How to Break a Heart (10 page)

“Okay,” she says, facing him now, a little more upright.

He tries to ignore the fact that her legs look twisted.

“Would you mind rearranging my pillows?” she asks.

He’s relieved to have something simple to help her with, something like pillows. He plumps them up and stacks them under her head.

“Perfect,” she says, smiling at him. “Hey, how’s your hand?”

“It’s good,” Thad says. He’s been taking good care of it, keeping it clean and covering it with fresh gauze. Wearing the gloves whenever he goes outside of the house. There’s
no way
he’s going to end up in the hospital.

“Can I see?”

He holds his hand where she can see it and unwraps the gauze a little. His knuckles look like a road map. There’s an interstate etched across the thumb side of his fist. She cringes.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t really hurt,” he tells her. Which isn’t really true—his hand
does
hurt sometimes. But there’s Tylenol in the bathroom cabinet. And at least if he keeps this wound clean, it’ll heal. It’s the invisible ones that are harder to treat.

She asks for her hairbrush. He doesn’t want to watch it fall from her hands, or see it get stuck in her hair. That’s torturous. So he says, “I can brush it, Mom.”

She gives him an amused look. “You want to brush my hair?”

“I—I mean, I can.” He stares at the bedside table.

“I’ve got a few tangles.”

“Yeah.” He smirks. “That’s why I’m offering.”

She gives him a tiny smile. “Okay.”

He gets the brush from the top of the dresser, where Aunt Nora must have left it, and moves the chair toward the head of the bed. He starts to brush her hair close to the ends, like he’s seen Aunt Nora do. He works on a small tangle right above her shoulder, being overly gentle, afraid to hurt her even just a bit, afraid of the pain in his right hand if he were to squeeze the handle of the brush too tight.

And then she says, “You think—I don’t know—that he’s celebrating somehow?”

“Dad?” he asks, his brushing hand momentarily paused. Sometimes she seems like a little kid. Just how is his dad supposed to be celebrating? He’s a box of ashes. A box of ashes that cost ten dollars and seventy-two cents to ship. His mom doesn’t know that part—Thad signed for the delivery on his own. He just opened the door and there was the mailman, ringing the doorbell, holding a box. Just like any other box. And a Harriet Carter catalog—the place that sells things like toilet paper cozies. Thad had accepted them both together, his head swimming.

“Yeah. What do you think he’s doing?”

Sitting in the front closet, in a black box, that’s what.

But he thinks about what Aunt Nora said—about not bringing an attitude in with him. And his mom’s smiling now, sort of. Thad can’t see her face from where he stands brushing her hair, but he can see the rise of her cheeks, and feel the burdensome, overwhelming, helpless wave that sometimes hits him. He wants to keep her smiling. So he keeps brushing and says, “Probably eating cake.”

“Yes!” she says. “He’s definitely eating cake.”

“And maybe hanging out with Michael Jackson.”

“Michael Jackson?”

“I don’t know a lot of dead people,” Thad admits.

Then he has an idea. “Hey, Mom, Aunt Nora’s not going to work till late. Want me to go to the store and buy a cake?”

“Oh, I—” She sighs. “That sounds fun, but honestly, I think I’m pretty tired. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” he says, putting down the brush, although he can’t help feeling a little disappointed.

She pulls the blanket up to her chin, and he notices her feet are covered up, too. He doesn’t want them covered up—he wants to see her wiggle her big toe. Both big toes, maybe. It could happen.

“Mom?” he says. Maybe she’ll try, just for him.

“Hmm?” she says, like she’s too tired for words.

“Never mind.” He gives her a kiss on the forehead and leaves the room quietly. On the way back to the kitchen, he pauses at the front closet and stares at the louvered door. Behind that door, on a shelf, the Box of Dad sits.

Happy birthday, Dad.

This is the problem with love—real love, not the stupid make-believe stuff that Mabry passes it off as. On a good day, it can wind up in a wheelchair—on a
good
day. On a bad day, it can end up in a box that costs ten dollars and seventy-two cents to ship.

yo corto
tú cortas
ella corta
nosotros cortamos
ellos cortan

I
n the morning, there’s no sign of Sirina at school. I study my new Mariela face in the tiny mirror on the inside of the locker door, brush some of the mascara flakes from my cheeks, and try that whole
heartbreak, thy name is
thing silently. It feels tinny and hollow without her.
¿Donde estás, Sirina? ¡Donde estás!
I finally pull out my phone and call her. It’s an illegal act here at Hubert C. Frost, but it’s like when, on
La Vida Rica
, Rafael had to steal food for his starving children. Something that has to be done.

“Why are you calling me?” she asks, panicked. “You’re going to get caught!”

“Where are you?” I hope to hear that she’s just running late, because a day of school without Sirina is a day of unbearable loneliness.

“I had one of those auras,” she says quickly. “I’m fine; my mom’s just being paranoid and wants me to rest. I’m just going to stay home and eat Jell-O.”

Jell-O. It’s an ongoing joke between us—ever since I made the Red Jell-O Confession. But I find it hard to laugh right now, because I always worry when she has an aura.

