Jessa frowned. Tyler was using his stage manager voice—that mix of patience, attentiveness, and condescension that made Jessa feel both safe and three inches tall, like at any moment he would usher her in perfect time onto a lit stage or give her a graham cracker and a cup of apple juice. Right now felt like the latter.
Tyler patted the empty seat next to him. Condescending.
Jessa didn’t budge.
“Come on. Sit down.” He smiled at her, that smile he had that shot through his dark eyes and made his face gleam. Patient. Attentive.
Thing was, Tyler was a really good stage manager.
She sat.
#1: the polka-dot
incident
Outside, the sky was losing the flashes of pink that had been streaking the sky.
“Open it.” Tyler motioned to the envelope in Jessa’s lap. “I think it will make your day.”
“Promises, promises.” She turned the package over. The front was labeled:
Top Twenty Reasons He’s a Slimy Jerk Bastard:
Instructions for Getting Over
One Pathetic Excuse (Key Word Ex) of a Boyfriend
Jessa couldn’t help but let a smile sneak out. Under the title it read:
Open it, Jessa!
She slid her finger under the half-sticky film of the opening, then peered inside. More than a dozen small white envelopes peered back.
“What is it?”
Tyler raised his eyebrows. “Instructions are in there.”
Jessa dug through the sea of envelopes and extracted a piece of pale-blue binder paper covered in Carissa’s neat print:
This has an order—a method to my madness (see…I paid attention, even if I didn’t get the part I wanted in the stupid play)…anyway—digressing! The envelopes. They’re numbered 1–20, enough to open two a day on your trip but the IMPORTANT thing is that you read and think about each reason and THEN do the instruction before moving on to the next envelope—no skipping ahead! Pinky swear with Tyler right now that you won’t skip ahead! I’m waiting. Do it!
Jessa held her pinky up to Tyler. “Pinky swear I won’t skip ahead.” They locked pinkies and shook their hands three times.
And make sure you save the last two envelopes for the plane ride home. Each envelope has a reason why he’s a jerk and not worth the dirt on your shoes. And each one has an instruction, something you have to do—NO CHEATING. Tyler knows he’s to be ON TOP OF THIS! I’m doing this for your own good—you’re in no state right now to argue. Ciao!—C.
“What a nut.” Jessa folded the paper and handed it to Tyler.
He tucked it back into the package. “She thinks she’s helping.”
“No wonder she’s getting a D in chemistry. She spends all her time doing stuff like this.” But inside, Jessa felt the tight knot around her heart loosen a bit.
Tyler fished around in the package until he found the #1 envelope. He peeled it open and pulled out the thin sheet of paper.
Reason #1: The Polka-Dot Incident: Remember in third grade when Sean had that birthday party and his mom hired the clown and he punched the clown in the face because he was wearing polka dots instead of stripes and his mom cried? This is Sean Myer—a kid so disturbed, he has to punch a clown in the face and make his mom cry. You dodged a bullet, Ms. Gardner. A bullet! Who wants to be with a clown puncher who’s mean to his mom?
Tyler started cracking up. “He punched a clown?”
Jessa rolled her eyes. “He was eight. And in Sean’s defense, that clown had serious personal-space issues.”
Tyler passed her the letter. “Says a nice thing about you.”
At that same party, you hugged the clown and told him that polka dots were your favorite kind of clown outfit.
“I was eight. And polka dots are the best kind of clown outfit.” But Jessa knew about that part of Sean that reacted when he didn’t get what he wanted. Her eyes strayed past the rows of airplane seats. She could just make out the crown of his head, his dust-blond hair, see the edge of his elbow in its tan jacket on the armrest, one white curl of his iPod cord. What was he listening to? It better not be one of the mixes she made him. That was the problem with the digital age: she would never have the satisfaction of snapping any CDs she had made him in half. You can’t snap in half an iTunes playlist.
“So are you going to do it?” Tyler studied the paper.
“Do what?”
“Your instruction.” He motioned toward Carissa’s letter.
“What is this—Mission Impossible 5: The Teen Years?”
