The Book of Love

by Lynn Weingarten

Six weeks ago, Lucy made a silent promise to find him someone else to love, someone as funny and fun and sweet and brilliant as he was. But in that moment, Lucy suddenly understood with the force and clarity that only comes from finally facing a truth you’ve already known but have tried hard to ignore—finding Tristan a girlfriend wasn’t the answer.

  Lovers fight, leave each other, lose interest, get bored, cheat. Sometimes love is yanked away all at once, sometimes it simply leaks out drip by drip. Even the perfect love that lasts a lifetime ends with death. They say time heals all wounds, but the truth is time also breaks all hearts. Every love ends in heartbreak.

  It’s a scary, dangerous world out there for anyone with a breakable heart. It’s only safe for those whose hearts are unbreakable. Like Lucy, like her sisters. They were the only ones who were truly free.

  And standing there in that dark room under a high ceiling twinkling with crystal, dance music pounding in her chest like a heart, Lucy felt a stab of intense longing so strong it almost knocked her over. It was as strong as the longing she’d felt the moment she first saw her ex-boyfriend, Alex, who’d broken her heart. This was what she needed for Tristan—the freedom she had. This was how she could repay him. By finding a way to fix his heart forever the way he had helped her fix her own.

  Of course this was the answer—it was amazing she hadn’t realized this earlier. It was perfect. It was the only way to make things right.

  Now all she had to do was figure out how.

  Three

  On Lucy’s thirteenth birthday, her father gave her a shiny green bicycle with a million different gears. At the time, this gift only proved how little her father knew, and for the first two and a half years the bike sat at the back of the garage untouched; the only trips it ever took were a couple wobbly rides down to the end of the driveway. Lucy was not a bike person. She did not like riding down the road, always feeling so unsafe. She did not like that there were no straps, was no seat belt. She did not like how easily she could fly off.

  Lucy relied on her parents for rides. Then after Tristan got his license, he drove Lucy anywhere she wanted to go and said he was happy to do it. He loved driving! (Now Lucy realized, actually, he’d loved her, but she didn’t know that at the time.) When Lucy first met the Heartbreakers, Olivia would pick her up and drop her off. And when she needed her own transportation, she’d walk. But after a week of one-, two-, three-hour walks home from wherever the Heartbreakers had taken her, Lucy remembered the bike at the back of the garage and pulled it out. And suddenly it seemed like the perfect solution—a bike was sleek and simple, powered by nothing but gravity and gears, by her own muscles steadily sending blood through her veins and back to her impenetrable heart. She loved the freedom; she could go anywhere, didn’t need gas or to ask anyone. When she wanted to think, she went for a ride. Her brain worked best when she was in motion.

  So an hour later, the party winding down, Lucy climbed onto the seat in her gunmetal gray dress, strapped her silver helmet onto her head, and pedaled off into the night, imagining that to anyone who passed, she’d be nothing but a silver whoosh, like the tail end of a comet. She loved the feeling of going so fast she couldn’t stop, of rushing down a hill at incredible speeds, of knowing there was real actual danger and that any second she could crash.

  Lucy propped her bike against the side of the house and went inside. Her mother was sitting on the couch in the dimly lit living room. Lucy missed the clean scent of trees and crisp fall air rushing past her cheeks.

  Right away, she knew they were fighting again. The usual evidence was all there: her mother had a full mug of tea in front of her but wasn’t drinking it; the TV was on, but she wasn’t watching it; and she was wearing a pair of faded blue and white striped pajama pants and a threadbare gray college T-shirt that she’d had since she was a student. She always wore it after a fight, as if she was trying to remind Lucy’s father that she had a life before she met him and that she could have a life after. Even though, as far as Lucy could tell, her mother didn’t really believe this.

  “Hi, Mom,” Lucy said.

  Lucy’s mother turned and gave her this blank, blinky, questioning look, not one that asked where Lucy had been and why she was coming home after one on a school night, but rather one of more global confusion, like nothing in the world made sense and she was hoping someone could explain it to her.

  “What’s going on?” Lucy asked because she knew she was supposed to.

  Her mother took a breath. “Your father and I are getting a divorce.” There was forced flatness in her voice like she was trying to sound as though she was just stating a fact. But Lucy knew her mother was saying this as much for her own benefit as she was for Lucy’s. She just wanted to hear herself say it out loud.

