Instructions for a Broken Heart

by Kim Culbertson

  Jessa held the phone out for him to see. She had asked Carissa the same thing. The text read:

  U know! Dont ask again

  Tyler gave her a funny look. “The audition?”

  Jessa nodded.

  He sat up in his chair. “It’s true?”

  Jessa tucked the paper back into the envelope, avoiding Tyler’s dark eyes. “It’s true.”

  ***

  For dinner, they dragged their jet-lagged bodies toward a small restaurant near the hotel. Tomorrow, they would start their tour of Rome, and Jessa felt it simmering under her skin, like roiling water. They would see the Forum and the Sistine Chapel, something extra special because they were being granted a tour on Good Friday. She could stare up at Michelangelo’s arched ceiling and suck in all that history through her pores—all the people who were there before, and she could breathe into the people who would come after her.

  Tyler walked slowly beside her, staring into shop windows. She had told him about the audition, about how Sean had switched his lineup ticket with Carissa so he could go before her, how he’d swiped it right off the metal seat where she’d left it to go talk to Christina about costume ideas, since she was helping Christina with costumes. He’d been twelfth and she’d been fifth, and he switched them. His sly, manipulative ways. Jessa sure related to that stupid twelfth ticket, left on a metal chair for a newer option.

  Tyler held the door of the restaurant open for Devon and Jade, and then he and Jessa stepped in behind them. The restaurant was candlelit and smoky, with a few burning wall sconces. Tables sat snugly together in the main room, and they settled into chairs near a fireplace, a low flame going. The stone walls of the room made Jessa think of fantasy novels or Shakespeare. Small prints hung here and there, line drawings of Rome, a few watercolors of buildings she didn’t recognize. Several other patrons dined quietly, a salty, low buzz of Italian all around. She watched her friends find seats, giddy with sleep deprivation and excitement, chatting, clutching menus. Hillary pulled out her Italian dictionary and was translating back and forth for Devon and Tim.

  “What an idiot,” Tyler finally said, scanning his menu.

  “Well, yeah.” Jessa’s eyes fell on the penne all’arrabbiata. Yum.

  “He switched the order?”

  Jessa shushed him.

  He just shook his head. “And you’re mourning this guy?”

  “It was humiliating, Tyler.” Jessa said, studying Sean, who was cuddling with Natalie at a corner table. “It still is.” Jerk. Jerk. Jerk.

  Tyler snapped his menu shut and leaned across the white-clothed table. “I get that. I do, Jess. But he’s done some seriously bonehead things. Not at the top of the list, switching his audition order so he was the first to do that Hamlet monologue, and, I mean…” His eyes strayed across the room. “Natalie? She’s nice and all, but she’s kind of like a Barbie with a speech impediment.”

  That got a hiccup of laughter out of Jessa. “You should design T-shirts.”

  He settled back in his chair, scanned the cover of the menu. “Not to be a dick, but he really traded down.”

  “Thanks, Ty.” Then she was suddenly sick again, watching them there at that table, her eyes feeling like they’d been rubbed with sand. Breakups were hard enough without having your own personal reality TV show in front of you just days after you found your boyfriend half naked in a costume barn with the Barbie in question. Not that Natalie wasn’t a nice-enough girl. She was. Until Monday, she really hadn’t been much on Jessa’s radar. Carissa couldn’t stand her, but Carissa couldn’t stand a lot of people. Still, how nice of a girl steals someone’s boyfriend?

  Jessa pushed back away from the table and found her two teachers sitting a few tables away. “Ms. Jackson?”

  “Yeah?” Ms. Jackson placed her hand on Jessa’s arm, almost instinctively, to keep her from fleeing. She must have that look in her eyes. Like prey.

  Jessa cleared her throat, tried for a light, clear voice. “Can I go back to the hotel, please?”

  Mr. Campbell sighed, his face slipping a bit. He glanced at Ms. Jackson and then back to Jessa. “I’m sorry, Jess. We all need to stick together.”

  Tears welled in Jessa’s eyes.

  “You know what?” Ms. Jackson stood. “I’ll walk you back to the hotel.” She pointed to her menu. “Ben, order me anything that doesn’t have lamb.”

