Heart Like Mine: A Novel

Dad and Grace were fighting. It wasn’t a loud fight. It wasn’t the kind he and Mama used to have, the kind where their words reached inside me and Max and gripped us with icy fear. It was the quiet, moving-around-each-other-like-there-was-an-invisible-wall-between-them kind of fight. The kind where they didn’t speak to each other unless they had to, and when they did, their voices were stretched at the seams. I couldn’t decide which kind of argument was worse.

Dad spent all of his time at the restaurant, coming home late over the holiday weekend, the same way he had when Mama and he were still together. I felt a strange sense of panic fluttering around inside me, just like I had in the months before he’d left us three years ago. I felt bad about lying to him about what had happened in Max’s room, but I was afraid if I told him the truth, it would only make things worse. I didn’t want to say anything to him that might make him regret having Max and me living with him.

“Do you think Grace might leave?” Bree asked me in the locker room after school. It was the first week of December and she was keeping me company while I changed for dance team practice. After finding out Mama had never been a cheerleader, I thought about quitting, but then decided it was something I liked enough that I wanted to do it anyway.

I pulled my T-shirt over my head and looked at Bree. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. It’s probably just a fight.” I hadn’t thought about the fact that it could be Grace who left us, and was a little surprised to feel worried that she might. “Are you going to stay and watch practice?”

Bree shook her head and stood up. “Nah. I’m gonna head home. Have fun.” She wiggled her fingers at me, then headed out the side door that led to the parking lot.

Just as I entered the short hallway that led from the locker rooms to the gym, Skyler Kenton appeared. He jerked his head to the side, moving his swath of black hair out of his eyes. “Hey,” he said with a smile.

“Hey,” I said, suddenly glad I’d taken the time to put on a little mascara and lip gloss. I reached up and smoothed my ponytail, hoping he didn’t think my knees were too knobby.

He took a couple of steps toward me. “You made the dance team, huh?”

I nodded and gave him a shy smile. “Yeah.”

“I heard you’re pretty good at it.”

“Really?” I said, cocking my head to one side. “Who said that?”

“Lisa. And like, four other girls on the team. They were talking about it in the lunchroom.”

“Not Whitney, I bet.”

He grinned. “Nah, not Whitney. But she’s kind of a bitch, so who cares what she thinks.” I giggled, thinking how much I wanted to tell Mama that he was finally talking with me. I’d had a crush on him since last year, when I watched him help Max learn how to dribble a basketball on the playground. But Mama was gone, and the giggle in my throat suddenly morphed into a potential sob.

“So, maybe I’ll see you at the games?” I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. “Cool,” he said, reaching out his arm and letting his hand rub the outside of my arm. “Talk to you later, then?”

“Sure,” I said, the word squeaking out of me. I watched him saunter down the hallway toward the exit. Skyler Kenton just totally touched my arm! I was not the kind of girl he usually talked to. Losing Mama had turned me into some kind of strange celebrity, and most of the time, I hated it. The looks people gave me, full of fascination and pity, made me want to scream. But now, here Skyler was, suddenly touching my arm. I sighed, a strange sort of fluttering feeling in my stomach, and went to join all of the other girls in the gym.

Lisa smiled and waved at me as I approached the group, who were sitting in a circle around Mrs. McClain. Happy that Lisa had made the team, too, I sat down next to her, cross-legged, giving Whitney a closed-lipped smile when she tried to look like she wasn’t going to make eye contact with me. Whatever. Let her be mad. The other girls were talking and laughing—a few others even smiled at me. It felt good to be part of a group.

Mrs. McClain clapped her hands to get our attention. “Okay, girls. Before we get started with practice, let me hand out the details about our new uniforms! The one we picked is on page forty-two, and you can go online and order it in your size. They tend to run a little small, so keep that in mind.” She gave a stack of catalogs to Lisa, who took one and handed it to me. I flipped to the right page, saw the red and white sleeveless top with matching pleated skirt, and liked it immediately. Then I glanced at the pricing chart and let out a little gasp. Lisa nudged me.

“You okay?” she asked, and I nodded, even though I wasn’t.

