Philip Siegel - The Break-Up Artist

For the next two weeks, my life consists of school, sleeping and SDA. My postpractice aches usually dissipate by the next morning, except on Fridays, when I feel like I barely finished a marathon. I’ve been so busy I barely pay attention to schoolwork or how little I see Val.

Huxley has fewer notes for me, only minute details that I totally missed. Ezra and I have shared plenty of eye rolls over her comments. However, she isn’t trying to be mean anymore. It seems like she just wants every dance to be a work of art and won’t settle for anything less. I’ve been working extra hard not to have two left feet. I get up an hour early to practice in my room. I can feel myself getting better. I’m dancing with confidence, not just trying to keep up. When the music starts, my body shifts into autopilot. Those old lessons from Frances Glory are coming out of hibernation. Today, finally, Huxley acknowledges my improvement.

“Your brain and legs seem to be on the same page today.”

I blush, just a crumb-sized bit. I can’t help it.

Huxley ends practice early to hand out costumes. She stands next to an open box, dabbing her temples with a towel. Even after two hours of choreographed sweating, Huxley’s hair flows down her back like she just left the salon. I look like I just left the rain forest.

The girls gather in their usual cliques on the bleachers.

“It had devil horns and ‘I’m a bitch’ written above her,” Ally Zwick whispers to Kerry Anderson.

“Whoa. Tell us how you really feel, Steve,” Kerry says back. I’ve overheard some variation of this conservation buzz its way through school. I love watching my work elicit such a reaction.

Huxley holds up the costume: a tracksuit made for a stripper pole with matching fuzzy earmuffs.

“Nice, right?” Huxley says to a sea of nodding heads. They’ll have no problem fitting into those things. “I had them add the earmuffs because curling is done on the ice, where it’s cold.”

She distributes them among the girls. Some hold them against their chests. If I had their toned bodies with curves in all the right places, I would be excited, too.

“This year, costumes are ten dollars,” she says. That garners whoops and light applause. “I know. My dad and I found a great deal online.”

“Oh, please,” Ally whispers to Kerry. “I doubt her dad went bargain hunting.”

I have to agree with Ally. Huxley’s dad works on Wall Street, where he is very well compensated. Doing what, I don’t know, but she used to show me pictures from his corner office with a view of the Statue of Liberty. They don’t do discounts. They probably paid top dollar for these costumes and lied to the school board. Only the best for Huxley’s team.

Huxley shuts the now-empty box. “These costumes are very...compact, so I recommend you take the money we saved and wax any areas that may be seen.”

“Will shaving be good enough?” a girl next to me asks.

“Stubble is for boys.”

My teammates spend the rest of practice trying on the stripper tracksuits. I’m not ready for that yet, so I pretend to read my history notes while envying their genes. Girls join Ally and Kerry’s huddle. They glance over at Huxley across the gym before talking. My teammates chat in the same animated, overzealous style people slip into whenever conversation turns to gossip. It’s a biological compulsion. Talking about others is the earliest form of entertainment, after all.

“Do you think she realized Steve worked there?” Tamara Boyle asks, shoving hair behind her ears every point-two seconds.

“Please. You don’t take the interstate to get pizza.” Kerry turns her head in a “come on now” way. “My boyfriend heard Steve was flirting with her.”

“What? No way.” Ally cups her hand over her mouth. “You think he would do that right in front of her?”

Kerry shrugs. “Anything’s possible.”

“That sucks,” Tamara says, then reconsiders. “Though it would be kind of cute if he got back together with his ex-girlfriend after five years. It’s like a movie I would totally drag my boyfriend to.”

“Yeah, Snow White saves Prince Charming from the Wicked Witch,” Ally jokes.

“Hey, guys, let me know if you need a different size,” Huxley says behind them. “With the costumes.”

Their faces turn white as they frantically trade “Oh, crap!” expressions.

“Sure,” Ally stumbles out.

I shut my book. “It’s really sad that you guys have such boring lives and low self-esteem that you have to resort to gossip. Some girl bought a slice of pizza. Chill out.”

The girls stay silent. What can you say to that? In normal social contexts, I would have stayed quiet. But I don’t care about being their friend. And a part of me felt uncomfortable listening to them. They were talking mere feet from the subject of their gossip. That’s just sloppy.

I pack my backpack, square my shoulders and walk to another corner of the bleachers.

Once settled in my new spot, I glance over at Huxley. She’s engrossed with a group of her friends. She doesn’t look my way for the rest of practice.

* * *

It’s not enough having to practice around dozens of the best-looking girls in school. I also have to share a locker room with them—in case I forgot how pale and blah my body is.

Huxley and a girl from the white team change next to me. I don’t know her name, but I think it’s the last name of a president. Madison, Taylor, Carter. Something like that.

“So Bari adamantly denies making that crazy-ass wedding binder,” Madison/Taylor/Carter says.

“Who would do that?” Huxley asks. She slips on her wavy peasant shirt. Leave it to her to make a hippie staple look utterly preppy.

“She thinks it was a setup.”

“Not this again,” Huxley says.

“She’s claiming it’s the Break-Up Artist.”

My back goes yardstick straight. I keep my head down as I dress.

“Derek thinks it was, too,” M/T/C says. She chuckles and smoothes out wrinkles in her blouse.

“Of course he does.”

“I don’t know, though. I think maybe she’s onto something. Whoever wrote that note in the stall could be real. When you think about it, there have been some strangely convenient break-ups at our school.”

