Instructions for a Broken Heart (8 page)

“Look…” Tyler’s hand went up like a flag. “Sorry.”

Across the room, Ms. Jackson went suddenly still, upright, like one of those prairie dogs that pop up out of a hole on the Discovery Channel, a prairie dog with Tina Fey glasses.

“Oh, this should be good…” Devon started.

“Shut it,” Mr. Campbell told him, and he did.

Sean and Natalie moved as far away from each other as possible on the couch. Jessa could practically hear the plastic wrap unsticking. Nobody looked at Jessa.

“I’m sorry.” Tyler made a move to get off the couch, then sat back down, his hand coming to rest again on Jessa’s shoulder. “But, Jade, I mean, come on. Your audience.” He made a motion toward Jessa, another one toward the pink couch.

All the blood escaped Jessa’s body. She was floating, bloodless, her hand still caught up in the carpet fringe. No one moved in the warm air of the hotel. Outside, the night sky seemed to grow darker. In the patch of night at the top of a window, Jessa could just make out the blur of a star.

Jade’s sweet orb of a face crumbled. “Oh, Jess. I…I…I’m sorry.” Her gaze slipped from Jessa to Sean. “I didn’t even think about…”

“OK, OK,” Mr. Campbell said, keeping an eye on Ms. Jackson, who still seemed frozen to her blue ottoman. “OK, we should just move on.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Campbell.” Jessa’s voice echoed in her own ears, like she was talking underwater. “We all know what happened. I mean, I threw a drink in his face.” Devon and Tim cracked up, and their laughter was a buoy under her in a rough sea. She turned her eyes to Jade. “It’s really pretty, Jade. You know I love your voice. And I’m totally fine. Totally. Fine. I am.” And then, without any explanation, she just blurted out Carissa’s limerick into the room. Her instruction. Quick, staccato words, like bullets:

There was a stupid boy from our town

Who decided to start messing around

He found that he cared

Not about what was upstairs

But the eggs in the front of her gown.

A tiny bubble of quiet, then—pop!—everyone started talking at once.

Jessa listened as her friends argued her life in front of her. Had she really just spat out that limerick into the air? Had she really just done that?

The weirdest thing, though, was watching Sean and Natalie listen, watching their faces transform as thirteen of their classmates aired their interpretations of their stupid little love triangle, realize how much they all
knew
about them—or thought they knew. Even Kevin Jones, a junior who was always reading Shakespeare or a spy novel the size of a small car and who was in Sean’s band, even Kevin thought Sean was an “insensitive prick.” But they weren’t all defending her. Like depositing rocks in her belly one after the other, she heard Hillary wonder aloud whether Jessa hadn’t “been too busy to be a girlfriend,” had perhaps “brought it on herself,” only to have Rachel agree with her, referring to Natalie as some sort of by-product. Brought it on herself? By-product! Biohazard was more like it.

A whistle cut through the air. Ms. Jackson, having unglued herself from the ottoman, had her fingers in her mouth, had climbed on top of a chair. “Hey, hey, hey!” she shouted. “That’s enough. This show is over.”

Natalie burst into loud, hiccupping sobs.

Quietly, eyes downcast, the students filed out of the room, leaving Jessa still sitting pressed against the couch. L. E. Wood, the pretty, soft-spoken sophomore, hovered for a minute next to her. “You know, Jessa. I’m going running in the morning. You can come if you want. A good run always helps me sort things out.”

Jessa thanked her, watching her petite, lithe form leave the room.

Mr. Campbell was in a corner talking to Sean and Natalie, who had turned the volume down on her sob but the speed up on her tears. Sean was trying to mop her face off with his T-shirt.

Jessa felt a warm hand on her back. “So, that’s not exactly what I had in mind when I asked you to reel in your behavior.” Ms. Jackson squatted down next to her, her eyes searching Jessa’s face. “Do you want to talk?”

Jessa shook her head.

Ms. Jackson sighed. “I know you’re hurting right now, Jess. But I’m done with you making it a public part of this trip. What you just did right there—that’s not OK.”

“I know.” Jessa wouldn’t look at her teacher, her eyes dry, something icy-dark settling in the pit of her. “I can’t even believe I did that.”