“I just didn’t know the uniform would be so expensive,” I whispered. I didn’t have two hundred dollars. I maybe had a little over one hundred in the bank account my mom had opened for me, but Dad hadn’t been giving us an allowance since we moved in with him. I knew he was already stressed out about having enough business at the restaurant and I didn’t want to make things worse by asking him for money. I definitely wasn’t going to ask Grace.

“Ava?” Mrs. McClain said. “Anything the matter?” I hadn’t noticed that all the other girls had already stood up. Everyone was looking at me. Whitney stood with a hand on her jutted-out hip and gave me a quick roll of her eyes.

“No, I’m good,” I said, dropping the catalog to the ground, and joined the rest of my team in the center of the floor.

*  *  *

Grace was late picking me up. Mrs. McClain waited with me outside of the gym, and when Grace’s car finally pulled into the parking lot, I climbed into the front seat without saying a word, shoved my backpack and gym bag to the floor, and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Sorry I’m late,” Grace said to Mrs. McClain as she used the driver’s-side controls to open my window. “Max’s basketball practice ran a little bit longer than I expected.”

“Hi, Mrs. McClain!” Max called out from the backseat, where he was sucking down water out of a bottle.

She smiled at him and waved, then looked back at Grace. “I understand,” she said. “But if you can possibly help it, we try not to make late pickups a habit.”

Grace nodded, but her cheeks flushed pink. “Right. Absolutely. It certainly wasn’t intentional.” She closed the window and gave a loud sigh. Usually she would ask me about my day and how the squad’s new routine was going, but she didn’t even look at me as she pulled away from the curb. I figured she must still have been mad at me about what happened in Max’s room on Thanksgiving, but I didn’t know how to say I was sorry to her without getting in trouble for lying to Dad. So instead, I kept my mouth shut, matching her silence with my own.

As Grace drove us home, I clutched the uniform catalog, thinking about the rest of what Mrs. McClain had said during practice, telling us about the away games, how we had to pay for our own food and drinks and for what it cost to ride the bus. The other girls on the team didn’t even blink hearing how much money it would take to be a part of the team, but none of them were scholarship students like me. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to quit because I didn’t have enough money. I didn’t need to give Whitney another reason to make fun of me.

When we got home, Grace put her stuff down and went into the kitchen to warm up dinner. Max followed her, and I sat in the living room, staring at my homework. My thoughts strayed to the slip of paper Mama had stuck in that book. I turned her scribbled words over and over again in my mind, convinced the person she’d lost was why she’d looked into private investigators, but there was no way to know who that person was. I wanted to talk with my dad about it, but after the way he reacted when I asked a simple question about pictures from when Mama was in high school, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t help me figure it all out. I was also pretty sure he’d have been pissed I called Mama’s parents, for all the good it had done me.

New Pathways. I hadn’t had time to look it up yet. I glanced over at Grace’s laptop on the table—it was on, as usual. “Hey, Grace?” I called out. “Is it okay if I look something up on your computer real quick? It’s for my homework tonight.”

“Of course,” she said. “Do you need any help?”

“No, I’ve got it.” I walked over to the table and sat down, glancing quickly toward the entry to the kitchen, hoping Max wouldn’t join me. I opened the browser and typed in “New Pathways school, California,” and waited for the results to show up. There were about ten listed, but as I clicked on the links, I realized that most of them weren’t girls-only, so I added that into my search words. The only link that came up was in an online news article, listing the school as one of the many private schools that had closed in the late 1990s due to lack of funding.

“Shit,” I whispered under my breath. It didn’t have a website or a list of teachers I could contact, but the article said it had been a small boarding school for troubled girls. How had Mama been troubled? I thought about asking Grace exactly what “troubled girls” might mean, but I hadn’t told her about my conversation with my grandmother, even though she’d been the one to ask me about Mama’s yearbooks. I wasn’t sure why she was interested in what happened to Mama in high school, but I felt weird talking about it with her. I also felt weird because I was pretty sure she still hadn’t told my dad that we’d gone to Mama’s house.

The ringtone on Grace’s cell jolted me out of my thoughts. “Ava?” she said, her voice carrying from the kitchen. “Can you grab that for me, please? I’m expecting a call from work and I’m afraid if I stop stirring this pasta, it’ll burn.”

