The Breakup Artist

by Shannen Crane Camp

  “Fend for Yourself” nights were typical in our household. Normally that meant I’d be reheating old pasta or chicken, but tonight I felt like doing something. I always got a bit weepy and self-deprecating right before prom. It was just one of those inevitable facts of life that I lived with. With my loner self-awareness in full throttle, I looked in the newspaper to see what movies were playing. There was a comic-book-turned-movie that had been getting good reviews, so I decided that would work perfectly for tonight. I figured I could just grab some popcorn and call that dinner. Though I didn’t have many opinions, hobbies, or interests to call my own, comic book things did bring me right back to my childhood—the childhood I had before I became someone who lived only to be what other people wanted. Therefore, this movie would make me feel much better about my total lack of identity. Or at least that’s what I was hoping.

  Chapter Five

  The movie turned out to be completely depressing and dark, but it did manage to take me out of the normal world for a while, so I couldn’t have cared less how dark it was. I must admit though, I woke up the next morning seriously considering wearing a cape to school. As usual, however, work called me back to reality, and I pulled on tight black pants, a shredded and worn-down stylized black shirt, and some mesh fingerless gloves. I curled my hair and pinned it up so that some of the ringlets escaped in a stylish frenzy.

  Today I opted for dark red lipstick, the kind you find in classic old black and white movies, where you think their lips are actually black. I was relatively mild with my make-up, only doing mascara, eyeliner, and a thin line of white eye shadow just above the black liner. The shoes tied the whole outfit together and with ten minutes to spare before I had to take off, I was ready.

  Searching through the fridge for breakfast this morning proved to be fruitless. Normally I would just eat the leftovers from whatever we had for dinner the night before, but today it looked like my options were some questionably old mashed potatoes or chocolate soymilk that had expired nearly a week ago. I chose the soymilk.

  My soundtrack for the day consisted of a band I’d never heard of playing music I couldn’t even place into a specific musical category. It was given to me by Corey’s girlfriend and, even though it made me feel a bit lazy, I decided to just pull the same trick I’d used on James only yesterday. When I arrived at school, I placed the CD into my oversized black leather purse that would be acting as a backpack today. I pulled out my files once more as I walked, reviewing my plan of attack. I’d try to bump into, woo, and set up a date with Taylor before the bell rang for our first class, and I’d meet Corey at the break so I could finish the job at lunch. Piece of cake.

  Taylor was pretty easy to find. He was the only boy in his group staring at my shoes instead of my face. I silently congratulated myself on finding such amazing shoes to snag him with, and then went on with my usual business. I told him his girlfriend, Heather, was sick, and that I needed someone to sit with before school started. No one ever seemed to question this explanation and I was just waiting for the day when someone would say “What, you can’t sit by yourself?” or “If you’re so cool, why don’t you have any friends other than my girlfriend?” Luckily for me, the intelligence level of most of the people at my school is equal to that of a sheep in the sense that I could tell them something and they would all believe it and follow that explanation right off a cliff—if everyone else followed it too, of course.

  Taylor and I talked about shoes, and then we talked some more about shoes, and then just for a change of pace, we talked about shoes. Heather wasn’t kidding—this guy really liked his shoes. Even though I figured it was a long shot that someone could actually be that interested in something so trivial, I had done as much research as I could on the topic after my movie the night before, so I was well prepared for this conversation. Taylor was obviously pleased by my vast shoe knowledge, and so I decided that while he was still enamored with me I should set up a date for tonight before he could realize he still had a girlfriend. I didn’t call it a date when I suggested it, of course; that would possibly cause him to realize he had to break up with his girlfriend when I was supposed to ensure that it happened the other way around. Instead I casually said something like: “I’m going out tonight at about eight to that little coffee shop near the library. If you happened to be there, I wouldn’t complain.” He seemed to pick up on the hint pretty fast and gave me an excited smile and nod of his head. I felt like things were going pretty smoothly which was why his next words startled me so much.