The auras are part of her epilepsy. They used to come right before a seizure, but she hasn’t had one of those in almost a year. I try to remain calm. She hates it when I get too anxious about it—she tells me my stress is contagious. So I ignore the ambulance sirens and hospital scenes that are blasting through my head and say, as reasonably as possible, “But you’re okay?”

“Yes! I don’t need you to start worrying, okay? Look, I did everything I could to come to school today, but my mom is just being a total nut. And we seriously don’t need to get on the wrong side of Officer Dirk right now, so I’m going to hang up before you get detention.”

And she does. I feel as alone as Graciela when she was lost in the forest and living in a cave. I try to remind myself that I’ve been through worse, such as the four weeks last summer that Sirina went off to her epilepsy camp, leaving me lonely and miserable, a shell of myself. Even though it was nearly impossible, I
somehow
did manage to stay alive. So I should be able to handle one day without her.

I look down at my purple tunic. I look down at the heels I borrowed from my mom’s closet. And suddenly I feel like an eighth grader in costume instead of the Mighty Mariela I was last night. It’s like without Sirina, I have no Mariela powers at all.

Amelia’s my lab partner in second-period Biology. Despite my saggy, soggy, heavy heart, today’s The Big Day. Today is The Day We Dissect a Worm. I’ve prepared for this day. I’ve said good-bye to my last enjoyable gummy worm. I’ve come to terms with the idea that I will cut into the flesh of a real being. I’ve even thought about whether I should have whooping cough today or not, and have decided that I should not. For today is a rite of passage.

Also, turns out I was vaccinated against whooping cough.

Other people are naming their worm things like Pepe or Brutus, or even Bait, but Amelia decides we should name our worm either Pat or Terry, because it’s both a boy
and
a girl. I don’t like either choice. “How about something like Kai or Drew?”

She makes a face and considers my suggestions, then declares our worm Dylan. “So, do you want to watch or cut?” she asks me.

Cristina would watch. But
Mariela—
now,
she
would cut.

So I say, “Cut.” I put on my gloves and stand over the worm.

“Now,” our teacher, Ms. Frederick, says, “as you begin your dissection, think precision. Steady hands. Remember, class, you are not cutting into a Hot Pocket. You are performing surgery on a delicate and lovely creature.”

I hold my hand out. “Scalpel,” I say to Amelia. She looks at me strangely, but hands over the knife, and I slice carefully into Dylan. This is no butter knife. And I see it for myself. Five tiny little hearts.

“Look!” I say to Amelia. “Isn’t this amazing?”

Amelia leans over to look closely, then recoils.
“Ew!”
she says. “Gross! What is that?”

“Dylan’s hearts,” I say. “They’re fascinating.”

“Honestly, Mabry, you’re the only person I know who would think worm guts are ‘fascinating.’”

Kipper, sitting across the lab table, glances at me shyly. “My worm has some dirt in its crop.” Then he smiles. “Her name is Glenda.”

“It’s not a
she
,” Amelia corrects him.

“Kipper’s just getting all excited about the girl parts!” Brian Stead, his lab-partner-slash-bully, says, whooping with laughter. The other guys around us laugh and bump fists, until Ms. Frederick tells them, in teacher language, to shut up.

Kipper looks up at me and smiles with quiet dignity. I smile back. Sirina was right. He did deserve some positive press.

In the stretch of hallway visible over Kipper’s shoulder, I see
Nicolás
. He walks slowly, and his face is blotchy and almost as red as his sweatshirt, like he’s been crying. The teasing must still be going on. It’s like someone’s picked a little scab off my heart and it’s bleeding again.

I force my attention back to the gentle Dylan and his various and magnificent parts.

It’s a bit ironic. You always think of love conquering all. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s true. I mean, just look around the room of one-hearted, mean-spirited creatures like Brian, cutting open the bodies of
five-
hearted,
gentle
-spirited creatures like Glenda and Dylan.

Forget doves. Why isn’t the worm the universal symbol for love?

I make a quick stop to change at my locker between fourth and fifth periods. As I’m changing out of the heels and into flats, a boy voice says, “Heard you’re doing an article about the crime scene.”

I spin around. It’s Abe. Patrick stands just behind him.

Abe continues. “Dude, you should talk to us. It was
manic
.”

“What happened?” I ask. I know Sirina wouldn’t approve of me talking with the rumor mill, but what else do we have at this point?

“Okay,” Abe says. His head bobbles and his eyes are wide. “So we were downstairs, just, you know, practicing fight moves—”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, crouching suddenly. “
Hi-yah!”
He completes a series of stiff hand movements that seem to go on way too long.

“So you two were doing karate when this happened?”

Abe says, “Yeah, well, Nick too, and we—”

“Wait. Nick?”
My
Nick?

I have a memory flash from Wednesday, the day it happened. The same day as the band rehearsal. Abe calling Nick to come downstairs. Nick running right past me without even a moment’s glance. My heart pangs now just as it did then.