CHAPTER

25

“Sunny?” Kate says, anger and panic mixing around in her voice.

I whip my head back to the window, but it’s completely dark.

“Yeah,” I grunt.

Kate hurries to where I’m sprawled on the floor, draped in drapes with a sore butt.

“What did you do?” she asks.

“What did I do? It’s not like I tripped on the curtains on purpose.”

She sighs and helps me to my feet and gathers the curtains into a ball before dumping them back onto the floor near my bed. Very un-Kate-like.

“You all right, Sunshine?” Dave asks from the doorway.

“She’s fine,” Kate snaps before I can even answer for myself.

Dave peers at me, eyes narrowed. Then he wiggles his fingers down his head and shoots me a thumbs-up. He likes my hair. I ignore him and he frowns, but I don’t care.

“Go to bed,” Kate says, heading for the door. “You should’ve been asleep hours ago.”

“Yes, Mother,” I say. But I don’t really say it. I spit it, all venom, a name I’ve never been allowed to call her. It feels like a weapon now and I’m going to use it. It must be sharp too, because Kate stops in her tracks, her shoulders heaving up and down. She doesn’t turn around to face me, though.

“Sunny,” Dave sighs out.

“Well, she won’t let me have my actual mom, will she?” I say. “A girl needs her mom, you know. Her real one.”

Dave glances at Kate, who still hasn’t moved. If my words really were a sword, they would’ve cut Kate in half. For real, she’d be in two pieces, blood all over the floor, her heart slowing, slowing, slowing until it finally stopped. I wait to feel some kind of triumph, but I don’t. Instead my throat closes up and my eyes not only sting, but water. Like, a full bloom of tears right in my eyeballs.

I try to hold it together, but Dave can tell I’m about to lose it. Maybe Kate is too. She still hasn’t budged. He comes into the room and takes her hand, so gently and sweetly, it makes all the tears start a sprint down my cheeks. Then they’re gone and my door is closed.

I don’t even wait to make sure they’re out of earshot. Tears blur my vision, and I almost trip over the curtains Kate plopped right in my way, but I shake the devils off and make it to the window. It’s locked up tight, but I get it unlatched and throw it open.

“Quinn,” I whisper-yell into the dark. I don’t see her anywhere. Not that I can see much, but more tears escape out of my eyes.

“Quinn!”

The word doesn’t even sound like her name, my throat squeezing it until it’s all broken up. I’m really bawling now, though I’m trying to be quiet about it. The last thing I need is Kate back in here, all mad but fussing over me just the same.

Trying to be quiet when there’s a hurricane happening in your face is not an easy thing, let me tell you. I’m probably the color of a beet, blotchy and snotty on top of that. I’m not sure I even want Quinn to see me like this, except that I do. I do want her to see me like this because… because…

“I’m here,” a voice says to my left. “I’m sorry, I dove into the bushes when I saw Kate come in your room and I got a branch stuck in my hair and—”

But she cuts herself off because I’m crying even harder now.

“Hey,” she says, real soft and sweet.

“Hey,” I say back, real hiccup-y and gross-sounding. I need a tissue.

“I texted, but you didn’t answer,” she said. “Then I called and it went straight to voice mail.”

“Kate took my phone.”

“Oh. I just… I wanted to make sure you were okay. That was intense. Earlier. With Kate and your… with Lena.”

A fresh batch of tears spills over, but I manage a soggy laugh. “Intense. Yeah. Aren’t you going to get into trouble for being out so late?”

She shrugs. “My mom sleeps hard and I have my phone if she wakes up. Even if she caught me, it’d be worth it.”

I look at her and she looks back at me. “It would?”

“Totally.”

“Why?”

She blinks a whole lot and I think her face goes a little red. But it’s dark, so maybe not. “BFFs, right?” she finally says.

“Right.” Hiccup. Sniff. BFFs are great. The greatest. In my opinion, they’re the number one most important thing in a gal’s life, in anyone’s life, which is why finding a new best friend was a top priority in my New Life plan. But for some reason, I feel sort of let down by Quinn’s answer.

Like I kind of, sort of, maybe wanted her to say something else.

Which is silly. And weird. And New Life Sunny isn’t either of those things.

I shake my head and take a breath and, all at the same time, rub my eyes, which are still leaking. Sheesh, I’m a mess.

“Hey,” Quinn says again, still soft and sweet. Before I know it, she’s climbing through the window and standing in my room.

Quinn is in my room. I mean, she’s been in my room before, but never in the middle of the night and never when I’m a crying mess and never, ever after she’s told me she likes girls and definitely never, ever, ever after I just wished she’d said she came over to check on me because of BFFs and because of something a little bit different than BFFs.

I feel like I’m on my surfboard again, the wild sea under my feet, and I’m trying to keep my balance.

