Breaking Up Is Really, Really Hard to Do (2 page)

The annual RSAGE Art Fair was coming up and Mads was planning a major project. She was going to draw pastel portraits of her friends, family, acquaintances, and maybe even pets, with a portrait of Sean as the centerpiece. He was so good-looking, how could she go wrong? Even a bad picture of him might win a prize.

“Am I going to be in your art project?” Lina asked.

“Definitely,” Mads said. “And Holly, too. And guess what? My parents are letting me throw a party after the fair. An after-show celebration. And I can invite as many people as I want.”

“Excellent,” Holly said.

“The only thing is, there might be teachers there,” Mads said. “My stupid parents thought it would be nice to invite some of them and make it like a school thing.”

“That's okay,” Holly said. “That way you know Lina will come for sure.”

“Hey!” Lina tossed a pen at Holly.

“When- can we see the ad?” Mads asked. Lina had found a personal ad Dan Shulman had posted on a dating Web site. Mads was dying to see it. Unlike Lina, she found it hard to picture Dan in a dating context.

“Come over tonight,” Lina said. “You can help me figure out what to write to him.”

“You're going to write him back?” Mads said.

“Under a fake name,” Lina said.

“Diabolical,” Holly said. “This should be good.”

“That sounds like something I would do.” Mads sighed. “Do you think Sean will come if I ask him?” Her mind was still on her party.
If only Sean would come,
she thought,
everything would he perfect.
For one thing, where Sean went, all the cool kids in school followed. For another thing, if he came to her party, it would mean he considered her worthy enough to show up at her house. And that was a step closer toward actually liking her.

Holly shrugged. “There's only one way to find out.”

Mads got to her feet. “I'd better get up to the art room. I'm working on a portrait of Captain Meow-Meow. I'm having trouble capturing his sense of humor on paper.” Captain Meow-Meow was her Siamese cat.

“Captain Meow-Meow has a sense of humor?” Lina said.

“Of course,” Mads said. “If he could talk, he'd be Conan O'Brien.”

“Funny, I never noticed that side of him,” Holly said.

“See you at my house tonight,” Lina said.

“See you.” Mads walked into the school building and up to the third floor. The art room was empty. Late afternoon sun poured in through the skylights. She sat at a table and took out a photo of Captain Meow-Meow she'd taken with her new digital camera. She'd caught him in her favorite cat pose—stretched flat out on her bed, legs weirdly straight behind him. She picked up some pastels and started working.

She was concentrating so hard she forgot where she was. When someone came up behind her and said, “What's that, a monkey?” Mads jumped.

She turned around. A tall boy with straight brown hair and bangs looked down at her. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to startle you.” He wore a black t-shirt that he'd torn and put back together with safety pins. On the front, in DayGlo chartreuse, he'd painted a star with an X through it.

“It's not a monkey, it's a Siamese cat,” Mads said. “See?” She showed him the photo she was trying to copy.

“What's her name?” the boy asked.

“His,” Mads said. “He's a male. Captain Meow-Meow.”

The boy laughed. “And what's your name—Sergeant La-La?”

“That would be cool,” Mads said. “But no, it's Madison.”

“Madison Markowitz?” the boy said. “Of The Dating Game? I'm Stephen Costello. A big fan. Huge fan.”

“Thanks.” Mads felt her face heating up with happy embarrassment. She nodded at his t-shirt. “Do you have something against stars?”

He plucked the shirt away from his body to see the Xed-out star better. “No. I just thought it looked cool. Well, I'll let you work. Are you making an entry for the Art Fair?”

Mads nodded. “Portraits. In pastels. What about you?”

He crossed the room to a drafting table and returned with a handful of sketches. He laid them out in front of Mads. They looked like plans for a stage set. “I'm doing an installation piece. It's going to be a guy's bedroom. I'm going to put in replicas of everything a teenage guy might have—posters, books, videos, games, CDs, magazines, clothes, a computer…all that junk.”

“That's cool,” Mads said. “Looks like a lot of work.”

“It is, but it will be worth it. I'm hoping to make a statement about teen culture and pop culture in general.”

