The Heartbreakers (10 page)

“Hey,” he said. He set his cup down on the table behind him and shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “What's up?”

The song on the sound system changed to a classic rock song. Several adults hooted and quickened their steps on the dance floor, moving in time with the beat.

Raven clasped her hands behind her back. “Thought I'd come to wish Simon well.”

The girl looked Raven over as if threatened.

Bet you don't even know who Simon is, Raven thought.

“Cool.” Caleb nodded.

Raven noticed her black dress went well with Caleb's outfit. They would have looked like such a cute couple in photos.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he said, and shot the girl a look like, “Scram.”

The girl curled her upper lip but darted away.

“Sure,” Raven said, pleased with the outcome of that situation.

Caleb grabbed her arm gently and led her through a door behind the food table. They entered a kitchen where several people worked, packing away extra food and cleaning dirty dishes. The air smelled like salty fish and chicken soup.

Caleb headed through another door that took them into a hallway and then into an empty room that looked like a
dressing room. He sat down on the couch along the wall and patted the cushion next to him. “Sit down for a second?”

She hesitated. He was being so nice, but at the same time, she was breaking a rule right now by being here, she just knew it. Still, she couldn't just leave things the way they were.

She sat down but was sure to keep some distance between them.

“So, uh,” Caleb said, “I was totally buzzed that night and mad, too; you can't blame me. Ya know? You did kiss another dude.”

Raven flicked her eyes to him. “It's not like I planned it. Or meant to hurt you.” The bus ride home from regional band competition flashed in her mind. She saw herself and Horace in the back of the bus, with Horace's hands in her hair. Raven turned away from Caleb, afraid that he'd read the thoughts in her eyes.

“I know you didn't mean to hurt me.” Caleb shifted so he could face her. “But you did.”

He sounded sincere, but Raven would put money on the fact that he didn't technically have feelings, just pride. And that's what she'd bruised more than anything.

“Well, I'm glad we had this talk,” she said, ready to get up. She was starting to get uncomfortable, as if her subconscious was trying to tell her how wrong it was that she was there.

“Me, too.” He paused, then scooted closer to her, taking her hand in his. “I don't want us to hate each other.”

“I don't hate you.”

Maybe she'd gone too far with the black dress and the act she'd put on to drive the other girl away. Had she led him on?

Back here, away from the main room and the stereo, it was almost silent. She wondered if her breathing sounded
too quick and whether or not Caleb was getting the wrong impression. She was feeling claustrophobic and definitely not excited.

She made a move to leave again but Caleb tightened his grip on her hand. “Wait.” He pulled her into a hug. “I've missed you.”

“Caleb.”

He tilted her chin up with a finger and kissed her. At first she didn't stop him, mainly because she was frozen in place. She'd kissed him so many times before, that this just felt natural, like slipping into a comfy but holey sweatshirt she should have thrown out long ago. He wound his arm around her waist and guided her back against the couch so that they were both lying down.

Heat brushed her cheeks, while her mind screamed, “Stop!” as it tried to be rational.

She slid out from beneath Caleb and practically jumped off the couch.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“We're not together.”

“We can be together.” He stood up, towering over her. “I
want
to get back together.”

The only reason he was saying that now was because he wanted to sleep with her. That'd probably been his plan all along. That's why he'd pulled her all the way back here in the recesses of the party hall.

But she wasn't going to sleep with him. It not only broke a rule, it was just plain wrong. Her friends would never let her live that one down. Not that she'd have to tell them. But she would know she deliberately broke one of the more serious rules.

“I'm going,” she said, straightening her hair with her fingers. She pulled open the door on the dressing room and hurried down the hallway.

Caleb ran after her. “Wait, Ray.”

“Don't call me Ray.” He made the nickname sound wrong.

“I've always called you Ray. Stop, would you?”

“There's nothing left to say!”

“If you didn't want to get back together, then why did you scare Yael away like you were jealous or something?”

Raven slowed. “Who's Yael?”

“The girl I was talking to when you came up.”

She shook her head. She didn't have a good answer to that one. It was a huge mistake. “I'm done talking.”

“Raven, damn it. Stop being a bitch.” His voice had turned harsh, the same as it had last Friday night when he broke up with her. If Alexia were here right now, she'd say Raven didn't deserve to be treated like this.

Raven had no idea how she should be treated. She wasn't some princess that needed to be waited on—but she certainly didn't deserve being called a bitch.

She stopped at the door, hand on the knob, ready to bolt. She turned to Caleb, his face red with anger now. “If you weren't such an asshole,” she said, “I wouldn't have to be a bitch.”

She pulled the door open and ran.

Rule 15
: Find a hobby or something you are passionate about.

