How to Break a Heart (22 page)

yo toco
tú tocas
ella toca
nosotros tocamos
ellos tocan

I
’m sitting at Macho Nacho with Thad. He is staring at the wreck-age of his burrito and is starting to eye my chimichanga, which I’m finishing up. I have only recently discovered the delight of the chimichanga—a fried, more compact version of the monstrous burrito, one that you actually
are
expected to eat with a fork and knife.

I’m telling Thad about the butt dials.

“Wow, it sounds pretty
serious
,” Thad says with a straight face.

“Ha.
Ha
. Anyway, he called again. For real. Him, not his butt.”

“And what did him-not-his-butt say?”

“Well, that I was a ‘cool girl.’” I feel both defensive and a little embarrassed. “And he seemed interested. He asked what I was up to.”

“Yeah, what did you tell him?”

I sigh. “I did the Mariela thing. I told him I was getting ready to go to salsa. And guess what?
For your information
, he likes salsa, too!”

Thad stops chewing. Then he breaks into a zoo-like laugh.

“What?”
I ask.

“Dude.” He looks amused. Strongly amused. “What exactly did you tell him?”

I feel like I’ve been holding on to a gift that is about to be taken away. “I told him I was getting ready for salsa lessons.”

“No, exactly. What did you say? Did you actually say
lessons
?”

I think back. Maybe not. Okay, probably not.
I’m getting ready for salsa.

Crap. Definitely not.

“He thought I was talking about this?” I ask, sweeping my hand toward the little cup of red sauce.

He just laughs in his wild way, and then eyes my plate and asks, “Hey, can I get a hit of that ’chong?”

It takes me a minute to realize he’s talking about my chimichanga.

“Go ahead,” I say, dispirited.

He takes it from my Styrofoam plate with his fingers, takes a bite RIGHT OFF OF IT, and places it back on the plate.

“Just finish it,” I tell him, now that I don’t want to touch the thing.

“Are you sure?”

I look down at the remains and see Thad’s crescent-shape bite taken right out of it. “I’m sure.”

Thad quickly takes another bite of my chimichanga. “Okay, look, Collins. Maybe the guy does finally like you. You’re welcome, by the way. And maybe he
is
going to ask you out.”

Do you really think?
I feel myself inflate with hope. Then I remember that Thad’s probably going to take my hope away, like he normally does.

But he says, “So, fine. Go out with him. Go discover another flaw. Or three.”

“Really?”
I ask.

“Yeah. Fine. Go. I think we have him where we want him at this point. I mean, that stupid dance is coming up soon, right?”

I nod. “It’s not just a dance,” I remind him. “It’s the Cotillion.”

“Well, if he doesn’t ask you, he’s going to ask someone else. So you might as well go out with him now, because if he ends up going with someone else, the whole plan is flushed down the toilet. You can’t stand up someone else’s date.”

“Right. Good point.” For a second, I’m impressed with myself. If I ever want to act in a telenovela, I’m certainly getting some practice. Because there’s something else that happened today, something I’m not telling Thad.

Nick and I ended up walking down the same hall on the way to fifth period. It’s not too unusual, because we have a similar commute at that time. But today, somehow, we ended up side by side. And his pinkie grazed mine. And he didn’t yank his hand away. It was, I’m sure, a Deliberate Dangle, and our hands and fingers collided three more times before I got to Spanish. I felt a little like Dylan the worm—each time our hands grazed and collided, I felt the beating of many tiny little hearts in each finger.

So while Thad gobbles down the rest of my
’chong
down in his usual disgusting manner, I check my phone, hoping to hear from Nick, and not just his butt cheek.

“Put that thing away. That’s your assignment for the day.” Thad says. He wipes his hands off on a napkin, still chewing. His chair scrapes against the tile floor. “Come on, just forget about that chump for now. Let’s do something fun.”

I stick my phone back in my pocket. The suspicious eyebrow-threading lady tries to lure me over with promises of a pain-free experience. Thad starts to get distracted by the waft of Sbarro, unbelievably. And me, I can’t help myself. I pull my phone out again. Maybe I’ve lost service. I need to check.

