Bart does notice, thankfully. “’Sup, little buddy?” he asks.
I feel the awkwardness simmering inside of me.
“Um, it’s just that we need, um, plates? And utensils?”
“But’s it fundue,” Bart says. “A traditional finger food.”
Nick clears his throat. “It’s just that—the lady—would like them.”
I feel like such an imposter. If Nick could see the usual me—the hanging-out-with-Thad me—would we even be sitting here together tonight?
Bart brings back two napkin-rolled forks and knives and two miniature plates, and follows it up with an unnecessary bow. Nick smiles at me.
I smile back. I try to enjoy myself. I’m the closest I’ll be for a while to being on a real date, in a real restaurant, with waiters who wear tuxedos and ferry around bottles of wine. Where there will be candles with real flames. Where items on the menu will require familiarity with a second language. Where the larger waiters aren’t giving the smaller ones wedgies in the kitchen.
I use my fork to place the dipper into the fundue and put it on my tiny plate. I take a small bite of mine and try to chew politely.
He gives me an awkward smile, and looks at his dipper, and says, “So, I wanted to ask you something.”
What are the chances he’ll ask me what my favorite food is? I wonder in a flurry of panic. Or my middle name? But I know it’s going to happen, and instead of the excitement I had expected, I feel sick inside.
“Mabry.” Under the table, he takes my hand in his. He fixes his eyes on mine. “Will you please go to the Cotillion with me?”
This is the moment. I open my mouth. I take a breath. Yes is the word I’m supposed to say. I once very much wanted to say Yes! Yes! Yes! With all my heart, yes! But here, now, I can’t get that simple word out.
Because I don’t want to anymore. The yes doesn’t feel real. Nothing about it feels real. My whole fascination with Nick feels like a stage set.
All I can wish for is that life had sound tracks like La Vida Rica—heavy, serious, mood-setting music. It just makes sad things easier. Without it, the words cut through the air like missiles, blowing through the space between us that is yet undefined.
My heartbeat is starting to speed up, sweat is starting to swim around under my skin, making its way to my pores. All my forehead muscles seem to be migrating toward the ceiling.
“Nick?” I pause. If only you could buy time as easily as you can buy some heart-shaped jewelry at the mall kiosk. “I’m sorry. But, I, uh, think I have to break up with you.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever uttered that phrase to anyone, and the words seem both heavy and trivial at the same time. They’re just words, my head says. Still, even if they can’t break bones, words can definitely break hearts, and possibly damage other organs. I mean, when my heart is breaking, try to convince me that my spleen isn’t somehow involved.
“Break up?” Nick’s face seems to melt a little. His eyebrows drop and his cheeks sink. “Why?”
I shake my head, like if I try hard enough, an acceptable answer will pop up, like a Magic 8 Ball. It doesn’t. How do you explain to someone that everything you thought you wanted was all wrong? That you were living someone else’s life—a character on TV’s! That you feel now like an exhausted actor who just wants to call it a day and go home? That “real” feels like a whole different thing than it did just a month ago?
He stares, as if in a trance, at the fundue bowl. And I realize that this heartbreaking business really sucks big-time.
“I’m sorry, Nick.”
He releases my hand under the table. It’s clammy and wet, and I have to wipe it dry on the hem of my skirt.
“I thought this is what you wanted,” he says without look- ing at me.
“It was.” It all feels so once-upon-a-time.
“I thought we, you know, liked each other.”
“We did! We do, but—”
Through the glass that separates the restaurant from the mall, I see a hand waving manically. I squint. I see that the hand belongs to Thad Bell. When he sees me gawking at him, he gestures for me to come out.
“Hey, Nick?” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” But he still gets up and lets me out of the booth. Or maybe I’ve sort of nudged him out of the way.
I get through the entrance and am face-to-face with Thad. “What are you doing here?” I ask. My voice comes out annoyed, but really, I’m not sure how I feel. Yes, maybe annoyed, but also excited and scared and curious and thrilled and confused and, well, basically, like a bolt of electricity has just traveled through me but I’m still trying to figure out what happened, and if I can move, if I’m hurt, if I’m okay, or what.
