I finally roll, literally, out of bed and go downstairs for a glass of water. My mom and Stephen are on the couch in the living room watching something newsy, with Hunter at their feet. Stephen’s in his science-teacher clothes—khakis and a button-down shirt with a loosened bow tie—and my mom’s in her fleece sweatpants. His arm’s extended along the top of the couch, and her shoulder is practically in his armpit. I know they claim they love each other, but I guess I’m glad they’re not really in love—like, if they had romantic dinners, and I had to worry about barging in on them. Or if I caught them outside on the patio, making out in the breeze. Now that would be uncomfortable. Still, I feel a little sorry for them.
“Howdy-doo,” Stephen says when he sees me. He bends his arm up from the elbow, like he’s about to take his arm away from the couch rim, but doesn’t.
“Oh, hi, honey,” my mom adds.
“I’m just getting some water,” I tell them.
“Good ol’ H-two-O,” Stephen adds, unnecessarily.
I force a pleasant-enough smile and keep moving toward the kitchen. The doorbell rings and Hunter springs up, like all the predatory instincts that have been lazing around inside of him suddenly have some purpose. In three seconds, he’s run to the door and back twice, barking so loud that my mom has to resort to gesturing to me to answer the door.
And I do. And immediately want to retreat. Because while Hunter stops barking, I am feeling my own wild panic.
It is Nicolás.
My Love. Holding a pink rose. In a plastic tube.
And I look like I’ve been stowing away in someone’s attic for three weeks, like Elisabet. I am sleep-crusty and unbrushed, in penguin-patterned pajamas. Please don’t let this be The Proposal, I think. Not here. Not now. Not like this. But why else would he be here?
“Mabry?” he says my name like a question, and I’m tempted to announce that I’m just her twin, who actually has been stowed in the attic. For thirteen years. But that I’d be happy to get the real Mabry if he can wait twenty minutes, thirty minutes tops.
But he doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Sorry I didn’t call or text, I just wanted to talk to you in person.”
Oh, no! He is so going to ask me to the Cotillion, and I feel nothing but panic. This isn’t the moment I’ve been waiting for. “Now?” I ask. My voice sounds harsh—stripped of its fruity richness.
“Yeah.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “It probably can’t wait.”
My mom finally comes to find out who’s at the door. “Oh, hi, Nick,” she says. “Oh, a flower! Let’s put it in some water, Mabry.”
She invites him in. I try to sneak some of the sleep out of my eye. She leads us both into the kitchen. After she finds a narrow vase, she fills it up, puts the rose in, and leaves us there.
“Thanks for the rose,” I say.
“I would have gotten you that flower you said—”
“The king protea?”
“Yeah, that, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“It’s—pretty,” I say. I lean over to the flower and sniff it. It does smell like a Ding Dong. Darn you, Thad.
I feel Nick’s eyes bearing into me. Oh no. He really is going to do this while I stand here looking like a bedbug. My eyes dart all around, from the counter to his non-Frankenstein hands, from the tile floor to his feet flat on the ground, from the oven to his minuscule ears.
My phone dings from the counter. It’s Sirina. Where are you?
I feel a flutter of relief. “Nick, I’m sorry. I’ve really got to go.” And then I remember why I have to go. “Oh, how did it go with the sketch artist?”
I text her back. On my way!
But Sirina’s text comes quickly. Hurry up. Urgent.
I look back up at him.
“Well, you’ll see. You better go.”
“Yeah, Sirina’s nagging me like crazy,” I say.
I walk him to the door and we say good-bye. He still looks at me in this strange, almost sad way. I feel bad that I’ve rushed him off, but I don’t want the memory of my Cotillion proposal to be ruined by nap breath and sleep boogers. I really don’t.
I text her. Sorry! Be there ASAP.
I expect her to text me something like, You’re a pain in the toe knuckle sometimes, you know that? But instead I get one that says, Just get here now.
