The Unbroken Hearts Club Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Brooke Carter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Carter, Brooke, 1977–, author

  The unbroken hearts club / Brooke Carter.

  (Orca soundings)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-2061-6 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-2062-3 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-4598-2063-0 (EPUB)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings

  PS8605.A77776U53 2019 jC813'.6 C2018-904888-3

  C2018-904889-1

  First published in the United States, 2019

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954089

  Summary: In this high-interest novel for teen readers, Logan uses her camera to work through the grief of losing her mother.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Cover images by iStock.com/Mny-Jhee (front) and

  Shutterstock.com/Krasovski Dmitri (back)

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  22 21 20 19 • 4 3 2 1

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is

  licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multi user, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information,

  please contact [email protected].

  http://ivaluecanadianstories.ca/

  For my mom

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from “Learning Seventeen”

  Chapter One

  Chapter One

  Snapshot of your morning, Logan. Mom’s voice hums in my mind, like a radio turned way down low. Or someone calling from underwater. Where is she now? Is she in the air? Is she in the river I photographed this morning? Maybe she is in the other room. Maybe she’s nowhere.

  On days like today, when I’m in my darkroom, I feel like the answer is nowhere. I have to push the creeping feeling of panic all the way down so all that’s left is…a numb, gray nothing. I push it down until I’m nothing and nowhere too.

  But okay, Mom, here’s a snapshot of my morning. I woke before dawn, gathered my trusty manual Pentax camera and a couple of rolls of black- and-white film. I snuck out of my basement bedroom window to take some shots at the riverbank on the edge of town.

  The river was Mom’s favorite place. Dad had the memorial bench installed. I didn’t have to sneak out—I doubt Dad cares that I’ve been getting up early for a change—but if he knew where I’ve been going, he’d try to tag along. I don’t have time for that. Dad is the opposite of me. He’s all raw feelings and big dramatic gestures. He always wants to talk, talk, talk. He will talk about Mom to anyone who will listen, even strangers in the grocery store.

  That’s why Dad loves his grief support group so much. All they do is sit around and talk about the people they’ve lost. Mom died of Huntington’s disease, which is an evil genetic disorder that is 100 percent fatal. As in, there’s no cure. Just suffering. Dad wants to talk and I do my best not to. I want to be left alone in my darkroom. In here, all that exists are the photographs. Snapshots of time. There’s no death.

  I’ve been getting up before the sun to take photos—I need the magical morning light to capture the image I’ve been seeking, and that special lighting doesn’t last long. It’s beautiful for a few minutes, then gorgeous for a moment, and then it’s back to being regular boring daylight.

  That’s when I come back to my darkroom to develop my shots. I know where every basin, canister and clothespin is by feel in here. My trusty tongs—the red silicone ones with a tomato on the handle that I stole from Dad’s barbecue set—are always hanging on a nail at my workbench. I can hook them with my finger and wield them like a magic wand, bringing images into existence. When the lights are on, you can see all the images from my favorite photographers and filmmakers. I have cut and pasted them together to create a kind of wallpaper collage.

  Cole will be here at any second to try and convince me to go to school. We’ve been best friends for our entire lives. Unlike me, he never seems to worry about anything. It’s his main talent, apart from being a great filmmaker.

  I gently swish the paper in the chemicals as the first image appears. This is my favorite part—seeing the picture appear out of nothing. Now I can see the riverbank and the bench. There is no one in the photo. Of course there isn’t. There wasn’t anyone there to begin with. And yet each time I develop one of these shots, some part of me expects to see my mom’s long dark hair and slight frame perched on the bench.

  Some people are intimidated by film processing, but I find it easy. Of course, there’s an art to it. But that art is threatening to become extinct since everyone now shoots in digital. I use a digital SLR app for the camera on my phone too, but for me the true art of photography is about the complex relationship between light and film.

  Despite Dad complaining that soon he’ll have no place for his fishing equipment, I converted the large storage closet under the stairs into my darkroom. It’s next to the rec room where Cole and I hang out and have our movie nights. I’ve got all the different materials and chemicals I need in here. To avoid light contamination, I sealed off the entry with an extra folding door inside the original one. It’s my own personal sanctuary.

  The trick to developing film is that you have to keep it in total darkness until the end of the process. This suits me fine. Living in total darkness is kind of my thing. If it wasn’t for Cole showing up every morning to drag me to school with him, I’d probably never interact with another human. Apart from my dad.

  Thinking about Cole is complicated. I mean, he’s my best friend for sure, but he’s restless. He wants more from me than I can give. It’s flattering, but I don’t have anything left over for anyone else.

