His dad’s last name. Thad’s last name.
Oh.
Crap.
yo hiero
tú hieres
ella hiere
nosotros herimos
ellos hieren
As Sirina and I are finally surrendering our Blizzard cups into the recycling bin, I feel a vibration through the tile floor under my feet and hear a whir of wheels approaching. A kid on a skateboard almost sails by, but comes to a skidding stop in front of us and steps off the board with a graceless thud, almost falling.
He is kind of tall, and he looks skinny and loose-jointed under his blue sweatshirt and jeans. He’s wearing a baseball cap backward over his shaggy brown hair. My head can’t place him, but my guts seem to recognize something about him immediately, and they squeeze together tightly in a protective huddle.
And then he speaks—“Mabry Collins?”—and I suddenly know why all the air feels like it’s being vacuumed out of my lungs.
It’s Thad Bell.
Thad Bell. My very first love.
Thad Bell. My very first heartbreak. It involved monkey bars, a fall, and a permanent scar on my soul. And it was the day before Valentine’s Day.
Sirina squints as if trying to recognize him. He is a different version of the Thad Bell I used to know. It’s as if someone took his fourth-grade picture and stretched it out, scuffed it up, and dulled the brightness out of his gold-brown eyes.
“And Sirina, right? It’s me, Thad Bell. You guys remember me?”
My mind goes back to fourth grade. We’d just finished a section on Europe. I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars, trying to keep my shirt tucked into my pants. He walked up to me. I was happy to see him—I smiled, and I wondered if it looked like a frown since I was upside down. You know that saying—“a smile is a frown turned upside down”? Well, then, I thought, the opposite must also be true.
But I was smiling, whether or not he could tell.
“Hey, Mabry,” he said, lifting his chin a little. “What’s Italy the shape of?”
We’d just learned this. “A boot!” I said, proud and smart, and thinking I was practically a genius.
“That’s right. And that’s what I’m giving you.”
I swung a little from the bar, confused. “You’re giving me some boots?” I pictured some cute white cowboy boots, like the kind baton twirlers wear.
“No, I’m giving you THE boot. We’re over.”
And then he walked away, leaving foot dents in the mulch.
And I fell, thudding gracelessly into the sand, like I had been dumped NOT ONLY by Thad Bell, but by the universe as a whole.
Here, now, I say, “How could I forget?” And not in a friendly tone.
“Wow, so,” Sirina says, “this is crazy. What’s it been—like four years?” She looks at me, like I’m who she’s asking.
“I haven’t been counting,” I say in this very cool and tight-lipped way.
“Yeah, about that long,” Thad says.
“Didn’t you move away?” Sirina asks.
“Yeah, but we moved back a few months ago.”
Sirina eyes his skateboard, which is tilted up under his foot. “Cool board,” she says.
“Thanks, I just bought it like five minutes ago. I lost my old board. Sucks because it was my dad’s.”
“You lost your dad’s skateboard and you broke your hand? Good going,” I say.
He looks surprised, and then looks down at his right hand, which is wrapped in gauze. “Oh, that,” he says, and laughs a little. “That’s from earlier. Yeah. Just a few scrapes. I’m new at this. But I got some gloves now, so I can fall all I want.”
Sirina laughs. I don’t.
“So what are you up to besides learning how to skate?” Sirina asks him, a vast question I’m secretly curious to hear him answer.
“Today, just buying this board, but usually I’m here for the nachos,” he says.
She laughs. “Seriously?”
“Yep. Burritos, sometimes. Most times.”
“Don’t get out much?” I say, meaning every bit of the bitter tone that comes across.
It doesn’t seem to affect him. “Yeah, not so much.”
“What about school?” Sirina asks.
“I’m just doing online school.”
“Online school? Is that the same thing as being homeschooled?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I snort. “What are you, Amish?” Despite my mockery, a fleeting image of Thad in an Amish Sunday suit flashes into mind. For a second, I’m intrigued. I wonder what it would be like to go out with an Amish guy. Would he pick me up in a carriage? Would we cause a scandal? Would my first kiss be stolen behind a barn? Would it cause a fight among his family, and if so, would he choose me over his Amish life?