“Okay,” I answered, closing down the browser before heading over to the entry table where Grace’s purse lay. She told me once that she had her phone set to something like twelve rings before it went to voice mail so she’d be sure not to miss important calls from her clients. Which was nice enough, I guess, but annoying when that weird salsa-dancing ringtone went on forever. Opening the purse, I stuck my hand inside to rummage for her phone but instead came up with her slim, black wallet. I was about to put it back but then hesitated when an idea hit me. My dance uniform. I took a deep breath, knowing even thinking about stealing was wrong but feeling desperate enough to consider it. Grace might not even notice, I reasoned.

The phone rang again. I glanced toward the kitchen to make sure she wasn’t waltzing through the doorway into the living room to check on me, then I opened her wallet up. There was a stack of twenties in the space behind her checkbook. There were so many, she probably didn’t keep track. With what I already had in the bank, I only needed five. In a swift movement, and before I could change my mind, I slipped them out of the wallet and into my back pocket, then grabbed the phone and ran it into the kitchen.

Grace stood in front of the stove, stirring the pot. Max kneeled on a chair next to the counter, tearing up lettuce and throwing it into a bowl. “Slowpoke,” he said, and I screwed up my face at him.

Ignoring Max’s teasing, Grace put her hand out, but just as I gave the cell to her, it stopped ringing. “Oh well,” she said with a small shrug as she set the phone on the counter. She glanced at the screen. “Looks like it was just a telemarketer, anyway.”

“Sorry,” I said, bending my right arm so I could slide my hand into my back pocket. I fingered the bills I’d just put there, feeling a hard knot of guilt in my stomach, knowing that apology was for so much more than just the missed call.

*  *  *

Taking that money from Grace made me feel guilty, yes. But getting away with it also made me feel brave enough to sneak just a tiny bit more out of her purse when she was in the shower the next morning—this time taking a few fives and ones, figuring she’d be less likely to notice those being gone. I planned on ordering my uniform and saving the rest to help pay for away trips. And then maybe I could ask my dad if I could work in the restaurant a little, just sweeping the floors or wiping down tables, and I would slip the money back into Grace’s purse and she’d never realize what I’d done. I convinced myself that it wasn’t really stealing if you planned on giving the money back.

When I got to school, I asked Bree to skip our last class and go to my mom’s house again. I wanted to see if there was anything else that might help me figure out why she’d written that doctor. But most of all, why she’d lied to me. Why she’d lied to everyone.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Bree asked as we walked down the street to the house. It was a cold and drizzly December day, and she’d been a little hesitant to leave early, afraid we’d get caught, but finally gave in after I’d begged her to come with me.

“I’m sure,” I said.

“What are we going to say when the school calls our parents?” We both knew that any absence that wasn’t preapproved by a parent resulted in an immediate phone call from the secretary to our homes, inquiring where we’d been.

“We’ll just say I got really upset about my mom,” I told her. “And you took me into the bathroom and talked with me to help me feel better and I was crying so hard for so long we didn’t realize we’d missed class until the bell rang.” It was a little astounding how easily the lie came to me. “No one can prove we weren’t there the whole time. It’s not like they have cameras in the bathroom. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, not sounding entirely convinced.

“We might find something about New Pathways,” I said. Bree already knew about my conversation with my grandmother, and earlier I’d told her about the online search I’d done for the school.

“It was an all-girls school, right?” Bree said. I nodded. “Maybe your mom was missing a friend she made there?”

“I don’t know . . .” I said, trailing off. I didn’t know what to think about the scrap of paper I’d found with Mama’s writing: She’s gone, but still, I feel her. I miss her so much.

“Oh my god!” Bree said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and grabbing my arm.

“What?” I asked, pushing my hair away from my face.

“Oh no. No way.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “What if she fell in love with another girl? What if her parents found out and that’s why they wanted nothing to do with her? That would totally make sense. They’re super religious, right?”

“Right,” I said slowly. “But why would they send her there in the first place?”

“Maybe it was like our school, small and private with good teachers, and they just wanted her to have the best education. Isn’t that what your grandma said? And then she met a girl and like, experimented with her, and that was the end of it for her and her parents. Like they couldn’t deal with it or something.”