  “So, who are you going with to prom?” he asked.

  My mouth actually dropped open in shock. I had endured lots of pathetic attempts at securing my phone number, but prom? In high school that was a pretty big thing, not that I’d really know since I’d never been, but from what I’d heard and simply judging by my clients’ behavior around this time of year, I had good reason to be shocked. I gathered my thoughts quickly and strung together a barely coherent answer.

  “Well, I’m actually . . . um . . . maybe going with someone . . . a friend,” I said after a long and awkward silence in which Taylor stared at my shoes, more out of fascination for them than by embarrassment at the look on my face. I hoped springing this news on him wouldn’t hurt his desire to meet me at the coffee shop that night.

  “Who?” he asked me, finally meeting my eyes. That was a good question—I had no idea. I didn’t even have a brother or a male cousin I could pay to take me. I hadn’t ever been to a dance.

  “David,” I finally blurted out, quickly recalling one of the names on my fact sheet.

  “David who?” he persisted. I had to hand it to the boy—he really didn’t give up without a fight. It was no wonder Heather wouldn’t just break up with him herself.

  “I don’t know his last name,” I admitted lamely. “We just sort of met. He’s my friend’s friend and neither of us had someone to go with so we thought we’d go as friends. So I can’t really back out . . . for my friend’s sake . . . I don’t know much about him, but he likes photography and books and culture.” I was rambling off everything listed on my fact sheet for David and looking like a complete idiot while doing it. If I didn’t regain my cool and composed façade quickly, I might actually fail a job for the first time. Taking a deep breath, I rearranged my facial expression to one of composure. Taylor was just staring at me with that look that cool boys give to nerdy girls who have just confessed their love for them. I’d seen it many times but no one had ever given it to me. Just for this I decided I would have to pull out all the stops.

  I let a little sideways smile creep onto my face as if there were some joke on Taylor that he wasn’t in on. “I’m kidding,” I said finally in a way that said, “Weren’t you cool enough to understand that?” This seemed to appease his wonder at my sudden fall from coolness. “I’ll call you later tonight and we’ll talk about it,” I lied smoothly. Then I got up from my spot beside him right as the bell rang and walked as quickly as I could to class without full-on sprinting.

  Even though I had managed to secure the date in the allotted time I’d given myself, I couldn’t help but feel slightly shaken by my horrible performance. I had never lost my cool during a job before. I tried to blame it on my pre-prom depression and sat quietly through history, which wasn’t difficult to do since the teacher had a tendency to lecture at us while the class slept. I confidently told myself that it was a one-time occurrence and I wouldn’t let myself be thrown like that again.

  That’s probably why, in the weeks to come, I didn’t expect the changes that came hurtling toward me.

  Chapter Six

  At the break I made my way over to where I had been told Corey would be. I quickly re-fluffed my hair and re-applied my dark red lipstick, making sure I looked as hip and fashionable as the girl who had hired me to eighty-six her boyfriend.

  He turned out to be a slightly dimwitted boy, much to my pleasure. He knew more about clothing and fashion than I ever wanted to think about, and had absolut
ely no trouble believing I was interested in him. Just to test my own limits, I tried dropping the bomb on him during the break. I wanted to see if a ten minute meet, mingle, and break could actually be done.

  It turned out that he had been hoping to ask someone else to the prom, which he told me without any reservations, so he welcomed the news of his relationship’s untimely death with great enthusiasm. He thanked me for making his job easier and I was done before the bell even rang for my sign language class. I almost felt like I could have gotten money out of him for the break up as well.

  After breaking up with people for so long, I’ve come to realize two things: most of the time it’s not nearly as hard as people think, and half of the time the other person wants out just as badly, or they’re willing to pretend they want out to save their own reputation. Either way, both of these facts mean that breakups aren’t that difficult, and I’m being paid to do a really easy job. But it’s like I’ve said before: I have no problem helping people out and getting financial compensation for my efforts. After all, even if it’s not an emotionally distressing thing for me to do, it’s still time-consuming and that directly impacts my wallet and my social life, which is why I fully deserve the money I get.

