The Book of Broken Hearts (13 page)

I’m twelve years old, and Araceli’s midnight tears are unmistakable; I hear them splashing onto her bedroom floor like raindrops through a leaky roof.

I flip over on the bed, shuffle the owls out of the way, and
press my ear to the wall: nothing but Celi’s muffled sobs and the murmurs of the other two. I can’t imagine why she’s upset. Tomorrow’s her engagement party, and Johnny’s bringing his whole family. Ours is here too—first time in seven years that all four Hernandez sisters are together under the same roof.

Why is she crying?

Next to my room, Celi’s door is open a hand’s width, enough to peek inside. The light from her night table glows orange-yellow, casting long shadows on the walls.

“That miserable bastard!” Mari paces at the foot of Celi’s bed in gray cutoff sweats and a dark-blue cami, hands flitting around like wild birds. “I say we kill him. Him and every last one of his rotten brothers.”

“Mari? Please. Shut. Up! No one’s killing anyone.” Lourdes strokes Celi’s long auburn hair and gently removes a bright orange flower from behind her ear; she went out with Johnny tonight and must’ve worn it to look special. It
does
look special. My sister is beautiful.

“Sorry. It’s . . . I hate that family.” Mari crosses the room and opens the window. She leans on the sill and lights a cigarette, exhales through the screen.

“Why is this happening? I should’ve listened to you.” Celi moans into Lourdes’s shoulder, and I catch a glimpse of her face, cheeks muddy with mascara tears.

“No, honey. You and Johnny were in love.” Lourdes pulls a tissue from a box on the desk and blots Celi’s face. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Mari is still hissing, her rampage resurfacing in a smoke-scratchy whisper that reminds me of the teakettle, all steam and whistle until someone turns off the stove.

“New mission,” Mari says. She smashes her cigarette into the sill. “Let’s rid the Vargas boys of their ability to reproduce.”

“Mari!” Lourdes covers Celi’s ears.

“This is more than Johnny and Miguel,” Mari says. “We’d be doing the world a favor. That family is cursed. Dark hearts, every one.” Mari nods when no one objects. She’s made up her mind. “Celi needs—”

“Celi needs our support,” Lourdes says. “Not violence.”

“Celi needs a drink,” the brokenhearted girl herself says. She untangles from Lourdes’s embrace and makes for the door, but stops short when she spots me in the shadows. “Jujube?”

I slip inside and lean against the wall, all three sisters looking at me with a mixture of surprise and concern. My cheeks burn under their collective stare, so hot and piercing I have to look away. I focus on the flower from Celi’s hair, cast to the ground, shining like a living thing against the weathered oak floor.

“It’s okay,” Lourdes says. “Go back to bed. Celi isn’t feeling well, but she’ll be okay.”

“Once I get that drink.” Celi tries to leave again, but Lourdes grabs her hand and she flops down on the bed, heartache resettling in her face. “I
hate
him!”

“Oh, honey.” Mari sits next to Celi and rubs her back. “I know, I know. I hate them too.” She looks up at Lourdes. “For both of you. How could they do this to us?”

My skin prickles and I rub my arms. Hazy images flicker behind my eyes from years past. Lourdes in a lemon-yellow prom dress with spaghetti straps and white roses pinned to the shoulder. A boy at the door, dark and handsome, a smile like a wolf’s. “This is my boyfriend, Miguel,” she said. Mom and Papi taking pictures. A limo full of girls like pastel flowers and boys in tuxedos, zooming off to the dance.

And then the yellow dress tossed on the bathroom floor, white roses smashed in the trash compactor the next morning. Late-night murmurs for weeks after. Miguel Vargas—horrible, awful, dark hearted—tried to hook up with Lourdes’s best friend, right there at the dance while Lourdes was touching up her lip gloss in the bathroom. I was only five or six at the time, but even I knew what that meant.

They’d been together for months, and then it was done. Over.
Terminado.

