Free Unbreak My Heart by Melissa Walker

moves so fast could be creating a drawing that’s even remotely good. But after about twenty minutes, James gets up suddenly and holds the sketch pad right in front of our faces, and what I see surprises me.
    Olive gasps.
    “That’s so us!” she says, delighted.
    It’s a cartoon us—not like one of those real-life portrait drawings, but still, she’s right. James got her face perfectly: the way her nose turns up a little at the end, her slightly mussy left eyebrow, the glint of light that bounces off her green-framed glasses, which are a tiny bit askew in real life and in the drawing.
    I notice that the background isn’t this setting, aboard this huge yacht. It’s earlier, at sunset. You can tell even in his gray pencil that the “lighting” is from a few hours ago. Olive and I are sipping from our root beer bottles. James put himself in the scene, too, just a little. His glass bottle is reaching in to touch ours for a “cheers.”
    And then I look at me. I mean, illustrated me. She’s prettier than I am. She has freckles on her nose and a smile playing on her lips, though she’s not letting it spread across her face. Her hair is pulled back in a bun, like mine, and the arch of her cheekbones is striking—like she has a face that’s meant to be drawn. Her eyes look bright and alive, but there’s no doubt they look sad too.
    I glance up at James and see him studying me. I wonder how much he can read in my face.
    “We should go,” I say.
    “Don’t you like it, Clem?” asks Olive.
    I bite my lip and look down at her. “It’s great,” I say, though I feel like I might start to cry.
    I walk to the spiral stairs and carefully but quickly ease myself down to the main deck. Then I step off the side of the boat and onto the dock. As the wake of a passing motorboat makes its way into the marina and rocks the dock with a few waves, I suddenly remember that I have to pee. Badly .
    “You guys, I’m going to The Possibility ,” I shout. “James, can you take Olive back to your boat?”
    “Clem, wait!” says James. He’s down the steps in a flash. “Is there something wrong?”
    “No!” I say. “I just really have to pee.”
    And it’s only a half lie, because I do have to pee, and I have to pee right now . I’m almost glad for this slightly comical distraction, because I don’t want James to know that what’s actually wrong is that he saw it. He saw my sadness.
    I hustle toward The Possibility and look back once to be sure Olive is with James and they’re walking to his boat. Then I runwalk back to our boat, jump on board, and tear down the stairs into the head.
    Ahhhh. Does anything feel better than making it to a bathroom after you’ve been holding it for hours? Well, probably something, but I can’t think of what in this instance. Sweet relief.
    I sit in the main cabin of the boat for a minute. I could do the right thing and walk back over to Dreaming of Sylvia , say good night to James and his dad properly, thank them for a nice night.
    But I just stay on the couch and listen to the gentle waves lap against the side of The Possibility . Those eyes. My eyes. They were cartoons, but they were so real. I saw my own sadness in that drawing, like I was looking into a reflecting pool from a fantasy novel that showed me my soul or something. How could James see that?

chapter thirteen
     
Dear Amanda,
It’s so hard to hide things from you. I know
you sensed something was wrong …
     

     
    “I saw your feelings get hurt,” said Amanda. We’d just gotten home from the movies with Ethan and Renee and Henry, and she was sitting on my bed, staring into the mirror across the room.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Just that I could see it in your face when me and Ethan were holding hands,” she said.
    “Oh.” My heart pounded in my chest.
    Amanda’s mom is a therapist, and everyone in her family is way tuned in to their own emotions, and others’ feelings too—it’s actually kind of annoying how hard