How to Break a Heart (2 page)

“Well—” I start, and I suddenly feel like an idiot. But, I mean, once someone has professed love to you, shouldn’t that go without saying? Of course he would ask me!
He would! He would!

For a few awful seconds, nobody says a word and it feels like time has stopped, caught between my will to rewind it and its natural tendency to plow rudely forward, mowing down everything in its way.

I hear a crashing sound, which could be the actual sound of my heart breaking. But then Nick’s mom says, “Oh,
no
! The cat just broke my coffee mug. I have to go. You’ll be all right, I promise—you’ll see. Good-bye, Mabry!”

My heart seems to stop beating, like it’s been stabbed. Filleted. Maybe even julienned into long, thin shreds. And you know what happens when your heart stops beating. You die. You just up and die.

I’m aware that it’s been about an hour, so I must still be alive, but I might as well be dead because my body feels like it’s in a state of rigor mortis. Stiff and rigid and unmovable. Sirina tries to hug me, but I can’t hug back. Hunter is also taking pity on me, nuzzling me with his snout, but I can’t even reach out to pet him.

“I can’t believe he had his mother call to break up with you!” Sirina says, for about the tenth time. “What kind of guy does that!?” She’s fuming.

Apparently, a wonderful, beautiful guy with an enticing mysterious side. And promising bone structure. And indigo-blue eyes. Who might actually grow to be about six-foot-three if his pediatrician’s predictions are right. But it’s hard to even talk, so I guess I’ll have to explain that to her later.

“Come on.” She tries to pry me off the couch, but it’s like I’ve been flash frozen in place. I don’t budge. I
can’t
budge.

“Let’s go get ice cream or something!”

“Don’t. Want. Ice cream,” I manage to say. I also want to tell her how annoyed I am that she’s trying to trivialize my pain with ICE CREAM! But I’m in too much agony.

She sighs and releases my arm. It creaks back into place.

“He’s a jerk,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. “A hot one, okay, but still a jerk.”

“Not. A. Jerk.”

“Seriously, Mabry! Come on!”

I stare ahead, staying stiff.

“Let’s just do what we usually do. Ice cream. Come on, Mabry, don’t you want a Blizzard?”

“My heart. Is a blizzard,” I manage. And it is. It’s like a Snickers bar being mashed up and ground up and blended into something frozen, by some heartless Dairy Queen clerk. A cold winter storm of pain and anguish. I’ll never look at ice cream the same again.

“Well, it used to work.” Sirina sighs. “I don’t know why you care about some guy who just had his mom dump you. You should be outraged!”

“He’s just confused, I think.” I hug my knees in.

“Oh, I get it. This is about that phone call last week.”

It was on Thursday, five days ago, just as we were getting off the phone. I’d taken a deep breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and said the words.
I love you
. And then he said them right back to me. Well, basically.

“No, Sirina,” I say. “It’s about being in love!”

“Mabry, he said, ‘Me too.’”

“AND”—I look right at her—“
AND
the next day he held my hand when we walked between the P.E. hall and the arts alcove.” Plus, he’s the first guy who didn’t follow my words with “Thank you,” or “You’re hot, too,” or “I know.” Or silence. Or “I’m moving to Canada.” That happened once.

Sirina exhales loudly, clearly unconvinced. I guess it’s hard to be very persuasive when you’re in a fetal position. Besides, I know she’s thinking she knows the drill. Mabry gets a boyfriend. Gets dumped. Cries. And does it all over again. Rinse and repeat. On the outside, I know it looks the same as it always does. But it’s just not. He told me he loved me. Maybe not exactly in the traditional words, but at least he
agreed
. He was The First! He was
El Amor de Mi Vida
—the love of my life!

“What do you want me to do, Mabry? You’re barely moving. Want me to stay or go?”

“Stay,” I bleat.

“Okay,” she says. Even though Sirina thinks this whole true love thing is stupid, at least she doesn’t think
I’m
stupid. Just a little insane sometimes, or so she tells me. She sits back down on the couch with me. “Then will you at least do me one favor?”

“What?”

“Blink.”

So I do. I not only blink, but take in a chestful of air, finally, bracing myself for what’s to come now. The crying. And not the dignified, beautiful, clean cry that Cristina just pulled off. I try for that graceful cry, I really do—and I’ve had plenty of practice—but my messy, slimy tears always seems to wind up on sleeves, and sometimes, in especially bad times like this, couch pillows.

Sirina passes me a box of Kleenex.

Oh, Cristina. How do you love with such grace? You must not truly understand the pain, not as I do. The torment! The agony!
No, Cristina, no entiendes nada!

