Sweethearts

Sara Zarr

As children, Jennifer Harris and Cameron Quick were both social outcasts. They were also one another's only friend. So when Cameron disappears without warning, Jennifer thinks she's lost the only person who will ever understand her. Now in high school, Jennifer has been transformed. Known as Jenna, she's popular, happy, and dating, everything "Jennifer" couldn't be -- but she still can't shake the memory of her long-lost friend. 
When Cameron suddenly reappears, they are both confronted with memories of their shared past and the drastically different paths their lives have taken.

Sweethearts is a story about the power of memory, the bond of friendship, and the quiet resilience of our childhood hearts.

My favourite parts:

1.

" Some memories are slippery. There are things I want to remember about Cameron Quick that I can't entirely, like the pajamas he wore when he used to sleep over,or his favourite cereal, or how it felt to hold his hand as we walked home from school in third grade. I want to remember exactly how we became friends in the first place, a definite starting line that i can visit again and again. He's a story I want to know from page one.

My brain doesn't seem to work that way. Most specific things about Cameron are fuzzy- the day we met, how we got so close, exact words we said to one another. There are only moments, snapshots, pieces of the puzzle. Once in a while I feel them right in my hands, real as the present, but usually it's more like I am gasping for vapor. I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there's stuff you don't know, can't know. But when it comes to Cameron, I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I'm convinced there are parts of myself hidden inside them.

Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't. They 're like a song you hate but can't ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.

The memory of my ninth birthday, is that way. Sometimes it's an endless loop, from start to finish. But it's always there."

2.

"I woke in the night. The chill in my room, the quiet, the eerie light coming through the window - it all said snow. I got up and pulled on an extra sweatshirt, moving down the hall toward Alan's study. The door was ajar a couple of inches; I pushed it open.' Cameron? Cam?'

'I am awake.'

'Get up,' I whispered. 'I want to show you something.'

His silhouette rose and came to me.

'Put on your coat and shoes.'

He did.

I took his hand and led him past down the hall, past the humming fish tank, through the living room and out the front door. We stepped into the still, cold air. The street and sidewalk, the roof of every house, every car, the power lines, every tiny branch of every tree, had been covered by a neat layer of sparkling snow.

Quiet. Quiet. Nothing untouched by the white. The world and every thing in it had changed overnight.

' I haven't seen anything like this since I left Utah,' Cameron said.

'Remember the time at my apartment? You raised the blind like you were showing me the eighth wonder of the world.'

'I was.'

3.

" I got up,crept up to Alan's office, and went in.' Cameron? Cam?' He didn't move and appeared to be fast asleep. I am not sure what I wanted. To look at him, I guess, and talk. I sat on the floor by the sofa bed so that my face was level with his. His breath came in short, toothpaste-minty sighs.

'Cameron Quick,' I whispered, just wanting to hear his name. He still didn't move. I touched his face, following the curve of his jaw, the bow of his lips. This was the boy who made my childhood less lonely, who made me feel loved. And known. And accepted. Who had stared into my most terrifying moment right beside me,while my most terrifying moment  was his everyday life. And I pictured him patting that baby doll by a cold window, showing it comfort by instinct. I felt overwhelmed with sadness for his life and what it could have been, even though I knew he wouldn't want me to feel that way. He'd say it was all right, that he'd get by, that he could take care of himself. That he didn't want anyone to fix it. But I still wanted to, to somehow make up for that infinite, infinite well of helplessness that I'd spent most of my life believing had swallowed us up.

It hadn't though, because we are here, weren't we? Wiser and braver and more ready for life than our friends or parents or anyone we knew, than even I had realised until he came to show me.

I touched his wrist lightly, his elbow. I tucked the blanket up around his shoulder. 

'I love you, Cameron,' I whispered.