A sad silence fills the room for just a few moments. Then Bastian says, “Xavi, it’s your turn.”
Xavier draws in a deep breath and sighs, stretching his chubby fingers until they curl over the edge of his desk. “I’m just a kid who skipped a grade because I’m hella smart, and I’m loveable and awesome, and these girls just don’t get it. They can’t see past these pointless stereotypes of what hot guys are supposed to look like and just give me a chance.” He lifts his shoulders and gives me a flat-lipped smile. “You want to go out sometime?”
“Me?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow.
Ciara slaps him on the shoulder. “She’s too old for you, kid. Maybe if you stopped trying to hit on seniors, a girl might give you a chance.”
Xavier rolls his eyes and shoves the sleeves of his plaid button-up shirt up to his elbows. “I’m more of a man than most of the guys in this school, and I’m not going to apologize for it.” He throws me a wink. “Are you eighteen yet?”
I shake my head. “Almost.”
He throws his hands up in the air. “See? It wouldn’t even be illegal if you wanted to hook up sometime.”
“Xavi,” Ms. Meadows says warningly from across the room. “That’s enough. You’re going to have Isla running out of here screaming.”
“I’m just playing, Isla,” Xavier says, but I’m not sure he means it.
“So, there you have it,” Bastian says, flipping to a new page in his notebook. I realize he’s been taking notes this entire time, though I’m not sure what they’re for. “I’m a hopeless romantic with a girlfriend-stealing brother, Ciara is obsessed with older guys, Xavi is too damn young and wants girls way out of his league, and Trish is more hopelessly romantic than I am. So what’s your story?”
I’ve made it this far, heard all of their own stories. There’s really nothing holding me back now. I take a deep breath. “I dated Nate for four years, and we were really happy together. Then a few weeks ago they rezoned my street to be a part of this school district and he just straight broke up with me. He said the distance would be too much for us.”
“Damn,” Ciara says under her breath.
“He lives two blocks away from me.” It’s this confession that sends the heat into my cheeks again. Admitting this means admitting the real truth, so I might as well say it out loud. “So it seems like he wanted to break up with me for a different reason and this was his excuse.”
“His loss,” Trish says.
Now that I’m thinking about him, it all hurts so damn bad. My lip trembles but the words fall out of my mouth anyway. “He can’t even be bothered to reply to my texts. Not after four years of being each other’s best friend.”
“Wait … you texted him?” Ciara says. Her gaze gets so serious that I flinch.
“Yes?” I say, and it sounds like a question.
“How many times?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me as if she’ll know if I lie.
“Be honest,” Bastian adds.
I swallow. “Just like … almost once a day.”
“Damn.” I don’t know who says it, but I am very much aware that every eye in the classroom is on me.
“What?” I say, throwing up my hands. “We dated for four years! I can’t help but want to talk to him.”
“And does he reply?” Ciara asks.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“Okay, okay, settle down,” Bastian says over the sudden roar of the entire Break Up Support Group talking at once. “Isla is our new member, and she’s our number one priority right now. She clearly needs a lot of help.” He marks something in his notebook quickly and then looks up at me. “I vote we make the next week Isla Intervention Week and spend all of our time helping her. Can I get a second?”
“Seconded,” Ciara says.
“Third,” Trish and Xavier say at the same time.
“I’m not a part of this,” Ms. Meadows says from her desk, “But I’d vote yes if I could.”
I lower my head into my hands as a wave of pure humiliation and shame rolls over me. Someone pats my back.
“This is a safe place,” Bastian says. “We’re going to help you cut out these self-destructive tendencies, and we’ll get your heart mended in no time.”
I look up, and tears fill my eyes for the billionth time since second period. Cursing myself, I blink them away. “So what do I do?” I ask, throwing myself on their mercy. Somehow, it feels right. Like maybe these people can actually help me.