  Because American Sign Language was a class I actually had to pay attention in, I didn’t have much time to plot my next attack. I figured David could wait until tomorrow anyway. Besides, if I finished all of my clients up too early and didn’t find any others to fill my time with, I’d have some pretty boring lunch periods for the next three weeks. After class I grabbed a slice of pepperoni pizza and a soda from the lunch line and headed for a little hallway right outside the library. There weren’t usually many people there, so I didn’t run the risk of running into a client or one of their ex-boyfriends. As I sat and quietly finished off my lunch, it dawned on me that instead of just trying to beat my old records of jobs finished in a week, I might as well blast the record right out of the water. So what if I didn’t have anything to do during lunch for the next few weeks? People always ended up coming to me for a job, so beating my record was just my way of freeing up some time so that I could take a few extra clients on.

  I threw away the remnants of my now half-eaten and cold pizza and reviewed David’s file one more time. The picture on the file struck me as odd. Claire, short for Clarice, who had given me the file, was like all of the other cool punk girls I had been dealing with that week, but the boy staring up at me in the picture didn’t look anything like James or Corey or Taylor. This boy had shaggy dirty blond hair, bright green eyes, and a light blue shirt on. He looked like a mix between a preppy class president and a poetic boy you’d find skulking around a coffee shop. It just didn’t fit with what I had come to expect from these girls.

  Trying to put this unsettling fact behind me, I made my way through the busy school filled with hormones and greasy food to find David. I couldn’t do much about breaking up with him today since Claire wasn’t supposed to be “sick” until tomorrow, so I simply observed from a distance.

  There he sat, his hand lazily entwined with Claire’s, the two of them sitting next to each other and surrounded by their single friends. It was a typical scene; Claire talked animatedly with her friends, hardly acknowledging David’s presence, as if he were an accessory in her life who was only there until she decided to stop putting up with him tomorrow. The only unusual thing about this scene was that David looked just as bored. Rather than trying to joke with his friends to impress Claire or constantly attempting to get her attention, he looked around his small clique repeatedly, as if searching the crowd for someone. As he looked over the shoulder of a little blonde girl, our eyes met for a second. In a moment of panic, I quickly ducked behind the closest object I could find, which happened to be a senior on the football team. The jock looked down at me with mild interest, and then continued walking, destroying my shelter.

  When I straightened back up, however, David was no longer looking at me but had his eyes trained on the floor with an amused smile playing across his lips. This behavior was slightly distressing, but I attributed it, once more, to my pre-prom melancholy. For the rest of the lunch period, I sat a good distance from Claire and David, peeking over the top of the school newspaper at the “happy couple” to see if I needed to change my plan of attack. I mean, this boy certainly didn’t look like the type who would be into black skinny jeans and over-processed hair, but sometimes opposites really do attract. And he did seem to like Claire . . . a little. Either way, my chances of finishing the break up tomorrow looked good because either he was into those kinds of girls or he wasn’t interested in Claire to begin with. It appeared my job would be that much simpler.

  I left my little makeshift hiding spot right before the bell rang so that I wouldn’t accidentally bump into either of them, and made my way to math, my last—and worst—class of the day.

  ☼☼☼

  The house was empty when I got home from school, which wasn’t unusual, so I went upstairs and did my homework, which also wasn’t unusual. My life was pretty well compartmentalized. I went to school, I worked, I came home, I did my homework, I ate, I went to bed. That was my life in a nutshell. The occasional movie night with myself was there so I wouldn’t slip into complete routine nonexistence.

  After I finished my homework I decided to call Claire, just to straighten things up and put my mind at ease for tomorrow. Claire was one of my regulars—I assisted her at least twice a month in her breakups even when I had to do it from a different high school—so she was one of the five numbers I actually had programmed into my phone. The other numbers were my own house, my mom’s cell, my mom’s work, and the paint supply store down the street.

