A Field Guide for Heartbreakers

by Kristen Tracy

  I don’t know if it was my conscience or the fear of Veronica’s wrath or some other powerful force, but the world around me began to turn very rubbery. It was like every solid thing had started turning flimsy on me. My legs. Veronica’s body. The car seat. The windows. My pen. Waller. I didn’t look at anybody. Instead, I stared at my rubbery story. The words danced. It was as if my own deep disappointment in myself had triggered a hallucination.

  “When are you up?” Waller’s voice only partially broke the spell.

  “I turn my story in on Monday,” I said. “I get critiqued on Wednesday.” I sounded like a robot.

  “Are you nervous?” Waller asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “You should relax about it.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I should relax.”

  Veronica looked at me. Then she swiped my pen.

  “Put it away and chill out,” she said.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I punched Veronica with my fist and grabbed my pen back.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  “Wow,” said Waller. “Here’s a girl who’s intent on revision.”

  He glanced down at my story. I felt my fist tightening again. Veronica saw this and grabbed my arm.

  “I don’t think she’s ready to share,” she said.

  “What’s going on back there?” Roger asked.

  “Nothing,” Veronica said.

  “I’m trying to sneak a peek at Dessy’s story,” Waller told him. “The first sentence is ‘Before I let him kiss me, I made him tell me a secret: His father was coming unglued, and spoke about the Rapture as though it might arrive before Arbor Day.’”

  Oh my god! He was reading my story. That was my first sentence. I hadn’t told him he could read the first sentence. What was Waller doing? Were there no rules in my new rubbery world?

  “Sounds good,” Roger said.

  “Yeah,” said Kite. “I haven’t thought about the Rapture in years.”

  In protest, I wildly waved my pen in the air. Veronica and Waller both pulled their faces away from my swinging hand.

  “Don’t read it now!” I said.

  “Okay,” Waller said. “Calm down.”

  “Mellow,” Veronica said. “He stopped reading it.”

  “I’m just not ready yet,” I said. “I still might change something.”

  Waller playfully tugged at a corner of my story. I pulled it out of his grasp.

  “I like where it’s going,” he said.

  I glanced over the four paragraphs on that page. This particular scene reeked of sexual tension. It was, in fact, my fictive couple’s first attempt at a kiss. I lifted my butt off the seat and tucked my story underneath me. Then I sat back down. This maneuver made a crunching sound. Veronica stared at me.

  “Do I need to get back there and sit between anybody?” Roger asked.

  “Maybe,” Waller said.

  Roger turned around and smiled at me. “Where’s your story?” he asked.

  “She’s sitting on it,” Waller said.

  I could feel myself blush. Why couldn’t I have just stuck it back inside my bag? Things kept getting more and more rubbery. We traveled mile after mile without any conversation. What was I doing? I decided I had to reclaim a sense of normalcy. So I reached forward and patted Roger on the shoulder.

  Veronica shot me a sideways glance.

  “How are things in the front seat?” I asked.

  Roger turned around and looked at me. “Decent,” he said. “Backseat?”

  “I haven’t seen a single cow,” Waller said.

  “There’s supposed to be cows?” I asked.

  “He was kidding,” Roger said. “It’s an inside joke.”

  I wondered what it could be. I shifted my weight and heard my story crunch beneath me.

  “So, do you take workshops in high school?” Roger asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Our school pretty much ignores the arts,” Veronica said. “You know how it is. Midwestern values. Most of us have never heard of Brueghel, but our football games are freakishly well attended.”

  The only reason Veronica knew about Brueghel was because of her mother. Mrs. Knox had written a short story about him around the time Mr. Knox had fled to Rome. She’d also bought a goldfish and named it Brueghel. Veronica had hated that thing. She’d even refused to feed it. It only lasted two months. I wanted to shift my weight again, but I feared releasing any more sounds.

  “So what kind of classes do you take?” Roger asked.