“No, genius,” Thad says to me. “Online. It involves a computer and, yes, electricity.”
“I know,” I say. “Obviously.”
Thad blinks his eyes in this self-righteous way and looks at Sirina. “Am I—? Did I—? Have I—? Done something to her?”
“Oh, what, besides giving me a curse?” I say loudly.
He takes his foot off of his skateboard. “I, uh—I don’t understand girl language.”
“She’s just—gah,” Sirina says. I hear the frustration in her voice.
“Nineteen times, Thad Bell! And you were just the first!”
“I need, uh, maybe an interpreter?” He puts a question mark on it.
“You probably don’t remember,” Sirina says in this apologetic tone. “You dumped her back in fourth grade.”
“Oh.” Thad grimaces. “Sorry. I guess I’d kind of forgotten about that.”
“Don’t worry, it’s just, she’s—uh—had a really bad couple days. And she’s taking it out on you instead of the person she should be mad at.”
“He crushed my soul!” I cry out.
“Me? I crushed your soul?” Thad says. “I was nine!”
Sirina puts her arm around me, but says to Thad, “Not you. It’s this guy Nick. He just—you know.”
“Wait—Nick Wainwright?” Thad asks.
“You remember him?” Sirina asks.
“Oh, yeah,” he laughs in a not-happy way.
“HE IS MY DESTINY AND I LOVE HIM!”
“Mabry, come on,” she chides me. To Thad, she says, “She’s obsessed with this TV show, La Vida Rica—it’s this Latin soap opera. That’s why she sometimes sounds so crazy.”
“It’s not a soap opera. It’s a telenovela. And anyway, Nick was the love of my life!”
“He dumped her for karate.”
“Uh, lame,” Thad says. “Really lame.”
“He didn’t dump me,” I say. “Not really.”
“Huh?”
Sirina makes a cringey face. “His mom did.”
“Dude, what? You got dumped by somebody’s mom? And you’re practically crying about it? That’s, like, classic!” Thad laughs.
“HE LOVES ME.”
“Uhhh…Hmm,” Thad says. He looks at Sirina with wide has she gone crazy? eyes.
“HE WAS GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE COTILLION.”
“What’s a cotillion?”
“The eighth-grade-graduation dance at our school. The Junior Cotillion. It’s like she thinks she’s going to marry the guy who takes her.” Sirina sighs. “I just don’t know what to do with her.”
“Jeez. Dude. Tell her to stop falling for tool bags,” Thad says.
“Can you please tell her how exactly to do that?”
He shrugs. “It’s easy. You just…don’t.”
“Is it such a crime to love?” I ask. Very bravely.
Thad says to Sirina, “Does she really believe in all that?”
“Then lock me up!” I say. But they continue to ignore me and my torment.
Sirina sighs. “Completely,” she says to Thad. “No matter what I say, all she cares about is getting him back.”
For a second, Thad says nothing. He just stands there with this bug-eyed look on his face.
Then he asks, “Getting him back?”
“Yep, that’s pretty much it,” she says. “Sick, right?”
But he’s smiling. He looks at me. “Do you really want to get him back?”
“Haven’t you heard anything I’ve been saying?”
“You want him to start calling you again?” Thad asks.
“Yes!”
“What? No,” Sirina interjects.
“And texting?”
“Of course!”
Sirina glares at him.
“And…I don’t know, what? Bringing you flowers and stuff?”
“With all my heart!”
“Seriously?” Sirina asks Thad. “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay.” He nods. “I think I can help.” He leans against the rail overlooking the food court. “I know how a guy thinks. I know what a guy wants. I can help you get him back. He’ll fall in love with you.”
I ignore the ridiculous tone in his voice when he says The Words because I’m too fascinated with the idea of having Nick back. In Love. With Me.
“Wait,” Sirina says. “That’s a horrible idea. That’s the last thing she needs. I mean, I know she sounds a little like a nut right now, but she’s not, really. Well, not in a bad way. The guy doesn’t deserve her!”
“Yep, I get it,” Thad says. “That’s why there’s one condition.”
“What’s that?” Sirina asks.
“That she breaks his heart.”
