Silence. I may have just heard a pin drop one town over.
“Welcome to the nineties,” I whisper to Val.
“Pretty cool, right?” Derek unwinds the cord around the accordion folder and reaches inside. “We anticipate the project will be completed by early May, so even though I’m headed for Princeton—early decision—this fall, I and my fellow seniors can experience this new step forward for Ashland High. I have all the details in this binder.”
In a miracle of obedience, the auditorium remains quiet while Derek opens his binder. I watch closely as he reads the letter taped inside, then flips through the pages.
“Come on!” a kid shouts, but Derek ignores him. He keeps flipping.
Whiteness drains his face of color. By the look in his eyes, you’d think he was looking at photos of POWs—not matrimonial bliss.
“Derek?” The principal motions him to keep talking, and for probably the first time in his life, Mr. Future Politician is completely speechless. He throws the binder in his book bag and runs into the wings. Everyone goes back to talking at full level.
“Students, quiet down!” the principal says, but it’s useless. When an assembly has a hitch, chaos inevitably follows.
Val nudges my elbow. “What do you think that was all about?”
“I have no idea.”
Students are about to make a mass exodus, but Steve Overland jumps up to the stage. He gets much more applause than the principal.
“Hey, guys, what’s up?” Steve asks with his boyish, dimpled smile, the carefree grin of someone who has no real problems in his life. The principal taps him on the shoulder and points back to Steve’s seat.
“I just need one minute, sir. Sixty seconds.”
The principal feigns annoyance and backs away, but we all know it’s merely an act. It’s no secret that he got a serious bonus when the football team won the state championship. The principal wouldn’t dare anger his prized possession.
“So, let me tell you the real reason we’re up in this assembly,” Steve says.
Val and I trade looks—hers excited, mine confused.
“It’s somebody’s birthday in this room,” Steve coos into the mic. “Will the real Huxley Mapother please stand up?”
Huxley complies. She hides her head in faux embarrassment, a look she seems to have down pat. I slouch back in my chair.
Steve takes a deep breath. “I’m a little nervous.”
A random gaggle of girls in front cheer him on. He winks at them.
“Here goes nothing.” Steve takes his sweet time, but he can, because he’s Steve Overland, and who’s going to tell him to get off the stage? He begins singing some Frank Sinatra song that I’m sure gets played at every wedding in America.
My classmates go wild: standing up and whooping, clapping to the nonexistent beat. There’s at least one aww every five seconds. Steve’s a decent singer, but it’s just a stupid song. Huxley probably came up with this whole “spontaneous” scheme herself.
“Happy birthday, Hux,” he says in between breaths.
Now I feel like a POW.
8
People don’t shut up about Steve’s American Idol audition all morning. I hope they filled their Sweeping Fauxmantic Gesture quota for the day and will spare us any theatrics during lunch. I wait for Val outside the cafeteria, farther down the hall from the rush of students so she can actually find me. We usually walk over together, and I wonder what’s keeping her busy. I lean against a glass case holding Ashland High’s cherished football memorabilia. Some of the players in the black-and-white photos are cute, which is creepy since they’re grandpas now. I guess since the case didn’t feel all-American enough, the school put a photo of Huxley and Steve being crowned at homecoming in the center of the display. He wore his muddy football uniform to the dance. Everyone thought he would continue playing football in college, but he’s giving it up next year to attend Vermilion, a nearby university, to stay close to Huxley, who’s only a junior. Girls think he’s such a doting boyfriend; I think he’s beyond whipped.
Through the clutter of scurrying underclassmen, Val approaches. She’s not alone, though. An unmistakable puff of black hair peeks out over the crowd.
“Hey,” Val says.
“Hi,” I say back, my eyes darting between her and Ezra.
“Um, this is Ezra.”
He releases his hand from hers and shakes mine. “How goes it?”
“Good,” I say again, realizing that I’m being totally awkward, but not at all adorable.
I watch Val give Ezra the “hang test”: How long will he let her hand hang next to his before he holds it?
Ezra passes with flying colors. When he grabs her hand, she has to work overtime to restrain the joy gushing out of her. I’ve never seen her so happy.
I can’t believe it worked. I feel a pit of dread form in my stomach.
“When did this...?” I gesture at their hands.
“Between third and fourth period,” Val and Ezra say at the same time.
“Whoa,” he says. “That was kinda weird.”
Kinda? I wonder if they practiced this meeting with me to make sure their coupledom was extra gagworthy.
“Ezra came up behind me at the Coke machine after third period.”
“I had to meet this funny, awesome girl who loved movies as much as I do.”
“And then he bought me a Diet Coke!”
“You’re telling it wrong. I bought you the Diet Coke while we were talking. I didn’t have champagne on me, so I had to use an alternative carbonated beverage to woo you.”
Val beams with pride.
“So you guys are official. Already. After one Diet Coke.”
“I don’t live my life by labels,” Ezra says. He brushes a strand of hair out of Val’s face. “You make me want to be a better man.”
“I do?”
“That was from As Good as It Gets.”
“It’s my favorite,” Val says.
