How to Break a Heart (3 page)

I
t’s the next morning. My mom is standing at my door, her arms crossed. “You think you have
what
?”

“A.I.W.S.,” I say. I groan and roll over. “You look really small. I better stay in bed today.”

She sighs. “And, Mabry, what exactly is A.I.W.S.?”

Of course she would ask that.
Of course.
“Alice in Wonderland syndrome,” I tell her. I open one eye and reach for the glass of water on my nightstand, pinching at it with my thumb and index finger. “Why is my water glass so tiny?”

She raises her eyebrows at me. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“It’s
real
!” I say. “Just Google it!” And it is—
it is
! Plus, the good thing is that you don’t have to have a fever to have A.I.W.S., so it’s not like she can prove that I
don’t
have it.

But instead of giving me sympathy, she just starts bossing me around. “Mabry, get up, get dressed, and get ready for school.”

“Mom,
okay
, listen. I probably just have a migraine.” Here’s what I know from experience: a claim of a migraine or strep throat or even a cold will buy you at least a day out of school, while, very ironically, a claim of an ailing heart—the
heart
, which you can’t live without, which is the most important organ in the body—won’t even get you a late slip.

But my mom just turns her head sideways and gives me that no-nonsense stare, like she is the Queen of the Whole World, or maybe even Señora Lomas from
La Vida Rica
, and I am one of her servants, who has no free will at all.

At school, on the way to first period, I run into my friend Amelia. She starts talking about the color she wants to paint her room. “It’s kind of like purple, but it’s not one of those pale purples—it’s more like a blue-purple. It’s called Mystic Moon.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Sounds nice.” And it does. But I can barely focus on anything but the wreckage in my heart.

“GOR. GEOUS,” she says, like it’s two words. “But I’m a little scared.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Well, come on, Mabry.
Purple!
It’s bold, even for me. What if I totally hate it? I mean…”

She keeps talking but my ears no longer register her words. Instead, I see him, My Love, My
Nicolás
, moving—
gliding
—toward me in slow motion. I inhale a warm breeze. A bird soars behind him. I hear a piano playing gently. The breeze caresses his bangs from his face. For that moment, the air catches as if it’s been locked in my lungs, and our eyes meet as if they’ve been seeking each other through eternity, and—

Er.

Wait.

Not. As. Planned.

Instead of running toward me—as the music increases in pace and intensity, as the bird is joined by its mate—Nick
bolts
. He takes an immediate detour into the Teen Life lab, which
I know
he doesn’t have until sixth period.

“…was thinking about pink, but then I was like, pink, really? I mean, how old am I, four?” Amelia is still going, twisting her blond hair around her fingers as she talks.

“Right,” I say, but it comes out a little garbled, because, of course, I am speaking through a crushed soul. I don’t want to see Nick anyway.
I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!
Okay,
I do
. But I shouldn’t want to. I mean, you go out with someone for six weeks and think you know them, and suddenly, your future mother-in-law is calling you to break up!

Amelia looks at me. “You okay?”

I clear my throat. “I’m really sorry, Amelia. I sort of just saw Nick.”

“Oh.” She twists her face into a grimace. “Ugh. That’s the worst thing about a breakup. Seeing the guy all the time afterward.”

No, Amelia,
I want to say.
The worst thing about a breakup is scraping your soul off the bottom of his shoe!
It’s like we’re living on different planets sometimes.

Our friend Jordan catches up to Amelia and me in the hallway. “Hey!” she says to us, all too cheerfully. Then she looks straight at me. “Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”

“She and Nick are over,” Amelia tells her.

“What!?”
Jordan says. “Since when?”

“Since yesterday after school,” I tell her.

“What happened? Oh my god, did he leave you for Ariana?” Jordan asks, meaning Nick’s girlfriend before me.

“No,” I say. “For karate.”

“Karate?
What?
” This time Amelia does the drilling. “He actually said that?”

“Well, I haven’t really been able to talk to him. I think maybe it’s just what his mom wants him to do. She’s the one who called.”

“His
mom
broke up with you?” Jordan says, way too loudly. “What a wimp!”

“He’s n-not—” I stammer. I haven’t spent six blissful weeks in love with a wimp—there’s no way! I mean, do wimps have those ocean-blue eyes? That slightly crooked but adorable smile? I think
not
!

“Yeah, he’s such a baby,” Amelia declares.

Jordan smiles. “Just wait till word gets out.”

“You’re not—
Don’t say anything, please!
”

“Don’t worry, Mabry,” Jordan says. “This makes
him
look bad, not you.”

“Yeah,” Amelia adds. “You should totally be laughing at him.”

“Just don’t say anything. I don’t want anyone laughing at him.
Please!
” I beg, but the bell rings and they scatter away too quickly. I’m left pleading for a mercy that will never come, like on
La Vida Rica
, when Irina was lost and stumbled upon a pack of wolves in the hills and was never heard from again.

At lunch, I find Sirina in the à la carte line. “My world is falling apart,” I tell her.

