As the bus left Spoleto behind, Jessa curled into a seat with her iPod and Portrait of the Artist, and just melted into the words, letting Stephen’s world become her world, his heartbreak and confusion her own.
An hour or so later, a passage in the book made her pause. She clicked off the Sarah Brightman humming low on her iPod and scanned the beautiful lines in the novel again, her eyes resting on the line:
A day of dappled seaborne clouds.
In the book, Stephen had realized that words, the sheer beauty of them, could alter the glowing sensible world, turn it into a prism of language. She read the passage again, its taste sugary in her mind. Words—and, for her, music. The way she could wash herself with sound, with words, with the luscious order of them—so free, but put there on purpose, in a journal, in a song. Her Harry Potter invisibility cloak from the real world. She preferred the words, the music, to dust-covered reality. She saw the world the way Stephen did—in all its crazy, beautiful disorder.
Love—her dictionary definition. This was love.
Not everyone saw life the way she saw it, not everyone stared out a moving bus window and saw the world’s sherbet colors, its gauzy, shifting clouds like wraiths, full of beauty and sadness. An eternal, tumbling world. But she did. She saw the world this way, read its pain between the beautiful lines.
She pulled out her phone and texted Carissa:
Love is the beauty of this world pressed nose to nose with all its pain.
She had tears in her eyes—tears. And they weren’t about Sean. They weren’t about her loss of him or even the beauty of olive groves slipping by outside. They were just tears, for all of it and none of it; for being so very, very small in a world so very, very big. For noticing. When most of the bus around her was probably just blissfully wondering what they would have for lunch. Sean always told her she was too sensitive, an “overthinker,” but she realized this was just the start of it. She was an overnoticer, an overfeeler. She walked around like an exposed nerve, her skin alive with millions of tiny little antennae, when he just walked around, fully armored, ensconced in his own singular world.
She added another line to her text and hit send.
Boyfriend: someone who gets that I see the world in this ridiculous, beautiful overfelt way, knows how necessary it is to me. Who maybe, just maybe, feels it too.
She rattled a sigh out of her closed throat, blinked into the dry air of the moving bus. Mr. Campbell glanced up at her over his New Yorker and he knew. Somehow, he knew. She held up the book. He nodded, his smile barely there, just enough to tell her he knew.
#13: backstage
“Sean kissed Carissa!” Jessa shoved the envelope into Tyler’s face, which wasn’t very nice considering that he’d been three inches from a lip lock with Cameron. Still, he could come up for air to spare a minute for her. He’d been MIA since Spoleto. He and his little instruction manual.
She tapped her foot impatiently. The bus idled in the parking lot, waiting for them all to pee and choose whatever sugar or salt they needed for the rest of the trip back to Rome. Tyler and Cameron cuddled on a crumbling stone wall next to the gas station or rest stop or whatever they called these things in Italian. Or at least they had been cuddling, before Jessa stuck Reason #13 in Tyler’s face.
“Um, what?” Tyler plucked the paper from her hands.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Jessa said to Cameron. To Tyler, she said, “He kissed her. During Hamlet. Backstage. But I guess you already knew that. So what does her little instruction manual say about how to handle me for this juicy piece of information?”
Tyler sighed, rubbed his temples. “OK, I knew. I mean, even before the manual.”
“What!”
Cameron grabbed her handbag. “I’ll save your seat.” She kissed two fingers, then pressed the kissed fingertips to his nose. It would have taken some pliers and a court order to pull his eyes from her retreating back.
Jessa waited. “Um, Romeo? Do you mind explaining that you knew my boyfriend kissed my best friend and then, oh, forgot for, like, eleven months, to tell me?”
“I didn’t forget to tell you.” Tyler stood up and walked toward the store. “I’m getting some gummy bears.”
“Tyler!” Jessa followed him through the swinging doors. Jade and Christina passed them, giggling. Jade had a handful of little silver-wrapped chocolates, and Christina had an orange soda. Jessa couldn’t even look at orange soda anymore. She waited while Tyler pulled the three remaining sacks of gummy bears from the rack.
