How to Break a Boy

by Laurie Devore

  I stepped farther into the bar. This was beyond none of my business. “Ellie, lay the hell off her, okay?”

  Claire put up hands toward both of us. “I don’t need you fighting my battle for me here. Either of you.”

  Ellie dropped her arm, looking at Claire. “I’m sorry if I don’t want you to go when Adrienne calls and hang all over Coxie. I mean, am I being ridiculous here?”

  “No,” Claire said, stepping toward her. “No, I know.”

  “So, you’re going to break up with him? Tonight?”

  I can tell this isn’t going to end soon. “Claire.” I said it again, more of a desperate plea. Adrienne was texting me nonstop.

  “Goddamn, Olivia, can I live for a second?” she demanded, turning on me. “Can you, like, wait outside for a minute? I’ll be right out.”

  I sighed and went back outside. It was three minutes later, per my cell phone clock, that Claire finally came out. I was ready to roll like it never happened at all, and she was smiling as she walked out like she was, too. But then her face changed when she saw me standing there so eager. “Just once,” she said to me, “just once, can the two of you try not to control my life?”

  “I was only…” I trailed off, looking down at my phone. Adrienne had sent me, like, three different sets of question marks.

  “What’s she going to do, O? What’s she going to do if I completely fuck off from the party to go hang out with Ellie? Is she not going to be friends with me anymore? Why the fuck are you so scared of Adrienne?”

  I took a deep breath, not used to Claire talking to me like this. Not used to her being anything but the peacemaker. “I don’t want her to hate me,” I said after a minute, not looking her in the eye.

  Claire sighed, putting her face in her hands and then pulling back to look at me. “No one hates you.”

  I laughed a bit at that. “Everyone hates me. My own mother hates me.”

  “C’mon,” Claire said, starting to walk toward Mom’s car. “We can just tell her it’s my fault we’re late. And you know I don’t hate you. Adrienne definitely doesn’t hate you—that would be impossible. She thinks you’re two parts of one soul or something ridiculous like that.” She opened the passenger’s door and slid in. I walked around to the other side, thinking about that, about how specific and strange it sounded.

  I got into the car. “Nah, it’s the three of us.”

  Claire snorted. “Olivia, c’mon. It’s you two and me. I’m the spectator to whatever the two of you are doing. It’s kind of a relief sometimes, you know?”

  I cranked up the car. “Why?”

  “Because sometimes the two of you scare me.”

  55

  If I got hangovers, I’d imagine this was one. This empty, painful feeling that increases with every second I’m left alone in my head. Any moment, I think. Any moment everything that I have left will come toppling down. Whit will know about Mrs. Baker. About all the terrible things I’ve done. I’m just waiting for payback from destroying her car.

  And then I will actually, without a doubt, have nothing.

  The bell rings, signaling lunch hour. I trudge down the hall to my locker, flipping through flash cards as I walk. I had time to color-code one thousand words over my three days of suspension, finding myself constantly texting my best handiwork to Whit. He started using all the words in ridiculous sentences to answer me. Sometimes, studying with him doesn’t suck. Sometimes, I wish I’d done it for the past four years and wasn’t cramming it all in now.

  But here we are.

  Without looking up, I put my hand up to my locker. It’s sticky.

  I jerk up immediately, pulling my hand away. Gross.

  I twirl the combo on the lock anyway, unhitching it from the handle. I pull at it but it doesn’t give. I drop my bag; I know Adrienne’s done something to it, I do, but whatever it is, I can deal with it.

  It opens to a rain of falling bottles.

  They fall around me, a cacophony of glass against tile. Liquor bottle after liquor bottle showers down around me as I push myself up against the locker door in an attempt to stem the onslaught. I see them fall in slow motion, each bottle tumbling into the other, each clatter deafening.

  Until, just like that, it ends. The last bottle rolls across the hall and swivels to a stop. It felt like more, but now I see there are only five full-size bottles littering the floor.