Sydney was spending her second Saturday as a single girl in the attic. She should have been out shopping. Or maybe studying. Or getting her hair done. But she didn't feel like leaving the house, which was definitely saying something. She'd spent the last two years avoiding the house because it had become a hollow shell of what it used to be, with her mother gone ninety percent of the time and her dad trying to be Mr. Mom.

As a way to get her mind off Drew, Sydney was in pursuit of a Rubbermaid tote she'd lugged into the attic some six months ago. It contained several crammed photo albums, one ratty blanket, an empty journal, and a digital camera that had once been considered top of the line but was now sorely out-of-date.

The idea was, find the camera and take up a new hobby as a way of fulfilling the concept behind Rule 15.

Sydney stepped around a leather trunk, bumping into a tower of cardboard boxes. She stilled them with her hands before they toppled over, and moved farther into the room, which ran the length and width of the house.

Mostly there were cardboard boxes and Rubbermaid totes up here. Sydney's dad filled the boxes, but her mom had always said totes were more practical because they guarded against moisture and bugs.

The tote Sydney was looking for was clear with a top the color of flamingos. It should have been easy to pick out among the brown cardboard and the forest-green totes her mother always bought, but for some reason, Sydney was having a hard time locating it.

And it should have been right there by the door where she left it. Had her mother grabbed it? Maybe to take the camera?

Mrs. Howard used to be an amateur photographer. She would take Sydney out to Birch Falls Park on weekends to take photos of the swans and deer, and the duck pond near the back of the park, where people ice-skated in the winter.

Sydney used to love those outings. It was so routine that it almost became as familiar as the ratty blanket that was also in the flamingo tote. Sydney had slept with that blanket every night until six months ago when she decided she was too old for it. It'd been a gift from her now-deceased grandmother.

Part of her was searching for the tote, not only for the camera but the blanket, too. She'd lost the most familiar thing in her life: Drew. She felt like she was reaching for anything that would be familiar and maybe fill that hollow void in her chest.

Dust swirled in the muted moonlight pouring through the square window at the far end. Sydney wondered what time it was and whether or not she'd ever find this stupid tote. It had to be after nine if the moon was out.

She thought of Drew and wondered where he was and what he was doing. Hopefully, he wasn't with Nicole Robinson.

“Aha,” she said to the silence when she spotted the pink tote lid peeking out from beneath a sheet. She pulled the sheet back. Dust spiraled in the air and she waved it away. When it settled, she sat on the floor with the tote in front of her and popped open the lid.

Sitting on top of the canary-yellow blanket was the digital camera, exactly where she'd put it six months ago. Did her mother miss those weekend trips to the park? Sydney had barely talked to her mother in weeks. And when they did talk, they didn't talk about the fun they used to have. Mostly it was about Sydney's schoolwork, and even then the conversations didn't last long. They usually went like this:

“How's school going?” her mom would say.

Sydney would reply, “It's good. I got an A in—”

Her mom's BlackBerry or laptop would start dinging with an incoming message. “I have to get that,” her mom would say and then bury herself in her work for another two hours.

Sydney usually gave up at that point.

Now she took the camera in her hands and slid the power button over. The camera let out three chirps while the power light flickered green. The batteries were still good. The screen lit up with the last picture taken.

Sydney's mouth hung slack when she looked at it.

It was of Sydney and Drew on the back patio, sitting in the bench swing. Their backs were to the camera, but they were
looking at each other so their faces were in profile, silhouetted by the flickering orange glow of a fire in the cast-iron pit.

That'd been two summers ago, when their relationship was still new and Sydney's mother hadn't yet received her promotion. Sydney never knew her mother had taken this picture. Or that she'd been there in the house watching them.

It was such a beautiful photograph. It reminded Sydney of how good her life was that summer.

I wish there was something I could do to get that back, she thought. That perfection.

But unless Drew took her back and her mother quit SunBery Vitamins, Sydney knew her life would never be that perfect again.

Rule 5:
You must not date anyone until you can go two weeks without thinking about The Ex. (Take this time to find yourself & focus on your emotional stability. Do group activities with friends—both girl and guy friends.)

It was Wednesday, which meant the normal band instructor, Mr. Thomas, was at Lincoln Elementary leading band class for the little kids. The assistant band instructor, Ms. D, would be teaching the class today. She was a really,
really
good musician, but Raven suspected Ms. D hated her. Which might have had something to do with the fact that Raven went out with and later broke up with Ms. D's little brother, Greg, last year.

If it were up to her, Raven would be hanging out in her dad's basement right now, flipping open the latches of a guitar case instead of a flute case. She pulled out the main body of her flute, then the mouthpiece, and lastly, the end. She fitted all of them together, turning the pieces so the keys matched up.

Her dad had promised to teach her to play the guitar until her mom found out and put a stop to it. Ms. Valenti didn't want Raven having anything to do with rock music or “that whole scene,” as she said. Being with the school band looked good on a college application. No one cared if you played guitar, and being in a rock band would never get a person anywhere.

