I feel that glorious beating. This time, I’m not sure whether it’s in my chest or his. Mine. No his. Wait, mine. His. Jeez. I’m glad I have only one heart, not five. Love just must be so confusing for the worm! I snort into his neck, practically giving him a hickey with my nose. So gross.
“Are you laughing?” He pulls away just enough to see my face.
“Sorry. I was just thinking.” I wipe his neck.
“Should I ask?”
“Maybe not.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I was just thinking about worms,” I say.
“Dude, seriously?”
“Did you know they have five hearts?”
He laughs. His laugh.
I smile. I’ve missed that safari sound.
Then he says, “What other crazy things go on in that head?”
“Well, lots of things,” I say.
“No doubt.”
“But not everything’s so crazy.”
“No?” He moves my hair back from my shoulders.
“No,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About writing about things that really matter.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Like can I meet your mom?”
Aunt Nora helps Thad’s mom put on a new red sweat suit while he and Mabry share a Little Naked Debbie and thumb-wrestle in the kitchen.
“You can come in now,” Aunt Nora says.
His mom’s sitting up in her chair, her feet bare. She smiles at them when they walk in the room.
“Mom, this is Mabry. But you can call her Collins if you want.”
Mabry gives him a quick ha, ha, ha look and turns to his mom and smiles. He’s warned her not to try the handshake thing, that sometimes she’s too tired for even a handshake at this time in the evening, so he’s glad to see Mabry clasp her hands in front of her. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Mabry says.
He knows his mom can’t actually say the same. She hasn’t exactly known Mabry existed until about forty-two minutes ago. He bites his bottom lip and feels the tremor in his ankle. He is a little nervous.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” his mom says. She smiles. And she does lift her elbow from the armrest. She does slowly reach her hand toward Mabry. Mabry smiles, takes her hand, and gives it a gentle pump.
Aunt Nora beams at Thad from across the room.
“Mom?” he says. “We’ll be out in the kitchen—”
“Thad, just wait. I want to show you something.”
Mabry looks hesitant. “Should I—?” She points toward the kitchen.
Thad feels a little shy about it, but his mom answers. “You can stay here.” Then she sits up a little straighter in her chair. “Okay, let me give this a try. Watch my right leg.”
He does, they all do, but nothing happens. He takes a quick glance at his mom’s face—the effort shows in her tightening forehead and her stiff smile. He fights the urge to help her, and instead, smiles patiently even when his eyebrows want to pull together with concern. She stares down at her foot, concentrating. And then, slowly, her right leg lifts off the leg rest, just an inch or so. It hovers—just a second feels like a tiny eternity to him—and then she releases it with a gust of a laugh.
Mabry is beaming, even though she doesn’t really understand how amazing it is.
Thad wants to jump up and down, but feels that shyness again. “That’s awesome,” he says, just about four decibels below where he really wants to.
“Hang on,” his mom says. And then, still as slowly, her left leg lifts a fraction of an inch. Two-tenths. Okay, maybe a tenth.
He feels the tear prickle. Oh no. Not here. Not now. No way. The only way to combat the tears is to do something else with these crazy, overwhelming feelings. So he does. “Well, is that it?” He smiles. “I mean, we actually have an audience today.”
She laughs. Aunt Nora laughs. And Mabry laughs. Okay, she snorts.
His mom looks at Mabry. “You must think we’re all nuts.”
“Not all of you,” Mabry says, eyeing Thad. “Just one of you.”
And then he laughs, too. And feels a ripple of something.
A ripple of something.
A ripple of feelings. Lots of feelings.
Okay, fine, love.
Love.
He can’t think of the word without also thinking of Mabry. So, even if she is ridiculous, which she is, maybe she was right. Just a little bit right. Maybe it exists in ways that he never knew.
First it’s a flutter. And then there’s a surge of it, like a tsunami. And for the first time since the accident, love feels a little bit okay.
yo empiezo
tú empiezas
ella empieza
nosotros empezamos
ellos empiezan
“What if she won’t come to the door?”
