Instructions for a Broken Heart (13 page)

“I don’t ever want to be just an option,” Jessa told her.

***

The next morning on the bus, Mr. Campbell passed back their stuff. “Here’s your virtual brains,” he said. But his smile had returned and he laughed at Devon’s dramatic display of reuniting with his PSP. “Nelda! Oh, my soul! Wherefore hast thou traveled, my love? We shall never part again!”

They were heading back to Rome for a lighted tour of the city at night, and the rhythm of the bus was familiar now, the movement from one place to another lulling Jessa into a trance. Earlier, as she’d settled into her seat, Madison had passed her on the way to the back of the bus, had given her a sweet, knowing smile.

As the bus left Spoleto behind, Jessa curled into a seat with her iPod and
Portrait of the Artist
, and just melted into the words, letting Stephen’s world become her world, his heartbreak and confusion her own.

An hour or so later, a passage in the book made her pause. She clicked off the Sarah Brightman humming low on her iPod and scanned the beautiful lines in the novel again, her eyes resting on the line:

A day of dappled seaborne clouds.

In the book, Stephen had realized that words, the sheer beauty of them, could alter the
glowing sensible world
, turn it into a
prism of language
. She read the passage again, its taste sugary in her mind. Words—and, for her, music. The way she could wash herself with sound, with words, with the luscious order of them—so free, but put there on purpose, in a journal, in a song. Her Harry Potter invisibility cloak from the real world. She preferred the words, the music, to dust-covered reality. She saw the world the way Stephen did—in all its crazy, beautiful disorder.

Love—her dictionary definition. This was love.

Not everyone saw life the way she saw it, not everyone stared out a moving bus window and saw the world’s sherbet colors, its gauzy, shifting clouds like wraiths, full of beauty and sadness. An eternal, tumbling world. But she did. She saw the world this way, read its pain between the beautiful lines.

She pulled out her phone and texted Carissa:

Love is the beauty of this world pressed nose to nose with all its pain.

She had tears in her eyes—tears. And they weren’t about Sean. They weren’t about her loss of him or even the beauty of olive groves slipping by outside. They were just tears, for all of it and none of it; for being so very, very small in a world so very, very big. For
noticing
. When most of the bus around her was probably just blissfully wondering what they would have for lunch. Sean always told her she was too sensitive, an “overthinker,” but she realized this was just the start of it. She was an overnoticer, an overfeeler. She walked around like an exposed nerve, her skin alive with millions of tiny little antennae, when he just walked around, fully armored, ensconced in his own singular world.

She added another line to her text and hit send.

Boyfriend: someone who gets that I see the world in this ridiculous, beautiful overfelt way, knows how necessary it is to me. Who maybe, just maybe, feels it too.

She rattled a sigh out of her closed throat, blinked into the dry air of the moving bus. Mr. Campbell glanced up at her over his
New Yorker
and he knew. Somehow, he
knew
. She held up the book. He nodded, his smile barely there, just enough to tell her he knew.

“Sean kissed Carissa!” Jessa shoved the envelope into Tyler’s face, which wasn’t very nice considering that he’d been three inches from a lip lock with Cameron. Still, he could come up for air to spare a minute for her. He’d been MIA since Spoleto. He and his little instruction manual.

She tapped her foot impatiently. The bus idled in the parking lot, waiting for them all to pee and choose whatever sugar or salt they needed for the rest of the trip back to Rome. Tyler and Cameron cuddled on a crumbling stone wall next to the gas station or rest stop or whatever they called these things in Italian. Or at least they had been cuddling, before Jessa stuck Reason #13 in Tyler’s face.

“Um, what?” Tyler plucked the paper from her hands.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jessa said to Cameron. To Tyler, she said, “He
kissed
her. During
Hamlet
. Backstage. But I guess you already knew that. So what does her little instruction manual say about how to handle me for this juicy piece of information?”

Tyler sighed, rubbed his temples. “OK, I knew. I mean, even before the manual.”

“What!”