I approach Celi’s bed slowly. “What happened with John—”

“Shh!” Mari holds up her index finger. “Don’t utter that name. Filthy, vile beast!” She pretends to spit three times. Celi sits up again and copies the spitting gesture. She tries to smile but instead unleashes a storm of fresh tears that twist my heart. Celi’s always crying about something—losing an earring, burning Mom and Papi’s anniversary cake, watching the Lifetime movie of the week. But I’ve never seen her so distraught, so completely wrecked.

Lourdes and Mari slip their arms around Celi on the bed, propping her up, and I squeeze my sister’s bare foot, a
comparatively inadequate gesture that makes me feel like a little gray mouse.

“He broke my heart,” Celi whispers. “I’ll never love anyone again.”

“Oh, hush,” Mari says. “You need to cleanse your soul of his filthy, vile evilness. A ritual. We need to swear off that family forever.”

Lourdes rolls her eyes, but when Mari is on one of her self-appointed missions, there’s no stopping her.

“Go get one of Mom’s candles, Juju,” Mari says. “The Archangel Michael one. I need a paring knife, too.”

Celi shakes her head. “This is crazy.”

“It’s totally not! Michael is the one for severing bad ties,” Mari says. “Especially cheating bastard ties. That’s why he has a sword. And we’ll have a paring knife.”

“A sword and a knife? Really?” Lourdes throws her hands up. “You’re so dramatic, Wrecking Ball.
God
.”

Mari ignores them and ushers me into the hallway. “Hurry, Juju!”

When I return with the stuff, Mari lights the candle and directs us to sit around it on the floor. “Celi, get that filthy boy’s things. Any mementos you can find. And get the book.”

My hair tingles. I know what book she’s talking about.

The Book of Broken Hearts.

Celi shuffles a few shoes out of the way and drags the book out from under her bed. The pages are so stuffed that they curve and bend and squiggle, and my eyes go wide as Celi
traces her fingertips over the cover, black and dull, scarred with silver hearts and stars and quotes from sad poems, all of it ominous in the flickering candlelight.

My sisters guard that book like a secret, using all sorts of spells and incantations to keep me in the dark. “Only those with multisyllabic names can know the secrets of the book,” Celi said more than once. “She who looks upon the book must first look upon herself in a bra,” Mari teased one summer when I’d been particularly desperate for a glimpse. The whole thing started with Lourdes her sophomore year—some kind of art class project about bringing emotion to creation, mining the depths of the soul. They were supposed to keep a journal and record their personal tragedies. Heartbreak, loss, death, fears, disappointments. She got really into it, and it became more of a scrapbook than a journal, an art project all its own. When Mari got the same assignment later, they called it a tradition, and Lourdes passed the book to her, and then it went to Celi.

I know all of this because I found Mari flipping through it one night and she told me. But when I begged for my own page? “Not until you’re sixteen,” Mari said. “Then you’ll be initiated and the book will be yours.”

Here’s the thing my sisters never remember: In four years, when I finally turn sixteen, no one will be left to initiate me.

Celi cracks the spine.

“When was the last time you opened this thing?” Mari asks as a few scraps flutter to the floor. “You’re supposed to be documenting stuff.”

Celi tucks the loose items back inside. “This is my first tragedy.” Her eyes well up again.

Lourdes takes the book and flips to a span of blank pages at the back. The rest is stuffed, writing swirled across pages, photos and postcards and stickers too. I hold my breath in reverence.

Mari shuffles through the pile of Johnny’s things Celi offered up. Concert ticket stubs. A bouquet of dried and blackened roses. A birthday card. A handwritten letter on loose leaf. Doodles, names, hearts. One of their wedding invitations. A few printed photos. Mari eyes up the engagement ring on Celi’s finger, but Celi shakes her head, and Mari doesn’t push. “That’s it?”

Celi shrugs. “I have to dig up the other stuff. The rest of the pictures are digital.”

“Good. Delete them. Burn the rest of his stuff later too. Anything you can find.” Mari knifes deep
X
s into Johnny’s eyes on the first photo.

I can’t believe Celi is letting Mari destroy this stuff. Broken heart or not, these are Celi’s memories. Proof that she existed, that she loved someone, even if it ended in betrayal.

Lourdes hands over the book, and on the first blank page, Mari tapes the defaced photos. She crushes some of the dried flowers, sticks on the blackened bits. At the bottom of the page, she scribbles the date with a Sharpie.

