Tyler flipped quickly through the instruction manual pages. “Oh.” He flipped the page around to face Jessa. At the top of the page, it said:
For # 15.
She doesn’t know about it. I repeat, she doesn’t know. If she finds out, make her understand. You were there. Jessa will understand about the improv. She understands that I get caught up in things. She gets me. Tell her. That’s all it was.
Jessa forced the haze out of her head. “What happened?”
Tyler held up his hands. “Jessa, I swear I didn’t know she hadn’t told you. She told me you knew. That you guys figured it out.”
Jessa studied her hands. “She told me she did a weird improv with Sean. She didn’t say anything about kissing him.”
“It was in front of a bunch of us. Just your average ‘freeze’ game…But…it was kind of intense. It wasn’t part of the sketch. We were all a little weirded out.” Tyler reached out as if she might fall, even though they were sitting, like she might fall into nothingness. “I’m sorry, Jess, honest.”
“And no one told me.” Jessa’s head began to throb. “Again.”
“Yeah, that’s not so good.” Tyler scrambled for Cameron’s water again who passed it to him, wide eyed. “We…We really thought she told you.”
“She said, if I find out…”
“I really, really had stopped reading it, Jess.” Tyler looked like he might cry.
“It’s not your fault.” She took a shuddering breath. “Are there any other Carissa and Sean kissing-for-no-reason moments that I should know about? Anything else in that little manual of yours?”
He flipped to the last page. “Nothing. Not that I know of. I swear. Do you want to see it?” He held out the index-card pages to her.
“No.”
Tyler did that squinty thing with his eyes when he was really, really worried, like when he was taking a geometry test or right before an audition. “Don’t freak out, Jess.”
“Please stop saying that to me.” Jessa sat up, tucked her knees under her, folded her hands in her lap. Freak out? She was actually, suddenly, inexplicably calm. She studied Dylan Thomas as he launched into another song. He was pretty good on that travel guitar of Jade’s. She lassoed her vision to him, found herself wrapping her ears around the lyrics—a Rhett Miller song she had always really liked.
You’ve got terrible vision if you don’t see…that I’m in love with you…
Jade giggled next to him. Jessa sighed. She was just missing things right and left, clearly. Wandering about in her little pity bubble. Not freaking out, she wanted to point out to Tyler. But then maybe that would just be its own brand of freaking out—that assertion that she wasn’t. Maybe this trip was just one epic freak-out.
And really, could Jade throw herself any more at Dylan Thomas? She was practically swooning, her face all bright and staring up at him, winding all that great hair around her finger. Guys tended to look like asses around Jade, not the other way around. Jessa thought maybe she should say something to her on the bus.
Gears shifted and whined, and Jessa saw the bus ambling around a corner to fetch them.
Another bus ride.
Jessa wanted to scream, wanted to ride on the top of the bus, ratcheted down with bungee cords so she could feel the wind in her hair and not have to spend five more minutes pressed into those velour seats with that liar—that liar! Sitting right there down the aisle listening to his liar iPod and reading his liar magazine. Carissa and Sean? She felt sick. Perhaps she should take a quick survey on the bus: “Excuse me, please—anyone here who hasn’t made out with my ex-boyfriend?”
Instead, she flipped open the letter from Carissa, the instruction like a suddenly illuminated sign:
Forgive Me.
She took a black pen from her bag, scribbled out the instruction, then added to the title across the top a line of question marks.
Friendship????????
Then she got on the stupid bus.
#16: the beat
before and after
Jessa texted Carissa on the bus:
I know about u and S. BOTH TIMES. The REAL story. U lied. How could u? And I know about your stupid Jessa instruction manual! WTF?! U don’t know me at all! I do NOT forgive U!!!
She turned her phone off and stuffed it as far to the bottom of her bag as she could, jammed it between her sweatshirt and a couple of torrone candy wrappers still a bit sticky with the nougat. Yuck.
Her fingers grazed the edge of the novel. She needed to finish it, to find out what Stephen did when the world went all dark and wrong.
