The Breakup Artist (7 page)

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in a furious whisper. I threw her an honestly puzzled look while I tried to make sure no one was listening to us.

“What are you talking about?”

“David!” she said simply. Her statement was so sudden that I thought perhaps he was standing behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see the normal procession of students passing through the hallway.

“Not behind you, you idiot. What did you do? I paid you fifty dollars to break up with him for me!”

“You guys are broken up,” I said shakily, finding that this confrontation was taking a lot of the fight out of me. I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that I didn’t have an identity that day. I wasn’t Lia the super cheerleader, or Mari the independent punk chick. I was Amelia Marie Bedford, sixteen-year-old breakup artist and personality-less high school student.

“Yeah, I wanted
you
to break up with him for me. Not the other way around! What am I supposed to do now? It looks like he dumped me!” she screeched. We were now attracting some attention, which was something I strictly avoided doing when I was off the clock.

“Why does that matter? You got what you wanted. You and David are broken up and you can get what’s-his-name to ask you to the prom.”

“It’s my reputation, Amelia,” she spat. “I know you don’t have one, but I can’t go around having people break up with me. It doesn’t sit well with my image. You need to fix this.”

“Fix this?” I repeated incredulously. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Make it look like I broke up with him,” she answered simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Why don’t you do that yourself? Just tell your friends that’s what happened.” I had no idea where any of this was going, but I knew I didn’t like it.

“I paid you to save my reputation!”

“No, you paid me to avoid an awkward situation for yourself,” I quickly corrected her. I may have suddenly turned spineless, but I wasn’t about to give back the fifty dollars she’d given me just because she had a bruised ego.

“Whatever. You need to get David to go out with me again so I can break up with him properly and publicly, or I’m taking my money back.” Her threat was loud and clear, and all I could do was nod silently. She turned to walk away but called over her shoulder, “And you should fix whatever you did to your hair. You look like Lexi Monroe.”

That school day went by in a haze of commotion. My mind was completely wrapped around my current problem and I didn’t pay attention to a single word out of my teachers’ mouths. My stomach was all tied up in knots over the prospect of A) getting David to ask Claire back out, B) getting her to break up with him publicly so I wouldn’t have to give the money back, and C) possibly sabotaging any chance I had with David. Though, all things considered, I’d say that would be the best part of this whole plan. I couldn’t risk having a crush on a boy. Besides, what boy would ever be okay with his girlfriend flirting with a new guy every day?

I wasn’t at all surprised to find that my mother was having another “client dinner” this Friday, so I ate some cold macaroni and cheese straight out of the fridge without even heating it up. I finished up my homework for the weekend and tried to watch reruns of old black-and-white TV shows until I fell asleep. As it turned out, however, even Lucy’s antics couldn’t soothe me, so I ended up going online to try to cyber stalk David. I needed some information on this boy, and I already had his name, which meant I should be able to find some sort of online profile for him. Everyone seems to have their own website now, which makes things infinitely easier for me when a client doesn’t give me enough information about their dear boyfriends.

I went to a search engine and typed in “David Fields” in an attempt to locate my burden’s website. I found many photography websites and even an interesting blog or two, but nothing from this boy at school. Now things were really getting weird. As I’ve previously stated, everyone has a website. Everyone. To find someone without some sort of online profile is like finding someone who doesn’t exist . . . at least in high school.

I considered calling Claire up just to confirm that I had the right last name, but I had a violent flashback to our last conversation and decided against it. Now all that was left to do was go to bed, hope I could get through the weekend without this boy single-handedly ruining my career, and paint a picture or two. Should be easy enough.

“I might not be home tonight,” I said suddenly. I hadn’t meant to say it, just like I didn’t mean to say every word that came out of my mouth when I was sitting with David. Things seemed to pour from my mouth lately in some relentless deluge.

“Oh?” my mom responded, as a way of being inquisitive.

“Date,” I went on, still unsure of why I was spewing lies at my mother, who had been kind enough to bring me fettuccini Alfredo.

“Oh,” she said again, this time in a slightly deflated manner, which didn’t make any sense. “Job related?” she pried.

“No,” I answered. We both seemed to be suddenly incapable of constructing any sentence longer than two words. There was a long pause, and I knew by instinct that my mom was probably looking down at her watch to gauge how much time she had to pull some more information out of me.