Cameron grabbed her handbag. “I’ll save your seat.” She kissed two fingers, then pressed the kissed fingertips to his nose. It would have taken some pliers and a court order to pull his eyes from her retreating back.

Jessa waited. “Um, Romeo? Do you mind explaining that you knew my boyfriend kissed my best friend and then, oh, forgot for, like,
eleven months
, to tell me?”

“I didn’t forget to tell you.” Tyler stood up and walked toward the store. “I’m getting some gummy bears.”

“Tyler!” Jessa followed him through the swinging doors. Jade and Christina passed them, giggling. Jade had a handful of little silver-wrapped chocolates, and Christina had an orange soda. Jessa couldn’t even look at orange soda anymore. She waited while Tyler pulled the three remaining sacks of gummy bears from the rack.

“Tyler Ramón Santos.”

“Ouch, the middle name? You need to calm down.”

Outside, she grabbed his arm and made him face her. “What don’t I know?”

He shifted his weight around, the gummy-bear bags crinkling against each other. “Yeah, OK—he kissed her. It was opening night…”

“We were together opening night!”

“Telling a story here!”

Jessa pinned her lips together with some undisclosed stash of willpower.

“You know how it goes,” Tyler told her, an edge of what must be annoyance in his voice. “We were all jumping around, congratulating each other, over-the-top opening night buzz, and they ended up backstage and they kissed. Probably a little longer than they should have. It wasn’t a big deal, really. Usual backstage stuff.” Tyler’s eyes drifted over Jessa’s shoulder, and she turned to see Cameron waving at him through the bus window. “We decided not to tell you. We didn’t want you freaking out over nothing.”

Jessa’s heart stilled a little.
Everyone
acted like puppies on speed backstage on opening night. It really wasn’t a big deal. She had actually planted a pretty big kiss on Kevin that night. On the cheek, but still, it bothered her that she was just finding out about it now. “I wouldn’t have freaked out.” Jessa waved back to Francesca, who was brandishing the frog at them spastically as she walked toward the bus. “I wouldn’t have freaked out.”

“Yeah.” Tyler steered her toward the bus. “No chance of that.”

***

Outside the hotel in Rome, Jessa sat cross-legged in the small rose garden, watching Dylan Thomas read over Reason #13. She sipped an espresso he had ordered for her from the little restaurant in the hotel lobby. The coffee tasted thick and bitter on her tongue, even with the milk she had added.

“I think she’s mostly just saying that she had an instinct she should have trusted. To tell you.”

“Tyler told her not to. That I would have freaked out.” Jessa held her head up to catch the slight wind that lifted her hair from around her face and cooled her neck.

“And would you have freaked out?” Dylan Thomas sipped his own coffee, eyes still on the letter.

“No. Everyone acts like idiots backstage after a show.” She sipped her coffee.

Dylan Thomas stared at her over the paper. “It really wouldn’t have bothered you?”

Jessa dropped her voice. “OK, yeah it would have.”

Over the lip of his cup, Dylan Thomas said, “So, there’s something to Carissa’s trusting-an-instinct theory.”

Jessa ran her finger around the ceramic edge of her coffee. “Um, I was wondering if you could have found a smaller coffee cup?”

“It’s a demitasse, you heathen.” He snapped off a piece of biscotti, dunked it, then popped it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “OK, we have a half hour before we have to go stare at another church or something. What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me what you think.” She nibbled her own almond biscotti.

“I think they were right to not tell you.”

“Traitor.” Jessa slumped into the stone of the garden wall.

He shook his head, his black hair falling a bit in his eyes.

Was it just her imagination or had his hair grown a bunch over the trip? She liked it a little longer, in his eyes a little. “Your hair looks good today.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “You’re changing the subject.”

She sat up. “I’m not.”

“Then why does it matter?”

“Your hair or changing the subject?” Jessa watched a butterfly settle on a nearby rose the color of cotton candy. She shivered, her bare arms suddenly cold.

“Their kissing.” Dylan Thomas tossed her his black sweatshirt.

