How to Break a Heart (4 page)

Mrs. Neidelman clasps her hands together, like she can’t quite contain her excitement. “Well, I’m so glad to have run into you girls. I have a last-minute request.”

“Sure,” Sirina says, way too quickly. She wants to become a news editor or a photojournalist for real one day. But working on
The Vindicator
isn’t as much fun for me as it is for her. I mean, the interesting stuff is not what’s going on in the classrooms and on the fields—it’s the stuff that happens behind the bleachers, under the stairwells, in the hidden alcoves. The stuff that Mrs. Neidelman won’t let us write about.

“There’s a band rehearsal in the cafetorium. Would you mind snapping some photos? Maybe write a blurb about the concert next week?”

I sigh. No bleachers. No stairwells. No alcoves. No janitor’s closets.

“Yeah, okay,” Sirina says.

Mrs. Neidelman looks right at me. “Now, I know this isn’t the most exciting thing, but it’s been a slow news week”—as if there’s ever been anything
but
—“and, Mabry?” She looks at me and gently clears her throat. “Well, this will be good for you. You know how I love your, uh,
flair
, but this is good practice for just sticking to the facts, okay, dear? The who, what, where, when. Just some nice, basic reporting.” She gives me a cautious smile.

I tell her okay, but as soon as she’s down the hall, I mumble to Sirina, “Nice,
boring
reporting.”

“Boring,” Sirina says, and laughs. “Okay, Mabry, that’s one thing you will never be.”

“Welcome, ladies!” Mr. Greer, the band sponsor, greets us with a radioactive dose of enthusiasm as we enter the cafetorium. His smile spreads his mustache wide over his upper lip. “Urine for a real cheat!”

Or at least that’s what it sounds like he says, but it’s hard to hear anything over the squawking trombones, the farting tubas, and the kazoo-like screech of a flautist in distress.

Sirina smirks at me. “Some ‘treat,’ huh?”

“Treat?”

“Yeah, what Mr. Greer said. ‘You’re in for a real treat.’”

“Oh, right,” I say.

I follow Sirina closer to the stage, so she can get some shots.

“Hey,” I tell Sirina. “Any closer and our eardrums might actually burst.”

“Fine, I’m sure we can leave if it becomes medically necessary,” she says, and takes a couple shots.

“Wonderful, boys and girls.
Just
wonderful,” Mr. Greer calls out, his hands pressed to his heart. “But let’s try that ‘Hero’s March’ once more.”

And the band plays on. It’s bad enough that my face starts to squeeze and pull in all sorts of directions on its own. When the music finally stops, Sirina looks at me, amused.

“Can we leave?” I ask. “I think it’s already becoming medically necessary.”

But the soloists are about to start, and Sirina shushes me. Mr. Greer calls Kipper Garrett up front. Kipper’s this shy kid in my biology class. He’s kind of short and square-shaped, which seems to bother everyone but him. Some of the guys make fun of him—not just for how he looks, but for the off-brand shoes he wears, or for the thermos he brings in his lunch. But it never rattles him. It’s like when he was little, his dad told him the sticks-and-stones rhyme, and it’s stuck with him ever since.

“Kipper will be playing a lovely rendition of Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry,’” Mr. Greer tells us.

Kipper steps forward in his slightly-too-long black pants. He wipes off the reed of his clarinet, places his lips on it, and closes his eyes.

I brace myself. Sometimes you just want to go up to kids like Kipper, give them a little knock-knock on the head, and say,
Are you trying to make it that easy for those jerknuts? Are you aware that you’re practically serving yourself up to them on a silver platter? Because even though their teasing doesn’t seem to faze
you
, it makes the rest of us feel pretty bad
.

But when he starts playing, I stop feeling sorry for him. He’s good. I mean,
really
good. The music he plays is like eardrum balm. Sirina takes a few closer shots of him, and when he’s done, she claps. I do too.

Mr. Greer announces Kailey Kinnell next on saxophone. She is whomping out something that might be “When the Saints Go Marching In,” but it sounds like the mating call of a whale with sea pox.

Sirina turns toward me. “Maybe we can do a little write-up on Kipper? He’s pretty good. What do you think?”

“Remember, we’re supposed to be keeping it as boring as possible,” I joke. Sort of.

“Well, he’s got talent. Plus, he’s nice. Maybe he deserves a little attention. Remember when Amelia didn’t have money on her lunch card?”

He’d been standing right behind Amelia in the lunch line when she tried to run her card and it came up with a zero balance. And he’d just given the cashier his card and told her to put Amelia’s lunch on it.

“I remember,” I say.

“And in P.E., when he has to choose a team, he always picks the kids no one wants—and he picks them first. Anyway, why not, you know? It’s kind of nice when you can use the power of the press for good.”

Kailey finishes up, and we have to clap for her, too, and Mr. Greer calls up the third soloist. Colby Ahrens steps up front and positions his flute, but the sound that we hear is something that even the worst flautist in the world couldn’t achieve.