“Have fun at work,” I finally called, cutting off the conversation before she could ask any more questions about my fictitious date—or at least what I hoped was a fictitious date. The door clicked closed, and I heard my mother’s car pulling away from the house. I breathed a sigh of relief for having escaped the exchange relatively unharmed and then proceeded to reheat the pasta my mom had brought me.

Sitting on the floor in the middle of my room, I picked through tubes of paint, throwing away the dry ones and salvaging what could be salvaged. I ate my pasta with chopsticks just to liven the meal up a bit, an action that had always amused my mother. Anything that hinted at a personality all my own made her happy. I think she sometimes thought her daughter was a sociopath or a future con artist or something along those lines.

I kicked a blue paint tube with my foot so that it rolled into the “useable” pile on the floor and threw my paper plate away once the pasta was all gone. Stretching in the way that a lazy person does on a lazy day, I fell onto my back and lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the mess I’d gotten myself into. I wondered how far Claire would go to make herself feel better. Would she just take the money back or would she expose exactly what I do, making it impossible for me to continue on in my body of work. Neither option sounded like much fun for me, which meant I had to figure out a way to solve this David problem.

From a remote corner of my purse on my bed, I could hear a buzzing sound. It was my phone. Reaching in and grabbing the pink plastic device, I was informed that I had one unread text message. My mom didn’t really know how to text, and when she did it took her a long time, which meant that it probably wasn’t her. I highly doubted that the paint supply shop would text me, since I only had their landline. And I hoped more than I’d ever hoped for anything before that it wasn’t Claire, sending me an angry reminder of just how much trouble I was in.

I flipped open the phone to find that the message was from a number I didn’t recognize. I opened the text tentatively and read my mysterious message from its mysterious sender.

“Don’t forget. 8 p.m. tonight.”

“David?” I asked my phone, as if it would reply to my question. It didn’t. I quickly saved the number for future reference and groaned in dismay. I had actually convinced myself that he would forget all about our “date” and I could just deal with him at school. I suppose, though, that I should have been more concerned with the fact that he had somehow obtained my number and that he would somehow be showing up on my doorstep at eight o’clock tonight.

I went over numerous excuses in my head as to why I wouldn’t be able to go on the date, until it struck me that this might actually be my chance to set things right. If I spent the whole date convincing him that he should be Claire’s boyfriend, then perhaps by the time Monday rolled around my only concern would be getting rid of the jock for Lexi.

“Okay, so this is good,” I said to my empty room, nodding at nothing in particular. Yep, the stress this whole ordeal had brought on was definitely causing me to lose my mind. I quickly got up off the ground and went to my closet, ready to find a perfect “date” outfit. The only dates I had ever gone on were with boys who I had just broken up with for their girlfriends. I was always in character then and didn’t have to worry about how I looked—as long as I fit the mold of what they had always been attracted to, I was just fine.

Tonight, however, was a completely different matter. I had to look unattractive enough that he wouldn’t try to continue hitting on me, while looking attractive enough that he’d actually listen to what I was saying. It was a shame how much appearance really factored in to what your opinion meant to someone, but that was the reality and that was what I had to play with. I figured that for tonight I should go with something relatively inoffensive, something generic and nondescript, but still stylish and eye-catching.

I thumbed through my clothes quickly, noting with dismay that it was already two o’clock in the afternoon. It wasn’t that I really thought I’d need six hours to get ready for a date where I would be convincing the guy that he didn’t want to date me; I simply wanted some extra time to do some mental preparation. I had to construct a plan, and I had to solidify exactly what I was going to do.

I decided on a jean skirt that came to just above my knee, with black cut-off tights underneath it. I did, after all, have to remember who my audience was and what kind of girls he apparently liked to date. Or in this case, what type he liked to break up with. I completed the outfit with a black baby doll T-shirt and black flip-flops. There was nothing special about my outfit, but it had just enough “date” quality to it.

Setting these clothes out on my bed I headed for the bathroom to take a shower, which was a rare occurrence for a Saturday. I usually avoided any form of getting ready on Saturdays—the process just took away from the magic of being lazy. After a very long, very hot shower, I got ready in a deliberate manner. I took extra time curling my shoulder-length blonde hair and even did my makeup with careful precision, lining my eyes so that the amount of liner used actually matched from the right side to the left. The silvery black shadow I used on my lids made the blue in my eyes really stand out. Deep down I felt a sort of excited anticipation about the date, even though it wasn’t really my date. It was Claire’s date. Despite this little fact glaring at me, I still allowed myself to feel some excitement over getting ready to spend the evening with a particularly gorgeous boy.