“Because he isn’t supposed to kiss other girls when he’s supposed to be only kissing me. Sorry, I’m old fashioned that way.” She pulled the sweatshirt around her shoulders. It smelled like pastries, like the bakery they’d eaten breakfast in back in Spoleto.

Dylan Thomas handed the letter back. “I think there is a better question to be asking.” He finished his coffee and sat the cup and saucer on the low wall of the garden.

“What?”

“Why is she telling you now?”

Jessa shrugged. “Maybe there’s no point. Maybe I should just throw the rest of these in an Italian sewer or something.” Jessa stuffed the letter back into the envelope, the inked purple Reason #13 too bright against the white envelope.

“Now that would be trusting your instincts.”

***

Instruction: Trust Your Instincts!

Jessa didn’t throw the envelopes in an Italian sewer. She thought about it, but somehow that would only be giving Carissa her way, following her instruction, and she didn’t feel much like doing anything Carissa wanted from her right now.

Instead, she headed back to the room she was sharing with Lizzie Jenkins, a junior with a sense of humor so dry Jessa was pretty sure she was really a sixty-year-old masquerading as a teenager. When Jessa got back there, Lizzie was reading a David Sedaris book stretched out on her stomach on the bed by the window.

“I’m taking a quick nap,” Jessa told her.

“Not the nap police.” Lizzie didn’t look up from her book. “No need to register.”

Watching her, Jessa’s mind flooded with an image of Lizzie at the fifth-grade end-of-the-year barbecue before they all went on to Five Hills Middle School. Lizzie, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, on her belly by the little stream that ran through the park, picking stones out one by one, stacking them in a little pile by the water’s edge, the sunlight dappling her back through the thick oaks that lined the streambed. Rock monsters, she’d called them, when Paige Ryan asked her what on earth she was doing and said she better watch out because she was going to ruin her shirt.

“Do you remember your rock monsters?” Jessa sat on the edge of her bed.

Lizzie looked up, a smile pulling at her mouth. “Oh my god, rock monsters! How do you even remember that?”

“I just thought about our fifth-grade barbecue where you made them all along the stream at Memorial Park.” Jessa watched Lizzie remember, her face lighting like a designer had finally flipped the right switch, hit the right spot on stage.

“My brother and dad used to make them for me when I was little.” Lizzie sat up on the bed, flipped the book shut. “I was so afraid of water as a kid, afraid it would just swallow me up. So they’d line them up along rivers, next to lakes. To protect me. It’s sort of dumb.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s wild you remember that.”

“Sometimes I wonder how we’re not ten anymore.” Jessa suddenly wanted to lay herself next to that streambed, stack rocks and rocks until there were rock monsters all around her. She’d make some for Maisy when she got home.

“Well, I, for one, plan on always being ten.” Lizzie fished around in her backpack and pulled out a bottle of water and a bag of almonds. “Want some?”

Jessa chewed an almond, savoring the salt on her tongue.

“I remember something about you,” Lizzie said, then took a sip of her water. “That scar on your arm.”

Jessa grew warm. It
had
been Lizzie with her, that day in fourth grade on the field when she tried to sneak under the curl of chain link fence to get a red ball she’d lost. Snagged her arm on a jagged piece of fence. How had she forgotten it had been Lizzie? Lizzie had given her one of her socks to wrap around her arm to stop the bleeding.

“It’s kind of a boring story,” Jessa said, digging through her bag, avoiding Lizzie’s eyes.

Lizzie flipped her book open, sprawled back out on the bed. “Maybe.”

Somehow, once again, Jessa had underdressed. Both schools stood in the courtyard of the hotel, waiting for the bus to pick them up for Rome by Night, though she heard Rachel whisper to Kevin that it should actually be called Slut Fest by Night, with all the cleavage showing.

The other school was sporting a vast array of halter tops (which Jessa could never pull off; she would need an actual chest), tight denim, short skirts, and glossy makeup (again, never pull that off—she’d look like a rejected extra from
Starlight Express
). Jessa sighed. Her jeans were cute enough, but her shirt bagged in the wrong places. Not a good Rome by Night look. She eyed Tyler, all black leather and dark denim, his arm around petite Cameron who could wear a brown lunch bag and look cute but who wasn’t wearing a brown lunch bag. She was wearing a silver, gauzy tank that looked spun by fairies and some skinny black jeans.