Sirina’s mom lets me inside and tells me Sirina’s waiting in her room upstairs. When I open the door, she looks up from the computer. “You’re finally here.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “Nick stopped by out of the blue.”
Her eyes narrow. “Did he now?”
“Yeah.” I flop down on her bed. “He was acting a little bizarre, though. I think he was going to ask me to the Cotillion, but I kind of panicked.”
“He came over today? To ask you to the Cotillion?” She’s acting like it’s the most absurd thing she’s ever heard.
I tuck my chin back. “I think so. But I kind of freaked. I mean, I was still in my pajamas!”
“And let me get this straight. He didn’t mention this?”
She angles the computer toward me. On the screen is a drawing of a brawny, bald man with a gold hoop earring.
“That looks like Mr. Clean,” I say.
“Exactly!” Sirina says, her nostrils flaring. “So apparently Mr. Clean is the culprit who broke the window. Imagine that!”
“What are you talking about?” I say, shifting to the edge of her bed and sitting up. “Nick said the guy was kind of thin, and had brown hair, brown eyes—”
She’s just staring at me.
“What?” I ask. “You mean he changed his story?”
“Well, that’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? This is the description he gave to the sketch artist!”
“Who is this sketch artist, anyway?”
She shakes her head. “Listen to you—you’re doubting a professional when you should be doubting your boyfriend!”
“He’s not my boyfriend!”
“Oh, right, Mabry. Let’s just stop pretending that’s not what you really want. I know it, you know it, and if Thad doesn’t know it, then he’s dumber than I ever could have thought.”
I’m stunned. I think the last time she talked so harshly to me was in sixth grade, when, for like three and a half hours, I believed Hannah Coates when she told me that Sirina said Emily Wong was her best friend.
She breathes in sharply through her nose and lets it out of her mouth with a throaty hissing sound. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking at me with eyes that have lost their usual spark. “I’m just so stressed. I’m sorry, Mabry.”
Even though there are little pings of pain still darting around in my body, I know she means it.
“It’s okay.”
“I mean, this makes no sense. He didn’t say anything to you about this?”
“No—” I say, but now I wonder. Is this what he wanted to talk about? Not the Cotillion at all? Was the rose just some sort of apology?
She shakes her head. “This really makes no sense.”
“Is this”—I know the answer before I even get the question out of my mouth—“going to affect the YoJo?”
“Yeah, you think? I mean, he changed his story! That means something’s not true. This series is dead. And what else do we really have to write about? Goat shows and bake sales?” She laughs in a not-funny way.
“Maybe something else will happen.”
“As big as this? By the deadline?”
“We have a month.”
“And we’ve waited almost two years for something of this magnitude.” She shakes her head. “No way. I have to figure out what’s going on. I’ve got to talk to him about this.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I offer.
“No. I think it should be me,” she says, giving me a look that says You’ve had your turn. “Sorry, Mabry, but I know where your heart is. I know you’d want to believe anything he says.”
Where my heart is? What’s she talking about
? I don’t even know where it is anymore. Sometimes it feels lost somewhere in my body—hiding in all the thoughts in my head—and sometimes it feels like it’s taken over every cell I have. I feel it beating in my toes and fingers. I feel it swelling up into my throat. Sometimes it overwhelms me, and I feel like I could have five hearts, like Glenda or Dylan. And sometimes I wonder if I have a real heart at all, or if it’s just some kind of fancy pump system fueled by gorgeous boys and made-up stuff on TV.
And right now, it feels like it’s shriveling up a little, like a worm on the sidewalk that forgot to wiggle home after the rain.
Her mom asks me to stay for dinner, but I just want to go home. Sirina’s been huffing about the article, and has even tried to call Nick. When he didn’t pick up the phone, she said to me, “Great. Now he’s going to be running down the halls to avoid me.”
Instead of writing the article, we end up writing a totally blah story that Mrs. Neidelman hounded us about—one that neither one of us could care less about.
Before I leave, she apologizes again for being so snippy with me. Again, I tell her it’s okay. But I wonder if it is. I mean, if we can’t enter the article, is it kind of my fault in some way? Was I blinded by my own agenda? And is it all backfiring now?
