The Museum of Heartbreak (8 page)

She picked up her backpack and hugged it to her chest.

“Autumn,” Eph said, trying pull her back toward him.

“Don't fucking touch me!” she shrieked, and I cringed; people around us were stopping to watch. She pushed her way through them, and everyone started to move again like nothing had been going on.

I waited for Eph to say something.

“Well, that could have gone better,” he said dryly, resignation on his face, his jaw jutting out stubbornly.

“I'm guessing
Macbeth
wasn't a hit,” I said lightly.

He shrugged, turning to his locker and starting to slide books in his bag.

“Do you want to talk about—”

“No fucking way,” he said, shutting his locker and sliding his bag onto his shoulder. “What's up with you?”

To say that Eph is bad at showing his emotions is an understatement. His heart is pretty much a quadruple-locked vault encased in concrete dropped in the part of the ocean where all the blind bug-eyed monsters live. At that second he had this awful grimace on his face, like he was trying to forcefully pretend the entire moment out of ever existing.

It reminded me of the expression on his face when I found his dinosaur notebook.

I wanted to ask,
Are you okay?
and
Why do you always break girls' hearts?

I wanted to say,
You don't know how lucky you are.

I wanted to say,
I don't want you to end up alone.

I wanted to say,
Tell me about the dinosaurs.

Instead I chucked him lightly on the shoulder. “Now I know where you picked up your excessive use of the
f
word.”

Eph snorted. “You're never going to let that drop, are you?”

“No. And guess what we're doing on Saturday?” I hopped a little in place.

“The Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel.”

“Wellllll . . .” I pulled out the invite and held it in front of him. “Want to be my plus one?”

Eph scanned it quickly, met my eyes. “This sounds like a douche fest.”

I moved to slug him in the arm, and he backed up.

“Easy, killer.”

“Don't call me that. Say you'll go with me.”

“On one condition.”

I did a fist pump, which was probably totally uncool, but whatever, I did it. “Name it.”

“I'm not dressing up.”

“No, you
have
to dress up. It says costumes mandatory.”

“What, is he going to turn me away at the door or something?”

“Eph, please.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I'm not dressing up as half of the periodic table,” he said. I cringed, remembering our spectacularly dorky fourth-grade Halloween costume, one suggested by our parents.

“Fine. But no raptors, either,” I said, referencing another year's ensemble. We'd ended up looking like garbage bags with wings.

“The things I do for you,” he muttered under his breath,

I resisted the impulse to seize his shoulders and jump up and down in sheer glee, and instead looped my arm through his, pulling his elbow close as we started walking down the hall.

“It is going to be awesome. I promise.”

FIVE DAYS LATER, THE DAY
of the party, October the first, I was 100 percent freaking out.

“Nothing is awesome right now,” I said to Audrey as she brushed out her long hair. She looked perfect: flared polyester pants, a plunging plaid shirt, big shiny hoop earrings, brown high-heeled boots.

“I told you—we only have two Charlie's Angels. You should be our third.”

“Bosley would be more like it,” I mumbled under my breath, glancing briefly in the mirror at the unruly mess of my hair next to Audrey's shiny mane, before heading across the hall in a funk.

It was four short hours before party go time. I was costumeless, pacing the empty space in my room—a pretty limited pacing zone, considering the clothes I had thrown in frustrated piles on the hardwood floor. I shoved items on the rack in the closet and pulled down an old vintage blue dress, holding it up and assessing
its potential. Alice in Wonderland? But it was polyester, and showing up at Keats's house stinky with anxiety sweat would probably not help my already terrible flirting skills.

I tossed it over my shoulder.

“Watch it!” Eph said from the bed, looking up irritably from his comic and throwing the dress on the floor.

“Sorry,” I said.

He shook his head and turned back to his comic, mouthing the words to himself as he read, a habit I'd noticed soon after we first met. When I told my mom I thought it was weird, she sat my six-year-old self down and explained about reading disabilities. A week later, when Wayne Pinslaw teased Eph about it on the playground, I kicked him in the shin, drawing blood and earning my only visit to the principal's office. I had to apologize to Wayne, but Wayne had to apologize to Eph, making the whole thing totally worth it.

I stared at Eph, envying the fact that he already had a costume, though whether it actually qualified as a costume was debatable. He was dressed in all black—black jeans, black knit hat, black boots, long-sleeved black T-shirt, black thermal on top of it.

“I'm the dark night of the soul. Or a black hole. Or something like that,” he'd said when I'd asked him earlier.

“You're copping out,” I said.

“How is being in more than one costume copping out? I'm actually so invested in this, I am in an infinite number of costumes. It's meta and crap.”

I rolled my eyes and resumed scanning the Internet for costume ideas.

That was an hour and a half earlier, when I'd still had five and a half hours to create the perfect costume, the one that would get Keats to notice me at his party. Now it was seeming like there might be another black hole wandering around with Eph.

“I'm so, so glad you guys are coming,” Audrey called out from under the noise of the blow dryer across the hall. “I told Cherisse she should get Keats to invite you. I'm so glad she did!”

