The Museum of Heartbreak (20 page)

He had surprised me the day after our Helvetica outing, offering to walk me home after school. On our way there, he made me laugh to the point of tears, his Mrs. Carroll imitation scarily perfect. He played the new National song for me, sharing one of his earbuds, his head nodding next to mine, in sync with the music. When we got to my stoop, the cool of the concrete steps passing through my jeans, we made out, entwined as scarlet leaves drifted magically in the air around us.

On Thursday, between watching teenagers break-dancing, some guy drawing caricatures, tourists getting lost, and locals walking their dogs, we sat on a wooden bench near Strawberry Fields in Central Park and made out some more, the trees bowing down around us like we were holy.

That Saturday, we walked from Keats's house to Battery Park City, the river glinting bright alongside us, and went to the Poets House library. I rested my head on his shoulder as he read me Jack Kerouac poems, the late-afternoon sunlight making me drowsy enough that I was able to tune out Kerouac and just listen to Keats's voice. It was a miracle, Keats next to me, the very fact of him liking me.

And Sunday we went to the Cloisters, orange leaves falling outside, holding hands inside while we studied the unicorn tapestries, my heart dreamy with the drug of pure like.

Keats was waiting for me at my locker Monday morning. He promised we'd go to the Strand after school. I spent the morning giddily imagining him pushing me gently against a shelf, his lips on mine, words around me, and by the time lunch rolled around, I could barely spell my name, already lost in the headiness of the afternoon's potential.

“Pen!” Grace called to me from down the hallway, and I blinked twice, rubbing my neck.

“Hey!” I said, sunshine spilling lazily out of me.

“Hey, you,” she said, giving me an admiring look. “You are totally blissed out. Keats?”

I smiled, big and dopey.

She wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pulling me down the hall. “You're late for
Nevermore
. For that matter, so am I. Turns out we have a little more space to fill for the next issue, but it needed to go to the printer like yesterday. So we're getting pizza and reading. Unless you have plans with your Prince Charming?”

I shook my head.

“Follow me.”

When we entered the room, May waved cheerily.

“No Emily Dickinsons or Walt Whitmans yet,” she said. “But we'll find them!”

Miles was bent over a pile of paper, his Mohawk uncharacteristically and ominously flattened down, scowling. “Be warned, there are
a lot
of vampire short stories and poems with thorns and dark tears and bleeding roses today.”

“Have you guys read
Twilight
?” Oscar asked.

Miles shot him a withering look, and Oscar shrugged. “It's really well done.”

“I can't even,” Miles replied, turning toward the wall and scowling.

I was just about to launch into questions about what Oscar could possibly find redeeming about
Twilight
when he winked at me.

“Man, you're good,” I whispered under my breath as I sat between him and Miles.

He shrugged, settling back with a submission, stretching out his legs.

“Soooo . . . how's it going with Starbucks Guy?” I quietly asked Miles.

He snatched a submission from the pile in front of us, in the process scattering the remaining entries across the table. May frowned and reached over, straightening them into a neat pile.

“Gracie told you?” His voice was petulant.

“I told Pen what?” she asked, sliding into the seat on the other side of Miles.

“About my date?”

“I told her the beginning but not the end,” Grace answered.

Miles sighed unhappily and loudly, pretending not to notice the way May glared across the table at the noise.

“What happened?” I asked quietly.

“Nothing happened,” Grace said. “Someone's being dramatic.”

“I'm not talking to you.” He gave Grace the hand and turned to me. “His breath smelled terrible.”

“Oh?” I said, not sure how to respond.

Grace rolled her eyes behind him.

“And he talked nonstop about his training at Starbucks and didn't ask me any questions, and at one point there was actually a ten-minute soliloquy about the best pork chops he'd ever had. Turns out he hates E. E. Cummings—was only reading him that one time because he had to. It was awful and boring and not at all romantic. Total nuclear disaster.”

“Oh no,” I said, immediately thinking of my encounter with the dirty hot guy at Grey Dog. “Maybe he was nervous?”

