Instructions For A Broken Heart Part 16

Cameron pulled her legs up to her chest. "Speaking of enjoying the rest of the trip, I heard you totally trashed Borington's wife!"

"Who?"

"Cruella," Tyler said, helping himself to Cameron's water. "They call him Mr. Borington because their last name is Corrington. Get it, Boring-ton."

Jessa felt their ease creep its way back in. "Um, yeah. I get it. It's not hard math."

Cameron giggled, a sound maybe a touch too much like bells for Jessa's taste-little golden fairy bells. But she was being really cool, and Tyler was over the moon about her. "Hilarious." Cameron offered her the water bottle.

Jessa took the bottle. "Thanks." She took a short sip. "I don't know. It was actually kind of sad. She's just so..."

"Pathetic?" Cameron suggested.

"Trollish?" Tyler offered.

"Just sad, I guess." Jessa thought about it. "And pathetic. And, yes, trollish."

Cameron leaned against Tyler, his arm circling her. "She's a freak show," she said. "We went to England with them last year and she totally pitched a fit and went home early. It's her MO." She paused. "This place is sad."

Pompeii was a strange landscape-the ruins, the cobbled streets, the lush green of the hillsides. Jessa's brain kept snagging on the casts of the ancient dead, their fright. "It makes me want to go home."

Tyler slipped his other arm around her, something-Jessa noticed-Cameron didn't seem to mind. Instead, Cameron reached over and cupped her hand over the top of Jessa's shoe. Gave her a sweet, quick pat.

It was an impromptu creativity salon of sorts. Jessa, Tyler, and Cameron wandered over to where most of the group sat in a large circle on a patch of lawn outside the city walls. The bus would be picking them up in a couple of minutes for their ride to Sorrento. Jade had her guitar and was playing an old Aimee Mann song that Jessa loved. Something about "driving sideways"-Jessa felt like that most of the time.

Jessa settled on the gra.s.s next to Hillary and pulled one of Carissa's reasons from her pocket. She told herself she was done. She didn't really want to open any more of the envelopes, but it was just sitting there with a big #15 on the front. What was it about her that made her want to follow the rules all the time?

She ripped it open.

It read: Friendship And there was an old picture of them. Carissa and Jessa in seventh grade, dressed as Danny and Sandy from Grease for Halloween. Jessa was Danny. A fake cigarette in her mouth, dark hair slicked back, her black leather jacket arm slung around Carissa's bare shoulder because Carissa had to go as s.l.u.tty Sandy-the Sandy who Jessa always thought sort of sold out in the end. Underneath it, it read, "We Go Together!" And underneath that, "No Matter What (Ask Tyler)."

Jessa tossed the note in his lap. Tyler whistled a few lines of a Grease song-"like shama-shama-shama-she-bomb."

"Shama-she-bomb?" Jessa laughed. "Those aren't the words. OK, this one isn't even a reason. She's losing focus. This has nothing to do with Sean."

His dark eyes settled on Jessa. "Doesn't it?" She could feel them on her face like some sort of tracking device, dissolving her smile. "No matter what?"

Jessa fiddled with the hem of her shorts. Jade was handing the guitar to Dylan Thomas. "Does she mean he threatened our friendship? Is that the reason? Come on, instruct me. What is she talking about? Manual me."

"I'm not reading the manual anymore, Jessa."

"Right." Jessa folded the note back up.

"Ask Cameron."

"He's not." Cameron did that pity-tilt thing with her head that Jessa usually hated, but somehow Cameron's version held all the intended sympathy in its tilt without the condescension. How did she do that?

"Carissa told me you already knew." Tyler pulled blades of gra.s.s up, twirled them in his fingers.

His words seemed layered with something shadowed, something slick and razor edged. Her mouth went dry. "Knew about the Hamlet kiss? Is that what she's talking about?"

Tyler shook his half-filled water bottle slowly back and forth, the water sloshing inside. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. "The other one."

"What!" Her screech stopped Dylan Thomas mid-strum. Jade looked alarmed. Actually, everyone did. No one wanted a repeat of the first creativity salon. Jessa tried to smile, leaned back on her hands-totally relaxed. "Nothing to see here" she hoped her very relaxed lean showed the group.

Dylan Thomas started to play again.

Tyler brushed gra.s.s from his pants. "That's what I thought this letter was about."

