The Break-Up Artist

by Philip Siegel

  Some sixteen-year-olds babysit for extra cash.

  Some work at the mall.

  Becca Williamson breaks up couples.

  Becca knows from experience the damage that love can do. After all, it was so-called love that turned Huxley from her childhood best friend into a social-world dictator, and love that left Becca’s older sister devastated at the altar. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, Becca strikes back—for just one hundred dollars via PayPal, she will trick and manipulate any couple’s relationship into smithereens. And with relationship zombies overrunning her school and treating single girls as if they’re second-class citizens, business is unfortunately booming. Even Becca’s best friend, Val, has resorted to outright lies to snag a boyfriend.

  One night, Becca receives a mysterious offer to break up the most popular couple in school: Huxley and the football team’s star player, Steve. To succeed, she’ll have to plan her most elaborate scheme to date—starting rumors, sabotaging cell phones, breaking into cars…not to mention sneaking back into Huxley’s good graces. All while fending off the inappropriate feelings she may or may not be having for Val’s new boyfriend.

  No one said being the Break-Up Artist would be easy.

  For Mom, Dad, and Steph—my first fan club.

  Contents

  A Warning To All Who Read This

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Questions For Discussion

  Q & A With Philip Siegel

  A WARNING TO ALL WHO READ THIS

  Couples are made to be broken.

  That’s what my sister, Diane, told me when I started my business, and she knows better than anyone. “Don’t get duped like I did, Becca,” she said almost a year ago, as she shoved her wedding dress into a garbage bag. She’d had it designed to look like Kate Middleton’s, lace sleeves and everything. It’s a shame nobody saw her wear it.

  We all like to think that there’s one person out there who will rescue us from the tower, slide the glass slipper onto our foot, brush away our one falling tear and tell us if there’s six more weeks of winter. Or something like that. But that’s not how the real world works. Just ask the cheating boyfriends and girlfriends I have to deal with on a far-too-regular basis.

  Back in olden times, people were up front about why they took the plunge. For land, for money, for children. Marriage was a business contract. That’s how it started, anyway. Farmers would marry off their sons and daughters in order to double their acreage. Society’s first corporate merger. Next were dowries, where brides came with a down payment. But history, as it always happens, was rewritten. The truth was washed away like a house in a flood, and in its place sprouted one vague excuse: love.

  People use that word to go around and do what they please. They don’t have to worry about who gets hurt because it’s all in the name of love. Love has no rules, no boundaries. It’s gone all these years unchecked. That doesn’t make it whimsical; that makes it a tyrant.

  I may not be an angel in all this, but I’m certainly not the bad guy either. If you can’t handle my line of work, then go read the latest bodice ripper. I’ll leave you with this: How many lives have been ruined because of love?

  Who’s really the bad guy here?

  1

  Calista McTiernan looks away from the screen. Tears form in her eyes. The levee’s about to break. I wish I could reach through my computer monitor and give her a hug. I hear these stories too often.

  “Ever since they started dating, Bari’s become a totally different person. Derek’s favorite band is U2, and now magically it’s hers, too. Derek is into politics, and now Bari is watching CNN religiously. I laughed it off because she acted this way with her last boyfriend. But then...” Calista shakes her head.

  “But then what?” I ask in my best British accent, looking directly into my webcam.

  “Then she dyed her hair brown, she started dressing like some J. Crew mannequin, and this week she quit cheerleading.” Her blond locks fan around her pea-sized head. Her hair’s the same shade as mine, but hers is real.

  “People change. It happens.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t the same. Derek’s making her do this. He told her he thinks blondes are trashy, and he didn’t want some slutty cheerleader girlfriend visiting him at Princeton next year. He said that. To her face!”

  “He did?” Derek Kelley has been student council president for three years, and what little power the Student Government Association—aka the SGA—holds has gone to his head. He seems friendly in the halls, but guys are just as capable of being fake nice as girls.

  “Bari said he was joking around, but I’m not laughing.”

  “Have you tried talking to her about it?” I can already guess the answer.

  “She says she isn’t into cheerleading anymore and she’s never felt like a blonde.” Calista rubs her forehead, and I can feel her concern through the screen. “Everything that made her Bari is disappearing.”

  I lean closer in my chair, all business, and hold Calista’s attention. “So, you want me to do this?”

  Calista squeezes a fresh set of tears from her eyes. I instinctively reach for the Kleenex box on my desk, forgetting we’re on Skype. “My best friend is pushing me away. You don’t know what that’s like.”

  I do, I want to tell her. My eyes wander to the floor and the pair of golden ballet slippers next to my desk. It’s like a hole through your heart that can never be filled. A part of you that is missing forever. I should throw the slippers out like I’ve done with the rest of my memories from that train wreck of a friendship, but I won’t. I never do. I keep them here, in plain sight, a perpetual reminder of why I do this.

