Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things Read online

  Maria stepped back and gave Edie a full eye-scan.

  “You’re so thin,” she said. “Like, vermicelli thin. What diet are you on?”

  “The eat-what-you-can diet?” Edie shrank in on herself, uncomfortable with Maria’s overt scrutiny.

  “God, you’re lucky.” Maria turned toward the standing mirror in the corner of the room. She sucked in her cheeks and pulled back her neck with both hands. “I’ve tried them all: fat-free, sugar-free, carb-free, gluten-free, meat-free, everything-free.”

  “You’re not fat, though,” Edie said.

  “Fat enough.” Maria pushed out her belly and drew it in again, pressing it firmly into place with the palm of her hand. “As Dear Mama says, ‘There’s always another pound to lose.’”

  “At least you have boobs.” Julia tugged at her blouse. “I’d rather be fat than flat.”

  Edie shuffled over to the dressing table and glanced self-consciously at her own B cup (B for barely worth bothering with a bra) while her cousins continued disapproving of themselves. She really hoped she wouldn’t have to spend the next five months telling Julia she was pretty and convincing Maria she wasn’t fat. Reassuring beautiful people that they were actually beautiful felt like such a bizarre waste of energy. Besides, only a few minutes in and Edie was getting caught up in the conversation, assessing her reflection just like her cousins. Insecurity sucked, and it spread faster than Ebola.

  Like anyone else, Edie had her own unique catalogue of imperfections. The gods had short-changed her chin but been overzealous in the forehead department. They’d also endowed her with one hundred and seventeen completely pointless freckles, one eye smaller than the other, and more cowlicks than a dairy farm on a salt flat. Her knees were knobby. Her elbows were knobbier. Her nose was vaguely unsatisfying as a centerpiece for her face. She was hardly a model of confidence, but she kept most of her insecurities to herself, or she laughed about them with Shonda.

  At that thought, Edie checked her phone again. Her heart sank, weighed down by a growing sense of guilt. Shonda still hadn’t replied to her post. Surely she understood by now that what’d happened back in Ithaca was just a stupid mistake, a fleeting moment of poor judgment, nothing more. Their friendship was strong enough to get past it. Shonda knew Edie needed her. She wouldn’t leave her best friend alone in Snobville without helping to find the humor in her situation.

  Maria’s reflection caught Edie’s eyes.

  “Cheer up,” she said, more like an order than a pep talk. “We get to take you shopping this weekend.”

  “Actually, I hate shopping,” Edie said.

  “No one hates shopping,” Maria argued. “That’s, like, totally un-American.”

  Edie bit back her caustic replies. She was a guest. Her cousins were trying to be helpful. This wasn’t the time or place to rant about privilege. Think it. Don’t say it.

  “Dad’s giving us his credit card,” Julia noted.

  Maria strode over to the closet.

  “We hear you arrived practically empty-handed.” She peered in and shook her head as if appalled. “Don’t worry. Julia and I will make a project of you. Project Edie. You’ll be like Cinderella, only without the evil stepsisters.”

  Edie cringed as she swallowed yet another retort.

  Julia grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest, all wistful and dreamy.

  “You’re totally Cinderella!” she gushed. “Which means we have to find you a Prince Charming.”

  “No, you don’t,” Edie said a little too quickly.

  Maria spun toward her, eyeing her suspiciously.

  “You don’t have a boyfriend back in Whatsit Town, do you?” Her lip curled as though the mere idea made her ill.

  “Or a girlfriend?” Julia added, more to Maria than to Edie.

  “Boy, girl, whatever. Some long-distance angsty baggage you have to let linger for obligation’s sake so they don’t OD on emo and drown in a pool of their own tears?”

  “No,” Edie started, “but—”

  “Thank god.” Maria stepped up behind her and turned her toward the mirror. “Then we can go full fairy godmother on you. After all, you have great bones, amazing skin, and fabulous hair. If you, like, comb it or something.”

