The Break-Up Artist

by Philip Siegel

  “Selling vintage comics? That’s sacrilege.” Fred shudders at the thought.

  “Perfect. Set up a fake eBay account for him. Or better yet, just contact him anonymously and say you’d be willing to pay for his cache. Not the big bucks, just a so-so amount.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “He doesn’t know that. You just need to catch him being interested, then casually show his friends that he’d be willing to give up the goods for some lowball offer.” I shrug nonchalantly. These genius ideas just come naturally. “Even if it’s not true, all you need to do is plant that seed of doubt, and the rest will take care of itself.”

  But Fred isn’t bowled over. He looks, well, kind of freaked out. “That’s, um, pretty extreme.”

  “Well, so is turning your friends against you and excommunicating you from their table.”

  “It’s different.” Fred shakes the thought from his mind and piles his trash on his plate. “I’m not going to sink to that level. I mean, I still have these guys,” he says, patting Howard and Quentin on the back.

  “You’re right,” I say. I stick my notebook in my bag.

  * * *

  I use the bathroom pass during seventh period. Steve’s gym period. I tiptoe into the boys’ locker room. The smell suffocates me. I pull my shirt up over my nose and breathe in the fabric softener. Why do guys smell so much?

  Like with most areas of our school, the locker rooms have not been updated in thirty years. The lockers are narrow and rusty, the green paint only visible on certain ones. Nobody’s backpack can fit in them, so they’re left on the floor.

  Bad for students. Good for me.

  I find Steve’s sleek, waterproof backpack in the back of the middle row. A Christmas gift from Huxley last year. It was meant for cross-country expeditions, not the halls of high school.

  I open the locker above Steve’s backpack with the V56 key. I hope his underwear doesn’t fall out onto my face. I shield myself before opening.

  I take the homecoming picture out of my back pocket and tape it on the back of the locker door. A crumpled mountain of clothes hangs precariously on the left hook. Once some of his friends get a glimpse, the news should wind through school. Little-known fact: guys are bigger gossips than girls. Girls will keep secrets from each other, but their boyfriends spill the dirt as soon as they hit the dugouts, court or locker room. They just don’t get caught.

  I haven’t sneaked into the locker room since I had to break up Nathan Crane and Sarah Covington. Her friends couldn’t stand what a snob he was and that he was turning Sarah into one, as well. Once Sarah found texts on his phone calling her incompetent and stupid, she gave him the heave-ho. I can’t believe that was only a year ago. Any guilt I had about what I was doing disappeared when it turned out Nathan did feel that way about his girlfriend. He just loved being with someone who made him feel so superior.

  Coach Kapnek’s raspy voice echoes off the lockers. I squat down and hide at the end of the row. I peer around the corner into his office, where Steve is in the hot seat.

  Still in my squat position, I waddle over to the wall by his door and situate myself behind a bin filled with used towels. No one said Break-Up Artists live glamorous lives.

  “Chandler University is still interested,” Coach Kapnek says. “They’re a great school.”

  “There’s only one reason they want me. Did you talk to Vermilion?”

  “I talked to my friend there. They’re offering nothing. But did you expect them to hand out a merit scholarship to a guy with a B average?”

  Coach Kapnek’s desk squeaks. He must’ve sat on top of it. What’s with teachers at this school not using chairs?

  “Are you sure about this, Steve? You can be honest with me. Do you want to play college football?”

  I lean my head closer to the door.

  “No,” he says, barely audible.

  “Can I be honest with you? I think you do.”

  “That’s not my life anymore. It’s time to move on. It’s not like I’m going to go pro or anything.”

  “You never know. It’s still a great opportunity, and once this door closes, it’s never going to open again.”

  “Thanks, Coach.” Steve bolts out of his office and, luckily, in the opposite direction of the towel bin.

