The Breakup Artist (3 page)
Read The Breakup Artist Online
Authors: Shannen Crane Camp
I had done it once again. I knew from experience he wasn’t really sad. Instead, he was just relieved that he wouldn’t have to break up with Nat because he’d discovered that she had a hot friend. He’d inevitably try to catch up with me after school to ask me out on a date, but with my tight schedule I couldn’t afford the time to let him down gently, so I gave him the cushion for the blow during lunch: lots of flirt-filled conversation and a quick, promising peck on the cheek as I scurried off to my last class of the day.
James didn’t manage to catch me after school because I faked a migraine during biology and bolted for my car fifteen minutes before the last bell rang. I unclipped the little plastic bow barrettes from my hair as I drove, fluffing it out with my hands as much as the wax in it would allow. Some fashion choices just puzzled me.
As a reward for a job well done, I stopped off at a convenience store and bought a cherry slushee, feeling that my many hours as Mari had taken the energy right out of me. Some sugar in my blood was just what I needed.
I returned home to put together my outfit for the next day. Though I still had about two weeks until most of my assignments were due, I thought it might be fun to try to knock out two in one day. It would be beating my personal record, and I always loved a challenge. This didn’t mean that I could get lazy in my work. I’d still have to go on a date with at least one of them. I’d just have to figure out which one was likely to reject the idea that his girlfriend was breaking up with him. From what my clients had told me, Taylor was my boy. Corey was flaky and would most likely be happy to be out of a relationship. Taylor, on the other hand, would need some extra convincing. So I’d simply take him on a date, flirt a little, and make it look like we’re getting really cozy in the restaurant when his girlfriend would conveniently walk in and think something horrible was going on. These situations always proved to be awkward, and I asked my clients not to cause too much of a scene or else the restaurant owners would start recognizing me as the girl who always comes in with a different boy and gets into fights. I always insisted to the boy that I drive my own car to the restaurant because I had some vital and terribly boring thing to do after the date. That way I’d have an easy escape when his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend confronted him.
Still, getting rid of two boys in one day would be a challenge. With versatility being the key, I scanned my closet to find the perfect outfit. It had to be different enough from “Mari” to keep James away while being “punk” enough to attract my next two victims.
I pulled out the files for Taylor and Corey once more, just to refresh my memory on exactly what I was going for. For Taylor I found a pair of shoes stuffed behind heaps of clothes in my closet. They were some expensive brand I’d never heard of that still managed to look well worn and inexpensive. The black tennis shoes had dashes of color in them in the most unexpected places, making them an instant hit with someone whose girlfriend would say “shoes” was one of his interests. For Corey I simply found some of my stylish clothes—the kind that only a stylish person would know were “stylish.” To everyone else I would just look like I’d gotten dressed with either too much confidence or not enough light in my room.
With my sudden burst of efficiency, I found myself almost wishing that more girls were in the “breaking up” mood. If I was this on-schedule with all of my clients, I could easily double my income. These ambitious thoughts played around in my mind while I pulled my homework out of my backpack—my real homework that is, not my job-related homework, which was infinitely more fun but much less helpful when it came to getting good grades. I finished off my English and history papers in only two hours, leaving me with a few pages of assigned problems in my math book and some reading for biology. I slowly and painfully made my way through the math problems, consulting my calculator and the answers in the back of the book regularly. If my teacher didn’t require that I show my work, I could have just copied the answers from the back, though I’m sure that would have been morally wrong somehow.
The two hours it took me to do my English and history proved to be a blessing compared to the time it was taking me to get through math, though with my completely empty social calendar, the only other thing I’d be doing if I didn’t have homework was painting. Painting was the only real “me” thing that I had. When you live a life that revolves around being other people, it’s rare to find something that’s unique to you. Painting was that thing. The odd thing about my love of painting, though, was that I couldn’t draw a decent picture if my life depended on it, and yet, I could paint pretty well. I’d always thought that the two skills went hand in hand, so maybe I was just some mutation to that rule.
