The Hearts We Sold(25)

—It knew her.

That was the only way she could describe it. This void knew her, tugged at something inside of her and then she was falling to her knees, sand and grit digging through the material of her uniform and—

—She is ten years old and trying to clean the bathroom. Her legs are too short, arms too stumpy, and she can’t quite reach the mold behind the faucet—

Dee yanked herself free of the memories. It felt as if the void were pulling at her own mind, feeding on her memories.

—She is eight and so excited about a new cartoon, but then there is a voice telling her, “Only losers watch cartoons every day. You don’t want to be a loser, do you?” And she is ashamed because she does want to watch cartoons—

—She is six and the house is quiet, heavy with silence; her mother has told her that Dad is feeling ill today and Dee does not know why—

She scrambled back on hands and knees. She hit Cal’s leg and scooted to one side, until she felt cool pavement rather than hot sand, and she was panting as if she had just run a mile.

Cal looked down at her, smiling ruefully. “The void has hallucinogenic properties that kick in when you fully immerse yourself. Which is why I prefer to remain here, as the human doorstop.”

“W-what?” she gasped.

Cal’s face softened. “Voids make you see things,” he said, with the calm benevolence that someone might use when trying to explain calculus to a golden retriever. “We don’t know why or how.”

Scrambling to her feet, she backed away from the void. It felt as if some of the grit were lodged in her throat.

“It’s disturbing,” said Cal. “It’ll show you things you don’t want to see. That’s why the same people usually go into the voids. You get used to it, I guess. Cora and James are the old team. At least until Cora gets her heart back in a few months, and then the dynamic will change again.”

The way he spoke was so normal, as if this were just another after-school job to him.

“W-what did you trade for?” she said raggedly. It was probably a rude question—she shouldn’t have asked.

Cal shrugged. “Someone’s life. It seemed fair.” The words came so easily to him, as if he were utterly at peace with the fact he stood half in, half out of some piece of unreality. He checked his watch and then let out a sigh. “I hope this is all the Daemon needs done tonight. I’ve got an eight a.m. class tomorrow.”

She blinked. “Aren’t you still in high school?”

“Grad school, actually.” When he caught sight of Dee’s stare, he let out a little laugh. “Prodigy,” he said, as if the word embarrassed him. “Studying physics—although I might fall back on astronomy if I get bored.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re some kind of science genius?”

He flushed. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that—but yeah.”

“How do you…” Dee gestured at the void, at Cal himself, and then her hand dropped to her side. “How do you reconcile all this? Magic portals?”

Cal snorted. “It’s not magic. It’s… just something we don’t understand yet. Which is why I’m going to unravel it.” He said the words so matter-of-factly, as if explaining the unexplainable were something mundane. “Once I get my heart back, I’m writing a paper on this.”

Dee rubbed at her hair. Small grains of sand scattered along the pavement and a moment later, Cora and James sprinted out of the void’s mouth. They were windswept but grinning, and James high-fived Cal as he ducked into the real world.

“See?” gasped James. “Everything’s good.”

Dee watched as the void flickered. It curled in on itself, like water draining from a tub, and then it was gone.

As if it had never been.





THIRTEEN


C arroll Medina did not sell his heart.

He traded it on Craigslist.

When he was seventeen, he spent many days in a hospital room. His attention was torn between a stolen doctor’s chart and a cardiovascular medical textbook. He did not know the right vocabulary, not at first, but after several days of reading, things seemed to settle into place.

Congestive heart failure.

Inoperable.

Cal overheard the doctors speaking to one another; a teenage boy seemed invisible to them, particularly when he sat quietly in the hall, his knees drawn to his chest. Perhaps they thought him asleep or ignorant, but he heard every word. When they were gone, Cal rose to his feet and strode back into the hospital room.

His grandfather was quiet and still—two words that Cal had never associated with his grandfather before. He was a robust man, even in his sixties, always working on their small garden or on home repairs.

Cal looked down at the older man, at the delicate lines around his eyes. At the slight rise and fall of his chest. At the work-worn hands, the same hands that had given Cal his first physics book. “You can do anything,” Grandpa had said with a smile. “But whatever you do, I’m sure you’ll be great at it.” He’d stopped trying to tutor Cal years ago, when Cal had been given the title “gifted.”

Gifted—or cursed, as he would have called it in middle school. He was too smart for his own peers, too young for those older kids he went to school with, and the weight of perfection seemed to drag at him. But through it all, Grandpa had been there. A stillness in a chaotic world, always smiling with his whole face.