  “The basics. Trigonometry. Government. Metal shop. Botany. Et cetera,” Veronica said.

  “What do you take, Dessy?” Roger asked.

  “Yeah, what’s your favorite high school class?” Waller added.

  I hated hearing the words high school. Okay, so I hadn’t completed my secondary education. Did it need to be brought up with every question? Things felt so awkward. Why were relationships this hard? And of all the materials on the planet, why did everything make me feel like rubber?

  “I like English,” I said.

  “Nice,” Waller said. “That’s Allie’s favorite class too.”

  That response totally bummed me out. And even though I felt this nagging impulse to rearrange my weight again, I didn’t do that either. Veronica must have been able to sense my clumsy desperation.

  “Does this car have a radio?” she asked.

  Kite didn’t answer, just turned it on. We listened to techno dance music as we drove to the bones.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wasn’t ready to move. I still had things to figure out. Thus, I didn’t want Veronica to open her car door. But she did. As I climbed out behind her, I grabbed my story off the seat and stuck it inside my bag.

  “Where is this church?” Veronica asked.

  Roger pulled a map out of his pocket and studied it. “It’s two blocks that way,” he said, pointing down a normal-looking street.

  It relieved me that the street didn’t look like something out of a horror movie. Maybe the bones didn’t even look like bones. Maybe they were ground up into stucco or something. I mean, could a church really be built out of bones? Weren’t they prone to breakage and splintering? And what about osteoporosis?

  We filed down the sidewalk past other tourists.

  “My god,” said a woman wearing a Miami Dolphins T-shirt. “That place was satanic.”

  Once the woman was out of earshot, Veronica turned and looked at Kite. “Sometimes, tourists can be so close-minded,” she said.

  Veronica’s need to flirt and score points with every member of the male population was somewhat astounding. I watched her twirl her hair and glide giddily between Kite and Roger. She seemed to think that by standing in the proximity of guys, she was saying something important about herself.

  “What’s that?” Veronica asked. On top of a hill sat an enormous sand-colored church with tall windows and slender spires.

  “That’s Saint Barbara’s Church,” Roger said. With his long-legged strides, Veronica had to walk twice as fast to keep up.

  “It looks like a crown,” Veronica observed.

  “It’s supposed to,” Roger said. “But that’s not where we’re going. Sedlec is up ahead.”

  “Too bad. It’s totally cool!” cheered Veronica. She pulled on my arm and pressed her mouth next to my ear, but she didn’t say any words. She just released kissing sounds. It tickled so much that I laughed.

  “Hey, I want to hear the joke,” Waller said.

  Veronica pushed me toward Waller and fell back in step with Roger and Kite.

  “You should tell him the joke,” she said.

  Waller touched me on the shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “Tell me.”

  I wanted to kill Veronica. Could she have stopped messing around for one afternoon, long enough for me to kiss Waller? Seriously.

  “Just like our love of roadside cows, it’s probably an inside joke,” Roger said.

  I nodded gr
atefully. “It is.”

  Soon the gates of the ossuary loomed before us. Kite was first in line, followed by Roger and then Veronica. I guess I thought that either Veronica would realize we were about to enter into a bone cathedral and refuse to go inside, or else she’d walk into the bone cathedral and the bones would be so tastefully and artistically attached to the walls that she wouldn’t freak out. She might have mistaken them for synthetic bones. If I hadn’t been told to expect real bones, I’d have assumed everything I saw inside was faux. Wouldn’t I?

  “Is it sick to want to see this?” Kite asked. “I mean, I can’t wait.”

  “So I take it you’re not religious?” Veronica asked.

  “I’m Catholic,” Kite said. “Lapsed.”

  “I’m really looking forward to this too,” Roger said.

  “Are you a lapsed Catholic as well?” Veronica asked.

  “I’m less lapsed than Kite,” Roger said.

  “Good to know,” Veronica said.

  The fact that Veronica was so clueless as to what the guys were really talking about bothered my conscience considerably. But I just couldn’t muster enough courage to bring up the skeletal remains.

