The Museum of Heartbreak - Meg Leder Page 0,19

had been going on.

I waited for Eph to say something.

“Well, that could have gone better,” he said dryly, resignation on his face, his jaw jutting out stubbornly.

“I’m guessing Macbeth wasn’t a hit,” I said lightly.

He shrugged, turning to his locker and starting to slide books in his bag.

“Do you want to talk about—”

“No fucking way,” he said, shutting his locker and sliding his bag onto his shoulder. “What’s up with you?”

To say that Eph is bad at showing his emotions is an understatement. His heart is pretty much a quadruple-locked vault encased in concrete dropped in the part of the ocean where all the blind bug-eyed monsters live. At that second he had this awful grimace on his face, like he was trying to forcefully pretend the entire moment out of ever existing.

It reminded me of the expression on his face when I found his dinosaur notebook.

I wanted to ask, Are you okay? and Why do you always break girls’ hearts?

I wanted to say, You don’t know how lucky you are.

I wanted to say, I don’t want you to end up alone.

I wanted to say, Tell me about the dinosaurs.

Instead I chucked him lightly on the shoulder. “Now I know where you picked up your excessive use of the f word.”

Eph snorted. “You’re never going to let that drop, are you?”

“No. And guess what we’re doing on Saturday?” I hopped a little in place.

“The Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel.”

“Wellllll . . .” I pulled out the invite and held it in front of him. “Want to be my plus one?”

Eph scanned it quickly, met my eyes. “This sounds like a douche fest.”

I moved to slug him in the arm, and he backed up.

“Easy, killer.”

“Don’t call me that. Say you’ll go with me.”

“On one condition.”

I did a fist pump, which was probably totally uncool, but whatever, I did it. “Name it.”

“I’m not dressing up.”

“No, you have to dress up. It says costumes mandatory.”

“What, is he going to turn me away at the door or something?”

“Eph, please.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m not dressing up as half of the periodic table,” he said. I cringed, remembering our spectacularly dorky fourth-grade Halloween costume, one suggested by our parents.

“Fine. But no raptors, either,” I said, referencing another year’s ensemble. We’d ended up looking like garbage bags with wings.

“The things I do for you,” he muttered under his breath,

I resisted the impulse to seize his shoulders and jump up and down in sheer glee, and instead looped my arm through his, pulling his elbow close as we started walking down the hall.

“It is going to be awesome. I promise.”

Star stickers

Stella stickers

New York, New York

Cat. No. 201X-7

Gift of Jane Marx

FIVE DAYS LATER, THE DAY of the party, October the first, I was 100 percent freaking out.

“Nothing is awesome right now,” I said to Audrey as she brushed out her long hair. She looked perfect: flared polyester pants, a plunging plaid shirt, big shiny hoop earrings, brown high-heeled boots.

“I told you—we only have two Charlie’s Angels. You should be our third.”

“Bosley would be more like it,” I mumbled under my breath, glancing briefly in the mirror at the unruly mess of my hair next to Audrey’s shiny mane, before heading across the hall in a funk.

It was four short hours before party go time. I was costumeless, pacing the empty space in my room—a pretty limited pacing zone, considering the clothes I had thrown in frustrated piles on the hardwood floor. I shoved items on the rack in the closet and pulled down an old vintage blue dress, holding it up and assessing its potential. Alice in Wonderland? But it was polyester, and showing up at Keats’s house stinky with anxiety sweat would probably not help my already terrible flirting skills.

I tossed it over my shoulder.

“Watch it!” Eph said from the bed, looking up irritably from his comic and throwing the dress on the floor.

“Sorry,” I said.

He shook his head and turned back to his comic, mouthing the words to himself as he read, a habit I’d noticed soon after we first met. When I told my mom I thought it was weird, she sat my six-year-old self down and explained about reading disabilities. A week later, when Wayne Pinslaw teased Eph about it on the playground, I kicked him in the shin, drawing blood and earning my only visit to the principal’s office. I had to apologize to Wayne, but Wayne had to apologize to Eph, making the whole thing totally worth it.

I stared at Eph,