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‘No, it’s not the heart, the heart is fine, it’s in here,’ he said, tapping his head. ‘I don’t feel myself any more, but I don’t want to anyway, you know? I didn’t much like who I used to be. But I feel different and no one understands. I can’t go back to college; it feels like a waste of time, even though Dad’s freaking out.’
‘How can it be a waste of time when all you do is stay down here every day wasting time?’ she asked.
‘I knew you wouldn’t get it,’ he said and he slumped in the desk chair.
Maggie nodded. ‘I’m sorry, I do get it. I don’t understand what having a new heart feels like, but I get the whole bit about trying to be something or go somewhere without directions or a destination.’
Elliot said nothing, just stared at the floor.
‘Why don’t you leave the house at least? Go and do stuff, whatever it is young people are doing these days.’ Maggie smiled. ‘I mean, I know this place is like living in the Hotel California, with everything you need at your fingertips, but you really need to get out of here. Go see your friends, get drunk, have sex.’
‘Most of my old friends are away at college. And those that are here just want to party, and I can’t party like that,’ he said, looking down at his chest.
‘So you’re friendless, depressed and aimless,’ she said. ‘That sounds normal for Hollywood.’
Elliot tried to raise a smile, but couldn’t. Just the idea of heading out into the world made him anxious.
He felt Maggie staring at him as he ran his fingers through his dark hair.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to be an actor? Zoe would rep you in a heartbeat.’
Elliot gave her a look.
‘Okay, a poor choice of words, I admit, but you know you’re good-looking enough.’
‘Good looks don’t translate into being a decent actor, Maggie, you know this,’ he said wryly.
‘Are you saying I’m an average actor because I’m so beautiful?’ she asked, in mock horror.
‘No, you know you’re both, but how many kids my age want to be actors just because they’re good-looking? It’s insane. Half the girls in my final year at school were making sex tapes and the guys were taking steroids so they could all be famous and hot.’
‘And this is why I weep for the future generation.’ She sighed.
They were silent for a moment and then Elliot found himself saying out loud what he had only admitted to himself.
‘I feel like I’ve been sick for so long, in and out of hospital and stuff, I don’t even know how to live normally.’ He shot her a look. ‘I mean, I’m twenty-three and I’m still a freaking virgin, Maggie. I’m a joke!’
‘Oh, El, you’re so not. Having sex doesn’t make you a grown-up, trust me.’
The room filled with an awkward silence and Maggie took a new tack.
‘If you don’t want to go to college, then what do you want to do?’ She glanced at the books. ‘Writing?’
Elliot laughed meanly. ‘As if Dad will say yes to that. You know what a prick he can be.’
Maggie nodded. ‘I was married to him, remember? But in a perfect world, if you could write, what would it be about?’
Elliot took his eyes off the floor and met hers. ‘I’d like to write a book about what I’ve been through,’ he said slowly. ‘Is that self-indulgent?’
Maggie smiled. Her voice was gentle. ‘Nothing about you is self-indulgent. You’re amazing.’
Elliot laughed. ‘No, I’m not, I just have a few ideas I wouldn’t mind trying to put down. Except I don’t really know how to start.’
Maggie leaned forward. ‘I know an amazing writer,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit of a mess right now, but I think you two need to meet.’
‘Maybe,’ said Elliot. ‘I don’t really want to share my sad story with strangers.’
‘Isn’t that what writing a book is, though?’ asked Maggie with a smile.
‘I guess,’ said Elliot, looking down at his clasped hands. He was such a lovely kid, thought Maggie, wishing life had been different for him, and then she thought about herself at that age.
At twenty-three she was just coming up through the ranks of Hollywood, and while she may not have had a heart transplant, she did have an emotional, geographical transplant.
‘El, here’s the thing,’ she said slowly, formulating the tack to take to not put him offside.
‘What happened to you is awful and the fact you have a dead person’s heart in you is weird and unsettling,’ she said.
