How to Break a Heart (6 page)

And then he speaks—
“Mabry Collins?”
—and I suddenly know why all the air feels like it’s being vacuumed out of my lungs.

It’s Thad Bell
.

Thad Bell.
My very first love.

Thad Bell.
My very first heartbreak.
It involved monkey bars, a fall, and a permanent scar on my soul. And it was the day before Valentine’s Day.

Sirina squints as if trying to recognize him. He is a different version of the Thad Bell I used to know. It’s as if someone took his fourth-grade picture and stretched it out, scuffed it up, and dulled the brightness out of his gold-brown eyes.

“And Sirina, right? It’s me, Thad Bell. You guys remember me?”

My mind goes back to fourth grade. We’d just finished a section on Europe. I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars, trying to keep my shirt tucked into my pants. He walked up to me. I was happy to see him—I smiled, and I wondered if it looked like a frown since I was upside down. You know that saying—“a smile is a frown turned upside down”? Well, then, I thought, the opposite must also be true.

But I was smiling, whether or not he could tell.

“Hey, Mabry,” he said, lifting his chin a little. “What’s Italy the shape of?”

We’d just learned this. “A boot!” I said, proud and smart, and thinking I was practically a genius.

“That’s right. And that’s what I’m giving you.”

I swung a little from the bar, confused. “You’re giving me some boots?” I pictured some cute white cowboy boots, like the kind baton twirlers wear.

“No, I’m giving you THE boot. We’re over.”

And then he walked away, leaving foot dents in the mulch.

And I fell, thudding gracelessly into the sand, like I had been dumped NOT ONLY by Thad Bell, but by the universe as a whole.

Here, now, I say, “How could I forget?” And not in a friendly tone.

“
Wow
, so,” Sirina says, “this is crazy. What’s it been—like four years?” She looks at me, like I’m who she’s asking.

“I haven’t been counting,” I say in this very cool and tight-lipped way.

“Yeah, about that long,” Thad says.

“Didn’t you move away?” Sirina asks.

“Yeah, but we moved back a few months ago.”

Sirina eyes his skateboard, which is tilted up under his foot. “Cool board,” she says.

“Thanks, I just bought it like five minutes ago. I lost my old board. Sucks because it was my dad’s.”

“You lost your dad’s skateboard and you broke your hand? Good going,” I say.

He looks surprised, and then looks down at his right hand, which is wrapped in gauze. “Oh, that,” he says, and laughs a little. “That’s from earlier. Yeah. Just a few scrapes. I’m new at this. But I got some gloves now, so I can fall all I want.”

Sirina laughs. I don’t.

“So what are you up to besides learning how to skate?” Sirina asks him, a vast question I’m secretly curious to hear him answer.

“Today, just buying this board, but usually I’m here for the nachos,” he says.

She laughs. “Seriously?”

“Yep. Burritos, sometimes. Most times.”

“Don’t get out much?” I say, meaning every bit of the bitter tone that comes across.

It doesn’t seem to affect him. “Yeah, not so much.”

“What about school?” Sirina asks.

“I’m just doing online school.”

“Online school? Is that the same thing as being
homeschooled
?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I snort. “What are you, Amish?” Despite my mockery, a fleeting image of Thad in an Amish Sunday suit flashes into mind. For a second, I’m intrigued. I wonder what it would be like to go out with an Amish guy. Would he pick me up in a carriage? Would we cause a scandal? Would my first kiss be stolen behind a barn? Would it cause a fight among his family, and if so, would he choose me over his Amish life?

“No, genius,” Thad says to me. “
Online
. It involves a computer and, yes, electricity.”

“I
know
,” I say.
“Obviously.”

Thad blinks his eyes in this self-righteous way and looks at Sirina. “Am I—? Did I—? Have I—? Done something to her?”

“Oh, what, besides giving me a curse?” I say loudly.

He takes his foot off of his skateboard. “I, uh—I don’t understand girl language.”

“She’s just—
gah
,” Sirina says. I hear the frustration in her voice.

“Nineteen times, Thad Bell! And you were just the first!”