  I waddle back to my locker hiding place just as Coach Kapnek leaves his office. He stands in the doorway a few moments. I crouch down farther, behind a fat backpack, and keep my breathing silent and controlled. He takes a few steps in my direction and stops. If you get caught, Becca, just say you’re sleepwalking.

  He strums his fingers on the lockers. I squeeze myself into an even tighter ball behind the backpacks. Peeling paint lingers in my hair. I close my eyes, knowing if I look at him, he’ll sense it and look straight at me.

  Coach Kapnek exhales a gust of air and walks past my row into the open bathroom area. What do guys have against privacy? While he’s busy, I make a run for it.

  “Hey! Who’s there?” he yells at the wall.

  Do guys realize how ridiculous they look at urinals?

  * * *

  Movies and television have lied to me. Stakeouts are not fun and exciting. They are boring.

  So boring.

  Diane and I have spent the past three hours sitting in her car spying on Steve and Huxley at Mario’s Pizza. I fidget in my seat, alternating between stretching my legs and sitting cross-legged every five seconds. That’s almost as often as Diane changes the radio. No music can hide the sound of our growling stomachs. Skipping dinner to stare into a pizzeria was not my smartest move. At least we don’t have to smell it.

  We take turns with my dad’s heavy-duty binoculars. The bridge of my nose is red and indented and stings whenever I hold them to my face. He bought them one Saturday afternoon because our neighbor’s house was broken into. He wants to live on a safe block, and the package said these are the same binoculars used by Navy SEALs. Those men must have stronger noses than me.

  Worst of all, there’s been no sign of Angela, or her boyfriend.

  “If I have to watch Ken and Barbie kiss one more time, I’m going to projectile all over the dashboard,” Diane says.

  “She will come. She has to. You don’t receive a letter like that in the mail and then not do anything about it.”

  “What if she emailed him instead?”

  I’m not that high-tech. I can’t access his email or bug his phone. Computers are so unromantic, though. What girl wouldn’t be a sucker for a handwritten note? It’s so old-fashioned. She wouldn’t ruin that vibe with a text message. At least, I hope not. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  A woman enters the pizzeria. Diane perks up. She looks through the binoculars. “False alarm.”

  She sinks down in her seat and twirls her gum around her finger.

  “So, baby sister, will Val and what’s-his-face be your next victims?”

  “I can’t do that.” That thought did cross my mind a few times. And every time, I shivered with disgust. How could I call myself her friend after doing that?

  “You thought about it, though?”

  “Doesn’t mean I’ll do it. Have you ever thought about doing that to your ‘friends’?”

  “What’s with the air quotes for friends? They’re still my friends,” Diane says. She switches out her gum wad for a fresh piece.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I care about them enough to let their relationships self-destruct on their own.”

  “What about Owen’s birthday?” I ask. Before I left tonight, I saw an invitation for Erin’s son’s first birthday. It was in the trash.

  “He won’t notice my absence.”

  It’s hard to call someone your friend when you won’t acknowledge her kid’s birthday. Diane used to love
organizing birthday events for her friends. She would buy a cookie cake and decorate it herself with inside jokes. For Sankresh’s twenty-first birthday, she planned a bar-crawl extravaganza with their friends. I saw photos where she put floating sparklers in his drinks. She was always let down on her birthday because Sankresh was never as creative as she was.

  Diane senses my disappointment. “The invite was just a formality. They all just want to see what a mess I’ve become. It’s cheaper than hiring a clown.” She laughs at her joke.

  “I think they’d be happy to see you.” They were all so close in college, the girls felt like my friends, too. I look forward to leaving the dull cliques of high school behind and finding my own group in college like Diane did.

  “I can’t go,” Diane says. Suddenly, the car gets quiet, like all of her sarcasm fizzled away.

  “Why? Did you guys get in a fight?”

  “Technically, no.” Diane’s face softens. “They’ve all moved on. And I’m still here.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “I wasn’t given that choice. I’ll always be here.” Her voice wobbles, but she doesn’t cry. I don’t think she has any more tears left after last year.