Ms. Jackson watched Sean walk a now-under-control Natalie from the room, then turned back to Jessa. “I know you’re confused, I really, really do. But let me tell you something for sure. You’re not going to find any of your answers in Carissa’s little instructions. In case you hadn’t noticed, they don’t seem to be doing much good.”

“
Actually
, I love to eat hot dogs with mustard,” Mr. Campbell announced, standing up in his bus seat, the heavy emphasis on the
actually
. A few groans from Williams Peak students. A few whistles.

“
But
I really love ketchup on my hot dogs.” Devon caught on to the game right away, calling out from his seat up front.

“
Certainly
, you would also eat them with relish?” Tim said, turning around in his seat, holding onto the back with both hands.

Jessa grinned. The ABC game. The point of the game was to make a conversation that took you as far into the alphabet as possible using each letter of the alphabet to start the next sentence.

“Do you think you guys could not play this stupid game?” Lizzie spoke up, her eyes never leaving the book in her lap.

“Even though you think it’s stupid,” Blake called out, “the rest of us are bored and this helps!”

“Forget it,” Lizzie countered.

“God only knows,” continued Mr. Campbell, “that there’s no such thing as boredom, only boring people.”

A few more whistles as Tyler high-fived Mr. Campbell. Blake turned, bowed, and said, “Honestly, touché, Campbell.”

“I didn’t mean it personally, of course.” Mr. Campbell’s eyes sparkled.

“Just about me as a person is all,” Blake shot back.

“What are they doing?” Madison, flipping through a
Vogue
, squinted out from her seat a few rows ahead of Jessa.

“Some drama thing,” Cheyla said, sniffing, her face buried in her BlackBerry, her thumbs whirling. Jessa had never seen anyone text as fast as Cheyla.

“They’re doing the alphabet,” Jamal said, then called out. “Klondike bars are my personal favorite, not hot dogs!”

Williams Peak cheered, and Jamal’s face broke into a bright smile.

They narrowly avoided the dreaded
X
as the bus pulled to a stop in a small parking lot in the town of Bologna, where they would eat lunch before heading the rest of the way to Venice. Everyone stood, stretched, pressed fingertips to the bus windows, pulled backpacks from the overhead storage.

The energy of the alphabet game dwindled, and the whole bus seemed to sag a bit, everyone looking tired, like they were starting to feel the trip in their bones. Jessa felt like her body’s seams were pulling slightly, splitting tiny threads around her joints, the skin around her eyes dry and tight. She sniffed, hoping she wasn’t getting a cold. Tipping one of the vitamin packs her mom sent with her into a water bottle, she watched the now-yellow liquid fizz and shift, then switched off her iPod, cutting off the strains of “Sun and Moon” from
Miss Saigon
in mid-wail.

Francesca clapped her hands at the front of the bus. “Today is National Picnic Day, Easter Monday, so Bologna’s market will be closed. But we have almost two hours here. Meet your teachers outside.” She went down the steps and off the bus. Francesca seemed agitated this morning, robotic, and Jessa could hear strain in the clipped edges of her voice.

Jessa pulled her bag over her shoulder, slipped on a pair of sunglasses, and made her way down the bus aisle. She tucked Carissa’s Reason #7 into her pocket. She hadn’t opened it last night, Ms. Jackson’s warning ringing in her ears as she fell asleep.

“What are you drinking? Pee?” Tyler waited for her outside the bus.

“Yeah. I’m drinking pee. It’s vitamins.”

“It looks like pee.” Tyler headed with her toward the tree where the other students from their group were waiting. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure.”

Dylan Thomas fell into step beside him. “What…?”

“It’s vitamins,” Jessa told him, tucking the bottle into her bag. “And your group is over there.”

“OK, grumpy.” He didn’t make a move to join them.

A gorgeous Italian woman passed in front of them. She wore a tight white dress with huge black sunglasses and pin-thin heels that click-click-clicked on the cobblestone. Her dark hair gleamed. “Wow.” Dylan Thomas let out a whistle. “My Bologna has a first name. It’s F-I-N-E fine.”

Tyler followed his stare, jaw literally dropping.

Jessa rolled her eyes. “You are both revolting.”

“I’m just admiring all the beauty Italy has to offer.” Dylan Thomas finally tore his eyes away as the woman disappeared around a corner.

“Yeah, well, be careful not to slip in your drool.”