“I’m sure she’s starting you off easy.”
The instruction for this one was easy. List five things she hated about him. She could list more, she was sure of it. Of course, she was suddenly struck dumb with images of all the good stuff. Sunday mornings at Ridge Café for breakfast and studying. That hair, those green eyes, the way he smelled like spice after a shower, the way he said he suffered from Jessaplexy—a known disease to cause serious shivers (OK, that one was totally lame and she made fun of him for it, but she secretly loved it)—the note in her locker each morning just to say “Morning!” because he had a zero period and she didn’t. Hate, hate, hate him, she repeated over and over in her head.
“He doesn’t like Broadway musicals.” She looked at Tyler hopefully.
“Insensitive jerk. He’s a disgrace to the entire world of theater.”
“You don’t really like Broadway musicals either, do you?”
“Not so much—no.”
Jessa leaned her head against Tyler’s shoulder, the black leather of his jacket cool against her skin, and listened to the hum of the airplane. Seriously, what had she been thinking coming on this trip?
***
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, Tyler grabbed an edge of their drama teacher’s sweatshirt as he headed down the aisle toward the bathroom. “I’ll ask Mr. C.”
Her teacher stopped and leaned against the side of the seats. “What’s up?”
Mr. Campbell was in his second year as drama teacher at Williams Peak. Twenty-six and fresh out of an MFA program for playwriting. He was a great teacher, nimbly walking that hazy line between teacher and sweet big brother. Right now, he seemed sort of rumpled and tired, though planes seemed to have that effect on most people—except flight attendants.
“Do they have liquid soap in Italy?” Tyler blinked up at him.
“Is this for the book?” Mr. Campbell tugged absently at a string of his hooded sweatshirt. Tyler was always saying he would write a book: Stupid Questions and Other Ways to Pass the Time.
“Sure.” Tyler hooked a thumb at her. “Little Miss Small-Town USA here doesn’t think they have liquid soap in Italy.”
“I’m just saying that liquid soap seems like an American construct, that’s all.” Jessa glanced at Tyler. “This is not book material.”
“I think they probably do.” Mr. Campbell smiled at them. “But it’s not a stupid question.”
“Diplomatic, Mr. C.” Tyler flipped open a copy of Rolling Stone.
Mr. Campbell pointed out a band he liked to Tyler in the glossy pages of the magazine. Then he said, “I like that book you gave me, Jess.”
“I just know how much you liked The Bean Trees,” she started to explain, but then Sean shifted in his seat up ahead, leaned in toward Natalie, and suddenly any and all coherent thought vanished from her brain.
Mr. Campbell was smiling down at her, his brown hair sticking out the way it always did, but as he turned to follow her gaze, his smile dimmed. She remembered how he had come up behind her when she found Sean in the costume barn, had wrapped an arm like a blanket around her, led her back to the theater. He’d seen them, a jumble of limbs and bare skin. He knew. He knew where her head was right now, which was actually more than just a little embarrassing.
Jessa shook her head as if she could clear the image of Sean and Natalie like the Etch A Sketch app on her dad’s iPhone. She tried to regain the thread of conversation with her teacher. “Any
way, the book has the Southwest plus it has all the acting stuff in it too.” She’d given him a novel called Catching Heaven, a woman fleeing her acting life in LA for a small southwestern town, a woman fleeing herself.
Mr. Campbell ran a hand through his thick hair. “I think we can all relate to wanting to run from something,” he said, fiddling again with the string of his sweatshirt hood, his eyes shadowed as they slipped back to Sean and Natalie.
Jessa didn’t respond, couldn’t seem to find her voice. The head shake hadn’t worked. She couldn’t get the image of Sean and Natalie out of her head. It sunspotted her, burned behind her eyes, and it took her a few minutes before she noticed that Mr. Campbell had wandered away back up the aisle.
***
Without warning, the sunspot was standing over her, and Jessa thought for a minute that she was having a nightmare, the one with the looming black shadow that struck her sometimes, left her shaking and sweating in the middle of the night.