  Laughter surrounds me, enveloping me in its embrace like an old friend. The laughter of a pleased crowd, so familiar to me, only this time, it’s me they’re laughing at. I bend down to pick up two bottles, not knowing what I’m going to do with them, just so I don’t have to look up.

  Because I’m crying. Ugh. I knew I wouldn’t get away with smashing her car up, so what’s the matter with me?

  I paw at my face.

  “You ready?” I hear someone whisper behind me. A peppy voice. I turn my head up, deciding I am about to rip some JV cheerleader a new one. As soon as my face hits the light, something hits my face—something wet and bitter. I choke as the liquid hits my open mouth, sputtering.

  Then I get hit again. And again.

  The liquor burns my eyes, soaks my hair to my scalp, drips down everything. All I know to do is crouch down in front of my locker and cover my face.

  But no one helps me.

  Not one person.

  I want to crawl into the floor, melt there into the pool of liquor, and stop existing. At least for that one moment, just stop altogether.

  These horrible racking sobs are filling my ears, and they’re coming from me. There’s a name on the tip of my tongue, not mine: It’s Ryan, over and over again. That’s what this is. This is his ghost, him and his Jack Daniel’s he loved so much and his car and that tree, all the things I imagine every night. Oh my God, this isn’t real.

  It can’t be.

  “Somebody go get Whit DuRant or a teacher or something,” a voice says in the distance. One voice of sympathy through the laughter.

  “Why should we? Would she help if it were one of us?” Footsteps retreat all around me.

  “Olivia,” says someone closer. A warm touch on my arm. “Get up. Let’s go.”

  56

  LAST YEAR

  Mom said “get out” to Ryan, and my whole life realigned. If Ryan was the problem child, then what did that make me?

  Ethan had just gone home, his face uneasy as he left me alone in my room with the sounds of fighting coming from the den. I’d wanted him to leave—didn’t want him to know that Ryan, the boy I’d spent my life worshipping, was so broken. I lay in my dark bedroom, my too-short dress tangled up around my legs, hair mussed from sex. I’d close my eyes and it’d all go—

  “Ryan, for God’s sake, we had this dinner planned for a month and now you can barely stand up. Can’t you think—imagine—what this is doing to me?”

  “Of course it is,” he replied, his words coming together as if one. “Of course it’s all about you and pretending you have everything under control.”

  Mom’s voice got low. That’s when I went closer to the door to listen. “This isn’t about me, Ryan. This is about you. What do you think seeing you like this does to your sister?”

  I heard him laugh. “Oh, because you care about her so much.” I almost smiled. “She was smart and happy and bright, and you brought her to this shithole and look what it’s done to her.”

  “Ryan,” Mom said.

  “Look what she’s become. Another fucking—”

  “Get out.”

  She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t even sounded angry by then. She just said it.

  I leaned against the wall of my room, my hand on my chest, momentarily stunned. And then I pulled open my door, running into the middle of them—between Mom, all hard-faced and serious, and red-eyed Ryan, confused and sloppy.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said automatically. I don’t know what made me do it. Why I thought I could change his mind, convince him to see me for who I was. For who he’d always known.


  I was heartbroken and I wanted him to love me again.

  Ryan kind of stared at me, mystified for a moment, and then he shrugged one shoulder and turned toward the door.

  When I went to follow him, Mom grabbed my arm. “Olivia, don’t!” she commanded. Her fingers squeezed into my forearm. “You’re not helping this way. This enables him.” For a second, I got a clear view of the desperation behind her eyes. “You can let me handle this.”

  I was incapable. Because of course I was.

  I yanked my arm out of her grip and tore off after Ryan, running out the door behind him. He was leaning against his SUV outside. I went to him. “Where are the keys?” I asked.

  Mom stood in the front door, the light shining on her from behind, casting her face in shadow. “Please, you drive, Olivia,” she said, holding up Ryan’s key ring. I leapt back up the stairs, taking the keys from between her fingers. I ignored the way she was looking at me, the hurt on her face, and pounded back down the stairs.

