The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James Read online

  Margot stuffs her hands in her shorts pockets and smiles at me. Like it’s just any other day. Like she didn’t do what she did.

  I would ignore her. I totally would. I’d loop my arm with Quinn’s and stomp us both off into the sunset, except Quinn says, “Hey, Margot,” and I nearly swallow my tongue.

  “Hey,” Margot says back.

  They know each other? How? Why? And if they do, does Quinn know about… about…

  I shake my head, trying to clear it so I can figure out what in the world is happening right now.

  “What were you two laughing at?” Margot asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. Or, rather, snarl.

  Margot frowns at me.

  “It was just this boy,” Quinn says, grinning at me. I try to grin back, but I think my mouth is broken. Margot, Breaker of Smiles. “He walked by right after we—”

  “Decided to get a funnel cake,” I say, standing up. “I want something super-greasy. Don’t you, Quinn?”

  Quinn blinks at me. “Um… what?”

  “Funnel cakes are my favorite thing ever in the whole wide world.”

  Margot snorts a laugh. “You hate funnel cakes. You said they’re like sponges soaked in grease.”

  I glare my best glare at her. She’s right, but I don’t care. She shouldn’t be talking about all the stuff I like and don’t like as if she’s still my friend. As if she still knows me.

  Margot clears her throat and looks down. “Plus, are you sure you should be eating… um… fried stuff?”

  “Should anyone?” I shoot back.

  Margot and Quinn both wrinkle their brows at me. I plop back down on the blanket.

  “So… you guys know each other, huh?” Quinn asks.

  “Yeah,” says Margot, sitting down so close to Quinn their knees touch. “Since we were four. She’d just moved here and my mom forgot to send me to preschool with a snack. Sunny shared her peanut butter and graham crackers.” She smiles at me, but she drops it real quick when I just stare at her.

  “Wow,” Quinn says. “I can’t imagine knowing someone for that long. Other than my mom.”

  “Your mom is so cool,” Margot says.

  Quinn shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Everyone says that.”

  “It’s true!” Margot says, grabbing my bag of popcorn. I frown at her total cluelessness. “Her hair is blue. I mean, how many moms do you know with blue hair?”

  “She’s only doing it to bond with me or whatever.”

  “So annoying. My mom started painting her nails the same color as mine.” Margot brandishes her fuchsia fingers. “Like, what?”

  “Totally.”

  “Hang on,” I say, because they really do know each other. Are they friends? My stomach goes all wobbly with nerves. “How… how did you two meet?”

  “Quinn and her mom are renting Sandy Dunes,” Margot says, munching on popcorn. Her dad owns a vacation rental company and has a bunch of cute little white beach houses all over the island. One time, for Margot’s ninth birthday, we got to spend the night in Sandy Dunes, which was always our favorite house because it had its own pool shaped like a kidney bean in the backyard and a screened-in porch with two big hammocks full of fluffy pillows we could sleep in. There’re few things better than a sleeping porch on the beach in the winter.

  “It’s the cutest house,” Quinn says. “Margot and her mom helped us unpack.”

  I nod and swallow hard, trying not to panic. Quinn smiles at me. I wait for her to roll her eyes at me or something, but she doesn’t. She’s the same Quinn. Still, I didn’t plan on her knowing Margot. The whole thing is making my stomach hurt.

  Quinn stands up and brushes the sand off her shorts. “I’m going to go get a Coke. You guys want one?”

  “Sure,” Margot says.

  “I’ll come with,” I say. I’d rather sleep in a sandpaper sleeping bag than stay here alone with Margot, but Quinn waves me off, already weaving through the moviegoers.

  “So,” Margot says.

  I say nothing.

  “Sunny.”

  Nope.

  “Look, I’ve been meaning to come over,” Margot says to my back. “My mom told me your surgery went well. I just wasn’t sure—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I snap. Then I try to watch the movie while Margot watches me. I can feel her eyes boring into me. She’s probably trying to catch a glimpse of my scar. Heart transplants fascinate people. Or freak them out.