“You’re failing this assignment,” Thad says. “Put it back in your pocket and
keep
it there.”

As much as I hate to, I do. But I say, “For your information, I was checking to see if Sirina called.”

He smiles. “I don’t even care. Take a break from it.
All
of it.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me forward.

We stop in front of a Brookstone and he pushes me into the massage chair. The store clerk waits a minute, then walks over. “That’s not a toy,” he says to us.

“Yeah!” Thad says. “Not at thirteen hundred dollars it ain’t.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the clerk says. He points to a handwritten sign taped up near the chair that reads:
Please no unaccompanied minors.

“That’s okay,” I say. “It feels like a robot is jabbing at me with sticks anyway.”

We scurry out of the store and I follow Thad to the escalator. “Let’s go upstairs,” he says. Except that he’s at the wrong escalator. The stairs are coming toward us. “You ever done this?” he asks. Based on the look on his face, we might as well be at Disneyland.

“No!” I say. “How do you do it?”

“Just run up really fast. Faster than it comes down. Come on!”

“What if someone gets on?”

“Yeah, no biggie. Then you just ride it down.” He jumps three steps up and starts scrambling toward the top. “Come on, Collins!” he shouts. And it does look fun, so I hop a few steps up, but I’m not fast enough. I’m carried to the bottom, backward. Thad’s nearly made it to the top.

I take a deep breath and try again, but I aim too high and my knees buckle, and I tumble onto my butt, and am delivered to the floor like a factory reject. Thad looks down at me, victorious, from the second floor. And then…

Whiiirrrrrrrr.

It’s Captain Jerry.

He sighs. “Are you
hurt
.” It sounds more like a general disappointment than a question.

If I was, it’s clear that I wouldn’t get any sympathy from him. “No,” I say, pushing myself up. “I’m fine.”

He takes his ticket tablet out of his pocket and scribbles something on it. Then he rips it off and hands it to me. “Now, first time is a warning. But the next time I catch you playing on the escalator—AND THIS CAN BE A DEATH TRAP—your parents get a call. Third time?” He whistles and points his thumb over his shoulder with a sweeping motion. “Kicked out. Barred from the mall. How do you like
them
apples?”

Then he spots Thad at the top of the escalator. “You!” he yells, and Thad runs off. Thankfully, he doesn’t
skate
away. I don’t think Captain Jerry could handle that right now. He gives me a threatening look and whirs off again.

I look around the mall. It’s pretty quiet. There are only a few people walking around and most of them seem to be employees. The only sounds are a few shoes shuffling on the floor, the distant whir of Captain Jerry’s Segway, and the hum of the escalator. And then Thad appears, lying lengthwise on the handrail of the down escalator. It looks dangerous. But it also looks fun. “This is actually much harder than it looks,” he tells me.

“You’re so stupid sometimes,” I say, but I can’t help smiling.

“You and me both,” he says. Okay, I can’t argue with that one.

And then my phone buzzes. I frantically grab it out of my back pocket. It’s a text from Nick. FINALLY!

“Loserboy?” Thad asks.

“If that’s what you want to call him,” I say, hiding my excitement.

“What’s he want?” Thad asks.

It’s just one word. One lovely little word.
Hi.

“He’s saying ‘Hi.’”

“Lame,” Thad says. “Don’t write back.”

But I’ve already texted
hi
back. “Too late,” I say.

Thad lunges forward and grabs the phone out of my hands. He lets out one of his feral laughs and rushes back to the down escalator, where he leaps up two stairs at a time.

I start to go after him, jumping onto the up escalator, but he yells, “Cheater!” So I jump off, and hop over to the bottom of the down escalator. The stairs are rolling toward me. I grab high up the handrail and take a giant leap, and then start running up the stairs as fast as I can. I manage to make it all the way up, even if I am huffing and puffing, and probably even starting to get some pit stains.

Thad is waiting patiently, with a smug look on his face.

“What?” I ask.

“So the question now is, do you want to go out Saturday?” His voice is all creamy and gooey, and he has this funny puppy-dog look on his face.

