The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers (12 page)

“And that’s when she became a Heartbreaker?”

Gil nodded. “Olivia and Liza were friends, and Olivia’s grandmother had just turned her into a Heartbreaker on her thirteenth birthday.”

“Olivia’s grandmother is a Heartbreaker too?”

“Well, was,” Gil said, “but yeah. She taught Olivia everything she knows. Which is how we know everything
we
know. Anyway, Olivia told Liza what to do. And that’s where the part with Liza’s mom comes in. Liza’s mom had a boyfriend at the time, which wasn’t out of the ordinary since her mom always has a boyfriend, but apparently this guy was different. According to Liza, he was the most boring guy on earth, but also the only nice guy she’d ever dated before or since. And he was very in love with Liza’s mom, wanted to marry her and everything. Anyway, her mom’s boyfriend had a son, and Liza’s mom and the boyfriend were always trying to get the four of them to be like a little family. Only problem was the boyfriend’s son was obsessed with Liza. And Liza hated him. So she broke his heart. His dad broke up with Liza’s mom not that long after that, pretty much for his son’s sake. And that was it. Liza’s always felt guilty about it, thought it was maybe her mom’s only chance for her heart to be safe and stop breaking. So now Liza is always making different potions and elixirs to find a new guy for her mom without her mom knowing she’s doing it.”

“Wow,” Lucy said. “I didn’t realize Liza . . .”

Gil smiled. “Yeah, she doesn’t broadcast that part of herself.”

Lucy tipped her head. “I didn’t realize you guys used magic for things like that. I mean, I thought it was only for . . .”

“. . . for breaking hearts?” Gil laughed. “What did you think, that we just broke hearts to get magic to use to break more hearts?” She shook her head. “Well, what would be the fun in that? We use magic for all sorts of things. But I’ve already said too much, so . . .” Gil raised her finger to her lips. “Ssh, okay?”

Lucy nodded.

“I guess what I mean is just that Liza is awfully good at hiding who she really is. But because she’s so good at hiding herself, she’s constantly suspicious of other people and assumes everyone else is hiding things too. Sometimes she’s not good at telling the difference between an actual enemy and a new friend. But soon, you’ll be one of us, Lucy, and she’ll be your sister too, and then she’ll love you.”

“But how can you be so sure?” Lucy said. Her stomach was heavy with ice-cold guilt. “I mean, how can you be so sure I’ll actually become a Heartbreaker? You don’t even really know me.” She could barely get the words out.

Gil just shook her head. “Lucy,” Gil said. “I know you better than you think.”

“M
usic room,” said Olivia as she turned a fancy gold knob and swung open the door. Lucy caught a glimpse of a giant, carved harp, a grand piano, a stand-up bass, dozens of other instruments she could name, and many she couldn’t.

Lucy wanted to stop, but they pulled her forward.

Olivia opened the next door. “Library.” Lucy saw rich wood shelves, stacked floor to ceiling with leather-bound books.

“My room.” Olivia turned the orange crystal knob and inside was an enormous bed, covered in green-and-gold silk.

It was a few hours later, Friday after school, and Olivia, Liza, and Gil were giving Lucy a tour of the house. The hallway went on forever. Olivia swung the doors faster and faster, and Lucy barely had time to peek inside.

“What was probably a maid’s room a long time ago but is now a guest room . . . empty room filled with nothing . . . cluttered room filled with everything . . . I don’t know what this room is for—my grandmother used to keep just flowers in it.”

There was one door Olivia walked by without mentioning. It had a small, wrought-iron doorknob and under it was an ancient-looking keyhole. Lucy stopped and stared at it. Olivia and Gil had gone up ahead.

“What’s in there?” Lucy asked.

“That’s a very
special
room,” Liza said. “Only for very
special
people.” Her tone was sarcastic, but something in her eyes looked completely serious.

“Oh, really?” Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. Somehow knowing all she knew about Liza made her seem much less scary. “Can I see?”

