The Breakup Artist (16 page)

“So, I’m really sorry . . . I guess this is my fault for giving her a taste of single life, but she wants to break up with you,” I finally said, his lack of reaction making me bold enough to just come right out and say it. I suppose I thought maybe he wouldn’t react to that either and I’d have completed my job with no verbal backlash from the dumpee. I was wrong, of course, but not in the way I expected to be wrong.

“She doesn’t want to break up with me,” he said simply, his eyes still trained on the page in front of him. I wondered if he was actually reading the play or just keeping it there so that he wouldn’t have to look at me.

“Yes, she does,” I said, almost defensively, as if he were calling me a liar by not believing me.

“No, she doesn’t,” he countered. His voice was still neutral, like he was telling me that the capital of California was Sacramento. Finally, after a long silence of my confusion and his stubborn insistence, he looked up from the book. “Who are you really?” he asked, with a resigned curiosity.

“I told you, I’m Karen’s friend,” I repeated. He shook his head at this but kept his eyes trained on mine.

“I’ve known Karen her whole life. We’ve been friends since we could talk. She only has a small handful of friends and most of them are homeschooled.” My mouth hung open slightly from his completely out of the blue response. I hadn’t expected him to know her so well, but then again, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t dealing with a normal high school relationship. “So who are you?” he asked again.

“Amelia,” I answered, though that didn’t really answer his question.

“And she sent you to try to break up with me because she didn’t want to do it herself?” he asked. This boy really was more astute than I gave him credit for. I nodded dumbly, wondering what I was supposed to do now. I felt like a spy whose identity had just been compromised, except I didn’t exactly have the option of setting off a smoke bomb to make my great escape.

Nate closed the book that lay on the table in front of him. “Listen, Amelia. I know you think you’re helping her out, but you’re really not. Karen’s mom is just overprotective of her because of her condition.” He looked at me, searching my face for some scrap of understanding to see how much I actually knew about Karen.

“Condition?” I repeated with my brows drawn together in confusion.

“When she was little she got scarlet fever and it left her with a weak immune system. Now the smallest bug going around makes her sick. It was a battle just for her mom to let her go to a public school, so a boyfriend has always been completely out of the question.” He kept his eyes trained on mine as though he were willing himself to be strong and continue on with the story of a life I was oblivious to. “As you can imagine, her mom is a little wary of Karen kissing boys or holding hands when she needs to be kept away from any germs. We’ve always been really careful, though. If I get even the smallest cold, I won’t even come to school since we have a lot of the same classes. I wash my hands every five seconds when I’m around her, and we only kiss if we’re both completely healthy.”

His words were so heartfelt and concerned that I couldn’t believe I’d actually set out to break them up. The fact that Nate was willing to risk a normal life just to be around Karen was almost too much for me to comprehend.

“She thinks she needs to break up with me because of her mom, but I know that if her mom knew how careful we were, she wouldn’t object to our relationship. Karen’s being unreasonable, though. She’s terrified that if I ask, her mom will take her out of public school and she’ll never see me.” Now Nate looked down, the weight of the situation clearly on his shoulders. “I don’t know what to do,” he concluded quietly. I bit my lip and looked down also. What could he do? I didn’t know Karen well, but maybe since she’d trusted me with the disposal of a relationship she was so fully invested in, she would trust my advice to let Nate talk with her mother.

“Maybe I can try talking to her. Karen, I mean. Maybe if I could get her to see reason, she’d let you talk to her mother. That way her mom would know there were ground rules to govern your relationship, since Karen is so fragile.” I looked at him hopefully, finding that I actually wanted to save this relationship, even though my job had always been to destroy them. Maybe it was my connection with David that had sparked it, but I had a lot of hope for Karen and Nate.

“That might work,” he said as he lifted his head to look at me. His eyes held a small spark of hope that I couldn’t ignore.

“I’ll call her later and see if you can come meet her mom tomorrow after school when she picks Karen up.” At these words Nate looked a bit doubtful.

“
If
she’s in school tomorrow. When she gets sick, Karen usually stays out of school for at least a week.”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to meet her mom on your own terms away from school. Besides, it’ll look like you’re much more serious about this if you go out of your way to meet her mom.” I’d had some experience in the relationship world, and though my expertise didn’t involve much hands-on practice, I knew what impressed people and how to really show them that you meant business.

“All right, it’s a deal,” Nate said, the spark of life that I’d seen in him the day before lighting once more. “Thanks, Amelia,” he said as the bell rang and he made his way to class. I had to admit that I felt pretty good about myself as I walked to my English class. Of course, there was the question of exactly how I’d get Karen to accept my terms, but that was just a small detail.

I didn’t have any time to work out my plan of attack during English because our teacher had decided that we needed to write a timed essay. She gave us a topic and started the timer, and I quickly learned that no one should ever write for two hours straight. By the time I left English for lunch, my hand was cramping and covered in ink.

I walked quickly to my spot by the library after stopping off to tell Nate that I’d be calling Karen in a few short minutes. David was there in my usual spot with a laptop in front of him, typing away furiously. I cleared my throat to try to break the intense look of concentration on his features. His face instantly brightened when he saw me, and he quickly put the laptop away.