“Look no further than your father if you want a good example,” Ms. Valenti had said. “He tried that whole singer thing and we ended up broke. It's no good, Raven. That scene is no good.”

Of course, if the college recruiters actually heard Raven play flute, it probably wouldn't factor into their judgment. Actually, it'd probably count against her. Last year, the band director went through every section, testing each player. The point was to score the players and give them “chair” positions. Chair number one was the best seat; it meant you were the best player in your section.

Out of five flute players, Raven was fifth chair. She hadn't put a lot of effort into being a good flutist. It was a dumb instrument. But the guitar…with the hard work and passion she thought she had…would pay off. And that was something she actually did learn from her mother.

Ms. Valenti fell in love with scrapbooking and decided she wanted to run a business centered on that art. So she started Scrappe, a scrapbooking store and café. It was voted Most Successful Business in last year's town survey and a lot of people from school hung out there on the weekends during the colder months.

There was a separate room for scrapbooking, so if you weren't into that, you could hang at the café without hearing about glue spots and acid-free markers.

Raven used to hang out there all the time, until she and Horace had their make-out session on the bus. Because Horace worked at Scrappe, she hadn't been there in weeks.

As if her thoughts had conjured him, Horace walked through the double doors of the band room. The first thing he did was look over at her and smile before climbing the steps to the third tier in the back, where the percussion section was set up.

She smiled back out of habit.

People were starting to file in the doors before the warning bell rang. Raven feigned interest in her music book, keeping her eyes on the notes as she pressed the corresponding keys on the flute.

“Ray,” Horace said, sliding into the orange chair next to her.

“Oh, uh…hi,” she said. Fumble much? Usually she was so confident and poised around guys, but Horace…not so much.

Horace was a geek in middle school. Everyone thought so; even she did. He used to be scrawny and short. He had braces for the longest time. Rumor had it his mother shopped for his clothes at Goodwill. In middle school, when it was all about being cool and what name brands you wore, shopping at Goodwill was social suicide.

Freshman year of high school, Horace started changing. Now, in his junior year—sans braces—he was still kind of a geek, but a cool geek. He grew a few inches, packed on some muscle, but probably still shopped at Goodwill. Except individuality counted now—at least to her—and he was very much his own person.

He shifted in his chair now, the brown material of his Western-style shirt bunching around his bicep. Beneath that
he had on a black T-shirt that said
PEOPLE SERVICES
, across the chest. His knee stuck through a hole in his jeans and loose strings hung from the cuffs around his brown boots.

Horace was Caleb's polar opposite. He was the opposite of
every
guy Raven had gone out with.

“What's up?” he said. His husky voice slid around the chatter and instrument tuning and hit her right in the gut. Jitters took hold of her stomach.

“Nothing,” she said, resting her flute on her lap, “just going over the music.”

“Are you doing anything this weekend?”

The final bell rang overhead and a few people hurried in. Raven's attention flicked from Horace to the door to the band director's office window and then back to Horace. His eyes were still on her.

She smiled. Play it cool, she thought.

“Yeah, I've got a few things planned with my friends. What are you doing?”

“Some friends of mine are hanging out at Striker's after I get out of work. I thought if you weren't busy, you could hang out with us.” He paused, nostrils flaring. Then, “No,” he corrected, “actually I want you to hang out with me.” He followed up with that hesitant smile of his.

Raven couldn't accept the invitation, even if she thought it sounded like fun. For one, she'd promised herself and her friends that she'd wait a few weeks (maybe even a few months) before going out with anyone. And two, she couldn't stand the thought of hurting Horace anymore. What if they started going out and she realized he wasn't The One either? She'd subconsciously ruin the relationship or, worse yet, drop Horace quicker than the flip of a calendar month.

She'd already gotten him punched.

“I can't.” She turned a page in her music book, faking nonchalance. “But maybe another time?”

Amelia, the fourth-chair flutist, came up then and glared at Horace. “You're in my seat.” Amelia took being fourth chair seriously and anyone in her seat was probably a direct violation of her flutist code or something.

“Sorry.” Horace got up. “Ray,” he started, turning to her, “if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Sure.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried up the steps to the percussion section. Raven surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder, watching as he grabbed his drumsticks in hand and beat at the air to warm up his wrists. Well, maybe not so surreptitiously, since he caught her staring.

Face hot, she turned back to her music book and lifted her flute up in her hands. With the mouthpiece at her lips, she blew across the hole, pulling out a warm-up note with all the others.

She was following The Code. She was doing the right thing.