For a moment, she studied the shifting landscape, turning more pastel as they headed south, then flipped open her book, but the words just swam on the page, and it felt like years before she could lose herself in them.
***
The bus pulled into a dusty parking lot in Naples.
“Here is the cameo factory.” Francesca stood the frog at attention at the front of the bus. She pushed her sunglasses into her curls, rubbed her fingers quickly beneath her dark-circled eyes. Where was Giacomo? Jessa hadn’t seen him at Pompeii.
Out the window, she saw the small, squat building. Factory? Every factory she’d ever seen was the size of a football stadium and spewing smoke or something into the sky through huge stacks. This could be someone’s house.
Jessa closed the novel she hadn’t quite finished, her eyes dazed and readjusting to Italy, lost for so long in Stephen’s green Ireland. She wished she were in Ireland now. Then she wouldn’t have to watch Sean’s long, muscled back take the bus steps in two quick strides, see Tyler stealing sheepish glances at her, or watch Jade’s arm linked through Dylan Thomas’s arm like she owned it or something.
Inside, rows and rows of tables stretched room length, covered with thousands of small round cameos. Jessa wandered the narrow aisles, her eyes slipping over the creamy, delicate pieces. She sneezed in the dusty air. The room seemed to block out all outside light, all the natural, peach-colored Italian late afternoon. Instead, the light in the room seemed to be fighting a losing battle with shadow, straining against it to cast a yellow glow on the tables. She sneezed again. Or the room was losing its light to all the dust in the place.
Her eyes landed on a small oval. Three women draped in robes, twirling together against a creamy shell pink background.
“The Three Graces.” Madison stood beside her, following her gaze. Her red hair was tied into a head scarf and she wore a clingy tube top and short skirt. Huge silver hoops glinted in the dim lighting. No camera in sight. “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” She picked up the delicate piece. “This is very you. I’m getting it for you.” She marched toward the cash register.
Jessa followed, dazed. “What? Oh, no. You don’t have to do that…”
Madison turned on the tiny heel of her silver flip-flops. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, I want to. Besides,” she waggled a Visa at Jessa. “It’s on my dad.”
Jessa followed her to the register, watched as the Italian man placed it in a slick, dove-gray box. Handed it to her in a slim blue bag with gold script. “Thank you,” she said softly and then said it again, louder this time, to Madison.
Madison’s eyes darted to her face and then over her shoulder as if unsure where to land—hummingbird eyes.
“You know what?” She flipped her head a little, sending her earrings swirling about. “It’s too bad the trip’s almost over. We could have hung out.” Madison nodded toward the door. “We’re having a group meeting or something. Anyway, see you later.”
And like a hummingbird, she disappeared, leaving Jessa holding the blue bag and the tiny, gorgeous Graces.
***
It took them a minute to realize the bus was gone.
Just a minute, blinking into the fading light.
Francesca stopped, the frog dipping to the ground, her eyes searching the vacant lot. All of them stood there, some with their little blue bags, staring, turning circles in the dusty parking lot, some with their han
ds to their eyes as if the bus was a ship lost on the horizon.
Ms. Jackson pinched her lips together, her eyes squinting down the road. “Did he go for gas?”
Francesca whipped out her phone and started dialing.
It was Christina who noticed that the other group was gone too. She pointed it out in her cool, whispering voice that always made Jessa think of snow.
Cameron shot her hand in the air. “But I’m here. Dylan Thomas is here. Mr. Reynolds is here.” Quiet Guy didn’t look up from his BlackBerry, but the group seemed momentarily reassured. Those three were standing right here. Where were the others?
“They wouldn’t have left,” Cameron said, her voice starting to fray at the edges. “They would have noticed…” The air seemed to swallow up the rest of her voice, carried it off into the sky that was just starting to turn toward evening, splinters of pink shooting through blue.
Devon and Tim looked stricken. “Um,” Devon said, rubbing his hand across his belly. “Will we miss dinner?”
