The Museum of Heartbreak (27 page)

“Oh, Pen,” Audrey said, rushing to sit next to me, bumping Ford, who yowled, and pulling me into a big hug. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head, trying to hold back all the sadness in me and failing.

I rested my head on her shoulder and cried and cried, thinking about everything I'd lost: Vivien and Delphine, my unwavering faith in fairy tales and happy endings, the dream that was Keats, the reality that was Eph.

When I wore myself out, the sobs softening and easing into an occasional tear-filled hitch of breath, Audrey leaned across the bed, pulled something out of her bag, and held it out to me.

“Oh my God, is that the . . . ?”

She nodded, and I took the Tonka truck from her hand—the one that got tangled in her hair all those years ago, the one that started our friendship.

“You still have it?”

She nodded again, and I dropped my head against her shoulder without thinking, turning the truck in my hand.

“As soon as the nurse cut my hair, she handed it to me and I kept it. I wasn't going to lose all that hair without something in return.” She poked a finger out and spun one of the wheels, and we listened to it whir. “Of course, I didn't know I'd get you from that deal too.”

“I wish we could go back to then,” I said.

“We're not the same people anymore, Pen.”

I thought about that truck whirring in Audrey's hair, how terrified she was, how it tangled and pulled, how she was trying so hard not to cry.

Be brave,
I thought.
Be brave for the people you love
. “I'm sorry I got so mad at you for what you said—you were right, about me and Keats and everything. I'm sorry I made you watch David Lynch movies and that I have too many rules and that I make it hard to be my friend.”

“I didn't mean all that, not really,” she said. “Okay, maybe the David Lynch stuff, but, Pen, I was just hurt. And you know I don't think you're pathetic, right? Please tell me you know that. That was the worst part of all of it, that you believed I'd think that about you. I would never . . .” She shook her head.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, realizing as she said it that I
did
know, that everything she had said that day had come out of love,
out of multiple viewings of
Titanic
, of gleefully smelling giant bags of M&M'S, of August nights spent spotting fireflies at her grandparents' house, of slumber parties and whispered dreams, that all that history didn't just disappear, even if the people we'd been then no longer existed.

“But, Pen,” she said, her voice quiet. “I can't
not
be friends with Cherisse. I'm not going to choose between you guys. I want you both, okay?”

I tried to figure out how to say what I wanted to say next. “I get that. But I can't be friends with her, Aud. Not with the Keats stuff.”

She sighed. “I know. I just wanted my best friends to be best friends . . . I wanted everything to be perfect.”

“I don't know what that's like at all,” I said, nudging against her lightly.

“I'm sure you don't,” she replied, smiling.

“But I get it now, what you were saying about bigger social circles and all that stuff. I met these guys, Grace and Miles, and it's like . . . well, it's like they know me already.”

Her smile faltered, and I wondered then if we'd stay friends forever, or if we'd drift off into our new groups, and if maybe that was okay.

I didn't know what would happen.

I held the truck out to her, but Audrey shook her head. “Hold on to it for a bit. You need it more than me right now.”

And I leaned over, gripping the truck hard, and gave her a hug, my arms moving on instinct, from history, letting go of all we'd lost, holding on to this small, fragile new thing we'd found.

AFTER AUDREY LEFT, I BRUSHED
my hair—kind of—and changed into jeans, grabbing my dinosaur necklace and the Bearded Lady's good-luck token, smashing on a hat and grabbing my coat.

“I'll be back,” I called to my parents.

I ran as fast as I could the entire two and a half blocks from my house to Eph's—it was so cold outside, I saw my breath in front of me. I hated running. I felt like there were knives in my rib cage, but I ran anyway, breathing hard, nearly knocking over an old woman with a cart full of aluminum cans in the process.

“Sorry,” I yelled over my shoulder, my legs pumping, until I slowed to a stop in front of Eph's.

I rang the doorbell, heard footsteps, saw a tall figure peering through the security glass. My heart skipped as the door opened, hoping it was Eph.

It was his dad. George looked as if he had died sometime in the
past twenty-four hours, dark gray circles under his puffy eyes, still wearing the same clothes he was wearing last night, the stench of sadness and alcohol coming off him like a cloud.

He wasn't dashing. He was broken.

“Eph's not here,” he said, his breath stale.

“Oh,” I said, not sure what to say next. George stared around me, not at me. “Will he be back later today?”

George smiled sadly. “No. He and Ellen left for her parents' house in Poughkeepsie at the crack of dawn this morning. They're not back until early tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said, my shoulders falling. I shifted uncomfortably on the steps. “If you talk to him, will you tell him I stopped by?”

George nodded. “If you talk to him, will you tell him I'm sorry?” he asked.

I nodded solemnly.

George stepped back in, and the door clicked shut. I walked a block, glad I had Eph's sweatshirt on under my coat, that I was holding myself in what I still had of him.

My hands were shaky. I felt weird and jangly, all the energy from running over to his house not spent but building inside, making me feel twitchy and restless.

I didn't want to go home.

I texted Eph.
Call me?

I wandered up the street, watching leaves crumble under my shoe, a plastic bag float around above me. It wasn't beautiful, it was garbage, and I hated that it was there and that some pigeon might get stuck in it, and I hated that I wasn't tall enough to reach it, and I hated that Eph was tall enough and he wasn't there.

I dialed his number. Straight to voice mail.