Forcing myself to ignore my sudden longing to paint, I muscled through the rest of my math problems and quickly read about photosynthesis in my biology book. Mrs. Mathers had painted a rather amusing mental picture about the process by saying that if we were like plants, then at random intervals during the school day everyone would go outside, take off all their clothes, and just lie around drinking up the sunlight. Wouldn’t that make lunch period more interesting? My biology teacher always had a way of putting things into terms we could understand. That’s probably why I loved her class so much, even if I was terrible at science. She also had a tendency to pull out her old acoustic guitar and teach us songs to help us remember formulas and scientific processes. As ridiculous as this idea seemed to me at first, I had to admit it worked like a charm every time. This meant, of course, that I spent many of my science tests humming to myself, much to the annoyance of everyone around me.
I didn’t have any psychology homework that night because Miss Tess didn’t believe in homework. She said that learning should be done at school and home was for enjoying life. I would pay big money for all of my teachers to have that particular mind-set. With my load of homework finished after just a few short hours, I had some time on my hands until dinner. I decided to pull out David’s file to see if there was any way to work him into my plan for tomorrow as well, but quickly thought better of it and just resorted to looking his POIs over. He didn’t seem like he’d be a particularly difficult target. Aside from his rather cryptic interest in “culture,” I could probably just whip out my Nikon and woo him by lunch. He’d have to wait a few days though while I worked my magic on the other two boys.
I settled on the decision to simply finish the other two off by tomorrow and quickly check David out from afar, simply to secure my prey before moving in for the kill the day after tomorrow. Placing the papers gently back into their manila folder, I pulled out my sleek (now pink) cell phone and popped off the cover, opting for the yellow one for tomorrow. I quickly dialed the number on James’s file to let Nat know I had done the job quickly and efficiently. If I didn’t call, I’d have a curious and possibly angry customer on my hands.
“Hello?” answered a tentatively cautious voice.
“Hey Nat, it’s Amelia,” I said, wondering why she sounded so worried. There was a deep exhale on the other end, possibly one of relief, though with an exhale you can never tell.
“Good. I didn’t recognize the number so I thought maybe James was calling me from a friend’s phone so I’d pick up.” The news that she hadn’t programmed my number into her phone hurt a little, but I was over it in two seconds flat. Her lack of confidence in my abilities was also a bit disappointing, but that’s something I’m used to.
“Nope, but on the subject of James, I just wanted to let you know I got the job done.” I kept my tone professional and even, trying to keep the pride at my own abilities internalized.
“Really?” she asked, her voice still lined with disbelief. I never understood why people found it so hard to believe that I had dealt with their problems so easily. Just because they blew the whole situation out of proportion didn’t mean that breaking up with someone was actually that hard to do.
“Really,” I answered, my tone now leaning toward annoyance. “So yeah, you should be fine for prom.” There was an “mmhmmm” sound on the other end of the line, which I took to mean “thanks.” I went on. “All right, well, I’ll talk to you after prom when you’re ready to break up with the next one,” I said, hanging up the phone quickly and not feeling one shred of remorse about my less-than-professional adieu. I allowed myself ten seconds to glare at the wall and feel sorry for myself and then quickly pulled myself back together and walked down stairs.
My mom wasn’t home from work yet and my dad hadn’t been home from work in ten years—at least, that was how I liked to think about it. One day he left for work and the next day all of his stuff was out of the house and I haven’t seen him since. He moved away to Florida or New York or wherever it is middle-aged men go when they have a mid-life crisis. His absence never really bothered me though. Some kids grow up in a house where their grandparents live with them or they have to take off their shoes before stepping on the carpet. I grew up in a house with just me and my mom. It worked out nicely though, because my mom was almost never home and I liked being alone most of the time.
I had just opened up the fridge to see if there was some sort of fruit I could snack on before dinner when I spotted a note held to the door with a smiley face magnet.