  Edie scowled at her reflection, desperate to be neither Poor Edith nor Project Edie. She hated being compared to Cinderella, not just because her defining characteristic was her relationship with a fireplace. The story was terrible, implying a girl just needed a fancy dress, a pair of painful shoes, and some rodent slave labor. Then—poof—true love would fall into her lap. That wasn’t romance. Not that Edie wanted a romance, of course, but if she did pursue one it wouldn’t be some superficial fairytale. It would develop over a shared love of books, music, and cloudy night skies that let the stars keep their secrets. No ballgowns. No pumpkins. No princes.

  “We’ll make sure you look fabulous for Dear Mama’s spring garden party,” Maria assured her, completely ignoring Edie’s overt lack of enthusiasm.

  “A garden party?” Edie glanced out the windows, where the trees were barely sprouting. “In the first week of April?”

  “Dear Mama likes to be first at everything. Keeping ahead of the Joneses and all that. She gets a zillion heat lamps. Everyone pretends it’s the middle of June.”

  “Half of Mansfield will be there,” Julia added. “We’ll treat it like your debut in society the way they do in old movies.”

  “It’ll be perfect,” Maria agreed. “We’ll drink champagne and flirt with cute boys while the old people stand around talking about mortgages, book clubs, and each other.”

  Edie slumped down on the bed next to Julia.

  “I’m not very good at parties,” she admitted, recalling her habit of hiding out wherever the fewest people gathered. “Or flirting, or anything involving strangers.”

  “They won’t all be strangers,” Julia encouraged. “Remember Tom and Sebastian from next door?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” Edie rolled away and buried her face in the pillows. She remembered. More specifically, she remembered reenacting Rodin statues with a certain sandy-haired boy her age. It’d started with an innocuous contest to see who could best mimic The Thinker and it ended with a toppling approximation of The Kiss. Ever since Edie’d accepted Norah’s invite, she’d been wondering if the Summers family still lived next door. She was kind of hoping they didn’t, and also kind of hoping they did.

  Maria popped open a bright pink tube of lipstick and leaned forward to apply it, eyeing Edie through her reflection.

  “Didn’t you used to have a major crush on one of them?” she asked.

  “I was only ten.”

  “Oh, please.” Maria scoffed. “I crushed on every boy I met at that age.”

  Julia shot her sister a pert little sneer.

  “You still crush on every guy you meet.”

  “It’s not a crush if they like you back.”

  “Brag much?”

  “Jealous much?”

  As Maria and Julia continued snapping at each other, Edie got up and edged her way over to one of the big bay windows, placing herself out of the line of fire. She glanced out at the tidy rows of elm trees, perfect lawns, and enormous brick houses. It was all so different from what she was used to. She might as well be in Oz.

  She clicked the heels of her sneakers.

  Nothing changed.

  She was about to turn away when she noticed a guy with sandy blond hair and a faded yellow T-shirt dragging two bulging garbage bags down the next-door neighbor’s driveway. A guy who might know a thing or two about sculptures. Despite her resolve to focus on her schoolwork, she couldn’t help but be curious. Besides, seeing him now would be easier than at some puffed-up party where her cousins were trying to turn her into someone she wasn’t sure she wanted to be. They could simply say hello, catch up, revive their friendship.

  “I’m going to get a bit of fresh air.” She crossed to the door.

  Julia jumped up.

&
nbsp; “We’ll come with you.”

  “No. Thanks, though.” Edie backed across the threshold.

  “No sulking,” Maria warned.

  “I just need a minute alone.” Edie took another step back. “I promise I won’t listen to any emo.” With that, she bolted.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Edie gripped the waist-high picket fence that separated Norah’s immaculately groomed garden from the neighbors’ driveway. About ten yards away, Sebastian was stuffing a garbage bag from a pile of raked yard waste, his back toward her. He was tall now, with long legs, broad but bony shoulders, and a sharp wedge haircut that was dark with sweat at the back of his neck.

