Breakable (Contours of the Heart 2)

I slid into my back-row seat and pulled out a textbook, preparing to study for a quiz in my eleven o’clock class. Waiting for Heller to arrive so Moore and his buddies would sit down and shut up, I sketched something violent in the margin of my text. I’d often wondered what people who ended up with my used textbooks thought when they turned the page to one of my doodles. Usually, they were just designs – the product of momentary daydreaming. Sometimes, they were personal illustrations for the printed material. Rarely – very rarely – they included faces or body parts.

Heller entered by the door at the front of the classroom, snapping my attention from my pointless musing. Since Jackie had quit coming, class had grown incredibly boring. I knew the material inside out. I knew all of Heller’s jokes and humorous anecdotes. The personal touches he incorporated into his lectures made him an awesome instructor, but even so – three times was plenty for most of them, and four was bordering on torture.

‘If everyone will be seated, we’ll begin,’ he said. From my vantage point on the back row, everyone was sitting down, but he was clearly addressing someone with that statement –

Oh, God. I stared. I couldn’t do anything but stare.

Jackie – cheeks flushed, eyes wide and fixed on Heller – stood feet away from me, just inside the back door of the classroom. Suddenly, as if prodded from behind, she scampered three rows down, sliding into the only empty seat … except for the one next to me. Which would have been closer.

Maybe she hadn’t seen it. Or me.

Maybe she had.

What was she doing here?

Good thing I’d been through this lecture three times and could comfortably regurgitate it for my session later, because I couldn’t focus on a single word Heller said the entire fifty-minute lecture. It was all blah blah blah and swishes of lines on the whiteboard. Jackie didn’t appear to be faring any better, though I assumed her inattentiveness was caused by altogether different reasons than the shock I’d received from seeing her. She couldn’t seem to look up without glancing at the back of her ex’s head, which left her staring at the board – whether or not Heller was writing or diagramming graphs on it, or at the empty page in her spiral notebook – which remained unfilled the whole lecture.

She was there to drop, I thought, finally, relaxing. That’s what she was doing – dropping the class. She’d arrived too late to speak with Heller before class began, so she was sticking around to get his signature on the drop slip after it was over. Reinforcing my conclusion, she stepped down to the front at the end of class (once her ex had passed in the centre aisle – without even noticing her). After a quiet exchange with Heller, she waited for him to chat with two other students, and then followed him out the door.

I should have been relieved. No need to assume any further responsibility for her. No need to send that email I’d written this morning.

No need to ever see her again.

So why this conviction that I would surrender something irreplaceable if I let her vanish from my life?

The answer was just another question. What other choice did I have?

Just like the Halloween party, I saw her the moment she entered, taking her place at the back of my line. She was an invisible force, dragging at something equally hidden inside me. I wondered at the magnetic field we’d managed to create between us, and whether she’d feel the pull of it as she moved nearer. Maybe it was just me who felt it.

She was with the pretty redhead I vaguely recognized from the party, where they’d arrived together – Jackie in her red-hot devil costume and her friend dressed as a wolf – fuzzy ears and bushy tail, requisite skintight leotard … and granny glasses on the end of her nose. Which I didn’t get until a tall, shirtless guy in jeans and a hooded red cape jogged over, picked her up – literally – and carried her on to the dance floor.

Whenever it rained, people elected not to leave campus between classes, and the student-centre Starbucks was besieged. Snaking round two displays and trespassing into the miniscule seating area where every seat was taken, the end of the line trailed down the hallway. The rush showed no sign of letting up. I didn’t have time to be distracted, but I was, watching Jackie and her friend inch closer, one step at a time.

Her friend leaned out of line to check the wait and decided it would be too long. I thought they’d both leave, but she enfolded Jackie in a hug and darted off alone.

Jackie hadn’t noticed me, not that she’d fully focused on anything at all. Her empty gaze drifted over the other patrons or stared out the far window. Her mouth was a flat line, her pensive expression a contrast to the rainy-day smile in my sketchbook. Watching her made my heart ache, as if that organ had become linked to her emotional state, rather than targeting its primary task – keeping me alive. She checked her phone and scrolled through messages or some web page for a minute or two, before resuming her aimless gazing, shuffling forward behind a tall guy who blocked her view of me, for which I was grateful. I knew instinctively that if she looked up and saw me now, she’d turn and head for the exit.

Finally, the guy in front of her gave his order, paid and moved to the pick-up area.

‘Next,’ I said gently, rousing her from her musing.

Her lips parted, but whatever she was about to say dissolved, unsaid. A blush ignited under her skin. I held her eyes – which I noticed, now that I was staring straight into them at close range, were a bit bloodshot, as though she’d been crying recently. Surely Heller hadn’t made her cry? As much of a hard-ass as I knew he could be when necessary, I couldn’t imagine him making this girl cry because she wanted to drop a class.

My heart constricted again, attuned to her. I’d be forever associated with that night in her mind. Nothing would eliminate that fact. I scared her or reminded her – either way, she wanted to escape it. How could I ever blame her?

The girl in line behind her cleared her throat, impatient.

‘Are you ready to order?’ I grounded her with this question, pulling her back to where we were. It’s over. I wished she could read my thoughts. He’s not here. We’re not there.

She gave her order then, her voice a distorted hum that I somehow understood. I printed it on her cup, along with her name, and passed it to Eve. Late Saturday night, it occurred to me that I’d called her Jackie, when I had no cause to know her name, but there was no reason to pretend ignorance of it now.

When I looked up, she was staring at my right hand – still swathed in a light layer of gauze. Most of the blood Saturday night had been his, as I’d told her – but not all of it. Once I got home and cleaned up, I could tell how hard I’d hit him by the split, abraded skin on both sets of knuckles. The injuries were gratifying. Proof that I’d not held back. Little wonder he’d gone down and stayed there.