A Field Guide for Heartbreakers (3 page)

blanket
not
sock
. But I was tired. It had been a long and crazy day. I leaned my head against my window and let my mind drift to Hamilton. More than once we’d talked about backpacking through Europe. Just the two of us. I pictured him sitting with me on a park bench in France, kissing me under the soft glow of a Paris streetlamp. In my head he was still mine. And I let him trip around in there the entire way home. I missed him. In the darkness I watched Ohio fly by. Bushes. Trees. Turnoffs. Mile markers. We drove in silence as cars on the other side of the freeway zoomed by, lighting up our faces in the white flash of their headlights.

Chapter Four

“
I
can’t believe you’re leaving the country,” my mother said. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror, flashing me a nervous smile. Overhead, jet-liners soared into the bright blue day. In a few minutes we would arrive at Hopkins. I was about to become a bona fide international traveler. There was no turning back. My newly acquired passport would have a stamp in it. My life felt surreal.“Prague is a great introduction to Europe,” Mrs. Knox said. “Easy to get around. Safe. Fairly cheap. Great dumplings.” She sat in the passenger seat, completely relaxed, looking out the window. Mrs. Knox looked like a cross between a mother and a politician. She was slim, serious, and wore a lot of blazers. Her hairstyle was the only thing that didn’t fit this pattern. It strongly resembled Veronica’s: lots of long, flowing brown layers.“Rome wasn’t a bad starter city either,” Veronica said to me. “Did I tell you about all the gnocchi I ate?” She pinched my leg and released a low growl.Even as we approached the airport I found myself poring over another definitive eyewitness travel guide. “I want to visit the Church of Saint Nicholas,” I said. “It says here it’s the best example of High Baroque north of the Alps.” I slid the book toward Veronica so she could see the picture.“Cool pipe organ,” she said. I felt the car make an unexpected left turn as my mother pulled into the Rite Aid parking lot. “I thought of something Dessy might need,” she said. She parked near the entrance and left the engine running. “I’ll hurry.” I watched my mother race out of the car and fly into the store.“I should probably go in too,” Mrs. Knox said. “After reading the first of the workshop stories, I’ve come to the realization that I’m going to need more red ink.” She climbed out of the car and followed my mother. “Considering my mom’s age and the amount of bread she consumes, I think her butt looks pretty good,” Veronica said. She leaned forward between the driver and passenger seat and flipped on the radio. “What station is this?”“NPR,” I said.Veronica turned it to something loud that involved drums and guitars. Then she opened her bag, grabbed a handful of peanuts, and shoved them in her mouth. “What does this city have to offer in terms of nightlife?”I hadn’t researched that. “We’re definitely not old enough to go to clubs,” I said. “But there’s this thing called Black Light Theater that looks fun. Originating in the 1960s, it says here that Black Light Theater uses black curtains and UV lighting and fluorescent costumes to make mystifying visual effects.” I flipped to a page of two headless people wearing blue glowing unitards, bending to form the letter
K
.Veronica threw a peanut at me. “I heard there’s a ton of dance clubs and that they play awesome music. Techno. Trance. Jungle. Everything.”I had never heard the words
trance
or
jungle
used to describe music. I turned the page in my travel book, exited Prague, and entered Bavaria. A crazy castle with enormous spires sat atop a fog-crested green hill. “Do you think there’s a chance we might be able to make a weekend trip to Bavaria?” I asked.“Bavaria? Dessy, nobody goes to Bavaria.”Our mothers returned at the same time, each carrying a small plastic bag. “I bought you this, Dessy,” my mother said, handing me her sack. I opened it up. It was an extra disposable camera. “I want you to be able to snap shots of everything you see.” She glanced at me in the rearview mirror as she pulled into traffic. “Don’t skimp. Shoot your heart out.”When we reached the airport, my mother waited by my side in maternal fashion until I took off my shoes and plunked them into a gray plastic bin. When my carry-on had passed through the metal detector, the airport worker made it clear that my mother couldn’t go any farther.“I love you,” she said, rubbing my shoulder.I held up my boarding pass, and walked through the metal detector without setting off the series of loud, accusatory beeps.“Wash your hands a lot,” my mother called. “You aren’t used to European germs.”My gray bin rolled out of the machine and collided with another gray bin. I grabbed my shoes, dropped them on the floor, and tried to stuff my feet in them as quickly as possible. Another bin—Veronica’s—smashed into mine. I grabbed my backpack and threw it over my shoulder. When I turned to wave good-bye, I saw my mother crying. Why was she crying? She shouldn’t be crying. “Call home!” she yelled.“I will!” I said.Veronica grabbed her shoes from her bin and made a gagging sound. I waited by her side until she had all her things in hand. “Your mother is acting deranged,” she said. She walked in her socks and didn’t seem concerned about re-shoeing herself anytime soon. “Only crazy people yell