“No way, dude. I’m not letting you chicken out now,” Thad says. He grabs my free hand, and it takes me a little bubble-bursting second to realize he’s just trying to keep me from bolting down the street. “Come on.” He pulls me down the walkway toward her front door.
“But wait. What’s my first line again?” I ask.
“There are no lines.” He looks at me and smirks. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, I really can’t, but just speak from your heart. There. Gah!” He makes a coughy-gaggy sound.
I look at him. “You really just said that.”
“I know. I know. It’s just sometimes I have to speak to you in your own language. As much as it kills me a little inside.”
He’s still holding my hand. Or maybe I’m holding his. Very tight. I look at him. He nods and squeezes my hand. “You can do this.”
“What if she hates it?”
“She’s not going to hate it, Mabry.”
Mabry. He’s called me Mabry. For the first time ever, not Collins. It makes me blush.
He steps onto the porch, my hand still in his, so I go along with him. Then he releases my hand and pulls the draft of the article I’ve been working on out of his pocket. He unfolds the paper, smooths it out, and hands it to me.
“Okay, you’re all set,” he says, and presses the doorbell.
Even the three-tone chime makes me miss her. Ringing it always meant the next few hours would be spent with my best friend. Ringing it always was practically the theme song for friendship.
I see people moving around inside through the window along the side of the door. Then it opens and Sirina says, “Oh. It’s you.”
Her face is blank. Her words are matter-of-fact. I had hoped for at least an exclamation mark, if not a heartfelt hug. I mean, it’s been weeks since we’ve spoken.
“Yeah,” I say. So brilliant.
She and Thad say hi to each other, and then she looks at me, her face still blank. I decide she should be a professional poker player. I just can’t seem to read her.
“So.” I take a breath and look down at the paper. “I wrote something for you. Well, I mean, not for you, but kind of, like, thinking about you. I mean, I know how much the YoJo meant to you, but I was thinking, how can I make it all better—”
Thad is pressing his sneaker against mine. “Just read it,” he says quietly, his coppery-brown eyes pleading.
“Right,” I say. I look at Sirina. She looks back at me, her mouth slightly open. She looks like she’s almost something—appalled, amused, baffled—but I can’t tell what.
I clear my throat and read. “Last year, Ashley Walker, now fourteen, went on the dream vacation of a lifetime: a ski trip to Colorado. But she had a horrible accident while atop that mountain. Not only did her pelvis get crushed, but also her dreams.”
I look back up at Sirina. Finally, an expression! Even if it is aghast.
“Go on,” Thad says.
“But it’s not the physical devastation that causes Ashley the most pain. Since she’s been out of school, struggling to keep up online, her friends have moved on without her.”
I glance up at Sirina again. Now she is sort of wincing.
“Jessica Sawyer, age fifteen, has the same dreams of any other girl her age. She longs to go to school dances, she dreams of walking on the beach, she yearns to dance tango. But her disability keeps her like a prisoner in her own home, a girl trying to live a life where wheels aren’t always welcome. Her only social outlet, she reports, is ‘liking things on Facebook.’”
“Is this real?” Sirina asks.
I look up from the page. Despite the fact that I’m starting to shrink a little inside, I say, “It turns out there are lots of kids in the county who have disabilities and can’t get to school. I wanted to share their stories.”
“But ‘crushed dreams and pelvises,’ Mabry? A little sensitivity maybe?” Her eyebrows lift. “And for the record, not every fifteen-year-old girl ‘yearns to dance tango.’”
“Well, so, I need a good editor,” I say, a little apologetically. Then in a quieter voice, I say, “I need you.”
Her face softens. “Well, how did you—? I mean, where did you get all this?”
“Thad and his family helped me. His mom’s in a wheelchair. She talked to her doctors and therapists, and they got me in touch with a lot of people. There’s more. A guy with cerebral palsy who has to rely on a bad satellite Internet connection. A blind girl whose guide dog died. There’s a bunch of kids who have trouble going to school. And I know you know some, too. What about all those kids you met at that camp last summer?”