“Dinner with a client tonight. Fend for Yourself.”
“Fend for Yourself” nights were typical in our household. Normally that meant I’d be reheating old pasta or chicken, but tonight I felt like doing something. I always got a bit weepy and self-deprecating right before prom. It was just one of those inevitable facts of life that I lived with. With my loner self-awareness in full throttle, I looked in the newspaper to see what movies were playing. There was a comic-book-turned-movie that had been getting good reviews, so I decided that would work perfectly for tonight. I figured I could just grab some popcorn and call that dinner. Though I didn’t have many opinions, hobbies, or interests to call my own, comic book things did bring me right back to my childhood—the childhood I had before I became someone who lived only to be what other people wanted. Therefore, this movie would make me feel much better about my total lack of identity. Or at least that’s what I was hoping.
The movie turned out to be completely depressing and dark, but it did manage to take me out of the normal world for a while, so I couldn’t have cared less how dark it was. I must admit though, I woke up the next morning seriously considering wearing a cape to school. As usual, however, work called me back to reality, and I pulled on tight black pants, a shredded and worn-down stylized black shirt, and some mesh fingerless gloves. I curled my hair and pinned it up so that some of the ringlets escaped in a stylish frenzy.
Today I opted for dark red lipstick, the kind you find in classic old black and white movies, where you think their lips are actually black. I was relatively mild with my make-up, only doing mascara, eyeliner, and a thin line of white eye shadow just above the black liner. The shoes tied the whole outfit together and with ten minutes to spare before I had to take off, I was ready.
Searching through the fridge for breakfast this morning proved to be fruitless. Normally I would just eat the leftovers from whatever we had for dinner the night before, but today it looked like my options were some questionably old mashed potatoes or chocolate soymilk that had expired nearly a week ago. I chose the soymilk.
My soundtrack for the day consisted of a band I’d never heard of playing music I couldn’t even place into a specific musical category. It was given to me by Corey’s girlfriend and, even though it made me feel a bit lazy, I decided to just pull the same trick I’d used on James only yesterday. When I arrived at school, I placed the CD into my oversized black leather purse that would be acting as a backpack today. I pulled out my files once more as I walked, reviewing my plan of attack. I’d try to bump into, woo, and set up a date with Taylor before the bell rang for our first class, and I’d meet Corey at the break so I could finish the job at lunch. Piece of cake.
Taylor was pretty easy to find. He was the only boy in his group staring at my shoes instead of my face. I silently congratulated myself on finding such amazing shoes to snag him with, and then went on with my usual business. I told him his girlfriend, Heather, was sick, and that I needed someone to sit with before school started. No one ever seemed to question this explanation and I was just waiting for the day when someone would say “What, you can’t sit by yourself?” or “If you’re so cool, why don’t you have any friends other than my girlfriend?” Luckily for me, the intelligence level of most of the people at my school is equal to that of a sheep in the sense that I could tell them something and they would all believe it and follow that explanation right off a cliff—if everyone else followed it too, of course.
Taylor and I talked about shoes, and then we talked some more about shoes, and then just for a change of pace, we talked about shoes. Heather wasn’t kidding—this guy really liked his shoes. Even though I figured it was a long shot that someone could actually be that interested in something so trivial, I had done as much research as I could on the topic after my movie the night before, so I was well prepared for this conversation. Taylor was obviously pleased by my vast shoe knowledge, and so I decided that while he was still enamored with me I should set up a date for tonight before he could realize he still had a girlfriend. I didn’t call it a date when I suggested it, of course; that would possibly cause him to realize he had to break up with his girlfriend when I was supposed to ensure that it happened the other way around. Instead I casually said something like: “I’m going out tonight at about eight to that little coffee shop near the library. If you happened to be there, I wouldn’t complain.” He seemed to pick up on the hint pretty fast and gave me an excited smile and nod of his head. I felt like things were going pretty smoothly which was why his next words startled me so much.