  “Stop,” I say.

  She flinches. “Stop what?”

  “Staring. It’s rude. I have a new heart. I’m not, like, half robot or something.”

  She huffs and tucks her hair behind her ears. We sit in the quiet for a few seconds and it’s weird. Since January, we haven’t been alone together. We haven’t been together at all. Juniper Island might be small, but it’s easy to avoid someone when you’re sick and pretty much homebound and really good at screening your calls and texts.

  Still, I can’t help but think about the last time she was at my house, just me and her, before that terrible slumber party, before everything changed.

  “I can’t wait to have my first kiss,” I said, tucking my pillow under my head.

  “It’s so amaaaaazing,” Margot said. She lay on her stomach across my bed and flipped her hair off her shoulder. “Do you like anyone?”

  “You’d know if I liked someone.” Although, even as I said it, I wasn’t so sure that was true anymore. Margot hadn’t slept over in a month. Tonight was the first night she’d even been to my house in like two weeks. A whole lot of stuff could happen in two weeks. At least, it could happen to Margot.

  But then she smiled at me and nudged my foot and said, “I’d better know,” and everything felt like it always did.

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to like someone like this.” I waved a sluggish hand at the oxygen tank hanging out next to my bed, a clear tube snaking over the covers and straight up my nose.

  “Please,” Margot said, flicking my leg. “I think it’s cool. You look like a superhero.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “For real! Henry just told me the other day that he thought you were cute.”

  “Aw, you’re lying to make me feel better. You’re the bestest best friend ever.”

  Margot laughed. “I’m serious. You should ask him out.”

  “Oh, sure. Hey, Henry, want to go to a movie? It’ll just be me and you… and Kate with a suitcase full of pills, Dr. Ahmed if Kate has her way, and of course, Raspy.”

  “Raspy?”

  I patted the oxygen tank. “I named her Raspy.”

  She rolled her eyes at me, but then she got all serious, her brows scrunched in the middle. She scooted up so she was lying right next to me and wrapped her arm around my waist, hugging me tight. I let out a happy sigh and forgot all about Margot’s new friends or how they could race down a beach, laughing and splashing in the waves, and I couldn’t.

  “It won’t always be like this,” Margot said. “You’ll get a new heart, I know you will. And then you’ll get to kiss whoever you want. You can even leave Raspy at home.”

  I smiled, but my throat got all achy. I hoped she was right. I could tell she believed it. She’d always believed I’d get better. She’d always believed anything was possible, from the moment I told her I was sick.

  “Well, I won’t want to kiss Henry Lee, I can tell you that right now.”

  Margot nudged my shoulder. “Why not? He’s nice! Very soft lips.”

  “Oh my god.” I covered my face and cracked up, as much as I could crack up without popping a lung. She laughed with me and then we got super-quiet. She laid her head on my shoulder and my mind went a mile a minute, thinking about kissing. A year ago, I’d never really thought about it all that much, but lately, I could hardly think about anything else. Every night, I went to bed scared I wouldn’t wake up. That my heart would just go kaput in the middle of the night and I’d never get to kiss anyone.

  “Have you ever wondered what
it would be like to kiss a girl?”

  The question flowed out of my mouth, like a big old exhale after holding your breath for a long time.

  Margot didn’t answer right away, but her body went all tense next to mine. Right away, I wished I could take the question back. Stuff it into my oxygen tank.

  “Never mind,” I said, but Margot never did like to let stuff go.

  “Um… wait… you think about kissing girls?” She pushed herself up to her knees and I sat up, my stomach clenching. “Are you serious?”

  “You’ve… never thought about that?”

  “Um. No.”

  I tried to take a deep breath, but I wasn’t too good at those lately. “I want to kiss a boy too. I just wonder sometimes, that’s all.”

  “But… why?”

  “I just do. I don’t know.” Tears stung my eyes, but I managed to keep them from falling down my face. My mind started going in circles, trying to think of a way I could play this off as a joke, but everything I could think of to say sounded stupid.

