The Museum of Heartbreak (12 page)

“Who?”

“Keats. Prince Masturbate Theater. The reason we went to that shitty party.”

“No, no,” I said, trying to rub warmth into my arms. “Keats was really nice.”

Eph snorted in genuine surprise. “I didn't see that one coming.”

He dug through a drawer and tossed a gray sweatshirt my way. It smelled detergent-y and seemed clean, so I figured it was safer than the navy pullover at my feet or the thermal tee hanging on the back of his desk chair.

The sweatshirt bristled with static, and when I pulled it on, the sleeves fell past my wrists, and I imagined it swallowing me up in grayness.

He left and came back with a blue towel, handing it to me as he dropped to the floor and leaned back against his bed, knees up. I dried my hair, and I slid down next to him, cross-legged, letting as much of the sweatshirt pool around me as possible.

“So, you wanna talk about it?”

“Audrey and I got in a fight. About Keats.”

He waited, not saying anything, while I fiddled with the cuffs.
They were soft and worn, gray clouds losing their edges.

“It's . . . She thinks . . .” I debated how much to tell him. “Cherisse and Keats have some kind of history, I guess, and she doesn't want me ‘misinterpreting' things with him.” My finger quotes felt hollow.

“Oh.” He picked at the floor.

“What? Tell me.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “Last night, near the end of the party, I saw Cherisse and Keats going into a bedroom together.”

I dug my fingers into my palm, small red half-moons. “He doesn't like her like that! God, why is it so hard to believe someone might actually like
me
?”

He held up both hands, surrendering. “Whoa. Relax. That's not what I'm saying at all, Pen. I only thought you'd want to know. I'd want to know.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I took a breath, refusing to look at him. “I would want to know, I do want to know.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay.”

Eph huffed, and when I looked over, I saw his eyelashes, longer than you'd think. I'd told him once they were pretty, and he had refused to talk to me for the next two days.

“So the thing with Audrey.” I made myself push the words out, hoped Eph wouldn't look at me. He couldn't look at me when I said them. “She pretty much implied that I'm kind of pathetic. That up to now I've only wasted away, harboring unrealistic crushes and living in some loser fantasyland, and that I'm in over my head with Keats.”

I snuck a glance at him. He was grimacing, but it wasn't exactly pity—it was more
like empathy, an echo resonating back from the deep caverns of him.

“That's really shitty, Pen,” he finally said.

Neither of us said anything more for a while, so long that when I turned toward him next, his head was resting back on the bed, his eyes closed. I couldn't tell if he was asleep, but it didn't matter. The stillness waited.

I began a mental list of all the
real
people I currently liked or had liked in the past: Keats, of course, and the dirty hot guy who worked at Grey Dog. I wasn't going to count Eph's dad, because gross. But there was Ryan Kurtz, who transferred into our class in third grade and who had just overcome some tragic childhood illness and had black hair and black eyes and who I liked so much, I pushed his desk over (obviously) with him in it (maybe not so obviously). And then there was . . .

I chewed on my lip.

Okay, so I guess I'd count Eph's dad. And that left . . .

The sweatshirt sleeves hung limply over my wrists. Eph's breath started to whistle, his chest rising and falling.

He'd fallen asleep.

I didn't have anyone else to add to the list.

I hated to even think it, but it was there, stark and ugly, unavoidable and unwanted: Audrey was a little bit right.

I let out a huge sigh and let my head fall onto Eph's shoulder, let it rise and fall with his soft breath, the way his eyelashes did in his sleep, and hoped on my subway token that Audrey wasn't right about everything.

THE NEXT MORNING, BY THE
time chemistry class rolled around, I was 100 percent
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
miserable. I had woken up that morning with a hangover of sadness—not that I knew what a hangover felt like, but I imagined it'd be something like this: a headache, a stomachache, sadness emanating like a stench from my pores. The Sweet Truck, which parked in front of school in the morning, was out of carrot-raisin muffins, and despite my best efforts with the blow dryer, my hair insisted on looking like butt.

To top it off, a small dumb part of my heart kept beating
maybe maybe maybe
—
maybe
I hadn't imagined the spark with Keats—but then Audrey's words would boom through my brain on loudspeaker:
I'm happy you finally like a real person . . . I don't want you to misinterpret anything . . .

I hated that small part of my heart.

As I reached for my chemistry book from my locker, I saw a hole in the armpit of the shirt I was wearing—my favorite, a vintage They Might Be Giants T-shirt—the perfect crescendo to the morning's symphony of crappiness. I picked up the subway token from the chain under my shirt and rubbed it between my thumbs, praying to the Bearded Lady:
Please, let me spontaneously combust like some boring old Dickens character (Note:
Bleak House,
you are the worst). Right now, in the hallway, before I have to go to chemistry.

I waited.

Nothing.

Instead I heard an anxious voice say my name.

I turned and Audrey was standing there, hugging her books against her chest. She met my eyes and shifted from foot to foot anxiously. Her brown eyes were big and watery, like she was a deer caught out.

I broke eye contact, pretending to be really focused on putting the books from my bag in my locker.

“Hey, Pen, can we talk?”

I shrugged.

“I'm really sorry about yesterday. Everything I was saying was coming out wrong, and I hate that things are weird with us—it feels really, really terrible.”

Inside me I felt something small and invisible relax just a little bit.

“I feel pretty terrible too,” I admitted, meeting her gaze this time.

