bet it is.

I think about her sister Becca, and I hope their parents pull their shit together and make it a good time for them. I lean my back against the foot of my bed. Fuck, I really miss her…the way she feels all wrapped around me, and her good smell. We still have to sneak around, so we don’t see each other all that much. But we meet up at parties, school sports shit, and sometimes at the public library near her house. I’m used to seeing Elise pretty often. So it sucks not to.

I wish I felt like I could call her—but her dad check’s her cellular phone log. I’ve emailed her from the library that’s near me, but it’s not the same.

There’s this feeling inside my chest like something clawing. Doesn’t matter, I tell myself. School will start again in nine more days. I’ll be okay until then. She said she might call sometime tomorrow—if she can find a safe time to try it from the house phone.

I get up, slip off my shirt, and pull on the sweater she gave me this past Friday night—at the MM Athletics Christmas party. It was the only way that we could swap gifts. I gave her a small gold ring I got one night I rode along with Tony on some sketchy jewelry store shit, and she gave me this sweater and a leather-bound edition of Lord of the Rings. I glance up at my bed, where the book hides in the covers.

Then I reach into the pocket of my jacket, where I’ve been holding onto something I was going to give her but didn’t. It’s a gold necklace with an amulet of St. Jude. I got it that same night with Tony, but when I arrived at the school gym for the athletics party Friday, I unwrapped the thing and stashed it in my pocket.

I thread the necklace through my fingers now and wish that I had given it to her. Maybe I will after New Year’s. I can tell her it’s Saint Christopher—for protection. One day, she’ll figure out it’s Jude. Or maybe she won’t. Maybe it gets lost before she even moves to college.

I fasten the necklace around my neck, quietly wrap my gifts, and steal into the living room to see what Santa Lucia left for Soren and me. Our stockings each contain a few small oranges, the same honey biscuits “Santa Lucia” always brings, cannoli in those plastic boxes my Zia Eva always puts her homemade stuff in, gold coin chocolates, several handfuls each of Double Bubble gum, ten dollars for each of us, playing cards for each, Pokémon cards for Soren, and at the very bottom of my stocking, my grandfather’s pearl cufflinks.

Seeing those makes me smile. My mom’s dad was a high school math teacher. Everyone says I look just like him.

I wear Saint Jude to sleep that night, despite the tightness of the chain around my throat, and open my eyes Christmas morning dreaming of Elise and me. She’s got on a fancy gown, and I’m wearing a tux with Nonno’s cufflinks. We’re going somewhere, but I can’t see our surroundings. It’s too dark out.* * *Elise

Four Months Later“So I don’t get it…”

“Every reflection Ref of its own inverse.”

I slap my textbook shut. “Arggh. This is tedious!” Calculus. “And boring, and not intuitive. It’s like learning to speak another language.”

Luca laughs. “Because that’s what it is.”

I drop my forehead down onto my notebook, letting out a sigh that seems to echo in the closet-sized library study. “I’m perfectly satisfied with plain ole English.”

“But you can speak a few other ones too, right?”

I lift my head and then shift so I’m sitting cross-legged, facing him on our shared bench. “Some Bengali and a lot of French, which was my chosen language in middle school and ninth and tenth grade. I did Spanish in eleventh grade and this year.” I smile softly. “And now I know a little bit of your language.”

He gives me a silly grin. “Arubesh?”

I lean in closer. “L’italiano.”

“Sei pronto per stasera, la mia rosa?”

It’s a question, so I just assume that it might be about… “Tonight?”

“Anything you want to do?” He smiles softly. “Or do you trust me to come up with something?”

“I trust you. But there’s that afterparty, too, remember?”