This was something like that.
“Hey, Jess.” Sean tucked his hands awkwardly in his pockets, two quiet tucks of guilt.
“Keep it moving, Sean. Nothing to see here.” Tyler surprised Jessa with the growl in his voice.
“I was just going back to see Devon,” Sean started, but something in Tyler’s look must have stopped him. Jessa memorized the first half of the safety instructions poking out of the seat’s back pocket.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to just walk by and not say anything.”
“Yeah, well, nobody’s going to accuse you of good judgment.” Tyler’s hand settled on Jessa’s shoulder.
She studied the long line of Sean’s body out of the corner of her eye, his legs in his jeans fidgeting as if they weren’t sure whether they were staying or going. Going, she willed them. Going.
Staying. Using muscles she was sure she grew yesterday, she forced her eyes to his face. And, of course, his mouth. She had kissed him for what would be the last time Sunday evening, a soft, quick afterthought of a kiss, before he got in the green Honda she’d named Frodo. They’d been studying, and she’d walked him outside. Such a silly nothing of a kiss. A sort of half kiss, half laugh because they’d been laughing at something. Something on the Funny or Die website. It made her smile a little even now, and he mistook it for an invitation.
“Jessa, I wanted to say…” he started, his hand finding a place on the seat rest behind her head.
Tyler saw the tears before she realized she had spilled them. “Sean…” he stood up, ducking a little to avoid the bag storage. “Just go. I don’t think the flight attendants will like it when I punch you in the face.”
“Five things,” Jessa blurted, staring straight ahead, the words tumbling out. “You never wash your car. Your cologne smells like possum pee. You overcommit to all your lines, and it is so, so annoying—you think you’re Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront and you’re not. You don’t like my dog, and you always pick Junior Mints at the movies when you know, you know, I like Raisinets.” She turned, almost panting, to Tyler. “Is that it? Is that five?”
“Close enough,” Tyler laughed, sinking back into his seat. Sean was already moving away down the aisle, other passengers’ eyes slipping from him to her. “And I don’t want to know how you know what possum pee smells like.”
#2: the audition
Jessa blew a strand of hair from her eyes and surveyed the tiny hotel room. She rolled her suitcase across the cool blue-and-white tiled floor and hefted it onto one of the two small beds. She needed a shower. Where was the shower? Her mind churned with the drive from the airport, the way the light hit the stone and terra-cotta buildings, everything here warm and buttery. Italy, Italy, she had mouthed into the expanse of bus window, making tiny patches of steam on the glass. Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Seneca, that guy that Russell Crowe played in Gladiator. Jessa had wanted to burst open the window and drink it all into her lungs. Now, outside the hotel window, framed in a gauze of pale curtain, a freeway buzzed and she caught a glimpse of a hazed linen sky just turning pink at the edges.
A rustle at the door turned her. Natalie “the Boob Job” Stone stood frozen there, a blue-jeaned statue, eyes locked on the white square of paper Ms. Jackson had handed out in the lobby. Jessa held her breath as she watched the other girl check the iron number affixed to the blue door and check her paper again. Natalie had taken off the sweatshirt she had on the plane and a white T-shirt strained across that chest. Jessa stared at the red lace of one peeking bra strap, then checked her own paper, her fingers starting to shake. Nine—underlined. Room nine—with the underline of death that made sure that girl standing three feet away hadn’t flipped it by mistake, to make a six a nine.
Five hours might have passed. Or five seconds. Time had suddenly failed Jessa, crawled inside her eardrums, a hissing monster. She blinked again, started zipping and unzipping the outside zipper of her black suitcase. Black suitcase with a green slip of hair ribbon tied around the handle—Maisy’s ribbon. Natalie’s suitcase was red, of course. And still there. Still there in the doorway.
“Oooh, problematic.” Tyler’s head appeared over Natalie’s shoulder. She recoiled as if burned, still clutching that stupid scrap of white. He laughed out loud. “You two are not rooming together—it’s not that kind of show.”