“No concern,” Francesca said, clicking her phone shut. “Another bus. It is twenty-five kilometers. No more.”
“Is that a lot?” Tim unwrapped a candy bar, ate the whole thing in two bites.
“It’s like fifteen miles, Einstein.” Dylan Thomas peeled the wrapper from a stick of gum.
Jessa saw Mr. Campbell’s face shift, redden slightly. He was getting the angry eyebrow he would get in class sometimes when someone said something inappropriate or mean. But she didn’t think he was mad at Dylan Thomas.
“They left.” She heard him say. Then he leaned and whispered something to Ms. Jackson, who just shook her head over and over as if she just couldn’t believe what he was saying, didn’t want to believe it. Quiet Guy joined them, showing them something on his BlackBerry. Mr. Campbell’s face fell.
What had happened suddenly seemed to dawn on the rest of the group at same time. “No way!” Natalie’s face turned an alarming shade of purple, and she let out a string of names for Jamal.
“Natalie!” Ms. Jackson’s voice sounded more shocked than angry. Jessa was pretty sure all their ears would now need a good washing out with some Italian soap.
“How could he leave with them? You didn’t leave with them!” She pointed an accusing, manicured finger at Dylan Thomas who simply raised his eyebrows at her. “I’ll kill him!” Natalie flipped open her phone and began to type furiously. She waited. The group waited, watching her. A few seconds later, her face melted, returning to is normal color. “They’re in Sorrento. At the hotel. He didn’t mean to go without me.” She smiled as if the world had suddenly whisked itself out of a storm tunnel and righted itself on a flowering meadow.
Blake raised his hand. “Um, does anyone want to go get a soda or something?” He motioned to the little store near the factory.
Mr. Campbell gave the OK, and most everyone wandered off, back into the factory, into the little store, over to the little lip of shade the factory’s roof provided, sitting cross-legged, sharing iPods with people who’d left theirs on the bus.
“It is half-hour drive at most,” Francesca said to the remaining travelers. She shrugged and re-collected the frog, but her cheeks held red spots of color.
Cameron still steamed. “I’m calling my dad. I can’t believe they left us here! I mean, how irresponsible is that? The guy might have a loony pants for a wife but that doesn’t mean he gets to abandon us in a foreign country.”
Dylan Thomas shrugged. “I didn’t think Borington had it in him. I have to admit I’m borderline proud of him.”
Cameron glowered.
“What did he think he was accomplishing?” Tyler rested his hands on Cameron’s shoulders, started to massage her neck, massaging the glower out of her face at the same time. “I mean, it’s like a half hour.”
Which struck Jessa as really funny, not just sort of ha-ha funny but totally and completely hysterical. She started to giggle, just a little at first, but suddenly Dylan Thomas was laughing with her. “What a sad, sad little man,” he choked out through his laughter.
“His one big act of rebellion,” Jessa sputtered through her laughter. “We’ll miss the appetizer!”
And then Tyler was laughing, and finally Cameron too.
Already another bus was pulling into the lot.
***
The Mediterranean coast leapt into Jessa’s view—not there, and then suddenly everywhere, a sweeping expansive blue, curving white beaches, houses clinging to hillsides. Pressing a palm to the bus window, she felt someone settle into the seat next to her: Tyler. He wore the bowling shirt he loved so much and wore more often than he probably should. The blue one, with the circle that read “Gary” over the chest pocket.
“Hi, Gary,” she peeled her eyes from the water, studied her friend.
“I have a two-part apology.” He picked some lint from Gary’s sleeve.
“OK.”
“One. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about them kissing—Hamlet or the festival.”
“OK.” Jessa waited.
“And two. I’m sorry about the instruction manual. I thought,” he paused. “I thought it would be fun. Helpful, even.” Tyler pulled the stapled sheets from his pocket. “But…you know Carissa was never going to come on this trip.”