Liza snorted. “The only way you’ll see the inside of that room is if you manage to become one of us,” she said. “Or if you grow enough balls to steal the key.” Liza gave a short laugh. “Of course, the only way
that’ll happen
is if you have the stuff that’s in that room.” She laughed again. “Come on.”

Gil and Olivia were up ahead, standing at the end of the hallway in front of a set of double doors with sculpted brass handles.

Olivia pushed the doors open. The room revealed was easily as big as Lucy’s family’s living room. All four walls were lined with dresses, skirts, shirts, pants, jackets, shoes, and hats, in every color and fabric that had ever been invented. There were slinky slip dresses and brocade silk suits out of another era. An entire section of men’s suits and shirts and pants, but in women’s sizes. A half rack of clothes in gold glitter, six pairs of blue pants printed with multicolored reindeer, and shelf after shelf of jeans, boots, and boxes of jewelry. Against the walls were trunks made of leather, wood, and brushed copper, each labeled with a metal plaque.

Lucy felt her phone buzzing in her pocket and was about to reach for it when Gil called, “Dress-up time!” and Liza said “Strip.”

They yanked Lucy into outfit after outfit. Zipped zippers and buttoned buttons. Yeses got tossed in one pile. Nos in another.

An hour later, both piles reached waist high and Lucy stood in the center of the room, staring into a stand-up mirror with a glossy wood frame. A sequined headband was wrapped around her head, three black feathers sticking straight up in the air. Gil stood behind her, poking at one of the feathers, making it bounce back and forth.

“But it looks so . . . ,” Lucy started to say. “Silly.” But then again, what did she know? Apparently not much.

Lucy’s phone buzzed again from the back pocket of her jeans, which were in a ball on the floor. She started to reach for it but Gil was standing in her way.

“I know,” Gil said. “It’s not quite it. . . .” Gil took the headband off Lucy’s head.

Lucy looked over to one corner; five wedding dresses and one ivory-colored satin suit were hanging in the closet. “Wow, someone really likes to get married. . . .”

“Ruby did, six times in fact
.
”

“Who’s Ruby?” Lucy said.

“Olivia’s grandmother,” Gil said. And then gave her a pointed look. A we-did-not-have-that-talk-we-had-earlier look. “This was her house.”

“Bought for her by one man while she was married to someone else,” Liza said.

“Now
that’s
a Heartbreaker,” said Gil.

“And one powerful bitch,” said Liza.

Olivia’s eyes flashed. “She used to be anyway,” she said.

Olivia dragged a beautiful, dark wood trunk to the center of the room. There was a brass plaque affixed to the front.
BIRDS
was carved on it in fancy, gothic letters.

Gil opened it. Lucy peeked over her shoulder. From amongst the many bird items within (sparkly pins, necklaces, a nest made of gold wire), Gil selected another headband, this one a simple black band on which was perched a very real-looking bright yellow bird with its wings ever so slightly outstretched. She put the band around Lucy’s head. Lucy stared at herself in the mirror. Her bangs flopped over one eye. She pushed them out of the way. The bird looked as though it had just landed on her head, or was just about to fly away. Gil stood next to the mirror and nodded.

“Yeah, that’s it, I think,” she said. “It gives you a Snow White kind of vibe. And with the hair and everything . . .”

Lucy reached up and lightly touched the bird. “Is it a costume party?”

Olivia and Liza just laughed.

“Insofar as every party is a costume party, yes,” said Olivia. “But otherwise, no.”

“Oh . . . ,” Lucy said. “But it looks . . .”

“I know,” Gil said. “Sort of crazy . . .”

“. . . but that’s the point,” Olivia said.

Gil reached out and replaced the yellow bird headband with one with a red bird. Then she took the red one off and put the yellow one back on and nodded. “Yellow.”