  “Get in,” I told Ryan.

  When we drove away, she stared off after us, but I don’t think she could see us anymore.

  That night, Ryan and I ended up on the high school football field, stars strewn against the Buckley sky above us, itchy grass rubbing against our bare legs. Ryan found a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his trunk. He’d take a swig, hand it to me, and wait patiently while I did the same. “The stars are brighter here than anywhere else,” he told me as I pulled the bottle out of his hand.

  I’ve always hated the taste of Jack Daniel’s.

  Finally, after another excruciating swallow of dark liquor, I asked, “Why do you do this?”

  He stopped, the bottle halfway to his mouth, and let it fall to his side. “You sound like her.”

  “Don’t say that.” There wasn’t going to be an answer, I saw. I don’t think even he knew why.

  With some effort, he twisted his head to the side, looking at me through glassy eyes. “Remember how I used to tell you all those stories when we were younger? About all these places around the world? Back when Mom was practically a robot, and then after we moved here, how it’d be our escape from this nothing town? How everything would be so different once we were on our own?”

  I nodded. I’d been clinging to that hope my entire life. That I’d go someplace where the Rough House wasn’t the highlight of a Friday night and where people weren’t defined by what side of the railroad tracks they lived on. Where I could atone for my sins. Where I’d finally feel totally and completely loved and whole.

  Anywhere else.

  He laughed, hollow. “It’s all bullshit, Liv. I thought I’d be happy if I could just get out of Buckley. Out of my head. But now I’m more trapped than ever.” He stopped, breathed. Brought the bottle back to his lips and sucked down another gulp. “So that’s why I do it.”

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said it: “Do you hate me, Ry?”

  He shifted his head to face me then, and I followed so that our eyes lined up to each other, our same dark hair side to side. “Of course not, Liv,” he said very carefully, as if trying to make sure I knew this wasn’t coming from the Jack Daniel’s. “You’re still my favorite person in the world.”

  A chill swept through the air, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “Then don’t go back,” I said. Especially if I was never getting out.

  But he did. That’s the thing about us Claytons.

  We never know when to quit.

  57

  The world is covered in alcohol—it’s in the smell and the sights and the feel. I’m drowning in it right outside my locker, waiting to cease existing.

  Someone’s hand hoists me up from the floor in front of my locker, marching me down the hall. A guy’s hand. I can’t open my eyes. They sting so badly, I want to claw them out of my head. He leads me through a doorway, slamming it and turning the lock behind him. Then I feel cool water brushing across my face. I cringe away from it, but he brings me back in closer.

  “Are you okay?”

  I open my eyes.

  Do you know what color Jack Daniel’s is?

  It’s like if you mixed honey and soda and bile and just a little of whatever makes it swish up against the glass, that’s the color of Jack Daniel’s. Or, right now, the color of the wet paper towel in Ethan’s hand. He looks like he has witnessed the first truly tragic thing in his life.

  I shake my head, afraid if I talk, the taste will be worse. I pull more paper towels out of the dispenser, wiping at my mouth, scouring my tongue with the rough material. It’s like trying to stop a flood with a piece of gum. I drop the paper towel and lean against the bathroom stall. Ethan stares, his dark blue eyes thoughtful.

  “Where’s Whit?” I ask because it’s the first thing that pops into my head.

  He winces like that actually stung. “I don’t know. He’s your boyfriend,” he says, his voice with a chilly edge.

  I push my sopping-wet hair back out of my face. I’m not thinking about him. I’m not thinking about Whit.

  Ryan. Ryan. Ryan.

  “Did you know she was going to do this?” I ask, still trying to choke back my feelings. Swallow them. Stomp them into the ground.

  “Of course not. Do you think I would let her do that to you after your brother—” He stops and shakes his head. “It’s so fucked up.” He pulls at the ends of his hair. “Everything is fucked up.”