I try to ignore the yesses that keep bubbling up to answer the questions in my mind.
That night, when I get into bed, I text her. Good night, my blue-belly shark tooth.
I put my phone down and wait. And wait some more. And then her text finally comes through, so I can go to sleep. Good night, my mountain-bike lip fuzz.
THE VINDICATOR
The Official News Blog of Hubert C. Frost Middle School
* * *
Bored Board Game Club Invited to Regional Convention
The Hubert C. Frost Bored Board Game Club was invited to the Connect Four Hundred Convention, a regional convention for nonelectronic gamers and fans.
While chess clubs have an established following, traditional, new, and evolving board games have had little fanfare in the convention scene. The team of twenty-one students will be traveling by bus to Hillsdale, where they will [click for more}
IN OTHER NEWS…
* * *
Ventriloquist and Puppet Pack It In After Eraser Assault
After being pelted by rubber erasers during a presentation on self-esteem, ventriloquist Paul Wiseman packed up his puppet, Brent, and left school grounds. Before his hurried departure, he stated, “These kids are just horrible.” When reached at his home later, he released a statement by e-mail, declaring: “After today’s incident, I’m reconsidering the belief that everyone [click for more]
yo dudo
tú dudas
ella duda
nosotros dudamos
ellos dudan
We’re sitting on a bench in the food court. Thad offers me some of his bean dip, but I shake my head.
“What’s the problem, Collins? All beaned out these days?”
“No,” I say, although there’s probably some truth to that. “Just, nothing seems right.”
He takes another bean-coated chip. “Okay, what’s wrong?”
I start to say everything. Because that’s how it feels right now. Things between me and Sirina feel a little off. The YoJo is out of our grasp after all. And I still have to either break a heart, or convince Thad and Sirina that they’re doing a disservice to humanity by interfering with true love. Both options fill me with a sense of dread. But how do you tell your friend with a dead father and a trapped mother that everything’s wrong?
“Come on, Collins. Spill it.”
I shake my head.
“Oh, right. You already have Sirina to tell all your woes to.”
“Actually, things are a little weird between us at the moment.”
“Oh. Why?”
But if I tell him, I have to tell him why things are weird, and he always starts acting so annoyed whenever I talk about the article or the YoJo. So I just sit there crumpling and uncrumpling my burrito foil.
“That’s okay—you don’t want to talk about it. I get that,” he says. “Anyway, she’ll get over whatever it is. No one can stay mad at you for too long. Come on.”
I stay stuck to the bench.
He grabs the crumpled foil out of my hands and launches it artfully into the trash can, landing it in the basket. And then he bows. Seriously.
“Well, come on,” he says again. He looks at me like he might grab my hand, but then takes my phone from the bench next to me and runs off.
“Hey!” I say, scurrying off behind him. What if Sirina calls? Will she leave a message?
Thad runs a few circles around me, laughing in his Animal Planet way. And then he disappears around the corner of the sunglass kiosk. When I get to the other side, he’s wearing a pair with little round lenses.
“You look like a dweeb,” I say, feeling my mood lighten a little. “Like someone who works in a cubicle and clips his toenails at his desk when he thinks no one’s looking.”
I put on a pair with big lenses, and he tells me, “You look like a fly. About to give birth to a thousand maggots.”
“You really are disgusting,” I remind him. I don’t smile, even though I sort of want to.
He tries on another pair—one that wraps around his head.
“You look like a total tool bag,” I say. “With all the sharp tools missing.”
“Ouch,” he says. “I actually thought those were pretty cool.”
“Nope, not even a little bit.” I slide a nice purple pair on.
“Dude. You look like an alien.”
“Really? Is that all you can come up with? Mars is actually kind of cool.”
“Not from Mars,” he says. “From Uranus!”
And then we both crack up, and the sunglass lady shoots us a dirty look and starts wiping down everything we touched.
