To Lynn Bauer, anam cara, for always being on my side
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Debbi Michiko Florence
Sneak Peek of Sweet and Sour
Copyright
Heartbreak is for suckers.
Smart people protected their hearts, and I wasn’t stupid. Far from it. I locked my heart in a vault and buried it where nobody could trample on it. Which was why even though Elliot Oxford dumped me right before Christmas break, my heart was still whole.
Two weeks later, I’d made it through the entire first day back at school without any mention of Elliot. My best friend, Keiko Carter, hadn’t brought him up once. She’d texted me while I was at my dad’s in Texas for the holidays to see if I was okay. But I didn’t answer. And after several long, “meaningful” looks from her at lunch, it looked like she’d taken the hint. Now all I had to do was avoid Elliot at newspaper club. It wasn’t as if we had to work together. Ignoring him was going to be a piece of cake.
Unfortunately, I ran into Elliot on the way to my locker after school. And I mean literally.
I rounded a corner too quickly in my rush to get to Ms. Fontes’s classroom, and Elliot and I crashed into each other. My messenger bag slipped off my shoulder and thudded to the ground. We both leaned down to reach for it at the same time and knocked heads.
“Ow!” I straightened and rubbed my forehead.
“It was an accident,” Elliot said, handing me my bag. I snatched it from him. He was the last person I wanted to talk to.
His eyes traveled over me. “You cut your hair. And colored it.”
“Way to state the obvious,” I grumbled. I tugged the shorter turquoise strands. While I often dyed my hair when I was upset, this time I’d just wanted a fresh start: new year, new shade. Or at least that’s what I’d told myself.
“Right.” Elliot pressed his mouth into a straight line.
I hefted my bag onto my shoulder as we stood there awkwardly.
“Are you heading to newspaper club?” he asked.
“Why? Did you hope I’d drop it?”
Elliot frowned. I used to think that furrow between his eyebrows was cute. Not anymore. “Why do you have to be so angry all the time?” he asked.
“Why can’t you stop judging people?”
“It’s not judgment. It’s observation. A great journalist is a great observer. You should know that.”
Oh, he was going to go there again? “A great journalist is also objective.”
“Something you can’t be if you’re shooting angry flames out of your eyes all the time.”
“That’s physically impossible,” I snapped.
“That’s called a metaphor,” Elliot said calmly.
Gah! I hated when he got all condescending. I decided to skip my locker. I pivoted and stalked to newspaper club. Alone. The way I liked it.
I swooped into the room and took a quick look around. Ms. Fontes, our sponsor, wasn’t here yet. She always ran out for a coffee after school but left the door unlocked for the rest of us. I counted seven, so only Elliot was missing.
Passing the table I used to share with Elliot, I made my way to the opposite end of the room and sat next to Isabella Baker.
“Hey,” she said. She wore gold eye shadow that sparkled against her dark brown skin. “Oh! I love your hair!”
“Thanks.” I smiled.
“Did you have a good break?”
“Pretty good.” I’d spent the entire two weeks at my dad’s. My first Christmas away from home, without both of my parents together. At least the weather in Texas hadn’t been too different from Southern California. “How was yours?”
“Stellar! My sister came home from college, and she helped me with my fashion designs.” Isabella’s eyes flitted behind me. “Where’s Elliot?”
Oh. I’d forgotten about this part. I’d have to actually tell people we broke up. “I’m not sure,” I said.
“There he is!”
I turned, and yep, there he was. He strolled in, and when I saw him this time, from a distance without him right in my face, I was able to check him out. He wore a blue-and-green plaid button-down with cargo pants and Vans. His chestnut-brown hair was, as usual, a little long, but I’d liked it like that. It always smelled like coconut and was so soft. My chest tightened. I’d never touch his hair again. I quickly swung back around in my seat.
Isabella made a small sound when Elliot sat across the room at our old table.
“Are you two fighting?” she whispered.
I liked Isabella. I admired her writing style and fashion sense. We both favored T-shirts with sayings and bold graphics. Today mine was the Sandra Oh quote IT’S AN HONOR JUST TO BE ASIAN, while Isabella wore her BIG IS BEAUTIFUL shirt. Except while I paired my tees with jeans, she usually wore hers with colorful skirts.
It was better to come clean. As Keiko always said, rip that Band-Aid off.
“We broke up,” I said at a normal volume.
Isabella gasped. Caitlin and Laurel at the next table glanced at me and then at Elliot. I followed their gaze. He was talking with Carlos and Thea, who usually sat with us. Him. Sat with him, I mentally corrected.
“What happened?” Isabella asked. She had that same concerned look Keiko had had when I told her the news the day before I’d left for my dad’s. “You two were so perfect together.”