  “Churches can be so threatening,” I said. I had almost convinced myself that the bones would be understated. That was not the case. Upon entering, we saw tall shelves showcasing skull after skull. Fibulas were wired to their lower jaws. And in a corner, a large coat of arms was formed from what looked to be the bones from dozens of arms and legs. A chandelier made of bones hung heavily above us.

  Pelvises. Scapulas. Spines. There was no mistaking what we were seeing. They were bones. Pitiful, ugly, innumerable bones.

  “Jesus,” Veronica said. “They look so real.” She tilted her head back, taking in the bone-decorated ceiling. They draped the tops of the high walls like an icing border on a cake.

  “They are real,” Roger said. “They’re from people who died during the plague.”

  “Yeah,” Kite said. “This place is an ossuary.”

  “What?” Veronica asked, covering her mouth with her hand. “These are people?”

  “They used to be,” Roger said.

  Veronica stared at me in disbelief. I felt that rubbery sensation return. It began in my feet and traveled upward.

  “You don’t look shocked at all,” Veronica said. “You knew! You knew!”

  I blinked at her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” she yelled. “What have I ever done to deserve this?”

  I kept blinking. “Nothing,” I said.

  I watched her swing her arms like she was trying to propel herself outside. Behind her there was a doorway big enough for a doll that led through the bones into a small room filled with more bones.

  “Get me out!” Veronica yelled.

  Things started happening in slow motion. I felt my knees give way. Then I felt myself hit the floor.

  “Dessy?” Waller yelled.

  The next sound I heard was the noise of somebody repeatedly retching.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Roger said.

  Waller picked me up off the floor. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let my head lean against his chest. The orange-and-spice scent of his chest region smelled manly and safe. I caved against it. Then I heard the sound of more retching.

  “This is bad!” Kite said.

  “You grab her feet. I’ll take her arms,” Roger said. “Lucky for us she’s light.”

  I continued to hold Waller and didn’t open my eyes. But I imagined Veronica being removed from the bone church the way people carry rolled-up Oriental rugs. I’d betrayed her. And I wasn’t sure if she could forgive me.

  It didn’t take long for us to reach the car.

  “We need to clean her up,” Roger said. “She has puke on her face.”

  “And arms,” Kite said.

  “And shoes,” Roger added.

  This was very terrible news.

  “I have baby wipes,” I mumbled.

  “What?” Waller asked.

  “I have baby wipes,” I repeated. “They’re in my bag.”

  Waller set me down in the backseat and opened up my bag. He took out the box of wipes and then kissed me. Not romantically on the lips like I’d hoped and planned for. He pressed his mouth to the top of my head, then carefully shut the door.

  Had I wanted to jerk myself into a state of total alertness, I probably could have, but drifting in this odd place of half-awareness felt pleasant. When Roger opened the front passenger door, the sweet powdery smell of baby wipes nearly overwhelmed me.

  “Did anybody tell her what an ossuary was? She seemed genuinely surprised,” he said. “You’ll be okay.” He gently set Veronica in the front seat. “Hopefully, it’ll reduce the chance of motion sickness.”

  “What a god-awful place,” Veronica said. “That’s what hell will look like.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kite said as he strapped himself into the driver’s seat.

  Roger slid into the backseat beside me. “I think when we get to hell, we’ll all be very surprised by what we see.”

  They laughed, but not in an easy, free-spirited way. They seemed nervous.

  “If you need us to pull over, Veronica,” Roger said, “just tell us.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just don’t parade any skeletons around in front of me.”

  “You got it,” Roger said.

  “This feels like the worst day of my life,” Veronica said. “Again!”

  I rested my head on Waller’s shoulder. My third flaw. It had finally surfaced, even here in Prague. Hamilton had said that the worst thing about me, the thing that rendered our relationship “over,” was my inability to challenge Veronica.

  “You surrender to her every whim,” Hamilton said. “You’re a serial caver.”

