How to Break a Heart (36 page)

Which would normally annoy the crap out of me. But today, it’s just nice to know that in this new, different world,
not everything
has changed.

yo sé
tú sabes
ella sabe
nosotros sabemos
ellos saben

I
t’s the night of the Cotillion. And my feet are moving. But not in the way I ever expected, no. Not at all.

Outrageous.
This is
outrageous
.

My feet are doing things without the permission of my brain. They are playing this game where they trade off stepping in front of the other, almost like it’s some sort of race. I keep telling them to stop, but that only seems to make them go faster.

I try bargaining with them—
just let me figure out what to say!
—but they don’t listen. I don’t really know what’s in it for them. For the first time in my life, I hope they trip on something. An unexpected rise in the sidewalk, a rogue tree root, my own heel,
something
! I ask them very nicely to slow down; they rudely do not. I remind them that they’re in flip-flops, not running shoes, but it’s almost like they’re asking for blisters.

They don’t care. They just don’t care. I argue with them the whole way there. They finally come to a sudden stop in front of Thad’s town house.

“Now what?” I ask them. They offer nothing. In fact, it’s like they’re suddenly struck dumb. It’s like they’ve been set in cement.

“Seriously?” I look down at them, the stubborn things. The skin at the base of my left big toe has been worn through, sacrificed, I realize with annoyance.

“Move!” I tell them. They do not. “Come on!” I cry out. They just sit there like stubborn mules. I wonder if I can—

“Collins?”

It’s Thad’s voice that makes me freeze in place. I’m bent over with my hands on my right shin, trying to get the thing to budge.

“Uh, hi.”

“Are you lost or something?” He has stepped out onto his front stoop, and doesn’t sound all that happy to see me.

“No,”
I say, still crouched.

“I know that,
duh
,” he says, shaking his head. “What are you doing down there?”

I stand up slowly. Very slowly. And self-consciously face him. “Nothing,” I say.

He starts to crack a smile, but it’s like his face wrestles it away. “It looked like your foot was caught in an invisible raccoon trap.”

“Well, it
wasn’t
,” I say.

A laugh crackles up through his throat. And even though it hits me how incredibly stupid my response was, I don’t laugh. Well, I try not to, but my chest and throat quiver a little, and my nostrils start to spasm. I try to breathe the laugh away, but it doesn’t work. It erupts from me. But it’s one of those laughs that feels inappropriate—a laugh that comes at the wrong time, embarrassing you and everyone around you, like when someone falls down but actually gets hurt. We both turn bright red.

“So, uh.” His laugh quiets, pretty abruptly. He steps off the stoop and onto the sidewalk where I am. “So why exactly are you here?”

“I thought you were coming back to school. You said you were.”

“I’ve been sick,” he says.

It doesn’t feel like he’s telling the truth exactly, but it doesn’t feel like a lie.

“Like, how sick?”

“I don’t know, just sick.”

“Like, on-medicine sick?”

“I don’t think there’s, like, an approved drug—” There’s a hint of a smirk, but it disappears quickly. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“Sorry I yelled at you that night,” I say. “If I was a jerk or anything. I don’t want to be a jerk anymore.”

“So just don’t,” he says. So Thad-like.

There’s a word for how I feel right now. I don’t know why the poor sheep got saddled with this kind of word, but it did.
Sheepish
. “You don’t give lessons on how to get your best friends back, do you?”

“Best friends?”

“You and Sirina,” I say. “Like, how to unbreak hearts?” I make myself laugh at my own joke, even though it’s not really a joke at all.

He stares at me. “You should be able to figure that out on your own by now.”

And maybe I should. “Okay, I’m sorry I asked. I’ll figure it out.”

He’s still looking at me as if he’s waiting for me to start trying. Right now. So I exhale and say, “Okay, I guess I’m here because I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“Have you,”
he says. “Well, good for you.”

But I continue. “You know how you wanted me to find those flaws in Nick?”

“Barely,” he says. He crosses his arms over his chest.

I remind myself that Thad’s been hurt. Really hurt, not just by me. Heartbroken by life, in a way that I haven’t. “Well, I finally came up with one—the only one that matters.”

He glances away. “Yeah, well, Mabry, he’s almost perfect, then. But I don’t really care about that anymore.”

“It’s that—”

He shuts his eyes. “Doesn’t matter.”

“The one major flaw—”

His jaw clenches. “Don’t care.”

“—is that he’s not
you
.”

He quickly turns to face me. “
Well.
Lucky him.”

This isn’t at all what I envisioned. Where’s his thankful embrace? Where’s his long-yearning kiss? I shift my weight from foot to foot. Inside the house, a woman passes by a window in a wheelchair.

I clear my throat. “Is that your mom?”

His turns toward his house and sees her. “Yep.”

“How is she?”

He takes a breath. “She’s, you know, a little better.”

Our eyes meet, and when they do, it’s like there’s some magical force keeping them connected. I can practically feel my pupils grow. Though we’re not touching, the nerves in my body start to magnetize, as if they’re all pulling forward, reaching for him.

A car drives by and Thad’s eyes snap away from mine, breaking the spell. His mother crosses back across the kitchen in her chair. “I guess you better go,” I say, and wait for him to argue. Or hope for him to argue. Whatever. I
esperar
. In Spanish, that one word means both of those things, which makes perfect sense right now. Waiting and hoping. Hoping and waiting. It is its own state of existence.

