Tin Heart

Flatiron Books

Picture the ticker-tape parade when I left the hospital. Nurses and doctors and strangers crying and waving hankies. You did it, Marlowe! You survived! Picture me driving off in the back of a flashy convertible doing my best queenly wave at the streets lined with people cheering for the girl who survived.

And then Marlowe Jensen lived happily ever after.

Except ...

That's not really how it went. And I'm only seventeen so there's a lot of "after" to get through.

I think about what the counselor said to me, when I was placed on the transplant waiting list. That losing my heart was like a death. And that I would mourn for it. That I would grieve. That I would move on but never forget.

But she didn't tell me I wouldn't be able to rid myself of this feeling. The feeling that even though I'm living the happily ever after, there's still something missing. There's still the feeling that every beat and thump and thud of my heart is unknown and unknowable because now there's this whole part of me that's not me — a little locked room deep within my chest.

I thought I could know who gave me their heart. I thought I could meet their family and it would be all sunshine and rainbows and happy tears. But that doesn't happen. You can't know who they are. Who they were. And if my heart isn't my own — and I don't know whose it is — then how can I ever know who I am?

So I can't escape that feeling.

And when people look at me, what do they see?

It can't be me. There is no "me" anymore. They're seeing a girl with a borrowed heart.

You know that moment when you're standing in front of Bert's Quality Butchers holding a speaker blasting "Meat Is Murder" and your mum is doing interpretative dance to express the heartbreak of a slaughtered cow and your ten-year-old brother, Pip, is handing out pamphlets for your family's new vegan-organic-wellness store called Blissfully Aware and he's dressed in a gingham pinafore, red wig, combat boots and tiger face paint?

That moment sucks.

I mean The Smiths are all right. And I'm pro my mum's no meat, no wheat, no dairy, no sugar, no anything-that-tastes-good diet, even though I sometimes stare longingly at cheese. And if my brother wants to dress like he fell headfirst into a costume box, then all power to him.

But does it have to be such a production? Does it have to be 8 A.M. on Queens Parade with a crowd gawking at us? Does Mum have to be "giving birth" to an imaginary dead calf with my brother pirouetting around her and Bert the Butcher holding a meat cleaver, glaring through his shop window?

Can't we be weird in secret?

"Can I go now?" I ask.

Mum closes her eyes and takes three deep, cleansing breaths. "Hold the boom box higher, Marlowe," she says.

"No one says boom box, Mum."

Mum's got fake blood on her hands, all the way up to her elbows like she just delivered a cow, which, you know, she sort of did. It's actually a stuffed unicorn called Princess Sparkles painted black and white with the words LOVE ME, DON'T EAT ME scrawled on its side.

A guy with a knitted tie shuffles up to stare at us. I hide behind my long hair, trying to be inconspicuous, but that's one thing my family's never been good at. I mean, I do my best — no one rocks timid tan, washed-out white and boring beige like me. No one has worked harder to become a human-chameleon hybrid. But it's difficult to blend into the background when you're flanked by a blood-clad vegan warrior and a kid who thinks every day is Halloween.

Pip thrusts a pamphlet into the guy's hands. "That's Blissfully Aware," he says, and points at our shop. "Grand opening today." The guy looks at the pamphlet, then at Pip, then at our shop, smack bang next to Bert's Quality Butchers. He shakes his head like he can't even begin to explain just how Blissfully un-Aware we are.

He walks off and my cheeks are burning red.

I check over my shoulder. Bert the Butcher is still scowling at us with a white-knuckle grip on his meat cleaver. Even though we only just moved into the shop a couple of days ago, I think he might already have plans to put us on the specials board.

The speaker weighs heavily in my arms.

"Mum? When is this going to be over?" My shoulders grow tight. "Can't we just go? It's my first day back at school in ages. Why can't —"

Bert the Butcher barrels out of the shop, and the ye olde bell that jingles politely when someone enters thrashes and clangs. "What are you lot playing at?" he shouts. His voice sounds like it's been squeezed through the meat mincer. "You're driving away my customers."

I stumble back and hug the speaker to my chest. It's not much of a shield, but I guess I could throw it.

Mum doesn't miss a beat. She's an expert at confrontation. She thrives on it. Which was perfect when she was a high-powered lawyer and even better now that she's a vegan warrior.

"At least we're not murdering innocents." She waggles a fake-blood-red finger under his nose. "Ten million cows are slaughtered for human consumption annually. That's mass murder."

Bert laughs unkindly. "One of those animal-rights nuts, are you?" He's got streaks of red all over his blue-and-white apron — the real kind of blood red.

"You're damn right I am."

They start shouting over the top of each other, Mum citing stats and Bert spouting hippie clichés. Pip, ever industrious, hands out pamphlets to the assembled rubberneckers.

"What's going on?" asks a woman.