But I can’t.

I’m about to fall. I just know I am. Right into an ocean so big, I’ll disappear and no one will ever find me again.

I feel dizzy. My heart is totally out of control. This was not the plan. This was not on my list of amazing things to do if I got to live. I tap two fingers to my chest, trying to get my heart to calm down, to behave, to chill out because it’s only Quinn.

But this heart is not having it. It keeps pounding, and my breathing keeps huffing and puffing.

“Sunny—”

“I’m okay,” I say, but I sit down on the window seat anyway. I turn and lean my back against the frame, pulling my legs to my chest. Quinn does the same and it’s such a tiny little bench that our knees touch.

“Your hair matches your room,” Quinn says, whispering.

I look around and smile, picking up a long chunk of my hair and holding it against the walls. “It totally does.”

“I love it.”

I let my eyes meet hers. “I love yours too.”

She takes a shaky breath. “I’m sorry about what happened. I feel like it’s my fault.”

“What? No way.”

“But I brought over the hair dye.”

“Kate’s not mad about my hair,” I say. “I mean, she is, but it’s more…”

“Lena?”

A knot balls up in my throat. “Yeah. Lena.”

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

She shrugs. “Being you. All this stuff with your heart and now Lena. It’s… wow, Sunny. It’s a lot.”

I swallow hard. No one’s ever asked me that before. Not even Kate. Not even when I was sick. She’d ask how I was feeling. She’d ask if I wanted to talk about Lena. But she’s never, ever asked what it was like.

I take a deep, slow breath and feel my heart pounding under my ribs. Then I tell Quinn what I’ve only ever told Lena. That it’s weird, to be alive. That it’s weird to have someone else’s heart, someone who died, and that sometimes I’m not sure what parts are me and what parts… aren’t.

As I talk, I watch Quinn play with her fingers. Her nails are painted a pretty rose-gold color. I reach out and grab her hand. I tell myself I just want to look at her nails a little closer, but I’m not really sure about that.

I keep on talking, though. Then, somehow, Quinn’s hand gets under mine and I move my fingers so they’re tangled with hers and we’re holding hands. We’re holding hands like we did under the waterfall, like I always dreamed of holding hands with a boy.

Like I always wondered about holding hands with a girl.

Except now it’s not practice and it’s real. I know it’s real, because I’m saying really real stuff to her and when I open my eyes, she’s looking right at me and I know she gets it.

“That sounds hard,” she says when I finally shut up.

I shrug. “Sometimes. But I’m alive, you know? And I shouldn’t be. If my donor hadn’t died when they did, I might have died too.”

Her eyes get shiny and she nods. “That’s so sad. And weird, because… I’m so glad you’re alive. And if I’m glad, does that mean I’m glad they died?”

I give her a tired smile. “Welcome to my brain.”

She squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. We don’t let go.

“So, what’s it like being you?” I ask.

She huffs a laugh, but then she sees I’m serious, that I really want to know, and she’s quiet for a while. Her thumb moves over my first finger, back and forth, back and forth, making me feel all warm and happy.

“Lonely,” she finally says.

“How come?”

“You know I hate all the traveling, right?”

“Right.”

“But it’s more than that. Like, all that stuff I told you that happened with Sadie back in Alaska. I just… I never fit anywhere. For the past couple of years, I was pretty sure that I liked… that I… well, you know.”

I swallow hard. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe. Luckily, she doesn’t look at me and keeps on talking.

“So, even if I’m not the only brown girl in whatever town we’re in, I’m always nervous that I’ll… that someone will…” She sighs and shrugs. “I just can’t find any real friends, you know? My mom calls it ‘finding your people.’ But what if you can’t? What if people you thought were your people laugh at you and forget about you?”

I nod, still unblinking and unbreathing. I thought Margot was my people, but I was way wrong. Kate and Dave are my people, but they don’t know about all my wonderings, wonderings that I hoped were long gone but that keep creeping back into my head and heart. Then there’s Lena, but there’s still so much I don’t know about her. So many holes and gaps in the eight years she was just a mermaid under the ocean.

But here’s Quinn. Quinn, who’s holding my hand. Quinn, who maybe, just maybe, not only wonders, but knows.

“I can be your people,” I say, really super-quiet. Because Quinn is amazing. Quinn is smart and beautiful and she got laughed at too. She got betrayed too, and she’s still here, being herself. She’s still sitting in my room, holding my hand, like maybe, when I asked why she was here a few minutes ago, she wishes she’d given me a different reason than BFFs too.

“You can?” she asks, just as quiet.

“I mean… I’m not brown, and it seems like that can be hard.”

She grins. “No. You’re very, very white.”