“Tyler Ramón Santos.”
“Ouch, the middle name? You need to calm down.”
Outside, she grabbed his arm and made him face her. “What don’t I know?”
He shifted his weight around, the gummy-bear bags crinkling against each other. “Yeah, OK—he kissed her. It was opening night…”
“We were together opening night!”
“Telling a story here!”
Jessa pinned her lips together with some undisclosed stash of willpower.
“You know how it goes,” Tyler told her, an edge of what must be annoyance in his voice. “We were all jumping around, congratulating each other, over-the-top opening night buzz, and they ended up backstage and they kissed. Probably a little longer than they should have. It wasn’t a big deal, really. Usual backstage stuff.” Tyler’s eyes drifted over Jessa’s shoulder, and she turned to see Cameron waving at him through the bus window. “We decided not to tell you. We didn’t want you freaking out over nothing.”
Jessa’s heart stilled a little. Everyone acted like puppies on speed backstage on opening night. It really wasn’t a big deal. She had actually planted a pretty big kiss on Kevin that night. On the cheek, but still, it bothered her that she was just finding out about it now. “I wouldn’t have freaked out.” Jessa waved back to Francesca, who was brandishing the frog at them spastically as she walked toward the bus. “I wouldn’t have freaked out.”
“Yeah.” Tyler steered her toward the bus. “No chance of that.”
***
Outside the hotel in Rome, Jessa sat cross-legged in the small rose garden, watching Dylan Thomas read over Reason #13. She sipped an espresso he had ordered for her from the little restaurant in the hotel lobby. The coffee tasted thick and bitter on her tongue, even with the milk she had added.
“I think she’s mostly just saying that she had an instinct she should have trusted. To tell you.”
“Tyler told her not to. That I would have freaked out.” Jessa held her head up to catch the slight wind that lifted her hair from around her face and cooled her neck.
“And would you have freaked out?” Dylan Thomas sipped his own coffee, eyes still on the letter.
“No. Everyone acts like idiots backstage after a show.” She sipped her coffee.
Dylan Thomas stared at her over the paper. “It really wouldn’t have bothered you?”
Jessa dropped her voice. “OK, yeah it would have.”
Over the lip of his cup, Dylan Thomas said, “So, there’s something to Carissa’s trusting-an-instinct theory.”
Jessa ran her finger around the ceramic edge of her coffee. “Um, I was wondering if you could have found a smaller coffee cup?”
“It’s a demitasse, you heathen.” He snapped off a piece of biscotti, dunked it, then popped it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “OK, we have a half hour before we have to go stare at another church or something. What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me what you think.” She nibbled her own almond biscotti.
“I think they were right to not tell you.”
“Traitor.” Jessa slumped into the stone of the garden wall.
He shook his head, his black hair falling a bit in his eyes.
Was it just her imagination or had his hair grown a bunch over the trip? She liked it a little longer, in his eyes a little. “Your hair looks good today.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “You’re changing the subject.”
She sat up. “I�
�m not.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“Your hair or changing the subject?” Jessa watched a butterfly settle on a nearby rose the color of cotton candy. She shivered, her bare arms suddenly cold.
“Their kissing.” Dylan Thomas tossed her his black sweatshirt.
“Because he isn’t supposed to kiss other girls when he’s supposed to be only kissing me. Sorry, I’m old fashioned that way.” She pulled the sweatshirt around her shoulders. It smelled like pastries, like the bakery they’d eaten breakfast in back in Spoleto.
Dylan Thomas handed the letter back. “I think there is a better question to be asking.” He finished his coffee and sat the cup and saucer on the low wall of the garden.
“What?”
“Why is she telling you now?”
Jessa shrugged. “Maybe there’s no point. Maybe I should just throw the rest of these in an Italian sewer or something.” Jessa stuffed the letter back into the envelope, the inked purple Reason #13 too bright against the white envelope.
“Now that would be trusting your instincts.”
