How to Break a Heart (28 page)

I try to ignore the yesses that keep bubbling up to answer the questions in my mind.

That night, when I get into bed, I text her.
Good night, my blue-belly shark tooth.

I put my phone down and wait. And wait some more. And then her text
finally
comes through, so I can go to sleep.
Good night, my mountain-bike lip fuzz.

THE VINDICATOR

The Official News Blog of Hubert C. Frost Middle School

Bored
Board
Game Club Invited to Regional Convention

The Hubert C. Frost
Bored
Board
Game Club was invited to the Connect Four Hundred Convention, a regional convention for nonelectronic gamers and fans.

While chess clubs have an established following, traditional, new, and evolving board games have had little fanfare in the convention scene. The team of twenty-one students will be traveling by bus to Hillsdale, where they will
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IN OTHER NEWS…

Ventriloquist and Puppet Pack It In After Eraser Assault

After being pelted by rubber erasers during a presentation on self-esteem, ventriloquist Paul Wiseman packed up his puppet, Brent, and left school grounds. Before his hurried departure, he stated, “These kids are just horrible.” When reached at his home later, he released a statement by e-mail, declaring: “After today’s incident, I’m reconsidering the belief that everyone
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yo dudo
tú dudas
ella duda
nosotros dudamos
ellos dudan

W
e’re sitting on a bench in the food court. Thad offers me some of his bean dip, but I shake my head.

“What’s the problem, Collins? All beaned out these days?”

“No,” I say, although there’s probably some truth to that. “Just, nothing seems right.”

He takes another bean-coated chip. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

I start to say
everything
. Because that’s how it feels right now. Things between me and Sirina feel a little off. The YoJo is out of our grasp after all. And I still have to either break a heart, or convince Thad and Sirina that they’re doing a disservice to humanity by interfering with true love. Both options fill me with a sense of dread. But how do you tell your friend with a dead father and a trapped mother that
everything’s wrong
?

“Come on, Collins. Spill it.”

I shake my head.

“Oh, right. You already have Sirina to tell all your woes to.”

“Actually, things are a little weird between us at the moment.”

“Oh. Why?”

But if I tell him, I have to tell him
why
things are weird, and he always starts acting so annoyed whenever I talk about the article or the YoJo. So I just sit there crumpling and uncrumpling my burrito foil.

“That’s okay—you don’t want to talk about it. I get that,” he says. “Anyway, she’ll get over whatever it is. No one can stay mad at you for too long. Come on.”

I stay stuck to the bench.

He grabs the crumpled foil out of my hands and launches it artfully into the trash can, landing it in the basket. And then he bows. Seriously.

“Well, come
on
,” he says again. He looks at me like he might grab my hand, but then takes my phone from the bench next to me and runs off.

“Hey!” I say, scurrying off behind him.
What if Sirina calls? Will she leave a message?

Thad runs a few circles around me, laughing in his Animal Planet way. And then he disappears around the corner of the sunglass kiosk. When I get to the other side, he’s wearing a pair with little round lenses.

“You look like a dweeb,” I say, feeling my mood lighten a little. “Like someone who works in a cubicle and clips his toenails at his desk when he thinks no one’s looking.”

I put on a pair with big lenses, and he tells me, “You look like a fly. About to give birth to a thousand maggots.”

“You really are disgusting,” I remind him. I don’t smile, even though I sort of want to.

He tries on another pair—one that wraps around his head.

“You look like a total tool bag,” I say. “With all the sharp tools missing.”

“Ouch,” he says. “I actually thought those were pretty cool.”

“Nope, not even a little bit.” I slide a nice purple pair on.

“Dude. You look like an alien.”

“Really? Is that all you can come up with? Mars is actually kind of cool.”

“Not from Mars,” he says. “From
Uranus
!”

And then we both crack up, and the sunglass lady shoots us a dirty look and starts wiping down everything we touched.

My phone buzzes with a text. It’s not Sirina. It’s Nick.
I’m sorry,
it says. I look at it and put it away.

“You’re learning, my little cricket,” Thad says.

“I think you mean grasshopper.”

“I think I mean cricket. So let’s talk about D-Day,” he says, and starts clutching at his heart and gasping, buckling at the knees.

He means Dump Day. The day I dump Nick. The day I break my very first heart. The very idea of it fills me with such angst that I suddenly feel sick to my stomach.

“What about it?”

He drops his dramatic interpretation of heartbreak. “Well, you’re going to do it, right?”

“I told you I would,” I say. Which isn’t a lie. Which may
not
be a lie. I don’t even know anymore. “But he still has to ask me.”

He studies me, with one eye squinting, like he’s skeptical.