EEEEEEE
. The mechanical scream of an alarm, not too far away.

C
RAAAAASSH!

The window shatters with a sound so sharp and ringing that it overwhelms his senses, leaving him feeling like his ears have been stuffed with cotton. Before the last of the glass finishes its
tink
to the ground, Thad tucks his bleeding fist farther up into the sleeve of his sweatshirt and rams his left hip against the emergency exit leading out to the school’s back field. An alarm cries out, and for a second he freezes.
Go,
GO,
he tells himself, and falls forward into a run. He flies right past the new rubber track at a pace that he’s sure would make any P.E. teacher proud.

Anger is like a high-octane fuel. He feels his heart pounding too high in his chest, his breath too full in his lungs, but he can’t stop now.
Nick Wainwright, you smear
. Thad runs even faster.

He reaches the woods, his path now full of rocks and trees. He trips on a root, and finally feels the pain in his right hand. For the first time, he looks back. The school is in the distance; there’s no one chasing him. His scalp feels itchy with relief, and his breath slows some as he trots along the winding path.

A pebble jabs through the sole of his shoe, and he hops around, letting out a few pent-up words—words he can’t get away with at home, words that feel good coming out. But then a thought makes him suck the words back in—practically gasp them into his lungs. He’s left something behind. He’d been so angry, he must have run right past it. It’s still back there, somewhere. Hopefully not too close to the window he just punched out.

His skateboard.

Crap. Crap. Holy, holy crap.

It was an old board, but it had belonged to his father. He can’t go back for it without getting caught. It’s just another thing he has to say good-bye to.

me duele
te duele
le duele
nos duele
les duele

T
he
EEEEEEE
noise continues. Mr. Greer starts shooing everyone toward the exits.

“But it’s not a fire alarm,” Colby says, still standing at center stage with his flute. “That’s just one of those emergency exit alarms. And anyway, there’s no smoke.”

“Colby, you’ll have your chance,” Mr. Greer says. “But an alarm’s an alarm. Let’s move, boys and girls!”

We file out of the cafetorium with the band. When we get outside, Sirina huddles close. “Look.” She shows me a shot of Mr. Greer over-reacting to the alarm. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open. His arms are outstretched.

“That’s funny,” I say.

“Oh, come on, Mabry—then laugh, okay? Laugh!”

“I would, if such a thing were possible.”

The alarm continues. Everyone’s getting restless. A piccolo player starts chasing around a horn blower, and some shrieking begins, and a tall bassoonist bumps into Sirina, nearly knocking the camera out of her hands.

“Watch it!” I yell, momentarily happy to have an outlet for my terrible mood.

Sirina looks at me. “Hey, we have everything we need. And school’s already over. Let’s just go.”

It seems like anywhere I go, I feel restrained, confined, a prisoner to heartbreak. “Fine, let’s go home.”

“No, not
home
. Let’s go for ice cream.”

“I told you ice cream’s not going to help this time.”

“Mabry, listen to me. You need to get over him. If you can’t do it for
you
, do it for me. Your best friend. Who knows what’s best for you.”

“Well, I
love
him, Sirina. It’s
real
. What am I supposed to do?” I ask her.

“How long have we been friends, Mabry?”

“Forever,” I say. Well, close enough—it was really the third day of kindergarten. On that day, she fell down while standing in the playground line. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her body started shaking and twitching. Some people screamed, some people laughed, but I knelt down right next to her and held her hand. It wasn’t because I was so great or anything. It was because I was struck with guilt: she had been right behind me in the lunch line earlier. There were two Jell-Os left—one red, one green—and I was definitely eyeing the red.
Cherry!
Yum!
But then I saw it—a fly landing right on the red Jell-O’s whipped-cream center! I had looked around and realized I was the only witness. So despite wanting the red, I chose the green, secretly leaving her with only the contaminated option.

And there, on the asphalt, in front of my own eyes, she was dying, and I was sure it was my fault.
Sorry, sorry, sorry,
I whispered to her, under all the commotion. Soon after, she was diagnosed with epilepsy, which she now takes medicine for. It took me three years to confess to her the true story behind my playground compassion—but by that time, we’d already decided we were fated to be friends forever.

“Yes,” she says now, with all the authority of Someone Definitely In Charge. “We’ve been friends a long time, a very long time. So now you’re going to trust me when I tell you what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to close your mouth and stop talking about
Nick Wainwright
”—she says his name like it’s a dirty word—“and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Until we get to the mall. Dairy Queen awaits.”

“But I—”

“Uh-uh!” She wags her finger. “No talking. Just walking.”

I try to remind her that it’s useless, but she puts her fingers on my lips and clamps them together.

“Now, the next time that mouth opens,” she says to me, “it needs to be for the sole purpose of shoveling in a Blizzard.”