“Homework,” he said simply with a nod toward his backpack, where the computer now resided.

I sat down and told him everything that had happened during break and what my current plan was as I pulled out my cell phone, which was pale blue today.

“Wow,” he said simply, as I grabbed Nate’s fact sheet to retrieve Karen’s number. “Is your work always this crazy?” he asked me, though after watching me for a year I was sure he knew.

“Never,” I answered. “It’s weird for me to stumble across people who actually care for each other, let alone people who care for each other but can’t be together because of things that are, for the most part, out of their control. I just really want to help them.” David smiled at me warmly.

“And that’s why I like you so much. You’re a good person.” I smiled back at him but looked down at the phone, not used to receiving genuine compliments that didn’t revolve around my good looks. “Even if your typical day involves destroying innocent boys’ lives,” he added with a grin.

“I knew it was coming,” I said with a shake of my head and a smirk.

Punching in the number Karen had given me, I rehearsed what I would say to her one more time.

“Hello?” came a familiar but weak voice on the other end.

“Karen?” I asked, even though I knew it was her.

“Hi, Amelia,” she said quietly. I was surprised that she recognized my voice or possibly my number, but I continued on without any pause.

“How are you feeling? I heard you actually got sick.” I knew I sounded guilty even though her real illness had nothing to do with me.

“I’m all right. It’s just a small flu, but I should be fine in a few days.” I heard a cough on the other end, and then she resumed her thoughts. “Did you talk to Nate yet?” I knew this was coming. In fact, it was the only reason I had called her, but I still felt unprepared to answer that question.

“So here’s the thing, Karen. I talked to Nate but he wanted nothing to do with me because he’s so in love with you.” I paused for a moment but got only silence on the other end, so I took that as a sign to keep going. “So he ended up figuring out that you had sent me just to break up with him, and then he explained why you were doing it in the first place.” Still silence. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that Nate and Karen had the most boring, silent relationship ever. “So anyway . . . I didn’t break you guys up. I’ll give you your money back and everything, but I have something I want to talk to you about.”

“What is it?” she asked with a yawn.

“I want you to let Nate talk to your mom about you two.”

“No,” she said instantly, and with such authority I couldn’t believe it had come from little, fragile Karen.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” I asked.

“If he talks to my mom she’ll know about us, and she’ll take me away from the school and away from him,” she whispered, and I suspected her mom was nearby.

“You don’t know that,” I responded, hoping I sounded more convincing than I felt.

“Yes, I do. She’s so afraid I’ll get sick just from being at school, she’d never let me near him.” I thought this over for a moment, trying to find some sort of compromise.

“Well, maybe Nate could talk to her and you guys could set some rules. He already told me how careful you are. Surely that will show your mom how serious you both are about staying safe.” I heard a choked sound on the other end of the line that sounded like a sob. “Or what if you went back to being homeschooled and Nate could still be your boyfriend? That way you’d be away from the threat of hundreds of kids and trade that in for just one boy.” I thought it sounded like a reasonable proposal. After all, Nate had told me that Karen’s friends were all homeschooled, and he was the only one she knew at the school anyway. If it meant getting to keep Nate in her life, I couldn’t see why she wouldn’t want to just stop going to a public school. It’s not like she would miss the cafeteria food.

There was a long moment of silence in which I wondered if Karen had hung up or fallen asleep. After a minute or so of the silent hum of ambient noise, Karen’s voice sounded on the other line. “It’s worth a shot,” she said finally, instantly bringing a smile to my face.

“Perfect,” I said, a bit more enthusiastically than was necessary. David gave me an odd look, but I ignored it and continued. “I’ll see if Nate can drop by your house tomorrow to talk to her. Don’t worry, Karen. This is going to work. I just know it.” We ended our conversation after a few more reassurances. I knew I shouldn’t make promises to her if I couldn’t definitely keep them, but I was just so sure that this whole plan would succeed that I couldn’t see any other outcome.

“So everything’s all right, I take it?” David asked beside me.

“I think it is. Nate’s going to talk to Karen’s mom tomorrow. He’s going to ask if she can go back to being homeschooled in exchange for the freedom to date him. Personally I don’t see how her mother can refuse. Trading in 3,000 kids for just one potential threat has to be a pretty appealing offer,” I said confidently.

“Unless she feels that Nate poses a greater threat than those 3,000 kids,” David replied with a sigh. “From what I’ve seen of her, Karen wouldn’t be the type to go around kissing 3,000 students, just passing them in the hallways, not even making physical contact.” As much as I hated how grim his outlook on my plan was, I couldn’t deny that it was a legitimate argument, and one I’d have to be prepared for. “And there’s always the possibility that she’ll agree to the terms and then go back on the offer once she has her daughter out of school,” he continued, quite unnecessarily.

“You certainly have a glum outlook on human nature,” I said in annoyance.

“I was trying to catch a con artist for a year, so I had to start thinking of every possibility,” he replied with a cheeky grin.

“I’m not a con artist,” I corrected with indignation. “I’m a breakup artist.”