Elliot looked up at her, surprised by her candour.
‘But I think things happen for a reason. And while you can’t change the past, you can change your future, because you have one now. Write your story and see what happens afterwards, get the thoughts out of your head so you can start to think clearly.’
Elliot was nodding profusely. ‘Yes, that’s it, my head is filled with thoughts, I need to get it all out. I will write, I don’t care what Dad thinks, I have things to say.’
His eyes were wide and his voice passionate and Maggie bit her lip to stop herself from crying out in joy at finally seeing some excitement in him.
‘And if you’re writing a book, you’ll need an assistant,’ said Maggie, her eyes shining.
He laughed. ‘What the hell for? Sharpening my pencils?’
‘To help you write, research, do writer jobs,’ she said emphatically. ‘And maybe they could become your friend also.’
‘Jesus, Maggie, I’m not that desperate. You can’t hire me a friend, that’s stupid.’
But Maggie wasn’t listening.
‘Baby, this is Hollywood, I can hire you anything you want. I’m going to set up a meeting with my writer contact and then I’m going to find you an assistant.’
Elliot shook his head. ‘Dad won’t let you do it. He’s going to throw a fit if I don’t go to college. It’s his whole thing. My son, who will be attending Berkeley.’
Maggie scoffed. ‘When has your dad ever been able to say no to me? Anyway, he understands the need for assistants better than anyone.’
‘Assisting in what?’ asked Elliot, putting up his hands in confusion.
‘Life, kiddo.’ She clapped her hands and stood up. ‘Life.’
West Virginia
September 1995
Krista Calkins walked home the long way, through the back streets and the small wooded area where no one ever went after dark.
Some trouble only came out at night, but Krista had enough trouble during the daylight hours.
As she walked along the path, something glinted on the ground and she bent over to pick it up.
A penny, head side up. Everyone knew head side up was a good omen. Good luck was on its way, she thought happily, and put the penny in her pocket.
Back at the foster home, her foster family had stopped praying, and were now drinking. Her foster mother’s show poodles were barking wildly from the large spare bedroom that was used as their area.
Sliding the screen door across as quietly as she could, Krista hid her purse down the front of her blue-wash jeans, stolen from JC Penney, and hurried to the tiny boxroom where she slept. Everything nice she owned was shoplifted; even the slippers she had given her God-fearing foster mother for Mother’s Day had been stolen.
It made Krista happy to think her foster mother was wearing something stolen, when all she did was spout the Ten Commandments at anyone unlucky enough to be passing her way.
Krista had a job babysitting for Preacher Garrett over at the Haven of Jesus Pentecostal Church. His wife paid her in crumpled five-dollar notes from the offering bowl and Preacher Garrett made up for it with ten-dollar notes for the hand jobs Krista gave him in the back of the church.
After she saw the double lines on Shay’s pregnancy test, Krista knew she was right to convince the preacher that a hand job wasn’t real sex and that she was happy to keep doing it as long as he kept handing over the greenbacks.
The poor man was so desperate for any touch he probably would have let one of the rattlesnakes he kept in a glass tank bite him on the penis just to relieve the tension, she thought.
Krista hid her purse under the floorboard she had prised loose last year. If her foster mother saw any money she would take it, telling Krista she had to pay Jesus for bringing her to such a loving Christian home.
So many times Krista bit back the retort that Jesus didn’t get the money anyway seeing as how her foster mother spent it on cigarettes and whiskey, but she knew it wasn’t worth her breath.
She was sixteen and in two years’ time, she could leave and go to California, where she wanted to be Cinderella at Disneyland.
She was pretty enough, even she knew that. With the money she was saving she would have enough for a bus trip and to rent a costume for her audition.
But she couldn’t leave Shay here in Butthole, West Virginia, as they called it, she would die a slow death, like every other woman in this place.
Krista lay on her small, lumpy bed and stared at the ceiling, calculating how much money she had in her hidden stash. Maybe she could pay for an abortion for Shay?