Bastian draws a line across the paper in his notebook and writes something new underneath it. “Your homework is to avoid talking to Nate for twenty-four hours. No texts, no social media, no calls, and no looking longingly at his photos on your phone.”
“I don’t—” I say quickly, but Bastian narrows his almond-shaped eyes at me. “Okay fine, maybe I do,” I say with a sigh.
“The first step in healing is cutting out the wound,” Bastian says. “And Nate is your wound.”
Trish holds up a fist and makes a slashing movement across the air, her invisible dagger slicing out Nate from my heart.
“We’re going to take real good care of you,” Ciara says, giving me a wink.
I sigh and wipe away a tear. “God, I hope so.”
Chapter Eleven
My phone is a lead weight in my back pocket. I feel its presence everywhere I go. It is a living thing, heavy as hell, and calling out to me telepathically. I grind my teeth and pull it out of my back pocket, turning it over in my hand. The screen is dark, and that little LED light at the top doesn’t blink. I know what this means, I know it as a scientific fact—there are no new messages—but I click the button anyway, just to see the screen light up. Just to feel the noose around my heart clench a little bit tighter.
There are no new messages.
With a sigh, I push the button again and turn the stupid thing off. I toss it to the granite countertop in our kitchen, just hard enough to feel good about throwing something but not hard enough to damage it. Mom would kill me a thousand times over if I broke the phone, she’d given me for Christmas last year. How is it possible to be genuinely proud of myself for going all day without texting him, but still be hurt and sad knowing he hasn’t texted me?
And why would I even expect him to? He hasn’t said a word to me since that cryptic text on Friday night. Who says they wish you were there and then ignores you when you really are there? A simple “screw you” would have been easier to handle.
The back door closes and Mom enters, her face hidden behind two massive fabric bags of groceries. I take one of the bags and she jumps, nearly dropping the other. “You scared me!” Mom says, her eyes going wide. “I didn’t think you’d be home yet.”
“It’s three thirty,” I say, setting the bag on the counter and digging through the contents. “What else would I possibly be doing? It’s not like I have spirit practice or anything.” My words are bitter, and she doesn’t say anything right away. I hope she feels guilty. She’d promised that she would talk with the principal and try to get me back into Deer Valley High, but it really feels like she’s not doing anything at all to fulfill that promise.
“What is all of this?” I say, curling my lip as I pull a huge green leafy bundle out of the bag. There’s also carrots, radishes, and an array of weird-looking lettuce in dark greens and purples.
“We’re having a nice salad for dinner,” Mom says, emptying even more vegetables from her bag. “It’s time this family eats healthy for once.”
“Your teen daughter is heartbroken, and you’re forcing her to eat healthy?” I point a celery stalk at her. “This is child abuse.”
“You’re practically an adult, so it would be adult abuse,” Mom says with a roll of her eyes. “Besides, I heard you got some help today.”
“Of course you heard.” I groan. It was one thing when my mom worked at my school and knew everything about me, but now I’m at a new school, and she still knows everything? I sigh. “What exactly did you hear?”
“I hea
rd you went to talk to the counselor today. That was a very smart move, Isla. I’m proud.”
“Is that all?”
She nods and grabs a colander from a cabinet, dumping a handful of kale into it. “Why, what else happened?”
I take exactly one second to decide if I should tell her about the support group. “Nothing,” I say as I pull off rubber bands from the celery. “I just talked to that lady, and I feel better now.”
“That’s wonderful.” Mom’s voice is ten times more relaxed. I nod and try to siphon some of her positivity as we chop and rip and dice everything into a massive salad. I’d been trying on my own to stop texting Nate, and had been proud of myself for only texting him once a day. But now that my “homework” from the support group is to ignore him … it feels like an impossibly hard challenge. The Mission Impossible of broken hearts.