"That's my mum, owner of Blissfully Aware." Pip shoves a pamphlet in the woman's hand. "Half-price soy-based products for our grand opening today."

The woman narrows her eyes at him. "And you're supposed to be ...?"

"Jungle Anne of Green Gables. Like if Anne of Green Gables got lost in a jungle and she had to fight her way out Survivor style."

The woman laughs, but it's a nervous trill. She looks at me. Questioning. Like I can make sense of it for her. And even though I don't offer any answers she keeps looking at me.

They're all looking at me.

My new heart is thumping. The doctors said it was a good one, but I don't know: should it race like this? I'm not unfit — I have a strict post-op exercise program and it usually doesn't take long for my heart rate to settle after a run. But I'm not even moving, so why do I feel like doubling over and passing out? Why does it feel like my heart is failing, after all?

I turn away from the gawking crowd only to find I'm being watched from inside the butcher shop too.

He's got that bones-bursting-through-the-skin kind of look, like the man inside is just dying to rip through the outer shell of boy. He's a head taller than me, broad shoulders, square jaw, tousled dark-blond hair. He's behind the counter, wearing a blue-and-white apron, holding a that's-not-a-knife-this-is-a-knife. And he looks like he just stepped in dog shit. Like I'm the dog shit.

My heart is beating fast and hard — it's making me feel breathless. Maybe it's a dud, maybe it's a ticking time bomb and it's seconds away from exploding and I'll die here on the pavement and the paramedics won't be able to tell what's my blood and what's the blood of a fake unicorn/cow. What even happens when you die with a transplanted heart — do you get buried with it or do they give it back to the donor's family?

I turn to my mum. She's really yelling now and Bert's face is turning purple and Pip is dancing, singing the shop's theme song he wrote last night.

I feel like I could drop the speaker on the concrete and scream. But I don't want people looking at me. Not because I'm shy and hate being the center of attention. I am — I really am — but it's not because of that.

It's because of that feeling. That borrowed-heart feeling.

The best thing about showing up at school with my brother (pinafore, tiger face paint, massive diorama of the Roman coliseum) and my mum (fake blood up to her elbows) is that most people aren't looking at me.

Most.

"Breathe, Marlowe," says Mum. "In through the nose, out through the mouth."

I smile weakly at her. "I know how to breathe, Mum."

"I know." She nods. "It's just ... don't forget your positive affirmations if you feel overwhelmed. And remember your calming exercises."

I tell her I'm fine.

People staring at me is fine.

Returning to school after almost a year off is fine.

My heart — someone's heart — pulsing a thousand beats per second in my chest is fine.

Seriously, unbelievably, completely fine. (Breathe, Marlowe. Just breathe.)

Pip screws up his nose, whiskers morphing out of shape. "Everybody's staring," he announces. "I think it's cos they're jealous of my diorama. It's to scale."

Mum tells him his diorama is so awesome it's going to cause a riot, and Pip beams. I could roll my eyes but the truth is his diorama is spectacular. So instead, I sneak glances at the crowd of students in front of me and reassess my definition of "fine."

Most of the student body is milling about before the first bell — there's no uniform so it's a color explosion, like a T. rex ate a truckload of confetti and vomited all over the school. In my grey T-shirt and tan shorts I'm the one dull spot in the middle of it all.

I search the faces around me, but there's no one I know. A dodgy heart will drag you out of school so often they have to keep you down a grade. And another grade. Until everyone you began school with has graduated and you're the only seventeen-soon-to-be-eighteen-year-old starting year eleven.

Welcome back, Annie McNoFriends.

Northside Community P–12 is a mixed bag of buildings, from giant Rubik's Cube art studios to kidney-shaped learning centers; the school motto NURTURING CREATIVE MINDS SINCE 1972 is painted in not-quite Comic Sans above the front entrance. I hitch my backpack over my shoulder and mumble good-bye as I head toward the main office for my "welcome meeting" with the principal.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Mum calls.

Yes.

"No. I'm fine."

"Well, don't forget: hospital appointment after school."

I nod over my shoulder and get a bloodstained wave. She ruffles Pip's hair and tells him to "Go get 'em, tiger."

I keep my head low and the crowd parts for me, Moses style. Pip hurries after me, telling me to wait up.

I can't breathe.

I've forgotten how to breathe.

Can I run back to Mum and ask her how to do it?

I turn and stand behind the Feeling Tree. I just need a moment. Maybe five moments. Maybe more.

The Feeling Tree is a tree-shaped sculpture carved out of wood with pens strung from the branches, ready for any desperately troubled teen to express their deepest troubles. In reality the pens have been used by boys to draw penises. Lots of penises.

The ironic thing is that right now I could totally use the Feeling Tree.

Because I have Feelings.

And I'm struggling to breathe.