I don’t add when you abandoned me for four weeks.
“Camp Amberbrook,” she says.
“Right,” I say. “You told me one of the girls was having ten seizures a day. That’s got to get in the way of school.”
“Wow,” she finally says. At least, her words say it. Her face, not so much.
I finally break down. “Oh, Sirina! Let’s take another shot at the YoJo. Or being best friends again. Or both!”
She finally smiles at me, but it’s a tight smile that looks almost painful on her face.
“Can you at least think about it?” I plead.
“Okay.”
Thad tells us he’ll wait down by the sidewalk. Sirina leans on the doorjamb. “Well, this is—”
“Weird, I know.”
“I was going to say a surprise, but you’re right. It’s a little weird. But it’s you. You keep things—interesting.”
“Not boring?” I ask.
“Not at all. You never were.”
Say it, I tell myself. Just say it. So I do.
“Sirina, I miss you.” And then I just say more words, which make me feel even more exposed. “I love you.”
She lifts her eyebrows.
“Not in a La Vida Rica way, of course,” I add. And it’s true. La Vida Rica doesn’t do friendship well. It’s always people in love or people fighting. People in lies and people betrayed.
“I miss you too, Mabry,” she says, but her words are quiet and she’s not really looking at me. She opens her mouth to say something else, but closes it again.
Her pocket buzzes. She takes her phone out and looks at it. “Hey, Mabry? I kind of want to take this,” she says. And then, in a quieter voice, she says, “It’s Kipper.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Hey, I’ll call you right back,” she says into the phone. She slips it back into her pocket, and says to me, “Well, thanks for coming.”
Thanks for coming? What is this? A business memo?
I start to walk away, but she says my name. I turn around. “Just so we’re clear.” She smiles. “I never, ever want to kiss you on the mouth. Ever. But I love you, too.”
So I just do it—I fling myself around and just hug her. She smells like Sour Patch Kids, and right now, it smells better than any flower ever could. She hugs me back, and a piece of my hair gets caught in her watch, but I don’t care. Even with a little pain in my scalp, this is the best I’ve felt in a long time.
It’s getting late. It’s getting dark. And technically, Thad has to hold my hand on the way back to my house, which I’m trying to be very cool about. So I give Sirina’s hand one last little squeeze and say, “Go talk to Kipper.”
“Wait,” she says. She pulls back just enough to see me. “We’re going to need photos, interviews, everything. And of course, some major editing. It’s a whole different category—Education in Our World? Wait, no, maybe Modern Life. And we could enter it as a feature, I think, instead of a series. But it’s a good story. And a good start.”
I smile.
She smiles.
“And if we’re going to win the YoJo, we’ve only got a few weeks. We better get started ASAP. Like, tomorrow morning—here, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. I feel giddy.
In my head, I see it. Sirina and I growing up together. Sirina and I being each other’s bridesmaids. Wait—our husbands will be best friends; it will be a double wedding! There will be king proteas involved. And gazebos. Sirina and I will pass our children off as cousins, and we’ll spend holidays together for the rest of our lives. I can practically see the photo montage. Our kids dressed as Skittle-faced monkey wrenches or peanut-headed sock puppets for Halloween. Summer vacations at the beach. I see us growing old together. Waving from a ship. Flying over Europe. Riding in a rickshaw in Asia. In a carriage in Central Park.
Maybe friendship is actually the best kind of romance there is.
We hug again, just a quick good-bye with promises to see each other in the morning, and Thad and I start back to my house. I stand on the skateboard and he walks, pulling me by the hand, just so I can get the hang of it. I’ve told him it’s strictly for research. He tells me he believes me.
But a block away he stops, kind of suddenly. I wobble on the board, and he grabs both my hands.
“Why are we stopping?”
“Just look,” he says.
I do. There, stuck in the middle of the sidewalk, is a lone worm.