The Williams Peak group gathered in the shade of a tree. Jessa studied her friends as they stood, waiting in the dappled light. Mr. Campbell counted heads. Then counted again. “Are we…?”

“Permission to come aboard, Captain,” Dylan Thomas clarified. “It’s like an IQ suck over there.” He motioned to where his group still stood by the bus.

Mr. Campbell had that eating sour soup look he got when he was trying not to laugh. “Go check in with Bob. He needs to know you’re jumping ship.”

Dylan Thomas gave a little salute. Jessa watched him stroll over to where Cruella’s husband and Quiet Guy were chatting near the bus. Jessa had been right with her initial history teacher impression. Mr. Cruella taught, as Dylan Thomas said, “the world’s most boring world history class.” He said he would rather rub sand under his eyelids than listen to one of his lectures on the First World War. The other chaperone wasn’t so bad, though. Quiet Guy taught art, kept to himself. Dylan Thomas took clay for his visual art so he’d never actually had Quiet Guy as a teacher, but he seemed nice enough. At least he didn’t offend people and ask a zillion stupid questions.

“OK, one hour, you guys, and then we’ll meet back at this tree.” Ms. Jackson waved them off.

Jessa noticed most of the other group heading straight for the McDonald’s. She followed Tyler and Dylan Thomas toward one of the little side streets, winding their way around a crowd of parked Vespas.

All she wanted was cheese, bread, and a small table in some shade.

***

Zero for three.

Somehow, they’d ended up at a tiny café table in a blinding spill of suddenly too-hot sunlight. For National Picnic Day, the café was sure busy. Shouldn’t more people be picnicking? Dylan Thomas nabbed one of the two tables left, then begged Jessa to hold down the fort while he and Tyler went in search of bathrooms.

Jessa didn’t even have time to blink before a couple sat at the other empty table next to her. It took her a second to realize it was Cruella and Bob, the world’s most boring world history teacher. At first, she couldn’t see Cruella under a ridiculous hat that made her look like the man with the yellow hat in the Curious George books her sister used to make her read endlessly. Fidgeting in her seat, Jessa wondered three things simultaneously. One: who would buy a hat like that? Two: who would pack it all the way to Italy? Three: would the woman be snatching any monkeys out of their natural African habitat and then passing them off as pesky but well-intentioned pets?

Cruella noticed her staring. “Well, hello.” She slapped her husband’s bare arm to get his attention. Rubbing it, he nodded in Jessa’s direction. “That’s the girl who threw the drink,” Cruella hissed.

“Yes, yes, I know.” He smiled, almost apologetically, though he could just be squinting into all that sun.

“Hi.” Jessa scanned the café for her friends, sweat dripping down her back.

“You’re a fidgety little thing aren’t you?” Cruella snapped her fingers at the waiter walking past her who pretended not to notice, holding his black tray like a shield.

Jessa stopped fidgeting.

Bob scanned the menu. “Why is everything here so expensive? What they charge for a Coke? Criminal.”

“So did he deserve it?” Cruella flipped the menu onto the stone table. “That boy.”

“Not sure anyone deserves an orange soda in their face.” Bob’s eyes never left the menu. His voice had a way of dipping under the air, as if he could make it inaudible at a moment’s notice.

Jessa licked her dry lips, saw Tyler starting back toward them, a look of alarm crossing his face when he saw the couple at the next table. Jessa stood up. “No. He did.”

“Well, good for you.” Cruella pursed her lips, then went back to studying the menu.

Spotting Dylan Thomas, Jessa jumped to her feet, hooked Tyler by the sleeve, and led them both out of the café.

***

Jessa found her shade, under the tree they had first gathered by with the group. She studied the slip of white paper in her lap. With Reason #7, Carissa had written only one word:

Blank

No reason with this one. And no instruction.

Tyler bit off a chunk of the cheese they had bought at a small market.

“Gross,” Jessa told him. “At least break it off.”

“It doesn’t break.” He studied Carissa’s page. “She probably wants you to do one of your own.”

“I figured.” Jessa took her pen out of her backpack. She crossed out “Blank” and wrote:

What we deserved

“What are you writing?” Dylan Thomas chewed a piece of baguette and sipped from his soda.

“My reason is: I didn’t deserve this. And I’m writing a list for my instruction.” Jessa made a line down the center of the paper, then titled each column.