  ***

  The air had grown cool and a light wind rustled the leaves in the trees lining the narrow street. Jessa pulled her denim jacket close to her and glanced sideways at Ms. Jackson. She’d had Ms. Jackson for English for the past two years and couldn’t actually remember standing this close to her before. She was a terrific teacher, maybe thirty, knife-blade sharp, always calm, and she came up with interesting projects for the English section of their drama academy, always talking about feminist theory or literary symbolism, and totally into the students’ insights about what they read. She was polished—bohemian meets Banana Republic clothes—and her short blonde hair seemed always in place, her black-rimmed reading glasses perched on her head or dangling from a beaded chain. Still, there was a coolness to her, something distant in her, not at all like the warm big-brother light Mr. Campbell pooled onto them. The air between them now seemed tight and strange.

  “Thank you for walking me, Ms. Jackson.” Jessa wiped at a stray tear.

  Ms. Jackson seemed to be weighing something, hesitating. Finally, she said, “It was brave of you to come, Jessa. No one imagines for a moment that this is easy for you.”

  Jessa started to tell her it was fine, that she had saved for ten months for the trip and that no stupid, cheating boy was going to keep her from the experience of a lifetime—and besides this was going to look really good on her college applications—but she stopped. She stopped on the street and looked at her teacher, felt a melting in the air between them. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  Ms. Jackson’s smooth brow furrowed, and Jessa immediately regretted her words, wished she could just stuff them right back into her mouth like a big chunk of bread.

  “Yes, you can.” Ms. Jackson’s usually muted eyes glittered. “You can. But you can’t half ass it.”

  “What?” Jessa took a step back, her eyes finding the hem of her jacket.

  “Jessa. You know how Mr. Campbell talks to you guys about auditioning?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How you start your audition the second you walk in the door, the second you take your seat. Not just when you get on stage?”

  Jessa nodded.

  “Think of this like that.”

  This was one of those things English teachers did when they wanted you to find the deeper meaning, when they wanted you to seek out the metaphor. Jessa was missing the metaphor.

  “I think I’m missing the metaphor.”

  Ms. Jackson laughed, a deep, surprised laugh she sometimes got when one of her students said something unexpectedly funny in class. “No, honey, you’re not. This is about impressions. How you’re seen. You don’t want him to see you moping around, leaving restaurants and sulking. You want him to see you having a blast, living it up, not needing him. Don’t come all this way and then blow your monologue. Now there’s a metaphor.”

  Jessa thought about Carissa’s audition for Hamlet, her meltdown when Sean switched their lineup tickets and then marched on stage with his “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” What a rogue? For sure. But Carissa had flipped and then sulked her way through the rest of auditions. She had blown her audition before she got on stage.

  The street darkened, tiny bits of lamplight pooling from the windows of restaurants and bars, the haze of evening settling over the city, this city she had come so far to see.

  “You know what, Ms. Jackson? They had some pretty good-looking pasta on that menu.”

  “Good girl.”

  ***

  The next morning, Jessa sat cross-legged on the smooth floor inside the belly of the Pantheon. She still couldn’t believe she�
��d walked through those massive gray columns and into the heart of this ancient temple, the huge dome above her head with its bright, light-spilling eye. She breathed in the cool air, tried to close up her ears as if they had eyelids. For a quick moment, she thought about her iPod—she craved Rent. How perfect would “Seasons of Love” sound right now? But she didn’t want to drown out the sounds of Rome around her completely. She was sitting in the temple of the gods, this great sweeping place where all the people in their tourist shorts and swinging cameras seemed out of place, seemed like they should be wearing togas or draping gowns laced with ivy. No, an iPod would just be tacky. Looking up, she followed the smooth marble walls peppered with Latin rising around her, her eyes sliding across the high ceiling, the dome lit with sky. She willed away the sounds of all the tourists around her. She began to sing under her breath about all those thousands of minutes that made up a year. The gods probably sang, right? Even if they didn’t sing Jonathan Larson.