A normal Sirina response would be to say,
Your world is not actually falling apart.
Instead, she just gives me this I-feel-kind-of-sorry-for-you look and orders a Chipwich from the cafeteria lady.

“A
Chipwich
? You’re eating an ice-cream sandwich? Really?” I ask Sirina.

She looks at me. “Yeah, why not?”

I just shake my head. It’s hard to feel like you’re being taken seriously when you’re pouring your heart out to a friend who’s just sitting there eating a Chipwich, like it’s a day at the carnival or something.

At our lunch table, Jordan immediately scoots over to make room for us, and Amelia gives me a pat on the back, which actually makes me feel a little
more
like a leper.

Sirina wedges in close to me and I open my lunch—pasta salad.

“He won’t even look at me,” I say as I stare into the chaotic, oily bunch of noodles.

“He’s an infant,” Sirina says.

“When Axyl broke up with me, I un-friended him,” Jordan says. “You should do it first before he does it to you.”

“But I could
never
un-friend him,” I say. “He’s
still
the love of my life.”

Amelia chimes in. “You should just come in tomorrow looking all hot, and be like,
Whatever, dude, I’m over you
.”

I sigh and shake my head. No one understands.
No one!

“Block him on your phone, too,” Jordan says. “I blocked Axyl on everything. There was no
way
he could come crawling back to me. I didn’t want to speak to him or see him or have anything to do with him—not if he was the last guy in the world.”

She’s such a drama queen sometimes. “I’d rather
die
,” I say.

I’m still staring into my pasta, and no one’s talking, but I can practically hear them all exchanging glances, their eyes inflating, their eyebrows shooting up into their hairlines. Sirina nudges me in the ribs with her pointy elbow. “They’re
just
trying to help, Mabry,” she says.

“I know.” I exhale. “I’m sorry.”

“He’s a butthead,” Amelia says.

“Don’t call him that!”

Amelia and Jordan get up from the table, exasperated, and start to walk away. “Sorry,” I call after them. To Sirina, I say, “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I just—I just want him
back
.” My eyes brim with tears. I try not to blink.

“Hey, Mabry?”

“What?”

“You, my friend, are the poster child for misery.”

I sigh and poke at a noodle with my fork. “I can’t wait for you to fall in love so you know what it feels like.”

Sirina looks at me for a second. Then she shakes her head and looks away and says, “The way you’re acting, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

We finish lunch. Or rather, I finish staring at mine, and she polishes off her Chipwich. “Sorry,” I finally murmur.

“I know, me too,” she says.

And just as we’re about to leave the cafetorium, she says, “But, Mabry?”

“Yeah?”

“You
are
driving me crazy.”

I’m kind of stunned. I really have no idea what to say to that, but just then, Mrs. Hurst, the nutrition manager, starts screeching about how we all need to return our trays and pick up all remaining food and “food waste” from our tables and UNDERNEATH THEM and get headed to our fourth-period classes. She says it with such urgency you almost feel like you must spit out anything in your mouth just to follow the rules. So, luckily, I don’t have to say anything to Sirina right now.

At the end of the school day, I see
Mi Amor
again. Through the crowd of faceless faces, he is sailing toward me. My breath catches in my throat for a second. I feel like I am about to drown.

He will save me. His hand will grab mine, and he will sweep me out of this mighty middle-school ocean.

Nicolás!
My heart calls out to him.

And it appears as if he hears my heart. Because his sparkly blue eyes meet my emerald-green ones. I open my mouth to say his name, to ask if we can just talk—and then, out of nowhere, A SHARK ATTACKS.

A shark by the name of Patrick Hennessey. Who is usually more of a minnow than a shark, but today he might as well be a great white.

“Nick!” he calls out. “Downstairs. You coming?”

“Wait up!” Nick calls back. He bolts past me.

I am Cristina aching for Luis. I am Andres pining for Consuelo. I am Elisabet yearning for Cristof. I am devastated, alone, abandoned. A washed-up shell piece on a remote island beach. The piece that winds up jabbing you in the ball of the foot, and then gets cursed at and thrown back into the ocean.

“Mabry,
Maaaay
-bry.” Sirina puts her hands on my shoulders and steers me toward the locker we share. “You’re standing there like a statue from a Greek tragedy. You look ridiculous.”

I sigh. “Let’s just get this day over with so we can go home and watch
La Vida Rica
.”

“Oh, my little
pobrecita
,” Sirina says, rubbing my shoulder.

Then we hear, “Girls?”

We turn to see Mrs. Neidelman. She’s in charge of the Hubert C. Frost Middle School news blog,
The Vindicator
. I’m a reporter and Sirina’s both my editor and photographer. It’s something we’ve been working on together since we got “redirected” from the drama club last year. Well, since
I
did. I still remember Jessica Morgan’s snotty little face when she told me, “This is the drama club, not the
melo
drama club.” And then Mrs. Neidelman
just happened
to ask me if I could help out by writing for
The Vindicator
. “Anyone as passionate as you are, Mabry, would be an asset to our team,” she’d said. And Sirina quit the drama club and came with me.