“Hi,” he says. He looks nervous. He is holding a cabbage, or at least something that looks like a cabbage. “Am I too late? Did you already say yes?”
“No, I—” It seems too hard to explain what just happened.
“Oh, good.” He seems to melt a little with relief. “Because guess what?”
Chicken butt? I’m tempted to say, but I’m not really in a chicken-butt kind of mood. “What?”
“I can go.” He looks strangely excited.
It’s like my thoughts are trapped in molasses. “Go?” Though I have no idea what’s going on, I am sure of the fact that my face is practically doing acrobatics, trying to find a proper expression.
“I confessed about the window. I told the school what happened. And apparently, the kids who get into trouble are the ones who aren’t in school. So, instead of banning me from school property, like I thought they would, they made me re-enroll. You’re actually looking at the newest student at Hubert C. Frost.” Thad looks relieved, maybe even a little happy. “Officer Dirk knew the whole time. He was just hoping I’d turn myself in. It just took me a while to do it. But it’s done.”
“Oh, well that’s—good.” My head feels jammed, like a broken printer.
“Yeah, so, all right, Collins, here goes,” Thad says, clasping that cabbage-thing in front of him.
My nerves start to bundle together. My scalp starts to feel hot and sticky. I can’t move.
“Will you go to this stupid Cotillion thing with me after all?”
“Thad, I—I mean, I’m still trying to understand this.”
“I can go to the Cotillion. The dance.” He smiles. “That stupid dance.”
All I can do is stare at him and manage a couple blinks.
“Okay, Collins, here’s something you can probably understand. Maybe I need to speak your language,” he says, smirking and turning a little pink. “I, uh, have feelings.”
“Feelings?”
“Yeah. About you,” he says. “I mean, I think you might be right. About those things.”
I blink again. I breathe. I wiggle my toes. Amazingly, he has feelings, but I seem to be completely out of them. It’s like when you stub your toe on something and you have that weird blank space in time where you don’t feel anything yet, but you know some sort of pain is about to make itself known.
But Thad is standing there, staring at me with those stupid penny-colored eyes, pushing the cabbage-thing into my hands, and now my feelings start to rush in.
Not the feelings he is probably hoping for.
No.
They are sharp feelings. Red feelings. Boiling feelings. I. Am. Livid. I mean, he can go to the dance, and then he can’t, and then he wants me to go with Nick, and then he wants to go with me to the dance that he made fun of in the first place—now that I’m so over the idea of going anyway? And here he is pulling out this “feelings” thing, like he has any right to use that on me. Feelings are my territory.
“Collins?” Thad says, a look of uncertainty taking over. “I, uh—”
“You know what, Thad Bell?” I say, I actually yell. “This isn’t about you anymore. AND IT NEVER WAS!”
I storm away and thrust myself back into the booth next to Nick, flinging the paper cabbage thin
g onto the bench next to me.
“You okay?” he asks. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Except my world just spun off its axis. That’s all. “Sorry.”
I take a sip of water and try to calm down.
“Do you want some more food or anything?”
“No, I’m”—incredibly ready for this night to be over—“okay.”
Now I take a deep breath. “I’m really sorry about the Cotillion.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “I really did want to go with you, but I might ask Ariana.”
“Oh,” I say. So I haven’t ruined him for all other women, I suppose.
Even though I won’t be going to the Cotillion, and I feel sad and a little lonely, I start to feel something else. Something bigger. I feel free. It’s not the kind of freedom that makes you want to spin around in circles and shout joyous things, but the kind of freedom that makes you realize you are no longer shackled, like you’ve been released into a brand-new, unfamiliar world. Free, yes, but a little scared. Like Graciela when she found her way out of the cave after months of being confined.
He studies me for a moment and leans in close to me, “I guess it’s too late to ask you for a kiss.”