Olivia stared at it. “Something’s missing.” She reached down into the box, rifling deep. She stood back up, delicately holding a yellow feather identical to the three that were already sticking out of the bird’s tail. “
Four
is the most powerful number in nature. There are four seasons, four phases of the moon, and most important”—she reached out and tucked the fourth feather into the tail of Lucy’s bird—“four chambers to a heart.” Olivia stepped back. “There.”

“A guy is going to fall in love with me because I’m wearing a four-feathered bird on my head?” said Lucy.

“Of course not,” Olivia said. “That extra tail feather is just a little nod to Mother Nature. As for the bird, no, a guy won’t fall in love with you
because
you’re wearing it. But a guy might come talk to you because of it if you manage to stop looking so uncomfortable. . . .” She gave Lucy a sly smile. “The fact that you’re doing something different will make people think you
know something
that they don’t. And maybe they’ll want to find out what it is. Also it gives them something to talk about. You don’t have to use a bird, of course.” She opened the trunk and began pulling things out as she named them. “You could use a big, sequined apple or a pair of plastic monster hands. It’s all just bait.” She tossed a handful of rubber eyeball rings onto the floor. They bounced across the dark wood.

Liza walked up behind Lucy with a blue-and-white-checkered dress. “Put this on,” she said.

Then she pushed Lucy to the side so she could look at herself in the mirror. “It’s like this: Most guys are scared shitless. Even more shitless than you are.” She looked Lucy in the eye and smiled ever so slightly.

Lucy fumbled with the tiny buttons, then tied the cotton belt around the waist. She stared at herself in the mirror. She looked like she was about to go work at a fairy-tale-themed diner. Olivia was shaking her head. “Yeah, too polarizing. Perfect for the guy with a fairy-tale fetish. But fetish freaks hardly ever invest, not with their hearts anyway. . . .”

Lucy started to take the dress off.

Olivia continued. “It’d be awfully convenient if we could just go up to all of them ourselves, but there are still those guys who like to think it’s all their idea. The problem is, lots of guys are too scared to approach a girl because they have no idea what they’re supposed to say when they get there.”

“So what are you supposed to do then?” said Lucy.

“You help them out a little.” Liza shrugged. “Wear something they can make a joke about or comment on. Giving a guy an easy opening line is often the difference between him standing, staring, wishing he could talk to you and actually being able to do it. Then—and this is kind of the best part—the fact that he’s been able to approach you is going to make the littlest, scrawniest loser feel like a big, brave, manly man. Even though you made it easy for him to do it, that’s not what he’s going to remember. He’s just going to remember feeling like he was hot shit there for a minute, and he’s going to want to be around you so he can continue reveling in his hot-shittiness.”

“Okay,” Lucy said. “But then what happens after that?” She took a breath. “Is that when the magic comes in?”

Liza and Olivia looked at each other and smiled. But Gil caught Lucy’s eye. She walked toward her with a navy slip dress. When Lucy took it, Gil winked.

Lucy thought it was a just-you-wait wink, but she could not be sure.

Lucy stood there, the dress hanging limply in her hand.

“That’s called a
dreeesss,
” Liza said slowly. “You put it on over your head, Lucy, and then you wear it places.”

Lucy shook her head and rolled her eyes. She pulled the dress on. It was made of a thin T-shirt material, clingy and swishy in just the right places. Would Alex like her in a dress like that?

“It’s . . . ,” Lucy said. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine. She kind of thought he would.

Olivia handed her a pair of navy satin ballet flats that somehow fit just right. Lucy stared at herself in the mirror, wearing that tiny little navy dress, her hair tousled, eyes smudgy and lips looking wet, a bird perched on her head like it was just landing, or about to fly away.

The three were looking over her shoulder, nodding. “Perfect.”

A
t the end of last year, Alex had invited Lucy to a party being thrown by some random girl he had a class with. He said she’d just come up to him and told him she really wanted him to be there. The girl wasn’t flirting; she had a girlfriend. She just thought he’d be a good person to have at her party.

That kind of thing happened to Alex all the time—he always got invited places because he just seemed like the kind of guy who got invited places.

