A Field Guide for Heartbreakers

by Kristen Tracy

  “Same difference,” Veronica said.

  I wagged my finger at her. “That’s not true. I picked Guatemala for very specific reasons.”

  “Please, do not start lecturing me about Guatemala.”

  “You think everything is a lecture,” I said.

  “You’re acting like you’re on your period. Let’s declare some silent time and work.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Sometimes Veronica drove me mad. Okay, so maybe I had been intending to let loose some lecturelike information. But where’s the hurt in that? She definitely didn’t know enough about foxes to write her story. She could have benefitted from some additional knowledge about all sorts of countries. Central and South American ones especially. To be honest, she could have used some refresher facts about North American countries as well. Even the United States.

  “Don’t pout,” Veronica said.

  “I’m not. I’m utilizing my silent time.”

  Veronica got up and clicked on the oscillating fan to its lowest setting. Every four seconds the air above me stirred, and it felt like a bird was flying over me. After coming to this realization, I tried not to think about Hamilton.

  “Aren’t you excited about our date Sunday with Scotty Dee and Kirk?” Veronica asked. “Aren’t you impressed that I pulled that off?”

  I sighed. “I was at first. But to be honest, upon reflection, Scotty Dee seems old,” I said.

  “Get over it. He’s gorgeous,” Veronica said. “Boz will freak when he sees pictures of me with a rock star–hot Aussie.”

  I hated the idea of the continued torment of Boz.

  “Frank is cuter,” I said.

  “Oh my god! I think so too,” Veronica said. She hurried across the room and plopped down on my bed. This maneuver made my whole body bounce.

  “What happened to silent time?” I asked.

  “Duh. Silent time ended when we started talking about guys. Okay. On a scale of one to ten, how attracted do you think Frank is to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Guess.”

  I mulled it over. “Seven,” I said. “And a half.”

  Veronica’s eyes bugged out. She looked thrilled. “Oh my god. Seven and a half is high. What about Kite?”

  “Seven and a half.”

  Her grin intensified. “Roger?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “He’s reserved. Let’s just say seven.”

  The seven range seemed safe. It kept Veronica pleased and also put her in a place where she didn’t ask for elaboration.

  “What about Waller?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “On a scale of one to ten, how attracted do you think Waller is to me?”

  I blinked at her several times. My stomach tightened. Veronica and I had never been interested in the same guy before. What was she doing? Didn’t she have enough potential flings on her plate?

  “Stop making that face,” Veronica said. “I’m totally kidding. I know you like Waller. I’d never make a move on a guy you liked. Ever.”

  Veronica picked up my hand and kissed the back of it.

  “That was a terrible trick,” I said.

  “I know. But the important thing is that I think Waller is interested in you at least at a level eight, possibly a level nine,” Veronica said.

  This made all my anger flow out of me.

  “He’s so cute,” I said. “I can’t wait to read his story.”

  “Yeah. Everybody’s writing is better than I thought it would be. I mean, I didn’t like Brenda’s”—she stuck her finger down her throat—“but I liked Kite’s. And I like Frank’s and Annie Earl’s stories for tomorrow.”

  “He knows a lot about marine animals,” I said. “I had no idea that if you messed with a dolphin’s blowhole it had the potential to charge you and deliver a fatal head butt.”

  I waited for Veronica to offer some sort of sexual interpretation of Frank’s story, but she didn’t. I couldn’t come up with one either.

  “Do you think his story is a metaphor for something else?”

  Veronica sighed. “Basic postadolescent male horniness.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Can you believe that Annie Earl won a pie-making contest and was given an award of five hundred thousand dollars? That’s so huge. And for a cherry pie? Can you imagine?”

  “That was a true story?” I asked.

  “Totally. I Googled it. She won five hundred thousand smackers.”

  “Have you Googled anyone else?” I asked. “Maybe I’ll Google Waller.”

  “We don’t know his real first name. He’s un-Googleable,” Veronica said. “It’s one of those sucky things you’re going to have to live with. Or we could break into his room and sneak a peek at his passport.” She was perfectly serious.

  “No way,” I said. “I think I’d rather let there be a little mystery involved.”

  “Your choice. The only guy I found on the Internet was Roger. He won some prize in Chicago for writing a poem about a trout.”

  “He fishes?” I asked.

  “No. The poem isn’t about catching the trout, it’s about eating it. I suspect he might have a sexual hang-up. But I’d need to read more poems.”

  I wasn’t clear how writing a poem about a trout dinner turned you into somebody with a sexual hang-up.

  “He seems really normal to me. Nice, actually,” I said.

  “Time will tell.”

  Veronica flipped onto her side and narrowed her eyes at me. “I know it’s probably rude to talk about this, but I think it’s time we discuss it.”

  “What?” I asked. I was worried she was going to bring up my BO. This city made me sweat so much I couldn’t help it.

  “How do you think she got burned?” Veronica asked.

  “Annie Earl?” I asked.