that
loudly in airports.”But I was glad she’d yelled. My mother’s voice echoed in my head as we passed the hot dog cart, and pretzel shop, and coffee hut, and cinnamon roll stand, and fruit smoothie booth. In the terminal, Veronica’s mother sat down across from us and opened her writing satchel. As a closeted aspiring writer I’d always coveted her writing satchel. It looked leathery and sophisticated and literary. I watched her pull out a pile of papers.“Are you working on a new story?” I asked.“No,” Veronica said. “She has writer’s block. Bad.”Mrs. Knox sent Veronica a stern look. “How old are you? Twelve?” She turned to me. “They’re stories from our workshop.”“When you criticize my maturity level in front of Dessy and random airport people—something Dad would never do—it only makes me want to regress more,” Veronica interrupted.This fight had been brewing for some time. And I hated being dragged into it. Mrs. Knox gave Veronica her full attention. “Put your shoes on.”Veronica shook her head. “I’ve regressed to the point where I no longer require footwear.”“If you step on something sharp, then you’re on your own,” Mrs. Knox said.“I’ve actually felt that way for a while. Come on, Dessy, let’s go buy useful crap for the flight.” She moved her backpack next to her mother’s seat. “Do you mind watching this for me?”“We board in fifteen minutes,” Mrs. Knox said. “If you miss the flight, prepare to live at your grandparents’ for a month. I won’t rebook you.”“Fine,” Veronica said. We hurried toward an overlit magazine store. Glossy covers, T-shirts, and bags of corn chips draped two of the walls.“When I went to Rome I didn’t bring enough snacks. It sucked.”“Are you going to fight with your mom like that the whole time?” “Not you too. Everybody needs to get off my back. Hey, did you bring aspirin? Altitude changes can cause severe headaches.” There was no way I could tame Veronica. I just had to hope that she mellowed. “Didn’t you pack a ton of ibuprofen? Can I borrow some of that?” I asked.“Sure.” Veronica reached to the back of the cooler so she could get the three coldest water bottles. She handed them all to me. I watched her buy a shot glass and an Ohio-shaped oven mitt along with our snacks. “We need to hurry,” I said. Veronica handed me the bag of stuff and then took off in the wrong direction.“Where are you going?” I asked.“I want to buy one more thing.”“Why didn’t you buy it here?”“Because the stud at the pretzel counter is way hotter than the dude at the magazine store.”“Well, I’m going back. I’m not going to miss the flight!” I turned to leave.“Thrill deflator.”I turned around. “Okay, I’ll wait. But be fast.” I backed up to a wall and watched passengers flood by. There were so many. Businesswomen with briefcases, men in cowboy hats, six-year-olds with security blankets, girls in tank tops, dogs in portable kennels. And some of the dogs were wearing jackets. “Got it,” Veronica said.“That was fast.”“He didn’t do much for me. He had a weird tongue.”“He showed you his tongue?”“If you look hard enough into people’s mouths, you always see their tongues. Anyway, his looked spotted. He probably had a disease.”When we arrived at the gate, Mrs. Knox had already packed her things and was waiting in line to board.“This is your first flight, isn’t it?” she asked me.“God, Mom. Don’t make Dessy feel like a cave woman!”“I’m trying to honor her moment,” Mrs. Knox said.I appreciated that. “Do you want the window?” Veronica asked as we filed down the carpet-walled chute toward the plane. “Technically, it’s my seat, but if you want to watch the engine and see if it sucks up any geese, you’re totally welcome to do that.”“That’s all right,” I said. “Whatever floats your rope.”“Boat,” I corrected.Takeoff wasn’t bad at all. I felt incredibly alive as the plane left the runway. I was amazed by how tidy and orderly the world looked from several thousand feet in the air. For the first half hour, Veronica let me crane over her and stare down at the miniature scenery. But then she got bored and our flight became tense.“How many days of workshop are we allowed to miss?” she asked, leaning over me to look at her mother. Mrs. Knox didn’t answer.“If I suddenly become feverish, I’m allowed to take a week off, right? And if that happens, Dessy, my roommate and presumed caregiver, is allowed to take a week off too, right?”Mrs. Knox clenched her jaw and kept reading the workshop story. “And if my condition worsens, and I become freakishly feverish and phlegm-ridden, and I need to take a few more days off, that would be acceptable too, right?” Veronica asked.“Veronica, you know where I stand on this. You attend everything. You got into the program without special consideration and you will participate in the program without special consideration. Unless you’d like to reimburse me for your airfare, that is the end of this discussion.”I looked at Veronica. She had taken out an enormous set of earphones. “Fine,” she said. “What are those?” I asked. “They cancel out noise. My dad got them for me for my return trip from Rome.”She slid them on and continued to talk to me really loudly.“I think I’m ready for our corn nuts!” she said.Mrs. Knox reached over and snatched the headphones off her daughter. “Veronica, please do not embarrass me on this plane.” She put the earphones on her own head.Veronica didn’t object. She pulled out her backpack from underneath the seat and tore open a bag of corn nuts. She popped them into her mouth one at a time.