  The thing is, Lucy had had this same conversation at least a dozen times before, and her mother’s words could not shock her. It was only her own words that did. “I hope you really do it this time,” Lucy said. And both she and her mother looked up in surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lucy ran her tongue along the roof of her mouth. The sour smell of the room had curled itself into her nose, and suddenly it was as though she could taste it. Her parents were a perfect example of love gone wrong, the way love always did. It had sunk its spiny hooks deep into their hearts, connecting them irrevocably together. No matter how much they seemed to want to separate, they couldn’t quite manage. “Because you and Dad have been talking about this for years,” Lucy said. “And maybe you’d both be happier if you just actually did it.”

  It felt good to be honest with her mother for the first time in a very long time. At least for a moment it did. But when Lucy looked at her mother’s face, at her hurt expression, her own sure sense of calm was replaced by a stab of guilt. Her mother didn’t want to know the truth, and it was not Lucy’s place to try to force her to hear it. Lucy wished she were somewhere else, back at the party or out in the world. Not here with her mother in her pajamas and that sour smell.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” And she looked down.

  “You don’t give up on love.” Her mother reached for her cup of tea and held it in her hands but still did not drink it. “Maybe one day when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

  Lucy imagined just opening her mouth and letting it all spill out—telling her mother that she had already been in love and had her heart broken and now she was far beyond ever sitting on the couch staring silently into space over anyone ever again for the rest of her life. How wonderful it was to be done with that. But of course, she couldn’t say any of this. “You’re right, Mom,” she said gently. “I’m sorry.”

  Their eyes locked again, and Lucy could see straight into her mother’s heart. And no matter how big the rift was that had, in the last few months, sprouted in the space between them, Lucy couldn’t bear to see her mother suffer.

  Lucy had an idea. She reached for her mother’s cup.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s up in our room.” Her mother’s voice caught on our. “I think he’s awake. . . .”

  Lucy nodded. She slipped her hand into her little purse and pulled out a tiny white star.

  “Oh, look,” she said. She motioned toward the clock on the wall. “One eleven, make a wish.”

  Her mother smiled sadly. “I think I’m too old for making wishes.”

  Lucy shook her head. “No, you’re not,” she said. “No one ever is.”

  When she looked down, the white star had turned to gold. Lucy popped it in her mouth and crunched down.

  I just wish he would talk to me, Lucy heard her mother’s voice whisper. I wish we could talk to each other and just be nice.

  Lucy took a breath. “I’ll get you a new cup of tea,” she said. “This one’s gone cold.”

  She ran up to her room, closed the door behind her, and took the evergreen silk box from the back of the bottom drawer of her dresser. Inside was a tiny pot of crystals, a
thimble-sized jar of lotion, and a clear vial with a miniature eyedropper containing a solution of heartbreak tears diluted 10:1. Lucy sprinkled a few crystals onto her palm and mixed them with a single droplet from the dropper. A wisp of smoke rose up into the air and formed itself into the face of a boy with a pointed chin, huge eyes, and a mean-looking mouth. Dove Marin. Lucy remembered seeing his name on the tear vial. Apparently he was some guy in a band whose heart Liza had broken the previous spring. Lucy silently thanked him, wherever he was, for making it possible for her to do what she was about to do.

  Lucy put the case in the drawer and went back downstairs to the kitchen. She turned on the kettle and then went about preparing the mugs—a splash of half-and-half for her mother, two sugars and a lot of milk for her dad, and a tea bag and sprinkle of Sweet Talk Sugar for each of them. She walked back into the living room and set both mugs down on the table.

  “DAD!” she called out. “Can you come downstairs for a minute? I made you some tea!”

  Then she turned to her mom and whispered, “Just talk to each other, okay?”

  By the time Lucy got back to her room, she could already hear the quiet murmur of their voices.

  There was a time when this all would have made her so sad—hearing them get along after a fight was even worse than their fighting. She knew it wouldn’t last. But this was her mother’s wish. And so Lucy had helped. That was all.

  Still it reminded Lucy of the vow she’d made earlier that night—the vow to Tristan and to herself, to spare him from his heartbreak, from all of this, really.