  “Hey, Amelia. We’re still on for tomorrow, right?” Claire asked instead of the traditional “hello.” It felt nice to actually have someone my own age know it was me when they picked up the phone. Claire and I were almost friends, except that we weren’t, because she was my client and the only time we talked was when it was business. But it still almost felt like I had a friend.

  “Yeah we’re still on for tomorrow but I have a quick question.” I didn’t quite know how to say, “Your boyfriend doesn’t look as weird as you. Are you sure I should dress like you?” So I just settled for, “I came to check on David today during lunch and he looks a bit . . . reserved.” That was a nice way to put it. “Are you sure I should go for the whole edgy and cool look tomorrow?” I thought it was a fair enough question and I had helped Claire out enough times that she should be able to trust that my concerns were legitimate. I heard a high-pitched giggle on the other end of the phone, but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

  “Trust me, David loves girls like me,” Claire assured me. “He just likes to dress like a stuffed-shirt for some unknown reason.” Claire was the one dating him, so I assumed she knew what she was talking about and made a noncommittal humming noise on my end of the phone as an answer to that statement.

  “Was there anything else?” she asked, now becoming slightly impatient.

  “Yeah, just one thing. You wrote on his interests that he likes culture? What exactly does that mean?” Claire was a smart enough girl, but sometimes she needed a push in the “understandable” direction. It’s like most things made sense to her, but she just couldn’t understand why other people didn’t understand what she meant when she would suddenly say “dancing hippos” during a phone conversation.

  “Culture. You know, like why people do what they do and stuff.”

  “Like psychology? Or anthropology? Sociology?” I asked, hoping she would just explain herself so I wouldn’t have to pry more information out of her using words she probably didn’t know.

  “Yeah, like that,” she said after a long and thoughtful pause. Or at least, I assumed it was a thoughtful pause.

  “Got it. That’s all I needed to know. Thanks, Claire. And I should have it done by tomorrow, so you’d better start developing a fever before school.” She giggled at this statement a
nd then hung up the phone without a good-bye. She was always kind of off in her own world. The normal social rules like greetings and good-byes didn’t really apply to her. Claire just sort of flitted around life, dating every boy she saw and giggling at things that were never really meant to be taken as jokes. I shrugged at this unusual end to the conversation and began dialing the number for my other client to let her know Corey had been taken care of and she was free to pursue her potential prom date.

  The note I found on the fridge last night was there again but the date was scribbled out with the current one written right underneath it. I had been noticing that my mom had been having more and more “client dinners” lately. I was starting to think that maybe this was code for “my mom is going on dates but doesn’t want to bring a man back to the house because she just never knows what her daughter will look like from day to day.” I could accept this. It was a reasonable enough fear. But I was slightly upset that she didn’t think she could trust me enough to tell me that she was dating at all. I glared at the note for a moment before returning to my room and pulling a new outfit out for my “date” that night. I had some black leggings that almost looked like they were plastic. They grew tight at the ankles where a short zipper went from my anklebone to my mid-calf. I figured these pants were good for attracting the eye to my feet, where my expensive black heels now resided. They were strappy and edgy and exactly what I needed to snag Taylor. I finished the look off with an oversized white T-shirt that hung off one of my shoulders, showing enough collarbone to be alluring without being trashy.

  Once I finally arrived at the coffee shop I ordered a raspberry hot chocolate, not really feeling in the mood to be injected with caffeine and over-priced coffee. I found a comfy love seat in a small secluded area of the coffee shop and watched the door like a hawk, hoping Taylor would get here quickly so I could get this over with and spend some quality painting time in my room that night. After about ten minutes I actually started to worry that I had overestimated my charm. Maybe he really didn’t want to come and meet me at the coffee shop. Maybe my shoes weren’t enough to attract him. Or maybe I had really slipped up when I told him I was going to prom with someone else, and he didn’t believe my pathetic attempt at reassuring him that it was a joke.