“I need, uh, maybe an interpreter?” He puts a question mark on it.

“You probably don’t remember,” Sirina says in this apologetic tone. “You dumped her back in fourth grade.”

“Oh.” Thad grimaces. “Sorry. I guess I’d kind of forgotten about that.”

“Don’t worry, it’s just, she’s—uh—had a really bad couple days. And she’s taking it out on you instead of the person she
should
be mad at.”

“He crushed my soul!” I cry out.

“Me?
I
crushed your soul?” Thad says. “I was
nine
!”

Sirina puts her arm around me, but says to Thad, “Not you. It’s this guy Nick. He just—
you know
.”

“Wait—Nick Wainwright?” Thad asks.

“You remember him?” Sirina asks.

“
Oh
, yeah,” he laughs in a not-happy way.

“HE IS MY DESTINY AND I LOVE HIM!”

“Mabry, come on,” she chides me. To Thad, she says, “She’s obsessed with this TV show,
La Vida Rica
—it’s this Latin soap opera. That’s why she sometimes sounds so crazy.”

“It’s not a soap opera. It’s a telenovela. And anyway, Nick was the love of my life!”

“He dumped her for karate.”

“Uh, lame,” Thad says. “Really lame.”

“
He
didn’t dump me,” I say. “Not really.”

“Huh?”

Sirina makes a cringey face. “His mom did.”

“Dude,
what
? You got dumped by somebody’s mom? And you’re practically crying about it? That’s, like, classic!” Thad laughs.

“HE LOVES ME.”

“Uhhh…Hmm,” Thad says. He looks at Sirina with wide
has she gone crazy?
eyes.

“HE WAS GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE COTILLION.”

“What’s a cotillion?”

“The eighth-grade-graduation dance at our school. The Junior Cotillion. It’s like she thinks she’s going to marry the guy who takes her.” Sirina sighs. “I just don’t know what to do with her.”

“Jeez.
Dude
. Tell her to stop falling for tool bags,” Thad says.

“Can you
please
tell her how exactly to do that?”

He shrugs. “It’s easy. You just…don’t.”

“Is it such a crime to love?”
I ask. Very bravely.

Thad says to Sirina, “Does she really believe in all that?”

“Then lock me up!”
I say. But they continue to ignore me and my torment.

Sirina sighs. “Completely,” she says to Thad. “No matter what I say, all she cares about is getting him back.”

For a second, Thad says nothing. He just stands there with this bug-eyed look on his face. Then he asks, “Getting him
back
?”

“Yep, that’s pretty much it,” she says. “Sick, right?”

But he’s smiling. He looks at me. “Do you
really
want to get him back?”

“Haven’t you heard
anything
I’ve been saying?”

“You want him to start calling you again?” Thad asks.

“Yes!”

“What?
No
,” Sirina interjects.

“And texting?”

“Of course!”

Sirina glares at him.

“And…I don’t know, what? Bringing you flowers and stuff?”

“With all my heart!”

“Seriously?” Sirina asks Thad. “What are you doing?”

“It’s okay.” He nods. “I think I can help.” He leans against the rail overlooking the food court. “I know how a guy thinks. I know what a guy wants. I can help you get him back. He’ll
fall in love
with you.”

I ignore the ridiculous tone in his voice when he says The Words because I’m too fascinated with the idea of having Nick back. In Love. With Me.

“Wait,” Sirina says. “That’s a horrible idea. That’s the last thing she needs. I mean, I know she sounds a little like a nut right now, but she’s not, really. Well, not in a
bad
way. The guy doesn’t deserve her!”

“Yep, I get it,” Thad says. “That’s why there’s one condition.”

“What’s that?” Sirina asks.

“That she breaks his heart.”

“Break his
heart
? I don’t want to break his heart!” I complain.

“Wait,” Sirina says. “Why do you want to help her break his heart?”

“Okay, obviously, I’m not a fan of the guy. I mean, I just—” He shakes his head. Then he looks up at Sirina. “I just think the guy’s a complete
wipe
.”

“He
is
!” Sirina says, sounding satisfied, finally, while my heart screams in agony.