An hour goes by, and then two. Although my phone sits like a priceless heirloom next to me on my bed, it is nearly seven thirty in the evening, and I still haven’t turned it back on. I am fully aware that I’m like a crackhead going through withdrawal as I flip channels on TV and stare blankly at my pre-cal homework. I am a Nate addict. I am a cell phone addict. I am desperate to send him just one more text, one simple, perfect line of words that will change his heart and have him take me back.
The steady tap tap tap of my pencil on the calculus textbook lulls me into daydreams of Nate … only I’m not daydreaming about Nate Miles specifically. I don’t know how much time goes by, but eventually I realize I’m just daydreaming. I’m alone. I want someone to love, to hold, to care about. And I want them to care about me. Maybe it’s not Nate at all. He never had time for me anyway—unless we were both at the same football field or the same party thrown by jocks.
I pick up my phone, turn it over in my hands. I take a deep breath and tell myself that I’m being silly. I should sew a giant red P on my chest. P for pathetic. God, what is wrong with me? I shake my head and turn on the stupid phone.
I just want companionship. I don’t need Nate anymore, and I am no longer in danger of texting him. Maybe this support group’s idea of homework was a good one. My phone powers up and makes a series of rings and beeps to alert me to all of the social media happenings I have missed in the last few hours. I ignore it as I finish the last two math problems on my homework.
When I pick up my phone, I see it. Nestled between a notification of six new Instagram likes and three Twitter replies, there is a text from Tess and one from Nate.
My vision blurs and my fingers feel like they’re vibrating. A massive smile forms on my lips. Here I am ignoring my phone and forcing myself not to send him a text to let him know how badly I miss him, and he texted me instead. The pounding in my chest tastes like victory.
I almost don’t want to open the message. I just kind of want to let it linger on the screen, unread and full of promise. The words inside of that message could say anything. It could be the start of something new or the reminder that what I once had is gone.
I fall asleep trying to decide if I should read it.
By the next morning, Nate’s unread text message is like a winning lottery ticket that hasn’t been scratched. I’ve made it this far, I figure I might as well wait until lunch and read the text with the group. I picture Bastian and his hopeful little smile and how proud he’ll be of me for showing so much restraint. Every minute that passes without me reading the text is like one minute of gaining my life back.
And that’s not as important to me as it used to be. It’s like I’m creating a new life, one that’s just my own when my old life was half Nate. Now I am slowly becoming 100 percent Isla Rush. I shove my phone with its unread text into my back pocket as I jog up the stairs to first period English class. I’m on the southern wing of the massive four-story school because I’ve recently learned that this stairwell is the least busy in the mornings. It’s the furthest away from the parking lot, and everyone is too lazy to bother walking down here so they just pack into the other stairwells like anchovies.
I smirk. This school doesn’t control me either. I’m controlling it. I jog a few more steps then grab the handrail, swinging myself around the bend in the stairs. I smack straight into something leather and tall and unfriendly.
“What the hell, bitch?”
Startled, I back up, stopping when my heel hovers over the stair behind me. “I’m so sorry,” I mutter, but the glare the blond gives me tells me she’s not having it. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Uh, yeah obviously,” she spats, glaring down at me from her massively tall and expensive-looking crimson heels. She wears a tight red dress with a leather jacket over it. A hand takes her arm and pushes her backward.
Emory Underwood appears, his shirt ruffled, smudged lip gloss staining his lips. “Sorry about that Iz-la,” he tells me in a steady and low voice. “We’ll get out of your way.”
The girl bitches but Emory tugs her across the stairwell and sinks his arms around her leather jacket. I don’t need to watch anymore. That boy gets around more than the communal paperback books at my old school. I take the rest of the stairs two at a time, and I do not talk to him in English class. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
The hours seem to take forever, and I know it’s all because of this stupid text message. Finally, when the bell rings for lunch, I practically float out of my chair and hover down the stairs and into Mrs. Meadows’ classroom. There is no hesitation as I open the door and slip into the art room, which smells like paint thinner today. It is finally time to read Nate’s message, and I couldn’t be more ready to see what he had to tell me last night.
