1. The small, withered heart of Marie Antoinette’s ten-year-old son is kept in a crystal urn in a French church.
2. The Polish composer Chopin’s heart was smuggled in a booze jar out of Paris and to a Warsaw church, where it was then stolen by Nazis before being returned.
3. Twenty-two embalmed hearts of popes are on display at a church near the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
4. The mummified heart of Saint O’Toole was kept in a cage on display in Christ Church Cathedral, until someone stole it.
5. There is a strange fascination with disembodied hearts.
For a day and a half, Annabelle runs on a brutally hot road, WA 970, through Cle Elum. She is smothered in slick, sticky Body Glide. Every truck that whips past gives her a near-death experience. This is how opossums must feel, the ones that make it across the road. Sweaty relief, plus the cold fear that makes the hair stand up along your arms.
Next, there is endless flat farmland, stretching like a yellow sea. And then, for two days, she is on a forest service road. Loretta keeps her entertained with names: Cougar Gulch (eek), Roaring Ranch (nice), Beehive Road (adorable), Swauk Creek (where gold was discovered in 1873, she read that morning).
Finally, today, farmhouses begin to appear, and then come the gas stations and feed stores that mean a city is about to materialize. Her day’s run is almost done, and all she wants is food, water, rest, and a break from the day’s monotony. She spots the always welcome sight of the RV, parked in the driveway of the Squilchuck Mobile Home Park.
“They’re letting us stay for free,” Grandpa Ed says.
Where to park overnight is one of their largest concerns, they quickly discovered. You can’t just plop an RV down anywhere and stay. Even if they overlooked private property and sheriffs writing citations, most of the highways feature narrow shoulders, in a landscape that gets so pitch-black at night, any car rushing past would likely kill them all. So now, Malcolm, logistics coordinator, and Zach, financial manager, organize their sleeping location every day, texting her each evening with the details. From the open doorway of the RV, Grandpa Ed hands Annabelle a bottle of water.
The cap is already off. They’ve got this routine down. She takes big, grateful gulps. Grandpa Ed sits on the step. He picks up a little piece of wood and a knife.
“Are you whittling?”
“What, where’s the problem? Gotta have a hobby while I wait.”
“I thought only hillbilly grandpas did that, not Italian ones. What is it going to be? It looks like a large raccoon dropping.” Annabelle should know. She’s already seen bunches of those.
He ignores her. “Did you text the girl from the school paper?”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“You’re feeling fine.”
“My stomach aches. I’m going to call Olivia and cancel.”
“Che cavolo!” Translation: What cabbage!
Annabelle calls Olivia, but she doesn’t answer. A moment later, Annabelle’s phone buzzes, and it’s a text from her. You’re not canceling. I just called and told Ashley Naches that you’re an hour away.
I’m sick, she types.
A text from Zach bleeps onto her screen. You’re fine. Remember debate, sophomore year? The silver, baby.
Ugh! Okay, all right! In the tenth grade, before their debate competition, Annabelle told Mrs. Lehwalder she had a stomachache and had to go home. Mrs. Lehwalder gave her a pep talk and a Pepto-Bismol, and Annabelle ended up winning a medal.
“Hurry it up,” Grandpa Ed says. “You’re supposed to meet somebody, you meet somebody.”
• • •
The stomachache is real when she walks through the hallways of Wenatchee High. The problem is, every high school looks pretty much like every other high school. At least, she’s hit with the fluorescent-light-ness of the place, the locker-lined hallways, the smell of sweat and lunch-bag apples and cafeteria cooking. She can sense all the other stuff you find at any high school, too—the bravado and insecurity and self-consciousness and pretending. Big posters are taped to the walls. They have images of basketballs and say GO PANTHERS! She made signs like this at her own school. Her and Sierra and Josie Green and other girls. Mostly girls, which makes her think that boys should make the posters for the next few hundred years until the poster score is even.
She sees The Taker by the—
Stop!
On the stairwell, there is The Taker—
Stop!
In spite of the physical pain of the last few weeks, Annabelle realizes what a relief it’s been to be in forests and farmland and even on highways. She understands why Dr. Mann kept suggesting yoga and meditation. These are all ways to be away, to set aside the images that scream and pummel. Everything here is a reminder. She has no idea how she ever managed to be in school. Well, truth is, she wasn’t managing, was she? She wouldn’t be here if she had been.