What I deserved

What Sean deserved

A breeze skittered across them and it ruffled the paper a bit. She held her face up to it for a minute, let it soak her skin. Around them, the sun stippled the ground through the trees, the tiny diamonds of light shifting and changing.

She noticed their bus waiting for them in the lot across the way, the driver leaning against it, smoking a cigarette. Francesca sat in the first seat. Jessa could see her through the window talking on her phone, gesturing wildly.

Under her column she wrote:

honesty

time

a key to Frodo

Sunday mornings

friendship

love

your soccer jersey to sleep in

answers!

Under Sean’s column she wrote:

love

dreams

my locker combination

attention

friendship

gas money for Frodo

She hesitated for a moment, remembering what she’d told him at the Palazzo Pitti, that he didn’t get to miss her, then wrote:

to miss me

She stood up.

“Where are you going?” Tyler bit off another hunk of cheese.

“I’m giving him the list.”

***

Jessa lugged her bags up the narrow stairs of the hotel. She pushed open the door of her room and crossed the small space to the window. They were staying a bit outside of Venice, across from a beach and a wide blue stretch of the Adriatic Sea. Jessa took a deep breath of sea air. It felt good to be out of a city.

Before third grade, Jessa’s parents moved them out of San Francisco and into the small foothill town of Williams Peak. Jessa sometimes missed the buzz of the city streets, the whirl of lives. As a child, she would often stare out at the street of their first floor window at the passing shoes. All those shoes hurrying by, year after year. Her mother would bake cookies in the small kitchen behind her, slipping chips into Jessa’s waiting mouth. But she wouldn’t take her eyes off the shoes: red heels, sneakers, flip-flops, glossy black business shoes.

In Williams Peak, they bought two acres, rescued a puppy named Taco from the local shelter, trimmed their apple trees. Jessa made forts out of twisting manzanita bushes and helped her dad string twinkle lights from their outdoor gazebo each spring. But she always felt straddled between those two worlds, that hurried city life and the taffy-stretched days of her life in Williams Peak. Something about Italy cinched those worlds together inside her like the strings of a purse. Her breath came more easily here, her senses more into focus as if even the colors here were more defined, the world suddenly drawn straight and right.

“Hey, Jessa.” Hillary stood in the doorway behind her. “Guess I’m your roomie for this stretch.” She wheeled in a green bag behind her. “Can I have this one?” She motioned toward the bed closest to the door.

“Sure.” Jessa turned and hefted her own bag onto her bed, the soft mattress giving slightly. Hillary flopped onto the bed with her iPod and closed her eyes. She must have sensed Jessa staring because she opened an eye. Jessa never understood that one-eye instinct. It actually seemed harder to open one and not the other.

“What’s on your mind, Jess?”

Jessa shrugged, kicked her shoes onto the ceramic tile, and sat cross-legged on the bed. “Nothing.”

“Liar.” Hillary sat up, pulling her knees into her chest, tossing her iPod aside on the bed. “Spill it.”

Hillary had one of those big-sister things going for her even if she was actually the youngest of four, the only girl. The roles she got were always the best friend, the comic relief, or the old man whenever they needed an old man. She’d been Polonius in
Hamlet
, the mother in
Brighton Beach Memoirs
, the janitor in
The Breakfast Club
, a role that seemed larger and more important because Hillary played it that way.

It had been Hillary’s words at the salon that had stuck to Jessa like gum on her shoe, that she’d been trying for the past day to scrape off against the stone streets of Italy. She told Hillary that—not the gum part. That would be weird. Just the part about her words, how they’d hurt her.

“You said I brought this on myself.”

“I said
maybe
you brought this on yourself.”

Jessa failed to see the difference. “What did you mean by that?”

Hillary ran her fingers through her short, blonde hair. “Look, Jessa.” The way she said her name, the breathy patience of it, annoyed Jessa. That big-sister thing had its drawbacks. Jessa made a mental note never to talk to Maisy like that. Finally, Hillary said, “Look, Sean’s not a jerk.”

“I think he’s a jerk.”

“Right. OK. But he’s not. Not empirically.” Hillary and her SAT words and her whole I-just-found-out-I’m-going-to-Cal-next-year superiority. Jessa was starting to wish she could just sleep in the hall. No more roommates. “Look, he’s not going to end up one of those guys who beats his wife and hangs out at Lit Lantern after work instead of going home to his three kids.”