Unbreak My Heart (5 page)

Dear Amanda,
I wish I could tell you about the summer so
far. Olive is being clingy. Dad is being cheesy.
Mom is being nosy (about us and our fight).
I wish …

Rip
. Another page for the trashed-letters drawer.

It’s not like we were each other’s only friends. There were a group of us—me, Amanda, Henry Choi, Aaron Blake, and Renee Hartwell. Amanda and I were like the core, somehow, always tighter than the friends floating around us, but the five of us definitely had a unit.

“The lighting isn’t working,” said Henry, staring at Renee pointedly. “Amanda looks splotchy.”

“Maybe Amanda
is
splotchy,” said Aaron, raising his eyebrows in a mock-serious gesture.

“Shut up!” Amanda threw a small couch pillow at him.

“Excellent use of the ‘throw pillow,’” I said, using air quotes to emphasize my joke.

Aaron cracked up. Amanda smiled.

Henry frowned. “Renee, fix the lighting?” he said.

Renee shifted her weight, struggling to move the spotlight while also holding up the giant microphone rig that was her charge during this student-film experiment.

Henry really wanted to go to a film school program in California over the summer, and he had to turn in a three-minute short with his application. We all agreed to help him shoot it over an early fall weekend, but I think Renee was less than thrilled with her role, which included major behind-the-scenes physical labor.

She’s the tomboy type—always wearing jeans or shorts and a T-shirt, hair in a ponytail, very casual. I thought that was cool about her, the way she didn’t chase guys. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have her eye on someone; it was clear to everyone who looked twice that she totally loved Henry. You don’t work hot lights and hold a heavy microphone boom on a Saturday for just anyone.

Amanda and I were cast as two women in our early forties dealing with infertility, who meet in the waiting room of our mutual doctor, played by Aaron.

“Remind me again why we have to be forty-somethings,” I said, wiping at the brown makeup that was supposed to make my face look shadowy and older.

Henry shaped his hands into a rectangle and looked at me with one eye closed. He was always doing things like that, which I think he saw in the movies, ironically. I’m not sure he even knew
why
film people did that.

“Everyone and their sister is going to turn in movies about coming-of-age and young love and blah, blah, blah CW crap,” he said. “But
I
am going to turn in a thoughtful exploration of middle age.”

“Is this because your parents have been watching DVDs of that old show
thirtysomething
?” asked Amanda.

Henry sighed. “It’s a good show.”

Amanda and I looked at each other and started laughing.

“Can we get this scene done, please?” Henry sounded like he was about to lose it, so we settled down.

He didn’t have one of those official black-and-white clapboard things that you crack, so when we all got back to our places, Henry just yelled, “Action!” from behind the camera.

“I haven’t tried intravenous yet,” said Amanda in a very serious voice, leaning in to me conspiratorially.

I looked at her and burst out laughing again.

“In-vitro!” shouted Henry. “It’s called
in-vitro
fertilization.”

“She could just say IVF,” said Renee. “That’s what my mom’s friend kept calling it.”

“Fine, IVF,” said Henry. “Okay, let’s start again.”

We ran the scene six more times until Henry was satisfied that he had the right pieces to cut together. Then we had to film it from another angle. It was a long day, but a really fun one, and I remember looking around and thinking it felt like being with family.

After everything happened, it wasn’t like Renee and Aaron and Henry vandalized my locker or threw eggs at me or anything dramatic like that. They just, kinda … weren’t there. Renee sent me a message saying she needed to “figure things out,” which I guess meant she wasn’t ready to talk to me. Henry and Aaron asked if I was okay at school, but they didn’t, like, make any real effort to make sure that when I said “Yeah,” I was telling the truth.

And, honestly, I had tunnel vision: all that mattered was Amanda. And of course, it was natural that everyone sided with her. I was the one who did something wrong.

chapter seven

“Another one!” Dad whisper-shouts, pointing toward the dark night sky.

He and I are in the cockpit, each stretched out on a cushioned seat, looking straight up at the stars. Mom and Olive have gone to bed—they’re the morning people on this vessel. Dad, a night owl like me, heard about a meteor shower tonight, and we’ve been hanging out here for half an hour or so, watching shooting stars. I’ve seen six and Dad claims to have seen eleven—twelve counting this latest one, which I didn’t catch. I think that’s impossible.

“Your eyes are playing tricks on you, old man,” I tell him.

He laughs. “Maybe so.” I look in his direction and I can see his white hair ruffling in the breeze. Mom’s freckles make her look young, but Dad’s prematurely white hair—not to mention his round belly—sometimes makes him look like Santa Claus with nerd glasses. He used to be blond, but that was before my time. I used to wish my hair were white when I was younger—I thought it was so unique. Even luminous, somehow.