  I force my attention back to the screen. I can never get personal. One misspoken word, one accidental truth, and I give myself away.

  “I told her I didn’t think Derek was treating her well,” Calista says.

  “And what did she say?”

  Calista stares at the screen, her bottom lip quivering. Only the hissing of her radiator fills my speaker.

  “She said, ‘You just don’t understand because you’re single.’” Tears stream down Calista’s cheeks. She buries her face in her knee to compose herself.

  I clench my lips together. I have to remind myself to stay strong for my client. She can fall apart, but I have to make things right. Blood rushes to my fa
ce in frustration, coloring me the same shade as this shapeless graduation robe I’m wearing.

  Calista continues, “I feel like if Derek had his way, she’d never talk to any of her friends again. Especially me.”

  My raccoon mask conceals my raised eyebrows. I’ve seen Bari and Calista joined at the hip since elementary school. They once tried convincing our classmates that they were cousins. (I fell for it.) They seemed to have one of those übertight friendship bonds that I thought would survive the dating world. Then again, I’d thought I had that, too. But now I know that once people get into relationships, friends—and rational thought—get tossed aside.

  “It’s a good thing you came to me,” I say.

  “You seriously can break them up?”

  “I have a perfect track record.”

  “How?”

  “My methods are proprietary and confidential.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m really, really good, and you’ll just have to trust me.” I catch my reflection in the screen. I’m shocked anyone’s been able to take me seriously in this disguise. I look like an escaped mental patient, but that’s better than looking like myself. Luckily, my work speaks for itself.

  “It’s not going to be easy. I think they’ve already said ‘I love you’ to each other.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I say. Why do my classmates believe that saying those three words automatically protects a couple? They’re not relationship insurance. They’re just words, and if people actually meant them, then I would be out of a job. Bari and Derek are a couple destined for flame out. I’m just speeding up the inevitable. And if I can save Bari before she’s permanently under Derek’s thumb, so much the better.

  “Before we go forward, I want you to be certain about this.”

  She gets so quiet I can hear the static crackling in the background. “I—I don’t know.”

  “A minute ago you were devastated.”

  “I know. But...” Calista hugs her chopstick legs into her chest. I wonder if she’s one of those girls who stays skinny no matter how much she eats. “This seems kind of severe. I don’t know, and maybe a little petty, too?”

  I clench my jaw. “When was the last time she called or texted you just to say hi?”

  Calista ponders this. She shrugs her shoulder.

  “So you think it’s fair that she’s cutting you out of her life? Just because she has a boyfriend?” I ask calmly.

  “No. But Derek—”

  “Derek hasn’t mastered the art of mind control. She’s choosing all of this. To disappear. To change. To stop being friends with you. It’d be nice if Bari suddenly came to her senses, but that’s not going to happen, and you know it,” I say. Blunt, but not untrue. “So now here’s where you choose—are you going to let her continue on this path uninterrupted or are you going to do something about it?”

  “So you really will break them up?” she asks between sniffles.

  “For a hundred dollars via PayPal I can.” The wheels begin turning in my head. I flash Calista a warm smile, telling her I got this. Maybe I can salvage this friendship. No girl should have to live through a best friend cutting her out of her life.

  Her face brightens among the red splotches, and she smiles for the first time tonight. “Let’s do it.”

  2

  My mom still makes me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich every morning. It was the only thing I ate for breakfast when I was in elementary school, and she stuck with it. Now that I’m older, I found my ideal get-up-and-get-’em meal: a large cup of coffee. Black, no sugar.

  Sharp rays of morning sun pierce through the kitchen windows. My dad sits at the table with his coffee and oatmeal, watching a guy shout on TV. Apparently, the fluctuation of Chinese currency can make some people quite flustered. My mom hands me a cup of coffee, and I push aside the sandwich with my mug. She picks it up and takes a bite. And so goes our morning routine.

  “Busy day today?” my mom asks.

  “Kinda.” I have a new couple to break up. Oh, and I have a math quiz. “Where’s Diane?”

  My mom heaves a sigh, then gives me a look like I should know better. “Still sleeping.”

  Which I should’ve known, but I hold out hope that one day the answer will be better. My dad shakes his head and mutters to himself.

  “Hey,” my mom says to my dad after taking another bite of my former breakfast. “Why did you get one-ply toilet paper last night?”

  “It was on sale,” he says, his focus returning to Chinese currency.

  “You couldn’t spring for two-ply?”

  “Not if it’s not on sale.”

  “We don’t live in a tenement.”

  “More like a Turkish prison,” he says with a half smile.