“Five hearts, right?”
“Right,” I say.
“From this day on, whenever I see a worm on the sidewalk, I’ll think of you,” he tells me.
“You mean it?”
“With all my hearts.”
I know the smile on my own face is probably a pretty goofy one, possibly smile number ninety-three, but I don’t even care. The one on his face can’t be much better.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket. He puts his thumbs through my belt loops while I get my phone out. “Just to help steady you,” he explains.
I tell him I believe him.
The text is from Her. My Sirina, Mi Mejor Amiga.
Good night, my razor-backed ostrich feather, her message reads.
And it is a good night. A great night. The bueno-est of noches indeed.
I smile and type back, Good night, my shea-butter blowfish.
And Thad kneels down to move the worm carefully to the grass.
The Unbreaking
At first, just existing feels like betrayal. Not just a betrayal of your own heart, but of your lost love. Loneliness threatens to swallow you up, but you still have to brush your hair. Floss your teeth. Put things into your mouth and chew and swallow them. You still have to put one foot in front of the other and move along. Life just doesn’t wait. The world has no patience for a broken heart. Hair mats and tangles. Stomachs growl. Clothes wear out. Teeth rot.
And then—something catches you off guard. You laugh at something, maybe by accident. It’s just a reflex. But still, you start to remember what it feels like not to ache so much. It’s like cracking through an invisible surface, and not knowing how to climb back under.
If, that is, you want to climb back under. Because up here, out here, you can breathe a little deeper. It’s a little warmer here. And brighter, too—you can see colors again. And your heart—it still somehow beats. You can feel the stubborn pulse on the inside of your wrist. You can feel the blood, how it sometimes rushes around inside you like it has a mind of its own, in and out through your cobbled-together heart. Sometimes very fast.
It’s a diff
erent world, a strange one. But maybe it’s not so bad. There are pretty things here. Nice things. Soft things. Shiny things. Things you could like. People you could like. People you could love.
And maybe even some you already do.
—El Fin—
yo agradezco
I’d first like to thank my mom, Delores Bucknam, for her constant love and encouragement, for her sense of humor, for her odd little quirks, and for her stubborn belief in me. For years ago bringing me the palm-size copy of El Libro Semanal, with the shirtless man and a bare-shouldered beauty on the cover, and for reminding me that you never know where you’ll find your next idea. I thought I knew everything about heartbreak until I lost you.
Warm embraces to my friends and family who helped me through her loss and the writing of this book, which went hand in hand: Michele Nesmith, The Best Friend One Could Ever Hope For. Seriously, she should run workshops. To Kylie Stewart, who never met a ’chong she didn’t like. Unless it has gluten. To Joe McGrath for reading, and reading, and reading again, and for expanding my heart in all the good ways. To Dad and Anna, Lois, Uschi, Deanna, and Andrea. Big, fat “fundue” pots of love to all of you.
Extra hearts to Ashley Rock, who is the nimble-footed walrus cheek behind many of the good-night texts. And to Casper, the little blond thing that makes sure I’m up every morning to write. All right, fine, he’s more concerned about his kibble than my writing, but the point is that he pants and paces and nudges and sneezes until I’m up.
A dole of doves to my agent, Holly Root, who deserves more thanks than I can give her here. There are mountains that should be shouted from; choirs of praise that should be sung. Oceans of gratitude that should be swum in order to fully express my appreciation for the many things she’s done and continues to do for me.
Passionate thanks to all the editorial staff I’ve worked with at Disney Hyperion, including Julie Moody, Abby Ranger, Lisa Yoskowitz, and Laura Schreiber. Julie, a bonus heart-shaped box of chocolates to you for all the hard work and insight that brought this book into its own. Admiring glances of gratitude to Stephanie Lurie for her support; Dina Sherman, who is simply awesome in all her work with libraries and educators; Emma Trithart, for her cover illustrations; and Maria Elias for her cover design.
How to Break a Heart Page 24
