Philip Siegel - The Break-Up Artist

“Why don’t you ask your friend?” I say, my eyes darting to her former best friend. “I’m hired to break up couples.” Bari whips her head around at Calista, whose head turns the color of Craisins. It’s bad business to rat out my clients, but she started it.

“What are you talking about?” Bari says inches from my face.

“Was being with Derek really worth it? Did you even like being a brunette?”

I can smell the sweat off her, how badly she wants to lunge at me, and I am terrified. I can do catty and underhanded fighting, just nothing involving my fists.

“It’s better than what you are,” she says.

My heart speeds up, about to leap out of my body. Fear swallows me whole.

“Leave her alone!”

Val pushes Bari off me. She shields me from her and the rest of school. Her swishing blond hair flicks me in the face, but I’ll take that over Bari’s fist any day.

“She’s not the Break-Up Artist. So stop the witch hunt,” Val says.

“She already confessed,” Bari says. “Some friend you got there.”

Val turns around, and I have to watch her get her spirit crushed yet again. “Becca?”

I don’t say anything. What can I say except the truth, and that won’t help.

“I think this is a big misunderstanding. She’s my friend. She wouldn’t do this.” Val pleads my case to the school, but it’s useless. What defense do I have? I wanted to help people; but really I wanted to help them get revenge, help make others as unhappy as they were.

“Are you sure about that?” Huxley asks her.

“Yes, I’m sure!” Val says with absolute conviction.

“Why don’t you ask her what she’s been doing with Ezra?”

Every kid in the hall gawks at me, mesmerized. I am an overturned car on the highway, and they are crossing their fingers for a gas leak and explosion.

Val turns to me. She hesitates a moment before asking. “What is she talking about?”

I shut my eyes.

“Becca, what is she talking about?”

“It seems Rebecca got awfully close to your boyfriend. A little too close.”

Val’s eyes go wide with hurt and horror, and I can’t take how defenseless she looks.

“Wow, you’re a backstabber and a home wrecker!” Bari says. “Have you killed any orphans lately?”

I squeeze my eyelids as tightly as I can.

“Rebecca, I am disgusted with you on so many levels. How many innocent relationships have you ruined just to make yourself feel better?”

“I hate you,” Val says. Her voice cracks with a sob.

I open my eyes. Flecks of white fill my vision. I’m squeezed against the trophy case, my personal space a distant memory.

“What’s going on here?” Ms. Hardwick pushes through students. Bari turns her way, and that’s my cue.

I free myself from her manicured clutches and race down the hall, ignoring the teacher calling my name. Tears fly off my face. I charge through the front doors to the parking lot, get in my car and drive off.

For the next two days, I stay home from school. On day one, I convince my mom that I have a bad cold. That night, I call Val’s house and practically beg her mom to put Val on. To my surprise, Val doesn’t hang up, and it takes me a few seconds to start talking.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I say back, completing the most awkward greeting in the known universe. Val stays quiet. I have to lead this. I started it.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Sorry because you kissed Ezra?” I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

“Sorry because I lost my best friend.” Knowing that it’s come to this, that it’s come to me saying that, straining to salvage this friendship or risk losing Val forever, causes me to tear up.

“We’re still together. Not even you throwing yourself at him could break us apart.”

“What? Throwing myself at him?” True, I kissed him first. But what about the notes, the freaking pebbles at my window? Apparently, Ezra has been teaching a class in revisionist history. “It’s not like that, Val. I can explain.”

“I’ll pass,” she says, so cold, like a cult member. “Some friend you are.”

She’s gone full-on zombie.

“Ezra’s taking me on a Starlight Cruise Friday night to celebrate our relationship renaissance. We’re stronger than ev—”

I hang up.

* * *

By day two, after I’ve received enough vicious emails and phone calls from my classmates, my mom doesn’t put up a fight and tells the school that I have strep throat. In exchange for my truancy, I spill the details about being the Break-Up Artist. I know my mom must want to yell at me for doing something so mean and then demand I see a shrink for some heavy psychoanalysis, but to her credit, she doesn’t interrupt me. She listens attentively, her hands cupped on her lap. She hides her disappointment and withholds her judgment. That makes me talk more, about Ezra and Val. No gasps from her. I wish I had known my mom would be such a good listener. I would have come to her with other issues instead of Diane.

On day three, I sit at the breakfast nook eating cereal at 2:00 p.m. Some milk dribbles off the spoon onto my sweatshirt, but I don’t bother wiping it off. My mom comes out of her alteration studio and massages her hands. They are cramped from a long day of sewing, from day after day of dealing with demanding customers. All so she can provide me with a pleasant, comfortable life, one which I have just destroyed. I’m daughter of the year.

“I think you should go back to school on Monday,” she says.

My stomach clenches when I think of school. Huxley’s face. Bari’s face. I keep picturing them glaring, ready to pounce. Val. I can’t even imagine her face.

“I know you’re scared, but you can’t stay home forever.”

“You could homeschool me.”

My mom sweeps crumbs off the counter into her palm, then brushes them into the sink.

“I really appreciate your opening up to me about everything that happened, sweetheart. I think I’ve done a good job of listening impartially, but now I want to discuss why you found the need to be this Break-Up Artist person.”