  She rubbed her eyes—so tired. Stupid Tyler and his stupid rock-paper-scissors he made her play to see whether or not she’d write Carissa’s character description. He knew Jessa had made a personal commitment to never turn down a legitimate RPS request. No fair. And she had lost—paper to Tyler’s scissors. So she’d stayed up and written it, surprised it had taken so long. The first draft was just too mean; the next rewrite wasn’t mean enough, wasn’t close to accurate. But Jessa had spent a good deal of her relationship with Sean defending him. It was a hard habit to break. Finally, she’d landed on it. She sent it to Carissa at breakfast after a pretty lengthy argument with Tyler to include “dresses like an Aberzombie”:

  Audition for World’s Suckiest Boyfriend

  Name: Sean Myers, age 16. Tall, good at sports, good looking but not in an obvious sort of way

  Character traits: Charming, big ego that he covers with aforementioned charm, CHEATER, only half listens when someone talks, selfish, eats too fast, gets what he wants, likes pizza a little too much, average student, great soccer player, decent writer when he tries, demanding, flashes of romantic behavior (can make up for all bad behavior above), dresses like an Aberzombie (Tyler’s contribution)

  Now, watching Sean and Natalie holding hands several yards away, both peering up at that great eye in the ceiling, she wished she had sent the meaner one—the one that called him an ass-kissing mediocre bastard. Her eyes welling up, she sang softly to herself, something Sean used to love about her, her Julie Andrews instinct he’d called it. “Seasons of Love”—all those minutes that made up a year, all those moments.

  A year—almost a year ago, she was kissing Sean in the faint backstage lights of Hamlet, swathed in her Ophelia costume, that incandescent, cascading dress she had thought about borrowing to wear to prom. Now she was sitting in the temple of the gods watching Sean nuzzle Natalie’s ear, rubbing his hand up and down her narrow back. She jerked her eyes away. It would suck to puke in the temple of the gods.

  She searched the room for Tyler. No sign of him. Mr. Campbell stood near the entrance, checking his watch. They were waiting for the other school to arrive with the tour guide. Because Williams Peak had such a small group, only eighteen including Mr. Campbell and Ms. Jackson, they had to partner with another school for the trip to share all the tours, bus trips, and hotels.

  “Don’t worry,” Mr. Campbell had assured them the night before, right before lights out. “We told them we’re a theater program. I’m sure they’ll find us a good match.”

  There was commotion at the entrance. A pack of teenagers stomped their way in, talking loudly, pushing and jostling one another. Jessa counted the swarm, twenty or so students. Two men, probably teachers, were with them, both wearing versions of the kind of shirts you buy in travel magazines, the kind that say they don’t wrinkle.

  “Oh my God,” Jessa heard a girl in huge black sunglasses say. “It’s so filthy.” The girl planted her hands squarely on the hips of her designer jeans. She was very blonde, a polished chrome-bumper of a girl—all gleaming and photo-shoot ready. “Gross.” Sniffing, she checked her pink BlackBerry.

  A shorter redhead in skinny ankle jeans next to her nodded and snapped a picture with an expensive-looking digital camera. “Twenty bucks.” She snapped another picture. The heels of her shoes looked like ice picks.

  “Your dad is such an idiot.” The blonde was now checking the skin beneath her eyes in a sleek, glittery compact. “I can’t believe you get twenty bucks a picture.”

  “I know, right?” The redhead had a laugh like a howler monkey. “But only if it’s ‘culturally relevant’—whatever the hell that means.”

  “It means ‘old.’” The boy who had sidled up suddenly, winding his arm around the blonde, was over six feet, with dark creamy skin. He put his free hand in the low pocket of his baggy pants. “And he’s only doing it to make sure you actually look at some of this junk and not just abuse the discos.” The redhead swatted at him, then stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his mouth.

  “Oh my God, Madison. You’re such a slut!” The blonde snapped the compact shut and tucked it away in a small gold bag.

  Jessa frowned at Tyler as he settled in next to her. “Oh goody,” he said, pulling the hood of his black sweatshirt over his head. “Our traveling partners.”

  Then the frog appeared.

  At first, Jessa thought she was imagining something or that she saw someone’s silly hat, or maybe even some sort of sign for a nearby restaurant. Then, as it closed in on them, bobbing over the heads of tourists, she realized it was a plastic frog on a stick.