I nodded, my thoughts racing, unable to process what this all meant. “But she loved my dad. I know she did. How could she be in love with a girl and then get married and have kids with him?”

Bree shrugged and we started walking again, turning the corner that led to my old house. “Maybe that’s part of why they got divorced? And why she was looking at private investigators after your dad left. She could’ve been trying to find the person she wrote that note about.”

“It’s possible, I guess.” We approached the house, and a weird feeling began to form in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like thinking about Mama this way. I wanted to remember her as I knew her. I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to find out about her past at all.

“What else could it be?” Bree said. “I mean, what else would make her parents flip out like that and totally disown her? It had to be something big, right? Her being a lesbian is pretty big.”

“My mom was so not a lesbian!” I said with more force than I’d intended.

Bree’s shoulders curled as she looked away from me. “God, sorry.”

I sighed again and reached out to touch her hand. “No, I’m sorry. I just . . .” I paused, struggling with how to verbalize everything that was spinning inside my head. “It’s just that we don’t know for sure that’s what happened.” She nodded, and we walked up the front steps. I put my key in the lock when suddenly, the sound of my name stopped me from turning it.

“Ava?” It was Diane. Shit. I hadn’t thought about her being home. Bree grabbed my arm again and squeezed as Mama’s friend made her way across the lawn and to the front porch.

“Hey, Diane,” I said with a big smile, hoping if I acted like my being there was totally normal, she wouldn’t tell my dad.

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at us. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“It’s a half day,” I lied, which, apparently, I was getting good at doing. “Teacher’s conferences or something like that.” I tilted my head toward Bree. “We’re just picking up some of my stuff.”

Diane gave me a strange look. “I thought Grace and your dad had already done that.”

“Most of it,” I said. “But they forgot a few things. My mom’s things, actually. I sort of want to have more of them with me, you know?”

“Of course,” Diane said, pushing back her frizzy brown hair from her face. Bree’s grip lessened on my arm. “Do you need some help? I could drive you home.”

“It’s not much, really. Thanks, Diane. I appreciate it.” I turned toward the door, hoping she’d take the hint and leave us alone, but she spoke again.

“So . . . are things okay at home? Have your dad and Grace set a date for the wedding?” she asked, and everything inside me went cold. Diane went on. “I know your mom was pretty upset about the engagement when she found out, but I think she would have eventually come around, don’t you?”

Bree dug her fingers into my arm so deeply I was sure she’d leave a bruise. Dad and Grace were engaged? And Mama knew about it? I took a deep breath and lied to Diane again. “Sure. It’s fine. They haven’t set a date.” My voice felt brittle enough to snap in two. I gave Diane a smile. “We should probably hurry up. Grace is expecting me back soon.”

“Okay,” Diane said with a short wave. “I’ll leave you to it. Nice to see you, honey. I’ve missed having you next door.”

“Nice to see you, too,” I said, and finally, Bree and I were able to slip inside the house. I reached for the light switch, but when I flipped it, nothing happened. My dad must have had the power turned off so he wouldn’t have to pay the bill.

“Oh my god,” Bree exclaimed. “Your dad’s engaged? And he didn’t even tell you?”

“I guess so.” My entire body tingled like my foot does when it falls asleep. “And my mom knew.” I suddenly pictured Mama at Max’s basketball practice the week she died. How upset she was after talking with Dad, how I had to wait for him to tell me whatever it was that was bothering her. At the time, I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but now it totally made sense. She knew Grace and Dad were engaged and she was devastated. I suspected that part of her always hoped she and Dad would get back together—the same way Max and I used to whisper about it right after he left. I remembered another night, just a few weeks before she died, when I’d found her sitting in her closet, sobbing so hard it gave her the hiccups. I’d dropped to the floor and wrapped my arms around her. “What’s wrong, Mama?” I asked, and she just kept shaking her head.

“It’s hopeless,” she cried, her eyes so swollen I could barely see them. “I’m hopeless. Nobody wants me.”

I held her tighter as she shuddered, panic rushing through me. “I want you,” I said. “Max does, too.”