“You’re my favorite.”
I roll my eyes. Is he for real? If only Ezra knew how much romance was actually involved. How her movie knowledge was taken from the internet, condensed into a cogent outline and written by me. How he is just the closest available option who happened to have some spare change handy.
“Let’s eat. I’m starving!” I signal for the cafeteria.
Neither of them move. The pit of dread expands.
“What?” I ask.
Val scrunches her eyebrows together. “I’m going to eat with Ezra today.” She leans against his shoulder. Their PDA level is rapidly escalating.
“We have some catching up to do,” he says. His eyes go up and to the left. Val’s right. It’s both awkward and adorable.
“Oh.”
She gives me a look only I can read, silently pleading with me to go with it.
“Okay.” I manage my best fake smile. I tell myself that this is what Val wants, and that I’m happy she’s happy.
“It was good seeing you,” Ezra says. They walk into the cafeteria holding hands.
And so it begins. Val’s march toward the dark side.
I follow behind them, a commoner scrambling to her table. Across the cafeteria, Huxley’s laughter takes over the room, all attention drawn to her corner table, just as she prefers. She giggles into Steve’s broad chest, reacting to something probably not that funny. For a second, I think she’s laughing at me.
Steve pulls her in close and lights a candle atop a cupcake.
“I’ll talk to you later!” Val says to me, but I don’t believe it.
* * *
I come home to find my mom and dad in their usual positions in the living room: she’s watching TV on her overstuffed chair we call the Throne, and he’s reading the n
ewspaper on the couch. They make great roommates.
My mom waves me over to the Throne. Once she settles in, she won’t leave it until dinnertime. “Can you see how Diane is doing?”
“Did something happen?”
“Open up the paper on the dining table. To the engagement section.”
I scan the page of announcements. In the top right corner, I find the article in question. Sankresh Ramamurty, 25, engaged to Priya Ghosh, 25. I get a lump in my throat. My mom reads my next thought.
“Diane saw it this morning.”
I remember Sankresh’s brown skin next to Diane’s pale complexion, a Williamson genetic quality. I once joked that they would have the cutest butterscotch babies. “Sounds delicious!” Sankresh had said back, and then he pretended to take a bite out of Diane’s arm. They reminded me of Steve and Huxley, except they weren’t showing off for anyone. They were just being themselves.
I tiptoe to Diane’s room, my feet getting heavier with each step. I tap at her door with my index finger. No answer. I tap again.
“Diane, it’s Becca.”
The door swings open. “Hey,” she says. Diane has some light makeup on, and her hair’s pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’s beautiful. But I can’t help but notice the red puffiness around her eyes.
“How are you doing?”
“I’ve had better days,” she says. I’m glad to see her sarcasm still intact.
“I’m sorry.”
Diane shrugs. What can she say to that? “Thanks for feeling sorry for me”? She waves me to enter. Her room is spotless. I should take notes.
“I’m almost sorry for him, for having to marry that horse-faced woman.” Diane checks her skin in the mirror, verifies her face is not horse-shaped. I figured the knives would be out, though I suppose it’s better than a replay of when he first called off the wedding. I can still hear the screaming echoing in my ears. I just wish Diane had an in-between mode. “You know his mother set the whole thing up.”
“It’s an arranged marriage?”
“Obviously. He’s only marrying her to make his family happy. He’s a total coward. His mother will cut off his inheritance if he doesn’t marry an Indian girl. I wish I had known that earlier than six hours before my wedding, but whatever.”
I used to love hanging out with Sankresh and Diane. It was like having an older brother. He was teaching me how to play piano on a Casio keyboard he’d picked up at Goodwill. I threw it out the day he called Diane to break off the wedding.
He called. He didn’t even have the guts to face her in person.
“You’re better off.” I put a tentative hand on her shoulder.
“I know. But I had to learn that lesson sometime.”
My tentative hand becomes a back massager. Diane welcomes it. “I’m here if you ever want to talk about it.” I sound so unconvincing and fake, worse than a guidance counselor.
“I know you are. But I’m fine.”
“Don’t worry. One day, you’re going to find a great guy—”
“Stop it, B. Are you actually giving me the ‘one day’ speech? There won’t be a one day. I know the silver lining to what happened is that you were able to learn from my mistake. I thought Sankresh loved me, but he just wanted a Western fling before following tradition. I was used, just like everyone else. People just use relationships to get what they want: money, power, sex, connections, self-esteem.”
“Didn’t you date that guy in college because he had a car?” I ask. Diane rolls her neck forward, letting me work her upper back.
“Right. But it’s never about love. Did Erin, Aimee and Marian marry those cardboard-cutout snoozefests because it was true love, or because they all make a lot of money, and my friends wanted a hot husband to show off at their big parties in their McMansions?”
“Right.” Aimee’s and Marian’s husbands are pretty cool, though. Aimee and Bill went skydiving on their honeymoon, and Ted plays drums in a band. (Okay, Erin’s husband is a boring square, but two out of three isn’t bad.) Diane always had a blast hanging out with the group, even before they began pairing off. But now’s not the time to argue.