It was not like that for Lucy. There was nothing terribly wrong with her, like a bad smell, or fleas, or a propensity for getting drunk and throwing up on things, that would have made her an undesirable guest. People were happy to invite her places when they were trying to pad a Facebook invite or even out a boy-girl ratio. But she was never the top of anybody’s list. Not that Lucy minded really. Parties made her stomach hurt. There was always just so much
pressure
to be funny and interesting and loud and fun. She avoided them when she could. But at the end of last year when Alex had invited her to come to one, of course she had to say yes.

Within thirty seconds of walking in the door, Alex started chatting to some guys he knew. Lucy had hovered by his side for a while, but then the guys had started talking about girls and their hotnesses (not Alex, although he’d laughed when someone had made a joke about a very breasty freshman) so she’d gone and gotten a cup of some gross punch stuff and spent the rest of the party taking tiny sips and trying to find ways to look busy. She walked from room to room, pretending like she was looking for someone; she stood in the bathroom line even when she didn’t have to go; she texted Tristan a whole lot and called her voice mail a couple times even though she knew she didn’t have any.

But that night, walking into that party with Olivia, Liza, and Gil, felt like a whole other thing. Lucy could feel the heat of a hundred eyes on them, but instead of getting that sick feeling in her gut, she felt something else, higher up, a kind of sizzling. It pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. And while she did not think that they’d used their magic to make the perfect sexy strutting song start playing just as they came into the main room, the fact was, the song
had
changed, and it
was
perfect. And for just a moment Lucy couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if this really were her life.

It only lasted a couple of minutes though, that feeling. Then she thought she heard someone make a bird noise (although they could have just been sneezing). And she thought she heard someone say the word
nest
(although it could have been
best
or
vest
). She turned to the side and saw two incredibly tall, blonde girls whispering and maybe possibly looking at her.

Her face started burning. She reached up and slid the headband off her head. She held it down at her side. The bird’s beady little eyes stared up at her.

Lucy’s phone started buzzing inside the little red purse that Olivia had given her to carry. When she was sure none of the girls was looking at her, she opened her purse and looked inside. Four texts from . . . her heat sank: Tristan. The first three sent hours before.

Hey, where are you, bud? I’m at the bottom of your driveway . . .

Have already made it through 4 l-pops.

All I have left now is grape. YIK. Are you coming down?

Bud, are you okay?

She had three missed calls from him too.

Lucy had completely forgotten they’d had plans.
Sorry sorry sorry!!
She typed quickly.
Something happened I am okay will text you later. Sorry. Sorry!

“Come on, Lucy,” Gil whispered. She linked her arm through Lucy’s arm and pulled her forward as Lucy tossed her phone back in the bag.

Olivia led the way through the house. People kept calling out her name, Liza’s name, Gil’s name. They slowed down for hugs and cheek kisses, but they never stopped.

They went through the back door, out onto a brick patio. A group of a dozen or so people was sprawled out around a giant outdoor table, in white plastic patio chairs, sipping from beer bottles. The table was covered in plastic cups. One of the cups seemed to be mildly on fire, but no one noticed or cared. Beyond that was a giant aqua-colored pool lit up from underneath and next to it was a hot tub, the steam hovering over the water, a tangle of bodies in each of them.

“Okay,” Olivia said. “So here’s what you need to . . .” Olivia suddenly stopped and pointed at the bird headband clutched in Lucy’s fist. “What’s going on there?”

“It was itchy,” Lucy said.

“Look around you, Creamsicle.” Olivia pulled her back against the wall of the house. “See that girl?” She pointed at a tan girl barely covered in strips of yellow ribbon. “And that girl?” A girl in a gold bikini was by the pool, obviously posing. “And that one?” A tall girl with huge, dark eyes and a giant Afro was sipping something pink. “You’re a beautiful little lemon muffin. So are they. So are most girls whether they know it or not. But beauty alone doesn’t get you anything. The point of bait isn’t just to make it easy for guys to talk to you and make you look like you ‘know things.’ It’s like a maaaagical visibility cloak. It makes you visible when otherwise you might not be. . . .”

