Paper Heart

Chapter 1

Almost one year later, I returned to the cabin in Wyoming. It looked and smelled exactly the same, but everything was different.

Colette had been dead for two and a half months.

“Keep it moving,” Kennedy said in her Boston accent, so it sounded like mah-ving to me. She bumped my shoulder with her duffel bag, trying to get around me in the cramped cabin entryway. “God, cousin, you’re like a rock in a river.” Rivah.

“Sorry,” I murmured, my vocal cords hardly working, taking a step toward the bench that had dirty hiking boots lined up under it, but not setting down my own bag. I’d been pretty much silent during the two-hour solo plane ride from Washington to Salt Lake City and the four-hour rental car ride with my relatives from Salt Lake City to Pinedale.

Frankie had refused to come back, so that meant my mom and her boyfriend, Charles, stayed home, too. I’d been given a choice: go alone—with my Boston relatives, of course—or spend the summer at home.

Here, I’d go to art camp with strangers and try not to annoy my cousin.

There, I’d see the world moving on without Colette firsthand.

That hadn’t really been a choice to me.

“I’ll carry your bag up, Tess,” Uncle Bran said, appearing behind me. “I know you don’t like the stairs.”

I was very aware of the weight being lifted off my right shoulder as Bran took the bag. I felt like it’d been keeping me from floating away. I sort of wanted it back.

“Thanks,” I said weakly. He was already halfway up.

Aunt Maureen tiptoed through the door with five-year-old Kane sleeping in her arms. She lovingly smiled at me before walking down the hallway to put Kane in bed.

“Tess?”

Now Aunt Maureen was standing by the old compact fridge, without Kane, looking at me expectantly. I guess I’d zoned out; who knows for how long.

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“I asked if you wanted something to drink.”

She and Uncle Bran didn’t have Boston accents, since they weren’t raised there; only their kids did. It was kind of weird.

Aunt Maureen waited patiently for me to answer. I thought about how she was a slightly younger, more put-together version of my mom. Her short-sleeved blue button-down shirt and tan shorts somehow weren’t even wrinkled from traveling all day. But my mom had waved me goodbye this morning in dirty sweats and a messy bun.

“I’ll get some water,” I said.

“I’ll get it for you,” Aunt Maureen said, motioning me over. “Take a seat.”

The round table could fit four people comfortably or six if you didn’t mind squishing in. I sat down on one of the outdated chairs. The plastic tablecloth felt sticky even though it was clean. I reached for a faded wooden lemon from the bowl in the center.

Last time I was here, Colette sat across from me. She tried to juggle these lemons. I wonder if she was the last person to touch this.

Aunt Maureen set down my water.

“Are you doing okay?”

Don’t ask me that, I thought. It makes it worse.

I nodded because talking would make me cry. I felt like crying anyway. I picked up the glass and tried to wash away the lump in my throat.

Uncle Bran and Kennedy thunked down the stairs, across the room, and out the back door.

“Why doesn’t she have to help unload the car?” Kennedy asked her dad. I heard her through the screen door.

“She’s been through hell,” Uncle Bran said. “I think you can manage some kindness for—”

Aunt Maureen shut the inside door.

“Want to go lie down until dinner?”

I didn’t want to do anything. “Sure.”

I stood up, and Aunt Maureen pulled me into a tight hug.

“Oh, Tessy Bear, you’ve had a hard time of it, but things will get better. Day by day, it’ll get better.”

So many adults had said to me: It’ll get better.

No, it won’t, I thought.

Aunt Maureen released me, and I went upstairs, not feeling as terrified of the stairs this time. I walked up the center and barely held on, numb.

In the bunk-room doorway, I looked from right to left at the full-size bed Kennedy had claimed, the two sets of bunk beds on the far wall, and the queen bed to my left. Maybe I should have picked a different place to sleep, but I didn’t. I kicked off my shoes, crawled onto the queen bed and under the covers, and snuggled into my spot near the wall, leaving space for someone who wasn’t here anymore.

I closed my eyes, thinking of the kids at school. Colette’s family. My family.

How did you just keep going?

How did you joke around, signing each other’s yearbooks, at the end of a seventh-grade year that Colette didn’t finish?

How did you sell the house where she lived?

How do you laugh now when I feel like laughter is a foreign language?

How do you get out of bed without making deals with yourself?

How is Earth even still turning?

“You have an owie.”

Startled, I opened my eyes to find my youngest cousin, Kane, next to the bed. I felt out of it, like I’d fallen asleep. His dark blond hair was wild from his own nap. He was looking at my left hand, where the cuticles on three fingers were coated in crusted, dried blood. I’d gotten really good at hiding my hands in pockets or long shirtsleeves after the nail biting had gotten so much worse.

Good job, loser, you’re freaking out a little kid.

“That’s a bad owie,” Kane pointed out again.

“Yeah,” I said, tucking my hands under the covers.

“Does it hurt?” he asked with huge, concerned eyes.

He was asking about my hand, but I felt the question in my heart. “Yeah, it does,” I said quietly, which made the tears come. They always came eventually.

Kane reached over and wiped my cheeks dry with his miniature thumbs. “It’s okay to cry when you have an owie or just anytime you feel sad.”

“Thanks, Kane,” I said, so surprised by the gesture that I stopped crying. I wasn’t used to being around kids who were younger than me. I didn’t have my babysitting certificate yet. Colette and I had been planning to do that together at the end of the summer.

“Okay and Mommy says you have to come to eat your hamburger now please.” Kane stared at me for three seconds, then added, “Okay, Teth, you have to get up now Mommy says please. We are having hamburgers and do you like ketchup?”

“I do,” I said, sitting up and throwing off the covers.

I followed Kane to the landing. Before he started down, he took my hand and looked up at me with his big eyes and long eyelashes.

“We’re going downstairs now,” he said bravely, taking a deep breath, then the first step off the landing. “You don’t have to be scared. Just hold on tight and go slow.”

“Okay, thanks, Kane,” I said, getting choked up again.

“Ketchup is icky,” he said as we stepped. “I like plain hamburgers. We can still be friends, though, because everyone has their own ’pinions and that’s okay. ’Cept my ’pinion is ketchup is very bad and my ’pinion is your ’pinion is wrong.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

Me and my little cousin made it down the steps. And then we ate hamburgers.