How to Break a Heart (35 page)

He’s short of breath, too. It’s like he can’t take in a full lungful of air, whenever he sees it in his head—Mabry kissing Nick. This is bad. He must be coming down with something awful. Miserable.

He has to walk home. The skating is making him feel worse—dizzier, more panicky. He can’t remember when he felt this awful—he hates to pull a Mabry, but it feels quite possible that he could be dying. Is this how his dad felt right before he died? He hopes not. He really hopes not, but love and pain seem to come together like a package deal. A combo meal in the drive-through of life.

He gets to the front door and dry heaves right there on the porch. Aunt Nora opens the door and takes in a breath when she sees him. “Thaddeus? Are you okay?”

He moans. He doesn’t even have the energy for a proper reply, and anyway, he’s sure from the looks of him, it’s not needed.

“Oh, honey.” Her voice is warm. Concerned. Good old Aunt Nora.

He stumbles inside. She places her hand on his forehead. “No temperature, so that’s good. Probably a bad cold,” she says. “Why don’t you go on up to your room and I’ll bring you some soup.”

He’s never had a cold like this.

He manages to ask how his mom is.

“She’s doing better than you, I think.” Aunt Nora gives him a smile, but it’s a weak and worried one. “You look pretty bad. You need some rest.”

Even though he doesn’t feel like he
can
rest, he goes up to his room and lies down on the bed without even taking off his shoes. He curls over on his side and listens to his own breath. His throat is tight, he realizes. That’s why it hurts.

Aunt Nora brings him some herbal tea. “It might help. It’s that lemon ginger.”

He’ll try anything. He takes a sip. “Thank you,” he says. He’s not sure the tea will make him feel better, but there’s something about her trying that does.

“Are you hungry?”

“No.” And that’s the weird truth. He couldn’t eat a single nacho, not even if it was put in front of him, not even if it was covered in extra cheese.

“When did you start feeling sick?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says. And it hits him. It’s only been about thirty-five minutes. Since Mabry Collins yelled at him and then kissed Nick Wainwright right on the lips.

Oh. No.
Oh no no no no
.

Could this be—?

He doesn’t even want to let the word pop into his head. But it doesn’t seem to need his permission.

Lovesickness?

He heaves again. Aunt Nora scurries out and comes back with a bucket, just in time. He throws up the ginger tea, which still tastes gingery and pleasant, even as it comes out.

But this can’t be
that
. There’s no way. Just because he has feelings, it doesn’t mean
that
. Because that kind of love doesn’t actually exist. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. It does
not
.

In Mabry’s silly little world, love is hearts and flowers and candlelight and that kind of crap. But what does she know? If love is hearts, it is hearts that will never beat again. And sure, maybe love means flowers—mums dying in the windowsill of a hospital room. And maybe it means candlelight—of birthdays never had.

Death. Now
that
is the ultimate breakup.

Mabry knows nothing about love.
Not. A. Thing.

If he’s sick of anything, it’s Mabry. Mabrysickness. Now
that’s
real.

Later, when his phone buzzes, he picks it up. He can’t sleep anyway. It’s a text. From her. Of course. It would be.

Sorry about tonite. I pooped. We can talk about it tomorrow.

She pooped?
And
she wants to talk about it tomorrow? Then her other texts come in. She’s trying desperately to cover for her mortifying typo. He feels the ghost of a laugh inside of him. Oh,
duuuuude
. He would have so much fun with this if he wasn’t done with her.

But he’s
so
done with her.

THE VINDICATOR

The Official News Blog of Hubert C. Frost Middle School

Girl’s Entire Life Ruined, Over

While other girls are busy buying dresses and shoes for the famed Cotillion, eighth grader Mabry Collins is slowly dying in her small upstairs bedroom. A recent turn of events, including losing her best friend, has turned her heart into a shriveled black pump—one that isn’t expected to last much longer.

There have been no crowds of well-wishers or get-well-soon cards flowing in through the mail, but Collins says she doesn’t hold that against anyone. “I’ve a had a full life
[click for more]

IN OTHER NEWS…

There Really Is No Other News When You’re Dying

yo pienso
tú piensas
ella piensa
nosotros pensamos
ellos piensan

I
t’s Sunday night. At dinner, Stephen blathers on about something and my mom responds to all his blather. Then things get quiet suddenly and she says, “Mabry, aren’t you listening?”

