How to Break a Heart (30 page)

“Well,” Mr. Thomas says, rubbing the top of his bald head, calming down. “The school day’s over. You’re officially trespassing at this point.” And then he invites us to leave. Now.

And so we do. The mood is not just ruined, it’s bludgeoned. And even though we trod upstairs like two battle-worn soldiers and say a very unromantic good-bye, I’m feeling a sweep of relief. It was a narrow escape. All hearts are still intact. Everything is still possible at this moment.
Everything.

The buses have gone, so Nick goes into the office to call his mother, and I start my journey home, alone and on foot. Try having a shred of dignity in middle school. I dare you. Just try.

I pull out my phone and dial Sirina. But it rings and rings and goes to voice mail. Instead of leaving her a message, I text her:
Sorry about that! Call me.

But my phone remains quiet on the walk home.

When I arrive at my house, I call her. I get her voice mail again. “I’m really sorry. Please call me,” I say after the beep.

But still, I get nothing back.

My phone hasn’t rung or buzzed or lit up all night, so I pick it back up and try calling Sirina again.

This time she answers!

But her voice is pancake-flat when she picks up.
“Hello,”
she says.

“Hi!” I say, with enough enthusiasm for both of us. “I’m really sorry about earlier.”

“Yeah, I hear those words a lot lately.”

“I mean it, Sirina!”

“Doesn’t really feel like it.”

“I’m
sor
—”

“Mabry, please. What do you want? Just to say you’re sorry, sorry, sorry,
sorry
?”

“Well, I am, but
no
. That’s not it. I wanted to
talk
to you.” I try to ignore her tone. She can be
so
difficult sometimes. “What were you going to tell me today? You know, before we got interrupted?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Sirina.
What?
”

“I don’t feel like talking about it.”

I sigh. Difficult, see? “Well, guess what?”

“What.” She doesn’t sound that interested.

I continue. This is how she usually is when she gets mad—it’s like pulling teeth to get her to talk. But usually once I make her laugh, she gets over it. So I try. “So Nick took me down to the dungeon of the school.”

Nothing.

I try again. “Like, the bowels of the building.”

Nothing but a sort-of sigh.

I try harder. “Like, if the school were a person, we would have been in the
large intestine
.” I laugh at my own joke.

“That’s seriously gross,” she says, and not in the fun way.

And,
ew
, I realize it kind of is. I also realize she doesn’t seem the least bit curious about why I was in the building bowels with him. I try not to let it bother me—it’ll just take a little more work. She’s still upset about the YoJo, understandably. So I laugh a little. “Well, it was really the mechanical arts room. He brought me down there so he could give me this necklace he made.”

“Oh.
Woo-hoo
.” Again, her voice is sarcastically flat.

“Well.” I chuckle. “Yeah,
woo-hoo
.” I fling my finger around in a circular motion even though she’s not there to see it. Whatever sense of ridiculous hope I had simmering inside of me has been doused with cold water.

“Sirina?”

“What?”

This is hard work. But I just need to be honest with her. I can tell her how I don’t think I want to be a heartbreaker after all. Maybe she’ll have a solution. Hey, maybe I can go to the Cotillion with both of them—Nick
and
Thad! Instead of a heartbreaker like Mariela, I can be the Belle of the Ball! But wait. That’s like two worlds colliding. My picnics-in-the-park world with Nick. My bean-dip-in-the-food-court world with Thad.
Yikes.
I need her help.

Even over the phone, I can feel her impatience mounting. So I take a breath in and say, “So, I feel like he’s going to ask me to the Cotillion any minute, and—”

“You know what I was going to tell you?” she says suddenly, interrupting me.

I take a breath. “What?”

“You
are
getting boring.”

I take another breath, but this is more like a gasp. “What do you mean?”

“You always said I should tell you if you’re getting boring. Well, here you go. All you do is talk about Nick, and you’re
boring
.”

I feel
crushed
. “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way.” My voice is like an out-of-tune ukulele.

“Yeah, well, me too.”

“Sirina? Come on, can we just—?”

“You know what? I gotta go,” she says. And then she hangs up.

I sit there, frozen with shock. I wait for the phone to ring again, for her to call and say,
Wow, I sure had a bug up my butt
. It’s happened before. But no such call comes. And I think about calling her back and saying something like,
Okay, let’s start over.
But it’s like the idea of moving anything at all is a completely impossible concept. I might as well be gagged and tied to my desk chair, like Andres was when the cartel made off with his secret gold trunk.