“It’s magic?” Lucy said.

Olivia just smiled, took the headband, and put it back on Lucy’s head. “There,” she said. “Now someone might see you.”

“And there’s nothing to be scared of when you’re with us,” Gil said quietly.

“Well, if it isn’t my three favorite people!”

Lucy looked up.

“Paisley!” Gil said.

Off to the side a guy was staring at them. He had a wide mouth and wide-spaced, ice-blue eyes, and the way the bones in his face were made it easy to imagine that his skull was in there, but in a beautiful way, not a science-dissection way. A pair of giant, white headphones hung around his neck; the cord was being held by a tiny, gorgeous girl dressed all in white who was perched on his lap.

“Paisley, come meet our brand-new friend,” Olivia said.

Paisley stood, lifting the girl up with him, then placed her back in the chair. She held on to the headphone cord. He took the headphones from around his neck and put them over her ears. Then he patted her on the head. She sat there blinking her enormous eyes, her mouth curled down into a pudgy little pout. He turned and made his way toward them, slowly and gracefully like he was doing an underwater ballet.

“Hello, lovelies,” he said. He pulled Olivia, Liza, and Gil in for a hug.

“And hello, brand-new friend,” Paisley said. “And who might you be?”

“This is Lucy,” Gil said. “She . . .”

“No, I’m not
‘the bitch’
who
stole
anyone’s anything,” Liza said loudly. Lucy turned. Liza had spun around and was pointing at a girl with a long, blonde braid draped over one shoulder standing a couple feet away with two friends huddled behind her. “Boyfriends are not brand-fucking-new MacBooks. If anyone’s boyfriend left anyone, he did so because he wanted to. And you”—Liza pointed to the friends—“would be wise to put a muzzle on your friend here, lest she embarrass herself with that mouth of hers.” Liza reached out and grabbed the girl under the chin and gave the girl’s face a little shake. “Anyway.” Liza turned just as she was slipping a container of what looked like lip balm back into her purse. She blinked innocently. “You were saying?”

Paisley caught Lucy’s eye and raised a perfect black eyebrow. “They’re a nonstop party, these girls, no?” He smirked at Lucy. Lucy gave him a tiny smile back.

“When are you going to Tokyo again?” Gil asked. She turned to Lucy and said, “Paisley is being flown in by the guy at Insurance Office.”

“Why’s an insurance office flying you to Tokyo?”

Paisley laughed.

“Um, hellew, it’s a very important club?” the girl in white called out from her chair, where she’d been eavesdropping.

Liza put her arm around Lucy. “Lucy probably hasn’t even heard of you.”

Lucy stared at her feet. “I haven’t heard of a lot of things.”

When she looked back up, Paisley was smiling at her. “The less random stuff you hear about, the more room in your ears for music, that’s what I always say. The show was supposed to be next week, but they moved it up a week. I’m leaving tonight. Heading to the airport in oh . . .” He tapped the empty spot on his wrist where a watch would have been. Then took a shiny black phone out of his pocket and poked at it. Then shook it. “Hmmm,” he said. “Guess it wasn’t fire resistant after all. Vivs, sweetie, how much time do I have?” he called out behind him.

“You were supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago,” the girl yelled back.

“In fifteen minutes ago, apparently,” he said. “Hey, does your bird speak Japanese, Bird Girl? You and birdie want to come to Tokyo?”

“Um,” Lucy said. She knew she was expected to flirt back then. To sass it up the way Liza would have. “We can’t. Birdie has a fear of flying,” Lucy said. She cringed at hearing herself.

But Paisley just smiled. “You—” He pointed at Lucy, swirled his finger around like he was stirring something in the air. “You are refreshingly adorable. I like you.” Then he turned back toward the girl in white. “Vivs, would you tell the car service we’ll be outside in, like, two minutes?” The girl in white nodded and smiled then, like being asked to do something for Paisley was the biggest honor of her life.

