My Heart and Other Black Holes (22 page)

And this is exactly why Roman didn’t want a flake. But
he ended up with a flake. A grade-A flake. Though, it’s his fault. He’s the one who turned me into one.

I just need to turn him into a flake, too. Maybe flakiness is contagious.

While I’ve been spaced out, he’s gone back to devouring his food. When I come back to reality and glance at him, he’s staring right back at me. “Oh, hey. You’re back. Did you come up with some pressing physics problem you had to work out or something?”

I shrug at him. Now seems like the wrong time to pitch my ocean road trip plan. “Something like that.”

“Well, it’s your turn.”

“Huh?”

“To tell me about your dad,” he says.

I bring my hand to my face and chew on the skin around my thumb’s fingernail. “It’s kind of a long story and I don’t really know all the details . . .”

Roman’s face hardens. “Don’t play games with me. I answered your question. Now you have to answer my question. Straight up.” He lowers his voice so he’s practically whispering. “Suicide Partners keep their word to one another.”

And I know he’s right, but I wish keeping my word didn’t mean drowning my heart. Literally.

SUNDAY, MARCH 31

7 days left

I
convince Roman to let me wait to tell him the story of why my dad was locked up until we get to the playground. I didn’t really feel like airing my family’s dirty history under the fluorescent lights of the shabby diner. Then again, I was probably just trying to buy time. It seems like all I’m trying to do now is buy time.

He’s on the phone with his mom when I pull into the playground’s parking lot. She’s called him approximately fifty-seven times since our trip began.

“Everything’s good.” He pauses, nodding like he’s in agreement with whatever his mom is saying. “Yeah, it was a
fun trip.” She must say something funny because he smirks. “Aysel’s great. But hey, Mom, I was calling because I’m going to be a little later than I thought.” He starts nodding again. “Aysel and I thought we’d swing by the playground and play a pickup game.” He laughs. “Yes, I’ll take it easy on her. I promise. See you soon.”

He hangs up and turns to me. “You’re really doing your job, by the way.”

I blink at him. “What are you talking about?”

“My mom thinks I’m completely normal again. Before, she would’ve never let me come home later than I was supposed to.” When he smiles, it’s different from his half-moon one. It’s a calculated one. It makes my stomach flip in a bad way. “And did I tell you she hasn’t even come check on me in the middle of the night for the past week? Thanks to you, I don’t think she’s that worried about me anymore.”

I open the car door and step outside. The knot in my chest grows and I shuffle my gray Converses in the muddy dirt of the playground. It’s stopped raining, but the air is still damp and cold. I wrap my arms around myself and walk over to the picnic table I sat on the last time I was here. I climb on top of it and press my palms against the wet wood and lean back, staring up at the sky. Roman hops up on the table and sits beside me. I look over at him and he’s shading his eyes with his hand.

“You always do that,” I say.

“Huh?”

“Shade your eyes with your hand. I’ve noticed you always do that. Even if it isn’t sunny.”

His half-moon smile returns. “You’re so observant. In another universe, you’d make a really great scientist.”

“Maybe in this universe, too,” I whisper.

His posture stiffens. Before I can say anything, he’s jumped off the picnic table and is standing with his arms crossed, glaring at me. “Take me home.” His voice is flat. It’d almost be better if he was angry. At least then I’d know he felt something.

“Come on, Roman,” I say, trying to downplay it. I mentally slap myself for saying something so stupid. I should know better than to try to surprise him like that. I need a more subtle approach. He’s going to have to come to the conclusion himself—I can’t push him there.

I attempt to backpedal. “I was just saying that to say that. I’m not a complete idiot.”

He raises his eyebrows, pulling his lips into a straight line.

“I mean, I was trying to say that if things were different, I could be a great scientist.” I pause for emphasis. “In this world.”

“Yeah. If things were different. But what things are you talking about?” He doesn’t uncross his arms. The sun has poked out from beneath the clouds, and the sunlight is making his eyes look especially golden. They almost look like they’re on fire.

