Claude held the box toward me. It was blush-colored cardboard, two inches square, Zayre embossed on the cover. “This is why I’ve been such an ass,” he said.
I took the box, lifted the lid.
He started speaking fast, his words running together. “I know you don’t want it, not now that you’re dating Ant, but I bought it for you before I found out, so you might as well have it. You can do whatever you want with it.” He paused to draw a breath. “I stuck the receipt inside if you want to exchange it for the money.”
A copper heart on a copper chain was nestled inside, the same penny-colored necklace the jewelry-counter lady had shown me at Zayre. It was plain and beautiful at the same time. I gazed up at Claude, my steady friend. He stared back, his gaze earnest and so, so scared.
“What’s it mean?” I asked.
He thrust his hands in his pockets, and his shoulders moved up near his ears. “It means I like you, Heather. Like like you. I have for a while, but I never screwed up the courage to tell you. I guess Ant isn’t a coward like me.”
I took the chain out of the box, held up the heart. Looking at it made me feel like I was growing and shrinking at the same time, like Alice in Wonderland. It was so pretty, so pure. I didn’t deserve it, not after what I’d let Ant do.
“It’s dumb, I know,” Claude said. “I’ll take it back and just give you the ten dollars. That’s what it cost. Really, $9.99 plus tax. We can still be friends, right? That’s all I care about. I can’t lose you, too. Not after Maureen and Brenda.”
Tears blurred my vision. “Will you put it on me?”
I handed it to him and turned around, lifting my hair. He unclasped the necklace and held it in front of me. His hands were shaking. He fastened it on my good side, not because my ear bothered him but because it bothered me. I felt the copper heart against my chest and thought about how much it mattered, having a friend like Claude, what a treasure it was, and here he was offering me something more.
I turned. “I love you, Claude.”
His hands were back in his pockets, his cheeks bright with hope.
I didn’t have any to give him, not really. It seemed unkind to pretend we deserved something as rich as that here in Pantown. Yet I heard the words come out of my mouth. “Can you wait?”
His face wrinkled. “For what?”
I placed my hand over the heart, feeling the beat of my blood through it. I tried to picture Maureen and Brenda alive, teasing me and Claude mercilessly, Heather and Ziggy, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, but I couldn’t. I could only see them smiling at us, nudging us together. “I don’t know.”
He searched my eyes, looking like he wanted to hug me but stopping himself. He must have found what he was after because his face softened. “Sure. I can wait.”
The wave of relief surprised me. “I better get going. Visiting hours are over soon.”
He blinked hard, like he had something in his eye. “For sure. We’ll take good care of Junie.”
“I know.”
The Saint Cloud hospital’s odor made me nervous. Always had. It smelled like rubbing alcohol and fresh-washed sheets you’d been strapped to. I breathed shallowly as I walked the familiar halls that both amplified and muffled sound. I could hear people talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Mom?” I murmured, stepping into the room the nurse had directed me to. It was on a regular floor, not the psych ward. That floor must have been full.
This was one of the larger rooms she’d been in. It housed four beds. The two nearest the door had privacy curtains drawn around them. The two by the window had their curtains open, and one of those beds was occupied. I gave a weak smile to the elderly woman reclining in it.
She waved her hand toward the two curtained beds. “One on your left is an old woman, like me, and on the right is a lovely young lady, if that helps,” she said. She didn’t have any visible bandages, no machines hooked up to her, but she could have been there for the same reason as Mom, waiting to be moved to the appropriate section of the hospital.
“Thanks.” I lifted a corner of the curtain she’d indicated, still tentative.
“Heather,” Mom said, her face lighting up when she saw me. “Help me raise my bed.”
I let the curtain drop behind me and reached for the crank, an old hand at adjusting hospital beds. I turned it until Mom said to stop.
“How do I look?” she asked.
Only a few inches of natural light leaked in over the top of the curtain. Her cold bedside lamp sharpened her features, sank her eyes into her skull.