“What's the statement?” she asked.

“Well, it might change as I work on the project. But right now it's about clutter. How pop culture clutters our minds so that we can't think clearly or even recognize what's important to us.”

Wow,
Mads thought.
He's deep.
So deep Mads was a little afraid to talk to him.

She studied the sketches more closely. They showed three walls made of cardboard, seven feet high, painted white, with a window cut out of one wall. The room would be filled with cardboard furniture he planned to build himself. “I'm going to paint a rug on the floor and everything,” he said.

“It's like a giant dollhouse,” Mads said.

“I'm going to put a video monitor here,” he said, pointing to a sketched-in TV on a shelf. “And have it running the whole time, with images from commercials and videos and stuff on a loop.”

“You'll win a prize for sure,” Mads said. “Nobody else is doing anything like this.” She looked him over, trying to guess where all this artistic ambition came from. He was thin and plain-faced, but there was so much confidence in his bearing and such a brainy look in his eyes that he seemed striking and almost handsome.

“What year are you?” she asked.

“Junior,” he said. “My family moved here from London last year.”

“But you don't have a British accent,” Mads said.

“I'm not British,” Stephen said. “We only lived there for three years. Before that we lived in New York.”

“You must have had so many interesting experiences,” Mads said.

“I guess,” he said. “But it doesn't really matter where you live—Werner says the true adventure of life is in your mind and in your dreams.”

“Who's Werner?” Mads asked, and immediately regretted it. What if Werner was super-famous, somebody everybody should know, like Shakespeare? What if she'd just said something stupid?

“He's a German philosopher. He wrote this book called
The Empty World.
I'll lend it to you if you want.”

“Thanks.” He didn't say it as if he thought she were an idiot, which she appreciated.

“Anyway, I knew lots of people in London who were always bored, even though there was tons of cool stuff to do all the time.”

“I've lived in Carlton Bay since I was three,” Mads said. “People think nothing ever happens here, but those people aren't paying attention. Like a few weeks ago I was at this party at a very elegant house—” She was thinking of Sean's Victorian house, which
was
elegant in its over-decorated way. “We were all drinking screwdrivers, of course, though
some
kids insisted on beer, and this senior, Alex, asked me to tell him the story of my life. Well, I closed my eyes and thought, What a question. What is the story of my life? What is life all about, anyway? Just thinking about it made me so dizzy I nearly got sick right there!”

This story had elements of truth in it, but Mads had added a philosophical twist to it that had never been there before. Mads
was
at a party, and Alex
did
ask her to tell him the story of her life, and she did nearly get sick right there. But not because of existential nausea. More like too many screwdrivers. The actual vomiting took place a few minutes later, in Sean's mother's room. Mads decided to spare Stephen those unnecessary details.

“Wow,” Stephen said. “You've already had your first existential crisis. Very precocious.”

“Thank you.” Mads beamed. “For my age, I'm kind of a woman of the world. I mean, I wasn't before, but this year, things just started happening to me. There's one guy who was insanely in love with me—he even wrote a poem about me. Did you see it? He posted it on the library bulletin board.”

“I must have missed it,” Stephen said.

The boy she was describing—known as Yucky Gilbert—was a twelve-year-old freshman who occasionally wore a cape. More details Stephen was better off not knowing. “He wanted too much from me. I'm not ready to give my whole self up, heart and soul. I hate breaking guys’ hearts, but what else can I do?”

Stephen gathered up his sketches and shook his head. “You sound like trouble, Madison. I'd better stay away from you.”

Mads laughed. “You can call me Mads. All my friends do.”

“Mads. The perfect name for a madwoman like you. And I mean that as a compliment.”

“Thank you. My father does say my mind has a logic all its own.”

“My mother calls me St. Stephen the Serious. Once you've gotten to know me a little better, I'd like you to tell me if you think that's true.”

“Do you want it to be true?” Mads asked.

“No.” He sat down at a nearby table and laid out his sketches, studying them. He picked up a pencil and started drawing. No one spoke for several minutes. Then he stopped, his hair in his eyes, and said, “Will you tell me? Do you promise to tell me the truth?”