  Edie tried to muster a hello as she flashed through memories of the ten-year-old boy who’d loaned her his seven-book Narnia set, raced her up trees, and shared her first kiss. The kiss was awesome for approximately six seconds. Then Edie fell on a sprinkler, making her look like she peed her pants and bruising her backside so she couldn’t sit down for three days. She’d hated that he laughed when it happened, but she never thought she’d see him again anyway. Now here he was right in front of her, and he looked good (really, really good) and she was a Gordian knot of nerves. Did he even remember that kiss? There was no way he remembered that kiss. But if he did remember that kiss . . .

  Edie ducked behind a tree, took out her phone, and added another post to her lexicon, hoping to pique Shonda’s curiosity enough to elicit a comment.

  Crush

  noun

  Squeeze, compress, force inward.

  A brand of orange soda-pop that would horrify your aunt if you drank it in her house.

  A feeling you deny to everyone because you’re totally focusing on your education—not your love life—but secretly you’ve been obsessing about this guy for years and now you’re about to talk to him, only your social anxiety has skyrocketed so you think you might just vomit and flee.

  Edie shoved her phone into her pocket, stepped out from behind the tree, and opened her mouth to say hello. Then she turned away, embarrassed.

  “Dammit!” she muttered as she slammed the fence with both fists.

  “Hey! What did that fence ever do to you?” Sebastian called from behind her. His voice was deeper now but his harmless teasing tone was exactly like Edie remembered it.

  She turned around, slowly, nervously, and undeniably gut-fluttering-ly. Sebastian was smiling, which meant Edie was blushing. He had the sort of smile that came more from his eyes than his lips, like his joy was being channeled wherever he looked. Since he was looking directly at her, she did, in fact, feel a little surge of joy.

  Yep. Crush.

  She managed a small wave, frustrated with herself for failing her No Boys plan so soon after making it. Then again, she wasn’t really failing unless she actively pursued Sebastian, which she had no intention of doing, especially since starting a simple conversation was already making her nauseous and neurotic.

  “Hi.” Sebastian brushed off his hands as he approached the fence. “Nice shirt.”

  Edie glanced down, certain she’d spilled something on herself.

  “Atlas was a shoplifter,” he read. “That’s funny. Guess Atlas lifted pretty much everything.”

  “Right. Yeah,” she said with a little gust of relief. “Most people don’t get it.” She eyed the print on his shirt: a cartoon of a guy in a baseball catcher’s uniform, crouching in what she assumed was a rye field. “Yours is funny too.”

  “Most people do get it.” His smile tipped higher, reviving her blush. “So, you’re back in town for a few months?”

  Edie nodded as she tried to gauge his level of interest in that particular piece of information. Her sleuthing proved inconclusive, despite the vaguely hopeful rise in his voice and his temporarily unattended bag of lawn debris.

  “Last time I saw you, you were only about this high.” He floated a hand just above the top of the fence. “Do you still climb trees and draw on furniture?”

  “Trees, maybe. Furniture, not so much.”

  “I’ll bet people call you Edith now.”

  “Actually, I still go by Edie. Edith makes me sound like I’m ninety, knitting an endless afghan while surrounded by semiferal cats.” She shoved a toe across the gravel path and kicked at the fence. “Too bad my mom was such a massive fan of The Age of Innocence.”

  “She named you after Edith Wharton?”

  “Yeah. Wow. Don’t tell me you’ve read the book?”

  “Not yet, but I might. Want to give me your best ten-second pitch?”

  “Um . . . okay?” Edie picked at a knot in the fence-post, peeling away a small strip of white paint, wondering how to describe a romance to a guy she sort-of-but-not-really-but-okay-yes-totally wanted a romance with. “Long-held secrets, missed opportunities, and one hell of a held hand.” Her eyes trailed toward Sebastian’s hands. His thumbs were tucked into his jeans pockets and his fingers tapped his thighs.

  “Sounds great,” he said. “Maybe I’ll give it a read. You know, to find out what all that hand-holding is about.”

