The Book of Love (13 page)

T
he drive back was a celebration, a traveling party in a baby blue convertible. Liza rode shotgun, flashing every other trucker that passed. Olivia sang along with the radio, loud and off-key. Gil just could not stop bouncing, bouncing, bouncing in her seat.

One of Beacon’s songs came on, and Olivia cranked it up.

If you’d give me one chance

To show you my love, baby

Gil danced in the seat next to her and sang at Lucy.
My heaaaaart.
She held her hands up to her chest and mimed a heart beating in time to the music. Then she mimed breaking it. When the chorus came on, Gil shimmied her shoulders. She leaned in like Lucy was supposed to join her. Lucy did her best to fake it.

In a way she understood Liza’s and Olivia’s excitement—they’d entered a contest together, and they’d won. But somehow it struck Lucy as strange for Gil to be celebrating like this, and maybe a little bit wrong considering everything else. And Lucy could not tell if she was being fair or not.

An hour into the ride, they were waiting at a stoplight when Liza suddenly shouted, “SHIT!” And turned toward the back. “I just thought of something,” Liza said. “What if we didn’t win?” She looked kind of horrified. “We’re acting like we won, we’re just assuming Gil was first. She was fast. Someone could have been faster.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gil’s voice was hard. She sounded almost angry. “No one could have beaten me.” But the look in her eyes said that this hadn’t occurred to her either. And now she was worried.

“We’ll find out when we get back,” Olivia said. “Either the council will be there or they won’t.” But she turned down the volume on the radio, and she did not sing along with any songs after that.

Lucy leaned back against her seat and watched as the sky darkened. Fat raindrops began to fall onto her skin, into her hair. Olivia did not pull over to put the top up, and no one asked her to. They just kept going like that, the top down, the rain pounding down into the car, drenching all of them.

A shimmering gold balloon was hovering in front of the door when they got back to Olivia’s. Olivia reached out to touch it and it popped, releasing the faintest wisp of silver smoke. In the smoke were the faces of Olivia’s Heartbreaker friends from SoundWave, smiling and waving while giving the finger.

Olivia shook her head.

It was just after midnight when they walked into the house. Usually when they were all together, Lucy felt like they were a part of something—even if Liza was crazy sometimes, and Olivia could be hard to read, Lucy felt like they were a unit and she was part of that. But now, as they made their way into Olivia’s living room that night, Lucy could feel the vast distance between them, as though each one was sealed inside her own bubble with her own thoughts, floating off into space, all on her own.

Olivia stood in the living room, staring at the photograph of her grandmother that hung over the fireplace. She turned to face them.

“I’m making hot chocolate,” she said. “Does anyone want hot chocolate?”

Gil and Lucy exchanged a look, and then Gil nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” And she forced her mouth into a smile.

Lucy said, “Me too.”

Liza licked her lips with her pointy cat tongue. “Same,” she said.

They followed Olivia into the kitchen and sat at the thick wooden farm table while Olivia got glass bottles of milk and cream from the huge brushed-steel fridge. She
heated the milk and cream together, then melted in two bars of dark chocolate, the warm sweet scent filling the air. They were all silent as Olivia whisked the mixture until it was frothy and then poured it into four off-white mugs and topped each with a drop of bourbon, then whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Lucy looked around. How strange it seemed that Olivia had so much actual food in there—a fully stocked pantry, breads in bags dusted with flour, a refrigerator filled with cheeses and piles of fruit, like a still-life painting come to life.

Olivia set the four mugs down on the table, one in front of each of them. Lucy reached for hers, too tired even to drink it. She just sat and let the sweet steam rise up toward her face.

For a while it felt like the four of them were together again—for a while it felt certain that everything would be okay. But time kept passing, and the Heartbreaker Council didn’t appear. And with each hour that went by it seemed less and less likely that they were going to.

