The Museum of Heartbreak (4 page)

“Worst. Dare. Ever.”

“Worst. Dare. Everest.”

I reached over to hook pinkies with her.

“Seriously, though, Pen. You are
not
crusted Norwegian scabies, not even close. It's never as bad as you make it out to be.”

“It's
always
as bad as I make it out to be,” I said.

“Such as . . . ?”

“Me trying to start a conversation with the coffee guy at Grey Dog who was all greasy-dirty hot, the one I had been crushing on, oh, for no less than a year, only to discover I had a booger on the outside of my nose in the middle of asking him what music was playing?”

(I was so mortified that I ran outside, leaving my purse behind, but then Audrey found me and made me cry-laugh by insisting that boogers were in the new issue of
Vogue
as
the
fall accessory, and I decided I wouldn't run away forever after all.)

She flapped her hand. “No changing the subject. Think about French Club.”

“I will,” I lied, mentally crossing my fingers. “But before I forget, I was going to see if you and Eph wanted to come over tomorrow for a David Lynch marathon?”

She wrinkled her nose again. “Um, David Lynch? Please tell me you're not talking about the guy who did that movie we watched last month, the one that gave me nightmares for four straight nights after? I hate that movie more than goatees or mashed potatoes or men wearing sandals.”

“Mandals,” we groaned together, before I added, “I still can't believe you hate mashed potatoes.”

“They're like big piles of tasteless mush. Disgusting.”

“Sometimes I wonder how we're friends.”

“You know you love me,”
Audrey said, giving a charming, beaming smile.

I snorted. “I was thinking we could do a
Twin Peaks
Season One marathon. It's totally the best season, and it's only eight episodes, so if we start early, I think we can do the whole thing in one night. It's the same director, but I swear it isn't as terrifying. The main guy, Agent Cooper, is crazy hot, I promise,” I said, crossing my heart.

“Well, as much as I like crazy-hot guys . . . ,” Audrey said.

I started to clap. She held up her hand.

“I promised Cherisse we'd go dancing tomorrow night. You should come with us!”

The only thing less appealing than going dancing was going dancing with Cherisse. I had eight left feet—I was literally an octopus of awkward movement when it came to music—and I could only imagine how terrible it would be to try to fit in while Audrey and Cherisse whirled around, sexy and glamorous, next to me. The fact that Cherisse was willing to go dancing with Audrey was maybe the only thing I liked about her—it made me feel less guilty every time I said no. I wasn't quite sure why Audrey kept asking.

“I don't think I can . . . ,” I started.

Audrey's phone dinged, and she was immediately distracted, fingers typing a fast response.

I picked up Barnaby and ran my fingers over his soft worn ear.

I hadn't spoken to Keats since the first day of school, just a week ago. I had, however, spent each chemistry class since obsessively studying the rebel curl on the back of his neck, the one that went the opposite way. I always imagined twisting my finger around it, hooking him to me.

My heart flushed.

I had to stop.

“Put your phone down,” I demanded.

She ignored me.

I winged Barnaby back at her so he thunked against the side of her face.

“Hey!” Audrey dropped her phone and rubbed her neck.

“Oh my God.” Before she could stop me, I sat up and pushed her hair back. The bruise on her neck was mottled red and purple, the size of a plum.

She leaned away and slapped at my hand. “Stop it, Pen.”

Scenes from every single teen cancer movie and book flashed through my mind. “Are you okay? Maybe you should go to the doctor. What happened?”

“I think you mean
who
happened,” she finally said.

“What do you . . .” I stopped, understanding settling uncomfortably over me. My insides cringed in embarrassment.

I was probably the only sixteen-year-old in the entire Milky Way who didn't recognize a hickey when she saw one.

“Duh.” I gave an exaggerated smile and smacked my forehead, felt the sting of slap on skin.

Audrey smiled gently, squeezed my knee. “It freaked me out when I saw it this morning too.”

I tried to push past the inner mortification of being hopelessly, abnormally inexperienced, but every molecule in me felt whiny and monumentally terrible. Ever since I met her in third grade, Audrey and I had gone through pretty much everything together: learning there was no Santa (she told me and I told Eph), the horrors of
puberty and zits and cramps, swooning over
Titanic
marathons on cable, scoping out all the boys in our class yearbooks. Yet somehow in the past year her life had merged onto the sleek highway of making out and hickeys, and I was still on the slow back road of never-been-kissed.

“Don't you want to know more?” Audrey asked, gently bumping her shoulder against mine.

“Um, yes.” I straightened and tried to put on my best friend smile. “Okay, who was it, when did it happen, when are you going out next, what's his name, how old is he—”

“Whoa, slow down there, Delphine.”

I felt a smile creep onto my face, and I tried to appear stern. “Not fair. Vivien tells Delphine everything. Besides, you know Vivien is always making foolhardy decisions.”

“Foolhardy. Nice one.”

“It's a good Delphine word, yeah?”

“Most definitely,” Audrey said.

I eyed my bookshelf and the old copy of
Anne of Green Gables
that my mom had given to me in seventh grade. The pages were yellowed, and there was a picture of the actress who played Anne in the miniseries on the cover. The spine was so cracked from multiple reads that pages 48 through 103 came out in a separate chunk. After I read it, I made Audrey read it. We fell in love so hard, so fast with that book, we decided to write our own series—not the story of an orphan girl on Prince Edward Island but rather the story of
two
orphan girls in New York City in the late 1800s. Totally different, right?