“You look good,” Tyler told Jessa. “Are you wearing eyeliner?”

“Yes. Jessa own eyeliner,” she quipped in her best caveman voice, aware it came out bitchier than she meant it to. She should try to tone it down. Tyler was just being nice. But Cameron gleamed like a goddess in that silver tank top and Jessa didn’t feel like apologizing for her tone.

“OK, then.” Tyler widened his eyes. “We’ll save you a seat.” They moved away, Cameron looking like she’d rather get dental reconstruction than save Jessa a seat.

***

Suddenly, Rome became a jeweled city, something from
The Wizard of Oz
. The light seemed to disappear all at once, night replacing day in a blink. Jessa felt it in her chest, squeezing the little pillow of flesh around her heart. As the bus whirled them toward the Trevi Square, dozens of fountains lit the way, the ice-blue water against the marble figures becoming otherworldly, floating ghosts. Tall, stone buildings that would seem dirty in the daytime were suddenly magical palaces arching into the black sky, their windows swollen with yellow light.

The bus pulled to a stop in a wide parking lot, and after Francesca’s quick set of instructions and a nod from the frog, the students spilled out of the bus into the dewy haze of Rome at night. Jessa had noticed Giacomo slip off the bus well before Francesca stopped talking, noticed the slight skip of Francesca’s eyes toward his exit, the way her face seemed to tighten.

The square was alive with laughter and music. Couples strolled by with arms wound round each other, Vespas beeped their friendly horns, groups of Italian teenagers called loudly, their Italian thick and full. Tyler and Cameron disappeared almost instantly. She searched the group for Dylan Thomas. He’d been on the bus, up near the front, chatting with Mr. Campbell during the ride. Back at the hotel, he had mentioned getting gelato, finding a quiet place to hang out together.

“Hey.” Sean appeared next to her, hands in his pockets.

Jessa’s skin spread with warmth the way it always did when he was close, like he had some sort of radioactive ability to up her internal thermostat by a couple of degrees.

“You hanging by yourself?” He pulled on his jacket, and Jessa tried not to watch the long sweep of his arms into the sleeves, tried not to think about the way it used to feel to be wrapped up inside of them. She tried, and failed—miserably.

“I think I got kind of ditched.” She flipped open her bag and dug through it to have something to do. She didn’t even need anything out of it. She found a stray lip balm, uncapped it, pressed it to her lips.

“Where’s that Dylan kid you’re always with?”

She had not imagined the scissor edge to his voice. She popped the cap back on the Burt’s Bees. “Not sure.”

“Are you guys, like, together now or something?” He grabbed the Burt’s Bees and helped himself.

She snatched it back. “No. I mean, Dylan Thomas is the greatest. But, no, we’re not together…” She let her voice trail off. Let him think that she was adding “for now” on the end of that statement even if it was ridiculous to think of herself with Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas had an ex-girlfriend named Link who moved to Japan. For him to even notice Jessa she’d have to pierce her nose and add about twenty black long-sleeve shirts to her wardrobe.

“Right, right,” Sean said, his eyes scanning the square. The Trevi Fountain was breathtaking, striking—the horses charging out and away, lit up, emerging from the eerie blue of the water. “Sure. You want to go eat or something? The pizza here is really good. Even if it’s flat.”

“Isn’t all pizza flat?”

“You know, like almost no crust or whatever.” His eyes locked on to something over her shoulder and she turned, following his gaze. Natalie and Jamal were locked in an embrace next to the fountain, an embrace playing on the passion the fountain exuded, like they were performing a live, non-marble interpretation. Her hair looked white in the ghost light of the fountain, striking in its spill against the dark skin of Jamal’s arm.

“I saw them in Venice,” she said, her eyes on Sean’s face.