***
Instruction: Trust Your Instincts!
Jessa didn’t throw the envelopes in an Italian sewer. She thought about it, but somehow that would only be giving Carissa her way, following her instruction, and she didn’t feel much like doing anything Carissa wanted from her right now.
Instead, she headed back to the room she was sharing with Lizzie Jenkins, a junior with a sense of humor so dry Jessa was pretty sure she was really a sixty-year-old masquerading as a teenager. When Jessa got back there, Lizzie was reading a David Sedaris book stretched out on her stomach on the bed by the window.
“I’m taking a quick nap,” Jessa told her.
“Not the nap police.” Lizzie didn’t look up from her book. “No need to register.”
Watching her, Jessa’s mind flooded with an image of Lizzie at the fifth-grade end-of-the-year barbecue before they all went on to Five Hills Middle School. Lizzie, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, on her belly by the little stream that ran through the park, picking stones out one by one, stacking them in a little pile by the water’s edge, the sunlight dappling her back through the thick oaks that lined the streambed. Rock monsters, she’d called them, when Paige Ryan asked her what on earth she was doing and said she better watch out because she was going to ruin her shirt.
“Do you remember your rock monsters?” Jessa sat on the edge of her bed.
Lizzie looked up, a smile pulling at her mouth. “Oh my god, rock monsters! How do you even remember that?”
“I just thought about our fifth-grade barbecue where you made them all along the stream at Memorial Park.” Jessa watched Lizzie remember, her face lighting like a designer had finally flipped the right switch, hit the right spot on stage.
“My brother and dad used to make them for me when I was little.” Lizzie sat up on the bed, flipped the book shut. “I was so afraid of water as a kid, afraid it would just swallow me up. So they’d line them up along rivers, next to lakes. To protect me. It’s sort of dumb.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s wild you remember that.”
“Sometimes I wonder how we’re not ten anymore.” Jessa suddenly wanted to lay herself next to that streambed, stack rocks and rocks until there were rock monsters all around her. She’d make some for Maisy when she got home.
“Well, I, for one, plan on always being ten.” Lizzie fished around in her backpack and pulled out a bottle of water and a bag of almonds. “Want some?”
Jessa chewed an almond, savoring the salt on her tongue.
“I remember something about you,” Lizzie said, then took a sip of her water. “That scar on your arm.”
Jessa grew warm. It had been Lizzie with her, that day in fourth grade on the field when she tried to sneak under the curl of chain link fence to get a red ball she’d lost. Snagged her arm on a jagged piece of fence. How had she forgotten it had been Lizzie? Lizzie had given her one of her socks to wrap around her arm to stop the bleeding.
“It’s kind of a boring story,” Jessa said, digging through her bag, avoiding Lizzie’s eyes.
Lizzie flipped her book open, sprawled back out on the bed. “Maybe.”
#14: competition piece
Somehow, once again, Jessa had underdressed. Both schools stood in the courtyard of the hotel, waiting for the bus to pick them up for Rome by Night, though she heard Rachel whisper to Kevin that it should actually be called Slut Fest by Night, with all the cleavage showing.
The other school was sporting a vast array of halter tops (which Jessa could never pull off; she would need an actual chest), tight denim, short skirts, and glossy makeup (again, never pull that off—she’d look like a rejected extra from Starlight Express). Jessa sighed. Her jeans were cute enough, but her shirt bagged in the wrong places. Not a good Rome by Night look. She eyed Tyler, all black leather and dark denim, his arm around petite Cameron who could wear a brown lunch bag and look cute but who wasn’t wearing a brown lunch bag. She was wearing a silver, gauzy tank that looked spun by fairies and some skinny black jeans.
“You look good,” Tyler told Jessa. “Are you wearing eyeliner?”
“Yes. Jessa own eyeliner,” she quipped in her best caveman voice, aware it came out bitchier than she meant it to. She should try to tone it down. Tyler was just being nice. But Cameron gleamed like a goddess in that silver tank top and Jessa didn’t feel like apologizing for her tone.