It’s not even worth lying about. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?” Stephen says, getting his joke face on. “What’s
that
? There’s got to be an app for that.”

My mom just gives him a tight little smile. To me, she says, “I was thinking we could go dress shopping tomorrow. For the Cotillion.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”
My mom’s eyebrows pull together in confusion.

“I’m not going,” I say.

Even though I’m staring into my Brussels sprouts, I feel all their curious looks darting across the table. My mom puts her hand to my forehead. “You okay?”

But I’m
not
okay. I’m
not
, I’m
not
, even though The Former Man of My Dreams asked me to go the Cotillion with him. Even though I got what I thought I wanted.

“She looks tired,” Stephen says, like I’m not at the table.

“She looks ugly,” A-Bag adds.

My mom doesn’t even start berating him. I glance up. She looks too concerned about me. So I just say, “Your imaginary girlfriend is ugly,” to him, and he tells me how lame I am, and then my mom tells us both to be quiet and stop picking on each other, and everything goes back to normal, at least on the surface.

I check my phone. No Thad. No Sirina.

A little part of me is hoping that maybe Thad’s just having a Funyun moment. I mean, it’s possible, right?

Okay, probably not.

Well, Thad can go skate off the edge of the world, for all I care. He can laugh at all my poop typos and THEN go skate off the edge of a cliff. He can laugh at all my typos, IGNORE THEM, and then go skate off of Mount Kilimanjaro. For all I care.

And Sirina. I’m as lonely and miserable as I was when she went away to her epilepsy camp last summer and left me to fend for myself for four full weeks. No, wait. This is worse. There are no miles to blame for our separation. The thought makes me even more lonely and miserable.

Doesn’t she miss me at all? I hold the phone in my hand and stare at it. I will it to ring. Nothing happens, so I intensify my stare and start sending telepathic messages to Sirina.
Call me. Call me. Call me.
And then, for good measure, I throw in a
Call me, please, my tufted-head paper cutter.

The only thing that happens is that I get confirmation that my telepathy skills suck.

No, under the surface, nothing is right in this world.

Later that night, when I’m curled into a ball on my floor, A-Bag passes by my room. He sees me and pauses at my doorway. “Sick again? What is it this time? Cholera? Consumption?”

“Shut up!” I say without thinking. Now I have to soften my words because I’m thirsty. “Sorry. Can you get me a glass of water?”

“What do I look like,
Mom?
” he says.

He’s just being his usual mean self, but right now I feel so awful that I just start crying. He walks in and flops to the floor next to me. “What’s
wrong
with you?” he asks, stretching his legs out and using my curled-up body as a footrest.

“I’m sure
you
could write up a pretty good list,” I mumble.

He gives me an evil laugh. Then he says, “Yeah, but I’d have to be pretty bored to do it. So just tell me.”

“Why do you care all of a sudden?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, it’s just crazy that you’re not going to that dance.
You
of all people. Even
I
went to that stupid Cotillion.”

Which is true. And normally it would really get to me, but now, I just don’t care about it. It just all seems so ridiculous.

“Is Sirina going?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re
not
?”

“No.”

He lets out a big sigh. “Oh, man,” he groans. “This is serious, then.”

“Uh.” I give him a look like he’s crazy. “This is not your problem.”

He raises his eyebrows and looks at me. “Well, it kind of is. I’m your big brother.”

“And?”

“I
mean
”—he puts the soles of his feet on my back and rocks me back and forth—“if you want to go, I’ll take you.”

“What?” I laugh. I actually laugh.

“Oh, is that funny?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

He thumps my back with the balls of his feet, so that my laughter breaks into staccato.

“But you’re off the hook. I’m not going. I don’t even
want
to go anymore,” I say, still being bounced around.

Finally, he stands up. “Fine, my work here is done. Glad I could cheer you up. And even gladder you don’t need me to go to that
Cartellion
with you.”

I crack a smile for him. “Thanks, though,” I call to him as he leaves my room. A few minutes later, he comes back with a full glass of water.

I can hardly believe it. Maybe Earth got a little heavier. Maybe the cosmos is shifting in some way. Maybe some of the stars are being written out of the universal script.

He puts it down on the table next to my bed. And then he pinches my cheek. Hard. “Aw, my little loser sister. She’s so
cute
! Such a little cockroach!”