“HE IS NOT!”

“And also, so say I was a jerk in fourth grade. Hey, Collins, let me make it up to you now. You can have him begging for you.”

“Think about Mariela,” Sirina tells me.

“Who’s Mariela?” Thad asks.

“Just someone from
La Vida Rica
,” Sirina tells him. Then she looks at me. “She’s someone who Mabry could learn something from. Someone who wouldn’t be crying over some guy.”

I start to argue that you can’t make a fruit out of a flower—or was it a flower out of a fruit?—but they both look at me like I should be packed into a straitjacket, like Elisabet when she was found living in her dead sister’s husband’s attic, so I just say, “What about the Cotillion?”

“Fine. You can lure him back. Let him ask you to that stupid dance. And that night—
bam
!
You stand him up.”

“That sounds like an
awful
idea,” I say.

Thad looks down and shrugs. To Sirina, he says, “Oh well, I guess she likes crying her eyes out over
meatwads
.”

“No, I
don’t
!” I say immediately.

He steps on his board. “Ah, never mind. That’s okay. I gotta go anyway.”

“Wait!”
I say. If it’ll make Nick fall back in love with me, maybe I should go along with Thad’s plan. For now. I see
Nicolás
and me together, admiring a rainbow. Looking up at the night stars, maybe sharing a wish
juntos
. Together. I see us running hand in hand on the beach. Laughing joyously in the rain.

Oh, my heart is so hungry for him!

So I say, “Okay.”

“Great,” he says. We exchange numbers and he says, “I’ll be in touch.” Then he takes off on his brand-new board. A little shakily, if you ask me.

“Hey! No skateboards!” the mall cop, Captain Jerry, shouts. He takes off on his Segway behind Thad, the swirling red light tailing him. But even though Thad looks a little unsteady, he’s definitely fast—too fast for Captain Jerry, who circles back, points at us, and says, very sternly, “No. Skateboards!” again before rolling off.

“I hope he calls you soon,” Sirina says. “Thad, I mean, not Captain Jerry.”

“Sirina, are you really sure I should do this?” I ask her. “You
do
remember what Thad did to me?”

“Mabry,” she groans. “Fourth grade was, like, a lifetime ago!”

“Wow,” I huff. “Thanks for the sensitivity.”

“Come on—we were kids!”

Oh, she’s
so
forgiving. I sigh. “Whatever, Saint Sirina.” Maybe
she
should join a convent instead of Hermana Ampuero.

“Mabry! Come on! Don’t forget what I did when he dumped you!”

And I haven’t. The day after Thad dumped me—Valentine’s Day, of course—she gave everyone in the class a red, heart-shaped lollipop. Everyone except for him. He got a Dum Dum. At the time, it was a brilliant show of friendship and loyalty, the first of many. “I remember,” I say.

“When have I ever let you down?” she asks me now.

“Never.”

“Right. So listen to me, okay? You need to get over Nick no matter what it takes.”

“I’ll try,” I say. And maybe I should. Maybe Thad can help me get my
Nicolás
back. And then the heartbreak thing? The standing-him-up thing? Well, once Thad and Sirina see us together again, they’ll get over
that
. I’ll make flowers-out-of-fruit out of both of them! I’ll make them both believe in true love.

W
ow,
Thad thinks, gliding back home on his new skateboard.
That was easy. She walked right into it.
Here he’s been wondering how he’d ever get back at Nick; and there she’s been wondering how she’d ever get Nick
back
. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate, as his dad used to say. A win-win situation.

Still, the girl is ridiculous. To be obsessing over such a smear. Wow. Nick hadn’t been so bad in fourth grade, but he’s definitely changed. It shouldn’t surprise him. Everything’s changed in those four years.

Everything.

Anyway, what is it with Mabry’s insistence on this love thing? It’s like believing in the tooth fairy. Santa Claus. Unicorns, even. He’s glad he dumped her back in fourth grade. She was ridiculous back then, too, although he doesn’t remember why he dumped her. Probably on a dare. He’s a sucker for those. He once ate a worm on a dare.