So far she had saved two hundred and eighty-three dollars, but even she knew that wasn’t enough.
Closing her eyes, she thought about Shay and her predicament and then knew what she had to do.
She would tell the serpent-handling preacher she would sleep with him for two hundred dollars, and get Shay her abortion. Then the two of them would get the hell out of Butthole and move to California where everyone was rich, the sun was always shining and they would both live happily ever after.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_c5470da8-6f48-5b51-abd6-ec5ee6e98d0d)
‘I don’t think I can last here much longer.’ Dylan was Skyping Addie from a corner of the UCLA library. ‘I’m down to my last packet of ramen noodles.’
Addie was lying on the bed in her dorm room at Columbia, a huge poster of movie star Will MacIntyre, looking moody in a dinner suit, behind her on the wall. The computer on her lap was reflecting blue light onto her face, making her look as though she was in a spaceship. ‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘I lost my job with the catering company, I’m being evicted and I’m still no further forward on my research.’
‘Where are you now?’ Addie leaned forward as though trying to see over Dylan’s shoulder.
‘The UCLA library. It’s peaceful here, and I can use their Wi-Fi,’ said Dylan, holding up her mother’s library pass, which was good for all universities across the country. ‘I might end up moving in here if I don’t get a break soon.’
‘You could sell Maggie Hall’s shoes on eBay,’ Addie suggested.
‘What? No way.’ In truth, Dylan had already thought about it, and decided it would be a last resort.
‘Well, you could ask your mom for some more money.’
Dylan shook her head. ‘I can’t ask my mother to fund what she sees as a betrayal. She hates that I’m here, she thinks I’m lowering my intelligence.’
‘Hey, speaking of which, I got you a present,’ Addie cried out. ‘Wait a sec.’
Addie disappeared from camera and Dylan looked at the pile of books on the table from the previous occupants.
Three books on business management, one book about walnut tree growing and two novels. Picking up the first, she glanced at the back, something about a soldier, and another with an ornate painted heart, cracked down the middle.
Her mother would be appalled if she knew Dylan was entranced by the cover of a book, and she heard her voice in her head: Never judge a book by its cover, Dylan, some of the best books in the world don’t have pretty pictures on the front. She turned it over and read the blurb anyway.
‘I’m back,’ said Addie and Dylan looked up at the screen.
Addie was wearing a T-shirt with black writing on the front.
Dylan leaned forward to read it.
‘“Too stupid for New York, too ugly for LA,”‘ she said and then cracked up.
‘And I got me one as well.’ Addie peeled off the T-shirt to reveal another one underneath, and read out, ‘“Too smart for LA, too ugly for New York.”‘
Dylan started laughing so loudly that the other occupants of the library turned to glare at her.
‘God, that’s funny, can you send one to my mom?’ she said, wiping her eyes and leaning on the book on the table.
She picked it up and held it up to the screen. ‘Do you know this book?’
Addie nodded. ‘Yeah, why?’
‘I don’t know, I just saw it here and I was wondering what it’s like,’ said Dylan, turning it over in her hands.
Addie leaned in close as though she was telling a secret. ‘Don’t tell anyone in my lit class but I loved that book. I bawled my eyes out at the end.’
‘Why can’t you tell your lit class?’ asked Dylan. ‘Surely they’re not that snobbish?’
‘Are you kidding? One critic said the book was Marley & Me but with a wife, not a dog,’ said Addie. ‘But he writes really well; it’s worth reading. And your mom would hate it,’ she added.
‘Then I’m gonna read it,’ said Dylan in a wicked voice and Addie giggled.
The sound of her phone ringing broke through the library’s hush again. ‘Hey, I’ve gotta go, this might be the catering company with an emergency reprieve.’
‘Call me tomorrow,’ said Addie before Dylan finished the session, and picked up her phone.
‘Dylan Mercer speaking,’ she said in her most professional tone.
