The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(12)

C E L E B R A T E

Was this, could this…? Who the hell else would it be?

Jack.

Jack-Jack-Jack! His name bounced around my hollow head like a rubber ball inside an empty gym. Celebrate. This was no coincidence. He went to the Body-O-Rama website. He saw my post about birthday plans—the one in which I’d posted a photo of the Brödel. Humiliation and excitement raced through me in dizzy spirals.

Oh, my ever-loving God …

He did this for me.

Important-looking people rushed in with a security guard. Museum administration. One of them was a distinguished older woman in a dress suit, who clamped a hand over her mouth when she saw the graffiti.

Someone was excitedly talking to a couple next to me. “Dressed in black,” he was saying. “I didn’t get a look at his face, but I thought it was weird he was wearing dark glasses. He had a paint pen or something tucked into his sleeve, and he just strolled up to the wall and started writing, like it was nothing.”

The couple gasped and shook their heads.

“Did they catch him?” I asked, butting into their conversation.

“I don’t think so,” the man told me excitedly. “It all happened so fast. I ran through that doorway to flag down a guard for maybe ten seconds, maybe. He was already gone when I got back.”

Holy crap. This was shocking. And stupid. And crazy. Someone else nearby said the police were on their way. My hands shook as I fumbled inside my pocket for my phone. No way in hell was I getting closer, so I zoomed in as best I could and snapped a photo.

Oh, Jack … what have you done?

6

It took us forever to get out of Lincoln Park because of all the hubbub and traffic. Meanwhile, I was cooped up in the backseat of the paddy wagon, dying to talk about it. But I couldn’t—not in front of Mom, who’d already joked that the “coincidence” of the graffiti was bizarre (if not cooler than the birthday sombrero I’d get in a restaurant).

As soon as I could get Heath alone, I was telling him everything. My brother may be a lousy role model, but he’s an excellent listener and advice-giver. He’d give me some perspective.

If I didn’t die first.

We made a couple more stops before we headed home, but I spent the rest of the afternoon on my phone, refreshing Body-O-Rama every minute and checking my email and feeds (still nothing). Now that I knew he’d actually been on the site, it was driving me batty that he hadn’t contacted me personally. I did my best to consider everything rationally. I mean, he hadn’t actually defaced any artwork. If he had? Watch out, buddy. Never mind the world of hurt he’d be in with the law—I would personally hunt him down and strangle him if he’d screwed with the Max Brödel heart.

But he hadn’t. All he’d defaced was a temporary wall—one the museum probably painted over for every installation.

And yet he’d had the balls to walk into a museum in broad daylight and vandalize it. Talk about a jailable offense. Cop cars had descended on Lincoln Park like they were answering a bomb report. Granted, I knew a lot of kids who did crazy things. My own brother had probably broken a million minor laws before he graduated. Unlike me, he knew perfectly well how to be bad, and he was damn good at it. But smoking weed and using fake IDs paled in comparison to citywide infamy.

And then there was the much more personal part of this: the Me factor. What did it mean? Yes, it was my birthday, so clearly it was a nod to that. But for the love of Pete, just send me a Have a Terrific Day! message online. No need to bring a felony charge into the mix. Was Jack a secret adrenaline junkie? I could already hear Mom labeling him a troublemaker.

Despite all that, it was—in a way—incredibly romantic. Or maybe I was just romanticizing it. Maybe he pulled a dozen nutball stunts every day before breakfast.

“You okay back there?” Mom asked when we were nearly home, peering into the rearview to make eye contact.

“A little weirded out by everything, that’s all.” Which was true. “And hungry.” In the wake of what had happened, I’d forgotten all about getting my fancy strawberry shortcake.

“I thought we’d pick up Mae Thai for your birthday dinner. How does that sound?”

I sighed with pleasure. “Heavenly.”

Mom’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled at me in the mirror. I really hated lying to her, especially when she’d been so nice to me today. This whole situation with Jack was exhausting. If this was what it was like to have a crush on a bad boy, I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. I mean, Howard Hooper—aka the only real boyfriend I’d ever had—was kind of a jerk, but not in a tough-guy way. In the way that geeks sometimes are when they look down on everyone who doesn’t know the name of every Avenger or what 1337 meant.

Howard Hooper would probably wet his pants if he even daydreamed about doing something as ballsy as vandalizing a museum in broad daylight.

Where are you, Jack?

When I finally got so frustrated I couldn’t handle it anymore, I decided to throw caution to the wind and posted the pic I took at the museum. I added the vaguely troll-rific comment Golden Apple Vandal wishing me a happy birthday.

Once I’d hit SEND, I had a minor panic attack. There it was in my feed, for all 167 people who followed me to see. Okay, almost none of those people actually knew me, so maybe I was overreacting. Besides, I really only wanted one person to see it, because hey, you just can’t make an epic public declaration like that and then walk away as if nothing happened.