I’m so focused on listening, I don’t notice that I put on my shirt backward. The collar chokes my neck.

“The Break-Up Artist is an urban legend,” Huxley says.

“Aren’t all urban legends rooted in truth?”

“Reagan, you are not this susceptible.”

Reagan!

Huxley continues: “If that book was planted, then why aren’t they back together? Spare me your conspiracy theories.

“Though, if Bari knew what was good for her, she would move heaven and earth to get back with him,” Huxley says. She pulls up impossibly tight jeans.

“If they’re meant to get back together, then they will.” Reagan wraps her curls into a messy bun.

Huxley rolls her eyes. “Some things should not be left up to chance. Guys like Derek Kelley don’t come around every day. Now Bari is just another single girl. She’s thrown herself back into the unrecognizable masses.” Huxley shakes her head. “Her loss.”

“That’s a little harsh, Huxley. He’s just a guy.”

She leans in close to Reagan. “Do you think we would be friends if you weren’t dating Mark Olawski?”

All cheerfulness evaporates from Reagan’s face. She finishes dressing in silence and gives Huxley a polite nod before leaving.

Huxley and I are the only ones left in this row. I get nervous for some reason. She’s said far worse to me.

“Rebecca,” she says. She shoves her feet into uncomfortable yet oh-so-beautiful heels. “You’ve gotten a lot better out there.”

“Thanks.” I tie my sneakers. Huxley notices them. I unzip my backpack and show her my heels. “If I wore these after practice, my feet would fall off.”

“Remember those golden slippers we got in Frances’s class?” she asks out of nowhere. “Do you still have yours?”

I picture them, hanging out on my bedroom floor next to my desk.

“Yeah. I think so.” For the sixth-grade level, instead of handing out trophies, Frances Glory decided to dye a pair of ballet slippers platinum gold for each girl. It must’ve been a last-minute idea because the paint wasn’t dry when she distributed them. My mom called her up, irate that my leotard was spattered with gold paint that wouldn’t wash out. She wasn’t the only parent. For our class picture, we all wore our stained leotards.

“I think the paint finally dried like a year ago,” I say, and Huxley cracks up. It’s a real, hearty laugh that I haven’t heard in years and kind of missed.

Huxley thinks about the slippers, or the class or something. She sits on the bench and stares at the locker for an extended moment. I’ve never seen her be so introspective.

“You think someone’s your friend,” she says. “It’s a sad day when you can’t tell your closest friends something in confidence.”

Is she talking to me? Is she talking about me? I can’t tell. I’m not used to dealing with a sensitive Huxley. I’m out of practice.

“They don’t sound like much of a friend,” I say.

“I told my friends that stuff about Angela in confidence.”

“Well, honestly, the higher you climb, the more those around you want to take you down. One of the drawbacks of being happy, I guess.” I can’t believe I’m giving Huxley any type of sane advice, but I’ve met her friends, and I wouldn’t trust them either. Addison and Reagan and the rest of them, all reveling in their popularity but wishing they could ascend higher, wishing they were dating the quarterback. I realize that being queen bee is probably exhausting, and I’m impressed that she’s been able to keep it up this long.

“You’re smarter than this,” I say.

“Thanks.”

I remain frozen on the bench. I still have to put on my right shoe, but I don’t want to break this moment.

“I’m really glad you joined SDA,” she says. Huxley places her hand over mine, and I squeeze.

“Me, too.”

As I lie on my bed attempting to do math homework, I receive an unexpected phone call from an unexpected caller.

“Hey! Want to go ice-skating tonight?” Val asks me.

“Now?” It’s 7:16 p.m. on a Thursday. I’m not cool enough to have a social life on a weeknight. I can barely scrape one together on a weekend.

She explains to me that the regional college opens up their rink to the public Thursday nights.

“Ezra and I heard about it from Jeff,” she says. “We’ll pick you up in twenty.”

“I don’t know.” My eyes dart from my clock to the homework sprawled out on my bed to my sore legs. Not to mention the fact that I only ice-skated once, and that ended in blood, tears and stitches.

“‘I don’t know’ means ‘convince me more.’ Fine. It will be so much fun! Maybe some guy will ask you to skate with him and hold your hand. It’s a scientific fact that everything is more romantic on ice.”

“What’s your source? Us Weekly?”

“Come on, Becca!”

I won’t lie. It does feel nice that my friend is so excited to see me. Val and I haven’t hung out in what seems like forever. And I don’t mind that Ezra will be there, too. Now that I’ve gotten to know him, I’ll be spending time with two friends. It shouldn’t be awkward, as long as they aren’t munching on each other’s faces the whole night.

* * *

“So what’s up?” Val asks me for the second time in the car. I hate those generic questions. People use them on someone they don’t know, not their best friend.

“Not much.” I shrug my shoulders. When you go from sharing every minute detail to barely speaking for a few weeks, it’s hard to know where to start.

Val never knew me in my Frances Glory days. We knew of each other in middle school, but we didn’t run in the same circles. I don’t know why I never became friends with her friends. Huxley didn’t like them, and that was that. It wasn’t until our eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C., that Val and I had this unexpected-yet-profound bonding session. We sat next to each other on the bus, and four hours and three states later, we were friends. It’s amazing how that happens. With most people, my conversations never go beyond small talk. But then with a very special few, I just click. We bypass meaningless chitchat. After five minutes, I feel like I’ve known them forever. I can’t explain it. It’s completely outside my control. That’s what happened with Val. So it breaks me that we’re stuck in small-talk land tonight.