I stopped on the sidewalk, the wind around me so chilly my nose was starting to run, and I thought,
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

In a Jane Austen book this was when Mr. Darcy and I would stumble upon each other, our breath puffing sweetly in the cold in front of us, and we'd declare our love for each other, shyly, beautifully, purely.

In the world of Vivien and Delphine, this was when Jason North, the schoolteacher I had secretly pined after for years, would realize he loved me too, would run to the train station, trying to catch me before I slipped out of his life forever.

In
Titanic
this was when Leo would take my hand and we'd run until we found our happy ending or we'd die trying.

But I was standing alone on a New York City sidewalk that reeked of urine. My nose was running, and I didn't have a tissue, and I was worried a pigeon might strangle itself on that stupid out-of-reach plastic bag.

I wasn't getting a happy ending.

•  •  •

I didn't tell my parents what I'd seen in the attic at the museum.

I didn't tell anyone about what had happened with Keats.

Instead I got to school early on Monday and camped out by Eph's locker. I didn't know what I'd say about his dad. I didn't know what I thought about the kiss. I only knew I needed to see him.

Leaning against the wall, still wearing the now extremely smelly sweatshirt, I waited.

Grace walked by, did a double take, and stepped back.

“Not my locker,” I said before she could ask.

“No, I was going to ask if you're okay?”

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head and trying to smile, tears gathering. “Not at all.”

“Want to talk . . . ?” she started, and then her eyes narrowed at something behind me, her breath sucking in sharply.

I turned around, instinctively dreading whatever was about to happen.

My instincts were right.

Walking down the hallway, hair shining and brilliant, her confidence parting the crowds in the hall like she was the ultimate Queen Bee, like she was Victoria's actual secret, was Cherisse.

Holding hands with Keats.

“Oh crap,” Grace muttered under her breath, and she grabbed my hand, squeezing it tight. “What a complete bastard person.”

Keats saw me and cringed, stopping abruptly in the hall.

Cherisse turned toward him, confused, and whatever he said to her must have involved me, because for one brief unbelievable human second an expression crossed her face that might have been shame.

“Pen, I'm sorry,” Grace said, leaning around me and giving Keats and Cherisse the finger.
You suck,
she mouthed at them.

I giggled, even though I was crying. Keats looked stricken, but Cherisse was pissed, narrowing her eyes at both of us and spinning Keats around, marching him the opposite way.

For some reason it made me laugh and cry harder.

I wiped my face on my sleeve, the soft gray of the sweatshirt, hoping I wasn't simultaneously smearing snot all over it. “No, that's not it. It's fine. Seriously,” I said, realizing as the words left my mouth that it was fine, that I didn't care about losing Keats.

She handed me a tissue and I blew my nose.

It was Eph who was breaking my heart, Eph who'd left an emptiness inside me that was as surprising and infinite and unknowable and terrifying as a black hole.

As if the realization had conjured him into being, I saw his long, slouched form round the corner and pause, taking in the scene in front of him. Me against his locker, blowing my nose and wiping my eyes, Grace huddled around me like she was protecting me from roving bands of blood-hungry Vikings, and walking toward him, holding hands, Cherisse and Keats.

It happened before I could say anything, a blur but in slow motion, too: Eph dropping his bag on the floor and racing forward like some superhero, straight at Keats, knocking him to the linoleum; Cherisse's hand whipping loose, her face opening to scream; and Eph's fist, pulling back, like grace, like the fury of gnashed teeth, landing a hard one right on Keats's face.

Cherisse's scream echoed through the hall, and people circled around them so I couldn't see what was happening, and Grace pulled me forward, elbowing through the crowd, and everything was sweat and adrenaline and noise and I needed to find Eph.

When we broke through, Mr. Garfield was pulling him off Keats.

Eph's eyes were wild, like he was ready to keep on fighting the whole world and every single person in it, but then he saw me.

A beautiful, horrible ache bloomed inside, all the nerves in my body tuned toward him, and I stepped forward, wanting to tell him
I was sorry about everything, that I believed him, that I loved him.

He met my gaze, and his face flattened.

He turned away.

Grace held my hand.

Mr. Garfield led Eph toward the principal's office.

Mrs. Carroll helped Keats up.

Keats moaned and cradled his nose.

Cherisse sniffled but still managed to fetchingly flip her hair, clutching Keats's arm.

Students muttered and whispered and laughed and dispersed.

The first bell rang.

Grace held my hand.

The second bell rang.

Grace held my hand.

And then my heart broke.

I dropped to my knees and cried, the most absurd girl in Absurd Town, the one who didn't know what she had until it was gone.

•  •  •

Eph was suspended for a week.

I didn't hear that from him, though. The seventeen times I tried to call him on Monday, he never once picked up.

Instead I heard it from Audrey, who stopped by my locker that afternoon, Grace and Miles on either side of me like bodyguards. She told us that Keats's nose was broken, that Eph should have been expelled, but that Keats had said he'd instigated it, which was one small point—the only one—in his favor, and that instead Eph was suspended for a week, and when he came back, he'd have to complete four weeks of community service.

Audrey walked me home after school, both of us quiet and cold, and she hung up my coat as I crawled into bed, Ford making himself as small of a ball as possible against my thigh.

That night I called Eph twelve times, sent him four texts. No response.

When I woke up on Tuesday, I couldn't bear the thought of going to school, my bedroom seeming much less fraught, so I told my mom I had cramps.

That night I called Eph eight times, sent him five texts. No response.