  Plus, it wasn’t a joke. And Margot should get that. She was my best friend. She didn’t laugh at me when she found out I secretly sucked my thumb at night until third grade. She never made me feel weird for having a mom who took off on me when I was four years old. She’d gone to a bunch of doctor appointments with me, even the ones where they had to draw my blood, and Margot hated blood. She helped me pick out young adult novels from Kate’s shelves at home and read the best kissing scenes with me over and over again. She loved me no matter what. I know she did.

  “Hey,” I said, keeping my voice light. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just like wondering about boys.”

  “Except they’re not boys.”

  “So what?”

  “I don’t know.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I was just surprised. I didn’t know you thought about girls like that.”

  “I don’t know what I think yet. I’m just… wondering.”

  “Yeah, you said that.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  My oxygen tank puffed and huffed and I wished I could erase the last five minutes. For real, a time machine would be really awesome right now.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I asked when she just sat there, picking at the peeling turquoise nail polish on her fingers. My nails matched. She’d painted them for me just the day before.

  “I won’t,” she said, finally looking at me. “Of course I won’t.”

  “Pinkie promise?”

  She reached out and wrapped her pinkie around mine. “Pinkie promise.”

  I pull my knees to my chest and replay that conversation with Margot over and over. If I’d never said anything about kissing girls, I wouldn’t be sitting in the sand right now with my stomach all knotted up and my shoulders shoved up to my ears next to Former Best Friend. I’d be telling Margot all about Step Three. I’d be grinning at how excited she’d be that I was going to get my first kiss. I’d be tugging on her arm, blushing but laughing, when she called out to some floppy-haired tourist boy that I thought was cute.

  My eyes start stinging, my throat aching.

  “Hey, Sunny?” Margot asks.

  I sniff in response, making sure there aren’t any tears leaking out.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Like you care.”

  She sucks in a breath. “How can you say that? Why… why wouldn’t I care?”

  I just shake my head. My eyes are aching super-bad now. I blink-blink-blink to keep the tears back.

  “Why did you stop talking to me?” she asks when I don’t say anything else.

  Her voice sounds super-soft. And sad. Maybe even hurt. It makes my heart feel all tender, like a finger poking at a fresh bruise. She would think our eight-year-long friendship totally falling apart was my choice. Nothing’s ever her fault.

  She doesn’t know I heard her talking to her swim team friends the night of her twelfth-birthday-party sleepover, two weeks after I told her my biggest secret. They were all cozied up on her bed together while I was supposed to be in the bathroom.

  I don’t even know why she invited them. I mean, I know she’s friends with them, but birthdays were usually only a Margot and me thing. Just like everything was only Margot and me for years and years. Sleepovers almost every Friday, sharing school lunches—half of my peanut butter and honey for half of her ham and provolone—picking out what clothes we’d wear on the first day of school every year.

  Sixth grade had been different, though. By the start of school, I was pretty sick, so Kate and Dr. Ahmed decided home study would be the best thing for me. Margot and I didn’t pick out any first-day outfits. We didn’t bike to school together. We didn’t scope out the cafeteria and pick the best lunch table, we didn’t have lockers next to each other, we didn’t share a homeroom. I wasn’t there at all. It was the worst thing that could’ve happened to two best friends.

  And Margot barely even noticed.

  She joined the swim team and didn’t seem to care that I couldn’t join with her. Even if I had still been at school, there was no way I could hold my breath underwater for ten seconds, much less huff it down a whole pool lane. I thought it would be fine, because, you know, BFFs and stuff. When she didn’t have practice, Margot still came over all the time and slept over on weekends.

  But then, every weekend turned into every other weekend, which turned into once a month. Margot started hanging out with all the swim team girls more and more. I still saw her, but it was always at my house, watching movies or talking while swinging on the front porch swing. With her new friends, she could go to the mall and to school dances and to Adventure Cove, the little amusement park over in Port Hope. She could do all the stuff there was no way Kate would let me do, especially after I got my oxygen tank.

