How to Break a Heart (12 page)

She looks at me skeptically. “Chased?”

“Well, I mean—”

She rolls her eyes. “So what do we actually have for this story besides the Incredible Hulk and your hero?”

I pull out my notebook. “Are you ready to get to work?”

She pauses. “Well, we can start—but I still want to get something from an official source.”

“Well, fine, you can wait for that ‘high road.’ But
that
hallway’s closed.” I look at her. “And at least the low road’s wide open.”

That night, after we’ve finished the article, my teeth are brushed, and I am in bed, I text her.
Good night, my jujitsu justice angel.

And then I get her message back.
Good night, my spork-wielding heartbreaker.

THE VINDICATOR

The Official News Blog of Hubert C. Frost Middle School

Hero Walks Amongst Us
Hooded Stranger Breaks Window in Language Arts Hall, Runs

On Wednesday, at approximately 3:30 p.m.,
a violent giant
an intruder
broke a window in
the easternmost corner of
the language arts hall.
Eyewitnesses allege that
a man in a hooded sweatshirt drove his fist through the window, shattering the glass, and then
ran out of
exited
the building through a nearby emergency door, setting off an alarm within the school.

The key witness,
a valiant and brave
eighth grader
named
Nick Wainwright,
chased
saw
the trespasser
down the hall while help was summoned. The subject
disappear
ed
into the woods behind the soccer field.

Wainwright describes the man as
massive and hulking.
tall.
He reports that the man was wearing a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt
.
We should all be proud to go to school with such a hero, who was able to keep us safe through this harrowing event.

When asked why he
gave chase
didn’t flee the scene with two other students who had been present at the time of the incident,
Wainwright
acknowledged a sense of justice and safety, and
said “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

After-school activities were temporarily suspended while the
scene of the crime
area
was cleared.

The motive for this
vicious outburst
incident
is unknown
.
, but most likely, it was a crime of passion.

Jordan Sweeney reports that her neighbor’s uncle, who works at the state prison, said a murderer did in fact escape the prison on Monday. There is the possibility of a connection to the crime.

Further information and/or reports of suspicious activity can heretofore be reported to
Sirina Fein
.

IN OTHER NEWS…

Lunch Workers “Horrified” by Inappropriate Use of Puddings and Jellied Desserts

A team of cafeteria ladies, led by lunch supervisor Mrs. Teagen, declared strong disapproval for students’ varied abuse of desserts, following incidents in which Hayden Dunlop placed a glob of butterscotch pudding on a tissue after a staged “sneeze,” and Nolan McRae began “oozing” green Jell-O from a pretend neck wound. Teagan instituted a mandatory recall of all
[click for more]

yo muero
tú mueres
ella muere
nosotros morimos
ellos mueren

“Y
ou did
what
?”

It’s Saturday, and Thad and I are at the mall for our first official heartbreaker meeting, and he’s been shoveling in chips with bean dip for the past five minutes,
with his skate gloves on
. But now he looks at me, a chip paused in front of his mouth.

“I interviewed him for
The Vindicator
. About the biggest news that’s ever happened at our school,” I tell him, then ask, “Don’t you ever take those stupid gloves off?”

He doesn’t answer. He just puts the chip down on a napkin and wipes some of the dip off his gloved hand.

“I can’t believe you eat with those things on. I hope you wash them.”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“What’s your problem?” I ask. “You told me to get him to notice me in a new way. That’s exactly what I did.”

“I wasn’t thinking
that
, though,” he says. “I was thinking more like you were going to do the Mariela thing.”

“Well, I did, but I still couldn’t get him to talk to me!”

“So you got him to talk to you about this whole stupid window thing?”

“It’s not a whole stupid anything. I mean, for one, it’s our chance to win the YoJo!”

He squints. “The YoJo?”

“The Youth Journalism award. It’s like the Pulitzer for middle-school news reporting. I mean, this is the first exciting thing that’s happened in our school in, like, ever, and we’re writing an investigative series—”

Thad’s eyes roll to the ceiling.

“And for two, it’s an actual crime, and he was the only real eye-witness.”

“Eyewitness? What do you mean, ‘eyewitness’?”

“Nick saw the guy who broke the window.”

Thad studies me. “Yeah, well, what exactly did he see?”

“Well, I mean, okay, so not a lot. A guy in a sweatshirt.”

“Right. So it doesn’t sound like Nick saw much of anything.”

“Well, at least he didn’t run away like the rest of them. And you know, sometimes people piece things together later. They remember details.”

He closes his eyes. “No, no, no, and no,” he murmurs. He shakes his head and repeats it again. “No, no, no,
no
, and no. Okay, change of strategy.”

