Instructions For A Broken Heart Part 10

"He was a good Valjean," Jessa mumbled.

Tyler snorted. Jessa was pretty sure, somewhere, an ocean away, that Carissa would be rolling her eyes.

"Who did you play?" Dylan Thomas asked Jessa.

"eponine."

"Of course." Dylan Thomas reached over and stabbed the mushrooms she had pushed aside on her plate.

"This is why the other group doesn't like you." Jessa pulled her plate toward her, not that she would have eaten those mushrooms in a million years, even if they were the last food on the earth and someone had coated them in dark chocolate.

"Why didn't you play Javert?" Dylan Thomas asked Tyler.

"Because I played, like, every other guy character in the whole play." He leaned back to let the waiter set a bowl of steaming soup in front of him.

"What does this have to do with anything anyway?" Dylan Thomas motioned toward the envelope. "Why is she bringing it up? Sounds to me like these envelopes are becoming a little more about Carissa than they're supposed to be."

Something snagged in Jessa's chest. Had she been feeling that too, staring down at Carissa's insistent handwriting? "It's not a reason."

"It is a reason." Tyler swirled his soup with his spoon. "Carissa is addressing the very relevant fact that Sean is a self-absorbed jacka.s.s." He glanced at Dylan Thomas. "Judge's ruling?"

Elbow on the table, Dylan Thomas propped his chin on his hand. "I'll allow it."

"Good man!" His eyes were back on Jessa, who was rolling hers at Dylan Thomas. Tyler continued, "The guy who ended up playing Javert got the chicken pox the night before the birthday party."

"Does anyone even still get the chicken pox?" Dylan Thomas interrupted.

"Not the point." Tyler jabbed his spoon in the air. The point was, he told him, that Jessa stepped in at the last minute and played both parts, that she sang "Stars" in the back room of Village Pizza and other diners came in from other rooms to hear her. She made people cry, it was so beautiful. She made everyone cry.

"It's a really beautiful song," Jessa whispered.

"I always thought it was kind of judgmental," Dylan Thomas said, wiping some stray soup from his face with a napkin. "With all its 'you're wrong and I'm right and I have G.o.d on my side blah blah blah and when I find you you'll be sorry...'"

"Point is," Tyler said, interrupting, holding up the envelope. "She wants you to sing it somewhere where Sean can hear it. To remind him."

Jessa peered at the paper. "Where does it say that?"

Tyler paused. "It says."

Jessa checked again, turning the note over. "No, it doesn't. It says to sing it. It doesn't say anything about singing it where Sean can hear it. It doesn't say anything about reminding him." She held out the note for inspection.

Sing the song again, Jessa!

A grand symbol of why you're you and he's, well, him.

"Oh." Tyler fiddled nervously with his napkin, pretended to look for something under the table, like suddenly there was some sort of government summit going on right under the table that Tyler really needed to witness.

"Tyler?"

"What?"

"What exactly did Carissa say to you about this reason? Since you two have obviously been on the Batphone about this."

He emerged from under the table. "Nothing."

"Just tell me." A dull ache started creeping behind her eyes.

Instead of answering, he pushed back his chair, mumbled something about getting his water bottle-apparently it had been his water bottle he'd been conveniently rummaging for under the table-and left the room.

Jessa followed Tyler out to the hotel courtyard. "Why are you acting all weird?" The courtyard echoed with the sound of her voice, m.u.f.fled only slightly by the drone of the ocean across the street.

Tyler turned around, his features shadowed in the feathery evening light. "I'm not."

"Tyler, you're obviously talking to her or you wouldn't have known that thing about reminding Sean." He was lucky she'd adopted a no-throwing policy because she seriously wanted to hurl something at him right now. Maybe that water bottle he'd gone looking for? He didn't answer her. "You know what? Forget it. If you're going to lie to me, you can just climb into one of those envelopes right there alongside of Sean. I'm used to it!" Jessa hurried out of the courtyard toward the beach, the sea air stinging her eyes.

"Jessa!" Tyler's footsteps behind her. "Wait...would you just wait!"

Looking both ways, she crossed the street toward the little strip of beach where they'd eaten the night before.

"I got my own envelopes!" he shouted behind her.

Jessa stopped but didn't turn around. In a minute, he was beside her, the buckles on his jacket ringing like tiny bells in her ears as he removed the stapled index cards from his inside jacket pocket.

"Well, not envelopes exactly."

He showed her the cover.

INSTRUCTION MANUAL TO MISS JESSA GARDNER.

For Tyler, in case of emergencies and cases where Jessa will be p.r.o.ne to act like, well, Jessa "Instruction manual?" Jessa's head started to spin. "What? Like I'm a lawn mower? Some predictable machine?" She reached out to take the papers from Tyler.

