Page 74 of House of Hearts
Another sharp sob racks through my body, and Calvin presses a kiss to my shoulder as he leans his weight against me.
“Be good to each other,” Percy says. He gazes at Em with so much tender love and care, even beyond death. They share a look that melts me to my core. I don’t have to worry about Em anymore, not in this life or the next. She’s at peace.
“I love you, Em,” I whisper as she disappears.
“I love you, too.”
And just like that, they’re gone and the real world is coming back into focus. Illusion lifts from reality like oil separating from water. Calvin and I are back to the present, the moon hanging full above our heads.
I can’t say how long Calvin and I sit there in the clearing. The world keeps spinning and the clock keeps turning, but the two of us stay rooted where we are. All we’re doing is holding each other, crying, because what else can you do in a situation like this? We cling to each other for dear life, and the emotions that follow are jumbled beyond comprehension. Relief? Despair? Hope? It’s impossible to tell. Human hearts are such tricky things, and nothing is as simple as it seems.
One thing is, though.
“I think it’s really over now,” I murmur into his hair.
I know he can feel it, too. His forehead finds mine, and his breath ghosts across my skin. “I think so, too, Violet.”
The Queen of Hart’s has finally found her heart. And perhaps she isn’t the only one.
Epilogue
Not all stories have happily ever afters. Some only have afters. But standing here on stage with Calvin on our graduation day, I’d like to believe ours is happy.
The campus is alive with the swell of visitors—students and families flooding the Greek Theater and an orchestra pit of underclassmen playing our school song over the nervous chatter of onstage seniors.
Despite it being a literal graduation, there are no caps to be thrown in the air or polyester robes to slip on over our shoulders. Graduation gowns are too pedestrian for the academy (of course), so everyone is clad in theunofficially officialuniform of either a red dress coat and tie or a white dress and floral crown.
The seasons have swept through our school seemingly overnight—autumn stripping the trees, winter lacing the academic halls in collars of ice, spring thawing campus through an onslaught of showers. Now in summer, the Little Garden has come to life and brought with it enough new growth for our daisy chain crowns.
“Introducing your new graduates!” the headmistress bellows into the mic, and Calvin stiffens beside me, his smile momentarily wavering at his mother’s voice.
I grip his hand and give it a tight squeeze. He returns it and then, like that, the names are called. Diplomas are handed out in reverse order, so I get to watch Amber grace the stage before the rest of us.
She’s radiant today in her Miu Miu dress, her dark hair contrasting against the bright chain of florals. She’d been the least shocked by the truth and far more observant than any of us knew. “You forget, writing gossip columns is all about reading in between the lines. Which is precisely what I did whenever you three talked.”
She accepts her diploma, and there’s a chorus of cheers from her extended family on the lawn. Only immediate family are allowed in the theater seats for crowd size, but that doesn’t stop everyone else from filling up the grass around us. Her cousins whoop and cheer as she blows them a kiss on stage.
Oliver follows, and there are a million camera flashes from his parents in the front row. They arrived early enough for me to see his mother pinch his cheeks and sob “That’s my boy!” into his shoulder.
There’s Ash and then, several minutes later, Birdie. She might not have a grad cap to customize with fabric paint and trinkets, but she’s made a number of modifications to today’s “uniform.” Starting with her hair. She cut it last minute into a pixie in the girls’ bathroom and then used some of her hair for a braided “flower crown” of her own. I can think of absolutely no one else on the planet who would do this in the last hour before their graduation, but it’s got “Birdie” written all over it.
Her mom groaned at the sight of it, but her father let out a deep belly laugh and clapped his knee. Turning to his wife, he soothed her with a “You’re lucky it’s not a mohawk.”
Birdie tapped her chin in contemplation and pretended to type the idea into her Notes app for college.
It wasn’t easy picking up all the pieces with her after my last lie. A promise had been broken on my end and a truth told on hers that could have gotten me killed. There were tears and awkward days that followedand finally a hand grab before I left for winter break.
We hadn’t spoken right away. There hadn’t been an avalanche ofsorrys and explanations andnever agains. It had been a quiet minute of understanding, a reflection that transcended the need for words.
“I’ll see you in spring,” she’d told me, and when the next semester came and the snow piled high on campus, our friendship was reborn.
Just like for Amber and Oliver, I shout out Birdie’s name alongside her parents. And also like the two of them, Birdie’s handshake with the headmistress is a “cordial for the camera” clasp before a quick smear of her palm afterward.
When it’s Sadie’s turn, she leans in for a hug and is met with a stiff handshake in its stead. She keeps her smile up for appearances, but it thins at the edges and the transaction is brief.
Still better than Calvin. He avoids her hand entirely and grabs the diploma, exiting stage right with minimal fanfare or theatrics.
One by one they continue until I’m next, and I brace myself for the moment before me. It’s as simple as walking across a stage, but it’s also so much more. The necklace might’ve been returned to Anastasia, but my nails are adorned in Emoree’s favorite stickers. She never got the opportunity to walk across this stage, so it only felt right to carry her with me in some small way.