  “The book’s also good for quotes,” Edie added quickly, hoping to divert attention from the heat creeping up her neck. “I’m kind of a collector. Words don’t take up much shelf space. Unless I count this thing.” She tapped her forehead a split second before realizing it was probably as beet red as her neck.

  “Cool. Lay one on me.” Sebastian smiled again, forming parenthetical dimples in his cheeks, as though his smile was an aside. “We’ll make a game of it. You show me yours. I’ll show you mine. These things, I mean.” He tapped his forehead, mimicking her gesture, but without the blush.

  “I don’t know.” Edie squirmed, unsure if he was flirting or just being friendly, and equally unsure what she was supposed to do if he was flirting.

  “Go on. Take something off that shelf. Something from the other Edith.” He rested his forearms on the fence and leaned forward, expectant.

  Edie’s mind raced until it landed on the perfect quote. It was a little forward but it fit the moment beautifully. She willed her blush to recede as she risked a look in Sebastian’s eyes, the color of robins’ eggs, September skies, and Berry Blue jellybeans.

  “‘Each time you happen to me all over again.’”

  His smile slowly stretched wider as the world reduced itself to a garden, a driveway, two people, and the single word again.

  “Nice,” he said, sweetly sincere. “I like it.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, seriously smitten. “Me too.”

  The world gradually expanded to include boring things like streets, houses, and those little gnatlike bugs that swarmed around at dusk as if determined to turn a perfectly beautiful evening into a spontaneous swat-fest. Edie ignored them all. The ice had been broken. Her anxiety was gone. She’d blundered her way through their reunion, as awkward and bashful as Norah had accused her of being. To his credit, Sebastian hadn’t laughed at her once. Whether or not he was flirting—and whether or not she was flirting—she got the feeling Sebastian could turn out to be a truly solid friend. In a place like Mansfield, that was important.

  The two of them continued chatting from opposite sides of the fence, catching up on the events and nonevents of the past seven and a half years. The conversation was casual until Edie mentioned her mom’s accident and Sebastian asked the one question she wasn’t prepared for.

  “How are you doing?”

  Edie opened her mouth to say she was fine, and to thank him for asking, but she couldn’t manage it. Something was stuck in her throat, and it was trying to escape through her eyes. As the air grew heavy with unspoken grief, Sebastian patiently waited, his eyes never leaving her face while she bit her lip and willed her tears to ignore gravity. They fell anyway.

  “It’s hard sometimes,” she finally whispered. “People always say losing someone gets easier with time, and it does, but it hits when I least expect it, like the one time someone actually asks me how I am.”

 
; “‘Gets easier’ doesn’t mean ‘gets easy,’” Sebastian said. “After ten years I still miss my dad. My stepdad’s all right. He’s just not the kind of guy who’d hold a kid by the ankles and pretend to mow the lawn with him.”

  Edie nodded and they shared another silence, one that felt good for the honesty, the un-fine-ness, and the memories that didn’t need to be tidied up and packed away. No one pretended potholes didn’t exist, or pockets, or spare rooms. So why did the heart’s empty spaces always have to be “cheered up”? Why did so many feelings have to be felt “in moderation”?

  As Sebastian traced a line from picket to picket with an outstretched finger, Edie quietly murmured, “‘Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.’”

  “Oh for two. Who said that one?”

  “George Eliot.”

  “Wow, you do keep a lot up there.” He gestured at her forehead without quite touching her.

  “I read a lot, and I have what my mom called a ‘Velcro memory.’ It’s great for tests and lost keys, but otherwise kind of annoying.”

  “I always knew you’d grow up to be one of those smart girls,” he teased.

  Edie shook her head, annoyed, as a little snort of humorless laughter escaped.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Girls who get labeled ‘smart’ quickly become social outcasts.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous, but true.”

  Sebastian stepped back and clapped his hands together.

  “Then I have the perfect quote for you, to even up the score a little. A line from a play we did at my school last month. Molière. ‘Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.’”

  “Good one,” Edie said, “but I dare you to prove that theory true.”