He pulled them back. "She really, really didn't want you to see this."

"Too late." She reached for the manual.

Again, he pulled it away.

Head throbbing, Jessa felt the wind come off the water cold and quickly, and she shivered. "This isn't some reality TV show you guys get to have a good laugh at. I'm your friend."

Tyler was shaking his head before she'd finished talking. "No one's laughing. We're trying to help. And Carissa's not here. She just wants to help. We've never seen you like this before."

"Well, guess what? This isn't about Carissa for once. Or you. I don't need you stage managing my life, OK? Both of you are officially off Jessa watch!" Without waiting for his reply, she turned and ran toward the silver strip of beach.

A soccer tournament had come to Venice, or at least to the outskirts of Venice. To their hotel, to be precise. And the place crawled with boys in soccer jerseys-cute boys in soccer jerseys.

Later that night, Jessa found one of those boys dangling from a sheet out her hotel window.

She had walked the beach until about an hour before curfew, her mind spinning with Carissa's manual. Staring out at the churning water, she had tried to focus on what Carissa must have meant, that she must be thinking in some sort of twisted-Carissa-universe sort of way that she was helping or that she and Tyler were being funny, but Jessa's whole body kept settling on a feeling that was some sort of mashed up version of anger and bruised feelings and betrayal, that clenched-up gut feeling she got before she puked. She wanted to trust her friend, wanted to appreciate her trying to help, but mostly she just wanted everyone to leave her alone. She could find her own way without notes, without some stupid instruction manual, without Tyler's manic, stage-managery control issues.

Staring out at the sharp, churning water, she'd never felt so far from the worn quilt on her bed, the feel of her favorite blue mug in her hand, the view of pine trees out her own window.

Exhausted and cold, she'd headed back to the hotel to take a shower in the shared bathroom at the end of the hall. She had expected to come back from the shower, crawl into bed, and sleep. Instead, she found her bed jammed up against the window, its sheet and the one from Hillary's bed tied together, wound around a bedpost, and draped outside-and their room was on the fourth floor of the hotel.

"What are you doing?" She stared down at the dangling boy, puzzled, as he tried to gain some footing on the slick side of the building.

"Hillary," he managed in a thick Italian accent, clearly holding on for dear life, his feet gaining and losing ground.

Jessa pulled him into the room.

He tumbled in, gasping for breath, "Grazie."

They blinked at each other.

"Wait here," Jessa told him.

Hillary had been waylaid at the roadblock that Mr. Campbell and Ms. Jackson had set up at the entrance to their floor sometime after Jessa had come home to take a shower. Hillary stood under the arched doorway, arms crossed, glaring at the floor. Ms. Jackson waved a bottle of some sort of clear alcohol at her. "What were you thinking, Hillary? I mean, really-what were you thinking?"

Jessa noticed the pile of alcohol bottles at their feet, some empty, some still capped. For a horrified moment, she thought they were all Hillary's until she realized that her teachers must have been collecting them from all the students as they came back in for curfew. Ms. Jackson added Hillary's to the pile with a dangerous clink of gla.s.s.

"Um, Hil?" Jessa started when Hillary looked up and caught her eye. "Um..."

"Oh, d.a.m.n it! Bruno!" She raced toward their room.

"Bruno?" Ms. Jackson followed her down the hall.

Mr. Campbell raised weary eyebrows at Jessa. "Who's Bruno?"

"We didn't have much chance for introduction."

He groaned, sinking down against the hotel doorway. "This is going to be a long night."

Jessa peeked at her watch-4 a.m. So much for going to bed early. She leaned on the wide windowsill, the curtains billowing behind her, the sea air cool on her face. No one had really slept yet. After hours of tears, of doors slamming, of urgent texting, Mr. Campbell and Ms. Jackson had almost everyone accounted for. Then came all the phone calls home to parents. Jessa was pretty sure they were all being sent home-Mr. Campbell had suggested as much when she pa.s.sed him in the hallway.

Somewhere around two, she and Hillary had finally untangled the sheets, scooted the beds back into their rightful positions, and Hillary had gone to sleep wrapped in Bruno's jacket.

An hour ago, she'd heard Ms. Jackson's door across the hall click shut after rounding up the last of their group-L. E., who'd been taking a moonlit run on the beach with a tall midfielder from one of southern Italy's premier teams. At least that's what she told Ms. Jackson (and her mom via cell phone) in heated whispers in the hall. Hillary and Jessa had pressed down on the floor to listen through the crack under the door. Jessa believed L. E. She'd seen them come in through the courtyard, walking hand in hand, two sets of running shoes side by side. She probably was taking a run, knowing L. E., and it seemed like Ms. Jackson believed her too. But she'd been chasing them into their rooms all night, sorting through lies and truth like mismatched socks.

