The Museum of Heartbreak (17 page)

We walked into Little Italy that way, weaving among tourists braving the cold and crowding the sidewalk, strings of white lightbulbs swaying over the street, and I couldn't imagine ever feeling cold again.

When we got to Canal Street, I beckoned him closer. “I have to show you something.” I pulled him past vendors selling foreign fruits and vegetables, men with garbage bags of designer knock-off purses, everyone's breath starting to show in the chill. I turned and caught him watching me. I grinned. “Almost there,” I promised.

I found the small silver food cart on Baxter Street, steam coming from within, and dug in my purse for a dollar, then handed it to the woman working, who poured batter into a honeycombed skillet. Keats leaned into the warmth of the cart, leaned into the warmth of me, and I felt his closeness, his solidness. In one fluid motion the woman opened the skillet and dumped out small, perfectly formed cakes, scooped them into a wax bag, and handed them hot to me.

“Mini hotcakes,” I said, offering the bag to Keats. He tasted one.

“Oh man, you may have questionable taste in books, but that's good.”

I teasingly elbowed him in the stomach, lightly, so I could feel him, and with one hand he gripped my elbow and squeezed it.

“How'd you find this place?” he asked, letting go and grabbing another hotcake, biting halfway through, the steam escaping.

“Eph showed me—his mom knew about it from one of her friends who used to live down here.” I took a few of the mini cakes from the bag and popped them in my mouth, and they were sweet and warm, like pancakes, but light and easy, like goodness.

We meandered toward Chambers Street, companionably digging into the wax bag. When it came time for him to head toward his train and me to mine, I made him take the last three mini hotcakes. As I handed them over, he circled me with his arms, and I lingered there, against his shoulder, smelling pine trees and thinking,
Keats, Keats, Keats, it's finally happening.

“I like you so much.” The words came out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop them. So much for playing it cool. But Keats smiled the smile I was coming to know as his and his alone, the left side crinkling up a little higher, the dimple on that side a little deeper, his eyebrows furrowed.

He stepped back, held up the bag, and winked. “See you later, Scout.”

I rode the train home as warm and light as the mini hotcakes, my burned tongue pressed raw and new against the roof of my mouth.

AS SOON AS MY ALARM
went off the next morning, I sat straight up in bed—awake and jingly and blushy with thoughts of Keats. I stretched my arms Ford-style, feeling happiness extending to the tips of my fingers, shooting out in beams of sunlight, and flopped back down with a contented exhale.

Being in love, or at the very least being in like, was waking up with spring inside me—everything chattering and blooming with blue sky and white petals.

My phone dinged, and my heart jumped.

Thanks for yesterday, Scout. Having brunch with bro and parents today. Dad talking about b-school. It sucks. How's Kerouac? K.

Keats!

I flopped happily back down in bed, gazing at the leaves outside my window, the beginning of oranges and reds, a bright golden ginkgo yellow. It was Sunday, and I had never felt so pretty, so noticed, so delirious, like every part of me was light and perfumed and lovely.

I missed Audrey right then, wanting to tell her how liking Keats was a miracle, how it was everything Delphine had always dreamed of. I wanted to show her the matchbook notebook with his scrawled handwriting, and to tell her about the paw print on the top of my hot chocolate.

I debated calling Eph. But what would I say? After I kissed you, the next day I fell head over heels with a beautiful boy?

The social triangle was broken. So I scrolled through my phone contacts until I found the one I was looking for.

Hi Grace it's Penelope. Wanna go 2 the bklyn flea 2day?

Send.

As soon as I heard the whoosh, I second-guessed my decision. Even though we'd been at Nevermore meetings together, and I'd joined Grace and Miles at lunch on days I was brave enough to risk an Audrey-Cherisse sighting in the cafeteria, what if Grace and I weren't really hang-out friends yet? What if we didn't have anything to talk about? What if the silence was weird or I took a joke too far? Should I text her back and say “never mind”?

I conjured Eph, thinking what he would say about Grace, probably something like
Chill, Pen
and
If she's weird about it, you don't
want to hang out with her anyway
and
Don't make things so fucking hard.

Okay, okay, stop freaking out.

The phone dinged.

Yes! 11?

All right. Maybe I didn't always have to make everything so hard after all.

Perf c u there,
I wrote, deciding right then that this was a reminder to take it all down a notch. Grace wanted to hang out; I wanted to hang out; done.

Keats liked me; I liked him; done.

Not everything needed to be hard.

I shoved out of bed and dug through my dresser for something to wear.

I pulled on Eph's gray sweatshirt along with black leggings and my Docs, tried to scrunch some Ellen-like waves into my hair, shoved
On the Road
in my bag for the subway ride to Brooklyn (I would persevere, for Keats!), and headed downstairs to grab a bite to eat.

A wrinkled bag sat on the kitchen counter, bagels spilling out, a trail of sesame seeds across the floor the only indication someone in particular had already dug into them.

“Dad? Is one of these for me?” I called out.

“Of course,” he called out from the general direction of the living room.

I headed out to meet him, half a cinnamon raisin bagel already in my mouth.

“Darling daughter,”
my dad said, lowering his copy of the
Times
. “Just who I wanted to see.”

“Mmm?”

“You joining your mom and me for a movie later today?”

“Where is she?” I asked, wiping a crumb from the corner of my mouth. I wondered if Keats liked bagels.

“Emergency coffee date with Ellen. But she'll be back by three for a movie.”

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

My dad shrugged. “Not a clue.”

I flashed back to George being weird in the bookstore, to Annabeth-with-the-ponytail touching his arm, and a wave of discomfort passed through me.

