Heartbeat Academy: Chapter 36

“I keep meaning to tell you,” Bailey said as we lay on top of the main building, staring blankly at the starless night sky, a frosting breeze brushing against us. “I’m leaving the Heartbeat Academy.”

The heat of the words scorched my throat and smoked my brain, leaving me unable to respond for several minutes. All of a sudden I got an intense pain in my sternum, as if I was going to have a heart attack. As if I was going to collapse then and there. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I couldn’t move.

“Well?” she said, confused at my utter silence. “You’re not going to, you know, say anything about it?”

I shook my head, taking a deep breath to let the pain subside and relax my body. “Are we going to get to see each other anymore?” I asked, jitters in my stomach, my voice cracking. “Or is this it?”

“I’m leaving the morning after tomorrow,” she explained with a shrug. “So after that…I don’t know. My parents might not let me come back. They want to press charges. Not just against Coach Johnson, but against the whole school.”

“Well, can you at least meet me up here again, tomorrow night?” I asked. “I’ve got something I want to give you.”

She looked at me, shifted her eyes down in a sorrowful, strange gaze, then nodded her head. “You don’t want to…? Y-yeah,” she said. “Yeah. I’ll meet you up here. Tomorrow night.”

***

The next morning came, and Dr. Pam had agreed to take me into the city to go Christmas shopping for Jean-Luc. When I stepped into the main office, she was chatting with Mrs. Barnes, and he was standing right behind her.

“Oh, here he is,” Mrs. Barnes said.

“Ah, good, Toby," Dr. Pam said. “Jean-Luc is going with us as well. Remember, we only have an hour, and nothing more than ten dollars.”

“I don’t understand why Mr. Tyler can’t take his own students shopping,” Mrs. Barnes scoffed, all three of us shifting our gaze towards her. “What are you all looking at me for?”

The elevator started to rumble behind us. “Oh, and we have one more person going with us,” Dr. Pam said with a smile.

The elevator doors stretched open, and Melissa Sotterley stepped out, dressed in a blue jacket and jeans, her aqua eyes hidden beneath huge brown glasses, her blonde hair cut short above her ears.

“Hey there, Toby,” she greeted quietly, waving her hand. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?”

The four of us made our way through Silenda City, walking off to a middle-sized convenience store located towards the heart of the town. We stepped inside as the bright lights, warm, cramped air and smell of bakery food plugged up my nose and hungered my stomach, and I began to wander through the various lanes in search of a present.

What to get for Jean-Luc, I said to myself, picking up a glass human skull into my hands, staring blankly into its empty eyes. Is there anything they don’t sell here?

*Crash*

I jumped backwards and my heart skipped a thousand beats at the loud sound of the echoing, deafening explosion, followed by the piercing screams of the other shoppers. I began to sweat buckets, hyperventilating as my mind scrambled and my heart raced in a hasty effort to find out what was going on.

I darted off to the front of the store, and when my eyes saw they saw, I dropped the glass skull to the ground, listening as it shattered into a million pieces.

A white minivan had crashed into the front of the store, shattering the walls and doors into nothing but dust and smoke, as about thirty or forty shoppers and civilians looked on in amazement at the sight of the shambolic scene.

“Toby? Are you okay?” Melissa asked, rushing up behind me alongside Dr. Pam, shock and fear overwhelming the two of them. “What happened?”

“T-the driver,” Dr. Pam said. “Are they…dead?"

The driver’s side door of the minivan opened, and a lanky, pale woman with long blonde hair stepped out, dressed in pink and red, fluffy pajamas. “Bonjour everybody,” she said in an obvious French accent, slurring her words. “Where Jean-Luc?”

“E-excuse me?” Dr. Pam asked. “Did you just say?”

“Ah, ha,” A high-pitched male voice said. “Found ya’ll, didn’t I now?”

Coach Johnson, I said to myself, flinching backwards as soon as I heard it, as soon as the venomous name crossed my mind. No way. It can’t be.

The man stepped out of his pickup truck parked outside of the shop, but he wasn’t Coach Johnson – just sounded like him. Rather it was an unfamiliar, bald, and pudgy Caucasian man dressed in a white tank-top and blue denim jeans. “Claudia, what is wrong with you,” he said, wagging his finger at the blonde woman. “Look what you did.”

“Vas te faire encule, Melvin!” Claudia shouted.

“I know what that means,” Melvin beamed.

"What?” Claudia asked. “What it mean, Monsieur Genius?”

The two started arguing uncomprehensibly back and forth, as Dr. Pam tried to calm them to no avail. “Mommy? Father?” Jean-Luc said.

The two went quiet and turned around towards Jean-Luc. “Good. There you are Jean-Luc,” Melvin said. “Get in the car. You don’t have to spend Christmas with this drunk mess.”

“Drunk mess?” Claudia screeched. “You complain me? You cheat me, you dirt! Why not you tell that?”

“Oh, here we go again,” Melvin complained. “For the last time, I did not cheat on you. You want me to say it again? Do you want me to swear on the bible? I did not cheat on you!”

I couldn’t take this any longer. “Hey!” Melissa and I shouted in unison.

Apparently she couldn’t either. We glanced at each other and smirked, as Melvin and Claudia bolted their heads towards us. “You two are, uh, Jean-Luc’s parents, right?” I said. “Uh, so, you two realize you’re in public, right?”

“What you mean?” Claudia asked.

“It means you two need to stop making idiots of yourselves,” Melissa said, crossing her arms. “But let me get this right. You two are Jean-Luc’s parents.”

“Yeah. I married the devil, then she divorced me,” Melvin explained. “And all I want is for Jean-Luc to come home with me for Christmas.”