My phone buzzes with a text. It’s not Sirina. It’s Nick. I’m sorry, it says. I look at it and put it away.
“You’re learning, my little cricket,” Thad says.
“I think you mean grasshopper.”
“I think I mean cricket. So let’s talk about D-Day,” he says, and starts clutching at his heart and gasping, buckling at the knees.
He means Dump Day. The day I dump Nick. The day I break my very first heart. The very idea of it fills me with such angst that I suddenly feel sick to my stomach.
“What about it?”
He drops his dramatic interpretation of heartbreak. “Well, you’re going to do it, right?”
“I told you I would,” I say. Which isn’t a lie. Which may not be a lie. I don’t even know anymore. “But he still has to ask me.”
He studies me, with one eye squinting, like he’s skeptical.
“Okay, you want to know something? All my life I’ve been looking forward to the Cotillion. I mean, it’s a huge deal for me. And now, the whole memory of it is going to be shot by this heartbreaking thing. I mean, if I stand him up, what then? I sit home while everyone else goes and has fun?”
Thad is still eyeing me suspiciously.
“Stop giving me that look,” I tell him. “This isn’t about Nick. This is about me not missing one of the most important events of my life.”
“Okay, then, I have an idea,” Thad says.
“What?”
“You dump him when he asks you to that dance. Boom. His heart is broken. Your job is done.”
“And miss the Cotillion completely? I can’t do that!” I start to feel panicky.
He shrugs. “Yeah, so, how about this? I’ll go with you.”
He’s got to be kidding. “What!?”
“Well, why not?”
“Why not? Because, dum-dum, you hate those kinds of things!” I tell him. “You’ve probably never been to a dance in your life!”
“So, what? That means I should never go?”
“I didn’t mean that,” I say, a little apologetically. I picture us at the Cotillion. Or at least I try to. I can�
��t see us spinning around on the dance floor, but I can see us huddled over in the corner. Laughing about something. It could be fun. It could be—Well, it won’t be boring, that’s for sure. “I mean, do you even want to go?”
“I don’t not want to go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Two negatives make a positive, right? Can you tell I’ve been doing my algebra?”
I roll my eyes, but I laugh. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “Okay, fine, but for the record, never, ever ask a girl to a dance like you just asked me.”
“Collins,” he says, giving me a fake-shy look, “I believe you just asked me.”
And then he yanks my hood over my head and I chase him from the eyebrow kiosk to the second jewelry store, until I almost run into a housewifey-looking lady who yells at me, “What are you? Nine?” and both Thad and I are out of breath from laughing.
Thad passes by Ron’s Formal—the shop he always skates by on his way out of the mall. This time, he practically skids to a stop. A banner in the front window reads Prom Season! He studies the mannequins, headless, posed stiffly, arms toward each other. He feels a cloud set in—can he even do this thing? What was he thinking? Was he even thinking? He doesn’t even know how to dance—especially not in some stupid Cotillion. Maybe Mabry will be happy just to drink punch and ride up and down the fancy glass elevators in the hotel.
He wonders what he would even wear, just before it hits him that he’s thinking like a girl.
Whatever. Maybe this will be even better. Maybe it’ll be worth it to see the look on Nick’s face. He hopes Nick’ll go to the Cotillion after Mabry dumps him—hopes Nick can still cobble together some sort of date, for Thad’s sake.
He skates down the hall to the mall exit, but before he pushes open the glass doors, he sees a police car passing by slowly in the parking lot. It takes a second for his nerves to catch up, but it’s just mall security. A guy driving around, eating a giant pretzel and chasing it down with a Starbucks shake. And anyway, if Nick hasn’t turned him in by now, maybe he didn’t have that moment of recognition Thad was sure he had. And if the school hasn’t found him by this point, what does he really have to worry about? The Case of the Broken Window. Even Scooby-Doo could have sniffed him out by now. It’s been well over a month—even the evidence is disappearing. His hand’s almost fully healed.
How to Break a Heart Page 18