I look up again. The sky is huge out here on the water. It’s so big you can see the curve of the earth, which makes me a little dizzy. Sometimes the sky freaks me out, to be honest. Space and the universe and all that? Scary.

We settle back into a comfortable quiet, and I’m thinking about how nice it is that Dad and I can do this—sit out here and be silent together. Mom’s always talking or bringing something up, but Dad’s more relaxed, more …

He clears his throat, which puts me on edge instantly. Dad never clears his throat unless he’s nervous about something.

“So do you miss them?” Dad asks.

“Sorry?”

“Amanda, Aaron, Ethan, your friends …,” says Dad.

I close my eyes and shake my head. Just when I thought Dad was being cool, he has to go and bring this up. I didn’t even know he knew Ethan’s name. I wish he didn’t.

“Did Mom ask you to talk to me about this?”

“No,” says Dad. “I just know something’s been on your mind, and I thought you might like to let some of it out.”

I hate that my parents assume they know what I’m thinking about when I close myself up in my room. They always imagine that they understand situations so much better than I do, but do they know Ethan? No. They’ve never even met him—they just saw him in a Facebook photo one night when Amanda and I were on the computer in the den, and Mom asked Amanda which guy her boyfriend was. They don’t even know Amanda, really—not like I do. Mom thinks she’s a saint because she does things like make emergency cupcakes for the church bake sale on just a day’s notice. They have no idea she actually bought them at a bakery outside of town and then smudged up the frosting a little to make them look homemade.

“No,” I lie. “I don’t miss him—er, them.”

“It’s okay to miss him, you know,” says Dad. So maybe he knows more than I thought he did. And I’m glad that we’re both looking up and not facing each other right now, because a tear slides down my cheek before I can stop it.

It’s not like the tear is all sadness. The thought of Ethan still affects me—I feel sad, mad, nostalgic, bitter, excited, wistful, energized, and, like, a hundred other emotions whenever he enters my mind. Also, I’ve done something ridiculous. I’ve gone through my iPod and found all the songs Ethan put on my playlist—well, all the ones I still had on there, anyway—and then recreated it as an on-the-go situation. I am completely masochistic.

“He isn’t mine to miss,” I say a minute later, after I control the quiver I know would have crept into my voice if I’d responded right away.

“No one belongs to anyone, Clem. Especially not when you’re sixteen years old.”

“Dad, let’s just say there are rules.”

“I know,” says my dad. “I know all about the rules. There are times when life gets lived outside the rules, though.”

“Yeah, well, high school is pretty unforgiving of social rule-breakers,” I say. “Believe me, my ex-friends have made that very clear.”

“Well, maybe that says more about your friends than it does about you,” says Dad.

I know he’s trying to help with his circular vagueness, but I’m so not in the mood. He doesn’t know the details, and I’m not about to try to explain everything to him. It’s like I’m inside this situation that has so many different emotional components and friend connections that it feels like a web that only I and maybe, like, two other people can totally grasp. I decide that I’m staying quiet, looking for one more shooting star, and then going to bed. That way it won’t seem like I left because of this conversation.

A few seconds later, I see a bright light streak across the starboard side of the sky.

“Whoa,” I say.

“That was a big one,” says Dad. “I hope you made a wish.”

“I did.”

I stand up and kiss him on the forehead.

“Good night, Dad.”

“Good night, Curious Clem,” he says.

He used to call me that when I was little. I’d ask him a million questions about everything—the boat, his shirt buttons, the color of the sky. Anything that entered my field of vision, really. I’ve lost some of that curious nature, though. I have answers now, and they’re not all as magical or interesting as I once thought they would be.

When I tuck into my bed, I try to think, from a curious perspective, about Dad’s question:
Do I miss Ethan?
I miss my friends, I miss the way my life was before Ethan was around, and—okay—I miss the way I felt when I was with Ethan.

And I wonder if it makes me a bad person.

chapter eight

Dear Amanda,
I always envied the way you were with guys.
It was like you could cast a spell on them or
something …

“So that new kid Ethan is in my Physics class,” she said.

“Oh, he’s in my AP American History.”

At my house after school in early September, we sat on my bed and stared into the mirror. I had a brush in my hand and was slowly combing through my long brown hair. Amanda was trying on different lipsticks with a box of tissues by her side.

“He’s a junior, so he could technically go off campus, but I’m thinking about inviting him to sit with us at lunch.” She pursed her lips and applied a dark pink that made her pale skin look luminous.

“That looks so much better on you,” I said. “Take it.”

She smiled. “Really?”

I nodded.

“I can trade you for the cheek stain I got at Sephora last week.”

“Deal.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a thick, sparkly pink pencil. “You can use it on your lips too.”