“Break his heart? I don’t want to break his heart!” I complain.
“Wait,” Sirina says. “Why do you want to help her break his heart?”
“Okay, obviously, I’m not a fan of the guy. I mean, I just—” He shakes his head. Then he looks up at Sirina. “I just think the guy’s a complete wipe.”
“He is!” Sirina says, sounding satisfied, finally, while my heart screams in agony.
“HE IS NOT!”
“And also, so say I was a jerk in fourth grade. Hey, Collins, let me make it up to you now. You can have him begging for you.”
“Think about Mariela,” Sirina tells me.
“Who’s Mariela?” Thad asks.
“Just someone from La Vida Rica,” Sirina tells him. Then she looks at me. “She’s someone who Mabry could learn something from. Someone who wouldn’t be crying over some guy.”
I start to argue that you can’t make a fruit out of a flower—or was it a flower out of a fruit?—but they both look at me like I should be packed into a straitjacket, like Elisabet when she was found living in her dead sister’s husband’s attic, so I just say, “What about the Cotillion?”
“Fine. You can lure him back. Let him ask you to that stupid dance. And that night—bam! You stand him up.”
“That sounds like an awful idea,” I say.
Thad looks down and shrugs. To Sirina, he says, “Oh well, I guess she likes crying her eyes out over meatwads.”
“No, I don’t!” I say immediately.
He steps on his board. “Ah, never mind. That’s okay. I gotta go anyway.”
“Wait!” I say. If it’ll make Nick fall back in love with me, maybe I should go along with Thad’s plan. For now. I see Nicolás and me together, admiring a rainbow. Looking up at the night stars, maybe sharing a wish juntos. Together. I see us running hand in hand on the beach. Laughing joyously in the rain.
Oh, my heart is so hungry for him!
So I say, “Okay.”
“Great,” he says. We exchange numbers and he says, “I’ll be in touch.” Then he takes off on his brand-new board. A little shakily, if you ask me.
“Hey! No skateboards!” the mall cop, Captain Jerry, shouts. He takes off on his Segway behind Thad, the swirling red light tailing him. But even though Thad looks a little unsteady, he’s definitely fast—too fast for Captain Jerry, who circles back, points at us, and says, very sternly, “No. Skateboards!” again before rolling off.
“I hope he calls you soon,” Sirina says. “Thad, I mean, not Captain Jerry.”
“Sirina, are you really sure I should do this?” I ask her. “You do remember what Thad did to me?”
“Mabry,” she groans. “Fourth grade was, like, a lifetime ago!”
“Wow,” I huff. “Thanks for the sensitivity.”
“Come on—we were kids!”
Oh, she’s so forgiving. I sigh. “Whatever, Saint Sirina.” Maybe she should join a convent instead of Hermana Ampuero.
“Mabry! Come on! Don’t forget what I did when he dumped you!”
And I haven’t. The day after Thad dumped me—Valentine’s Day, of course—she gave everyone in the class a red, heart-shaped lollipop. Everyone except for him. He got a Dum Dum. At the time, it was a brilliant show of friendship and loyalty, the first of many. “I remember,” I say.
“When have I ever let you down?” she asks me now.
“Never.”
“Right. So listen to me, okay? You need to get over Nick no matter what it takes.”
“I’ll try,” I say. And maybe I should. Maybe Thad can help me get my Nicolás back. And then the heartbreak thing? The standing-him-up thing? Well, once Thad and Sirina see us together again, they’ll get over that. I’ll make flowers-out-of-fruit out of both of them! I’ll make them both believe in true love.
Wow, Thad thinks, gliding back home on his new skateboard. That was easy. She walked right into it. Here he’s been wondering how he’d ever get back at Nick; and there she’s been wondering how she’d ever get Nick back. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate, as his dad used to say. A win-win situation.
Still, the girl is ridiculous. To be obsessing over such a smear. Wow. Nick hadn’t been so bad in fourth grade, but he’s definitely changed. It shouldn’t surprise him. Everything’s changed in those four years.
Everything.