“Because she had to baby-sit.” Only as she said it, Jessa knew that wasn’t the reason at all. Carissa would have never come to Italy, Santa Cruz or not. And Jessa realized, her stomach sinking, that she’d never even asked Carissa if she wanted to go. “Was she jealous of me? Because of Sean?”
Tyler shook his head. “Jess, I think she was jealous of Sean. Because he took up any time you had left over. I mean, you’re a busy girl—don’t get defensive,” he held up his hand to quiet her response. “You take on a lot. Especially the last year or so. I think Carissa felt like she was starting to lose you.”
“Well, you know what? Instead of kissing my boyfriend, she should have talked to me.”
“In a weird way—and this is Carissa we’re talking about, so it’s very weird—but in her own messed-up way, I think that’s what these envelopes were. Her trying to talk to you about it. When she knew you wouldn’t be distracted.”
Jessa swallowed her reply. Tyler was right. She took in her friend’s face, his dark skin and eyes, the flop of his black hair—she was reminded of all the times he picked Carissa up when she got in trouble with a boyfriend or brought them both a latte to rehearsal, or the time Carissa got really drunk at Scott McKinley’s party and he carried her all the way to Jessa’s house, tucked her quietly under Jessa’s quilt. Or the time he typed Jessa’s honors paper for her at eleven at night when she sprained her finger playing volleyball. Tyler had spent most of his Italy trip so far making sure she didn’t throw herself in front of the bus. She and Carissa owed him a Pantheon-sized thank-you card. “Why do you put up with us?”
Tyler shrugged a smile. “Entertainment value?” He held the manual out to her. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“I’m still trying to decide what to do with these.” Jessa peeled open envelope #16. “I mean, if she’s trying to tell me something, I can at least read the rest of them and figure out what kind of conversation she and I will be having when I get home.”
Tyler looped his arm across her shoulder and read #16 with her.
Reason #16: The Beat Before and After. Sean never considers the before or the after. Doesn’t consider why things are the way they are or where they are going. He never loved you in the complete way that needs the beat before and after to make sense of what’s now.
We were friends then (before), we are friends now (after).
I’m sorry.
I love you.
Chills lit up and down her arms. Carissa knew she’d find out. So why hadn’t she just told her? If the kisses didn’t matter, didn’t mean anything, she should have just told her.
Tyler tucked the manual back into his pocket. “Think Carissa realizes how ironic this is?”
“Probably not.”
“Didn’t think so.”
Jessa folded the letter back into its envelope, watching the water, wishing she could believe her friend, not knowing what to believe, about anything, anymore.
***
The beat before and after.
In theater, Mr. Campbell always talked about the beats of a scene. The tiny little pieces that made up the whole scene, and how each beat had its own little world, its own intention, building blocks. And when they did scene work in class, he always talked to them about the beat before and after. What came right before you enter the scene, what came right after. Those two beats are just as important, if not more so, than the ones in the scene being performed. The actor needed to know them, even if she wasn’t performing them. They establish and conclude. Establish and conclude.
This was something Jessa loved about theater, about a play and scenes within a play. They started. They ended. So clean. Clear beginning, clear ending. No fussy, messy strings and roads that led nowhere. Life, real life, didn’t always make for very interesting theater. The beats weren’t always where they were supposed to be.
“You coming?” Ms. Jackson waited in the bus aisle next to her, resting a hand on the seat edge.
Jessa hadn’t even realized the bus had stopped at the curb of a tall, pink hotel resting over the ocean, hadn’t noticed Tyler’s silent exit.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Jessa pulled her bag onto her shoulder and followed her teacher off the bus.
***
The Mediterranean Sea at sunset was something that Disney must have tried for in all its princess tales, all its Disneyland ads, and then just simply failed at, instead landing in a slightly blurrier, slightly more metal version of the sweeping view in front of her. Jessa was certain she’d never seen anything like it, never would again, the sea a mix of every possible blue and the sky stained pink, bleeding to purple. Everything both muted and striking, hushed but full of clean, dynamic lines.
Instructions for a Broken Heart Page 17