I sink my spoon into the cereal bowl, drowning it in milk. I knew this moment would come, but it’s useless. She doesn’t understand why. She can’t understand because she’s in the type of relationship that I would dissolve. She’s Val in thirty years. “It’s complicated,” I tell her.

“I remember how stressful it was for me in high school. I was one of the last in my group of friends to start dating—”

“Mom, it’s not about that!” Of course, it always has to come back to being single. That’s the only logical explanation why girls do anything, right?

My mom slips her hand over mine and looks me in the eye. “I never had the best luck in the guy department.”

“Mom, stop.”

“But when I met your dad, I knew in an instant why it was never meant to be with any of those other losers.”

“No! You didn’t! You settled. Don’t feed me this image of a fairy-tale courtship. You were single, Dad was single, you came from similar backgrounds, you wanted to have kids and live in suburbia. The end. It was never about love.”

Mom stiffens up. She tries to take it in stride, but I can tell I just deeply offended the woman who gave me room and board inside her for nine months. “You don’t think your father and I love each other?”

It sounds different, more serious, when she phrases it like that. “I know you guys don’t hate each other.”

“But you don’t think your father and I love each other?” She’s in disbelief, which confuses me. Have they seen how they act around each other?

“You never kiss. Dad will kiss you on the forehead once in a while, but that’s it.” I cringe, thinking about my parents kissing on the mouth, kissing like couples do at school. Yuck!

“When we were dating, our friends used to call us the romantics.”

“Seriously? Now it’s like you’re siblings.”

“Your father and I love each other very much. It’s just that after twenty-six years of marriage, it becomes a different kind of love.” My mom pulls a rag from the sink and wipes down the rest of the counter. She’s always working to make things look nice, from bridal gowns to tabletops.

“You two didn’t even go out for your anniversary.”

“We’ve done the lavish anniversary events many times over. They become boring, and expensive. If your father wanted to, he could’ve taken me out to the nicest restaurant in Manhattan and then to a show. But we had both worked long hours that day. I know how much your father loves any show about war. And he knows that Brunello’s is my favorite restaurant that does takeout. So we relaxed on the couch eating chicken cutlet and learning about Iran–Contra, and it was a great anniversary. I know it’s hard to understand now. I’m sure couples at your school act much...differently. But that’s what love is.”

“It sounds boring.”

“Welcome to real life. After the first dates and romantic gestures peter out, because they all will eventually, you have to be left with a person you still want to look at every day.”

“And Dad?”

“I still do.” She wipes the milk off my sweatshirt.

Maybe she was right. I think back to all those boring moments between my parents, and how they know every little detail about each other without even thinking. They weren’t acting like anything. They don’t need to prove to the world that they’re in love with PDA and giant stuffed animals.

“Did you see the news?” She pulls the daily paper from the counter. “Steve Overland got a full scholarship to Chandler University. He even had a press conference with the coach there.”

She shows me the article. I spit cereal all over the table. I recognize the coach. How could I not recognize the baby face and sparkly blue eyes? Chills crawl up my arm. Everything about him is utterly familiar, except for his name.

* * *

I clench the phone in my hand and shut my door.

“Hello, Chandler University Athletics,” the secretary says.

“Coach Latham please.”

“Latham here,” he says into the phone.

“Hello, Mr. Towne.” I try to sound ominous, but he laughs.

“Great job, Ms. Williamson,” he says.

“You’re not Steve’s uncle, are you?”

“You got me.”

“Steve’s family never had a problem with Huxley. You just wanted her out of the way so Steve would play football for your second-rate school.” I shake my head, shocked at my stupidity.

“Come this fall, we won’t be second-rate anymore.”

“You lied to me.”

“You’re giving me a morals lesson? You break up couples for money.”

“I thought I was helping his family.” I’m not some mercenary, splitting up couples no matter what. I always needed a compelling reason to take on a client. But is any reason really good enough?

“I’m sure you were. They didn’t want their son to languish at some nothing school because of some controlling girlfriend.”

“Better than some conniving coach!” My voice bounces off the walls. Nausea overwhelms me. I need to sit down.

“I told you what you needed to know to get the job done. You should see Steve. I’ve never seen a kid so happy. You did the right thing.”

I think of Huxley, who I doubt is as happy. And for what? So Coach Latham can get a nice Christmas bonus? “He was already happy with his girlfriend.”

“Are you sure about that? When I spoke to him at the press conference, that was not the case. If they were really in love—” he laughs at the thought “—they would still be together.”

I don’t think any relationship could withstand the lies and manipulation I used to break them up. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t interfered? What would have happened to all the other couples?

“I’m going to tell,” I say.

“Who’s going to believe you? You’ve been talking to Mr. Towne.”

“I can track your IP address, too.”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone about our agreement if I were you.” He lowers his voice, and a chill passes through the phone into my body. That wasn’t some friendly advice. “I think it would mostly hurt you. Nobody will appreciate the sick after-school job you have going on.”

“They already know.”

“The damage has already been done, then,” he says. “Trust me. You don’t want this story leaving your school and becoming actual news. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get me fired. But my coaching record, while not stellar, is still good. Another college will hire me once this blows over. The first win of the season will make this story ancient history. But you...”