  And she knew it would take a lot more than a little Wish Star to fix that. Lucy took out her phone. She typed: Can you meet me after homeroom tomorrow at the big tree out front? There’s something important I need to ask you. . . .

  Then Lucy got into bed and closed her eyes, and to the sound of her parents’ hushed laughter, she drifted off to sleep.

  Four

  It was 7:45 in the morning, and Lucy was walking down the halls of Van Buren watching the dancing lines of light. There was a strawberry stripe between a girl who was holding hands with her boyfriend, and his best friend who was waving at them from across the hall. There were rose-colored streams passing back and forth between two shy freshmen, too scared to look up from their phones. There was a ruby shimmer stretching between two players on the football team, both walking with their arms around their girlfriends.

  When Gil had taught Lucy how to make the Love Lines potion a couple weeks back, she’d explained that the lines you saw after putting the drops in your eye didn’t always signify love that currently existed—the lines also indicated love that could be. Where the line started was the lover, and where the line pointed was the lovee. If the line stretched both ways, the two people either were in love or one day might be. Potential. That’s what the lines showed.

  The potion only worked for a few hours per dose, but today Lucy had a hunch, and if her hunch was right, then a plan. And it would take only seconds to figure out what she needed to know.

  Now there was a line starting at the heart of an angry-looking girl in an oversized brown sweater pointing toward a beautiful boy in a bowler hat, and one from his heart, stretching right back to hers. Lucy reached up and gently plucked the line of light like a string on a guitar. The two of them looked at each other. And that was where Lucy left it; today she had other things on her mind.

  Lucy walked to her homeroom, sat down, and looked around at her fellow W’s, staring down into their book bags and at their homework and breakfasts. W for Wrenn.

  W for Wishmaker.

  The morning after she became a Heartbreaker, Lucy realized something—breaking hearts was the method by which one got the magic. But once you had the magic . . . that’s when things really got interesting. Lucy was a Heartbreaker now, and so officially what she did was break hearts. But unofficially what Lucy had been doing was something else entirely.

  Lucy turned toward Jessica Wooster, whose puffy blonde hair was puffing out around her pink face, like a lemon meringue balanced on top of a strawberry. Lucy felt a kinship with this girl for reasons she wasn’t quite sure of—maybe because she always looked so far away, like she was imagining herself somewhere else. The way Lucy used to before here became better. Lucy wanted to help her. Maybe today she could.

  Last Friday during homeroom Lucy had turned to Jessica at 7:47 and said perkily, “Ooooh, seven forty-seven! Time to make a wish!” And Jessica had stared at Lucy as though trying to decide whether this was Lucy’s confusing way of making fun of her somehow and/or if Lucy maybe had something slightly wrong with her.

  “No, seriously,” Lucy had said. “Seven forty-seven is supposed to be a really lucky time. I read it in my horoscope this morning.” And Jessica had just smiled, clearly deciding on option two, and turned back toward the front of the room. But not before making a wish of her own.

  When Liza had taught Lucy about the stars, she had explained that a Wish Star only worked when wishes were consciously made. “Get him to make it on an eyelash, a blown-out birthday candle, a necklace with a clasp at the front, whatever,” Liza had said. “So long as he actually thinks it.” Then Liza had gone on to explain that once you knew what he wanted, you didn’t give it to him, but rather figured out a way to dangle it in front of him. “Always leave him wanting something,” Liza had finished.

  But Lucy had another idea of what she could do with the Wish Stars: She could listen to people’s wishes. And then she could make them come true.

  Big wishes were out of her league, of course—she couldn’t make anyone famous or rich, she couldn’t make anyone taller or shorter, she couldn’t make boobs shrink or grow, she couldn’t cure anyone’s sick loved one (although hearing wishes like that was awful). But every so often someone wished for something small—to be able to make a single basket in gym class while their crush was watching, to once, just once, have the perfect comeback to a bully right when they needed it the most. These wishes Lucy could actually help with. And so she did.

  For example, last month in bio, Lucy dropped a glittering little pellet into Angeline Strathmore’s mango juice, and then for the first time that anyone could remember, the girl got through an entire oral presentation without looking like she was going to vomit from nerves.

