Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

“Flea!” Jake’s voice cut through the romping music of the television, startling Moira, who fell and caught her mother’s ankle, pulling her down as well.

“Jake thinks he’s the king of England,” Molly said, lifting her youngest daughter.

I smiled and ran up the stairs. Jake was bent over in his closet, looking for something in the mess of socks and sneakers and dirty underwear. “Hi,” I said.

He did not turn around. “Where’s my good belt?” he asked, the simple question you’d put to a wife or a longtime lover.

I reached under his arm, tugging the belt from the peg where he’d placed it days before. Jake b waáfore. Jakegan to thread the leather through his khaki slacks. “When you go to college,” he said, “I’m going to be lost.”

I knew as he said it that I would never go to college, never even draw another picture, if Jake asked me to stay. When he turned to me, my throat ached and my vision grew blurry. I shook my head and saw that he was dressed for a date; that his grease-spotted jeans and blue work shirt were puddled in a corner under the window. I turned away fast so that he wouldn’t see my eyes. “I didn’t know you were going out,” I said.

Jake grinned. “Since when haven’t I been able to get a Friday-night date?” he said.

He moved past me, and the air carried the familiar scent of his soap and his clothing. My head began to pound, surging like a tide, and I believed with all my heart that if I didn’t leave that room I was going to die.

I turned and ran down the stairs. The door slammed behind me, and the wind picked up my feet for me. I heard the concern in Molly’s voice reaching out, and the whole way home I felt Jake’s eyes and their questions burning into my back.

At home, I pulled on my nightgown and fell into bed, drawing the covers over my head to change the fact that it was only dinnertime. I slept on and off, waking with a start just after two-thirty. Tiptoeing past my father’s room, I closed the door, and then I went down to the kitchen. Feeling my way through the night, I unlocked the door and I opened the screen for Jake.

He held a dandelion in his hand. “This is for you,” he said, and I stepped back, frustrated because I could not see his eyes.

“That’s a weed,” I told him.

He came closer and pressed the wilted stem into my hand. As our palms touched, the fire in my stomach leaped higher to burn my throat and the dry backs of my eyes. This was like being on a roller coaster, like falling off the edge of a cliff. It took me a second to place the feeling-it was fear, overwhelming fear, like the moment you realize you’ve escaped a car accident by precious inches. Jake held my hand, and when I tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let go.

“Tonight was your prom,” he said.

“No kidding.”

Jake stared at me. “I saw everyone coming home. I would have gone with you. You know I would have gone with you.”

I lifted my chin. “It wouldn’t have been the same.”

Finally, Jake released me. I was shocked by how cold I became, just like that. “I came for a dance,” he said.

I looked around the tiny kitchen, at the dishes still in the sink and the muted gleam of the white appliances. Jake pulled me toward him until we were touching at our palms, our shoulders, our hips, our chests. I could feel his breath on my cheek, and I wondered what was keeping me standing. “There isn’t any music,” I said.

“Then you aren’t listening.” Jake began to move with me, swaying back and forth. I closed my eyes and pressed my bare feet against the linoleum, craving the cold that came from the floor when the rest of me was being consumed by flames I could not see. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it?

Jake let go of my hands and held my face in his palms. He stared at me and brushed his lips over mine, just as he had three years before at the drive-in, the kiss I had carried with me like a holy relic. I leaned against him, and he twisted his fingers into my hair, hurting me. He moved his tongue over my lips and into my mouth. I felt hungry. Something inside me was tearing apart, and at my core was something hot, hard and white. I wrapped my arms around Jake’s neck, not knowing if I was doing this right, just understanding that if I did not have more, I would never forgive myself.

Jake was the one who pushed away. We stood inches apart, breathing hard. Then he picked up his jacket, which had fallen to the floor, and ran out of my house. He left me shivering, my arms wrapped tight around my chest, terrified of the power of myself.

“My God,” Jake said, when we were alone the next day. “I should have known it would be like this.”

We were sitting on overturned milk crates behind his father’s garage, listening to the hiss of flies sinking into puddles left from the rain. We were not even kissing. We were simply holding hands. But even that was a trial of faith. Jake’s palm enveloped mine, and the pulse in his wrist adjusted to fit the rhythm of my own. I was afraid to move. If I even took too deep a breath, I would wind up as I had when I had run into his arms and kissed him hello-pressed too close for comfort, lips burning a trail down his neck, with that strange reaching feeling that started between my legs and shot into my belly. For the first time in three years I did not trust Jake. What was worse, I did not trust myself.

I had been brought up with stricter religious values than Jake, but we were both Catholic, and we both understood the consequences of sin. I had been taught that earthly pleasure was a sin. Sex was for making babies and was a sacrilege without the bond of marriage. I felt the swelling of my chest and my thighs, heavy with hot running blood, and I knew that these were the impure thoughts I had been warned of. I did not understand how something that felt so good could be so bad. I did not know who I could ask. But I could not help wanting to be closer to Jake, so close I might squeeze through him and come out on the other side.

Jake rubbed his thumb over mine and pointed to a rainbow coming up in the east. I was itching to draw this feeling: Jake, me, protected by the bleeding strands of violet and orange and indigo. I remembered my First Communion, when the priest had put the dry little wafer on my tongue. “The body of Christ,” he had said, and I dutifully repeated, “Amen.” Afterward I had asked Sister Elysia if the Host really was the body of Christ, and she had told me it would be if I believed hard enough. She said how lucky I was to take His body into my own, and for that precious sunny day I had walked with my arms outstretched, convinced that God was with me.

Jake put his arm around my shoulder-creating a whole new flood of sensations-and wrapped his fingers in my hair. “I can’t work,” he said. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat.” He rubbed his upper lip. “You’re driving me crazy,” he said.

I nodded; I couldn’t find my voice. So I leaned into his neck and kissed the hollow under his ear. Jake groaned and pushed me off the milk crate so that I was lying in the wet crabgrass, and he brutally crushed his mouth against mine. His hand slipped from my neck to my cotton blouse, coming to rest under my breast. I could feel his knuckles against the curve of my flesh, his fingers flexing and clenching, as if he was trying to exercise control. “Let’s get married,” he said.

It was not his words that shocked me; it was the realization that I was in over my head. Jake was all I had ever wanted, but I could see now that this fever inside me was just going to grow stronger and stronger. The only way I’d be able to put it out would be to give myself completely away-unraveling my secrets and baring my pain -and I did not think I could do that. If I kept seeing Jake I would be consumed by this fire; surely I would touch him and keep touching him until I couldn’t go back.