How to Break a Heart (29 page)

“I don’t think it’s so weird, Sirina. When something traumatic happens, sometimes the mind can’t really process anything until later.”

“Yeah, Mabry,” she says. “Where are you getting this astute research? Let me guess.
La Vida Rica
.”

I redden. I guess there’s no reason to bring up Paolo and the road-bandit revelation, then. Sirina’s not going to care that it took four episodes for him to realize that his attacker was his own half brother. We walk the rest of the way to school in near silence.

When we get to school and open our locker, a folded piece of notebook paper falls out.

Mabry and Sirina,
the note says.
I’m sorry. Please believe me. Your friend, Nick.

Sirina crumples it up.

“Maybe he
was
stressed out, Sirina,” I try. “People make tons of mistakes under stress.”

“Maybe he’s just an idiot.”

“Maybe it’s my fault a little,” I say.

“How would it be your fault?”

“Maybe I just wanted a story. Maybe I pushed him a bit.”

She looks at me tentatively. “Yeah, you know what? It
is
a little ridiculous that you tried to make him some sort of crime fighter. He was basically a bystander, Mabry. That’s all he ever was. A glorified one, thanks to you. And not even a reliable one, as it turns out. And you need to stop making him some sort of hero, okay? It’s
sickening
!”

Ouch.

Jordan walks up and sees us staring at each other. “What’s up with you guys?” Jordan asks, looking from me to Sirina.

Sirina turns back to the locker. “Nothing,” she says.

“Well, are you guys okay?”

“I don’t really know. Are we?” I ask Sirina.

She sighs. “We’ll be okay,” she says. “I’m just—I just needed to vent.”

“Okay,” Jordan says as she starts to walk away. “See you at lunch.
Oh!
Amelia says she has news.”

I look at Sirina and she looks at me, and then her face softens a bit, and she says quietly to me,
“Oh my darling Clementine.”
And we start to laugh. A little because it’s funny, and a lot just because we’re relieved we still can.

At lunch, everyone’s talking about the Cotillion. It’s less than two weeks from now, but it feels far away, more in distance than time.

“So,” Amelia says, “Ray Shaw asked me over the weekend. We were working on our PowerPoint presentation for French with our study group, and he put this great slide in. It was like,
Will you go to the Cotillion with me?
Except for, in French. And I was like,
oui, oui!
”

“That is
so
romantic,” Jordan says, but she seems a little distracted.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Amelia tells her. “You’ll get asked. I’m sure you will.” She turns to us. “What about you guys?”

I don’t really want to tell them about Thad asking me to the dance. Or, rather,
me
asking
him
. Sirina’s the only one who knows. I texted her about it last night after I met up with him, but it feels sort of like a baby-bird secret. That if I let anyone else touch it, it could easily die.

Sirina looks at me. I must look uncomfortable, so she saves me. “Mabry and I might go together,” she says, joking, only Amelia and Jordan don’t know it. “You know, girls night out.”

“
O.M.D.C.!
That would be so much fun,” Amelia says, though we both know she doesn’t mean it.

And then Ray stops by our table, so we all stop talking and listen to the two of them butcher French.

Sirina turns to me. Quietly, she says, “I’m glad you’re not going with Nick.”

“What?”

“With Nick. To the dance.”

I glance up and see Nick looking at me from his table five rows down. It’s like he’s pleading for forgiveness with only a stare.

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

And though my heart may no longer be broken, it definitely is torn.

A
unt Nora’s got one of Thad’s textbooks on her lap—she’s using it as makeshift desk, and she’s folded her origami into some unrecognizable shape.

Thad’s mom laughs. “What
is
that?” she asks Aunt Nora, as she folds her own paper into what looks like a mangled cootie catcher.

“Let me try again,” Aunt Nora says. “I was going for a swan.”

“Well, I guess it sort of looks like a swan,” Thad’s mom says. “Or maybe a duck.”

Aunt Nora smiles, and sighs. “This is a lot harder than I remember.”

“It is. My eagle looks like a vulture.” Thad’s mom puts her origami paper down on the bed tray and looks across the room to where Thad sits, hunched over his own project. “Have you already given up on origami, Thad?”

“No, I haven’t ‘already given up.’ I got it for you.”

“Well, what are you working on over there? That looks easier.”

He is coloring coffee filters with a red Sharpie. He looks up. “Want to help?”

“Yes!” she says.

“You’re coloring?” Aunt Nora asks. She looks down at her botched swan. “I think I’d rather color, too.”

“Great,” he says. He hands them both some coffee filters. He gives his mom a pink Sharpie and Aunt Nora an orange one.

“What do we do?” Aunt Nora asks.

“Just color the whole thing for now,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

He goes into the kitchen and opens the cupboard where Aunt Nora keeps her Tupperware, and starts rummaging through it.

“What are you looking for in there, hon?” Aunt Nora calls to him.

“A plastic lid?” he calls back.

“I should have a couple old containers under the sink,” she tells him.