I run my fingernails along her shoulder blades. I saw a girl do it at a slumber party. It seems to do the trick and calm Diane down. I can’t give a pep talk if my life depended on it, but at least I’m not totally useless.
“Did you see that they already set a date?”
“That’s fast.” I only glanced at the article; Diane has it memorized.
“June 28. That’s the day Sankresh and I had our first date. Five years to the day. He took me to this Italian restaurant and we sat in the courtyard in the back. They forgot to put our order in, so they threw in free tartufo. Sankresh let me eat the cherry in the center.”
Diane never talks about Sankresh, not this stuff anyway. I don’t know if she’s talking to me or to herself anymore, so I just give her a supportive squeeze.
She spins around and grabs my shoulders. Her eyes are wet but urgency lights up her face. She stares through my eyes directly into my mind, like she’s been able to do forever. “You’re the Break-Up Artist. I don’t want you to get—”
“Duped. I know.” A chill runs through my body. I throw the newspaper into her overflowing garbage. “Don’t worry. I’ll never forget.”
* * *
I check my email when I get back to my room. And then I check my other email. LeBreakUpArtiste [at] gmail [dot] com. (I decided to be creative.)
Perched at the top of my inbox is a message from a Mr. Towne. The email has been sitting there for a day—way too long. The name doesn’t ring a bell, but most people don’t use their real names with me in the beginning.
To: Le Break-Up Artiste
From: Robert Towne
My wife saw your ad on a bathroom stall...it’s worth a shot. I need you to break up Steve Overland and his girlfriend, Huxley Mapother. I’ve attached a picture. Let me know next steps.
I reread the email about five more times. The words don’t change, but each time they seep in more. I deal with low-profile relationships, ones that don’t cause major seismic shifts in the tectonic plates of gossip our school rests upon. Huxley and Steve are the San Andreas Fault of relationships. (Wow, I guess our current unit on geology is more fascinating than I thought.) Maybe this Towne guy is confused. I open the picture.
It’s Huxley and Steve at homecoming—the same picture on display at school.
9
It’s not until after dinner that Mr. Towne pops up online. I email him back asking to video chat. He asks for ten minutes, which gives me enough time to set up. I tape a black blanket to the mirrored sliding door behind me to eliminate all traces of personality from my surroundings. I pull out my grandfather’s vintage suitcase from under my bed and remove my costume: my raccoon mask and Diane’s old graduation robe. As I slip them on, I contemplate who this Mr. Towne could be. A vengeful father? A frustrated teacher or disgruntled janitor?
But it’s none of the above. Mr. Towne looks exactly like a Mr. Towne would. He’s an adult dressed in full dad attire—baby-blue polo buttoned all the way up and tucked into khakis with his gut protruding. Thinned hair, creased face, but a boyish smile. Despite his age, he still looks fitter than some guys in my school. He sits at his desk and doesn’t say a word.
“’Ello love,” I say in my British accent.
“I didn’t know you were British. I assumed French,” he says, totally calm. It’s making me nervous. He leans back in his chair. “Is that what you normally wear?”
“Um, no. It’s my work uniform.”
“You really British?”
“Why, of course!”
He stares at me, his gray eyes coalescing into a steely glare. “I get it. Gotta protect yourself.”
“Is Mr. Towne your r
eal name?” I ask him.
“Does it matter?”
He flashes me that boyish grin, dimples caving in both cheeks. He was probably Steve Overland thirty years ago. His high-school sweetheart and three kids are probably down the hall singing Bible hymns.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I have no idea who you are, and I don’t care to know so long as you get the job done. So let’s stop prying and get down to business.”
I exhale in relief. Most of the awkwardness has left the room. “Why does a fortysomething man want to break up some high-school couple?”
“Why do you need to know?”
I’ve never had to pry information from a potential client like this. I’m not interested in competing in a “who’s more paranoid” contest. “Do you want me to do my job or not?”
We have a stare-off. I won’t let him dictate how I run my business. He cracks first.
“I’m a family friend of the Overlands. I was there when Stevie got his first tooth and first touchdown. I’m always looking out for him. And right now, I’m worried about his relationship with his girlfriend. His family does not like her at all. They think she’s snooty and controlling.”
I nod. Sounds like they know Huxley well.
“I understand first love and hormones and all that nonsense, but Stevie gave up a football scholarship to a well-known university to go to some local college close to her. His parents have tried to talk to him about what a big mistake he’s making. But he won’t listen. That girl’s got him wrapped around her finger. So...”
“You need my help?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if this is just some prank you’re pulling, but we’re out of options. All college admissions decisions become binding May 15. That’s less than three months out. I don’t want the kid to throw his life away.”
“Vermilion is a good school, I’ve heard,” I say. Steve wore a pine-green Vermilion sweatshirt to school when he got accepted. I couldn’t care less, but it caused murmurs in the guy corners of my classes. My mom said Vermilion was an overpriced liberal-arts school that charges an arm and a leg just to remain exclusive. It’s not ranked that high in college guides, but Huxley likes telling people otherwise.
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