  #3: dead dog

  “Buongiorno, I miei amici!” Their tour guide, Francesca, blinked out at them with bright eyes much like the frog’s she was toting on the stick they were supposed to follow. Standing outside on the shallow steps of the Pantheon, dwarfed by a massive column behind her, she assembled the group. Jessa studied Francesca’s wide, cropped linen trousers and the charcoal cape that seemed a nod to the togas on so many of the statues that dotted the city landscape like secret service agents. Her outfit had no right angles, all sweeps and folds. Her hair seemed its own creature, something wild and reddish brown and curly; its tendrils down her back, draping her shoulders, swept back away from her wide O of a face. Her looks were exaggerated and windswept, strikingly beautiful.

  The two men from the other group had noticed immediately.

  The taller man quickly positioned himself close to her, watching her, her every word the key to something he couldn’t quite open. He was six feet tall but shorter somehow, as if the world’s hands constantly pressed his shoulders into downward slopes. Close-cut hair, not blond or brown, a travel shirt with flaps and pockets and on the sleeve some sort of buckle. Probably a history teacher, or earth science.

  Francesca surveyed the group. “Are we missing some?”

  “Um, Francesca?” The man with sloping shoulders laughed nervously. “My wife and a couple of our students went to do a bit of shopping. Hope that’s OK. Not holding us up?” He had a mustache that Jessa hadn’t noticed at first, a mess of straw beneath his nose that looked like something Carissa might feed Jumper for a snack.

  Francesca frowned, adjusted her cape. “Certainly, certainly.” She checked some papers she had fastened to a clipboard with a large jeweled clip. “Actually, no. You must fetch them. We have to meet the bus.”

  The shoulders slouched off in the direction of the boutique shops across the way.

  A low murmur arose from the group, side whispers that were suddenly allowed to grow and shift. Jessa spotted the blonde girl with the BlackBerry snapping her gum. The redhead snapped a picture of her snapping her gum and got a manicured middle finger as a reply.

  Francesca spoke suddenly into a cell phone in fast Italian. Mr. Campbell and Ms. Jackson pulled the Williams Peak group over to a nearby fountain to wait for the wayward members of the other school.

  Tyler sat on the ground next to Mr. Campbell, reading a packet of what looked like stapled-together index cards.
As Jessa crouched down next to him, he shoved them into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Travel stuff.” Tyler cleared his throat and nudged Mr. Campbell. “OK, so this is dubious.” Tyler’s new favorite word—lately, everything mildly annoying or suspicious was dubious.

  Mr. Campbell slipped on a pair of sunglasses. “Come on, it’s not that bad.”

  Tyler flipped his hood off. “Correction. It wasn’t that bad until the whole cast of The Hills showed up.”

  “Be nice.” But Mr. Campbell was smiling.

  Jessa longed to go park herself at one of the small café tables lining the plaza, sip an espresso, and read a book. But instead, they waited. Tim attempted handstands and Devon tried to knock him over without stepping on the pigeons. Jade sang quietly, strumming her travel guitar.

  “How do you say ‘bored’ in Italian?” Tyler asked.

  Jessa brushed some hair from her eyes.

  Mr. Campbell motioned to the inside of her left wrist, the long iridescent skinny trail of a scar. “Where’d you get that?”

  Jessa laughed, pulled her cuff up. “Didn’t you know? I’m Harry Potter’s crazy half sister.”

  Chuckling, Mr. Campbell pushed on the nose of his sunglasses as if they didn’t quite fit and went back to studying the whole group. Jessa used the tiny pocket of time to fish her iPod out of her sweatshirt pocket and plug herself in. She found Les Mis and started from the beginning.

  Tyler peeked at her screen, reached over, and clicked it off.

  “Hey!”

  “Carissa’s orders.” He handed Jessa a white gummy bear, her favorite.

  A moment later, Francesca ushered them back into a pack, the frog a bobbing, floating thing.

  “Come on, Éponine,” Tyler said, pulling her to her feet.

  The shoppers returned, their arms full of shiny bags. They wore cropped jackets and strappy heeled sandals, designer denim, and round, smoky sunglasses. Jessa frowned. The whole lot of them looked lacquered, shiny, and windproof. Jessa stared down at her Chaco sandals and tan shorts that might as well have a neon sign reading “Tourist” on them.