Stop! Now, it’s the open doorway to that classroom, where she can see The Taker in front of her in Mixed Media.
Stop! Another open doorway to another class with The Taker, winter quarter of AP English Comp.
Stop! The trophy case, because next she’s smacked with the memory of walking with Will through his school. He shows her his name on the plaque from their state championship lacrosse win. Immortal, he says. Until you graduate and junior varsity becomes varsity, and they win, and you’re outta here.
Stop! The library, where she is meeting Ashley Naches.
And this library looks basically like the one at her school, too. There’s a long desk up front, and shelves of books. There are tables with computers, and READ posters on the walls. There is one kid, hiding from life. There is a table with four chairs. She can see herself sitting beside The Taker with Destiny and Lauren K (who was always Lauren K to distinguish her from Lauren Shastes, who was always just Lauren). They’re at the library during English Comp, and he takes her fingers under the table, and she lets him.
She lets him, do you see? This was after the card in the parking lot, after the birthday gift, but her mind jumps and shoves images in front of her.
She still feels his fingers. They are warm as they grip hers. She doesn’t mind. She lets him, and she likes it.
• • •
Annabelle is nervous. She taps her thumb to her fingers under the library table where Ashley Naches can’t see. Annabelle feels around for the weight of the Saint Christopher medal in her hoodie pocket.
Ashley sets her phone between them to record their conversation, and she has a spiral notebook to take notes in, too. Ashley Naches has the thoroughness of a CNN reporter interviewing a head of state.
“So how do you feel about your decision to do this now that you’re halfway across Washington? Your publicist, Olivia Ogden, said you’ve gone almost—” She checks her notes. “A hundred and fifty miles.” Her publicist! Annabelle wants to laugh. Then again, she thinks of Olivia in middle-school orchestra, always first chair. Olivia has colored tabs dividing every class notebook in some personal system of priorities, and she plays Minecraft like a demon.
“One forty-two. I feel . . . I don’t know. Crazy. Insane. No, wait. Don’t write that.”
“Okay.”
“Please don’t write that.”
“I won’t.”
The librarian stands near the computer table, watching them. She made the kid who was hiding in the back corner leave, like Annabelle had an explosive device strapped to her chest. Annabelle’s hands start to sweat. She can only guess what it’s like to have her here.
She tries again. “It feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” But of course this is wrong too. Running 2,700 miles is nothing compared to what she’s been through and what’s ahead. “Um, wait. Don’t write that.”
“Okay.”
“Just say, I don’t know. Tired. Determined. I’m not really all the way determined, but that’s what people will want to hear.”
“Probably,” Ashley Naches says.
There are more questions. How long it will take. What she did to train. What she hopes to accomplish once she gets to DC.
Ashley Naches does not ask about The Taker. She doesn’t ask the thing everyone really wants to know: How did it feel?
“Can I take your picture?” Ashley asks.
Oh, God. Annabelle hadn’t anticipated this part. She’s not wearing makeup. She’s gotten thin already from the run. Her cheekbones sink in like old couch cushions. Her hair still looks like she cut it with her eyes shut. “Okay. I guess, okay.”
Ashley stands. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a glitter butterfly on it. She is overweight but confident, wearing her T-shirt tight enough to hug her curves. Go, Ashley! Way to love your body! Annabelle thinks. Ashley backs up until she’s under the “Great Books for Spring” poster. She hunches, snaps a few photos of Annabelle, who isn’t sure whether she should smile or not. Smiling seems disrespectful.
Ashley Naches gathers her backpack and her notebook. The interview is over. The librarian locks the door behind them the second they leave.
“I have to stop at my locker, so . . .”
“Sure. Well, good-bye,” Annabelle says. “Thank you.”
Now, Ashley Naches looks at her hard. Ashley Naches has warm, dark eyes, and they stare kindly into Annabelle’s. “Are you, um, okay?”
How to answer this? There’s an awkward moment of silence, when Annabelle searches for a response. “Not really.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
Annabelle shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Ashley Naches does a surprising thing, then. She hugs Annabelle. She grips Annabelle to her big chest. When they separate, Annabelle sees that Ashley’s eyes are wet with tears.
“Bye,” Ashley Naches says.
“Bye.”