He swallowed hard. “Yeah. She broke up with me that first night there.”

“At least she broke up with you first.”

His eyes fell back on her, his shoulders sagging. He rocked back and forth over the cobblestones under his shoes.

“Do you think…” Jessa trailed off, her voice feeling like it was made of feathers. “Were you ever going to talk to me about that?”

“I’m talking to you.”

“About that?”

“I tried.”

“What?” Jessa pulled her own coat tighter into her, crossed her arms across her chest. “When?”

“In Florence. In the gardens. At that palace.”

Jessa dug through her memory. Had he tried to talk to her about it? She mostly remembered wanting to kick him in the shins. She shook her head to clear it, but he mistook it for disagreement.

“I did. I tried. You didn’t listen.”

“Um, that was a few days late. Generally, you talk to your girlfriend before mauling another girl in the costume barn.”

“OK, yeah. But I did try. And you just used it as an opportunity to attack Natalie.”

Jessa felt her body start to tremble, start to fill with tiny bubbles on the surface of her skin. “I think if anyone has a right to attack her, it’s me.”

He sighed. And for some reason, Jessa got the impression he was thinking about pizza.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Am I boring you? Is smashing my heart into a million pieces and humiliating me in front of all my friends not so much worth an explanation?” She knew what was happening to her voice. She was going to the banshee place, the nether world of screechdom, as her dad would say. She put a lid on the banshee.

“You know what, Jessa?” Sean went to his quiet, zombie, blank place, a perfect mini-replica of all their past fights. Her screaming, him silent. Quietly, he said, “Maybe for once you could learn that the whole world isn’t here to owe you an explanation.”

“How about just you?” She could feel the tears, hated them, wanted to erase each single tear as they bulged in her eyes, but she couldn’t stop them.

“You know what? It just always seems like when girls say they want to have a conversation, they just really want to do all the talking.” Sean sighed again, ran his hands through his hair—his great hair.

For a minute, she imagined shaving it with one of those sheep-shear things she’d seen at the farm they visited with the environmental club last month. It helped, a little. “I want to have a conversation,” she whispered. “I want to know what happened with you and me. One minute we’re about to go on a romantic Italian trip and then the next minute I’ve got standing room only to your romantic vacation with another girl, which, by the way, has been just a rocking great time for me—not that you’d notice.”

“Yeah, really romantic.” His eyes over her shoulder again.

“It was a horrible thing to do to me.”

“Jess…” Every once in awhile, Sean looked at her as if she were the only person in the world, the rest of the world falling away around her like a dark stage, leaving her flush in the middle of a circle drenched with spotlight. Now was one of those times. “Jess,” he repeated, leaning in toward her a little. “It’s like you’re in a race. You’re always in a race.”

“What do you mean?” Her stomach prickled with his words. Always racing—after that elusive future.

He dropped his hands, his face going slack. “I just…I wanted things to be easier. You’re…not easy.”

“No,” she said, her voice hiccupping, fighting the tears back down to her belly. “No. I’m not.”

“I do miss you. You said in your note. What I deserve. I deserve to miss you, you said.” His eyes searched her face. “But, it’s just…” his voice trailed off, his eyes on something over her shoulder. Maybe Natalie and Jamal had invited a mime to participate in their little show?

“Jessa,
bella
.” The voice caught her from the side, like a sudden wind.

She turned as Giacomo moved in next to her, his arm coming around her shoulder in one clean move and settling there, warm.

“You are crying.” His eyes darted to Sean, who, Jessa smugly noted, looked guilty.

“I’m fine.” She wiped at the skin beneath her eyes. It felt papery, like tissue.

“We get something to eat?” Giacomo motioned toward the busy square behind him. “We drink something?”

“We were kind of talking,” Sean said. He stood up a little straighter, folded his arms across his chest.

Jessa leaned into Giacomo. “I’d love to get something to eat.” She caught Sean’s eye. “That way your evening can be
easier
.”

Giacomo whisked her away into the blurry, busy Rome night.