“Exactly what I suggested. I don't think he's giving him enough of a chance,” Grace said under her breath.

“What kind of romantic story is that?” Miles practically yelled. “ ‘When your dad and I met, he couldn't stop talking about pork chops'? That's terrible!”

May made a harsh “shhhh” noise, and Miles gave her the finger.

“Classy,” she muttered.

“I want sweeping romance; I want a kiss that takes me to other worlds. Is that asking for too much?” Miles asked.

“Settle for nothing less,” I murmured, thinking of Vivien and Delphine's vow, worrying faintly for the first time that maybe it was impossible to keep. But this wasn't me and Keats we were talking about.

“It doesn't work like that,” Grace said to Miles patiently. “I just think you should give him another chance. When I first met Kieran, I thought he was so boring, but—”

“That's because he
is
boring!” Miles said.

Grace's face froze.

Oscar raised his head from the manuscript, watching Miles, and May started twisting a ring on and off her finger.

“You think Kieran is boring?” Grace asked, her voice cracking.

“The only thing he can talk about for an extended period of time is
Game of Thrones
,” Miles said.

“I like
Game of Thrones
,” Oscar offered.

“He never wants to go out,” Miles said, ignoring Oscar. “He only eats hamburgers.”

Grace's eyes were watering up, but Miles was on a tear, not even looking at her.

“He likes college basketball, for God's sake!”

“Hey,” Oscar said to Miles, tapping him on the shoulder.

Miles shrugged him off. “What did he give you for your birthday this year again? A Best Buy gift card?” He wrinkled his nose. “If that's real romance, no thank you.”

Grace was crying now, her face red and stricken. She grabbed her bag and headed toward the door, looking back at us before she left. “Screw you, Miles,” she said, the door slamming behind her.

Miles flinched, the color draining from his face, his furious energy disappearing with it.

Oscar stood up then, his chair screeching across the linoleum, and pointed firmly at Miles, then at the door. “Out.”

May shot me a panicked glance.

Miles looked at Oscar, confused. “You're kidding again, right?”

Oscar continued to point at the door.

Miles turned toward May and me. “You guys know I didn't mean it. I'm just stressed. I'll find Grace and apologize, okay?”

“You need to go,” Oscar said firmly.

Miles waited for one of us to say something, but I couldn't stop thinking of the look on Grace's face, how we shouldn't have seen it, how we were trespassing on the secret parts of her heart.

Miles snatched his bag, furious again, and stormed out.

Oscar and May and I sat in silence for a few minutes, until she stood suddenly. “I'm going to look for Grace. You guys should keep reading—we need to find something by tomorrow if the issue's coming out on time.”

Oscar sighed and handed me the next submission on the stack, grabbing one for himself too, as May left.

The short story I was reading—“Wonder Wheel”—started with a guy riding the Coney Island Wonder Wheel at night, making out with a girl named Jena.

Even though I wasn't very hungry, I leaned over for a slice of pizza, blotted the grease off with a paper-thin napkin, and folded the thin triangle in half.

The narrator was angsty, spending a lot of time moodily staring at the rain through cafe windows, drinking his coffee black while he lamented the fact that he was attracted to Jena—that even though he found her “mean and shallow as a teenage girl's eye shadow dreams” (sexist much?), he kept returning to her “like a hardened moth to a passionate and cruel flame” (clichéd much?).

Irritated, I flipped to the last page.

The final scene featured the narrator riding the Wonder Wheel, alone this time, smoking a cigarette and staring poignantly out over the sea. He had broken things off with Jena, her cruelty “a dark blot of cancer seeping into him like mold,” but once he'd lost her, he realized that he loved her.

I was ready to check “nope” on the reader report when my brain caught up with my eyes and finally processed the last sentence:
As the Wonder Wheel jerked to a halt at the top, he stretched his legs onto the aluminum seat and studied his mismatched socks, the weariness of life beating ceaselessly into him like a drum.

No.

No.

No mismatched socks.