  And the week before, in European history, when Kevin Marx and his gang of jerk friends were tossing bits of tuna sandwich at Dougie Fishman’s head, they suddenly felt all of their insults bounced back on them tenfold. Of course, they couldn’t see the invisible Rubberglue Bubble Lucy had blown around Kevin, but they could definitely feel its effects. Within three minutes, one had left for the nurse, claiming a headache, one’s lower lip started trembling as he quietly brushed back a tear, and Kevin himself, red with embarrassment, stared silently down at his desk for the rest of the class. They’d left Dougie alone since then.

  Last Friday, just as homeroom ended, Lucy had popped Jessica’s Wish Star in her mouth. As she bit into it, she heard Jessica’s voice whispering in her ear, “I wish that he would love me.” Lucy knew that love only led to heartbreak, but she had committed herself to granting wishes, not telling people what their wishes should be. Of course, Lucy did not know for sure who he was then, but she had a hunch.

  And now, standing in homeroom, magic had confirmed it. From the center of Jessica’s light green T-shirt shone a line of light—delicate, petal pink, so faint Lucy had to squint to see it. Lucy followed the line straight to the center of the chest of the guy in front of her, Jason Walser. Jason with his hair hanging in his face, playing imaginary bass guitar in his lap, occasionally taking bites of his peanut butter sandwich, was completely unaware of anyone around him, but there was a line coming out of Jason’s chest too, a faint pomegranate stripe that stretched right back to Jessica.

  Ms. Eamon was up at the front calling out names. And as the room filled with “here” and “yup,” Lucy smoothed a dab of almond-scented Empathy Cream into each of her palms, then poked her finger
into the tiny secret pocket of her bag and fished out a steel capsule the size of a vitamin pill. “For emergencies only” is what Olivia had said when she gave it to her.

  Well, what’s high school if not one long one?

  Locked inside that steel was an undiluted heartbreak tear. This one was from Scott, the bouncer with the giant muscles and propensity for writing earnest love poems, whose heart Liza had recently broken. Thank you, Scott, Lucy whispered as she unscrewed the top. She dumped the tear onto the tips of her fingers and pressed them together.

  Usually diluted tears were used to activate the magic in whatever potion or elixir one was using, but with the help of a Heartbreaker as conduit, an undiluted tear could dissolve the barriers between hearts. Lucy wouldn’t be creating feelings that didn’t exist, but rather opening up a pathway for those that were already there.

  Lucy stood up and walked forward.

  “Hi, Jess.”

  Jessica tipped her head to the side. “Hey, Lucy,” she said. She smiled slightly.

  “That’s a pretty bracelet,” Lucy said. “Let me see. . . .” She reached out for the thin beaded band and pressed her thumb to Jessica’s wrist like she was taking her pulse. In less than a second, Jessica’s feelings flooded her—a rush of confusion, a prickle of nerves, and a surge of fierce bravery. Jessica was ready for her life to change. Lucy smiled. Well, change it would.

  “Jason,” Lucy said. “What size are your wrists? Let me check.” She knew she sounded stupid, but she didn’t even care. In a second, he’d forget all about her anyway. Lucy could feel his heart pounding, and his feelings right after, so similar to Jessica’s—the confusion, nerves, a slight hint of wonder. Their hearts beat under her thumbs. Lucy took a deep breath and concentrated on pulling up the energy from the center of the earth—through the rock, the soil, the floor of the building, up through her legs, into her chest, and out through her fingers. Lucy closed her eyes and behind her lids watched quick flashes of images of the two of them together—Jason brushing Jessica’s hair from her cheek, Jessica leaning her head against his shoulder, him playing a song for her, her handing him a gift, the two of them locked in an embrace, their lips meeting and parting and meeting again. These images were coming from them, not Lucy, although she could not be sure which was from who. She let them travel across her like a bridge, his passing to her, hers passing to him. She held them both there until she felt their hearts beating in sync. Then Lucy let go and stepped back, watching as they turned toward each other. Their eyes met, and in unison they took a breath. Jessica blushed. She looked down at the container of cottage cheese on her desk, then back up at Jason, who was still staring at her. He brushed his hair out of his eyes, and his lips spread into a smile. Jessica smiled back. And Lucy thought about what a lovely, lovely thing it was to watch someone get exactly what they wished for.