Technically, most of the group had broken the behavior contracts they'd signed before leaving. Still, Jessa didn't believe her teachers would send the whole bunch of them home. Besides, the other group was in more trouble than Williams Peak. Two of them had even come back to the hotel in Italian police cars. Those two were definitely going home. Quiet Guy had stood in the courtyard nodding along to whatever the officer told him, his jacket over a pair of red plaid pajamas. When Jessa pa.s.sed Bob-the-world's-most-boring-world-history-teacher in the hall, she thought he looked so worried he might throw up, called to the lobby in his robe, face green as an alien, Francesca hurrying behind him, spouting Italian into her phone. For once, there was no sign of the frog.

Jessa watched most of it unfold from her window. Madison, Cheyla, and a few other girls laughed their high hyena laughs with a pack of soccer players, pa.s.sing a glinting bottle back and forth. Kevin and Rachel wandered through the courtyard, his arm around her shoulders. When had that happened? Even Cruella wobbled in alone around 3 a.m. on spaghetti legs, her sungla.s.ses still perched atop her head, looking thin, worn.

Now it was quiet. A hush had settled over the hotel, a cloak of sleep around its stone shoulders. Jessa could see the ocean from her window, a dark, moving thing. The sky was choked with stars, the storm clouds having pa.s.sed through. She thought of Carissa's instructions. She had told Tyler to make Jessa sing where Sean could hear her. A ribbon of anger fluttered through her stomach, then settled like a feather. As much as she hated to admit it, Carissa did know what made her feel better. And singing always made her feel better, replenished something in her, her own little electrolyte tonic. Even if she didn't need him to hear, she needed to sing.

Quietly, like mist, she started to sing "Stars."

There was movement behind her. Hillary pulled the curtain aside and leaned next to her against the window. "Pretty," she murmured, rubbing her eyes.

"Did I wake you up?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't really sleep."

Jessa started from the beginning, Javert's song about chasing his fugitive, the despair of his failure, because really, it was less about judgment and more about being a slave to his own dogma that sent Javert leaping to his death. Her voice picked up, sent the song up and out, and she heard a movement at the window of the next room. Suddenly, Jade's voice joined hers, floating out, then falling into the courtyard below. Jade shifted the words around, catching onto the underbelly of Jessa's voice, adding dimension to her song.

They sang through to the end, their voices widening, entwining, and Jessa watched a few lights click on around the hotel, people leaning out, blinking from their windows below, looking up. Somewhere, Jessa was sure Sean was listening.

Several rooms over, Devon shouted out. "What do you think this is-West Side Story? Go to sleep, you idiots!"

#11: cafe dumba.s.s.

No one from Williams Peak was being sent home, but Mr. Campbell and Ms. Jackson let them know at breakfast that they were on very short leashes-collars, really. And they were leaving Venice early, losing the opportunity to take the cool boat ride that had been planned for the morning.

They left Venice with the dawn just a peeking glowing band on the horizon, the night above still spattered with stars. Francesca sat in the first seat, rubbing her temples, the man-boy whose name Jessa still didn't know asleep next to her, the side of his face pressed against the window.

Rachel slid into the seat next to her. "His name's Giacomo," she whispered, offering Jessa a wafer cookie from a bag.

"Who?" Jessa took a cookie, popped it in her mouth where it melted almost instantly. Yum. She grabbed another.

Rachel motioned to the front of the bus. "Adonis up there."

"Who is he?" Jessa helped herself to yet another cookie.

Rachel shook her head. "We're working on that. But he's definitely with Francesca. Lizzie heard them fighting last night."

"What about?" Jessa studied the back of Giacomo's head.

"Who knows? It was all Italian. But she said it was heated. Can I sit here?" Rachel tucked her knees up against the back of the bus seat in front of her and flipped open a Tennis magazine.

Jessa's eyes searched the bus. Tyler sat up close to the front with his sweatshirt pulled over his eyes. She nodded at Rachel. "Sure. You playing first singles this year?"

"Hope so. Kelly Stahl is. .h.i.tting really well. She'll give me a run for my money."

"Not a chance. You're more consistent than Kelly."

Rachel seemed surprised. "Thanks. Do you still play?"

Jessa sighed. "Not really. Volleyball kind of took over. Can't do it all." She cleared her throat, averted her eyes out the window. She and Rachel had gone to the same summer camp for tennis all through middle school, and she'd played a bunch when they lived in the city. But volleyball and tennis were the same seasons at Williams Peak. Jessa couldn't remember the last time she picked up her racquet. Maybe she'd dig it out of her closet when she got home.