“You big—”

“Quiet!” Melissa said, glancing over to me and then back towards the two parents. “I think Toby and I both agree that you need to go, Melvin.”

“Yeah, and—hey, wait a second,” I said. “Why does Melvin need to go? Claudia’s the one who needs to leave him alone.”

“Uh, no, sorry,” Melissa responded. “Claudia is definitely in the right here. Melvin cheated on her.”

“He hit me too,” Claudia added.

“Did not!” Melvin said. “She’s a liar!”

“Sorry, Toby,” Melissa said with a shrug. “But you can’t convince me that Claudia isn’t right here.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, shaking my head. “She crashed the car into the store! She could’ve killed people! And she’s half drunk, look at her.”

“Why do you always have to be so argumentative?” Melissa responded. “She wouldn’t have crashed the car if he didn’t cheat on her in the first place.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

The two of us started to bicker back and forth, as Melvin and Claudia restarted their argument as well. All the while Dr. Pam tried to intervene but to no avail, while all the shoppers looked on in amusement, beginning to argue among themselves whether Melvin or Claudia were in the right.

“If everyone could just take a deep breath and calm down,” Dr. Pam said in a slightly raised voice, doing nothing to quell the ongoing disputes.

“Vous le gens!” Jean-Luc said. “Vous le gens!”

I sighed and turned around, admitting apathetic defeat much to the joy of Melissa. I saw Jean-Luc taking a deep breath, clenching his fists and shutting his eyes.

He burst them open and exhaled. “Vous le gens!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Ferme…ta…guele!”

The store went completely quiet, bar the sounds of whirling police sirens approaching the store. “Father!” he said.

“Yeah, Jean-Luc?” Melvin responded. “Are you going come home to me for Christmas or what?”

“Il ne se soucie pas au propos de vous, Jean-Luc,” Claudia said. “Il veut seulement prendre tu Texas afin qu'il puisse obtenir un allégement fiscal!”

“Sh! Father. I hate you,” Jean-Luc said. “I hate you. Understand zat?”

Melvin’s eyes went wide and his body went cold, still as death itself. “You…you don’t mean that,” he said, giggling in a feeble attempt to convince himself that Jean-Luc wasn’t being serious.

He was being dead serious. “I hate you. I no want go home you for Christmas.”

“Ha! Ha! I know it! Now you leave us alone,” Claudia cackled, her body being drenched in pure ecstasy at the misfortune of Melvin. “Do you see?”

“I hate you also, Mother!” Jean-Luc said. “You lie about him. He do not cheat on you! He never cheat on you! You lie.”

He stepped forward towards the entrance of the store, as police cruisers began to swarm the outside. He looked at Dr. Pam, then at Melissa, then at me. “You lie about hit, Mother,” he said. “It not you who he hit. It is me.”

My heart nearly stopped. Jean-Luc looked to the doors and sighed. “You know zat. But you lie. You lie all my life. I stay here for Christmas. That is all.”

***

Jean-Luc would wind up getting what he wanted, and not end up having to go home to either of his parents for Christmas. But they would be back with a vengeance. I ended up getting him a box of chocolate for Christmas, and that was that. I had one more present left to give.

The night was cold and dark as I held the small box with the friendship rings in my hands, standing tall on the rooftop of the main building. I’d be lying if I hadn’t said I’d been through a lot over the years. From going into cardiac arrest for four years, to having the school doctor punch me in the face and having my first kiss be interrupted by my mother; but none of that prepared me for what was about to happen. Nothing could have.

I opened the box and turned around. “Bailey?”

But Bailey wasn’t there. She said she’d meet me on the top of the main building, but she wasn’t there yet. And so I waited. And she still didn’t come. I waited an hour but still, no sign of her, and that’s when I realized. That’s when I remembered.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, scrambling her feet, rushing back towards the window to the main building. “S-sorry, Ben!”

For once, I saw everything clearly. She almost kissed me, but then she got second thoughts and ran away. It wasn't just a gaffe as I thought at first – she was apologizing to you for what she almost did. Because it wasn’t me she was in love with, it was you the whole time!

The frustrating, biting, gripping feeling of abandonment pulled me towards the edge of the rooftop, and with a loud grunt, I tossed the box down below.

When I went back into the dormitory that night, hurt and alone, I saw Diana heading into Melissa’s bedroom for the night. I walked down the hall and looked over to Bailey’s bedroom, still shut tight. I thought about barging in and giving her a piece of my mind, but I ultimately decided against it. I’d have plenty of time to let her know how I felt in the morning.

***

I couldn’t sleep well that night. It was an unfamiliar feeling to have to deal with, as I couldn’t recall ever feeling angry with Bailey before. But every time I closed my eyes, and I imagined telling her how I felt, only to see that same, arbitrary look in her eyes that told me it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. I hated that look. I kept imagining her and I together, but then all I saw was you. I kept seeing you, even though I had no idea what you looked like, even then. And your face alone was enough to bring my blood to a boil.

By the next morning, I’d decided I’d had enough. I jumped out of bed, took my medicine and changed into my red and yellow t-shirt and blue jeans, before starting out into the lobby. I marched over to Bailey’s bedroom and started pounding on the door.

“Bailey! Open up!” I shouted. “Bailey! I’m not kidding. Come on.” I tugged on the knob and swung the door open, stepping inside of the room. The bed was neatly made and her favorite beanbag chair was pulled out in the center of the room with a GameCube controller in the middle, but she herself was nowhere to be found.

“Toby," Mr. Tyler said, tapping on my shoulder.

I turned around, scoffing as he looked at me with a certain emptiness in his eyes. “What?” I asked.

“Bailey died,” he said.