Sweeping Up the Heart by Kevin Henkes

Author:Kevin Henkes [Henkes, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

19 • Heart

After lunch Amelia rushed off to the studio because she needed to get her hands back into some clay. She thought if she stayed home waiting for Epiphany any longer, she might explode. She also felt badly about the way she’d treated Casey. Without explaining anything, she wanted him to know that everything between them was fine.

“Are you mad at me?” asked Casey the second he saw her. He was sitting in his usual place. A heart-shaped slab of clay lay before him on the worktable. He was carving into it with a sharp tool.

“No.”

“You hung up on me.”

“I know,” said Amelia.

He looked at her with narrowed, searching eyes.

She gave a tiny shrug. “It’s hard to explain.”

He kept looking at her, looking through her, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and then she changed the subject. “What are you working on?”

Now it was Casey’s turn to shrug. “Another dumb idea. A heart for my parents.” He extended his hands and waved them, as if presenting it.

The heart had dots pressed into the clay around the edges forming a border. In the middle, it said C + G.

“The C and the G are for Charlie and Gwen,” Casey explained. “My parents.”

“I remember,” said Amelia.

“I didn’t want you to think the C was for Casey.”

“I didn’t.”

“Because then you would have wondered who the G stood for.”

“Hmmm,” Amelia murmured. She lowered her eyes.

Casey’s shirt was lime green with the words DIVORCE SUCKS written across it in black blocky capital letters. When Amelia noticed it, she said, “I bet your mom loves that one.” She nodded at the shirt.

“When she saw it, she said, ‘I hate that word.’ And so I said, ‘Oh, good, I’m glad we agree on that. I hate the word divorce, too.’ Then she gave me one of those looks only a mother knows how to give. You know.” Casey paused. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them as if to clear away his last comment. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Casey opened his mouth to speak again, and Amelia sensed that he was on the verge of saying something about Epiphany when there was the sudden noise of Louise banging up the stairs.

Louise entered the workroom. “Oh, good, you’re here,” she said to Amelia. “I just opened the kiln. Your rabbits are too hot to glaze, but they look great.”

Amelia smiled.

“Make more,” said Louise.

“I will.”

Amelia got some clay and started right away. At first she watched Casey out of the corner of her eye. He poked and scraped and stared at his heart; he sprayed it with water from time to time to keep it moist. But soon she became more and more aware of the rabbits she was forming and less aware of anything else. When it was time to leave she had four new rabbits ready to be fired.

“Will you come tomorrow?” Casey asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”

Suddenly they seemed shy with each other.

“We can do lunch,” Casey said. “Make up names and stories for people again. Look for Epiphany.

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