  “Duh,” Veronica said. “I bet it was a crazy ex-lover. I bet it was one of those, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’ situations.”

  “I don’t know. She’s a cook. Maybe it was a grease fire,” I said.

  “I don’t think so. I think it was something dramatic. I know!” she gasped. “Maybe Ronald Reagan set her on fire!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “She said she had dinner with Ronald Reagan, and the way she said this made me think there was more to the story.”

  “Ronald Reagan did not set Annie Earl on fire.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Probably?”

  Veronica returned to her own bed and took out her notebook again.

  “Maybe you should Google some information about foxes,” I said.

  “Shhh. Our walls are pretty thin. I don’t want people to hear you say that.”

  “You don’t want people to hear me say Google?” I asked.

  “No, foxes,” she whispered.

  She’d already said the word “fox” much louder than I had, just moments ago, but I didn’t point that out.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a great idea and I don’t want anybody to steal it,” Veronica said.

  “Should we develop a code word?”

  “Totally. From now on call them otters,” she said.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Yeah. When you have a ‘great idea’ like this”—she drew scare quotes in the air—“it’s important to prevent people from ripping it off.”

  There were many reasons to object to this argument. Not the least of which was that it was based on irrational paranoia.

  “Okay. I’ll call them otters,” I said.

  “This may surprise you, but my ‘otter’ story is going to turn out to be pretty great,” she said.

  “Why would that surprise me?” I asked.

  “Because I’ve made it seem like I don’t care very much about it,” she said.

  I lay down on my own bed and reached into my backpack for the first six pages of my Guatemala story. So far the two main characters had driven h
alfway through Mexico in a rental car they’d secured in Oklahoma, though they would only drive while the guy was sleeping, because he was afraid of being in a moving car. I heard Veronica’s pen scratching against her notebook.

  “I know you care about your story,” I said.

  She tossed her pillow at me, and it thwacked me in the head.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a low monotone.

  “Why do you sound so unhappy all of a sudden?” I asked.

  “Writing makes me feel conflicted,” she said. “It makes feel like I’m being self-centered.”

  “Why would it make you feel that way?”

  “You’d have to live with a writer to understand.” Veronica rolled onto her stomach and commenced chewing her pen cap.

  “You complain a lot about your mom being selfish,” I said. “But I don’t see it that way.”

  “That’s because she acts differently when you’re around.”

  “We’ve been friends since seventh grade,” I said. “I think I would have picked up on it by now.”

  “It was way worse when I was younger,” Veronica said. “My mom was always typing. Or reading manuscripts for her class. Or reading other people’s books. Or traveling to read from her new collection.”

  “It’s her job,” I said.

  “I know that. But a lot of times things came down to a choice. Attend Veronica’s gymnastics meet or be a visiting writer at Breadloaf. Celebrate Veronica’s birthday with her or fly to New York to give a reading. And a lot of the time it was about her daily choices. Given the chance to spend time with her family or write, she always chose to write. Seriously. She always chose that over us. Every time.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “If she’d been around more—I mean, really been there for us—I think things would have ended up differently. Even with my dad.”

  When Veronica talked about her father, I never knew what to say.

  “I am the only person I know whose father left his family to live in Rome for the weather,” she said.

  “Your statement implies that you know of other dads who left their families to live in Rome,” I said. I didn’t mean it snarky. I was merely making an observation.

  “This is no time to pick me apart,” Veronica said. “I’m opening up.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Clearly, you have a better relationship with your mom than I have with mine,” she said.

  I didn’t argue.

  “But who do you think has the better relationship with their dad? Now that he’s gone, I see him two weeks out of the year. I fly to Rome and we bond like crazy. Then I leave and we talk on the phone twice a month. I know it’s nontraditional, but I still think it’s healthy. Don’t you?”

  Mrs. and Mr. Knox never got divorced. They lived in this sort of limbo place. It was weird to me, but I tried not to judge it.

  “I think your relationship with your dad is decent,” I said.

  “Decent! That’s a complete understatement. We’re very close,” Veronica said.

  “You talk twice a month,” I said.

  “So, you don’t ever really talk to your dad. He’s around, but you never talk to him. It’s like he’s a stranger. You have a way worse relationship with your dad than I do with mine.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up. I’m trying to work through something here. Writing makes me feel miserable. And I think my egomaniac mother is to blame.”

  “Your mother isn’t an egomaniac. You can’t blame her for everything. Especially for what happened with your dad. When relationships go kaput, the blame is fifty- fifty,” I said.

  “You really believe that?” she asked.

  My mind zoomed to Hamilton. Fifty-fifty? Did I really believe that?

  “I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is that maybe things would have ended up happening just the way they did no matter how much your mom wrote or didn’t write. Maybe these things were supposed to happen,” I said.

  Veronica didn’t look at me. “She could have done more.”