“Finally,” she said. “We get to leave this lame place.”

“Oh that poor girl,” Gil whispered to Lucy, shaking her head.

Paisley turned toward Lucy as he passed. He looked straight at her, then up at the bird on her head. “Hey, little birdie, tell your friend I said it was very nice to meet her. Can you do that for me, birdie?” He reached out and pet it
.
Then turned to go.

“Chirp chirp,” Lucy said. She wasn’t sure it was loud enough to hear.

And as he walked, Paisley broke out laughing like this was the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

“Too bad,” Liza said. “If it weren’t for the obvious, he could have been a good Chrys for you.”

“Chrys?”

“Chrysalis Heart,” Olivia said. “The one you break that changes you.”

“But I’m . . . I mean, I’m sure I’m not his type. I’m not nearly . . .”

“Cool enough?” Liza finished. “But that’s entirely the point. I think you misunderstand who likes who and why. I mean, what Paisley wouldn’t like about you is your lack of a penis, not your lack of coolness.”

“Oh,” said Lucy. She blushed.

“Aw, you thought he was flirting with you, didn’t you?” Liza said. And then she laughed.

“There are two mistakes so many girls make when they get past the initial flirting stage and are trying to get a guy long term,” said Olivia. “She’ll think a guy will love her if she’s similar to him, so she’ll pretend to like the same movies or the same music or the same whatevers. Or she’ll think a guy will like her if she fawns over him and giggles and coos at everything he says. Thing is, you can maybe get a guy to like you that way, kind of, a little bit. But if we’re talking long-term love, it doesn’t really work like that.”

Lucy felt her stomach tighten. “How does it work then?”

Olivia smiled. “Pick someone, Li-Li.”

Liza tapped her lip. “The dude over there, who thinks it’s open-mic night.” Liza pointed through the glass doors toward a tall, painfully skinny guy, in a bright green T-shirt with a picture of his own face printed on it. Both his real face and his T-shirt face showcased a mouthful of crooked teeth and a pair of enormous ears. He was standing in the center of a little group of people talking animatedly.

“Gil,” Olivia said. “Show her how it’s done.”

Gil nodded, then looked at Lucy and winked.

“Watch and learn, ginger chew,” Olivia said.

They walked through the sliding-glass doors and stood off to the side about fifteen feet away from where he was in the middle of telling a story. The half-dozen people surrounding him were hanging on his every word. “So, this is me,” he was saying. He started dancing, arms up, eyes squeezed shut. “And this is her . . .” He stuck his butt out and shook it around. “Moral of the story?” He did some complicated hand gestures that made no sense to Lucy. “Guess that’s just what the ladies like.” Then he winked. Everyone burst out laughing. A guy reached out and gave him a fist bump. A pretty girl with wavy, brown hair, who’d been standing up near the front laughing loud and hard, was staring up at him blinking her big, round, googly eyes.

“You are
soo freaking funny,
” she said. “Seriously, I just peed a little!”

The guy raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, not in a gross way,” she said quickly. “I’m just kidding. I was making a joke too! But yours are funnier.”

The guy shrugged. “Thanks, babe.” He gave her the up and down, but looked bored.

Olivia leaned over toward Lucy and whispered, “A guy might kind of like a girl at first because she seems to like him for whatever everyone likes him for, for the obvious stuff, but if you want him to feel like you are his air, his water, and his light in the long term, that’s not really gonna cut it.”

Gil slipped between the guy and the girl. Gil’s face had transformed, every bit of sweetness and warmth was gone. “Good job with the jokes there,” Gil said. Her voice sounded different too, deeper. “Very clever.” But the way she was talking, it sounded like she didn’t think he was clever at all.

The guy stared at her with this strange look on his face, part surprised, part hurt, part interested, and entirely confused.