Page 43 of House of Hearts
Not all stories have happily ever afters. Some only have afters. But standing here on stage with Calvin on our graduation day, I’d like to believe ours is happy.
The campus is alive with the swell of visitors—students and families flooding the Greek Theater and an orchestra pit of underclassmen playing our school song over the nervous chatter of onstage seniors.
Despite it being a literal graduation, there are no caps to be thrown in the air or polyester robes to slip on over our shoulders.
Graduation gowns are too pedestrian for the academy (of course), so everyone is clad in the unofficially official uniform of either a red dress coat and tie or a white dress and floral crown.
The seasons have swept through our school seemingly overnight—autumn stripping the trees, winter lacing the academic halls in collars of ice, spring thawing campus through an onslaught of showers.
Now in summer, the Little Garden has come to life and brought with it enough new growth for our daisy chain crowns.
“Introducing your new graduates!” the headmistress bellows into the mic, and Calvin stiffens beside me, his smile momentarily wavering at his mother’s voice.
I grip his hand and give it a tight squeeze. He returns it and then, like that, the names are called. Diplomas are handed out in reverse order, so I get to watch Amber grace the stage before the rest of us.
She’s radiant today in her Miu Miu dress, her dark hair contrasting against the bright chain of florals.
She’d been the least shocked by the truth and far more observant than any of us knew.
“You forget, writing gossip columns is all about reading in between the lines. Which is precisely what I did whenever you three talked.”
She accepts her diploma, and there’s a chorus of cheers from her extended family on the lawn.
Only immediate family are allowed in the theater seats for crowd size, but that doesn’t stop everyone else from filling up the grass around us.
Her cousins whoop and cheer as she blows them a kiss on stage.
Oliver follows, and there are a million camera flashes from his parents in the front row. They arrived early enough for me to see his mother pinch his cheeks and sob “That’s my boy!” into his shoulder.
There’s Ash and then, several minutes later, Birdie.
She might not have a grad cap to customize with fabric paint and trinkets, but she’s made a number of modifications to today’s “uniform.” Starting with her hair.
She cut it last minute into a pixie in the girls’ bathroom and then used some of her hair for a braided “flower crown” of her own.
I can think of absolutely no one else on the planet who would do this in the last hour before their graduation, but it’s got “Birdie” written all over it.
Her mom groaned at the sight of it, but her father let out a deep belly laugh and clapped his knee. Turning to his wife, he soothed her with a “You’re lucky it’s not a mohawk.”
Birdie tapped her chin in contemplation and pretended to type the idea into her Notes app for college.
It wasn’t easy picking up all the pieces with her after my last lie. A promise had been broken on my end and a truth told on hers that could have gotten me killed. There were tears and awkward days that followed and finally a hand grab before I left for winter break.
We hadn’t spoken right away. There hadn’t been an avalanche of sorry s and explanations and never again s. It had been a quiet minute of understanding, a reflection that transcended the need for words.
“I’ll see you in spring,” she’d told me, and when the next semester came and the snow piled high on campus, our friendship was reborn.
Just like for Amber and Oliver, I shout out Birdie’s name alongside her parents. And also like the two of them, Birdie’s handshake with the headmistress is a “cordial for the camera” clasp before a quick smear of her palm afterward.
When it’s Sadie’s turn, she leans in for a hug and is met with a stiff handshake in its stead. She keeps her smile up for appearances, but it thins at the edges and the transaction is brief.
Still better than Calvin. He avoids her hand entirely and grabs the diploma, exiting stage right with minimal fanfare or theatrics.
One by one they continue until I’m next, and I brace myself for the moment before me.
It’s as simple as walking across a stage, but it’s also so much more.
The necklace might’ve been returned to Anastasia, but my nails are adorned in Emoree’s favorite stickers.
She never got the opportunity to walk across this stage, so it only felt right to carry her with me in some small way.
It’s not the only thing I’ve decided to do for her today.
The Cards were true to their word when it came to the reward money.
It was staggering—far more money than I’ve ever seen in my life or dreamt of in my bank account—but despite it all, I didn’t feel good about using it. It was burning a hole in my pocket.
“Cut it in half,” I told Headmistress Lockwell in a rare moment of civility between us. Really, how does one interact calmly with a woman who advocated for your murder?
“You’re asking to receive less?” she scoffed, like she couldn’t process the concept.
“Half for me and half for Emoree.”
She approached the next question with as much tact as she could muster. “What would she use it for in her…condition?”
“I want a scholarship in her name.”
She stared contemplatively at her desk pen. “That can be arranged, but as for the title of it, I’m not sure if—”
“In her name,” I said again. “The Emoree Hale Memorial Scholarship.”
“Fine.”
I carry Em across the stage with me. Like Calvin, I avoid Headmistress Lockwell’s handshake, but she’s learned from the twins and strategically angles her back to hide another student slighting her in public.