"Tyler, seriously, what are you talking about?" Her skin rippled with icy b.u.mps and she flashed back to the curled body of the stone boy, his hands by his ears in defense, frozen. The air seemed suddenly full of ancient Mount Vesuvius ash.

Tyler blinked at her. "You really don't know? During Summer Festival."

"When I was in Santa Barbara?" Jessa's head filled with haze. She hadn't wanted to go to her cousin's wedding in Santa Barbara. She'd wanted to go to the Williams Peak Summer Festival for the Arts. She didn't even know her cousin, had only a floating image of an older girl who ate Wheat Thins out of the box with a jar of Nutella and used the word swellio a lot when you told her something, but her mom had gone through one of her whole we-have-to-keep-the-family-together things, and before she knew it Jessa found herself monitoring a purple satin guest book that was shaped like a heart and staring out at the Pacific Ocean next to a woman who was about a thousand years old playing Pachelbel on a harp. She had written "have a swellio life" in the guest book and not signed her name.

Tyler flipped quickly through the instruction manual pages. "Oh." He flipped the page around to face Jessa. At the top of the page, it said: For # 15.

She doesn't know about it. I repeat, she doesn't know. If she finds out, make her understand. You were there. Jessa will understand about the improv. She understands that I get caught up in things. She gets me. Tell her. That's all it was.

Jessa forced the haze out of her head. "What happened?"

Tyler held up his hands. "Jessa, I swear I didn't know she hadn't told you. She told me you knew. That you guys figured it out."

Jessa studied her hands. "She told me she did a weird improv with Sean. She didn't say anything about kissing him."

"It was in front of a bunch of us. Just your average 'freeze' game...But...it was kind of intense. It wasn't part of the sketch. We were all a little weirded out." Tyler reached out as if she might fall, even though they were sitting, like she might fall into nothingness. "I'm sorry, Jess, honest."

"And no one told me." Jessa's head began to throb. "Again."

"Yeah, that's not so good." Tyler scrambled for Cameron's water again who pa.s.sed it to him, wide eyed. "We...We really thought she told you."

"She said, if I find out..."

"I really, really had stopped reading it, Jess." Tyler looked like he might cry.

"It's not your fault." She took a shuddering breath. "Are there any other Carissa and Sean kissing-for-no-reason moments that I should know about? Anything else in that little manual of yours?"

He flipped to the last page. "Nothing. Not that I know of. I swear. Do you want to see it?" He held out the index-card pages to her.

"No."

Tyler did that squinty thing with his eyes when he was really, really worried, like when he was taking a geometry test or right before an audition. "Don't freak out, Jess."

"Please stop saying that to me." Jessa sat up, tucked her knees under her, folded her hands in her lap. Freak out? She was actually, suddenly, inexplicably calm. She studied Dylan Thomas as he launched into another song. He was pretty good on that travel guitar of Jade's. She la.s.soed her vision to him, found herself wrapping her ears around the lyrics-a Rhett Miller song she had always really liked.

You've got terrible vision if you don't see...that I'm in love with you...

Jade giggled next to him. Jessa sighed. She was just missing things right and left, clearly. Wandering about in her little pity bubble. Not freaking out, she wanted to point out to Tyler. But then maybe that would just be its own brand of freaking out-that a.s.sertion that she wasn't. Maybe this trip was just one epic freak-out.

And really, could Jade throw herself any more at Dylan Thomas? She was practically swooning, her face all bright and staring up at him, winding all that great hair around her finger. Guys tended to look like a.s.ses around Jade, not the other way around. Jessa thought maybe she should say something to her on the bus.

Gears shifted and whined, and Jessa saw the bus ambling around a corner to fetch them.

Another bus ride.

Jessa wanted to scream, wanted to ride on the top of the bus, ratcheted down with bungee cords so she could feel the wind in her hair and not have to spend five more minutes pressed into those velour seats with that liar-that liar! Sitting right there down the aisle listening to his liar iPod and reading his liar magazine. Carissa and Sean? She felt sick. Perhaps she should take a quick survey on the bus: "Excuse me, please-anyone here who hasn't made out with my ex-boyfriend?"

Instead, she flipped open the letter from Carissa, the instruction like a suddenly illuminated sign: Forgive Me.

She took a black pen from her bag, scribbled out the instruction, then added to the t.i.tle across the top a line of question marks.

Friendship????????