“My dad,” I blurt without thinking. After three years of trying to run from the shadow of my dad, now I’m dangling his dark history like some kind of bizarre bait. It’s pathetic, really. I’ve spent so much time trying to conceal the truth from Roman out of fear of his reaction, but now, I can’t worry about that; all I know is I need him to stay here. Stay with me. And I’ll do anything, say anything, that will make him stay just a moment longer.

“Your dad.” Roman shakes his head, staring down at the ground. “I don’t get you, Aysel. Your dad’s the reason you want to die. Yet you’re desperate to see him one last time, despite the fact that you supposedly hate him. And you won’t even tell me what he did. Do you really not trust me at all?”

I clench my teeth and resist the urge to tell him that I don’t want to die anymore. That everything has changed. But I don’t think this is exactly the moment to make that big proclamation, not when he’s so angry with me. I pat the table beside me, urging him to sit back down. “I promise I’ll stop messing around. I’ll tell you what really happened with my dad. What I know, anyway.”

Roman pinches his lips together and I can tell he’s contemplating what he should do. In the end, his curiosity wins out. He jumps up and takes a seat next to me. This gives me a perverse sense of hope. After all, being curious by definition means you want to see what comes next. It’s a feeling of some kind. I can maybe work with that.

I look at him out of the corner of my eye. His head is tipped down and he’s staring at his hands. “Roman?”

“What?”

“Do you promise not to judge me if I tell you the truth about my dad?”

He touches my wrist gently, wrapping his fingers around it. “Why would I judge you?”

I look away. My throat feels strained, loose, like a tire swing hanging from a frayed rope. It’s like any moment it’s going to collapse and crash, sink down into my gut, and leave me voiceless.

He touches my shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Timothy Jackson.” Those are the only two words I manage to push out.

Roman drops his hand, tucking it behind his back. He spins so he can directly face me. I force myself to look into his wide eyes. It’s in those eyes I found perspective and light again—they pushed their way into my black hole. I let out a choking heavy breath, a gasp for air. I’m so scared of watching those eyes turn from summer to winter, from warm to frozen.

He runs his hand along the small of my back. “Aysel, it’s okay. I know.”

Another choking breath. “No, you don’t. You have no idea.”

His fingers trail along the base of my spine. “Yes, I do. I know about your dad.”

I jerk away from him, moving to the very edge of the picnic table. I pull my knees to my chest and rock back and forth. I try to hum Mozart’s requiem, but I can’t hear anything except my own beating heart. It won’t slow down.

He moves to be next to me and drapes his arm around my shoulders. “Shh, it’s okay.”

My eyes blur and a wet ball forms and hardens in my throat. I haven’t truly cried in years. I’m not going to cry now. My shoulders shake and I bite down hard on my bottom lip. My mouth fills with the taste of blood. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

He grabs my chin and gently pulls on it so I’m forced to look at him. His golden eyes are still warm. “Because I didn’t know how to bring it up. And I wasn’t completely sure.” He drops my chin and pulls his hands away from me. He places them on his knees and takes a deep breath. “It was just a hunch I had based on your name and what you’d said about your family. It’s kind of hard to avoid the story . . . it’s everywhere. And I thought that was probably your dad, but couldn’t know for sure. Not until I heard it from you.”

“You don’t have to tell me about the story being everywhere.” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. I suck in a sob, refusing to let the tears stream down. My whole body stings with shame. It’s not even my dad—that’s bad enough—but I can’t believe I was so stupid to think that I
could hide the whole thing from Roman.

I sniffle and a briny taste crawls up my throat. “If you knew, why did you want me to tell you? Why did you keep asking about my dad?”

He grabs my hand again and squeezes it. “Because I wanted to know that you trusted me. That you felt comfortable enough with me to know that I wouldn’t judge you for it. And I wanted to hear the whole story from you.” He tugs on my hand, begging me to look at him. I tilt my head so I can gaze at the side of his face, but I refuse to meet his eyes. “I thought it would be good for you to talk about it. Hell, I still think it would be good.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes it helps to talk. It helped me to tell you about Maddie.”

My insides jolt with hope. “It did?”

“You gave me something no one else has given me.”

“What?”