  “I’m a what?” I’d asked him. I’d fiddled with my purse strap while I sat in his Volvo. I didn’t want him to dump me in the car. I mean, I didn’t want him to dump me at all. But I always thought that when people broke up they should do it in an actual place. A restaurant, living room, or post office. I wanted a place I could return to and, in a gesture toward closure, relive what had happened a few times.

  “You’re a serial caver,” Hamilton repeated. “Veronica presents you with bad idea after bad idea, and you cave and cave again.”

  Hamilton was right. I didn’t even need him to laminate that flaw.

  From the backseat I watched Veronica nibble on her fingernails as we drove through the green Czech country- side. Kite adjusted the volume on the radio several times as it continued to pump out dance music. Crazy drumbeats. Hypnotic melodies. I guess it was an appropriate soundtrack for the day.

  As we entered Prague, I leaned forward and smiled at Veronica. She chose to ignore me. I wasn’t sure how my friendship with her had turned into such a struggle. Or why I’d suddenly decided to resolve our tensions by being actively dishonest.

  Originally, by not telling Veronica about the bone church, by tricking her, I thought I had stood up to her. But looking at it now, I realized that I was afraid to be honest with her, so I dodged the issue altogether by being dishonest. Hamilton thought that my dependency on Veronica crippled my own identity. I tried to tell him that after Mr. Knox left, things had shifted for her. My friendship with her hadn’t always been this way. But he’d looked at me and said, “Reality is reality. You’ve surrendered your trim tab to her.”

  Hamilton, whom I considered fairly deep, often spoke of trim tabs. It’s the small rudder that steers ships. He felt there was a considerable amount of honor in making conscious decisions toward your life’s goals. Hamilton believed that my three flaws rendered me goalless. I think that was the hardest part of his big lecture: the words, “You don’t have any aim. Take away Veronica, and I have no idea which direction you’d go.” It was a problem I couldn’t deny that I had. Yet it was one I didn’t know how to fix. I liked Veronica. Even if she did inhibit my trim tab.

 
; Hamilton had been quiet after that. I’d absorbed what he’d said and felt miserable. And then, in an effort to make sure that I hadn’t misunderstood anything, I’d asked my final question.

  “So we’re not just taking a break, are we?”

  We’d taken a break once before. After I’d scared him by reading a bridal magazine in his allergist’s waiting room during one of his monthly appointments.

  Hamilton kept his sunglasses on and stared out the windshield. “I’m headed to Dartmouth in a few months. Breaking up makes the most sense.”

  I nodded. And then I realized that I was home. He’d steered his car into my driveway and pulled the gearshift into park. Then he did the cruelest thing. He turned to look at me and said, “I still think you’re pretty great.”

  Lamer words had never been spoken. I got out of the car and walked into my house and ate dinner with my parents. Baked chicken and peas warmed from a can. There might have been a salad involved.

  “Is something wrong?” my mother had asked.

  “Cramps,” I said.

  Neither one of my parents asked me anything after that. We weren’t that kind of family. I didn’t tell my mom about the breakup for a week. And later that night, when I’d called Veronica from my bedroom and cried to her about it, she’d said the things I thought I wanted her to say. “What a loser. I bet he comes back. Crawling.”

  But I never told her about my flaws. Because that’s not how I wanted others to see me. It certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to see myself.

  I found it hard to stay awake inside of the warm car. Sitting between Roger and Waller made things feel warmer too, like I was positioned next to radiators. I tried one more time to lean forward and have a pleasant exchange with Veronica, but she wasn’t having it. So I settled back, closed my eyes, and leaned against Waller again. Except Waller smelled totally different. He smelled like leather. When I opened my eyes I was horrified to realize that I was leaning against Roger instead of Waller. I shouldn’t be leaning against Roger. He wasn’t my crush.

  “Tired?” Roger asked me.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I sat up straight. I needed to say something right away to override this awkward feeling.