Sirina stays until her mom calls and tells her she has to come home for dinner.

I go upstairs to my room and lie down. I must have fallen asleep, because Hunter nudges me awake and I sit up, coughing.

My nose feels stuffy. My throat feels swollen. I hear my brother’s footsteps in the hall. “Aaron?” I call out to him. I use his real name instead of “A-Bag,” which is what I prefer to call him. Of course, he started calling me “M-Hole” first, so I think he deserves that.

He pauses at my doorway. He’s fifteen but acts twelve sometimes. “What’s up, loser? Let me guess—malaria?”

See why I call him A-Bag?

“I don’t feel good,” I say.

“Well, Mom said to come down for dinner,” he says. “She and Stephanie are waiting.” He means Stephen, my mom’s boyfriend, the science teacher. His name is pronounced like “Steffen” so my brother likes to call him “Stephanie” behind his back, and sometimes in front of it.

“Tell her I’m not hungry.”

He nudges me and smirks. “He brought that pie he makes. That berry one? Yeah, he took it into one of his teachers’ meetings, and it ‘went viral.’”

Oh, yeah, that’s a Stephen-ism. Something “going viral” means that people liked something, or that generally things went well. A-Bag and I, on separate occasions, have both tried to explain to him what it actually means, but we gave up a while ago. Now the way Stephen misuses the phrase seems almost normal, and I’m half-afraid that I’ll go into school and use it wrong myself. (Q: How was your weekend, Mabry? A: It was pretty viral. Thanks for asking.)

I try to smile, but it’s no use.

“Whatever, you’re no fun,” Aaron says, and leaves.

A minute later, there’s a “Shave and a Haircut” string of knocks on my bedroom door. Stephen. Of course.

“Come in,” I say in my most unwelcoming tone.

The door opens. “Hey there, kiddo!” he says. He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his feet. “What’s the four-one-one?”

I take a stiff breath and say flatly, “That’s the number for information.” I can’t help it. Sometimes I like to watch him squirm.

He makes a gaspy laugh and says, “No, I mean—that’s a—uh, a little joke.” His laugh comes to a wheezy end. “I mean, what’s going on up here? I hear you’re not feeling well?”

“I’m not.”

“Well, I hope you feel better soon,” he says.

“Thanks.”

He smiles and nods, and turns toward the door. Before leaving, though, he turns back around and says, smiling, “Wanted to make sure you weren’t just up here hangin’ ten.”

It’s another one of his jokes. One that he uses ALL THE TIME, like, anytime my brother or I are a little late to dinner, or have slept in late. You know that phrase
surfing the Internet
? Well, apparently
hangin’ ten
is an older term that meant surfing—like, your
ten
toes are
hanging
off the surfboard. So, in his strange little science-teacher mind,
hangin’ ten
means “surfing the Internet,” and it’s very, very funny. IN HIS OWN MIND.

“I’m definitely not hanging ten,” I say.

He gasp-laughs again and leaves, with a little forehead salute.

A little later, my mom brings a grilled cheese sandwich up to my room and says, “You want to talk about it?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I tell her.

“I might.”

“Have you ever really been in love?”

She pauses. “Well, yeah.”

I roll my eyes.
Well, yeah
isn’t a yes.
Well, yeah
is wearing fleece pajamas and watching
Dateline
on the couch with a pointy-looking man in a bow tie.
Well, yeah
is going to PTA meetings and working in an office and buying in bulk from Costco.
Well, yeah
isn’t really being in love.

She puts the grilled cheese on my nightstand and gives me a half smile. “All right, I’m going to bed. Eat your grilled cheese while it’s still hot.”

I look over at the sandwich. It’s perfectly golden and crisp, and on a paper towel so it doesn’t get soggy. I pick it up and take a big bite. And for a second, I’m full of appreciation for the
blah
kind of love that would make a mom cook a grilled cheese for her ailing daughter.

“It’s good,” I tell her.

She gives me a good-night kiss on the forehead and says, “I love you.”

“Well,
duh
,” I say, “I love you,
too
.” But it’s not nearly the same. It actually should be a different word. How are these different feelings all called
love
?

Right before I turn out my light, I send Sirina a text.
Good night, my little jazz-handed sea monkey.

It’s nice to know that she’s the only person on earth who isn’t going to ask what a jazz-handed sea monkey is. Our good-night texts are a tradition we started in sixth grade after one too many rounds of Mad Libs. They’re random blends of adjectives and nouns that make no sense—just constant little inside jokes between the two of us.

My phone buzzes with her response.
Good night, my little coral-reef dancing queen.

yo pierdo
tú pierdes
ella pierde
nosotros perdemos
ellos pierden