  I want to say something, but it’s not as if I have some magic answer. I can feel the moment passing us by. Just like Diane wants it to.

  She brings the binoculars back to her eyes.

  “Anything good?” I ask.

  “Actually, yeah.” She hands me the binoculars.

  “It’s Angela.” I’m always shocked when my plans go, well, according to plan. It’s funny to think people are listening to me, even if they don’t know it.

  “Where’s her boyfriend?”

  “I guess she didn’t bring him.”

  “And she waited until they were about to close. Interesting.”

  It was.

  Steve’s face lights up with shock, but quickly shifts to pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t expecting that reaction, until I realize that of course Steve wasn’t expecting a ghost from the past to stroll in for pizza. Angela is apprehensive, but when Steve comes from behind the counter, she hugs him.

  I narrate for Diane. “She is so nervous.”

  Her light skin shows off the redness flushing her cheeks. They have some harmless chitchat. No crossed arms or standoffish posture. Angela reaches into her bag.

  “She’s going to show him the note!” I say and slap Diane on the arm a few times. “Oh, wait.”

  Huxley joins their conversation, hooking her arm around Steve’s. Angela removes her hand from her bag. Steve makes introductions.

  “Blah blah blah. Wow, I’ve never seen such forced smiles.”

  “From who?” Diane asks.

  “Both of them. They’re acting like they’re long-lost best friends.”

  “Keep your friends close...”

  Angela orders a pepperoni slice. Steve boxes it up for her while Huxley hangs out by the register. She wants to get out of there as soon as she can. I don’t blame her. I feel bad that I threw Angela into this, but it’s not like I’m ruining her life. So what if she reconnects with an old flame? You can never have too many friends.

  Diane notices I’ve stopped narrating. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing,” I say with a sigh. “Huxley went back to her table. Angela got pizza. The end.”

  Angela shares an awkward goodbye wave with Steve and Huxley. I stop watching. I guess my plan sounded better in my head.

  “Sorry, B.” Diane turns the radio back on and flips through three stations in ten seconds. She’s probably a master at Name That Tune.

  I know my plan wasn’t foolproof, but I thought it would be somewhat idiotproof. I’m dreading SDA practice tomorrow now that I have nothing to look forward to. I replay the scene in the pizzeria in my head. A detail sticks out to me, and I almost leap out of my seat. How did I miss it? “She ordered a slice of pepperoni,” I tell Diane.

  “Maybe she likes it.”

  “She does, but Steve would always give her his pepperoni slices.”

  “Interesting.”

  But it’s not enough, I know she wanted to say. I rest back into my seat. Diane takes my binoculars for a second opinion. She gazes into Mario’s. A huge smile overtakes her face.

  “What?”

  Diane hands me the binoculars. I need both hands to lift them. She’s giggling and shaking her head.

  “What?” I ask. I zoom into the pizzeria. Huxley is doing homework, and Steve’s wiping tabletops. The night ends with a whimper.

  “Look at Steve.”

  He turns to a corner, away from Huxley to clean a pair of tables, and that’s when I see it.

  Steve is eating Angela’s pizza crust.

  15

  For the next two weeks, my life consists of school, sleeping and SDA. My postpractice aches usually dissipate by the next morning, except on Fridays, when I feel like I barely finished a marathon. I’ve been so busy I barely pay attention to schoolwork or how little I see Val.

  Huxley has fewer notes for me, only minute details that I totally missed. Ezra and I have shared plenty of eye rolls over her comments. However, she isn’t trying to be mean anymore. It seems like she just wants every dance to be a work of art and won’t settle for anything less. I’ve been working extra hard not to have two left feet. I get up an hour early to practice in my room. I can feel myself getting better. I’m dancing with confidence, not just trying to keep up. When the music starts, my body shifts into autopilot. Those old lessons from Frances Glory are coming out of hibernation. Today, finally, Huxley acknowledges my improvement.