Perfect? There was no such thing. I’d made a big mistake with Elliot, thinking our relationship would work because he was cute and we both wanted to be writers. Relationships were a waste of time. Look at my parents. They’d bragged about their meet-cute storybook romance, had a Hawaiian destination wedding, and celebrated their anniversaries with extravagant gifts. Sixteen years and a billion arguments later, they got a divorce.
Fortunately, Ms. Fontes walked into the room just then, holding her giant reusable mug of iced coffee. I was relieved not to have to continue the conversation with Isabella but also glad to have it out in the open. Maybe then nobody else would ask about Elliot.
“Good afternoon, reporters!” Ms. Fontes smiled and leaned against her desk. “Last semester you learned the aspects of putting together a newspaper. Researching, interviewing, writing, revising, and also design, layout, and production. This semester I’m going to push you out of your comfort zones. Your first assignment will be to try out an area of journalism you haven’t necessarily gravitated toward in the past. And it’s due on my desk next Thursday. I know that’s not a lot of time, but to put out a paper, you will need to learn to work fast. And yes, I’m aware that we aren’t actually putting out a paper. This club is all about learning so when you get to high school, you’ll be ready for the real thing.” Ms. Fontes looked down at her notebook and started calling out ass
ignments.
“Elliot, sports.”
I held in a snicker. I definitely knew more about sports than Elliot. Most people knew more about sports than Elliot. This was going to be entertaining.
“Ben, you’ll handle the Pacific Vista beat, covering school announcements. Caitlin, write an article, any topic, at least two hundred and fifty words long.”
Caitlin tapped her pencil against her sketchbook. She was our resident photographer and artist.
Ms. Fontes continued. “Thea, you write great movie reviews. Try a book review or two. Brody, instead of the sports page, give me an opinion piece. And it can’t be your opinion of the Super Bowl.”
Everyone laughed, including Brody, who gave Ms. Fontes two thumbs-up.
“Carlos, try your hand at a profile of the new science teacher, Ms. Shah.”
Carlos, the only eighth grader in our club made up of seventh graders, scribbled in his notebook. He, Elliot, and I usually wrote feature articles. I focused on environmental and cultural issues while he and Elliot wrote mostly about local and school news.
“Jenna”—Ms. Fontes nodded at me—“I’d like to see you write a personal essay.”
A loud rushing of air filled my ears. Personal essay? I pondered the words like they were a foreign language. Personal essay. Personal. Essay. What was the point of writing something like that for a newspaper? Personal essays were all about feelings and little stories and other useless stuff. They weren’t news. And writing about feelings would mean, well, feeling them. There was no point. I was all about facts and objectivity. That’s why I wanted to be a reporter!
I was so lost in my head that I missed the rest of the assignments.
I turned to Isabella. “What did you get?” She usually wrote about fashion, music, and pop culture.
She sighed. “Feature article, investigative piece.”
That was an assignment that would have been perfect for me. “Any ideas about what you’ll work on?”
Isabella shook her head, her dark curls bouncing. “You?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a personal essay in a newspaper.”
“Sure you have. Like those Modern Love essays in the New York Times.”
“The what?”
Isabella smiled. “My mom loves them. Essays written by everyday people about their experiences with love and hope.”
I jiggled my leg. That sounded horrible and way too personal. But I didn’t say so to Isabella. “Hmm,” I said instead. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen those.”
“Look them up. Some of them are pretty amazing,” she said. “Now, help me figure out what I should investigate.”
I nodded. “If it were my assignment, I’d look into where the funds came from to renovate our cafeteria over the summer. I mean, have you seen it? It’s super fancy. I heard one anonymous donation covered the whole thing. It had to have been huge. And the old cafeteria was fine. I mean, why not use the money for something more important, like updating our computers or remodeling our sad library?” Or funding a real school newspaper.
“Oooh! Good idea!” Isabella scribbled on her paper, then stopped. “Except you meant that as an example.”
I shrugged. “It’s a good angle, and it’s not like I’ll get to write it. Go ahead. And if you want help …” I let the rest of the sentence go unsaid.
Isabella raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Shocking.” Elliot and I had quite a reputation for being competitive and secretive about our articles. It had gotten so heated that Ms. Fontes started assigning us articles to work on together to teach us teamwork and how to cowrite.
“Okaaaaay,” Isabella said, dragging out the word like she was afraid I’d take it back.
“You’ll do great,” I said. “Look for an original angle. Try to find out from the office staff who the donor was. Even if it was anonymous, someone has to know where the money came from.”
“Thanks, Jenna! And seriously, read some of those Modern Love essays. The writing is great, and they’re from a world-renowned paper, so you know they’re the real deal.”
“Right.” I glanced at Ms. Fontes, who was engrossed in a conversation with Elliot. I still thought personal essays did not belong in a paper. It made zero sense. I would talk to her on Wednesday and get her to give me a different assignment.
I was an excellent student, and Ms. Fontes knew it. I was sure she’d totally be okay with me doing something else.