I was Delphine, a bookish and shy, dreamy girl who wanted to be an English teacher; Audrey was Vivien, an outspoken, scrappy
tomboy who wanted to be an actress. Of course we were kindred spirits and bosom friends. Of course we had myriad adventures—many, I'm sure, plagiarized straight from the adventures of Anne Shirley. And of course, more than anything, we each wanted to find our own Gilbert Blythe.

“So, what does the real-life Thomas Flannery look like?” I asked Audrey, referring to Vivien's one true love, a rakish troublemaker who later became a World War I pilot. (Of course Vivien nursed him back to health when he lost his leg.)

Audrey made a dismissive hand flap. “Nah, no Thomas Flannery. This was just some random guy from Saint Ignatius. Cherisse and I met him and his friend when we were at the smoothie bar near Union Square,
after French Club
.” She glanced at me significantly.

I gently rolled my eyes.

“By the way, Cherisse had me try this kale smoothie, and it was divine. I want to take you there. Plus, the guys from Saint Ignatius
all
hang out there after school. Maybe if not French Club, we could meet someone there. . . .”

“Kale?” I asked, unconvinced that anything associated with kale, let alone Cherisse, could ever be enjoyable.

“Hot guys, Pen.”

“But what about the guy who gave you that? What's
his
name?”

“Mark? Or Matt? Maybe Mike?”

“You don't even remember his name?” I asked, dismayed.

She blushed. “Gregory! It was Gregory!”

I resisted the impulse to point out that Gregory sounded
nothing
like Mark, Matt, or Mike. “Okay, okay. Here's how it's going to go: Gregory's totally going to grow on you. What started out as a
casual hookup is going to turn into true love, right when you both least expect it. You're like Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson in
The Breakfast Club
, or maybe, even though you didn't know each other beforehand, Monica and Chandler in
Friends
, and before you know it, you'll be totally head-over-heels smitten with each other.”

“I don't even know who those people are. You and your old movies and television shows . . .”

“You know
Friends
! Besides, John Hughes's movies are classic!” I said.

Audrey looked unconvinced.

“Okay, think of Eph's parents' meeting instead. It's like a happy
Wuthering Heights
! The way they were both rushing across campus during a thunderstorm, and the leaves were falling and whipping all over the place around them. And then they fell into each other—literally!—and Ellen dropped all her sketches in a puddle, and George stopped to help her pick them up, and they huddled under George's umbrella and dashed into a coffee shop where they talked for hours and hours.”

I sighed happily. I loved that story.

“I'm not sure things usually work like that, Pen . . . ,” Audrey started.

“Listen.” I gripped her arm. “Someday, you'll tell your and Gregory's kids, ‘Once upon a time, I was drinking this splendid kale smoothie' ”—I mimed gagging and continued—“ ‘and over the top of my glass I locked eyes with this handsome boy across the room, also drinking a kale smoothie, and I didn't know it then, but it turned out to be your father! And so we had kale smoothies at our wedding and they were disgusting but we lived happily ever after!' ”

Audrey started to reach for Barnaby, but I got to him right in time, clasped him dramatically to my heart.

“Oh, Jesus,” Audrey muttered, starting to laugh.

“Remember, Vivien, we're settling for nothing less,” I said grandly, reminding Audrey of Vivien and Delphine's vow. “Nothing less than absolute, one hundred percent, soul-stirring, Anne-and-Gilbert-meant-to-be, Jack-and-Rose-forever-and-ever, one true love. Nothing less.”

THE NEXT NIGHT, I HOPPED
down our wooden steps, admiring my new silver striped socks. While having an uninterrupted eight hours for our
Twin Peaks
marathon hadn't panned out (Eph wanted to get in some skating “while the weather was still nice,” a reason I said made him sound like an old man), his family was coming over for dinner. I smelled garlic and tomato sauce, bread baking in the oven.

“Mom? Do you need help?”

Eph's mom, Ellen, peeked around our kitchen door frame instead, a glass of red wine in her hand. Her red hair actually rippled, and even though she had this artist thing going on, she wasn't dippy; instead she was wearing a cool black dress and clunky motorcycle boots and an amazing chunky bright orange-and-red beaded necklace.

She always reminded me of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She was the most beautiful person I knew.

“Penelope! Hello!”

“Hi, Mrs. O'Connor! I didn't know you guys were here already.” I gave her a hug.
She smelled light and flowery, but not in a way that made you sneeze.

“Your mom says dinner will be ready in about ten minutes.”

“Eph here?” I asked.

“Setting the table. I'm sure he could use some help.”

In the dining room Eph was staring intently at a place setting, picking up the knife and putting it on the right, outside the spoon, then picking it up and placing it on the left again.

“Hopeless,” I said, reaching around his waist and placing the knife back on the right, nudging the spoon out.

He handed me the rest of the silverware, then man-spread in a chair while I rearranged all the place settings he got wrong.

“So, you try to kill anyone new today?”

“A whole week and still that joke hasn't gotten old, yeah?” I asked.

“Killing is never a joke, Penelope,” he said sternly.

“You get any new girls' numbers today?”

“Thirty-seven,” he said.

I pointed at the pitcher of water. “Get up. Get to work.”

He sighed and stretched like he was waking up, then bumped around me, filling the glasses, water sloshing off the top onto the tablecloth. How could someone so uncoordinated create those beautiful drawings? Speaking of, maybe this was finally the time to broach it . . .

“You draw any more of those pictures with the tiny dinosaurs? I really liked them.”

“No,” he said, an ornery expression on his face, his shoulders
bunched up in an irritable shrug. Okay, then—subject dropped.

“Did I tell you Audrey wants me to join French Club with her and
Cherisse
? She thinks we need to ‘expand our social circles.' I think Cherisse would rather burn the whole school to the ground than include me in her social circle.”