  “Your brain and legs seem to be on the same page today.”

  I blush, just a crumb-sized bit. I can’t help it.

  Huxley ends practice early to hand out costumes. She stands next to an open box, dabbing her temples with a towel. Even after two hours of choreographed sweating, Huxley’s hair flows down her back like she just left the salon. I look like I just left the rain forest.

  The girls gather in their usual cliques on the bleachers.

  “It had devil horns and ‘I’m a bitch’ written above her,” Ally Zwick whispers to Kerry Anderson.

  “Whoa. Tell us how you really feel, Steve,” Kerry says back. I’ve overheard some variation of this conservation buzz its way through school. I love watching my work elicit such a reaction.

  Huxley holds up the costume: a tracksuit made for a stripper pole with matching fuzzy earmuffs.

  “Nice, right?” Huxley says to a sea of nodding heads. They’ll have no problem fitting into those things. “I had them add the earmuffs because curling is done on the ice, where it’s cold.”

  She distributes them among the girls. Some hold them against their chests. If I had their toned bodies with curves in all the right places, I would be excited, too.

  “This year, costumes are ten dollars,” she says. That garners whoops and light applause. “I know. My dad and I found a great deal online.”

  “Oh, please,” Ally whispers to Kerry. “I doubt her dad went bargain hunting.”

  I have to agree with Ally. Huxley’s dad works on Wall Street, where he is very well compensated. Doing what, I don’t know, but she used to show me pictures from his corner office with a view of the Statue of Liberty. They don’t do discounts. They probably paid top dollar for these costumes and lied to the school board. Only the best for Huxley’s team.

  Huxley shuts the now-empty box. “These costumes are very...compact, so I recommend you take the money we saved and wax any areas that may be seen.”

  “Will shaving be good enough?” a girl next to me asks.

  “Stubble is for boys.”

  My teammates spend the rest of practice trying on the stripper tracksuits. I’m not ready for that yet,
so I pretend to read my history notes while envying their genes. Girls join Ally and Kerry’s huddle. They glance over at Huxley across the gym before talking. My teammates chat in the same animated, overzealous style people slip into whenever conversation turns to gossip. It’s a biological compulsion. Talking about others is the earliest form of entertainment, after all.

  “Do you think she realized Steve worked there?” Tamara Boyle asks, shoving hair behind her ears every point-two seconds.

  “Please. You don’t take the interstate to get pizza.” Kerry turns her head in a “come on now” way. “My boyfriend heard Steve was flirting with her.”

  “What? No way.” Ally cups her hand over her mouth. “You think he would do that right in front of her?”

  Kerry shrugs. “Anything’s possible.”

  “That sucks,” Tamara says, then reconsiders. “Though it would be kind of cute if he got back together with his ex-girlfriend after five years. It’s like a movie I would totally drag my boyfriend to.”

  “Yeah, Snow White saves Prince Charming from the Wicked Witch,” Ally jokes.

  “Hey, guys, let me know if you need a different size,” Huxley says behind them. “With the costumes.”

  Their faces turn white as they frantically trade “Oh, crap!” expressions.

  “Sure,” Ally stumbles out.

  I shut my book. “It’s really sad that you guys have such boring lives and low self-esteem that you have to resort to gossip. Some girl bought a slice of pizza. Chill out.”

  The girls stay silent. What can you say to that? In normal social contexts, I would have stayed quiet. But I don’t care about being their friend. And a part of me felt uncomfortable listening to them. They were talking mere feet from the subject of their gossip. That’s just sloppy.

  I pack my backpack, square my shoulders and walk to another corner of the bleachers.

  Once settled in my new spot, I glance over at Huxley. She’s engrossed with a group of her friends. She doesn’t look my way for the rest of practice.

  * * *

  It’s not enough having to practice around dozens of the best-looking girls in school. I also have to share a locker room with them—in case I forgot how pale and blah my body is.