  She rolls her eyes and takes a bite of the sandwich. My dad eats a few more spoonfuls of oatmeal then gets up. He puts on his suit jacket, then his winter coat. He kisses me goodbye, and gives my mom a pat on the shoulder while she wipes down the counter. It’s like this every day, every year, the same motions. Way to keep the romance alive, guys. If it was ever even there to begin with.

  My dad pauses at the door, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to pick my mom up in a hug and plant one on her, like lovey-dovey parents in a cheesy sitcom.

  “I’ll be on the 5:57 train tonight. I’ll just pick up a roast-beef sandwich at the station for dinner,” he says.

  “Okay,” my mom says, washing out his oatmeal bowl in the sink.

  Yep. So much for love.

  * * *

  Before I break up a couple, I have to do my research and examine their dating history. I have to know their past if I want to understand their present. Having a significant other will put any student at Ashland High School on the social radar, and chances are if you’re in a relationship, someone else is talking about it.

  In history class, I use the middle section of my three-subject notebook to build a dating dossier on Bari and Derek, tucked in between U.S. history and trig. I don’t like to build dossiers when one of my targets is two rows over from me, but she’s so engrossed in texting someone (let’s be real: Derek), she won’t even notice. Nothing our teacher Mr. Harrison says elicits a reaction from her. Bari clutches her phone against her stomach, as if waiting for the next message to inject her with another ounce of life.

  Usually, I’m able to list off a person’s past relationships from memory.

  Bari Mandell

  Dating History:

  • Joey Pollaro: fall freshman–spring freshman.1

  ºJoey—JV basketball. Bari—freshman cheerleading. Equivalent caste. Presumably met through games and parties.

  º PDA Level = HIGH2

  • Regularly held hands in hall.

  • Ample kissing and petting in public.

  • Rumors of having sex in the bathroom at Matt Wachtel’s party.

  º The dumper = Joey

  • Break-up occurred over Spring Break. He “just wasn’t feeling it anymore,” according to Nneka Jeffries.

  • He began dating Courtney Liu over the summer.

  Derek Kelley

  Dating History:

  • Tessa Colletti: summer junior–fall senior

  º Tessa—volleyball jock, so-so student. Derek—cross-country, in all AP classes. Began dating while lifeguarding at Munsee Lake.

  º PDA Level = ELEVATED

  • Kept a low profile in school, but were all over each other at games and parties and at the lake.3

  º The dumper = Derek

  • He wanted to focus on college applications, according to Bryn Levin.

  • Bethann Mancuso: winter sophomore–spring junior

  º AP power couple. Ran against each other for st
udent council president.

  º PDA Level = GUARDED

  • Some quick kisses before/after class.

  • He always ate lunch with his arm around her.

  º The dumper = Derek

  • Broke up because of natural causes?

  Bari’s dating history is straightforward. When a guy on the basketball team asks out a lowly freshman, it’s hard to turn him down. That was almost two years ago, though. I find it surprising that Bari went boyfriendless for that long. She’s what every guy wants: petite, skinny but curvy (the good kind). But amid the fierce competition for coupledom, that doesn’t always cut it.

  Ashland High has an overabundance of girls. It’s a sixty-five, thirty-five split, the biggest gap of any school in New Jersey. Something must’ve been in the water fifteen years ago, give or take. This gives guys a huge advantage. They can be fat, lazy and pimply and still get to be choosy. Finding a suitable guy to date is a study in Darwinism. Survival of the hottest. The options dwindle with each year. Upperclassman girls don’t date freshman guys in some unspoken, outdated and totally gender-biased rule. Lelaina Ryder went out with Troy Hawke for two months last year and received an endless barrage of cougar jokes until she graduated. No wonder Bari jumped at the chance to be with Derek. He’s a definite catch. He’s one of the few guys at Ashland who is both smart and cute. He has ins with most cliques in school. Half the auditorium swoons at his sparkly smile and wavy hair during student government assemblies.

  Spend five minutes talking to him, though, and you’ll notice how many times he manages to slip “Princeton early decision” into conversation and how hard he worked to scrub his voice of his New Jersey accent in favor of some affected, faux-aristocratic inflection.

  His break-up with Bethann was felt throughout the AP hallway, where they had a mini fan club. They told their classmates that their relationship had run its course, but I’ll never forget overhearing Bethann talking to her friends a few weeks before the break-up. She’d done better than she thought on her SATs and had decided to apply to Princeton. The girls, and even some guys, swooned at the prospect of Derek and Bethann going to the same Ivy League college, getting married and then popping out smart babies a few years later. I glanced at Derek, who was smiling like the rest of them. But he had this despondent look in his eyes, almost like dread. I was the only one who wasn’t that surprised about their split. I guess Derek couldn’t stomach Bethann being as smart as him. Tessa was a step down in that department, but at least she was off to University of California, San Diego, in the fall.