Thad hears a siren in the distance. It fills him with a new kind of dread; there’s more to lose now than there was yesterday. The siren gets louder, closer, and he eyes the back door.
If I were stupid…
he thinks. But then the sound passes, getting softer in the distance, and he realizes everything’s okay. He’s home. He’s safe. He’s looking for a plastic lid. So everything’s
got to be
okay.

He opens the cabinet under the sink and grabs an old yogurt container. Back in his room, there are cotton balls and glue. He goes upstairs, grabs them, and runs back down the stairs to his mom’s room.

“Sounded like an elephant stampede,” his mom says.

“Sorry.” He laughs.

“What is it that we’re making anyway?” she asks now.

“Just a flower,” he says. “I saw it online.”

They both smile and make little
ahh
noises. They don’t even need to know that it’s a king protea. Or that, okay, maybe with a little more practice it will be. They’re already impressed.

yo rasgo
tú rasgas
ella rasga
nosotros rasgamos
ellos rasgan

I
t’s after seventh period, and Sirina and I are at our locker getting our things together to go home. I’ve sort of been avoiding Nick all day, hoping that the tear in my heart won’t get any bigger. I don’t want to see Sirina upset. I feel like I’m on a tightrope, about to fall in one direction or the other.

I’m so absorbed in my thoughts that I barely notice Sirina staring at me, biting her lips shut.

“What’s up?” I ask, closing the locker.

She shakes her head.

“Come on,
what?
”

“Okay,” she finally says, smiling a little as we start walking. “There’s something I’ve been dying to tell you.”

“Well,
tell
me!”

She gets sort of red. “Well, so, I think—”

But then we hear, from behind us, “Mabry?”

It’s Nick.

We turn around.
“Hey,”
he says, his tone low and humble.

“Hey,” I say.

“Seriously?” Sirina says to me, loud enough for Nick to hear. “You’re still
talking
to him?”

I cringe a little and look over at Nick. He looks as uncomfortable as I feel. He asks, “Did you guys get my note?”

Sirina groans.

“Yeah, we did,” I tell him.

“Apologies are great and all, but they don’t do us any good, you know,” Sirina tells him. “The YoJo’s shot, thanks to you. We’ve got nothing to submit now.”

He shrinks a little. “I really am sorry—I didn’t realize any of that. The whole journalism award and everything. I didn’t know what a big deal all of this was.”

“Well,” Sirina says, “now you
do
. So what do you want?”

“I want—Well, Mabry, can I—? I mean, will you just come with me? I have something to show you.”

He looks so hopeful, so sincere, so desperate to talk to me. It hurts to even think about not giving him this chance. “Can I—?” I start to ask her.

Her face drops. “Hey, I’m not your keeper,” she says to me, and walks off.

I shout out her name, but she keeps walking away. “I’ll call you as soon as I get home!” She still doesn’t answer.

I turn back to Nick, and he motions for me to come down the hall, so I do. I can almost smell the cinnamony red-hot love coming off of him, and it hits me with a sense of both thrill and dread. I
so
want him to ask me to the Cotillion, but I
so
don’t want to break his poor, beautiful heart.

I picture my words going into his fragile, tiny ears.

Stop!

When I get to him, he takes my hand, leading me farther down the hall, around the corner, and down the stairs into the basement of the building. Where everything looks gray and smells musty.

And then we get to a classroom. One I’ve never been in, but have heard about. The mechanical arts room—“the shop.” He opens the door of the room and I see all sorts of little machines and tools. “I made you something,” he says.

He motions to a table where tools are splayed out. I follow him there. He picks up a necklace. Dangling off the chain is a pendant of the letter
M
.

“I made it with a soldering iron,” he says.

“Wow! It’s so—crafty!” I hear myself say.

“Crafty?”

Okay, so maybe it’s not given to me in an elegant case over dinner, while a violinist hovers and plays above us, but it’s still…pretty much everything I had hoped for. Wait.
Have
hoped for. “I mean,
gorgeous
.”

“Try it on,” he tells me. He walks behind me and puts it around my neck. I hold my hair up and out of the way. His breath feels warm on the back of my head as he latches it. When it’s clasped, I turn to face him. All sorts of checks are going into all sorts of boxes, and for a second I wonder how I ever got distracted by his ears or teeth or anything. For no physical flaw should ever get in the way of quote-unquote love.

Wait. Quote-unquote?
What’s happening to me?

“It looks nice on you,” he says, his eyes wide.

Never mind
. This is it. This is the moment. He is staring into my eyes—those emerald-green ones. He sweeps a piece of my hair back. My heart has migrated into my throat, and I find it hard to breathe or swallow. This is it. He’s going to ask me to the Cotillion, and I’m going to say—

“Exactly
WHAT
is going on here!?”

The booming voice belongs to Mr. Thomas, the mechanical arts teacher. He flips a switch and the fluorescent lights above us buzz and flicker on. And Nick and I move away from each other as if some sort of unseen force is tearing us violently apart, and our words crash and collide as we both mumble things like
Nothing! We were just. Nothing! Got a necklace. Didn’t mean. I mean. Nothing!