to take me right now so I can give him my heart. He needs a good one.”
“Sweet Pea . . . You can’t give him your heart. People only have one.”
“No. I want to give him mine. RIGHT. NOW!”
She was shouting and begging and her tears were big and hot, and her daddy was hugging her tight, and she thought that maybe she was gonna drown again. The way she’d felt when her mean mommy had left her alone and it was so scary and everything burned.
She didn’t want Evan to be sick.
She had to make him better.
Her daddy stood up with her in his arms, and her face was in his neck, and his skin was getting all wet from her tears. “Daddy, please.” Her voice sounded weaker.
He ran his hand over her back. “I’m sorry, Frankie Leigh. I’m sorry. I would change it if I could.”
“We have to do something right now.”
He hugged her tighter. “The only thing we can do is pray.”
“Oh, Frankie, what are you doing?” her mama asked from Frankie’s bedroom door.
But Frankie didn’t have time to stop. She kept trying to cut open the stuffed froggy, her movements frantic and shaking and her finger stinging from where she cut it.
She wasn’t allowed to have sharp scissors but she needed them really, really bad. So bad that she wouldn’t even care if she got sent to her room for being in trouble for the whole day.
A fat droplet of blood dripped on the big green froggy, and she hoped that Evan wouldn’t be mad that she got red on it.
“Frankie Leigh.” A hand curled softly around her shoulder.
She shrugged it off. “I gots to do surgery like Uncle Kale, Mama. Shh. You gots to be so, so, so quiet. Did you knows Evan looks just like a froggy? I fink this is his favorite toy in the whole world.”
Her mama climbed down beside her, touching the hearts Frankie had cut and colored and were spread out all over her bed.
Frankie’s hearts.
At least a hundred of them.
Because Evan needed so many hearts.
Not just one like her daddy said.
When she got the froggy open wide, she started stuffing all of the hearts inside, saying all the prayers she could find.
Please, please, please make Evan okay. He’s my bestest friend and I need him to stay here. It’s too scary to be alone. Don’t make Evan be alone. I’ll be good. I promise.
Her mama softly brushed her fingers through Frankie’s hair. “Do you want me to help you?”
Frankie frantically shook her head. “No. I gots to do it. They gots to be my hearts because he’s my best friend and Grammy said best friends make all the problems gets all better.”
“Okay,” her mama agreed, but her face was still sad, and she stayed right there while Frankie got all the hearts where they belonged. Frankie took the big needle and the white thread and she sewed it up fast so they were all safe inside.
“There,” she whispered. “All done.”
Evan got all her hearts. Even when her daddy said she wasn’t allowed to give it to him.
Thirteen
Frankie Leigh
I jolted upright with a gasp, drenched in sweat and clutching my sleeping bag.
My eyes darted around, everything dark save for the glow of the moon that seeped through the thin material of the tent.
The world was quiet.
Bugs trilled and an owl called from somewhere high in the copse of trees, the lake still doing its gentle patting at the shore, the waterfalls crashing in the distance. I felt drawn to the solitude. To the whisper of the world that promised it was all gonna be okay. That there was something bigger and better and more beautiful out there waiting for us.
I quietly crawled out of my sleeping bag and over to the tent flap. I cringed when I pulled down the zipper and it came off sounding about twenty times louder in the dead of night. I opened it only enough so I could squeeze through, and then I slipped on my flip-flops.
Quieting my footsteps, I started for the path at the back of the camp in the direction of a place that my heart would always know.
A place that was filled with memories of so much joy that it would always feel like stepping into a sanctuary.
The moon was high, close to full, the milky haze sweeping over the smooth gray rocks that had been my playground as a child.
I started to climb the path that felt so familiar.