Ciara caps her nail polish, a neon orange with sparkles, and beams at me when I enter. “Looks like I get five bucks,” she says, grabbing her purse and stashing the nail polish inside. “Trish bet me that you wouldn’t come back today. Hey, will you do me a solid and grab me some pizza? I can’t touch those boxes until my nails are dry.”
“I’ve known you two days, and you were painting your nails both of them,” I say as I walk over to the stack of pizza boxes on the table and make a plate for her and me. Xavier and Trish enter the room together, laughing about something.
Ciara shrugs. “Nail polish is my thing. I have four hundred and thirty-two bottles at home.”
“Holy shit, Ciara,” Trish says. I reach for a slice of pizza, and she bats my hand away. “I want that one,” she says, throwing me a wink. I smile like an idiot and let her have it. That wink of hers is something magical. She takes her plate and sits next to Ciara in the circle of desks. “You might need a support group for nail polish addiction.”
“Psh, hell no.” Ciara fans her hands in the air. “I run a nail polish blog and companies send me their newest colors for free. I take pictures and blog about if I liked them or not. It’s a lot of work, but I’m happy to blow off my school work to get it done.”
“Hey, do I owe someone for my share of the pizza?” I ask, taking a seat on the other side of Ciara. “And do we get pizza every day?”
“No and yes,” Trish says. She throws a thumb over her shoulder. “Mrs. Meadows is the daughter of the pizza empire of Granite Hills.”
I lift an eyebrow and look back at the teacher. She’s been so quiet today I forgot she was even in here. Her strawberry blond hair is pulled into a high ponytail and it bounces when she looks over at me. “My family owns Meadows Pizza,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I swing by and pick these up free of charge each day. So no worries.”
“Thanks,” I say. “This is awesome.”
Mrs. Meadows nods. “How do you think I got so damn fat?” she says with a laugh.
Xavier leans forward, his lips glistening from the pizza grease. “For all you know sweetheart, I’m actually happily dating someone, but I fake it for the delicious pizza.”
Trish punches him in the arm. “You’re not dating anything besides your right hand. And Ms. Meadows,” she says, looking over at the art teacher. “There’s just more o
f you to love.”
Bastian rushes inside the classroom, shoving the door closed behind him. He’s wearing slacks and a long-sleeved button-up shirt with a pocket square. He dresses better for school than I do for church. “Sorry I’m late, guys,” Bastian says, letting out a sigh. He heads to the pizza table. “Mrs. Gertie had me running intervention on one of our other members, but he wouldn’t budge. Refused to come even though he desperately needs it.”
“Who?” Trish asks over a mouthful of pizza.
“Jonathan Silvia.” Everyone except for me nods as if this makes complete sense.
“How many members do you guys have?” I ask, suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of more students in here.
“We’re the main ones,” Bastian says, loading up his plate with five slices. He closes the box and turns around to face me. “We have around five or six floating members. They come by randomly because they haven’t yet learned to face their heartache head-on.” He shakes his head. “Some people like living in denial. But you, my dear Isla, are on the way to healing.” He smiles and takes a seat across from me in the circle of chairs. His fingers weave together as he leans forward, his eyes focused expertly on me. “So what good news do you have today? Did you make it an entire twenty-four hours without texting your ex?”
Now is my moment to shine. I take my phone from my back pocket and hold it face up for everyone to see. “I did more than that, Bastian,” I say triumphantly. Behind me is the soft sound of the door opening, but I don’t pay attention to it. “I was avoiding texting him like you requested, and I was doing really good by the way. Then, last night at exactly eight thirty-three in the evening, Nate texted me.”
The club members look exactly as stunned as I’d imagined in my daydreams this morning. “And..?” Bastian says slowly. Hope and positivity are painted across his face.
I shrug as if my restraint was as easy as breathing. “I haven’t even read it.”
“Nice,” Xavier murmurs.
The Breakup Support Group Page 8