“You can’t eat these in front of guys,” she told me. “Why?” I asked.“They’re too crunchy.” Veronica tossed another one into her mouth. “Guys like watching women’s mouths when they eat. So mealtimes and snacks are crucial times to flirt.”I had never thought of that.“You want to eat slowly. And avoid noisy vittles. You also want to put the food in your mouth one piece at a time. It’s seductive and prolongs the meal.”“If you say so.”“Furthermore, ice cream is a top-choice, guy-getting food,” Veronica said.“Because it involves the tongue?” I asked.“Exactly. Eat it slow. And don’t let your tongue go wild. No need to behave like a dairy-addicted strumpet. Also, if it feels natural, make a couple of
mmm-mmm
sounds. Guys dig hearing
mmm-mmm
sounds. It’s very affirming.”This felt like ridiculous advice. And I had never heard her use the word “strumpet” before. “Shouldn’t we be eating healthy foods? Like, what if I’m eating celery?”“You shouldn’t eat that in front of a dude. If you really want to capture a guy’s interest, eat a banana.” “You’re insane,” I said.I reached under the seat in front of me and grabbed the first two workshop stories. They’d been e-mailed to us earlier in the week, but I hadn’t finished reading them. I also pulled out my own story, which was still in progress. “What are you doing?” Veronica asked.“Working on my story,” I said. “Veronica, have you still not started working on yours?”Mrs. Knox had already e-mailed the class our workshop schedule. Our stories were due one session prior to our class critique. Veronica and I were two of the last to go, which gave us an extra week to compose and polish. But I didn’t want her to procrastinate too much, then turn in something embarrassing.Veronica didn’t answer me. “Do you want to hear about mine?” I volunteered. “It’s about a girl and a guy who want to go to Guatemala together, but the girl is afraid of airplanes, and the guy is afraid of cars. So they’re paralyzed. It’s sort of like a metaphor for their love.” Veronica groaned. “Don’t make unflattering noises when I talk about my story,” I said. “It makes me feel vulnerable.”“
I
make you feel vulnerable? Imagine how you’re going to feel in the workshop. Everybody in there will be in college. They won’t respect anything you write. They’ll trash you.” That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Yes, we would be the only high school students in the class, but our acceptance letters had stated that we’d been selected based on our “strongly crafted image-based prose” and that our writing showed “exceptional promise” and the director was “honored to be accepting such fresh talent into the program.” He’d even closed the letter by stating that discovering and encouraging students like us is what kept their program “vibrant, successful, and diverse.” I wanted to focus on those claims rather than on what Veronica was saying. “You’re way too hung up on this. I mean, have you read the first two stories yet? They’re trying way too hard to impress my mom. They’re suck-ups. Seriously. I already know what I’m going to say. First story:
I liked the goat, but I had serious reservations about the other farm animals.
Second story:
Your protagonist didn’t feel like she was living in Maine. Can you add more landmarks and additional lobsters?
We’ll dish out a few comments and the rest of the time is ours. It’s no big deal.”“Whatever,” I said. I didn’t like Veronica’s attitude. I knew she was disappointed that we hadn’t gotten into the nonfiction section. But she needed to get over it. We were still going to Prague. For a college-level program. And I, for one, was determined to make the most of it.“Okay, okay,” Veronica said, sensing my annoyance. “I plan on writing about a fox who gets his leg caught in a trap and a second fox comes along and they end up doing it. You know, a nature piece. As far as I’m concerned, they can take it or leave it.”“That actually sounds good,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll say it’s slight and expository and derivative, and compare it to Kafka just to show off how much they love Kafka. Then Hemingway. Then Salinger. Then Steinbeck. Then Camus. Writers love to demonstrate that they’ve read more books than you have. They shoot off literary references as an ego defense. My mom does it too.”I glanced back at the sleeping Mrs. Knox. I’d been dutifully working on my Guatemala story every night. Adding concrete details. Rearranging clauses. “I might turn out to be a writer,” I said.“I doubt it. You’re not selfish enough. Trust me. I’m being raised by one.” Veronica picked up her magazine. “In life, you’re given three choices: making something, making fun of something, or making out. I choose the last two.”I barely recognized Veronica as she spoke. She’d never been this insensitive and horny before. “Maybe I should have told you sooner, but the whole point of this trip is to meet guys. I’ve got a plan. Trust me, Dessy, Prague will never be the same.”I had no response to this. Outside our oval window I watched as the plane’s wing cut into a bank of puffy clouds. “How much longer to Prague?” I asked. We had a layover in London, and I couldn’t remember the time difference.“Don’t think about it,” Veronica said. “We won’t be in Prague for, like, a billion hours.”