  “I didn’t put that photo in the papers. Of Claire. She did,” I say. “Not that you care; you’re so wrapped around her finger.”

  “What do you want from me, O?” Ethan asks. “To tell you you’re a hundred times more important to me than she’s ever been? You already know that.”

  I glare at him. “Fuck you for saying that to me.” I smell like a distillery. “Look at me. She throws Ryan in my face like he’s the king of hearts in a poker game. You do it, too. You slept with her and told me it was my fault.”

  His face changes. Anger flares to life on his usually calm façade. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, in thought. Making a decision. And then: “I didn’t know how else to get your attention.”

  I laugh out loud. “That’s the excuse now? You wanted attention. Well, bravo, you sure got it.”

  “I don’t know, O. I was so desperate for you to talk to me, and you wouldn’t, and I thought Adrienne would help.” He runs a hand through his hair with a sigh. “It’s all I’ve wanted for weeks. For you to look over and see me with her and finally tell DuRant to go fuck off and for it to fix this chasm between us. I thought the one thing you wouldn’t be able to stand was seeing me with Adrienne and eventually you would want me back. Even if it was just to stop it.”

  I open my mouth. Then close it. Then open it again.

  He laughs, a mean laugh that doesn’t suit him, looks down at his feet. “And it finally hit me. If you don’t care about me being with her, then you don’t care about me at all.” Accusation drips from his words; hurt, too.

  “But, Ethan, it wasn’t over until that last moment. The one where I had to see you like that.” I resist the urge to chew on my lip, not even sure if I’m lying or not. When was it over? “I bet the whole thing was her idea, huh?”

  “Adrienne may have done a lot of things, but driving a wedge between us was not one of them. That was all you.”

  “I was heartbroken.” I clutch at my ruined shirt. If I think back, I can actually feel my heart shattering again. None of what I remember about that day is Ryan. It’s Adrienne on a boat dock, every laugh line in her bright face. Ethan belly-flopping into the murky waters outside, arms outstretched to his side like a cross between a skydiver and a skimmer bug. Coxie nuzzling into Claire’s neck, eyes alight with adoration.

  My whole life was a beautiful lie built upon this one person who I didn’t realize held me together. And then the unraveling, for months after; I
was unraveling like a frayed ribbon.

  “I wanted to help,” Ethan says, his voice raw, his expression honest. “But you were dying in front of me, and you didn’t care about anything I had to offer. Nothing but sex.” The way he says it, I wonder if he’s the first teenage boy to ever make sex sound like a swear word.

  “Is that what you’re doing to DuRant, too—using him?” he asks me like it’s an accusation.

  If Whit and I were real, he’d be right, I guess.

  “You don’t know anything about us,” I say. Because otherwise, he’d be laughing in my face right now. He’d laugh knowing how much more I’ve used Whit than I ever used him. He’d laugh about the karmic retribution of it all—me wanting someone so badly who would never want me back once he knew the whole story.

  It’s all a great big tragedy, and it’s nothing less than what I deserve.

  “You don’t understand how it feels to lose everything that’s important to you,” I say.

  “You don’t understand what it’s like to be fighting for someone who doesn’t see you. You hadn’t lost me.”

  Tears are bubbling right beneath the surface again. I loved him so much then, when he never thought of me as second-best. But it wasn’t the same as Adrienne, as her fucked-up love I thought I had to earn. Ethan gave without question. And I took every bit I could get my hands on. “I wish things had been different,” I say honestly. “But you did what you did. It’s still not right.”

  He pulls at the fraying edges of the paper towel he’s still holding. “You didn’t want it to be different. You wanted to blame someone. I’m glad I at least gave you that.”

  I go silent. Stare hard at him. There’s nothing else to say, and I know that. Even though he was the catalyst for this whole mess, he’s not important anymore. He’s a pawn in Adrienne’s game now, same as the rest of us. Just a boy caught in the middle who once loved me, probably more than I loved him. So I let him have this.

  He’s right anyway.