“Great,” I say, and don’t mean it.

He looks right at me. “Are you listening to me, Collins? Ignore him. Leave him alone. That’s your next assignment.”

“So first I was supposed to get his attention. Which I
did—
”

“Not exactly the way I was thinking.”

“Well, but, I did. And now all of a sudden I’m supposed to ignore him?”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re, like, totally going in the wrong direction. You’re like three degrees from being a stalker.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Where do you think he is right now?”

“Karate,” I blurt out
waaay
too fast.

Thad lifts his eyebrows.

“I’m just
guessing
!” I attempt.

“I bet you know what he was wearing to school Thursday, two weeks ago.”

“Oh,
yeah
? Well, he wasn’t in school on Thursday two weeks ago. He was out with a cold,” I say.

Thad’s face is smug.

Um.
Yikes.
Maybe he’s right. “But I am
not
a stalker!” I say.

“No, you’re right, you’re not. Just close. Three degrees from it.”

“Okay, shut up, Mister Helpful.”

It’s not that I’m angry—I’m just a little, oh, I don’t know,
horrified
. Maybe I’m like Hilda, the woman who was once secretly in love with Luis. She spent several episodes following him around the town and plotting a way to get rid of Cristina. I get a shiver. I am freaking myself out.

“Dude,”
he says. “Come on, stop looking like that. I just meant it seems like sometimes you get, you know,
obsessed
.”

“I prefer to call it
intense
.”

“Yeah. Intense, okay? Let’s call it that.”

“And
focused
,” I add.

“Okay, fine. That too. Look, it’s not always a bad thing. If Nick was, like, I don’t know, a lost bag of gold, you’d totally find it. And you’d be a millionaire.”

Well. He
is
like a treasure to me.

Thad continues. “But the problem is, he’s not a bag of gold, he’s just a bag of—”

I narrow my eyes. “What’s your problem with Nick anyway?”

“I told you—I think he’s a wad.”

“But why? What has he done to you?”

“Collins, drop it, okay?”

“But you seem to—”

“Okay, let’s just say he stole a Star Wars figurine from me back in fourth grade.”

“Are you kidding me?” I snort.

He puffs out his cheeks with an exhale. “Maybe it’s a guy thing. Anyway, laugh if you want, but he’s going to be laughing at
you
soon. All you’re doing with this news stuff is bringing attention to him. It’s a total one-way street.”

“Well,
Luke Skywalker
, I got him to notice me for something other than my
sappy
self, as you put it, and I got him to talk to me. Don’t those two things have to happen if”—
he’s ever going to fall back in love with me
—“I’m going to get him to ask me to the Cotillion? So I can break his heart?”

“Yeah, but you can’t just chase him down like that. I mean, sure, maybe if all you care about is your yo-yo thing—”

“The
YoJo
,” I correct him.

He shrugs. “But not if you care about getting back at him. I mean, the way you’re going, he’s going to break your heart in half all over again.”

I do care about the YoJo, but I also care about winning Nick back. And I also care about my poor heart, and not letting it get broken again.

“Look, Collins, you’re going to have to backtrack. I mean, you can’t do anything to change what you’ve already done. So now you have to ignore him for a while. Don’t screw it up this time.”

Ignore him.
“I don’t like this assignment,” I say. “I liked the first one better. I was kind of getting the hang of Mariela.”

“Well, you can still do that,” he says.

“Okay, good.”

“
While
you ignore him.” He goes back to his bean dip.

“For how long?”

“Till he starts looking for
you
.”

Right now, I can’t really imagine that happening. But it’s happened before, so it can happen again, right? I look over at Thad and it hits me. I’m taking love advice from someone who has just polished off some refried beans and is now licking the plastic container clean. How did it ever come to this?

He looks up and catches me staring at him.

“Aw, Collins, don’t look at me like that. You’re not hopeless. You just got to break your bad habits. From what Sirina says, you could fall in quote-unquote love with a paper bag if it looked at you the right way. Which explains your whole obsession with Nick.” He pauses and then says, “Hey, you know what you need?”

Yes, I do know what I need. I need to be with the love of my life. I also need salsa lessons. And a C+ in history wouldn’t hurt. But I just say, “What?”

“A burrito,” he says, eyeing the Macho Nacho kiosk. “I promised you a burrito.”

“Well, I don’t want a burrito,” I say.
I just want Nick.

“But you
need
one at a time like this,” he says. “And anyway, like I texted you, I’m buying.”

“Okay, fine.”

It’s a big, ugly, graceless type of food, but I
am
a little hungry.

Thad orders us two massive burritos the size of our forearms. “I don’t think I can eat all this. We should just split one,” I say.