The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(68)

Laid out on Minnie’s metal table was the body of a skinny old man. His leg had been opened up for dissection near a pair of bloated testicles.

“Miss Adams,” Simon called out.

“There’s been a mistake,” I answered, scanning the other sheet-covered bodies. “This isn’t Minnie.”

He stopped on the other side of the cadaver and caught his breath. “That’s what I was going to tell you. Minnie was cremated two days ago. This is Mickey.”

“Cremated? Why?”

“They were finished dissecting her, and she’d been in the lab for nine months. It was her time.”

“But I wasn’t finished,” I argued. “How come no one told me?”

“I asked Dr. Sheridan’s assistant to let you know, just in case you wanted to be there for the cremation.”

“I never got an email.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, looking genuinely apologetic. “But look at the bright side. At least this new body will give you someone different to draw.”

I didn’t want someone new. I wanted Minnie. I wasn’t finished! And who was this guy, anyway? Mickey? I didn’t know him. He was old and gross, and he stank strongly of formaldehyde. I didn’t want to invent a new backstory for his life, and I didn’t want to draw the dissection of his leg. It felt like a blasphemy—a slap in the face to Minnie.

Tears blurred my vision. I snatched up my things and raced out of the lab. I didn’t stop running until I’d taken the stairs down, story after story after story, and finally ended up on the building’s front lawn, planting myself against the tree where Jack had taught me the breathing trick. And I fell to pieces.

My project was unfinished.

My entry for the art show was shot.

What the hell was I going to do? I had only a week. One week! And the unfinished drawing of Minnie had taken me an entire freaking month.

Everything was shit. Two days earlier, I’d been in Jack’s arms, satisfied and happy. Now I’d had my freedom snatched away, my brother had betrayed my trust, Mom and I were barely speaking, and my boyfriend might be sent to another planet—which is about how close Massachusetts felt.

And now this?

In a rage, I grabbed the sketchbook out of my bag and tore out pages. Rip! Sketches from the first day in the lab when I’d gotten sick in the bushes. Rip! All my preliminary drawings. Rip! Rip! Rip! Detailed studies, experimental angles, and the final sketch. I crumpled up the expensive French-milled drawing paper that had cost me several days’ salary and sloppily pitched it at the bushes. People stared. I yelled obscenities at one person, until I realized how banana-boat crazy I sounded, all emotional and dramatic.

Like Heath.

Or my father.

The empty sketchpad fell from my hand. I leaned back against the itchy bark of the tree and stared blankly at the lengthening shadows on the closely shorn grass, now littered with torn pieces of Minnie’s body. Plump birds pecked at the paper, searching for food. Students strolled up and down the sidewalk behind me.

When my breathing had slowed so much that I was practically meditating, I got out my phone to see what time it was. Mom wouldn’t be there to pick me up for another half hour. Out of habit, emotionally numb and hollow as a beach ball, I checked my email. A comment waited for me at Body-O-Rama.

I clicked the link and was surprised anew at the bright Carmine Red in my depressing heart sketch—did I really do that?—and scrolled down past my BioArtGirl profile to read the single-line comment from a newly created profile, RockabillyBoy. It said:

Have a little faith.

I stared at that line in wonderment. And as if the words themselves had power enough to create change, an idea bloomed inside my head.

28

Mom says I’m stubborn, and maybe that’s true. But she also taught me not to blindly follow rules without thinking. Not everything in this world is fair, and people with power don’t always have sense.

If I had anything to add to that, I’d say that even good people make bad mistakes (like Mom lying about Dad, which I could forgive her for). And sometimes good people break the rules, like Jack and his golden words—which his parents had to forgive him for, too. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but if they looked at it logically, they’d eventually understand that he was doing it for the right reason.

It was a Noble Defiance.

And that’s why I came to the realization that the lesson I’d learned from the jumbled mess of recent events was not that sneaking around was wrong. Sneaking around for the wrong reasons, sure. But sneaking around for the right reasons? That was a Noble Defiance. And that’s why Mom continued to let me go the anatomy lab, because she knew I’d been doing it for the right reason.

That’s also why I didn’t tell her about Minnie’s being cremated. I just quietly picked up my ripped drawing paper, flattened it all out, and crammed the pages back into my sketchpad. And when I got into the paddy wagon, Mom pulled away from the curb and asked, “How did it go?”

“I’ve had a small setback,” I told her. “But I know what to do to fix it.”

I just needed Jack’s help.

Two days later, I got it.

Mom was working, so she asked me to drop by the ER after my scheduled session at the anatomy lab. I could do that; I wouldn’t actually be working in the lab that night, but I’d be only a few buildings away. At six o’clock, I waited in the lobby of the mental health hospital, pacing near some empty visitor seats.