“Not your dad, though,” she sobbed. “Not my parents.” She let loose a deep, keening cry, one so aching and raw it gave me the chills. “Oh god. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Mama, you’re going to be okay,” I said. “Everything’s going to be fine.” I wanted her to believe those words. I wanted to believe them myself. After she’d cried a while longer, I helped her crawl back into bed and tucked the covers around us both. Her head was on my chest and I smoothed her hair back from her face again and again, the same way she had done for me more times than I could count. I convinced myself she was fine, that it was just another one of her bad spells.

But now, another thought struck me, one more terrible than any I’d had since the night Daddy told us Mama was dead. I looked at Bree, my eyes shiny with tears. “What if she was so upset she didn’t want to live anymore? What if that’s the reason no one will tell us how she died?”

Understanding blossomed across Bree’s face, immediately followed by a look of horror. “Like maybe she killed herself, you mean?”

I nodded, pressing my hand over my mouth. Bree was the only person I’d told about how much Mama cried, how many things I had to do to help take care of her. I knew she was depressed, even when she tried to hide it behind bright smiles and chirpy laughter. Maybe she hadn’t been sick at all. Maybe she just didn’t want to be alive anymore. Maybe Max and I were just too much work for her to handle and when she found out that Grace and Dad were engaged, it finally convinced her he’d never come back to her. Maybe she just gave up. And maybe it was my fault because I told her she’d be fine.

I dropped my hand back to my side, not wanting to think about any of this. I couldn’t stand to consider that I’d failed Mama—that she’d been asking me for help all along and I let her down. I wanted to relieve the sharp, biting pain in my chest. I’d always known it was possible my dad would want to marry Grace, but it was always distant, in the future, like the idea that I’d someday go to college or get married myself. I thought about everything nice Grace had done since we met her, suddenly convinced she was manipulating me the entire time, trying to impress my dad so they could get engaged. She didn’t really like being with us. I’d seen the tension etched across her face since Mama died. I knew that having us around wasn’t part of her plan. We were a burden, a means of getting what she really wanted all to herself—my dad. I tried to remember the last time he had come into my room on a Saturday morning to tickle me awake and came up empty. He stayed in bed with Grace now, and Max and I got up on our own and poured ourselves bowls of cereal. I didn’t understand how he could choose her over us—how anything could be more important to him than just being my dad.

“If Grace thinks I’m going to call her ‘Mom,’ she’s out of her mind,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“But you do kind of like her, right?” Bree asked. Her words were halting and unsure. I could tell she was trying not to make me mad.

“No,” I said again, unable to hide my annoyance. “I put up with her. There’s a big difference.” This wasn’t exactly true. I’d been feeling grateful to have her around. Yet every time I moved a step closer to Grace, I could almost feel Mama’s hands on me, trying to hold me back from the woman Dad loved.

Bree sighed. “Okay. If you say so.”

She didn’t believe me. She didn’t understand that Dad brought Grace around so he didn’t have to be there. So he could spend all his time at the restaurant and leave us all alone . . . again. “How would you feel if your dad married the Blond Hose Beast?” I asked her. “If you had to call her your mom?”

Bree snorted. “Well, first of all, I would never call her that, even if she tried to make me. Which she wouldn’t, because she hates the idea of being old enough to be anyone’s mother.”

“Yeah, but—” I began, only to have her cut me off.

“And second, you can’t even begin to compare Grace against the girls my dad falls in lust with. He just keeps replacing my mom with a younger, trashier version of her.” Talking about her parents that way, Bree’s voice was almost as bitter as mine had been just a moment before.

I didn’t argue with her, knowing she was just repeating the same words she’d heard her mother say about her father’s many girlfriends. “I just don’t want them to get married,” I said quietly. “I just want my life to go back to the way it used to be.”

Bree sighed. “But you know that it can’t . . . right?”

I didn’t answer her. Instead, I looked around the living room, which was illuminated only by the muted gray light from the front window. It didn’t look any different than it had when Grace and I came to get Mama’s cake recipe—Dad hadn’t had time to hire movers to pack up the rest of our stuff. It didn’t seem to matter now, why I’d come here today. What mattered was the fact that every grown-up in my life seemed to lie to me. What mattered was that outside of Bree, I didn’t think there was anyone left I could possibly trust.