  I couldn’t compete with them. No way. The swim team girls were popular and talked about boys and wore lip gloss and had fully functioning hearts. It was Margot and me less and less. I knew it was because I was boring, because I couldn’t do much of anything other than walk on the beach really slow or watch movies on my couch. I wanted my best friend back, so I told her about my secret. I told her I wondered about girls sometimes. I told her, because I knew, I just knew, that she’d be happy that I’d talked to her about it and she’d remember that it was her and me. I knew that she’d get it, that she’d help me figure it all out, that she’d let me wonder to my heart’s content and never, ever judge me for it.

  Well. Clearly, that didn’t go the way I thought it would. When her birthday rolled around and she told me she’d invited half her swim team, I wasn’t all that surprised. It still hurt, though. The swim team girls never talked to me very much, so I knew I was getting left behind. I just didn’t know Margot would betray me the way she did.

  Now, my heart starts pounding, thinking about what I heard her say the night of her party, standing in the hallway outside her bedroom.

  I didn’t want to invite her, she said.

  My mom made me, she said.

  It’s so weird, I don’t know what to say to her anymore, she said.

  You don’t think she’ll die in her sleep, do you? she said.

  And then she laughed. Laughed. And all the other girls laughed too. Bri and Xiomara, Eliza and Alexa and Annabel. Even Iris, who I’d always thought didn’t have a mean bone in her body. They all laughed at my broken heart, like it was a joke.

  But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part, the worst of worse things ever, was when Alexa said, She hardly talks to any of us except you, Margot, and then Eliza, the swim team captain and most popular girl in the whole school, said, Um, yeah, it’s like she has a crush on you or something, and then Margot didn’t say anything for a second and I peeked through the crack in the door, because what Eliza said was just so ridiculous, I didn’t understand why Margot hadn’t stuck up for me, and then I saw Margot lean forward, all secretive and stuff, the other girls pulled toward her like magnets, and then she said, You guys, she might. Beca
use guess what she said to me a couple weeks ago? I went over to her house because, you know, she can’t go anywhere, and she told me she thinks about kissing boys and girls.

  Eliza wrinkled up her nose and said Ewwww, but all the other girls totally lost it. Xiomara even fell off the bed because she was laughing so hard.

  After that, I went back to the bathroom and tried to cry, but I couldn’t because I was so mad. Then I left, saying I didn’t feel good, which wasn’t even a lie. I swear Margot looked relieved. I wasn’t even supposed to go to the party anyway. I was pretty sick by that point and Kate was freaking out, but I’d been having a good week and Dave had convinced her that I needed to feel normal. I needed to feel like a kid.

  Well, all I ended up feeling was that, apparently, my first and only best friend was a jerk who didn’t care about me one bit. Margot texted me a few times after that, but I wouldn’t respond.

  Eventually, Kate noticed that Margot was never at our house anymore and I wasn’t glued to my phone, texting my best friend all the time. Kate freaked out about that too, because Margot was pretty much my only friend, but I wouldn’t tell Kate what had happened. I was too embarrassed. Plus, I never, ever wanted Kate to worry about me more than she already did.

  After a few weeks, Margot stopped trying to talk to me, Kate stopped asking why, and everything went quiet.

  For a while, I tried giving up my kissing dream too, but then I got super-mad at Margot for yanking that away from me. Especially when she knew I was only thinking out loud about kissing girls that night in my bedroom two weeks before her stupid party, which is what you’re supposed to be able to do with a best friend.

  No way, nohow was Margot going to ruin kissing for me. So I started sneaking Kate’s young adult novels into my room and reading the kissing scenes again. But I only read the boy-girl scenes. I’d read some girl-girl kissing scenes before and I liked them. I liked them so much, a few of them even made me cry, but I was done with all that. Thinking about kissing girls was too scary, and I had enough scary things in my life, thanks very much. So I was going to kiss only boys. If I ever got the chance, I was going to kiss so many boys, Margot would end up asking me for kissing advice. In fact, all those girls would. Xiomara and Eliza and Alexa—every seventh-grade girl at my school would bow down to me as the Kissing Queen of Juniper Island.