I dropped my half-eaten pizza onto a napkin and flipped to page one, reading more carefully this time.

The narrator had an older brother who taught him to smoke pot when he was thirteen.

His mother complained frequently of ghosts.

But most damningly of all, even though his father wanted him to work at Goldman Sachs, the narrator wanted to be a writer.

Just like Kerouac.

I flushed, like I had been caught red-handed at something, but Oscar was staring out the window and no one else was there.

My stomach gurgled guiltily, but how was I supposed to know? It wasn't like his name was on the story.

I hated the story.

I wanted to burn it to the ground.

But at the same time I also felt this weird sense of protectiveness for Keats's vulnerability, sitting there all plain and raw on the page.

The first bell rang, and I checked the “not sure” verdict on the reader report and hastily handed it to Oscar, and instead of recycling the submission, per our guidelines, I shoved it in my bag.

“Talk to you later,” I said at the door, my hands tingling with, what? The theft? Borrowing? Not recycling?

“Later,” he said quietly.

I practically ran out of the room.

The right thing to do would have been to throw the stupid story in the nearest recycling bin and not give it a second thought.

Instead I read it furtively under my binder in World History. It didn't get better with repeat reads.

•  •  •

After the final bell, Keats was waiting for me at my locker, smelling like cinnamon. I snuck a glance at his socks.

I tried hard to banish thoughts of moths flying into flames and shallow-girl eye shadow.

“Scout,” he murmured, pulling me into a kiss.

I had a fleeting moment when I wondered if Audrey or Cherisse or Eph was walking by. What would they think if they saw us?

He pulled away, reluctantly, and gave me a sleepy smile—what I was learning was his post-make-out smile. “How are you, babe?”

Babe.
Keats called me babe.
Forget the stupid story, Penelope.

“To be honest, kind of crappy. Two of my friends got in a really ugly fight. Have I told you about Miles and Grace? I'm worried about them. So I'm mega looking forward to taking my mind off
things. I mean, looking at books.” I rubbed his arm, gave him what I thought was a super-cute, flirty smile.

“Ahh, that's the thing. My parents want me home early tonight—Beckett's in town for fall break and we're having some fancy family dinner with Cherisse's family.”

Cherisse's family?

I waited for him to ask me to join them.

He didn't.

“Oh,” I said finally, trying not to sound too disappointed, wishing I could shove Cherisse in a lake.

“You're totally mad, aren't you?” He ran his hand through his curls, searched my face.

“No, it's okay, you should spend time with your family,” I said, even though I wanted him to console me about Grace and Miles, wanted him to at least confirm he knew who they were.

“You sure?” His expression relaxed.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Thanks, babe,” he said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek and jogging backward down the hall. “I promise I'll make it up to you,” he called.

Gloomily, I headed toward the door. Once I was outside, I decided to take Columbus instead of Central Park West. The walk wasn't as pretty as passing by the park, but after the day's events, I wasn't in the mood for fall's show-offy colors.

I wondered if Cherisse and Keats were heading to his brownstone together.

I wished he hadn't bailed. I wanted to be with him, wanted to
make out until my lips hurt. I wanted to talk with him about Grace and Miles.

Or, at the very least, I wanted him to be a little more upset about canceling our plans.

But to be fair, he hadn't seen the fight, probably didn't know how horrible it was to witness, didn't know it made me sad in a way that reminded me of Audrey. And he was going to make it up to me. He
wanted
to be with me.

And, I reminded myself, Keats wanting to be with me was surely better than no Keats at all. This was what relationships were: give and take, ebb and flow. We couldn't hang out every second, right?

I chewed on my lip, walking by the greasy diner Audrey insisted made you smell like fried food if you were even on the same side street, when I did a double take.

Miles was sitting inside, slumped in a booth.

I didn't particularly want to go in, but I couldn't leave him there, so I sucked in my breath and walked inside, wrinkling my nose at the smell of cigarette smoke (even though it was nonsmoking) and alcohol (even though it didn't have a liquor license) and fish sticks (those, at least, were on the menu).