I kicked at the floor. “Do you know someone at the museum named Annabeth? She's working on her dissertation, I think?”

My dad furrowed his brow. “Huh, no, but you know me, I can't remember our neighbor's first name.”

“True,” I admitted.

“So, you joining your mom and me this afternoon?
Vertigo
's on the agenda.”

“I'm going to the Flea for a bit, but yeah, I can be back in time.”

“Good. Adios, darling daughter. Until we meet again!”

Dad didn't seem to be worried about Eph's parents. Maybe I was making things too hard yet again.

•  •  •

When I got outside, the world took my breath away. It was stunningly, amazingly, beautifully fall outside, the sky the ridiculous color of a crayon. Glowing red and orange leaves littered the
sidewalk, and I scuffed through them with my boots.

I loved the feeling of being in like. I loved the giddy feeling of being me today. I loved everything.

My phone dinged.

Did you get my text? Did I offend you? K.

What? No! I stopped in my tracks, trying to type back as quick as I could.

Yes! And no! And sorry! On my way to Bklyn. Can't wait to c u in chem.

I paused, trying to decide how to sign off, and feeling brave, not wanting him to doubt me, I signed
xo
, hit send, and waited.

Ugh bklyn. Until tmrw Scout.

Okay, okay. There. I guessed things were okay now?

Another message ding, but this time it was Eph.

U around?

I felt a rush of weirdness about the kiss. But it wasn't a big deal, per the other half of the kiss himself, a fact that exponentially increased the weirdness.

Weird: Eph wet his pants in second grade because the art teacher wouldn't let him use the restroom.

Weird times weird: Sometimes when Eph and I watched movies and he took off his hiking boots, his sweaty feet stank up the room so bad I actually gagged.

Weird to the third power: Eph hated reading anything other than graphic novels, comics, and
The Hobbit
—I think because reading was still challenging for him, a fact I totally got. But reading was pretty much the best thing in my life.

Weird to infinity: I watched him make two different girls cry at last year's spring dance, when they discovered he was dating them both at the same time.

I kissed that person.

Kissing Eph = weird.

(And good?)

No. Eph wasn't my dream boyfriend. Keats was.

Clearly, I needed a little time on my own to process things.
Flea w my friend Grace,
I wrote back. There. That should do it.

Grt c u there.

Dang it.

I was so busy fretting over Keats's message and Eph's message that I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking—and bam!—plowed right into someone.

“Watch it,” the person said. I looked up.

That someone, unfortunately, turned out to be Cherisse. Even more unfortunately, she was with Audrey.

There's like more than one and a half million people living in the borough of Manhattan. One and a half million! Granted, Audrey
lives within a ten-minute walk, but what were the odds that right there, right then, when all my newfound confidence was wobbling, when I was worried I'd hurt Keats's feelings, when I couldn't stop thinking about the feel of Eph's lips, that I'd run into the two of them?

The Bearded Lady's token was slacking off.

Cherisse was decked out in pinks and whites, like she'd just been weekending in the Hamptons. My lip curled, imagining what Eph would say about the getup—probably that she looked like an eighty-year-old socialite named Bunny.

“Hey, Pen,” Audrey said, shifting uneasily, and I looked over at her, missing her something fierce.

Before I could answer, Cherisse straightened. “You should really watch where you're going, Penelope. I'd hate for you to walk into traffic because you were too busy looking at your phone.”

I was pretty sure she wouldn't hate it very much at all.

“Sorry, Cherisse, I was texting Keats.”

Cherisse wilted about two degrees.

Bull's-eye.

“You know how it is.” I tried to giggle dizzily, like a girl in love, but it ended up sounding like I had just inhaled helium from a birthday party balloon.

Distracted, Cherisse started chewing on her nails, but Audrey frowned at me, and I immediately felt a little bad about who I was being.

“Um, what are you guys up to?”

“We're going upstate to see my gram,” Audrey said.

“Oh,” I said, thinking about how just a month ago I'd have been the person going with Audrey.

“Yeah,” Audrey said quietly.

“I'm sorry—”
I started to say, when Cherisse looped her arm through Audrey's.

“Aud, we
have
to go if we're going to get Balthazar croissants in the Grand Central food court and still have time to catch the next train.”

I couldn't help it. “Are those vegan?”

Cherisse narrowed her eyes at me, but Audrey cut in. “They're for my gram.”

I immediately felt small and unpleasant.

“Hey, tell your grandma I said hi,” I said to Audrey.

“I will,” she said, giving me a smile that felt perfunctory and empty, like she didn't really like who I was right then.

I wasn't sure I did either.

•  •  •

By the time I got to Brooklyn, and despite my efforts to the contrary, I was back to making things hard again. I definitely hated
On the Road—
I would finish it anyway because I always finished books and it was Keats's favorite, but
God
, Kerouac was the worst.

What if it hurt Keats's feelings if I didn't like it?

What if I blew it by not texting him back right away this morning?

Why did I stoop to Cherisse's level?

What if Audrey told her lovely grandma how ugly I'd been?

What if Eph wanted to talk about the kiss?

I sat on the steps of the school near the flea market, resting my chin on my knees and hugging them toward me. The smells from the food trucks floated my way: brick-oven pizza, pupusas, brisket, fried dough. I scanned the crowd for Grace or Eph. The Flea was crowded today—vendors
trying to get as many sales as they could before the weather got cooler. There were booths with racks of old vintage coats and shiny pleather shoes, booths with hundreds of tiny plastic toys, booths with old wooden soda crates. There were also people selling sparkly dainty necklaces and ironic T-shirts with narwhals on them, candles made of beeswax, and wind chimes made of sea glass.