Pip pauses beside me, his tiger-face squinting up at me. "Have you forgotten where the office is?" He tries itching his nose with his shoulder. The face paint smudges. "Do you want me to show you the way?"

"I'm fine, Pip. Just get lost."

"Why are you so mean?"

Pip is the sweetest kid alive and as far as kid brothers go he's actually the best, but right now I'm trying to be invisible and standing next to Jungle Anne of Green Gables is not helping me. So I ignore him until he wanders off, over to a gang of junior boys. Pip gets this sloppy grin on his face and I can hear him telling them, in excruciating detail, all about his diorama — how accurate it is, how to scale it is. "Look at that mini toga I made," he says.

My five or more moments are up, but I stay rooted to the spot looking at the east lawn, at all the groups of friends huddled in conversation, school bags dumped around them like walls. Impenetrable walls.

My heart squeezes against my ribs like it's too big for my chest. I have two more years of this. Two years of hiding behind the Feeling Tree because I don't know anyone and groups were fixed in prep unless you have the kind of personality that can break through the Great Wall of Friendship. And I don't.

I mean, I was celebrity of the month when I was The Dying Girl. Nothing attracts friends like impending death. You should have seen the flowers, the cards, the fund-raising stalls and the nondenominational prayer circles when I had to leave school for good.

But then someone else's bad luck meant I could trade in my dodgy heart for a new one and here I am again. And it turns out "celebrity of the month" literally means you get a month. When it's over, you're a nobody again. And if I'm not The Dying Girl, who am I?

I don't think anyone — including me — imagined what would happen if I didn't die.

Just picture it: you're in one of those disaster films. You're in a 7-Eleven minding your own business when suddenly the lights flicker, the earth shakes and everything falls off the shelves as an alien spacecraft appears overhead shooting lasers. People are screaming and you think, well this is it. It's the end of the world. So you and the ten random people who happened to be in the store with you hug and say how much you love each other and how crappy it was that you never got to eat a croissant in Paris or swim with sharks, and you promise if you get through this alive you'll do all of those things and then you start making out with the nearest guy because you figure you'd rather have a good time before you die. But then the lights come back on and the UFO flies away because Will Smith saved the day.

What do you do then? Do you sell everything and go swimming with sharks in Cape Town? Do you still want to hook up with the cashier? Are you going to be forever friends with this random group or are you just going to pay for your Slurpee and leave?

Breathe, Marlowe. Just breathe.

And walk.

I head for the main office but, after only two steps, three honey-blond girls trap me in a circle of smiling and waving. "Marley!" they squeal.

Close enough.

Besides, they can call me anything they like because actual human teenage girls are talking to me! Maybe this won't be as bad as I think.

"Oh my god, Marley. You're back."

"You didn't tell us you'd be back."

"You should have told us."

I know they're not sisters, but they look identical — same haircut, same blue jeans, same white sneakers. I can't remember their names because honestly the sum total of our relationship before today is five seconds of conversation and a get-well-soon card. It doesn't help that I've always mentally referred to them as Cerberus. But, like, a fairly nice Cerberus. Well, as nice as a three-headed dog-beast can be.

"Tell us everything," says head number one.

"Every detail," says head number two.

"You're famous," says head number three. "Everyone's talking about you."

The truth kicks me in the stomach — beyond an encore performance of The Dying Girl (otherwise known as The Transplant Girl) I don't stand a chance of holding their interest.

"There's nothing to tell," I say. "I got a new heart. I'm better."

They look at me, waiting, expecting — they want gory details and I'm holding out on them. How many bones do you have to throw to appease a three-headed dog-beast? I don't know, but they're getting nothing from me.

"I like your ... shoes," I say, pointing at all three sets of white sneakers.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Thanks."

Head number one looks over my shoulder, scanning the crowd for a new distraction, a better distraction, something a three-headed dog-beast can really sink her teeth into.

"Do any of you have English with Mr. Laidlaw?" I ask.

The three heads share a look.

"Yeah."

"I think so."

"Sure."

Their eyes grow dull with disinterest.

"You're shitting me," squeals head number one. She bops up and down on the spot, grabbing the other two by their arms. "Kaitlyn what's-her-face has a fugly new haircut. I have to see this."

And then they're gone, quicker than you can say "confetti vomit."

* * *

"This must be overwhelming," says the principal, a flat-faced lady with an asymmetrical bob and one of those arty, flowy dresses that could double as a bedspread. She says it with a sympathetic smile and points to a beanbag in the middle of her office. Yes, a beanbag.

I hover in the doorway.

"Sit. We'll have a cuppa and a chat." She watches me cross the room and sink into the beanbag. "I just wanted to say welcome ... Welcome back, I mean."

I nod.

She waves her hands, scrunching up her nose. "It's all a bit strange, isn't it? After so much time away. Trying to fit in again, finding your feet, meeting a bunch of new classmates."