Twenty

L
ucy and Gil lay back on the green velvet couches. It was four a.m. They were the only ones left awake.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just head up to bed?” Gil asked for the third time in the last hour. “I’ll wake you up when they get here, I promise.” Gil’s phone buzzed with a text. She looked down. “Beacon again,” she said.

Lucy shook her head. “I’m not sleeping until they either come or . . .” She stopped. She could not allow herself to entertain any “or”s. Of course they were coming. They had to.

“I’m staying up with you.” Lucy tried to smile. But for some reason Lucy’s own friendliness felt forced now. They were supposed to be in this together, the two of them more than anyone. So why didn’t it feel like that?

Lucy wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she woke up on the couch, but there was Gil silhouetted in front of the window, typing furiously into her phone. She stopped. It vibrated. Gil read whatever was on the screen, let out a sigh, and then tiptoed out of the room. A minute later, Lucy heard the front door opening and then being slowly shut.

Lucy crept out of the living room into the hallway.

“No, absolutely not,” Lucy heard Gil’s voice say.

The heavy front door was opened just a crack. Lucy peeked through.

Gil was standing on the front steps with a girl. She was a Heartbreaker—Lucy could tell that right away, from her golden glow, from the tattoo on her chest. Was this girl part of the council? She had streaky blonde hair, tan skin, a wild
look in her eyes. She looked familiar, and it only took a second for Lucy to realize why. Lucy had seen the girl in Alex’s photographs from over the summer.
This was the Heartbreaker who’d broken his heart.

Lucy leaned toward the door.

“. . . that’s not what we agreed on,” Gil said. She sounded upset.

“But that was before things changed,” the girl said.

“What do you want, Shay?”

This was Shay?

“I did you a favor, and now I want you to do me one. . . .”

“You didn’t do me a favor, I paid you. The deal is done.”

“The deal
was
done. And then I heard a rumor that you broke one of the HHB’s hearts, and now I just can’t help but feel you may be in a better position to do favors than you were before. . . .”

“Go home,” said Gil. “We don’t know if we won or not. And even if we did, you’re not getting anything else.”

“Are you sure?” Shay raised her eyebrows. “How do you think your sweet little sister Lucy would feel if she found out what you did? We all know you can’t get into the prizes without all four of you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” said Gil.

“Really? So it’s just a coincidence that the guy whose heart you hired me to break just so happens to be the guy who broke the heart of your brand-new sister?”

Lucy’s heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe.

“Go ahead and tell Lucy whatever you want.” Gil’s voice wavered. “She already knows.”

Shay laughed. “Really? And that’s why you’ve been hiding from me for days?”

“I haven’t been . . . ,” Gil started. “I’ve been busy.”

“
Ssh
.” Shay raised her finger to her lips. Behind it she smiled a sly-looking little smile. She just looked so pleased with herself, this girl who had stolen Alex away. Lucy thought she didn’t care anymore. She
didn’t
care anymore, not about the Alex part, at least. And yet . . .

Lucy felt her hand reaching for the knob, twisting it, pushing the door open. She stepped outside into the cool blue light of morning.

“Oh, hey girls,” Lucy said easily, as though they were expecting her. Lucy slung one arm around Gil’s shoulders. “You’re Shay, right? Thanks, by the way, for what you did. To Alex, I mean.” Lucy stuck out her hand.

Shay stared at her, her expression completely unreadable. She reached out. They shook—how weird it was to touch this girl who had touched Alex in ways Lucy never had.

Lucy took her hand away and wiped it on her pants as if she’d just touched something disgusting. “Nice try, by the way. But what Gilly says is completely true. I do know everything. I doubt the council will be very happy to hear about your attempts at blackmail. And they’ll be here any minute, so . . .” Lucy steeled her jaw and stared at Shay. “You probably shouldn’t be.”