Annabelle watches Ashley go. There are rhinestones in a V on the back pockets of her jeans, too. Annabelle wonders what it’s like to be Ashley Naches, a girl hopeful enough for sparkles. Ashley will head home now, to her mother and father, or just a mother, or just a father, or a grandma, or two mothers, or some configuration of family. There will be problems under that roof, because there are problems under every roof. But she will not carry the guilt Annabelle carries. Seth Greggory is not in her future, and for that reason, Annabelle is hit with a longing, a bad, bad longing, to be Ashley Naches in her sparkling jeans, heading home to whatever her problems are. Ashley Naches, who walks home feeling sorry for the girl she just interviewed back there.
Annabelle needs to get the hell out of Wenatchee High. She pushes through the doors, and outside it is spring again, and there is Grandpa and the RV, waiting in the lot. She is so relieved to see that her new life—where she’s both running and on the run—is still there. She still has many, many miles to go before Seth Greggory, thank God. She does the math. She has more than 2,500 miles between her and what’s coming.
And then she sees them. A group of guys on a patch of lawn with an iron panther statue at its center. One of the boys has his hand on the panther’s back, like they’re pals who’ve discovered the real meaning of friendship. Three other guys stand nearby, laughing and talking. One of them has a denim jacket like The Taker’s. His shoulders turn inward with shyness and he watches the others carefully, as if he’s gauging what his own response should be.
Just like that, he’s here.
• • •
He’s here. The Taker, wearing that coat, walking home with those same hunched shoulders. Annabelle is driving. She’s got her music on, and she’s filled with the boldness from a good song. It’s a few days after that card, and she’s trying to be friendly. They’ve talked in class. He told her how he’s trying to teach himself to play guitar, and about his dog named Marty, who can get into every locked cupboard. She’s told him about the Almond Croissant Crisis at Essential Baking Company last weekend, and how Mrs. Chen fled from Sunnyside Eldercare and they had to call the police. He’s surprisingly funny. And he knows all these cool cultural references that make her feel kind of stupid. Like the iconic dance scene in Pulp Fiction, he’ll say, and she won’t have any idea what he means.
After her initial avoidance of Will, he and Annabelle completed the breakup dance: There were a handful of upset phone calls, the long-minutes-of-silence calls, the maybe-we-shouldn’t, yes-we-should ones. Recently, the days of no contact have been stringing together into permanence. Her life is sort of like it was, just without Will in it—school, work, family, friends, running. So now, Annabelle is trying to be larger and fuller. She’s training for her second marathon in November, doing extra-long runs on the weekends, and she’s attempting to be open to all new experiences. Being open and new experiences are awesome, because they make her feel like she’s moving on, while also serving as a Fuck you, Will and a Look at all the stuff you don’t know about me now, Will.
She turns down her music, pulls up beside The Taker, and lowers her window. “Hey. Where you headed?”
“Home. Missed my bus.”
“Shoot. Want a ride?”
“That’d be great.”
His head almost hits the roof of her car. His legs fold in like a grasshopper’s. The small space between them is suddenly filled with heat; his cheeks are flushed and there’s the wet-wool smell of boy sweat and that tang of something again, maybe weed.
Also rapidly filling the car: awkwardness. Now that he’s in there, Annabelle has no clue what to say to him, and she can practically hear the gears of conversational effort turning in his own head. He shifts around a lot, looks for something in his jacket pockets as if he’s occupied with important business. She’s filled with instant regret at having stopped. See what happens when you’re impulsive? she lectures herself. She often lectures herself. It’s like living with a cruel boarding school teacher inside your own mind.
“So, where to?”
“Ravenna Park?”
“Got it.”
Whenever anyone gets in the car with her, Annabelle starts driving like an idiot. She’s fine when she drives alone, but now she almost runs a stop sign, and speeds past a lady waiting at a crosswalk. He’s not the only one who’s nervous.
She turns her music back up to cover the uncomfortable silence. “Can I look at your library?” He gestures to her phone.
“Oh, God. Go ahead. But disregard any Raffi.”
“Hey, childhood nostalgia, I get it.” He scrolls, comments. One thing she’s learned—he knows a lot about music. “I like, I like, I don’t know, I never heard of . . .” he says. “Hey, the Clash! ‘The only band that matters.’ ”
He’s making a cultural reference that she’s ignorant of again, she’s sure. “Stole it from my mom.”