***

Giacomo wiped his mouth with a napkin and pulled the letter closer to him. “So she writes you these reasons. With these instructions. And you forget this Sean?” She thought he might be making fun of her. His eyes glinted, crinkled at the corners.

“It’s not going so well.” Jessa read the note upside down.

Competition Piece.

Carissa had reminded her of their festival piece they had taken to competition that winter. About Sean’s sulking that he didn’t make it in.

No one wants a big baby for a boyfriend!

But apparently, Jessa glowered, it was fine to kiss the big baby backstage when he was already your best friend’s boyfriend.

“Why the lemon face?” Giacomo sipped his wine. “You don’t enjoy the wine?”

Shaking her head, Jessa took another small drink of her own dark red wine. “No, that’s not it. I was just thinking about something.” She tried to clear her thoughts, focus on the fact that she was sitting in the shadowed courtyard of a Roman restaurant, sipping red wine with an Italian man. She tried really hard not to slouch.

Giacomo pointed to Carissa’s instruction. “What is word for word?”

“It’s a type of theater.” Jessa finished chewing her bite of
caprese
salad. “You perform a piece of prose, like a novel, word for word. We did Dr. Seuss’s
The Lorax
.”

The waiter set down two plates of pasta and the smell of garlic and herbs permeated their table. Jessa took a deep breath. Giacomo said something quickly in Italian to the waiter, laughed, then refocused his gaze on her.

“What did you guys say?” Maybe they were laughing at her. The American kid with the stupid notes. She took another quick sip of wine.

Giacomo checked his BlackBerry, stuck it back in his pocket. “What we? The waiter?” He picked up his fork and spoon, swirled the noodles with his fork into the belly of the spoon before taking a quick bite, setting the utensils down again. “I told him that Roberto must love his garlic.”

Jessa didn’t know who Roberto was. Maybe the chef? She just nodded.

Giacomo studied her from over his wineglass. “So this Carissa says you should pick a word-for-word piece for Sean. One that says something about him.”

She swirled her noodles, feeling very sloppy and young—no spoon, noodles everywhere. “Yep,” she slurped.

“And what would you choose?”

She set her fork down, resting it on the plate at an angle, the way Giacomo had his. “Who knows? Is there a book about a boy who doesn’t know what he wants?” As the words tumbled out, Jessa realized she was currently reading that very novel.

“I think that’s what most novels are about.” He ate another bite of pasta. “Unless the book is about a girl.”

She laughed, folded the letter up, and stuck it back in the envelope. Giacomo’s eyes glinted in the candlelight.

He smoothed the tablecloth, then set down his wineglass. “You don’t want to do her instructions? Don’t want to read her reasons?” He took a sip of wine.

“Not really.” She paused, realizing she had grown completely tired of Carissa’s little game, her know-it-all instructions to Tyler. But there were envelopes left—unopened—and she had already gone this far. She had promised Tyler she’d finish, not that he seemed that interested anymore.

“So don’t.” Giacomo waved to the waiter, who filled his wineglass.

“There are still six envelopes.”

He laughed. “You Americans. So many rules. Always having to finish things. So…what is the word? Productive?”—said as if he might have uttered the word
toilet
or
congested
.

Jessa flushed. “‘You Americans.’ That’s a bit of a generalization.”

“What is this ‘generalization’?” The word rolled in his mouth like working it around a triple wad of gum.

Jessa thought about it for a second. “When you state something about a whole group. Like Italians care too much about shoes.”

“Italians do care about shoes. Too much? I don’t know.” He smiled, seemingly enjoying Jessa’s annoyance.

She stabbed at her pasta. “Why are you suddenly here?” She snatched the small dish of cheese and dumped a spoonful over her pasta.

“I asked you to have dinner. And we are here.” He sat back in his chair, his palms up in defense.

“No, not here, the restaurant. Here on this trip.”

His face darkened. “I was asked to leave school.”

Jessa set her fork down. “Why?”

He waved his hand in dismissal. “Narrow minds.” He leaned on the table. “My mother locked the house and left no key. So here I am.”