The Heart Ring

Chapter 6 – Testing Boundaries

By Friday, the secret felt lighter because Abby wasn’t carrying it alone. It also felt brighter, which was its own kind of trouble.

“Science experiment,” Kimi announced in the cafeteria line, conspirator’s grin in place. “Hypothesis: lunchroom chaos equals strong colors.”

“Peer-reviewed?” Abby asked, nudging her tray along the metal rails.

“Peer annoyed,” Kimi said. “Good enough.”

The heat lamps hummed. Grease pop-crackled behind the counter. Kids elbowed for pizza squares, and the air smelled like orange cleaner and melted cheese. Abby slid the ring on with the smooth, practiced motion of someone fastening a seatbelt. The world cleared, like someone had wiped fingerprints off glass.

A senior in a letterman jacket laughed too loud—orange streaked from his chest and burst like a firework. The lunch lady’s glow was patient blue that pulsed brighter whenever she called someone “sweetheart.” At the end of the line, a kid in a faded hoodie held steady green, quiet and calm, a forest in a corner.

Kimi leaned in. “Vending-machine guy?”

Abby glanced, then smiled. “Spinach green.”

“Zero stars,” Kimi muttered. “Review withdrawn.”

They took the table nearest the windows, where the glass always fogged from breathing bodies and the heat of food. Abby kept her voice low, naming what she saw while Kimi guessed. Sometimes they were right—“nervous yellow, two o’clock”—and sometimes they weren’t—“nope, that’s not jealousy, that’s jalapeño regret.” The game felt safe. Abby didn’t pry; she let colors be what they were and only touched them with language.

“Most in love,” Kimi said, chin-tipping at a pair sharing a carton of fries.

Abby checked, then hesitated. “Pink, yeah. But the one on the left has a gray thread. Fear. Or maybe… the feeling of not wanting to ruin a good thing.”

Kimi cocked an eyebrow. “At our age? Bold.”

Abby laughed, and the ring warmed—in her palm, in her chest—but not the burn of before. A held-mug kind of heat.

They carried the experiment into the hallway, soft-footed among locker doors and backpack thuds. Kimi pointed and whispered; Abby confirmed or shook her head. “Locker-anger guy?”

“Red spike,” Abby said. “Temporary. Three-minute half-life.”

“Ms. Vang with the plant cart?”

“Grief-blue, but she’s carrying it steady. Like when you hike with your hands on the straps.”

Passing periods became obstacle courses. A shoulder brushed Abby’s; a quick orange fizz, gone. Fingers met passing a pen; a shy pink pricked her palm like static. She learned that attention itself was a kind of touch. If she let her gaze rest—gently, not pushing—colors clarified. If she yanked, they recoiled. It felt like learning to handle a skittish animal: soft voice, open hands.

By fourth period she had a rhythm. She could be careful. She could be kind. The ring didn’t have to hurt.

They were almost to the stairwell when the day turned.

Jenna Sloane stood with her friends near the trophy case, sunlight catching in her hair. Everything about her was tuned—laugh at a pitch that drew eyes, posture that said she took up space without apology, clothes that mirrored the line of the day’s trend. Abby had never spoken to her beyond “sorry” and “excuse me.” She didn’t need to.

“What’s Jenna?” Kimi whispered—not mean, just curious.

Abby’s glance was quick. “Yellow. Warm.”

“Figures,” Kimi said, already turning for class.

Abby should have turned too. Instead, something small and slippery slid under her ribs. The question didn’t even have words, just an ache: Is it real, or perfect because she says so?

She didn’t step closer. She didn’t touch Jenna. She only let her attention lean—more than a glance, less than a stare—the way you press a bruise to see if it still hurts.

The ring answered like a wire pulled tight.

Heat snapped up Abby’s arm. Jenna’s bright yellow thinned, stretched, became gauze. Under it, a white line showed—wire-tight, high, a tense hum that made Abby’s teeth ache. The cafeteria noise and hallway chatter slid sideways, like sound underwater. Abby’s stomach dropped.

Then came the flood.

Pain knifed through her chest, high and bright. The ring’s heat flared into burn. Abby’s breath shortened to ribbon pieces as thoughts not hers jammed into her skull: don’t slip don’t slip don’t slip—until slipping was the only word left, and the word was a cliff.

Her knees softened. She grabbed the banister and missed; her palm slapped metal and skidded. The little heart-shaped stone bit into her finger. She tried to pull back—not just her gaze, but whatever invisible thread she’d tugged—and the thread yanked the other way.

“Abby?” Kimi’s voice tunneled through, muffled and far. “Hey—Abs.”

Abby’s vision speckled. The ring burned. Air tasted metallic, like blood and pennies. The buzz in her head rose toward a peak that felt like it might shear her in two. She fumbled at the band with clumsy fingers and wrenched it off.

