The Museum of Heartbreak

by Meg Leder

  Luminous luminous luminous moon.

  I smoothed my skirt with the copy of On the Road in my hand, and a few more stars drifted off, their tips curling. “This costume was better at the beginning of the night.”

  I started to pick them up, but Keats pulled me closer to him. He swayed, smelling like whiskey. Every nerve in my body was a solar system, stars and explosions and light and luminous moons.

  “It’s okay. I like your stars with me. Come on,” he said, tugging me gently to the door.

  When he opened it, the hallway was too bright, and I squinted. But Keats towed me through the crowd and it parted for us, and even though he seemed a little crooked with booze, he didn’t let go.

  We maneuvered down the packed steps, and when we got to the bottom, it seemed like the party had gotten even more crowded, as if the room was filled beyond normal capacity, like people couldn’t move even if they wanted to. There was another loud crash, this time from the kitchen, and a group of people burst into cheers.

  “Shit,” Keats muttered.

  I didn’t see Audrey or Eph anywhere.

  “My neighbors are probably five minutes away from calling the police if they haven’t already,” Keats said, his eyes scanning over the crowd. “I need to shut this down.”

  He let go of my hand.

  I tried to smile gamely, but inside, I wished I could rewind four minutes, back to the moonlight in his room. “Yeah, yeah, of course—I should head out anyway, curfew and all . . .” My voice trailed off, and I started to turn away.

  Keats reached out, tugging my shoulder.

  I blushed and bloomed and brightened; I couldn’t help it.

  He pulled me close, studying me like I was something strange and marvelous, something he was holding up to the light. He took a stray strand of hair off my face, tucked it behind my ear.

  That wry half smile. “See you soon, Scout.”

  He had a nickname for me, something charming and just my own. Swoon.

  He let go, stepped back, still grinning, and pushed his way through the crowd and out of sight.

  I didn’t move.

  Part of me wanted the world to end right then.

  Because it was perfect, that moment.

  But the muscles in my legs walked me down the last step and into the foyer, and my arms grabbed my coat from a pile on the couch, and my left shoulder bumped a cowboy, and my mouth murmured an apology. I slid past the people smoking on the stoop, and smelling of spilled beer but floating two feet off the ground, I stepped out into the cold, good luck emanating like warmth from the token over my heart.

  Gray sweatshirt

  Tunica canus

  New York, New York

  Cat. No. 201X-10

  On permanent loan from

  Ephraim O’Connor

  THE NEXT MORNING I KNOCKED giddily on Audrey’s door, the smell of the doughnuts in the bag I was holding already making my mouth water, and slid Eph’s good-luck token back and forth on the thin silver chain I had pilfered from my mom’s jewelry box.

  No answer.

  The sky grumbled ominously behind me, irritable with rain.

  I counted to ten and pressed the doorbell, cringing at how loud it was. But Audrey’s parents were always up early, so if I was waking anyone up, I doubted it would be a parental unit.

  A shadowy shape moved behind the frosted glass, and locks unclicked.

  Audrey squinted at me, shielding her eyes from the sun. Her face was still made up from last night, but one side of her hair was sticking straight out.

  Shrugging off my denim jacket, I squeezed past her, holding up the bag, grease spots shining through. “Vivien! A vanilla-with-raspberry-jam doughnut for you, a crème brûlée for me.”

  “Awesome,” she mumbled.

  I hung my jacket on the front rack and she followed me toward the kitchen, yawning loudly. In the kitchen, gray light was filtering in through the windows, dust motes moving lazily. “Where are your mom and dad?”

  Audrey wiped sleep out of her eyes. “Visiting my grandma in Pleasantville.”

  “How’s she doing in the new retirement community?”

  “Eh. Not great. She’s missing my grandpa a lot. Keeps insisting he’s talking with her at night.”

  “That’s hard. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Me too.”

  “How late did you stay last night?” I grabbed two clean glasses from the dishwasher and poured us each a glass of orange juice. “I tried to find you before I left.”