She brightened slightly, her face cautiously opening, tentative sun after a storm.

“I'm so glad I found you this morning. Cherisse told me I should give it some time, but I didn't feel right waiting—”

“Wait, you talked to Cherisse about us?”

“Well, yeah, she was there when you left yesterday . . .”

“Did you tell her about me and Keats?”

She nodded carefully, but her voice was steady. “She's my friend, Pen. I was upset about our fight. Of course I talked with her.”

I turned back to my locker, chewing on my lip and feeling a mortifying impulse to burst into tears.

Instead I said, “I wish you weren't friends with Cherisse. I wish you'd just pick me.”

I immediately wanted to take it back. I hated how pathetic I sounded. It wasn't fair. It wasn't nice. It wasn't who Audrey and I were. But before I could say anything, Audrey shook her head at me.

“God, it's really hard to be your friend sometimes. You know that? I can be friends with more than you and Eph! You can too! You have this stupid set of expectations and rules about how everyone should act and how life should be, and they're so damn impossible, you shut out everything.” She choked back an angry sob, her face red. “You know what? Cherisse doesn't make me watch David Lynch movies. Cherisse likes to go dancing and try new things. Cherisse called my grandma to see how she was doing in her new home. And you know what else? Cherisse isn't fixated on some stupid unrealistic Leonardo DiCaprio movie we watched in seventh grade.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth. “If it's so hard to be my friend, then maybe we shouldn't be friends anymore,” I said, my eyes stinging.

Her face went stunned and white, like I'd slapped her, like I'd pulled out her heart instead of mine. I turned toward chemistry, leaving behind Tonka trucks and Vivien and Delphine and M&M'S.

I waited for her to call my name.

The first bell rang.

I listened.

The second bell rang.

I felt Eph's subway token against my chest.

At that point the Bearded Lady sent me a little gift. It wasn't the bursting into unexplainable flames I'd been hoping for, but it was a spark.

I was angry.

Yesterday Audrey should have been excited for me, not judgmental.

And Cherisse was mean and terrible and I didn't want to be around her at all, and if she was such a good friend, Audrey could keep her.

Maybe we shouldn't be friends anymore. Maybe that was just better.

And I was going to talk to Keats, today, right now—bad morning, Cherisse history, armpit hole be danged.

When I stepped inside the classroom, I saw him sitting by the window, so I sucked in my breath, made sure I held the sleeve with the armpit hole close against my side, and slid into the desk in front of him.

Talk to him. Talk to him.

“Hey, Keats,” I said.

He met my eyes and I held my breath, and oh man, there it was: that half smile, that slight turn up of one side of his grin.

“Hey, Scout.”

The fire sparked further, bolder, encouraged.

“So, how'd the rest of the party go?” I asked, making myself
talk slowly, trying to ignore the way all the blood in my body was rushing to the very tips of me.

He rolled his eyes. “There was puke in the backyard and two busted wine glasses, but I got everyone cleared out by four and no cops, so all in all, not so bad.”

“Oh, good, good. It was a really good party, good and all, um . . . ,” I said, thinking,
Don't be pathetic—stop saying “good”!

Mrs. Carroll entered the room and began handing out quizzes.

He cleared his throat. “So, how's
On the Road
going?”

“Thanks for that, by the way! I haven't started yet, but I'm planning to tonight.”

His face fell. “You hate it, don't you? First I forget your name at the party, then I give you a book you hate . . .”

“No! I honestly haven't started it yet. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression, honestly.”

He shook his head. “Really? You don't hate it? Because my ex, Emily, hated it.”

Turns out Keats was a little bit nervous too.

“No, I haven't even cracked the spine. I'm sure I'm going to fall totally in love with it.”

His eyes widened at the phrase, and I clamped my mouth shut and turned around.

A big bucket of water fell on the little spark that couldn't.

What was wrong with me?

From the front of the room Mrs. Carroll cleared her throat. “Let's start with last night's reading. Who wants to tell me about covalent bonds?”

I am pathetic,
I thought, the words cold and final.

But then, from behind, someone took my hand and pressed something into it, something small and square, folding my fingers over it one by one.

A shiver ran up my arm.

A small miracle.

I slid my hand into my lap and opened the tiny square as the girl in front of me raised her hand and started reciting facts about electron pairs and valences.

C
OFFEE ON
S
ATURDAY?
I
WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT
K
EROUAC.

2
PM,
C
AFE
G
ITANE,
S
OHO?

K

Sunshine exploded in my heart and out my mouth and my ears and from my chest, and it blinded everyone in the class, setting the world on fire.

I turned my head slightly over my shoulder.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“It's a date, Scout.”

My heart was a goner.

•  •  •

I left chemistry ablaze with miracles and luck, waving good-bye to Keats as he walked down the hallway, then waving again. I hated the word “squee,” but at that second I couldn't think of a better description for what I wanted to do.

I had to find Audrey. The note was in the palm of my hand, like a talisman, like an honest-to-God real-life miracle, and I wanted to show her Keats's handwriting—proof
it
was happening—so we could erase the fight, so everything could go back to normal, the way it always had been.

But when I got to the cafeteria, PB&J and Diet Coke in hand, she was sitting across from Cherisse.

I stopped, watching them.

Cherisse was making funny faces at Audrey, and even though Audrey clearly had been crying earlier—her face was puffy and her makeup streaked—she was currently laughing so hard she was holding her stomach like it hurt.