But he just says, “Aren’t you supposed to be at the dance tonight?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I told Nick no. I didn’t want to go with him.”

He squints at me. “You
kissed
him. I saw you.”

He saw me? Is that why he’s acting so weird? I shake my head. “Yeah, well, I did it for you.”

“Oh, wow,” he says, flatly. “Well, thanks. You’re so
thoughtful
.”

“He’s not such a smear, Thad. He changed his description of the guy who broke the window when he realized
you
were the one who did it.”

He takes a deep breath and looks away. “Okay, well, dude, please don’t do me any more of those kinds of favors, because that made me retch.”

“Fine,” I say. “Deal.” Then I dare myself to ask my next question. “Thad, did you—?” I look up at him. He is staring at me curiously. “Did you mean what you said?”

“You mean about the invisible raccoon trap?
Collins
.” He rolls his eyes and acts exasperated. “You should
know
that there are no such things as invisible raccoon traps.” Then he laughs a little. It’s not his normal feral cry, but it’ll do. For now.

Ha-ha. Hardy har har
. I glare at him. “You know what I’m talking about. What you said that night. Your
feelings
.”

Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say yes.

But he lets his head drop sideways, and his smile goes all crooked, winding up almost apologetically on his right cheek.

“Never mind,” I exhale. I feel jellylike, exhausted. “Okay, I guess I’ll go.”

I turn to walk away.

He grabs my hand.

I whirl around.

“I also meant what I said about your earlobes.”

“My earlobes!
Great
.”

“More like, it’s easier not to crush on someone when you can focus on something stupid like that.”

My arms wrap around him just as quickly as his wrap around me. He pulls me tighter to him, and my cheek presses into his neck. A Cottonelle commercial blares from someone’s television through an open window. A car alarm goes off in the distance. And even though he
does
smell a little like jalapeños, I am certain that nothing in the history of the world has ever felt this good. I need all my senses to describe what I feel—orange and crackling and melodic and hot and safe and sweet. Like a new emotion has just been invented for us.

I feel that glorious beating. This time, I’m not sure whether it’s in my chest or his. Mine. No his. Wait, mine. His.
Jeez.
I’m glad I have only one heart, not five. Love just must be so confusing for the worm! I snort into his neck, practically giving him a hickey with my nose. So gross.

“Are you
laughing
?” He pulls away just enough to see my face.

“Sorry. I was just thinking.” I wipe his neck.

“Should I ask?”

“Maybe not.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I was just thinking about worms,” I say.

“Dude,
seriously
?”

“Did you know they have five hearts?”

He laughs.
His
laugh.

I smile. I’ve missed that safari sound.

Then he says, “What other crazy things go on in that head?”

“Well, lots of things,” I say.

“No doubt.”

“But not everything’s so crazy.”

“No?” He moves my hair back from my shoulders.

“No,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About writing about things that really matter.”

“Like what?” he asks.

“Like can I meet your mom?”

A
unt Nora helps Thad’s mom put on a new red sweat suit while he and Mabry share a Little Naked Debbie and thumb-wrestle in the kitchen.

“You can come in now,” Aunt Nora says.

His mom’s sitting up in her chair, her feet bare. She smiles at them when they walk in the room.

“Mom, this is Mabry. But you can call her Collins if you want.”

Mabry gives him a quick
ha, ha, ha
look and turns to his mom and smiles. He’s warned her not to try the handshake thing, that sometimes she’s too tired for even a handshake at this time in the evening, so he’s glad to see Mabry clasp her hands in front of her. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Mabry says.

He knows his mom can’t actually say the same. She hasn’t exactly known Mabry existed until about forty-two minutes ago. He bites his bottom lip and feels the tremor in his ankle. He
is
a little nervous.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” his mom says. She smiles. And she
does
lift her elbow from the armrest. She
does
slowly reach her hand toward Mabry. Mabry smiles, takes her hand, and gives it a gentle pump.

Aunt Nora beams at Thad from across the room.

“Mom?” he says. “We’ll be out in the kitchen—”

“Thad, just wait. I want to show you something.”

Mabry looks hesitant. “Should I—?” She points toward the kitchen.

Thad feels a little shy about it, but his mom answers. “You can stay here.” Then she sits up a little straighter in her chair. “Okay, let me give this a try. Watch my right leg.”

He does, they all do, but nothing happens. He takes a quick glance at his mom’s face—the effort shows in her tightening forehead and her stiff smile. He fights the urge to help her, and instead, smiles patiently even when his eyebrows want to pull together with concern. She stares down at her foot, concentrating. And then, slowly, her right leg lifts off the leg rest, just an inch or so. It hovers—just a second feels like a tiny eternity to him—and then she releases it with a gust of a laugh.

Mabry is beaming, even though she doesn’t really understand how amazing it is.

Thad wants to jump up and down, but feels that shyness again. “That’s awesome,” he says, just about four decibels below where he really wants to.

“Hang on,” his mom says. And then, still as slowly, her left leg lifts a fraction of an inch. Two-tenths. Okay, maybe a tenth.

He feels the tear prickle. Oh no. Not here. Not now. No way. The only way to combat the tears is to do something else with these crazy, overwhelming feelings. So he does. “Well, is that it?” He smiles. “I mean, we actually have an audience today.”