With This Heart(73)

There was a statue just off the sidewalk that looked at once solid and transparent. It was a stainless steel shell of mathematical symbols in the shape of a giant human form. The plaque at the base titled it “The Alchemist”.

It stood almost three times my height, and the front of the sculpture, where the man’s legs should have been, was cut out so that you could stand inside of it. I peered in, unsure of how claustrophobic the space would make me feel, but the way they layered the symbols made it feel like you were at once inside and out. The blue sky streamed in through the holes in each symbol and I took my time walking in and out, inspecting it from all sides.

Students walked around me, shuffling to their dorms or to buildings on campus, but no one bothered me as I stood and inspected the sculpture for the rest of the afternoon. It gave me an idea of how to reach Beck, and I sat there piecing it together in the Boston sunlight until I felt a buzzing in my pocket.

I looked down at my screen and smiled before pushing back onto my feet.

“ Hi, Mom,” I answered, waiting for a break in pedestrian traffic so I could start to head back to my dorm. It was early afternoon and I’d skipped lunch. She could probably sense that. Moms are superheroes, I swear.

She sighed into the phone, almost inaudibly. “I won’t bother you this much all the time. Just cut me slack for the first week, okay?” I could tell she’d been crying and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss her just as terribly.

“ I’m glad you called, Mom,” I told her, trying to keep my emotions at bay. “I miss you, too. Want to talk to me while I walk home?” I offered, sticking my free hand in my coat pocket and heading back to the bridge.

“ You’re still out walking?” she asked. I could hear her shuffling around the house in the background. Maybe she was preparing dinner for her and Dad.

I looked back and forth, making sure no one was around to hear me. “I was formulating a plan to reach Beck.”

“ Oh, I want to hear about it!” she sang into the phone. “But wait, you have his number and everyone’s on Facebook nowadays. Couldn’t you just do it that way?”

“ Mom. Where’s the romance in that?” I joked.

“ I’m just saying it might be a little easier. Maybe it could be a backup plan,” she added, and I scrunched my nose. I didn’t want a backup plan. I didn’t want to text or call Beck. He deserved more than that. He deserved a grand gesture.

That night when I got back to my dorm, I sat at my desk facing the city lights and started on my plan. I had no clue if Beck was still in Boston or at MIT, but I would just have to assume that he was. I tapped away on my keyboard— creating, erasing, and rethinking my ideas until I had it complete. It was almost impossible to condense my feelings into a page. But I did it. One single page with a bold title that would hopefully catch people’s attention. I planned on waking up early and taking it to a printer to get as many copies as I could on my measly budget.

When I tried to sleep that night, I tossed and turned, thinking over the memories of our road trip. I slid open the journal that I kept on my nightstand and read over my favorite parts. The pages were worn and stained. A few of the edges were curling in on themselves. The journal had been my crutch the past year. In a strange turn of events, Beck had actually done me a favor when he walked out without taking it, but I wasn’t going to let him walk away again.





[page]CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT





I walked through the MIT campus with a stack of papers in hand. The campus was still mostly empty. I’d woken up at the crack of dawn to be sure I could do my dirty work when there weren’t thousands of students in the way.

MIT’s campus is enormous, but I looked up where the journalism classes usually were held and hit that area especially hard. There wasn’t a safe surface in sight. I pasted pages up on the buildings, on telephone poles, and bulletin boards.

I pasted sheet after sheet in the student union     until the walls were almost completely covered in flapping pages. I kept moving toward the center of the campus where I’d seen the statue yesterday. I pasted as I went, trying to move quickly, but just when I thought I was in the clear, I felt a looming presence behind me.

“ Ma’am, do you realize that you’re vandalizing school property?” A stern voice questioned behind me. I turned slowly to look into the eyes of a distinguished man. He had thick white hair, cut short and styled nicely. Horn-rimmed glasses perched on his thin nose. A navy sport coat rested on top of his crisp white shirt.

“ I…I,” I couldn’t formulate a response. He was about to ruin my plan or yell at me. I didn’t do well with confrontation and I was seconds away from breaking down in embarrassing, ugly tears.


“ We have janitors that are hardworking individuals. They have enough on their plate without having to clean up after vandals. Do you understand that?” His tone was harsh and his sharp stare made me feel like a juvenile delinquent.

“ I’m sorry,” I murmured lamely, glancing down at my stack of unused papers. My plan felt foolish now. Why had I thought this would work?

“ May I at least see what you’re posting?” he asked. I fumbled quickly to pass a sheet over to him, unable to meet his gaze. My cheeks reddened beyond what I thought possible. If he hadn’t thought I was foolish before then he definitely would after reading my plea to get Beck back.