“Okay, you want to know something? All my life I’ve been looking forward to the Cotillion. I mean, it’s a huge deal for me. And now, the whole memory of it is going to be shot by this heartbreaking thing. I mean, if I stand him up, what then? I sit home while everyone else goes and has fun?”

Thad is still eyeing me suspiciously.

“Stop giving me that look,” I tell him. “This isn’t about Nick. This is about me not missing one of the most important events of my life.”

“Okay, then, I have an idea,” Thad says.

“What?”

“You dump him when he asks you to that dance.
Boom
. His heart is broken. Your job is done.”

“And miss the Cotillion completely? I can’t do
that
!” I start to feel panicky.

He shrugs. “Yeah, so, how about this? I’ll go with you.”

He’s got to be kidding.
“What!?”

“Well, why not?”

“Why
not
? Because, dum-dum, you hate those kinds of things!” I tell him. “You’ve probably never been to a dance in your life!”

“So,
what
? That means I should never go?”

“I didn’t mean that,” I say, a little apologetically. I picture us at the Cotillion. Or at least I try to. I can’t see us spinning around on the dance floor, but I can see us huddled over in the corner. Laughing about something. It could be fun. It could be—Well, it won’t be boring, that’s for sure. “I mean, do you even
want
to go?”

“I don’t
not
want to go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Two negatives make a positive, right? Can you tell I’ve been doing my algebra?”

I roll my eyes, but I laugh. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “Okay, fine, but for the record, never,
ever
ask a girl to a dance like you just asked me.”

“Collins,” he says, giving me a fake-shy look, “I believe
you
just asked
me
.”

And then he yanks my hood over my head and I chase him from the eyebrow kiosk to the second jewelry store, until I almost run into a housewifey-looking lady who yells at me, “What are you? Nine?” and both Thad and I are out of breath from laughing.

T
had passes by Ron’s Formal—the shop he always skates by on his way out of the mall. This time, he practically skids to a stop. A banner in the front window reads
Prom Season!
He studies the mannequins, headless, posed stiffly, arms toward each other. He feels a cloud set in—can he even do this thing? What was he thinking?
Was
he even thinking? He doesn’t even know how to dance—especially not in some stupid Cotillion. Maybe Mabry will be happy just to drink punch and ride up and down the fancy glass elevators in the hotel.

He wonders what he would even wear, just before it hits him that he’s thinking like a girl.

Whatever. Maybe this will be even better. Maybe it’ll be worth it to see the look on Nick’s face. He hopes Nick’ll go to the Cotillion after Mabry dumps him—hopes Nick can still cobble together some sort of date, for Thad’s sake.

He skates down the hall to the mall exit, but before he pushes open the glass doors, he sees a police car passing by slowly in the parking lot. It takes a second for his nerves to catch up, but it’s just mall security. A guy driving around, eating a giant pretzel and chasing it down with a Starbucks shake. And anyway, if Nick hasn’t turned him in by now, maybe he didn’t have that moment of recognition Thad was sure he had. And if the school hasn’t found him by this point, what does he really have to worry about? The Case of the Broken Window. Even Scooby-Doo could have sniffed him out by now. It’s been well over a month—even the evidence is disappearing. His hand’s almost fully healed.

He’s about to leave and start his skate home when he notices a little shop tucked away by the door. He’s passed it a million times, but he’s never given it a second glance. It’s a little craft store. There are art kits and colored pencils and a sign—
All Your Paper Needs!
—in the window
.

Origami. That involves paper, right?

He would never have predicted he’d one day be the kind of person who has “paper needs”—you know, besides toilet paper and paper towels and the occasional Kleenex—but today, he picks his skateboard back up and walks into the shop.

me equivoco
te equivocas
se equivoca
nos equivocamos
se equivocan

I
go to Sirina’s house early the next morning so that she has no choice but to walk to school with me. She’s in a foul mood, still seething about the YoJo, and the fact that the articles that
did
run are now no more than unverified gossip.

“Maybe there’s still something we can do—a totally different topic,” I say. I don’t even buy it myself, but I really want the old determined, hopeful, stubborn Sirina back.

“Like what?” Her tone is flat. “That the school is donating all unclaimed lost-and-found items to charity? That some poor person is supposed to be thrilled to get an unmatched sock? No thank you, Mrs. Neidelman.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Just give it up, Mabry. We’re no longer in the running for the YoJo.”

“I’m sorry, Sirina. Did you talk to Nick?” I ask.

“Well, when I finally got him on the phone, which was no small feat—I just kept calling until he finally gave in and answered it—he told me that he’d been stressed out, and just made a mistake with his original description. He says he realized it when he was with the sketch artist. Like, who makes a mistake like that?”