“Hey, old people have some good music! It’s not all ‘Lady in Red.’ ”
“Hmm. I’ve never heard that one.”
“You’re kidding! What’s wrong, you’re not into sappy shit from the eighties? Can I play the Clash?”
“Sure.”
It’s “Police and Thieves.” “Junior Murvin’s lyrics—so awesome,” he says. He sings along, stuff about fighting nations, and guns, and ammunition. She thinks he might have a thing for guns, which in her world is as rare as saying he has a thing for medieval weapons of war. Once, he dropped his backpack and a firearm catalogue spilled out, and there was also that photo at the shooting range. Who has guns in Seattle? No one she knows. Guns seem foreign and weirdly aggressive. Here, people say they’re sorry when they bump into someone on the street.
The Taker rocks his head to the beat, and she plays drums against the steering wheel. When they get to the chorus, they Oh, yeah together. She’s having fun.
“That one,” he says. “The gray one with the Volvo.”
“Wow, nice house.” It’s a big, old Craftsman, right by the park. There are three stories at least, and it’s got one of those curved cupolas that would be perfect to do your homework in. One of his parents must be a serious gardener. There’s the kind of mishmash of flowers that look unplanned but are oh-so-carefully planned.
She turns the music down.
“Hey, thanks. I appreciate the ride,” he says.
“No problem.”
He’s looking right into her eyes, and she’s looking into his, and he’s not being shy and maybe he doesn’t even like her anymore. Of course, this makes him more interesting, and he’s . . . how to explain it? Different. Odd. He’s maybe like a door to somewhere she’s never been. Maybe weird would be interesting. Weird is definitely not Will. Maybe weird means troubled or some kind of history that isn’t parents like Robert and Tracie, even though there’s a Volvo.
She could kiss him. She could see what it was like and then never do it again. She thinks he might kiss her. But he doesn’t. He just unfolds himself from the car and gives a little wave.
And what happened after that, well, this is what she really thinks about when she sees that boy by the panther statue. Because after that day, he started hanging out with Annabelle and her friends. It was her approval of him that let him into their circle, which is horrible right there—the “let” and “allow” by superior people. She was one of them, the superior people. She floated around in the privilege of her popularity without giving it a thought. It was wrong.
After the day she drove him home, he sat with them at lunch. Geoff Graham invited him to play guitar when his band, Shred, appeared at Café Hombre on Wednesday nights when no one was there. Kat helped The Taker with a paper on The Scarlet Letter. Everyone could tell he liked Annabelle. She liked being liked. It wasn’t a big deal, the liking, until it was.
Even after he joined their group, though, The Taker hung back in a way that’s hard to explain. Annabelle would catch him watching her and her friends, same as that boy on the grass is doing now, making sure he doesn’t do anything to shame himself from the circle.
Annabelle flings the door of the RV open, slams it shut behind her. “Get me outta here,” she says.
Grandpa Ed sits in the driver’s seat, window down, listening to NPR and whittling.
“Looks like you survived the paparazzi.”
“The librarian made everyone leave.” Okay, this is an exaggeration. Everyone was one lonely kid reading Dune. “She locked the doors. She couldn’t wait until I was out of there.”
“Bella Luna. Did you ever think that maybe she was trying to help you? She booted everyone out for your own privacy. To make you comfortable, capisce?”
She scowls. He’s saying the same things as Dr. Mann. That her perceptions skew reality. That her guilt does.
“Floor it,” she says to Grandpa Ed.
He does. His little wooden raccoon turd slides from the console and rolls under his seat. It clatters every time he makes a turn or the slightest swerve. Roll, clang. Roll, clang.
The noise in her head is worse. There are a thousand wooden raccoon turds rolling and clanging. All she wants is to get back where she now belongs: the trail. Where the only sounds she hears are her own steps, and Loretta’s calm voice, and streams gushing and birds tweeting, and trees creaking and crashing, and the occasional creepy animal sound.
She hears her own heart on the trail, too—its guilty beating. Out there, though, she can trick herself. It is not evidence of her going forward. It is not the sound of her own clock, moving her to the horror of what’s coming. It’s the base thrum of a trucker’s radio. It is the purposeful thump of hooves. It is an ancient drumbeat, old as time.