When I got home that afternoon, Keiko was waiting on my front porch. Most days after school, she played basketball with her boyfriend, Conner Lassiter, and his friends Doug Nolan and Teddy Chen at the park. Usually after that, she and Conner walked their dogs, but since we hadn’t hung out just the two of us since before Christmas break, she’d promised to come to my house today. It was nice to have some time alone with her.
We headed straight to my room, where we had to step over piles of dirty clothes, books, my mostly unpacked suitcase, and pens scattered across the floor.
I threw myself onto my unmade bed and stared up at the ceiling. Keiko sat down next to me, surveying the disaster. The navy-blue quilt shoved to the foot of my mattress was not unusual. The stuff all over the floor was. Keiko knew better than to comment, but I could read the question on her face.
“It’s not what you think,” I said, sitting up next to her.
She turned to me. “And what do I think?”
“That this”—I waved my hand at my floor—“is because of Elliot.”
“It’s not?”
“No!” I softened my voice. “I’m fine.”
“Jenna,” she said. “It’s only been two weeks. You’re allowed to be upset.”
I grabbed my teddy bear—the one my dad had won for me at the county fair before he and Mom got divorced last year—and squeezed it to my chest.
Keiko gently took the bear out of my chokehold. “You know you can always talk to me.”
I sighed loudly. The thing was, I wasn’t upset. “I know. But I’m telling you, I’m fine.”
“You haven’t talked about the breakup at all.” She frowned. “At least not with me.”
It wasn’t like I had anyone else to talk to. “Like I said, I’m fine.”
Because Keiko was my best friend, she didn’t argue. Instead she asked, “You want help cleaning up?”
I tossed dirty clothes into the laundry basket in the closet while Keiko stacked my books back on the shelf, in alphabetical order by author’s last name. She knew me well. Just as I closed my closet door, Keiko’s phone chimed with a familiar text tone.
I glanced at her, but Keiko continued straightening my books.
“You can look at your phone, you know,” I said. “Seriously, Keiko, I promise you, I’m not that kind of fragile and you know it. Tell Conner I say hey.”
Conner and Keiko had gotten together a few weeks after Elliot and I had, but unlike me and Elliot, they’d been friends for years before. And they were still together.
Keiko smiled as she read the message and then dashed off a quick response. She glanced up at me, an overly concerned look crossing her face.
“Keiko,” I said, my voice a warning. “I’m not a kid anymore. This isn’t my parents’ divorce. It was a middle school relationship. It’s not a big deal. No offense.”
She studied me a bit longer. I plastered a smile on my face.
“Okay,” she said. “But I’m here for you if you want to talk.”
I turned to empty out the rest of my suitcase. Talking didn’t help anything. During my parents’ divorce, I’d talked and talked to Keiko. Until Audrey—Conner’s sister, who used to be our other best friend—would join us. She was so judgmental, I hadn’t wanted to talk in front of her. So I’d go dead silent. And I’d learned a valuable lesson. Not talking about it was better. I didn’t have to think about the divorce or feel anything. Not talking about it meant I could forget about it. And I intended to deal with Elliot the same way.
While Keiko went to grab it, I turned up my computer speakers and blasted P!nk, which I’d been playing on repeat the entire holiday break.
When Keiko returned, rolling the shredder in front of her, I grabbed a small purple shoebox from under my bed. The loud music kept Keiko from asking any questions. She was smart. She’d figure out what I was doing without us having to talk.
As Keiko sat down next to me on the floor, I took a deep breath, opened the box, and riffled through the contents: articles Elliot and I had worked on together in newspaper club, a card for our one-month anniversary, receipts from meals we’d had together. I had the business card from the coffee shop we’d gone to on our first date, and a cardboard coaster from Islands, the restaurant where we’d shared a guacamole burger and fries for our one-month anniversary.
Without a word, Keiko plugged in the shredder. I handed her the stack of paper, and she fed it into the machine, destroying everything. I wished I could shred my memories into oblivion.
I pulled out the scarf I’d bought but hadn’t given Elliot for Christmas. It was green and yellow, his favorite colors. Keiko held out her hand. I shook my head. It wouldn’t go through the shredder. But I didn’t want to keep it, either. Keiko gave me a meaningful look and shook her open hand at me again. I blew out a breath and handed it over. Then she stood and bolted out of my room with it. I figured she’d gone to dump it in the trash can in the garage.
I glanced into the box, which wasn’t quite empty. At the bottom was the pen Elliot had let me use in newspaper club and said I could keep. I picked it up and twirled it. It had great balance and smooth ink. I’d keep this. It wasn’t as if a person could be sentimental over a pen.
I quickly shoved it into my messenger bag just as Keiko returned, empty-handed. She reached over and turned down the volume of the music.
“Let’s talk, Jenna,” she said, sitting on my bed.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other.” Keiko left out the “anymore,” but it was implied.
Just Be Cool, Jenna Sakai Page 1