“You know what you can write in that stupid book?” Celi’s eyes are suddenly fiery. “Screw Johnny. Screw Blackfeather. I’m getting out of here. New York, maybe. I’m sick of mountains
and sick of Johnny and his stupid caramel eyes and his stupid face and this whole stupid wedding. I’m never getting married. Write that down. And then you can take that book and burn it, because I don’t need it. No more love means no more heartbreak. Ever. Okay?”

“New York?” Mari says.

“New York.” Celi means it. She’s always wanted to go. The only reason she’s still here is Johnny. He wants to live in Telluride, build a stone house in the sky.

“Now I definitely need another smoke.” Mari tosses the book on the bed behind her and flips Celi’s stereo on low. As she puffs on her cigarette, her head bops to the music, and the shadows on the wall follow her dance.

Celi scissors her fingers, motioning for the cigarette. She takes a long, crackling drag, face creased and serious, eyes smudged with black makeup. In that moment, in the smoky haze, Celi looks grown up and wounded, and I realize how young I really am in my long pink nightgown.

My sisters have a whole collection of broken hearts in a book, and I haven’t even gotten my period yet.

“You know,” Mari says, “we need, like, a vow or something. To make it official.”

“What are you talking about?” Lourdes ties her long hair into a bun at the base of her neck. She looks like Mom.

Mari hops off the sill and grabs the book. “A contract. Something that ensures no Hernandez will ever get her heart broken by a Vargas again.”

“Not to be totally obvious here,” Lourdes says, “but Juju hasn’t even kissed a boy. And
you
never got your heart broken by a Vargas.”

“Not true.” Mari thumbs through the book. “Jack Ramirez, right here. One of their cousins. I had a crush on him in eighth grade.”

“Ramirez isn’t Vargas,” Lourdes says. “And a crush hardly qualifies as a broken heart.”

“He didn’t like me back.”

“Mari, he was gay!”

“Technicality,” Mari says. “We’re doing this for Celi and Juju. Johnny’s still around, and there are other brothers. Who knows how many. Juju could go back to school this fall and walk right into their trap.”

Celi sniffles. “There’s another brother two years ahead of Juju. And that’s not counting the rest of their cousins.”

“Let’s do it.” Mari flips to a new page in the book. She reads out loud as she frantically scribbles: “We solemnly swear that as long as we live, we shall be united in this promise against all that is scheming, lying, cheating, slimy, conniving, and worthless—”

“And stupid, hormonal, amoeba brained, and useless,” Celi says. “And ugly.”

Mari’s forehead wrinkles. “Celi. The Vargas boys are
not
—”

“It’s
my
heartbreak.” Celi takes another drag from Mari’s cigarette and exhales toward the open window. “Write it down,” she croaks.

Mari writes it down, followed by the vow we’ll each have to say out loud. When her Sharpie finally stops, she turns to our oldest sister. “Lourdes. Hair.”

Lourdes rolls her eyes again, but she doesn’t protest. She yanks a hair from each of our heads, finishing with her own, then winds them together and drops them into the glass candle holder. They pop and curl and fill the room with a burnt plastic smell, shriveling into nothing.

Next Mari shreds another photo and burns the tiny pieces one at a time, blowing the smoke toward the window. “Give Celi that flower.”

Lourdes scoops the orange bloom from the floor and drops it into Celi’s hand. The petals, once bright and beautiful, seem suddenly fragile, withering against Celi’s skin as if they’ve only just realized they’ve been clipped from their roots.

“This is the last night we will ever speak of Johnny Filthy Vargas,” Mari says. “Crush it, Celi.”

Celi holds the flower a moment longer, then folds her fingers over it. Tears fall freely down her cheeks, and she passes the broken bloom to Mari, who tapes it into the book.

“Now we say the chant and bind ourselves with blood,” Mari says.

Blood?
My stomach flip-flops.

“Someone’s been watching
Buffy
reruns,” Lourdes says.

“Quit being babies.” Mari turns the knife, blade flashing in the candlelight. “I’m not staking anyone through the heart. Just a prick.”