“Uh—” I say. This isn’t the first kiss I’ve been waiting on. Served up with a breakup? With fundue on my breath? A pity kiss? After a fight with Thad Bell? Really?
“Sorry.” He shakes his head, looking embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
We pay the check and get up to leave. At the hostess’s stand, I turn toward him.
“What did Thad want anyway?” Nick asks.
I shake my head. “He was just—passing by.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s—” All sorts of adjectives come to mind. Annoying, funny, sad, infuriating, cute, awful, awesome, exasperating, fragile, strong, sneaky, sweet, flawed, smart. “Complicated.”
Nick nods. “He’s had it rough. I can’t believe all the stuff you told me about him.”
And then it starts coming together, like the missing pieces of that puzzle have been found and are being put into place. “Wait. Is that why you changed your description all of a sudden?”
He gives me a squinty, guilty look.
“So you did see him break the window?”
He nods. “I didn’t get a great look, obviously. That was the truth. I wouldn’t have realized it was him if I didn’t see you guys together at the mall that day.”
“So that’s why you changed your story.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want him to get in trouble,” Nick says. “He didn’t need that. Plus, I realized I was kind of a—I mean, I think he overheard me making some stupid joke about a wheelchair. I didn’t mean anything by it, but he might have heard me.”
I look at him. I feel a sudden surge of affection. “Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“You know that kiss?” Maybe I can channel Mariela, for one last hurrah. And then I can let her go forever. She’s nothing but trouble.
I lean toward him. He leans toward me.
In three. I recite the definition in my head, which I know by heart: to press, purse, and then part the lips. There is only about an inch between us. I can feel the warmth of his breath; I can smell the salt from his dipper.
Two. Maybe a centimeter of space between us now. Or would that be a millimeter? A hectometer? Why am I thinking about metrics right now!?
One. My lips purse and pucker forward like a magnet is pulling them toward his. And then our lips touch. His are weirdly, surprisingly muscular, like he works them out—
It’s happening. Our lips are pressing together, and now we must part them slightly. I try, but maybe too hard, because I end up clamping my lips back together, and he pulls back, and when he does, we emit a smacking sound.
I’m really confounded. That’s a kiss? The world falls to its knees for that? I feel like a bonfire that’s been soaked with an ice-cold bucket of water. Long-burning flames are now little plumes of smoke. You couldn’t roast a marshmallow over this.
And it doesn’t help that I’m still thinking about Thad.
Then we hear, “Hey, get a booth.” It’s Bart. He winks at me. Then he hands me the cabbage bouquet. “You almost left this.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“What is that anyway?” Nick asks.
And for the first time I look at it. I mean really look at it. And I realize it’s not just any paper cabbage. It’s a true crafting project. It’s a handmade king protea.
No, not something you can get with a Ding Dong. At all.
“Just something,” I say. A boulder of an understatement. “From Thad.”
“Poor guy. But I get it. I guess I’m glad he hit the window and not me,” Nick says.
I sigh. “Well, he wouldn’t want you to feel sorry for him.”
Nick shakes his head. “I mean, I do feel bad for him, but it’s not that. I just, you know—when stuff like that happens, I can see why he’d be so angry all the time.”
Angry. But tonight that wasn’t him; that was me. He wasn’t angry tonight, not at all. No, the image of Thad’s face when I yelled at him is seared into my memory. It is broken.
Heartbroken.
And with a thrust of clarity, I realize something. Well, congratulations, Mabry Collins. Applaud yourself. You just broke your first heart.
“Well, bye, Mabry,” Nick says.
“Bye.”
And it isn’t Nick’s. Not at all.
yo quedo
tú quedas
ella queda
nosotros quedamos
ellos quedan
For the next few hours, the scene with Thad replays in my head over and over again. It’s torturous. I really wish I was on La Vida Rica. That some producer could just call CUT! and the scenes would end up in some digital trash can, never to be seen again. But instead, it’s like an episode set on a loop, ending with me spewing out words very loudly at Thad.