  “Not late.” She pulled out one of the stools and slouched over the island, yawning again. “Cherisse was too drunk to go home, so she crashed here. She’s still asleep.” She pointed at the ceiling.

  The doughnuts waited for us: one for Audrey, one for me, none for Cherisse. “Oh.”

  She waved her hand at me. “She won’t eat those anyway. Not vegan. Fried. Too many calories.” I slid her plate over and she scooped a big glop of jelly out of the center into her mouth. “Perfect.”

  I took a huge bite of my doughnut, feeling totally content, even if my archnemesis was one floor away.

  “So last night,” I started, my mouth full of chewy doughy heaven.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to hang out more. I totally wanted to, but even though Cherisse got some water in her, she still barfed all over the backyard and was so mortified and worried that Keats would see her getting sick, I spent most of the night trying to sober her up.”

  I glanced down at my hand, the one Keats had held, stretched my fingers, fully expecting it to be glowing with leftover moonlight.

  “That’s okay. I was actually with Keats,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, but really wanting to stand up and sing it, the hills being alive with the sound of music and whatnot. My sticky doughnut fingers were not exactly helping with the vision, but still.

  Audrey stopped, mouth halfway open.

  “You were with Keats?”

  My beaming smile spoke for itself.

  She put her half-eaten jelly doughnut back on her plate and started tugging on a front lock of hair. “I didn’t know you knew him all that well.”

  “I didn’t. Until last night. But, Aud, it was amazing. He’s amazing. He loves all these awesome books and gave me one to read. The moon was shining in his room and it was only the two of us. And at one point . . .” I chewed my lip.

  “Please tell me you guys didn’t hook up,” Audrey said.

  I looked at her, surprised. “No, but he held my hand. It was so romantic. I think Delphine has found her—”

  She buried her head in her hands. “No, no, no, this is not happening.”

  I frowned. “What does that mean?”

  She tapped the table and spoke slowly, as if trying hard to choose the right words. “Pen, I don’t know if Keats is the best guy for you.”

  “Wait. What? Why?”

  She rubbed her hands against her forehead, like she was trying to work away a migraine. “It’s, how do I put this . . . Cherisse and Keats . . .”

  Relief flooded through me. “Oh, it’s okay! Keats doesn’t like Cherisse like that; he told me. So it’s all good. He even gave me a book—”

  “No, it’s just they’ve got a really complicated history.”

  “So? It’s history—in the past.” I tried to smile.

  Audrey let go of her hair, rested both palms on the table, and took in a deep breath. “Pen, you liking Keats isn’t like having a crush on some character from a book or lusting over some random from a distance. Trust me: He’s not Prince Charming. Listen . . .”

  Without knowing why, my body braced itself, like it does when you get on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island, trying to minimize the bruising and shaking before the ride kicks into action.

  “I’m really happy you finally like a real person, but Keats isn’t a good one.”

  A real person?

  At that moment everything around me got really still, except for my heart thud-thud-thudding in my ears. My
vision tunneled inward, the edges black. I realized that something terrible had unfurled. That mere seconds ago I had lived in a world where I didn’t know Audrey could hurt me. That now I lived in a world where I did.

  “Listen, I can’t go into the details because she swore me to secrecy, but he really messed up Cherisse. He lies and he’s manipulative and acts down on himself so other people will build him up, making you feel like crap in the process . . .” She reached her arm across the table and squeezed my still hand. “I don’t want you to misinterpret anything and get hurt.”

  I physically recoiled, yanking my hand out of her grasp. “You think I’m so pathetic that I can’t tell if someone likes me?”

  She straightened, dismayed. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “You’re happy I finally like a real person?” My voice broke at the end.

  Her face was awake now, alarmed.

  “Of course that’s not what I meant!”

  “You think I’m pathetic,” I half said to myself, processing the words.

  I grabbed the bag, shoved my half-eaten doughnut in, and stood up. “I need to go.” My voice was shaky, not brave.

  “Wait, Pen, let’s talk about this.” Her voice was desperate, pleading.