Sound slammed back—lockers clanging, voices overlapping, the squeal of a shoe on tile. Pain stepped down as if someone had twisted a dial, but it didn’t vanish. It sat there, throbbing.

Kimi’s hands were on her shoulders, steady and warm. “Sit,” she said, no jokes. She guided Abby to the bottom step and crouched, eye-level. “Breathe with me.”

They breathed together. In and out. Abby’s cheeks were wet; she didn’t remember when crying had started. She pressed the cool ring into her palm so hard the edges dug crescents. Her heartbeat crawled back from the ceiling toward her ribs.

“What happened?” Kimi asked, voice careful. “Was it her?”

Abby swallowed, and shame went down like glass. “I looked too hard,” she said. “I wanted to see under it. I… pushed.”

Kimi followed Abby’s glance toward Jenna, then back. The concern on her face sharpened into something like resolve. “So that hurts you.”

“And maybe her.” Abby’s words came small and true. “It felt like I opened a door and it blew back in our faces.”

Kimi exhaled slowly, a held breath leaving. “Okay. New rule.” She lifted a finger between them, not scolding, sealing a pact. “We don’t open doors we’re not invited to.”

Abby made a sound that was half laugh, half broken. “I know better.”

“Then we remember better,” Kimi said. “Because you’re scaring me. And I’m not letting this turn you into someone who thinks pain is how you learn.”

The bell bellowed. The flow of bodies thinned, leaving a few stragglers and their echoes.

“Can you stand?” Kimi asked.

Abby nodded and stood. The world held, a little tilted, but not spinning. She slid the ring into her pocket instead of onto her finger. It lay there like a coin from a country where they used pain as money.

They walked to class together. Kimi kept a hand at the small of Abby’s back, the kind of touch you only notice after you realize you needed it. Abby focused on stupid anchors: the taped corner of a geometry poster; the smell of dry-erase marker; the little dent in the floor tile at the classroom entry where the door had hit it for a decade.

She made it to the end of the day without tipping again.

On the bus, she sat by the window. Trees smeared green and gold. The glass was cold against her temple. Kimi slid in beside her and didn’t say anything for a while, which felt like the right kind of friendship.

“Data point,” Kimi said at last, low. “Doors are for knocking.”

Abby huffed a laugh that made her ribs ache. “I practically kicked it in.”

“Yeah,” Kimi said, bumping Abby’s shoulder. “Let’s not do that again.”

The joke landed and didn’t. Abby texted Mom from the bus: home soon. Her hands still trembled around the phone.

At the front door, the key stuck in the lock the way it always did when it rained. She jiggled, felt it give, and stepped into the smell of tomato sauce and laundry heat. The dishwasher thrummed a steady bass. The TV murmured in the den. Ordinary sounds, like a life teaching her how to breathe at a normal pace.

Mom glanced up from the stove, eyes making a fast scan of Abby’s face—the one all moms learn. “Hi, honey. You good?”

Abby made the best version of a smile she could manage. “I’m okay.”

The word wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t a brag either. It was a status report from a battlefield where no one had died today.

Upstairs, she paused outside Randy’s room. A thin line of light cut the carpet under the door. The air felt heavier here, like the house had swallowed a secret too big for its throat. She didn’t look. She couldn’t. Not with the way her palm still stung where the ring had bitten.

In her room, she set the ring on the quilt instead of dropping it in the bowl. It caught a slant of late sun and threw a tiny red shard onto the wall. From here, it looked like a toy—small, pretty, harmless.

She sat and waited for her breath to find the slow lane.

The ache behind her eyes ebbed. Shame didn’t. She had wanted to help—and she had wanted to know, to be right about a girl she didn’t even know. The wanting had been enough.

Her phone buzzed. Kimi: you alive?

Abby’s thumbs moved. yes. not prying.

good.

also proud of you.

also eat actual food

Abby smiled, small and real. bossy

accurate Kimi replied, and then: we write the rule down?

Abby typed, then retyped until it was simple enough to remember when things got loud: Rule #1: Doors are for knocking.

Rule #2: Kimi sent, if it hurts, stop.

Abby stared at the ring. The small red heart didn’t blink. “Not a toy,” she said aloud, because saying it helped. “Not a pry bar. Not a crown.”

The house popped and settled around her—pipes, wood, the sleepy organs of a place that had been a place a long time. Somewhere down the hall, Randy’s floorboard creaked.

Abby turned off the lamp and lay back without touching the ring again. In the dark, Grandpa’s warning didn’t sound like a wagging finger. It sounded like a hand on a shoulder, weight and warmth both.

It keeps trials.

That’s not a toy, girl.

“Okay,” she whispered into her pillow. “I hear you.”

She fell asleep with the rules in her head and Kimi’s steady you-are-not-alone tucked in beside them, a second pillow she hadn’t known she’d needed. Tomorrow would be another experiment. But not a game. Not anymore.