How to Break a Heart (31 page)

For the first three classes of the day, the only thing I learn is physics. Specifically, that water is one of the most powerful forces on earth. I learn that looking up toward the ceiling only delays—but doesn’t prevent—the flow of tears. I learn that trying to chew gum, or fake a smile, or talk about
The Red Badge of Courage
are useless defenses against the force of tears. I learn that waterproof mascara—at least the kind that I can afford to buy—isn’t necessarily tear-proof, and that even one odd look from someone you hardly know can undam the tears all over again.

When I get to our normal lunch table, Amelia’s the only one there. Still, she gives me a look that doesn’t make me feel welcome. “Someone’s sitting there,” she tells me when I set my lunch down at my usual spot.

“Who?”
I say.

But she just glares at me until I finally retreat. I find a secluded spot at a table near the teachers and watch from a distance while Jordan bops over, and then Sirina, and then—Kipper.

Kipper!

How did I miss this? I’m a self-absorbed idiot. All this time I’ve been thinking Sirina Fein’s immune to love—and she is not. She is
not
! It’s so disorienting. How long has she had a crush on him? How did she ask him? Was she nervous? Excited? Scared? All of the above?

I feel like I’m just an extra on the set of my own un–
La Vida Rica
life—just a nameless character filling in the background, barely making the credits.
Ni
ñ
a en la Cafetería
.

Nick is walking with Abe and Patrick. They carry their trays past me, but then Nick notices me and does a double take. “Hey,” he says to me. “Why are you over here?” He glances toward my usual table and then back at me.

I try to answer, but I know it’ll be a wet explanation, so I just try to shake my head and wave him off.

He looks concerned. “Want to sit with us?”

“No, no,” I say. “I’m going to listen to some music. I’m fine.”

He looks unsure, but says, “Okay. I’ll talk to you later, then?”

“Sure, yeah,” I say.

I exhale with relief as he walks away. Maybe now would be a good time to finally listen to Sirina’s music—no one will bother you if you’ve got earbuds in. I rummage through my backpack, but I can’t find my iPod anywhere.

Crap.
My mom will kill me. I dump my backpack out on the vast table in front of me. Still nothing. Even though I’m frustrated, I’m partly relieved. Now I have an excuse to get out of the cafetorium.

I throw my uneaten lunch into my backpack and head toward the door.

“Lunch isn’t over. Where are you going?” Mrs. Hurst asks as I try to walk past her.

“Can I please just go to the lost and found?”

“You’ll have to wait till the bell rings.”

Typical middle school. I start to tear up again. “You’re way too old to be carrying on like this,” she says.

I feel a shudder of humiliation. After all this pretending to be Mariela, all I can think about now is Cristina, and her elusive, graceful cry. It’s just another thing I’ve failed at. I start back to the empty table, but then stop.

I’m not going back there. I’m not.

I turn around. Mrs. Hurst is busy chatting with another teacher. Good. I move toward the edge of the room. There’s a door in the corner. I’d rather be a refugee like Rafael than a prisoner like Luis.

I take another glance over. No one’s watching me. It’s like I’m a ghost. And not the beautiful, haunting kind, like the ghost of Arabela, who lives in Señora Lomas’s mansion. Just the totally invisible, garden-variety kind that no one seems to notice. So I push through the door. I am free.

Except that I’m not. Mrs. Hurst bursts through the middle door. “Miss
Collins
!” she says, in a how-dare-you voice. “You can have a seat in Officer Dirk’s office! I’m calling him right
now
.”

Mrs. Forester, the school secretary, is already on the walkie-talkie with Mrs. Hurst when I arrive. “She’s
here
,” she says, in a tone that would make me tuck my tail if I had one. She waves me down the hall like I’m an annoying mosquito she can’t get far enough away from.

I sit in the chair in front of his desk. It’s a tan metal folding chair, cold and unyielding, like Officer Dirk himself. I fold my legs up in front of me and hug them in for warmth and protection, resting my chin on my knee. Everything in the room seems stripped down to its basicness. There’s an artless, full-year calendar pinned on the wall. A bulletin board of neatly arranged memos, each with clear pushpins on all four corners. On his desk, which is nearly bare, sits a black frame. I can’t tell what’s in the frame from where I’m sitting—his mother? A girlfriend? A child? What would mean enough to him to put in a frame and place on his desk? What looks like
love
to someone like Officer Dirk? After a few moments of guessing, my curiosity growing, I get up from my chair and go around to the other side of his desk.

It’s a watercolor painting of a tree over a lake, some mountains in the background. I step a little closer to get a better look and my foot hits something under the desk. I look down and see a skateboard.

It looks old. It’s wooden, painted red, but most of the color has worn off and faded. I pull the skateboard out from under the desk and put my foot on it. I wonder what it would be like to be able to get from one place to another on a rolling board, like Thad does. I push it a few inches forward and back and feel the hum of motion in my foot.

The phone rings down the hall. I hear Mrs. Forester pick it up.

“For a delivery of
what
?” I overhear her say. It’s good to know that her annoyance is directed at pretty much everyone, not just me.