  Ever since Mom died, it’s like the light meter of life got turned way down to low. Colors are washed out, sounds are muffled, and my feelings—even feelings for guys—are blank. The girls at school can’t understand it. I mean, Cole is hot, and not just hot for our small town. He’s big-city hot, movie-star hot. Put-his-poster-on-your-wall-and-make-out-with-it hot. Drive-by-his-house-hoping-to-catch-a-glimpse-of-him hot. Leave-him-secret-love-notes hot. You get the idea. He’s like a modern-day Paul Newman. Cole would pass out with joy if I ever said that
to him (Luke from Cool Hand Luke is his blueprint for manhood). Why am I able to resist the irresistible? Why can’t I return the feelings he has for me?

  Forget it. I don’t want to think about it now. As I clip up the prints, I see that I haven’t captured the images quite the way I wanted to. Some parts are underexposed, and the compositions seem a little boring. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

  I don’t know what I’m looking for in these photos. It’s not the trees, the leaves or the returning of the birds to the river. It’s the empty spaces and the places I can’t see. What’s behind the large tree in the foreground? What’s under the surface of the water?

  I can’t help feeling like there’s something there, something I need, something waiting.

  Right on cue I hear Cole’s boots stomping down the stairs. And, as usual, he doesn’t knock on my darkroom door. He opens the outer threshold a crack.

  “Lo?” he whispers.

  I sigh. “Cole. Film is not sound sensitive. It’s light sensitive.”

  “Whatever,” he says. “You done? Can I?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, pulling open the inner door and switching on the regular light bulb.

  Cole’s sandy blond scruff of hair comes into the light from the shadows. He gives his head a little shake to get his bangs out of his pale blue eyes. He’s smiling at me, his usual everything-is-right-with-the-world smile. I feel… nothing. I fake a smile in return and see a strange expression flicker across his face for a moment.

  Cole looks at the photos drying on the line overhead.

  “More bench, huh?” he says. “Lolo, when are you going to stop with all these very sad photos of the saddest bench in the history of benches?”

  Cole is the one human being on earth who can call me Lolo without being murdered. That’s because he’s been my best friend since I moved in across the street when we were both two. (He couldn’t say my full name, Logan Imogen Flanagan, so he called me Lolo.) Now he mostly calls me Lo, since we’re not babies anymore. But he does reserve the Lolo for when he’s trying to sweet-talk me. I guess I kind of like it, though these days it’s tough to figure out just what I like and what I don’t like.

  By the way, my middle name comes from my mom’s all-time favorite photographer.

  Here is a snapshot. Imogen Cunningham was a photographer who was famous for taking soft-focus, blurred images of her subjects. Later on she created a sharp-focus style of photography that led to the formation of Group f/64—a bunch of photographers all obsessed with the same technique. Imogen Cunningham was pretty badass, considering she was born in the late 1800s.

  My mom was a photographer too, and she took a lot of photos in the Cunningham style. They were some of the best shots I’ve ever seen, even though she never shared them with anyone else.

  My first name, Logan, well, that’s 100 percent my dad. Yep, I’m named after his favorite comic book character, Wolverine. Dad is a huge comic book nerd, although he hasn’t been reading them much lately. He hasn’t been doing much at all besides going to work, trudging through the day and going to his support group. Dead wives will have that effect on you, I guess.

  “Lo?” Cole bumps my shoulder a little too hard. I look up at him.

  When did he get so solid and… muscular?

  “Sorry—don’t know my own strength,” he says.

  “Are you growing again, Cole?” I ask. “Weren’t you, like, two inches shorter yesterday?”

  “Yeah, probably,” he says, and starts telling me about his breakfast as I pack up my camera and grab my backpack. “I woke up today and ate two eggs over easy, plus toast and juice. But then I had to have some raisin bran. And for some reason that made me hungry for cheese, so I made two toasted cheese sandwiches and grabbed an apple on my way out the door. My mom says I’m going to eat us out of house and home…” He trails off and looks sad.

  This is another worst thing in a thousand worst things that happen when your mom dies—people feel like they can’t talk about their own moms. And it’s true. You don’t really want them to.

  He changes the subject. Cole is nothing if not dialed into my feelings, or lack thereof. “We should get going. We’ll be late for Media Arts.”

  “Ugh, crap.” You’d think Media Arts would be a good subject for me, right? Wrong. I’m close to flunking.

  “Logan Imogen Flanagan.” Cole cocks his head at me and narrows his eyes.

  “Don’t start,” I say, but it’s too late. He’s on to me.

  “You didn’t do the assignment again, did you?” His voice takes on a shrill scolding tone. I can tell he’s trying to make me laugh.

  I feel bad because it’s not working. I throw my hands up in silent surrender and hope he’ll leave it at that.

  “Fine,” he says. “Get your butt in the car. We’d better get to school if you have a hope in hell of graduating with me.”

