Yeah, I can see that, Jane responds. What’s up, math nerd?
What are you doing?
When?
Now.
Hanging at my dad’s place in Pac Heights. Want to come over? He’s gone tonight and there’s a ton of weed here.
Technically, I’m not supposed to drive into the city without clearing it with my parents first. Especially now. After.
Also, I don’t smoke. Or at least I didn’t.
Don’t.
Didn’t.
I text back.
What’s the address?
My parents are going to be pissed about the tattoo. Not because they are against tattoos per se — my mom actually has a tiny shamrock on her ankle — but because of the very remote chance that it could get infected and throw my whole recovery process out of whack. The thing with being constantly on immunosuppressants so that my body doesn’t attack my heart is that it can’t do such a great job fighting all the regular stuff it’s supposed to fight off either: Colds. Flu. Strep throat. Blood infections. In fact, if someone so much as sneezes in my direction these days, my parents get really uptight about it, which is a pretty big departure from our life before.
Until recently, being an only child had meant getting treated more or less like an adult in my house. My parents weren’t particularly concerned with rules. They didn’t enforce a curfew. They didn’t restrict my internet access or demand too many details if I was headed out somewhere with Emma. They would even pour me a glass of wine with dinner every now and then, especially when they were opening a good one and were feeling a little “European.” Of course, this may have been because I’d never really given them much cause to worry. They knew I wasn’t going to sneak out through my bedroom window in the middle of the night or have the number of the school’s drug dealer on my phone. But now they’re always checking on where I am and what I’m doing. They try to make it seem like they’re not, that they’re just touching base to ask if pizza is okay for dinner or if I have plans to go anywhere after school — but these are things they never really touched base about before.
In fact, my phone’s recent history is primarily made up of missed calls from Mom and Dad:
3:00 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. on Monday.
5:14 p.m. on Wednesday.
Multiple times in the last six hours, including at 12:01 a.m., when Jane and I were at a shop on Haight Street, drunk, cementing our new BFF status by getting some ink.
It wasn’t Jane’s idea. It was mine.
We’d been hanging at her dad’s Pacific Heights apartment, drinking an expensive-looking scotch whisky from his liquor cabinet. It smelled like leather and burned my throat but gave my lips a warm and tingly buzz. Jane’s dad has a huge classic vinyl record collection, and we were playing albums one after the other, lying on a shaggy sheepskin rug among a pile of sleeves. Led Zeppelin. David Bowie. Radiohead. R.E.M.
Music was something that I didn’t really pay close attention to before. In my pre-transplant life, it was mainly filler. Something that served as background during study sessions and sleepovers, that helped me keep up the pace when I trained for cross-country meets. Or that my mom and I could tease my dad about whenever he sang along to his cheesy ’70s favorites. I mean, sure, there were plenty of songs I liked or that I could recite the lyrics to in an earworm kind of way, but I don’t think I had ever once listened to a single album from beginning to end or devoted myself to a particular band or artist.
Now I couldn’t get enough. Music was becoming an obsession. I cranked it up loud in the car. Lived with earbuds connected to my head. It opened my mind to another universe — one that I never knew existed. And it also made me feel less alone with my thoughts.
At Jane’s dad’s, I couldn’t stop pulling records off the shelves, one after the other. I studied the jacket art and read the liner notes. It felt like I was discovering something . . . not new necessarily, but buried, like unearthing fossils. When I came across the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, I carefully slid it from its sleeve and put it on the player. That subway station entrance on the cover — it looked so familiar to me, even though this night was, in fact, the first night in my life that I’d ever played any vinyl record, let alone this one. And when the trippy opening guitar chords of the second song started up, I turned to Jane: “Shhh. Listen. This is your song!”
She laughed at the chorus to “Sweet Jane.” “My dad would love you. You know a lot about music.”
“Not really,” I answered.
Jane passed me the joint she’d been smoking, also from her dad’s supply. “He’s old-school about his pot,” she’d told me. “Still likes to roll his own.”
I held it between my fingers for a moment, watching it smolder.
I’m most definitely not supposed to smoke. Never. Ever. For heart transplant recipients, smoking is one of the things that is banned for life.
I took a hit of the joint anyway, trying not to look like a complete amateur in front of Jane.
“So your dad doesn’t notice that you drink his whisky and smoke his pot?” This seemed like something my parents would be wise to, at least if I tried it more than once or twice. Not that my parents have pot in the house.
“My dad?” Jane snorted. “He doesn’t notice anything. Honestly, he’s usually not even here. His girlfriend, Grace, is, like, twenty-six, and she’s always got something lined up on the weekend. And she hates it when I’m around, so they usually steer clear.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, stifling a cough.
“Because I’m a total bitch to her, why else?” Jane laughed. “Plus, I think she likes to pretend that my dad doesn’t have a daughter that’s basically old enough to be her sister. Her much hotter and more interesting sister.”
The record wobbled ever so slightly as it turned on the player. I concentrated my focus on the soft, satisfying scratch that accompanied the music and imagined myself dissolving into the rug.
Then Jane asked, “Do you know who your heart donor was?”
Although the song was still playing, in my head the needle was yanked away from the turntable, bursting the bubble we’d been floating in thanks to the scotch, the pot, and Lou Reed.
“No,” I told Jane. “Donor identities are confidential. If I want to try and find out, I can write a letter to the family. But it’s up to them to write back.”
Jane sat up on her elbows. “So are you going to? I mean, aren’t you curious? Even a little bit?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like it would be weird for them, and for me, so probably not.”
What do you say, after all, to the loved ones of the person whose death was your ultimate lucky break? Thanks so much! I’m sure I’ll get a lot of use out of this heart!
But I didn’t tell Jane the real reason I wasn’t going to write a letter. I already know that my donor’s next of kin do not want to be found.
“I’m sorry, Chloe,” Dr. Ahmadi had said a few days ago, returning my call from earlier that week. After what had happened at the beach and reading all those stories about cellular memory, I’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask about contacting my donor’s family. Maybe if I knew more about the person who gave me their heart, I wouldn’t feel so strange all the time. Maybe this heart wouldn’t feel so foreign. Maybe once I knew for certain that I wasn’t really inheriting anybody’s memories or anything like that, I could stop questioning every impulse, every feeling, every desire, and every random thought that floats through my mixed-up head.