I keep checking my phone. Maybe Thad’s texted. Maybe Sirina’s called. Maybe everything really is okay. But it’s not, and I feel like there are weights pulling me down, dangling off my (uneven) earlobes and my fingers, dragging behind my feet on the floor. I brush my teeth—normally I’d floss, too, but tonight it feels like too much work, like running ten laps around the field.
I so wish I could call Sirina. I need her. Maybe I can send her the most brilliant good-night text ever. One that will make her miss me to the depths of her being. But I can’t think of anything clever—it’s like a fire inside me has been stomped out. And there’s the risk that my message would just sit there, unacknowledged and unanswered, a little piece of myself rotting away somewhere in cyberspace.
And there’s Thad. The crushed, bewildered look on his face when I yelled at him. My memory serves up the image with a cracking sound. I feel a stream of sorrow.
I think about running downstairs and crying to my mom, but then I hear her laugh flutter up the stairs. It’s something Stephen said, no doubt. And it makes me feel even more alone. I mean, what if what they have is true love? What if the true love that I thought existed isn’t even real? That it’s as made-for-TV as the remote control? That it’s no more real than the fake desert that Aurelio is still somehow crawling across. Día cuarenta y tres.
I stuff my face back into my pillow. It can’t be. It just can’t.
I roll over and try to get comfortable. It’s not hard to still my body—I’m so incredibly tired—but my mind is on a separate course. It won’t shut up. It keeps whirling and twirling and spinning out thoughts that poke at me like little pins.
I try to breathe deeply. I mean, I actually succeed in doing that, but instead of feeling calm, I feel more awake.
But I tell myself, all’s fair in love and war, after all. That’s what they say.
Crack.
But it doesn’t feel fair.
Fine. I’ll apologize to Thad. Then maybe my HEAD WILL SHUT UP SO I CAN GO TO SLEEP!
&
nbsp; I roll back over and grab my phone.
I thumb-type it out. Sorry about tonite. I’m pooped. We can talk about it tomorrow.
And I hit Send.
And then I realize I WILL NEVER, EVER SLEEP AGAIN BECAUSE I JUST RUINED MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE.
Because what I thought I typed is not what I actually typed at all. What a difference—a crucial difference—one letter can make.
Because here’s what I wrote:
Sorry about tonite. I pooped. We can talk about it tomorrow.
Oh. My. Dear. God. I pooped and we can talk about it tomorrow!? What in the name of Dios mío HAVE I DONE!? AND THAT IS A REAL QUESTION!
I spend the next ten minutes furiously texting him things like: Don’t read that txt! And I meant I’m pooped, like tried.
Frantic texts lead to more typos. So, great, now I sound con-stipated.
TIRED! I text.
And I finally start to weep with exhaustion. I power my phone off and put it down on the table next to me. I lay my head on my pillow and cross my arms like an X over my chest, so when I die of humiliation and they find me in the morning, I’ll have salvaged a bit of dignity and have left this world gracefully and composed.
Thad throws up on the way home. In someone’s bushes.
It’s sudden. And confusing. He never got his burrito at the mall, so he’s pretty sure it’s not food poisoning. And, anyway, it’s not just his stomach. Is it possible to feel dizzy in your chest? Everything from his throat to his lower belly feels tingly, carbonated, and his head is starting to ache.
He’s short of breath, too. It’s like he can’t take in a full lungful of air, whenever he sees it in his head—Mabry kissing Nick. This is bad. He must be coming down with something awful. Miserable.
He has to walk home. The skating is making him feel worse—dizzier, more panicky. He can’t remember when he felt this awful—he hates to pull a Mabry, but it feels quite possible that he could be dying. Is this how his dad felt right before he died? He hopes not. He really hopes not, but love and pain seem to come together like a package deal. A combo meal in the drive-through of life.
He gets to the front door and dry heaves right there on the porch. Aunt Nora opens the door and takes in a breath when she sees him. “Thaddeus? Are you okay?”
How to Break a Heart Page 22