I step my other foot on the board, so that I’m standing on the thing and holding on to the desk for balance. The skateboard slips backward a bit and I gasp in some air. Is that what it feels like to be Thad?

“
Pond scum?
Is that what you said?”

I try to shift my weight forward a little, and when I feel like I’m balanced, I remove one hand from the desk. And then the other.

“Okay, listen, I’m going to have to put you on hold for a minute.”

Oh no!
Is she going to check on me? I scramble to dismount the skateboard quickly, which is harder than I’d have thought. I can’t just step off, because it’ll become unbalanced, so I do a little hop. I land on the side of my left foot and crumple awkwardly to the ground, with the expected thuds and clangs. I’m on my back—and so is the skateboard, wheels spinning.

And there I see a name written in black marker on the underbelly of the board:
Bell.

Bell.
Like Thad Bell. I have a flashback to the day Sirina and I first saw him in the mall. He’d just lost his dad’s skateboard. Could this be
that
skateboard? Could this have been Thad’s father’s? Thad’s
dead
father’s?
Could it be?

I hear Mrs. Forester’s voice from down the hall, “Barbara, do you know anything about a delivery of
pond scum
?” She is talking to our principal, Mrs. Vander-Pecker.

I make my way back to my feet. If it
is
Thad’s father’s skateboard, I wonder how it wound up in Officer Dirk’s office, when Thad doesn’t even go to school here. Did someone steal it from him? I feel a rush of justice.
I
can make things right!

“Oh, is that it? I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a prank call. You know how
these kids
can be,” I hear Mrs. Forester say. “I’ll tell them they can deliver, then,” she says, going back to her desk.

I hear the door to the front office open. “IS SHE IN THERE,” Officer Dirk asks Mrs. Forester.

I scramble back to the Seat of Shame.

“I believe so.”

I hear his big, rubbery footsteps in the hall, getting louder and louder until they stop. I look up. “WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM.”

“I don’t know.”

He just looks at me until I blurt out that I broke out of the cafe-torium. I try to tell him how unfair and unjust it is to confine students with
no
friends to a room where
having
friends is the only path to survival.

He stares at me wordlessly. His face doesn’t change.

“Am I in trouble?” I finally ask.

“YES. YOU HAVE TO STAY HERE UNTIL THE CONCLUSION OF LUNCH.”

“Really?” I’m actually relieved. Anything’s better than going back in there.

“DOES IT LOOK LIKE I’M JOKING.”

“No, no, not at all,” I say. Quietly, I say, “Thanks.”

He doesn’t acknowledge my gratitude but goes to his side of the desk, sits down, and logs on to his computer. His typing is methodic, steady, even soothing. After this crapstorm of a day, I’m finding myself starting to relax.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“YOU JUST DID.”

“That skateboard?”

He stops typing.

“I think my friend lost it. Thad Bell. I think it was his dad’s.”

He stares at his computer screen. “THIS IS NOT YOUR CONCERN.”

“The only thing is, his dad died, so it might mean something to him.”

“I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT YOUR CONCERN.”

“But—”

Once again, he shuts me down. His hand whips toward the door, and he points down the hall.

“REPORT BACK TO THE CAFETORIUM.”

“What?
Why?
”

“IF YOU’RE STILL HERE BY THE TIME I COUNT TO THREE, I WILL SEE YOU IN DETENTION.”

I want to throw myself at his mercy. I try to remember what that actually entails.

“ONE.”

I press my palms together like a prayer. “Officer—”

“TWO.”

I shut my eyes.
“Please don’t make me, please don’t make me
.
”

“TWO AND A HALF.”

I jerk myself into a run, but trip on the leg of the chair, pulling it down with me as I topple to my palms.

“TWO AND THREE-QUARTERS.”

I press my hands into the ground and push myself up as quickly as I can, leaving the chair mangled in a half-folded position behind me.

“TWO AND SEVEN-EIGHTHS,” I hear as I hurry past Mrs. Forester’s desk and out the door, like Cristof running from the secret attic dweller, Elisabet.

I’m on my lonely, despondent way to seventh period when I look up and see Nick standing in the hallway, against the opposite wall, star-ing at me.

I stop in my tracks. Some guy bumps into me from behind; the corner of a textbook jabs me in the back. “Watch it,” he says to me.

Nick makes his way across the crowded hall.

“Hi,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

“Just looking for you. I heard about you and Sirina. Now I get why you were alone at lunch. I’m sorry if I had anything to do with it.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

The look in his eyes is a little pleading. “The description—I really didn’t mean to screw everything up.”

“I know. I get it,” I say.

He grabs my hand. “Hey, Mabry? Can you meet me at Schatzi’s Saturday night?” he asks. “There’s something I’ve been wanting—trying—to ask you.”

My heart jumps. And then lands with a splat.

Crap. So on Saturday night I’m supposed to break his heart. His poor, dear, sweet, increasingly fragile heart. Or piss Thad off. Either way, I’ll manage to upset
yet another
person.