“OK, then.” Tyler widened his eyes. “We’ll save you a seat.” They moved away, Cameron looking like she’d rather get dental reconstruction than save Jessa a seat.
***
Suddenly, Rome became a jeweled city, something from The Wizard of Oz. The light seemed to disappear all at once, night replacing day in a blink. Jessa felt it in her chest, squeezing the little pillow of flesh around her heart. As the bus whirled them toward the Trevi Square, dozens of fountains lit the way, the ice-blue water against the marble figures becoming otherworldly, floating ghosts. Tall, stone buildings that would seem dirty in the daytime were suddenly magical palaces arching into the black sky, their windows swollen with yellow light.
The bus pulled to a stop in a wide parking lot, and after Francesca’s quick set of instructions and a nod from the frog, the students spilled out of the bus into the dewy haze of Rome at night. Jessa had noticed Giacomo slip off the bus well before Francesca stopped talking, noticed the slight skip of Francesca’s eyes toward his exit, the way her face seemed to tighten.
The square was alive with laughter and music. Couples strolled by with arms wound round each other, Vespas beeped their friendly horns, groups of Italian teenagers called loudly, their Italian thick and full. Tyler and Cameron disappeared almost instantly. She searched the group for Dylan Thomas. He’d been on the bus, up near the front, chatting with Mr. Campbell during the ride. Back at the hotel, he had mentioned getting gelato, finding a quiet place to hang out together.
“Hey.” Sean appeared next to her, hands in his pockets.
Jessa’s skin spread with warmth the way it always did when he was close, like he had some sort of radioactive ability to up her internal thermostat by a couple of degrees.
“You hanging by yourself?” He pulled on his jacket, and Jessa tried not to watch the long sweep of his arms into the sleeves, tried not to think about the way it used to feel to be wrapped up inside of them. She tried, and failed—miserably.
“I think I got kind of ditched.” She flipped open her bag and dug through it to have something to do. She didn’t even need anything out of it. She found a stray lip balm, uncapped it, pressed it to her lips.
“Where’s that Dylan kid you’re always with?”
She had not imagined the scissor edge to his voice. She popped the cap back on the Burt’s Bees. “Not sure.”
“Are you guys, like, together now or something?” He grabbed the Burt’s Bees and helped himself.
She snatched it back. �
��No. I mean, Dylan Thomas is the greatest. But, no, we’re not together…” She let her voice trail off. Let him think that she was adding “for now” on the end of that statement even if it was ridiculous to think of herself with Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas had an ex-girlfriend named Link who moved to Japan. For him to even notice Jessa she’d have to pierce her nose and add about twenty black long-sleeve shirts to her wardrobe.
“Right, right,” Sean said, his eyes scanning the square. The Trevi Fountain was breathtaking, striking—the horses charging out and away, lit up, emerging from the eerie blue of the water. “Sure. You want to go eat or something? The pizza here is really good. Even if it’s flat.”
“Isn’t all pizza flat?”
“You know, like almost no crust or whatever.” His eyes locked on to something over her shoulder and she turned, following his gaze. Natalie and Jamal were locked in an embrace next to the fountain, an embrace playing on the passion the fountain exuded, like they were performing a live, non-marble interpretation. Her hair looked white in the ghost light of the fountain, striking in its spill against the dark skin of Jamal’s arm.
“I saw them in Venice,” she said, her eyes on Sean’s face.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah. She broke up with me that first night there.”
“At least she broke up with you first.”
His eyes fell back on her, his shoulders sagging. He rocked back and forth over the cobblestones under his shoes.
“Do you think…” Jessa trailed off, her voice feeling like it was made of feathers. “Were you ever going to talk to me about that?”
“I’m talking to you.”
“About that?”
“I tried.”
“What?” Jessa pulled her own coat tighter into her, crossed her arms across her chest. “When?”
“In Florence. In the gardens. At that palace.”
Instructions for a Broken Heart Page 14