  “Lead on, captain,” I say. But I’m dreading it.

  We leave my darkroom and turn the corner to head up the steps. The last thing I see is the large family portrait hanging above the rec room fireplace. Snapshot: Mom, Dad, Daughter. Smiling in the sun. Spring flowers. An explosion of bright color. Blossoms on the trees. The promise of the future. Last known photo of Family Flanagan. A technicolor reminder of all we’ve lost.

  Chapter Two

  I open my locker and grab my Media Arts notebook. Cole waits beside me, fidgeting. People walk by and say hello. Girls check him out. Cole fits into the scenery like a famous actor hired to make the school more glamorous. He’s at home in all habitats.

  I’m dragging my feet. Today each student is supposed to discuss the progress of their yearlong project. I have nothing to show because I haven’t even started. It’s way past midterm. Everyone’s already getting amped up for graduation and the looming end-of-the-year hullaballoo, to borrow an expression from Dad.

  “I don’t know why everyone is so excited about leaving high school,” I mutter. Of course Cole hears me. He has hearing like a bat. Or maybe he always knows what I’m thinking. That’s a possibility too.

  “Because normal people look forward to the future, Lo. They don’t waste their talent taking photos of sad benches.” He arches an eyebrow at me.

  I give him “the eyes” in response. This is a move in which yours truly makes her big brown eyes even more huge in her big moony face. My super-short pixie cut adds to the effect. When Cole first saw it, he declared it the greatest haircut I’ve ever had. He called me Winona Ryder for weeks.

  He looks at me now and takes a small step back, leaning into the lockers like he’s been sapped of all his strength.

  “Oh no,” he says. “Don’t you dare, Lo. I’m trying to talk some sense into you. But you know I can’t resist ‘the eyes.’” He slithers down the bank of lockers and falls into a heap on the linoleum.

  “You should be an actor instead of a director,” I say, slamming my locker shut. “Because that performance was sneeze-worthy.”

  Cole springs up to standing. “You did not just reference the single greatest acting moment in cinema history.”

  “I did,” I say, turning toward class.

  “You do realize that the Keanu Reeves sneeze in The Lake House will go down as the benchmark by which all future acting generations measure their work?”

  During one of our many epic movie-watching nights, Cole and I discovered this cinema gem. It’s kind of our thing.

  “Uh-huh,” I say. “And Keanu’s not bad to look at.”

  “Lo, he’s, like, three times your age!”

  “What can I say? I like them…old and dark and handsome.” This is a total lie, but it’s fun to torture Cole.

  “You’re killing me, Lo. Killing me.”

  “I aim to please,” I say, pausing at the Media Arts room door.

  “After you,” says Cole.

  I give him the eyes again, and he nudges me through the door.

  Twenty minutes into class, Cole reaches over and grabs my wrist, placing his fingers
on my pulse. He does this sometimes—it’s his dramatic way of seeing if I’m checked in or checked out. Right now I’m checked out. The updates are so boring, I can’t keep my eyes open.

  When Ms. Mill calls on me to give my update, I shrug.

  “See me after class, Logan,” she says. I know I’m doomed.

  I try my best to pay attention during the rest of class, but my mind keeps wandering. I can’t stop staring out the window. I see the trees and I think about the riverbank down the street.

  “Hey,” says the girl next to me. Her name is Cheryl, or Sherry—I can never get it straight. “What’s with you guys?” she asks, nodding toward Cole.

  “Huh?” I play dumb, but I know what she means. Everyone always wants to know if we’re a couple.

  “He’s fiiine,” she says, drawing the word out.

  “Yeah, and quite the sneezer too,” I answer.

  She gives me a blank look, and we stare at each other for a moment.

  Cole clears his throat. He heard the entire exchange. “This is why you don’t have any friends, Lo,” he says.

  “I have you,” I say, turning to look at him.

  “Yeah,” he says. “You do.” He looks at me with such intensity that I have to look away.

  It’s a relief when class is over. I need a break. I’m almost out the door when Ms. Mill stops me.

  “Logan,” she says. “I’m not going to say the same old thing again, because we’ve had this conversation a few times now.”

  I nod.

  “This is a note that you need to show your father,” she says, handing me a piece of paper. “Please have him sign it and return it to me.”

  I open it. It’s a note, all right. It spells out all the ways I am screwing up my chances of graduating.

  “Start your project, Logan. Pick something. Please,” says Ms. Mill.

  “Okay,” I manage. I turn to leave.

  “And Logan,” she adds. “I’m…here if you need me.”

  I pause at the doorway. My brain tells me to turn around, give the poor woman a smile, tell her I’ll be fine. But my heart won’t let me. I manage a slight nod and get out of there as fast as I can.