  “I need to go,” I repeated.

  “Penelope!”

  I walked hurriedly down the hall, crumpling the paper bag edges in my hand. As I passed the stairwell, Cherisse was coming downstairs, last night’s blond curls flat. She stopped mid-stretch and stared at me, and I resisted the urge to give her the finger.

  “Pen, wait!” Audrey yelled, her voice close.

  I pushed the door open and didn’t turn back.

  The wind outside had picked up, and it was starting to rain sideways—sharp daggerlike drops. I thought about the first time Audrey slept over, how I woke up early in the morning to find her watching me intently, eyelashes fluttering.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  She pointed solemnly at the wall behind me. Evidently a black spider had decided to camp out there.

  “You sleep with your mouth open,” she said. “I didn’t want the spider to fall in. I saw it at five twenty-three.”

  It was 7:02. She had been keeping watch the whole time.

  I rolled up, away from the spider. “Not counting Eph, you’re my best friend ever,” I declared.

  “You’re my best friend Everest,” she said, holding out her pinky, crooked. I hooked mine in hers, believing then, unquestioningly, that it was true.

  I tried to get back last night: the moonlight in Keats’s room, the way he was surprised to see me, and his hand holding mine, soft brown curls of hair on the nape of his neck, how he brushed an eyelash off my cheek, the way I felt pretty, noticed. But now everything felt ruined—the person I was ten minutes ago suddenly pathetic and childish, the magic from last night as dead and gone as the dinosaurs.

  I tried to button up my jacket, when I realized it was not on me because I had left it on the coatrack at Audrey’s, which was terrible not only because it was insult upon injury or the temperature was dropping with the storm, but because it was my favorite jean jacket, the one I got from a stoop sale, perfectly worn in and soft, and it was lost to me forever because I was never going back to Audrey’s house, not ever, not if it was the last best jean jacket in the entire stinking world, not if my life (or evidently my body temperature; my teeth were clattering in my skull like they weren’t my own) depended upon it.

  What if I had misinterpreted everything with Keats? I couldn’t contemplate that possibility one second longer without it crushing me completely.

  I hunched my shoulders against the wind and huddled into the rain, becoming more wet and more cold with each step. I headed up Columbus and over to Eighty-First, stopping at the front door of a beautiful old brownstone. Using the door knocker, a brass fist, I tapped away, my fingernails tinted purple from the chill.

  “Got it!” someone called from inside.

  Eph swung open the door, the soft edges of his grin a contrast to the sharper parts of him, the elbows and cheekbones, angles and points.

  “Good day for a walk, eh?” He pointed at his nose, slightly swollen from last night’s head smash. “Come to finish off what you started?”

  But I hugged myself, biting my lip so I wouldn’t cry, teeth chattering, and his face shifted instantly into protective concern.

  “What happened?”

  I didn’t know how to say that in the twelve hours since I’d seen him, a boy had brushed an eyelash off my cheek, the feel of his hand making my whole body shiver, but that now hurt was seeping through me like octopus ink, that I didn’t know what to do with myself in that second, in that minute, perhaps ever again.

  “Can we watch a movie?” I asked instead, my voice small.

  He motioned me in.

  “Who was it, Eph?” George called from the other room.

  “Pen. We’ll be upstairs.”

  “Hi, Pen!” voices called out in unison.

  I followed Eph, envying his warm-looking wool rag socks and missing my jacket all over again.

  “Give me the word and I’ll kill him,” Eph said, pushing open his door and kicking a pile of dirty laundry off the floor to make room.

  “Who?”

  “Keats. Prince Masturbate Theater. The reason we went to that shitty party.”

  “No, no,” I said, trying to rub warmth into my arms. “Keats was really nice.”

  Eph snorted in genuine surprise. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  He dug through a drawer and tossed a gray sweatshirt my way. It smelled detergent-y and seemed clean, so I figured it was safer than the navy pullover at my feet or the thermal tee hanging on the back of his desk chair.