“You looked at me the same way before and after the story. I want to do that for you.”

“Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“I’ll tell you what I know.”

He lets go of my hand and moves to put his arm around me. I rest my head on his shoulder. “Don’t be mad at me,” he whispers.

“I’m not.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

His shoulder is broad but bony, and I can feel his muscles tensing under the weight of my head. “Do you really not hate me? Even now that you know for sure that my dad is the crazy guy that was all over the news? I just thought you’d be really upset because . . .” I focus my eyes on a faded soda can that’s been tossed under the picnic table. “Well, because you used to be really close to Brian Jackson.”

He strokes the back of my head, running his fingers through my tangled curly hair. “I promise I don’t hate you, Aysel. I could never hate you. And I definitely wouldn’t hate you because of this.
You
didn’t do anything to Brian’s brother.
You
didn’t kill him.”

His sentence replays in my head: You
didn’t do anything to Brian’s brother
. You
didn’t kill him.
As I digest his words, my eyes become blurrier and blurrier. A tear rolls down my cheek and then the flood happens. My body trembles and I heave. I don’t understand why I’m sobbing now, why now of all times, why now when I finally don’t want to die.

He wraps me in his arms and I press my face into the soft cotton of his T-shirt. It smells like a mixture of fabric softener and campfire smoke. He continues stroking my hair and I focus on his kinetic energy. I don’t want him to stop. I want him to stay in motion.

He presses his lips to my ear and whispers, “Tell me, Aysel.”

I suck in the damp air and it fills my lungs. My heart feels like it might burst, and I untangle myself from him. I wipe my eyes and clear my throat. “I’m sorry.”

He smiles slightly. “You don’t have to be sorry. Stop saying that. Crazy girl.”

I frown. “See? You do think I’m crazy. Because of my dad.”

He shakes his head, his smile becoming wider and more crooked. “No. I think you’re crazy in a completely different way. In a beautiful way.”

My heart stalls. I want to ask him how he can say things like that—seven days before we’re supposed to die. It’s not fair. He can’t make me love him when he’s going to leave me. When he wants to leave me. When he knows this is the end.

The tears keep streaming down my face and he nudges me with his shoulder. “Tell me the story.”

I wipe the snot from my nose. I stare at his T-shirt, now stained with my tears. “I ruined your shirt.”

“I don’t care about my shirt. I care about you.”

Something inside me clicks. It’s like I’ve spent my whole life fiddling with a complicated combination only to discover I was toying with the wrong lock. And now, the vault inside of me that contains all my secrets is swinging open and I feel
this rush of blood swell in my chest. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know.”

I don’t look at him, but I swear I can feel him nod. And I can definitely feel his eyes on my face, soft and gentle, like the first snow of the year. We’re silent for a while, sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder. I press my gray sneaker against his dirty white one, and I wish we could stay like this forever. But deep down, I know that we can’t, and so finally I tell him the story, the complete story, the whole story.

“My dad and mom moved from Turkey to the US before I was born. At first, they lived somewhere in Michigan, but some relative of my dad’s or maybe it was my mom’s . . .” I stop talking for a second and catch my breath. Roman is right—I’ve never told this story, not since my dad got locked away. It’s been whispered behind my back or talked about in hushed voices by my mom and Steve late at night when they think Georgia, Mike, and I are all sound asleep. It’s been twisted and manipulated and changed. I’ve never owned it.

“Anyway,” I continue, “this relative ran a convenience store here in Langston and when he passed away, my parents moved here to take over the store.”

Roman snorts.

“I know, Langston of all places. But, yup, they moved here and a couple months later, Mom got pregnant with me. After I was born, I guess they started to grow apart. When I was less than a year old, they separated. Apparently my dad
had really violent mood swings. One morning, he’d wake up at dawn and make her scrambled eggs and toast. But other days, she’d wake up to find he’d smashed a hole in the wall from anger and had locked himself in their small basement study and refused to come out. He was like that when I lived with him, too. But I was too scared to ever say anything to Mom about it.”

I work up the nerve to look at Roman. He places his hand over mine, interlacing our fingers. “Go on,” he says.