Anyway, what is it with Mabry’s insistence on this love thing? It’s like believing in the tooth fairy. Santa Claus. Unicorns, even. He’s glad he dumped her back in fourth grade. She was ridiculous back then, too, although he doesn’t remember why he dumped her. Probably on a dare. He’s a sucker for those. He once ate a worm on a dare.
Although he probably shouldn’t admit that. Especially if he’s calling someone else ridiculous.
Thad sees an orange cone right in front of him. Crap. They’re doing construction on the sidewalk—he didn’t expect that. He has to skate into part of the street. A car honks at him. His muscles freeze for a second, and he almost loses his balance. He’s embarrassed by his response, and by the prickly remains of fear that crackle in his fingertips. He shouldn’t be scared of anything anymore—there’s not a whole lot left to lose, and if he’s going to lose anything else, well, then, bring it on.
He shrinks a little lower on his board. It’s so different, this new world on wheels. Until you’re on them, you never really think about where you can go, and where you can’t. Better cross this route off the list—it’s too rocky for wheels of any type.
He skates through an intersection—a four-way stop but no cars—and rolls back onto the sidewalk. He relaxes a little, and navigates around some crushed glass on the pavement. A car drives slowly by. Could it be an unmarked police car? A detective? He feels a queasy panic rise from his stomach to his throat. But it’s just a man, a regular man, who doesn’t give him a second glance.
He takes a breath and tries to reason with himself. So he punched out a window. Okay, on school property. Okay, on government property. What’s the worst they can do? Arrest him? Maybe. Send him to juvie? Possibly. Or maybe they’d slap his family with a big, fat fine. Make them pay to replace the window. Great. Like Aunt Nora needs that.
Everyone should be glad that it was a window he punched out, and not Nick Wainwright, who deserved it a lot more than that innocent plate of glass. It’s probably also a good thing that Nick was so amazingly clueless. That Nick hadn’t realized Thad had overheard him, that Nick hadn’t gotten a good look at him, or at least hadn’t recognized him if he did. Otherwise, he’d already be
in deep stew.
Another car heads toward him—a little blue Volkswagen bug, being driven by a blond lady with sunglasses. She smiles at him through the car window and he feels a sudden urge to impress her. He jumps on his board and does a switch stance—at least he thinks that’s what it’s called—left foot forward now. But the car drives on, and the left-foot-forward thing doesn’t feel so good. He jumps and switches back, but his ankle gives way and he hits the pavement, his injured hand suffering another blow. He’s not sure if he’s mad at himself or at the laws of gravity, but he feels a familiar stab of injustice, and gives the pavement a good stomp with his foot like a stubborn four-year-old. He’s thankful that no one is there to see his mini-tantrum, and gets back up and jumps on the board like it never happened.
Tricks are overrated anyway, he thinks. So are people like Nick Wainwright. He used to like Nick. They were on the same Little League teams back in third and fourth grades. They once went to a Star Wars revival together, Thad as Chewbacca and Nick as C-3PO. In third grade, Thad had spent the night at Nick’s; that night the cat vomited up a mouse in Nick’s bed. It was one of the greatest, most disgusting moments in each of their lives.
But today—well, Thad wouldn’t have known words could hurt so much, especially coming out of someone he used to like. But maybe that’s why they do feel so bad. You expect stupid crap like that from other people, not from someone you used to consider a friend.
And Nick used to be a friend.
Used to be. That phrase pretty much describes everything in his life.
He can’t wait until Nick is put in his place.
He stands up tall and sticks his hands in his pockets. Just a nice, easy, casual zip home. Okay, a little wobbly, but who cares? Why not pretend he has nothing to worry about? He makes himself look bored again. No prob. No rush.
Except that he knows there probably is. He’s afraid to look at his phone. Not just because he’ll fall if he does, but because he’s sure he’s about fifteen minutes late. And Aunt Nora’s waiting. He feels a wave of guilt about that—he told her he’d be home. But then, a stab of annoyance. He’s thirteen—isn’t he supposed to be out having fun anyway?
Part of him wonders what would happen if he were to just skate away into the sunset, but most of him knows that he’s headed back home. Sunsets are probably overrated, too, and anyway, it’s cloudy outside.
How to Break a Heart Page 4