  The sweatshirt bristled with static, and when I pulled it on, the sleeves fell past my wrists, and I imagined it swallowing me up in grayness.

  He left and came back with a blue towel, handing it to me as he dropped to the floor and leaned back against his bed, knees up. I dried my hair, and I slid down next to him, cross-legged, letting as much of the sweatshirt pool around me as possible.

  “So, you wanna talk about it?”

  “Audrey and I got in a fight. About Keats.”

  He waited, not saying anything, while I fiddled with the cuffs. They were soft and worn, gray clouds losing their edges.

  “It’s . . . She thinks . . .” I debated how much to tell him. “Cherisse and Keats have some kind of history, I guess, and she doesn’t want me ‘misinterpreting’ things with him.” My finger quotes felt hollow.

  “Oh.” He picked at the floor.

  “What? Tell me.”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “Last night, near the end of the party, I saw Cherisse and Keats going into a bedroom together.”

  I dug my fingers into my palm, small red half-moons. “He doesn’t like her like that! God, why is it so hard to believe someone might actually like me?”

  He held up both hands, surrendering. “Whoa. Relax. That’s not what I’m saying at all, Pen. I only thought you’d want to know. I’d want to know.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. I took a breath, refusing to look at him. “I would want to know, I do want to know.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay.”

  Eph huffed, and when I looked over, I saw his eyelashes, longer than you’d think. I’d told him once they were pretty, and he had refused to talk to me for the next two days.

  “So the thing with Audrey.” I made myself push the words out, hoped Eph wouldn’t look at me. He couldn’t look at me when I said them. “She pretty much implied that I’m kind of pathetic. That up to now I’ve only wasted away, harboring unrealistic crushes and living in some loser fantasyland, and that I’m in over my head with Keats.”

  I snuck a glance at him. He was grimacing, but it wasn’t exactly pity—it was more like empathy, an echo resonating back from the deep caverns of him.

  “That’s really shitty, Pen,” he fin
ally said.

  Neither of us said anything more for a while, so long that when I turned toward him next, his head was resting back on the bed, his eyes closed. I couldn’t tell if he was asleep, but it didn’t matter. The stillness waited.

  I began a mental list of all the real people I currently liked or had liked in the past: Keats, of course, and the dirty hot guy who worked at Grey Dog. I wasn’t going to count Eph’s dad, because gross. But there was Ryan Kurtz, who transferred into our class in third grade and who had just overcome some tragic childhood illness and had black hair and black eyes and who I liked so much, I pushed his desk over (obviously) with him in it (maybe not so obviously). And then there was . . .

  I chewed on my lip.

  Okay, so I guess I’d count Eph’s dad. And that left . . .

  The sweatshirt sleeves hung limply over my wrists. Eph’s breath started to whistle, his chest rising and falling.

  He’d fallen asleep.

  I didn’t have anyone else to add to the list.

  I hated to even think it, but it was there, stark and ugly, unavoidable and unwanted: Audrey was a little bit right.

  I let out a huge sigh and let my head fall onto Eph’s shoulder, let it rise and fall with his soft breath, the way his eyelashes did in his sleep, and hoped on my subway token that Audrey wasn’t right about everything.

  Handwritten note

  Chirographum

  Saint Bartholomew’s Academy

  New York, New York

  Cat. No. 201X-11

  Gift of Keats Francis

  THE NEXT MORNING, BY THE time chemistry class rolled around, I was 100 percent Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day miserable. I had woken up that morning with a hangover of sadness—not that I knew what a hangover felt like, but I imagined it’d be something like this: a headache, a stomachache, sadness emanating like a stench from my pores. The Sweet Truck, which parked in front of school in the morning, was out of carrot-raisin muffins, and despite my best efforts with the blow dryer, my hair insisted on looking like butt.

  To top it off, a small dumb part of my heart kept beating maybe maybe maybe—maybe I hadn’t imagined the spark with Keats—but then Audrey’s words would boom through my brain on loudspeaker: I’m happy you finally like a real person . . . I don’t want you to misinterpret anything . . .