Shay tipped her head to the side, bit her lip coyly, then shrugged and sighed. “Well, damn.” She grinned at both of them. “It never hurts to try, right?” Shay slowly looked Lucy up and down. “I don’t know how you put up with him as long as you did, really. He was so needy. And awful in bed too. Just”—she held up her pinky—“awful.”

Shay made her way down the steps, walked to the driveway, got in a little yellow car, and drove away.

Gil turned toward Lucy. “I don’t even know what to say.” Her lip was trembling, her mouth curled into a grateful smile.

Lucy shook her head. “Just explain.” Her voice was an ice-cold whisper. “What the hell was she talking about?” Lucy felt the tears begin to form behind her eyelids, but they didn’t fall. She was too angry.

“I just . . .” Gil looked panicked, like she was trying very hard to come up with a suitable answer.

“Tell me the truth,” Lucy said.

“The truth is . . .” Gil turned away. “The truth is, I bribed her to take Alex from you.” Her voice was so quiet, Lucy could barely hear her.

“I don’t understand.”

“Last year, remember how you and me and Alex were all in that same American History class? It was already obvious that you were in love with him—anyone could have seen that. But I was using the Love Lines potion one day, and I saw that he didn’t love you back. And he was never going to.” Gil cleared her throat. “He was so cocky and really kind of a jerk, but you just couldn’t see it. And then we did that thing in class where everyone talked about our summer plans, and Alex kept bragging about going to Colorado and I knew Shay lived there, so I asked her to . . . to take care of it.”

Lucy pressed her fist to her chest. “So in a way, you could say that
you
broke my heart.”

Gil reached out for Lucy’s hand. But Lucy pulled away. “But you don’t understand,” Gil said. “It would have happened anyway, don’t you see? The stuff with Shay just made it happen sooner.”

Lucy took a breath. “Does Olivia know? And Liza? Were they in on it too?”

Gil shook her head. “It was just me.”

Lucy felt like she was sinking into something thick and dark. “Is this why you ‘helped’ me when I was trying to get Alex back? Because you knew it wouldn’t work and I’d be even more heartbroken, and you’d be there to pick up the pieces?”

Gil looked down and didn’t answer.

“How much of this did you plan?
Did you know I was going to break Tristan’s heart?
” Lucy was almost shouting now. She felt hot and sick inside. She could barely breathe.

Gil looked small and scared. She said nothing.

Lucy pushed past her, felt her legs walking her down the front steps, out onto the driveway, trying to take her away from all of this.

“Lucy, wait, WAIT!” She could hear Gil’s footsteps behind her. “I couldn’t have known you were going to break Tristan’s heart. I don’t know the future. No one does. Yes, I saw that he was in love with you. But I wasn’t sure
what
would happen. We didn’t force you to become one of us, Lucy, and we never could have
. You
chose to do that.”

Lucy pressed her lips together and felt her heart thunk. She had thought no one could ever hurt her more than Alex had when he broke up with her, and no one could betray her worse than he did when he let her pine away for him all summer long without ever telling her the truth. But as it
turned out, she’d been wrong. Gil wasn’t just some idiot guy who’d made a cowardly mistake. Gil was supposed to be someone she could trust, someone she could count on. Gil was supposed to be her sister.

“What was real, then?” said Lucy. “Was any of this?
Sister?
” She sneered when she said the word.

“My friendship, Lucy, that’s real. And I really do consider you my sister. I did right from the very beginning.”

“Well, it makes sense that you only have brothers, then.”

“You don’t understand,” Gil said. “I had to do it.”

Lucy felt empty. And so entirely alone. “No one has to do anything,” she said. She turned to go.

“Please, Lucy,” Gil said. “Wait!”

“Why? You’re worried if I leave and we win, you won’t be able to get into your precious prizes?”

“No, that’s not it,” said Gil. And then she paused. She looked down at the ground. And when she spoke again, she sounded desperate. “If you leave, if we don’t get the Diamonding Powder,
Liza’s mother will probably die.
”