The smell of crisp pages and old leather filled Alexia's nose. The history room in the library was one of her favorite places in the whole school. It felt like she was taking a step back in time. Finding the 900s in the Dewey Decimal System, Alexia slipped an American history book on the shelf. She turned back to her metal cart and saw Ben
thumbing through the other books she was supposed to be putting away.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

She hadn't seen him since yesterday this hour, and when she came into the library just twenty minutes ago to find him nowhere, the disappointment had been nearly palpable. So, she'd gone straight to work, checking in returned books and filing them away, but all she thought about while pulling her metal cart around was Ben.

She hadn't crushed this hard since Owen Wilson in
Zoolander
. Not that she would call this thing…whatever it was…a crush. She looked forward to seeing him, was all. A friendly crush was more like it.

Ben pulled a book about Rome out of the stack and held it up for her. “Did you know,” he cocked an eyebrow, “that in ancient Rome, the thumbs-down meant the crowd favored the gladiator in the arena?”

“No, I can't say I knew that.”

Pushing the book into a random spot on the shelf, he squared himself in front of her. “If I were a Roman emperor, which I probably wouldn't be, because I'm too cool for that, and you were a gladiator, I'd give you…” He jabbed his thumb toward the floor. “A thumbs-down.”

“So, you'd favor me?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Totally.”

If she had a mirror right now, she'd probably see her freckles lighting up like Christmas lights. She looked away. The flattery—was that what it was?—unnerved her.

“Aren't you supposed to be in the computer lab? Assisting?”

“No, actually.” He smiled. “I'm supposed to be in Mrs. Halloway's office calling my mother.”

Alexia turned around, brow furrowed. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Mrs. Halloway's office is out there”—she nodded to the doorway behind Ben's shoulder—“and to the right.”

He wagged his finger at her. “So that's where it is. I was wondering. Well, I should go call her, before dinner is spoiled.” He left the history room and headed into the librarian's office. Mrs. Halloway smiled at him and grabbed her phone. After handing it over, she left the office.

He dialed and talked to someone on the other line. Alexia knew all of this because she was peeking out the window of the history room watching him. He was so danged cute. Just watching him made Alexia smile. And talking to him usually had her laughing harder than she had in months. If she had to pick between her sacred alone time or an hour with Ben, she'd pick Ben.

When he hung up, he glanced over at the window and Alexia ducked. She went around one of the bookcases, losing herself in the books before Ben came back.

She put two more books away before he popped up behind her, making her shriek and jump, dropping the stack of books in her hands. They tumbled to the floor with a thud.

“I didn't mean to scare you,” he said, then frowned as if mulling that answer over. “Well, okay, I'll be honest. I did mean to scare you, but not that bad.” He bent down and scooped the books up. “Here.”

She took them. “Thanks. For picking up the books. Not for scaring me.” Her heart still drummed in her chest and her hands were suddenly clammy, but she had to admit it
was kind of funny. It'd have been funnier if it were someone else though.

“So, what are you doing this Saturday?” He leaned his elbow on a bookshelf, sticking his fingers into his messy hair.

Was she ever doing anything on a Saturday other than laundry and watching TV? Not like she would tell him that. Of course, now that she had her friends back…maybe they'd want to hang out.

“Why?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Some of us go to Eagle Park on Saturday mornings to play football. I think you'd have fun.”

“Me? Football?” She raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “I don't think so.”

“Why? It's not like we'll tackle you. It's just for fun, and other girls come.” He paused. “Sometimes.”

“I don't know.”

“Okay, okay. I have another idea and you have to pick between it and football.”

“I
have
to pick?”

“Yes, it's the rule.”

“What rule?”

“The Alexia-has-to-pick-between-two-things rule. Jeez, where have you been?”

She laughed. “Okay, what's the other option?”

“Either we play football, or…we go to Stixs-N-Yarn and make my brother's dog a sweater.”

“Knitting?”

“Yes.” He nodded incessantly. “I'm a master knitter. I'm a level three.”

“There aren't levels in knitting.”

He made a disgusted face. “Seriously? Well, there should be. What's the point if there aren't any levels?”

Mrs. Halloway popped her head in the doorway. “Mr. Daniels,” she said in her best authoritative voice, “what are you doing?”

“I'm trying to ask Alexia out on a date, but she's rebuffing my advances.”

“Smart girl,” Mrs. Halloway said, winking at Alexia. “Just hurry it up then.”

Grinning, Alexia said, “Okay, football, I guess. What time?”

“Nine. In the morning. At Eagle Park.”

“Got it. I'll meet you there.”

“So you can get out fast if the date goes sour. Nice.” He made his way to the door. “Later, Alexia,” he said over a shoulder.

Hugging a book to her chest, she squeaked out, “Later,” and watched him leave. For the rest of the hour, Alexia couldn't think straight. All she could think about was, what if she fell on her butt in front of him while trying to play football?

That would be so embarrassing.