Before bed, I give in. I text Sirina,
Can we please talk tomorrow?

I wait fifteen minutes, and hear nothing.

I try again.
You’re my best friend ever!

And nothing.

Okay, she’s still mad. I take a deep breath. Then I text:
Good night, my lemon-chiffon griddle cake.

Then, minutes later, as I am still staring intently at my phone, willing it to light up, I get a response. From
her
!

Good night, Mabry.

Which is the absolute
worst
thing she could have ever said. No
dry-roasted yogurt butter
? No
carbon-dated ant trap
? No
snot-soaked nail polish
? I feel the sharpness of tears forming at the back of my eyes, and then pushing forward, like those lemmings you read about. Once one starts off the cliff, the rest mindlessly follow.

I mean,
Good night, Mabry
!? I would have rather heard back nothing at all.

I guess sometimes even the people you’re not in love with can break your heart.

yo caigo
tú caes
ella cae
nosotros caemos
ellos caen

W
hen I get to my locker the next morning, Jordan smiles and waves frantically. Then she slams her own locker shut and practically skips over to mine.

“Oh my god. I’m so happy to see you!” she says, and for a moment—just a moment—it feels possible that my world might not be falling apart. That everything might still be okay. “Axyl just asked me to the Cotillion!”

Oh. That.
I try to muster some excitement, but all I can bring forward is a weak smile. “Great,” I say. “That’s great.”

She looks a little disappointed for a second, but glances over my shoulder and suddenly brightens back up. “Sirina!”

I whip my head around.
Is she coming to talk to me?
I feel a quick flutter of nerves. Jordan rushes toward her. “Guess what? Axyl just asked me to the Cotillion!”

“Oh, congratulations! I’m so happy for you!” Sirina says, a lot more appropriately, and appears to mean it. She gives Jordan a hug, and I feel even more stupid about my lackluster response.

“Yeah, that’s awesome news!” I say now, trying to put genuine feeling behind my smile.

“Aw, thanks!” Jordan says. She is beaming.

“Maybe we can double,” Sirina says.

Double? My mouth drops.
Sirina is going to the Cotillion? With
who
?

But Jordan doesn’t seem to have the same questions. “Oh my god. You did it!
You asked him!
”

Sirina smiles and blushes. “Yup.”

There’s a ‘him’? And I didn’t know this?
I feel as empty as an Oreo without its center. As discontinued as a Screaming Yellow Zonker.

But Jordan squeals and bounces on her toes. “You are the
woman
!”

“What did you do? You asked someone to the dance?” I ask her now, although I feel like I barely have the air in my lungs to talk.
“Who?”

Jordan looks at me with a severely wrinkled forehead. “You don’t know?”

“She’s been
busy
,” Sirina says without looking at me.

“Ooh,”
Jordan says. She starts looking around the hallway uncomfortably. “Well, I better get to class. See you at lunch,” she says to Sirina, and takes off.

My mouth is still hanging open, but I manage to make it say, “So
that’s
what you wanted to tell me. I guess I’ve been so, you know, into my own
stuff
.”

“I know,” she says. Not like it’s okay, but just an acknowledgment that I’ve been a letdown.

“I see that, okay? I haven’t been paying attention. I’m really sorry.”

Her eyes meet mine for a brief second and then she turns her head away, crossing her arms in front of her chest. But she’s still standing there, so I feel like there’s some hope.

“So will you tell me now?
Who
did you ask? And
when
?”

She shakes her head. “I’m really not here to talk. I’m just here to get my stuff out of your locker.” She brushes past me, toward the open locker.

“You’re—” I feel my breath leave me. “You’re moving out?”

But she doesn’t answer. She pulls a CD sleeve off the top shelf. Inside of it is a music mix she made me a couple weeks ago. “Are you ever actually going to listen to this?”

I nod. “I loaded it onto my iPod.” I don’t tell her that I haven’t listened to it yet.

But she seems to know. “Whatever,” she says, and puts it back on the shelf. Then she holds up a Mad Libs book. “Yours or mine?” she asks.

I’m a little surprised at the question, since we’ve done all of the Mad Libs together. I don’t even remember who the book belonged to originally. “Um,
ours
,” I say.

She just looks straight at me and says, “There’s no such thing anymore.”

I bite my bottom lip and try to hold the tears back, but I have to turn and walk away.