The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(32)

My little legs pumped at double time to keep up with his, and as we dashed through the trees, my head was a balloon, inflating with the singular fact that Jack was holding my hand! His fingers swallowed mine, and his palm was hot and a little sweaty, but so was mine.

One tug beneath a low-hanging branch and we burst out onto a shallow clearing of grass that clung to the side of the hill. I teetered on my tiptoes as Jack threw an arm around my waist to stop me from falling over the side.

“Oh…” I said, breathless.

The city lay at our feet, a dizzying labyrinth of rooftops and white buildings, spread out like a giant patchwork quilt. Golden Gate Bridge stood in the distance, and the wrinkled coastal bluffs behind it.

“Right?” he said a few seconds later, as if he could read my mind.

“How did you find this?”

“Exploring, when I was, like, ten.”

I heard people talking from somewhere behind the thick shrubbery that lined the clearing, but they were too far away for me to make out what they were saying.

“It’s just a few yards away from some steps that go to the top,” Jack noted as I glanced around. “So it’s extra-cool, because it’s private, more or less. I used to hide out here and feel like a total rebel, until one day I found a middle-aged couple out here. I was crushed.”

I laughed. “Well, if they come back today, we were here first.”

“Exactly. Now, help me with this.” He extracted two rolled-up padded black mats from the canvas bag that looked an awful like the ones for sale in the bookstore. I spread out one of the mats, and he butted the second one right next to it. They were square, and only big enough to sit down on, but I wasn’t complaining. “I’m just borrowing them. Not burgling them.”

“I swear that’s not a real word, but I haven’t been educated at your fancy-pants private school, so I could be wrong.”

“Be glad. There are a mere fifty people in my graduating class.”

“I’ve only been going to Lincoln for a couple of years—since we moved to the Inner Sunset. But my class is over seven hundred.”

He pulled off his gray Chuck Taylors and socks, and I took off my sandals, and we sat side by side on the mats and stretched out our legs in the warm grass, wiggling our toes.

“I know some people at Lincoln,” he said, passing me a bottle of water from the bag. He named a few names I didn’t recognize. Then he handed me a piece of mottled red fruit I didn’t recognize, either.

“What is this?”

“Pluot.”

“Plu what?”

“Plum crossed with an apricot. You’ve never had one?”

“I’ve never said it, much less had it.”

“Vegetarian bacon,” he said, squinting at me with merry eyes. He polished one on the hem of his shirt, lifting it up enough to give me a peek at A) a shiny silver belt buckle that was probably vintage and definitely stamped with the words 4-H CLUB and B) the bottom half of a shockingly well-muscled stomach and an enticing trail of dark hair arrowing into his jeans.

My pluot dropped out of my hand and nearly rolled off the cliff. Jack and his speedy arm caught it.

“Thanks,” I said, concentrating superhard on cleaning off my alien piece of fruit, and concentrating even harder when I bit into the flesh. It was sweet and plum-y and tart. “Not bad,” I said, trying not to think about the 4-H belt buckle (which made me want to giggle) or the trail of dark hair (which made me want to stick my hands down the front of his jeans to see where it led).

“The Zen Center has a lot of fruit trees in Marin County,” he explained while I flushed all the dirty thoughts out of my wandering mind. Fruit trees. Concentrate, Beatrix.

“So you burgled these, too?” I asked.

“No, these are from my lunch. I hoarded them. That’s completely different.”

We grinned at each other, and his dimpled smile made me beyond glad I’d gone to the Zen Center.

Chatting mindlessly, we polished off the fruit and pitched the pits over the side of the cliff as Jack said, “Make a wish!” and then, “What did you wish for?”

“Not to nail someone on the head,” I said with a grin.

“See? You’re already walking the Middle Path.” He scooted forward until he had enough room for his head on the mat, then settled on his back, using one thrown-back arm for a pillow. After a few moments I joined him, lying down with my shoulder against his. I didn’t say anything. He didn’t either. We just warmed in the sun and gazed up at the sky. Strangers chattered on the path beyond the trees.

Silent minutes passed. I closed my eyes. It was so warm I nearly dozed off. His voice pulled me back to the present.

“Have you ever heard of word salad?” he asked.

My heart thudded, but I didn’t open my eyes. “It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure.”

“It’s when your words get all screwed up, and you try to say one thing, but it comes out as gibberish. Like, instead of saying ‘I saw a man walking a dog on a leash in the park,’ it might come out as ‘I saw a man with a collar and claws walking a tightrope under the trees.’”

“Okay.” Where was he going with this?

“People with schizophrenia do it. Especially disorganized schizophrenia, which is one of the worst types. They aren’t as delusional as people with paranoid schizophrenia, but their reality is distorted, and they have major problems with disorganized thought and speech. Their thoughts get jumbled, and they have a tendency to blurt out weird things and laugh at inappropriate times. And the longer the disease goes on, the worse their speech gets, and the harder it is for them to communicate, and they can’t do simple things like, I don’t know, take a shower. Stress builds up; they get frustrated and lash out. Sometimes they try to hurt themselves or other people.”