WHAT? Is Thad Bell asking me out? Oh no! Retract! Withdraw! Abort mission!

He seems to know what I’m thinking, and he laughs. He holds up my phone. “Those aren’t
my
words, dorkface. That’s from
Loserboy
.”

I feel a jolt of annoyance. “You’re
breaching
my privacy!”

“Congratulations, Collins. You’re going to be a heartbreaker,” he says. “Have him take you somewhere
romantic
.” He rolls his eyes before tossing my phone to me, and luckily—but only luckily!—I catch it.
Is Nick really asking me out!?
It’s like my eyes can’t get to his text quickly enough. The text is exactly how Thad read it.

“It just makes me wonder,” Thad says.

“Wonder what?”

“Is it really
him
who’s asking you out?” He gives me a sideways look. “Or is it his left butt cheek? You just might want to make sure you know who’s asking.” Then he practically chokes on his jungle cry of laughter.

A laugh stirs in my own throat, but I say, “
Ha-ha.
You’re so funny. I’m just
CRACK-ing
up.”

“Good to know,” he says.
“BUTT…”
He pauses and holds up a finger, as if making some incredible point. “BUTT on that note, I gotta go.”

I smirk. “Ha!” I say it, rather than laugh. “Of course.”

He looks at me for a second. And then another second. And just when it starts to get almost weird, he says, “So, I didn’t really want to tell you this, but speaking of salsa, you’ve had like a gallon of it on your chin for the last hour.”

And then he skates away, leaving me red with both salsa and shame.

yo pregunto
tú preguntas
ella pregunta
nosotros preguntamos
ellos preguntan

I
t’s raining the next morning, so my mom drops me off in front of the school. I dash toward the front door and hear a car honk. I look back—it’s Mrs. Wainwright, waving at me from an otherwise empty car. I wave stiffly back, surprised, and then, right as I get inside the door, I hear
Nicolás
call my name.

My name has never sounded so beautiful.

I turn around to see him trotting toward the open doors. “Hey,” he says, pushing his wet hair back from his forehead.

“Hey,” I say back, kind of shyly. I am, after all, wearing a bright yellow rain poncho. Oh, blasted rainy days! Mariela, where are you?

Officer Dirk interrupts us. “FIRE HAZARD! CLEAR THE ENTRANCE!”

We scoot over to the side of the lobby, and Nick looks at me in this little-bit-melty way and says,
“Sooo.”

“Sooo,”
I say. Also melty.

“So, about Saturday,” he says.

“Yes?” I say, feeling tingly in the tips of things—my fingers, my toes, my nose. My uneven earlobes. I’d responded to his text asking me out the second that Thad skated off. Actually, I typed and deleted
WITH EVERY CELL OF MY BEING
, then typed and deleted
There are few things in this world that would make me as happy
, typed and deleted
I would love to!
, typed and deleted
That sounds like fun
. And then typed and sent the oh-so-brilliant
Sure.

“Do you want to go to a movie or something?”

Wait. Not a movie. Somewhere romantic. And I’m stumped. There are no beaches nearby, no horse-drawn carriages, no cabanas.

“Well—”

“Or Starbucks? The one we used to go to?” he asks. He pants in his sort-of-laughing-nervously way.

Starbucks. Must it be? I’m about to agree, just to have a plan with him—any plan—but he suddenly says, “I know! The park. We can have a picnic or something.”

I wonder if the whole school can hear my heart beating. It feels like it’s on a PA system.

There is no other place I’d rather be,
I think. But then he says, “Okay, great,” and I realize I HAVE SAID THAT OUT LOUD.

But I don’t have that much time to be mortified. Officer Dirk blasts, “MOVE! NOW!”

I’m blocked by a gaggle of seventh graders on the left, and a roost of pudgy teachers on the right, so Nick grabs my pinkie—GRABS MY PINKIE!—and leads me from the main hall through the science hall, and even though lights buzz above us, shoes squeak against the tile, and the aroma wafting from the cafetorium is the sour, tinny smell of canned spinach, I’m so happy I could faint.