“Yes, I will. I promise.”

Mads was afraid that on first impression, Stephen's mother was right. But what was so terrible about being serious? She thought it was kind of appealing.

3

Larissa Comes to Life

To: linaonme

From: your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY'S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: A new side of you will emerge today. It's about time—everyone was getting bored with your old one-sided self.

L
ook,” Lina said. “He changed his ad!”

Holly and Mads were in Lina's bedroom after dinner. Lina showed them a personal ad from an online dating site called The List. The screen name said “beauregard” but the picture showed the blue-eyed, sincere face of their IHD teacher, Dan Shulman. Ever since she had discovered his ad, Lina had obsessed over every detail. What was he looking for? What were his secrets? Whenever he changed an entry, she pondered the meaning of it.

Lina had had a crush on Dan since the beginning of the school year, and it got stronger every day. Mads and Holly knew about it, of course, but they didn't realize how intense it was. And Lina couldn't share that with them. It was private.

“I want to read the ad,” Mads said.

MAN SEEKING WOMAN

beauregard

ID#:
5344474

Age:
25

Occupation:
teacher

Last great book I read:
Dubliners,
by James Joyce. The last line of “The Dead” gets me every time.

Most embarrassing moment:
In third grade, when my older sister revealed to our entire school that I still slept with my blankie.

Celebrity I resemble most:
Some people say Tobey Maguire, but I don't really look like a celebrity.

If I could be anywhere at the moment:
Sailing down the California coast.

Song or album that puts me in the mood:
“Get the Party Started” by Pink; anything by Elliott Smith or the Velvet Underground.

Favorite on-screen sex scene:
Cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew and the girl skunk who loves him, surrounded by hearts.

Best or worst lie I've ever told:
When my sister asked me if I liked her boyfriend and I said yes, trying to be nice. Now they're married and I've got a soulless corporate shill for a brother-in-law.

The five items I can't live without:
Nutter Butter cookies, my dictionary, a pen knife, my bike, Chapstick…and I love walnuts but I'm allergic to them.

In my bedroom you'll find:
my bed, books, papers I should have graded long ago, old photos, notebooks full of unfinished stories and random scribbling, dirty socks, a rack full of old ties, three hats on a shelf, a guitar.

Why you should get to know me:
I always try to do the right thing. I mean I really think about it. I'm very patient, except with my sister, the one person who knows how to push my buttons (in case you couldn't tell). I know lots of two-letter Scrabble words. I would love to “take you out to the ball game.” I make a mean blueberry pie.

What I'm looking for:
A friend to call for spur-of-the-moment adventures. An appreciative consumer of my cooking. A low-maintenance, non-material girl with a sense of humor. A sexy bookworm.

That's me,
Lina thought.
A sexy bookworm.
Well, maybe she wasn't so sexy, but she
was
a bookworm. Every time she read his profile she fell for him a little more. She was the girl he was looking for. He just didn't know it yet.

Mads and Holly cracked up. “A sexy bookworm!” Mads squealed.

“I like the part where he says he wants to take you out to the ball game,” Holly said.

“He still sleeps with his blankie!” Mads said.

“No, he doesn't,” Lina said. “That was in third grade.”

“Still,” Mads said. “He's even geekier than I thought.”

Lina didn't bother pointing out what mattered to her—the change he'd made in his ad. He changed “Last great book I read” from
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens to
Dubliners
by James Joyce. The girls had read Joyce's
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
in English that year. Lina loved the strange, poetic language of it.

“I can't believe he likes Pink,” Mads said, laughing. “Can you picture him dancing around his room at night to ‘Get the Party Started’?”

Holly and Mads started dancing and singing,
“I-I-I-I'm comin up so you better get the party started.”
They collapsed in giggles on Lina's bed. Lina couldn't help laughing, too. It meant a lot to her, but at the same time she knew it was silly.

“Has Ramona seen the ad yet?” Holly asked. “She'll totally lose her mind. There's enough info in there for a year's worth of cult meetings.”