There’s no whispered congratulations or pleasantries between us. It’s all a cold transaction.
Meanwhile, Mom sits in the crowd with her go-to box of tissues.
She blubbers into her boyfriend’s side, but for once I’m not worried about her.
Ryan is actually good for her, it turns out, and it definitely helps to have another person keeping track of her perpetually lost keys.
She mouths “I’m so proud” like it’s a chant of her own, and I beam back at her as I exit the stage.
Music flares to life, and most of the girls throw their flower crowns in the air. A handful of them break apart and litter the ground in a colorful shower of loose petals.
“I don’t think anyone wants my hair falling on them,” Birdie quips.
Sadie inclines her head beside her. “I don’t mind.”
For most of spring semester, Birdie and Sadie have been engaged in Newton’s fourth law of motion: Two people newly in love must be in constant contact with each other at all times.
Birdie loops an arm over her girlfriend, and Sadie giggles in her embrace.
Even with all the PDA, I’m over the moon for them both.
“What can I say?” Amber asks with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “I’m Cupid. Guess my hit-on list worked.”
“Your what?”
Birdie burns bright red. “Amber!”
They’re still teasing one another when Calvin comes to my side. He’s already been forced into an awkward interaction with my mom and Ryan that resulted in a hundred prom-esque photos, but now that Mom is busy exploring campus with her beau, I have a brief window with mine.
“We’ll be right back. I just need to borrow her.”
“Going up to the lookout?”
“Haven’t you heard? Couples that go up together stay together,” Calvin says with a wink.
As I scale the tower steps, instead of the paranoia I first felt here, I’m met with a quiet sense of self-reflection. Em said something really bad had to happen for ghosts to come back, but now I realize the absence of them isn’t a denial of their existence. It’s a symbol of their peace.
Oleander’s knife has scratched a permanent sickle on Calvin’s cheek. The scar has scabbed and faded in the months following the incident, but it remains a sheer, glossy white line. I find it makes him twice as beautiful.
This is what survival looks like.
He leads me up to look out the window. A straight shot down still makes me wobbly-kneed, but I’m getting better with Calvin’s hand on my back. I stare out at the hedge maze and the bodies buried there, and this time, I know the maze isn’t staring back.
Down below, Amber has her arms full of papers. She’s handing them out to students, parents, cousins, anyone she can reach.
“Are those more graduation pamphlets?” he asks, squinting down to get a better look.
I don’t need to follow his gaze to know precisely what she’s passing out. “No, they’re the Hart Herald ’s last article of the year.”
“About what?”
I wink. “You’ll have to read it to find out.”
He leans back and collapses against the wall to situate himself on the floor. I follow suit and take my spot beside him. With my head propped against his shoulder, I ask, “Have you given any thought to what comes next?”
“I know what doesn’t,” he answers with a sigh.
“I didn’t apply to Curtis or Julliard or any of the schools my mother wanted.
I don’t want to attend any school that will let me in solely on the status of my last name, either.
I was thinking I might work a gap year and then apply to the same tech school as you. ”
I bump his shoulder with my own. “Your mother would be angry.”
“Let her be. It’s better to feel something than nothing at all.” Then, in an effort to lighten the mood, he casts a wistful look up at the stairs above.
“Remember the first time we came up here?” he asks, and his pinkie gravitates toward mine on the floor.
I tap my cheek and imitate his flirtatious drawl. “I believe you said, ‘I’d never dream of kissing you.’?”
He doesn’t waste any time as he presses his mouth to mine in a consuming kiss. His thumb brushes circles against my cheek, and when he looks at me, I know he sees the whole of me. Every microscopic part.
“Why dream when the reality is so much better?” he asks like the horrible flirt he is.
I roll my eyes even as a stupid smile spreads across my face. I can’t fight the skip of my heart even now. I used to think sappy moments were Em’s thing, but lately I’m not so sure. I’ve always been quick to write off the tender part of me, but behind my careful walls, a heart still beats.
“You’re…”
“Incorrigible?” he asks.
“Perfect.”
It might not be a fairy tale, but I have a feeling we’ll be happy after all.
HART HERALD
A Monster Misunderstood: Reexamining Local Legend
by Amber Yamada , Birdie Kennedy , Oliver Walton , and Violet Harper
Withstanding the test of time is no small feat, but for Anastasia Hart, the peculiar circumstances of her death have long cast a shadow on her legacy.
For over a century, students have spun her story beyond recognition and created a monster out of a young woman.
This macabre urban legend couldn’t be any further from the truth.
There once was a girl
whose heart was much too big,
much too broken,
so she dug within the garden of her ribs
and ripped it right out,
but in those heartless moments
strangely
she missed the pain,
missed the splinters of a broken heart
in the empty chasm of her chest;
she learned then that she’d rather feel
something than
nothing at all