The Museum of Heartbreak - Meg Leder Page 0,33

down the hall. It was too chilly to sit outside. Eph didn’t have the same lunch period as me. As far as I could tell, Keats wasn’t in my lunch period, but even if he were, how weird and stalkery would that be? Hey, you asked me out but I don’t have anyone else to sit with so can I sit with you? And forget a bathroom stall—every time I saw someone do that in movies, I couldn’t stop thinking about how gross it was.

I was so busy freaking out about where to eat, I didn’t realize I had stopped in front of a doorway until someone said, “You joining us for Nevermore, Penelope?”

Mr. Garfield, my English teacher, was waiting behind me, holding a lunch tray, beard crinkled around his smile. He was my favorite teacher, despite the aforementioned Bleak House assignment.

“I didn’t know you did this,” I said.

“I’m their advisor, though they can handle it without me. I’m only here for tiebreaker purposes, which happens more than you might think.” He motioned me in. “Come on . . . it’d be nice to have another neutral party.”

When I entered, Grace grinned hugely.

“Hey, Penelope! So happy to see you! You joining us? Grab a chair.”

The room we were in was tiny, with crowded bulletin boards, a giant poster of a raven, and a mess of papers on a round table.

“Guys, this is Penelope, the most generous donor from the Dead Poets Phone Drive, as well as a fellow attender of parties. You remember Miles?”

Miles’s Mohawk was currently tipped green, and he was wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. “Nice one,” he said, nodding appreciatively at my They Might Be Giants shirt.

I blushed. “Thanks. You too.”

“This is Oscar,” Grace said, pointing to the short guy with close-cropped black curly hair, and wire-rimmed, dadlike glasses. “He’s our new art director.”

“Hey,” he said.

“And May,” Grace said, as the tall girl across from me stretched her hand out, “is our esteemed copy editor.”

“Hi,” I said, shaking her hand, admiring the several dozen chunky silver rings she had on.

“You know Mr. Garfield, I’m guessing?”

He was at his desk, settling back with a stack of blue composition notebooks.

“Yeah, I’m in his junior English lit class.”

“Oh God, Bleak House?” Miles asked.

“You’ll thank me during the AP test,” Mr. Garfield said sternly, lowering his glasses.

Hated it, Miles mouthed to me.

“So this is how this works. We all have copies of the same stuff to read, so each submission gets at least four people reviewing it,” Grace explained.

“Five today with you,” Oscar added.

“And each submission is numbered—no contributor information—so you can read without knowing who wrote it,” Grace said. “That way the entry can stand on its own merits, whether the creator is your best friend or your archnemesis from third grade.”

“Misty Cooper,” Miles said. “Asked me why I didn’t wear dresses.”

“Pete Franklin,” I replied without missing a beat. “Asked me why my nose was ugly.”

“Bastard person,” Miles said disgustedly.

“All right, enough talking, people,” Grace said.

Miles wiggled his eyebrows at me. “I think she means us.”

“Sorry,” I said to Grace, as she handed each of us a stack of submissions. She smiled, shaking her head. “It’s not you.”

“I can hear you, Gracie.”

She ignored him. “Remember, check ‘publish-worthy,’ ‘not sure,’ or ‘nope’ on a reader report after you finish an entry. And anything you want to talk or share or ask about, feel free to bring up now, though we’ll also leave the last fifteen minutes to go over stuff.”

Thirty minutes later I was in a groove. I loved everything about the process: reading the overwrought, melodramatic heartbreak poems and the words in a short story that took my breath away, Oscar’s appreciative nods over a beautiful black-and-white photo of a tree, May pointing out humorous typos, even Grace and Miles arguing passionately about whether or not to run a collage featuring hundreds of Miley Cyrus faces—small and big, upside down and cut apart, glitter in between.

“It’s rad,” Grace said.

“Hate it,” Miles said.

“I don’t know,” May said, chewing on the edge of a pencil.

“Who’s Miley Cyrus?” Oscar asked without looking up from the photos he was shifting back and forth on the table.

Miles’s pen clattered on the table. “What? You’re kidding, right?”

Oscar looked up and seemed surprised to see the entire staff looking at him.

“Hannah Montana? ‘Party in the USA’? ‘Wrecking Ball’? Billy Ray Cyrus’s daughter?” Miles asked.

Oscar scrunched his face. “Is Billy Ray Cyrus that Republican guy from Texas?”

Miles threw his head in his hands, muttering, “How is this even