“I got nine?” Natalie had one of those voices that always seemed like it was asking a question. Always. Even if she was telling you something, she wasn’t totally sure about it. It made improv scenes with her an absolute nightmare because she always seemed to be getting permission for the next beat.
“Come with me.” Tyler grabbed Natalie’s arm in one hand and her suitcase in his other, and steered her out of Jessa’s throbbing sight line. Listening to their retreating steps, the roll of the red suitcase echoing away, she pressed her fingers against her eyelids, took a breath. The room smelled suddenly of mold, of old green things and wet paper. She needed a shower more than ever.
Then she noticed the showerhead on the wall. She squinted as if the light was wrong, as if there were not in fact a showerhead in the middle of the bedroom, and her eyes moved to the ring on the ceiling, to the bunch of curtain pulled into the wall. She was supposed to take a shower in the middle of her room? Her eyes went again to the tile floor, the curve of it toward a drain.
She fell backward onto the small bed.
***
Within minutes, Mr. Campbell was standing over her.
“Roommate trouble?”
She sat up. “Can’t I just room with Tyler the whole time?”
Mr. Campbell sat down on the bed next to her. “Listen. I get why you can’t room with Natalie. I mean, what are the odds of her pulling that number? Sick universe.”
“Par for my week.”
In the midst of what must have been a sympathetic glance, Mr. Campbell got caught in a yawn. “Sorry.” He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Here’s the thing—one of the goals on this trip is to grow as a community. We want you guys to have different roommates so you don’t clique up on us the whole time.”
Jessa took a deep breath. Somehow, the thought that it was Italian air cycling through her lungs helped lift the weight a little. “I’m sorry. I’m really not trying to be a drama queen.”
“You think I don’t know a thing or two about drama queens?” He tried to catch her eye, coax a smile out of her.
A rustle at the door—Jade Evans stood there, her bright, multicolored, woven duffel over her shoulder. “I switched with Natalie.” Her jangling earrings glinted in the late-afternoon light.
The weight lifted entirely. Jade had that calming Earth Mother effect, with her wide, dewy face and thick curls, her mood-ring eyes that shifted between hazel and green and brown. Being around Jade was always a bit like being glazed with fairy dust.
Mr. Campbell moved toward the door. “Thanks, J.” He patted Jade’s shoulder on his way out. “Dinner’s in an hour. Meet us in the lobby.”
***
Je
ssa reread the text on her phone from Carissa and then checked the slip of paper again. She gazed out over the red rooftops, watched the far dot of a man walk the smaller dot of a white dog along a riverbank on the other side of the whirling freeway. Tyler had somehow gotten a balcony with his room. She got a showerhead.
“I can’t get this SIM card to work.” Tyler frowned at his phone. “What’d she say?”
“Still blaming Sean for not getting to play Hamlet last spring.” She passed him Reason #2, her eyes still following the man and his dog:
He STOLE my part! Do I need to say it again!? STOLE IT! What kind of jerk does that?
Tyler read it as he bit the end off a Snickers bar. “That play was already a nightmare to manage—would have been a train wreck with Carissa in the lead.” He pretended to strangle himself. “Still, rumor has it he jacked her monologue.”
Jessa frowned. “It was not Sean’s fault he got cast as Hamlet over Carissa. It wasn’t the direction Mr. Campbell was taking the play. It has nothing to do with them doing the same monologue.”
“But he knew she was doing that one. Dubious.” Tyler picked a piece of chocolate and caramel from the end of the wrapper.
“Thanks for offering me a bite by the way.” Jessa grabbed the envelope back from him.
He held the last blob of candy out to her. “They didn’t have any gummy bears at the airport.”
Ignoring him, Jessa reread her instruction in Carissa’s purple pen. “She wants me to write a fake audition character description. About Sean and his sly, manipulative ways.” A few weeks before auditions, Mr. Campbell would tack up rows of multicolored index cards outside his office with descriptions of each character in the play, so they would know who to audition for.
“What ways?” Tyler tossed the wrapper in a garbage can and wiped his sticky fingers on his jeans.
Instructions for a Broken Heart Page 2