I was willing to bet the gold charm bracelet my grandma gave me—my number one thing to grab in a fire after my parents and Ford the Cat—that Cherisse had
not
talked to Keats on our behalf. Divine intervention from Zeus or Thor or Buddha or the patron saint of single, unkissed sixteen-year-old girls seemed more likely.

“I think it's great you guys can hang out with Cherisse more . . . ,” Audrey continued.

Eph pointed at himself and in a low voice said, “Tall. Handsome. Hottie. Right here.”

I tried to smile, but it came out all grimacey. I had no costume.

“Your neck is getting all red and splotchy again.”

“Telling me that doesn't help anything.” I rubbed at my neck.

“Audrey, Pen is panicking.” He flipped lazily through his book.

“I'm
not
panicking!”

Audrey's voice was calm but forceful from across the hall. “Pen, stop panicking. You're not going to think of anything if you're running around like a rooster with its head cut off.”

“Chicken,” Eph and I both said simultaneously.

I flopped down on the bed next to him, hoping that if I rubbed my forehead hard enough, the magic idea would simply arise.

“Eph, what am I going to be?”

“High School Junior.”

“Eph,” I said.

“Girl Without a Costume?”

“Eph,” I repeated more insistently.

He sighed, put his comic book down, and propped his elbow up, head on his hand, and studied me. I saw a stray eyelash on his cheek, Orion's belt across the bridge of his nose.

“If you give me one more bad suggestion, I'm going to sic Ford on you.”

“That cat hates me.” He frowned, contemplating Ford's inexplicable disdain for and fury toward him, before resuming. “No, what I wanted to say was fuck them. If anyone gives you a hard time? Fuck them. We'll leave, okay?”

That wasn't what I was expecting.

I stared at his face until it blurred, everything behind him sharpening: the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, the white Christmas lights I had strung around the edge of the room.

“Whoa,” said Audrey when she saw Eph leaning so close over me.

I scrambled guiltily up, even though there was nothing to be guilty about, and in the process knocked my skull squarely into Eph's nose.

“Ow, fuck!” he yelled, falling back and covering his face with both hands.

“Oh, I'm sorry! I'm so, so, sorry!”

“Why do you keep trying to kill me?” he moaned from behind his palms. “You already broke my nose once.”

“God, it was fourth grade! Besides, you instigated that one,” I couldn't
resist reminding him, thinking back to how he lifted my skirt in front of half the class.

Eph pushed himself up, still cradling his nose, and Audrey leaned down and pulled away his hands.

“You're not bleeding, so that's good.”

The bridge of his nose was a little red, but aside from the cranky expression on his face, he seemed pretty much unharmed.

“Eph, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to . . .” I hid my head in my hands. “You know, this whole evening is a mistake. I don't know what to wear; I hate parties; I nearly killed Eph. We should have gone to Coney Island.”

“Too late,” Eph said. “Besides, I only saw stars for like four seconds. It's probably only a minor concussion.”

“Wait, what'd you say?” Audrey asked him.

“Only a minor concussion?”

“No, before that.”

“It was an accident, I only saw stars—”

“That's it!” Audrey yelled.

Eph and I flinched.

“Pen, does your mom still put those little gold stickers on the papers she grades?”

“Yeah?”

“Get them!” Audrey said. She checked her watch and frowned. “I have to leave in like five minutes. I'll meet you in the bathroom.” She started digging through my dresser, held a navy tank up, frowned, and discarded it on the floor.

I checked Eph to make sure we were okay, and he spun his finger, making a cuckoo motion in Audrey's direction.

“Go, go, go, Pen!” she shouted over her shoulder.

I burst out into the hall and halfway down the steps, yelling over the banister, “Mom, can I borrow some of your teaching supplies?”

Once I had a packet of stickers, Audrey met me at the bathroom door. She shoved my black boatneck pocket tee, short pleated black skirt, black tights, and maroon-but-so-beat-up-they-were-practically-black Docs into my arms, while somehow pulling her jacket on at the same time.

“Here's what you're going to do,” she said, grabbing the stickers and starting to put them over the skirt.

“Can't you stay a little longer?”

“I wish I could! I told Cherisse I'd head over with her. But you can do this.”

She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“You're the best ever, Vivien,” I said to her.

“You're the best Everest, Delphine,” she replied.

We hooked pinkies before she ran out the door, yelling, “See you at the party, Eph!”

Fifteen minutes later I emerged. Eph was sitting up on my bed, drawing, and from where I was standing in the doorway, I could tell he was working on one of his dinosaur cityscapes.

“Eph?” I asked.

He looked up from his drawing, his eyes going wide.

Picking up where Audrey left off, I had stuck gold and silver star stickers all over me. Stars on my boots, a few stars on my cheek, stars over my heart. I was covered in constellations, like Eph's and my ceilings. I had three stars in a row on my sleeve, like the freckles
across his nose, like backup. My hair was twisted up into crazy knots with sparkly bobby pins.

“The planetarium?”

“Or the Milky Way. Or Van Gogh's
Starry Night
. It's an infinite number of costumes,” I said.

He nodded appreciatively, shutting his notebook and offering me his arm.