  I wasn’t sure about this. But I was tired of fighting. Veronica was on the verge of tears. I didn’t understand why she always had to be so mad at her mother. It made sense to me that Mrs. Knox had to work. Sometimes that means making sacrifices. For everybody. Plus, when a relationship busts up I don’t think it’s fair to blame the woman for everything. I’d done all I could to captivate Hamilton. It’s not like I wanted to have flaws.

  “I think your relationship with your dad is pretty healthy,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Veronica said.

  “And I think your mom is trying really hard now to be the mom you want her to be.”

  Veronica didn’t respond for a moment.

  “Okay. Let’s say I give her a free pass for forcing my father to seek out Rome. So maybe she is trying harder now, but does that mean she gets an additional free pass on everything? Like all the years where she sucked at being a mother are swept under the mattress and forgotten?”

  “You mean rug. Swept under the rug,” I said.

  “That’s even worse,” Veronica said. “Because that’s where all the floor dust of the world lives. I don’t want to be swept under there.”

  “What are you talking about? Your mother’s screwups would be swept under there. Not you. That’s what the metaphor means,” I said.

  “Are you saying that’s what I should do?” she asked. “Just let her sweep all her mistakes under the rug?”

  “I think you should do what makes you happy,” I said. “And I don’t think that being upset and disappointed by your mom for the rest of your life is the best choice.”

  “I wasn’t planning on staying mad for the rest of my entire life,” Veronica said.

  “You talk about this a lot. I think blaming her for what happened with your dad actually gets in the way of your happiness.”

  “What an awful thing to say,” Veronica said.

  “I’m your friend.”

  “Then why are you saying such awful things to me?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. First, you slam me about my relationship with my father, and then you start telling me how I’m destined to be miserable because I’m a lousy daughter.”

  “That’s not even close to what came out of my mouth. You’re twisting things,” I said.

  “You don’t get it.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “No. Your mom acts the way a mom should. She’s dedicated. Her life is defined by her mother duties. You don’t even get how lucky you are.”

  I thought about my mother. Home. Doing laundry. Calling her best friend, Collette, to exchange recipes. She had a simpler life. That’s true. But to hear Veronica talk about it made it seem like my mother had made a sacrifice. Like I’d made her make a sacrifice.

  “I’m going to go talk to Corky. She doesn’t seem like the sort of person hell-bent on wrecking my happiness.”

  “I’m not trying to do that,” I said.

  “Sure you’re not,” Veronica said.

  “What about our amazing ability to only fight for thirty seconds and make up?” I asked. “What about dinner?”

  “It’s not like we’re sharing the same lung. You do your thing. I’ll do mine.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Veronica’s man-wall had exploded with hot-dudes. There were fourteen new hot-dudes with stars drawn all over them. A star on a face. A star on a foot. A star on both kneecaps. I was stunned. While I’d sat miserable and alone in a café last night, eating an overpriced plate of fried potatoes, an order I’d placed because it was the only thing I could identify on the menu, Veronica had gone on a wild guy-meeting spree. Phone numbers were scrawled along their paper torsos. I felt like ripping Veronica’s hot-dudes right off the wall and tearing them into tiny bits.

  Below the man-wall, Veronica slumbered in her bed. We hadn’t sa
id anything since yesterday’s fight. I hadn’t even heard her come home. I slid my covers off and looked out the window. The sun was up, but it was still too early to get ready for workshop. I glanced at Veronica again. Her dark hair covered most of her face. Was she still wearing her clothes from yesterday?

  I got up and stood over her so I could give her a closer inspection. Yes, she was. I tried to see if she was still wearing her shoes, but her feet were tangled in the white folds of her top sheet. I leaned in closer and spotted a bare rectangle of flesh below her calf. There was something stuck to her leg. It was an ankle bracelet. And it had an ivory pendant dangling from its delicate silver chain. A skull? And there was black ink! Was it a tattoo? No. It looked like ink from a ballpoint pen. It said, “Property of Corky.” And it had a thick arrow pointing to the ankle bracelet. I pulled myself back to a standing position. Even while sleeping, Veronica Knox came across as complicated. And interesting.

  “I know you’re standing right there,” she said. “And you’re totally freaking me out.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were breathing.”

  Veronica pushed the hair out of her face and rolled onto her back. “No you weren’t,” she said, opening her eyes. “You wanted to see if I’d changed clothes from yesterday.”

  How did she know that?

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” She pulled her pillow over her head. “I’m still mad at you.”

  I didn’t offer any sort of defense. Nor did I launch into an apology. Let Veronica Knox stay mad at me. Whatever. Like she’d said the previous evening, it wasn’t like we shared a lung. I got my things and walked to the shower.

  After I got ready, I decided my best plan would be to walk around and find something interesting to stare at for two and a half hours. I didn’t tell Veronica where I was going. I grabbed my bag and left. Let her wonder. She was the one who instigated the fight. Two could play at this game.

  Upon closing the door, I spotted a new sticky note. I almost didn’t read it. But the five exclamation points grabbed my attention. Uh-oh. It was for me.

  Dessy, please call your mother!!!!!

  She called the front office and left