I grin back, but it fades quick. My heart is going buck-wild. My stomach too. “But I’m… I mean… I think I might…”

God, I can’t say it. I can’t do it. So I just squeeze her hand really, really hard. I scoot closer to her and hold out my other hand. She slips her fingers between mine and now both of our hands are all tangled up between us. She doesn’t say anything. She does stare at me, though, not blinking, barely breathing, but that’s okay. This is pretty much the most nonblinking, nonbreathing moment I can think of ever.

It’s actually the perfect first-kiss moment. The little white lights in my room are super-soft and make everything look like we’re underwater. We’re sitting in a window seat. The rain from earlier is gone and the moon dips in and out of the leftover clouds. All I can hear is the sound of our breathing, nice and shallow like we can’t catch our breath.

It’s perfect.

It really, really is.

If I just had a boy I liked…

If I just had a boy…

I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine I’m sitting on my surfboard, waiting for the perfect wave. I wait… and wait… and then I feel the swell lift me up and I turn around and start paddling.

Patience and daring, just like Lena said.

When I open my eyes, I see Quinn and her purple curls and her dark eyes and how she’s been the best best friend I’ve ever had and I know.

I just know.

I don’t want to kiss a boy. At least, not right now. Because I don’t like a boy right now.

I like a girl.

New Life Sunny likes a girl.

I lean forward a little, because if I know, maybe she knows too. I lean forward even more and she leans toward me and soon our foreheads are touching. She’s breathing kind of hard, but so am I and I really, really hope that I don’t puke in her lap before I have a chance to kiss her.

I have no idea how to do this, but if it’s just about the angle, I need to tilt my chin up a little.

So I do.

My nose bumps into hers and I kind of want to laugh, but she’s really quiet and still. I can’t even hear her breathing anymore. My heart is speeding around my body like a supersonic plane. I turn my face a little and her bottom lip touches mine.

And then…

And then…

She’s gone.

My hands are empty and her face isn’t close to mine anymore. In fact, it’s way over on the other side of the window seat.

“Um, I’m sorry,” she says, her arms hugging her body. “I just… I think I…”

She keeps swallowing, over and over. Then she stands up and my eyes follow her because this can’t be happening, can it? I open my mouth a bunch of times to say something, say anything, say I was just kidding or… I don’t know… practicing, but I can’t get my voice to work.

“I need to go, Sunny,” she says. “My mom… I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Then she crawls out the window. I watch her jump on her bike and pedal away so fast, she’s a blur in the dark. I rub my eyes over and over again, but when I open them, she’s still gone. I even pinch my arm to see if maybe, just maybe, I’m dreaming, but pain shoots right up my elbow to my shoulder, good and real.

I thought Quinn…

I thought she…

I thought we…

I bury my head in my arm and try to cry, but I can’t even do that. I’m shivering, my head so full of girls laughing and stories of girls kissing and hearts disappearing, I’m sure I’m about to shake to pieces.

I grab a pencil off my desk and the nearest piece of paper I can find, a bright blue flyer for the Fourth of July beach bonfire next week, and start writing on the back. I write and I write until a whole poem fills up the page.

Standing up, I stuff the poem—and all the other ones I wrote since Kate pretty much locked me in my room—in the front pocket of my backpack. I shove Lena’s journal inside, along with a half-empty bottle of water that’s been on my nightstand for at least a week.

Then I don’t even think. I don’t even care. Because right now, I need to talk to Lena. I need to see her and I need to tell her everything and I need her to tell me what to do and how to feel about all this. Because she knows what it’s like to start over. She knows what it’s like to be scared, to be patient and daring, and I’m betting she knows what it’s like to be patient and daring and have everything fall apart. Kate doesn’t know, because she won’t even let me be patient and daring. She won’t let me do anything.

No. I need Lena. I need my mom. I need her right now. So I pull on my black stomping boots, take a big breath, and toss my leg out the window.

I want to write a love song, but I’m not sure who it’s for.

Maybe it’s for you or maybe it’s for me or

maybe it’s for some boy with blue eyes and floppy hair

I have never met.

I feel something,

but is it just wonder or fear,

love or like?

Maybe I just want to be like you,

because you’re smart and pretty

and your feet have been all over the world.

The girls I used to know,

the ones who sneer and shame,

they seem so sure

all the time.

Wouldn’t that be easier?

Wouldn’t that be safer?

On nights when I can’t sleep,

my heart lights up and

I wonder, wonder, wonder.

I tuck it away.

Easier.

Safer.

But this heart is new and I think it

likes it when

you hold it in your hands,

gentle and sweet.

I thought you liked it too

and I thought I saw a flicker

of light in my heart.

A little brighter.

A little happier.

I thought it felt

a little more

like me.

But then you disappeared.

And when I touched my fingers to my chest

to make sure my heart was still there,

my hand went straight through

like it was never there at all.