Then she got on the stupid bus.

#16: the beat.

before and after.

Jessa texted Carissa on the bus: I know about u and S. BOTH TIMES. The REAL story. U lied. How could u? And I know about your stupid Jessa instruction manual! WTF?! U don't know me at all! I do NOT forgive U!!!

She turned her phone off and stuffed it as far to the bottom of her bag as she could, jammed it between her sweatshirt and a couple of torrone candy wrappers still a bit sticky with the nougat. Yuck.

Her fingers grazed the edge of the novel. She needed to finish it, to find out what Stephen did when the world went all dark and wrong.

For a moment, she studied the shifting landscape, turning more pastel as they headed south, then flipped open her book, but the words just swam on the page, and it felt like years before she could lose herself in them.

The bus pulled into a dusty parking lot in Naples.

"Here is the cameo factory." Francesca stood the frog at attention at the front of the bus. She pushed her sungla.s.ses into her curls, rubbed her fingers quickly beneath her dark-circled eyes. Where was Giacomo? Jessa hadn't seen him at Pompeii.

Out the window, she saw the small, squat building. Factory? Every factory she'd ever seen was the size of a football stadium and spewing smoke or something into the sky through huge stacks. This could be someone's house.

Jessa closed the novel she hadn't quite finished, her eyes dazed and readjusting to Italy, lost for so long in Stephen's green Ireland. She wished she were in Ireland now. Then she wouldn't have to watch Sean's long, muscled back take the bus steps in two quick strides, see Tyler stealing sheepish glances at her, or watch Jade's arm linked through Dylan Thomas's arm like she owned it or something.

Inside, rows and rows of tables stretched room length, covered with thousands of small round cameos. Jessa wandered the narrow aisles, her eyes slipping over the creamy, delicate pieces. She sneezed in the dusty air. The room seemed to block out all outside light, all the natural, peach-colored Italian late afternoon. Instead, the light in the room seemed to be fighting a losing battle with shadow, straining against it to cast a yellow glow on the tables. She sneezed again. Or the room was losing its light to all the dust in the place.

Her eyes landed on a small oval. Three women draped in robes, twirling together against a creamy sh.e.l.l pink background.

"The Three Graces." Madison stood beside her, following her gaze. Her red hair was tied into a head scarf and she wore a clingy tube top and short skirt. Huge silver hoops glinted in the dim lighting. No camera in sight. "Faith, Hope, and Charity." She picked up the delicate piece. "This is very you. I'm getting it for you." She marched toward the cash register.

Jessa followed, dazed. "What? Oh, no. You don't have to do that..."

Madison turned on the tiny heel of her silver flip-flops. "Don't worry about it. I mean, I want to. Besides," she waggled a Visa at Jessa. "It's on my dad."

Jessa followed her to the register, watched as the Italian man placed it in a slick, dove-gray box. Handed it to her in a slim blue bag with gold script. "Thank you," she said softly and then said it again, louder this time, to Madison.

Madison's eyes darted to her face and then over her shoulder as if unsure where to land-hummingbird eyes.

"You know what?" She flipped her head a little, sending her earrings swirling about. "It's too bad the trip's almost over. We could have hung out." Madison nodded toward the door. "We're having a group meeting or something. Anyway, see you later."

And like a hummingbird, she disappeared, leaving Jessa holding the blue bag and the tiny, gorgeous Graces.

It took them a minute to realize the bus was gone.

Just a minute, blinking into the fading light.

Francesca stopped, the frog dipping to the ground, her eyes searching the vacant lot. All of them stood there, some with their little blue bags, staring, turning circles in the dusty parking lot, some with their hands to their eyes as if the bus was a ship lost on the horizon.

Ms. Jackson pinched her lips together, her eyes squinting down the road. "Did he go for gas?"

Francesca whipped out her phone and started dialing.

It was Christina who noticed that the other group was gone too. She pointed it out in her cool, whispering voice that always made Jessa think of snow.

Cameron shot her hand in the air. "But I'm here. Dylan Thomas is here. Mr. Reynolds is here." Quiet Guy didn't look up from his BlackBerry, but the group seemed momentarily rea.s.sured. Those three were standing right here. Where were the others?

"They wouldn't have left," Cameron said, her voice starting to fray at the edges. "They would have noticed..." The air seemed to swallow up the rest of her voice, carried it off into the sky that was just starting to turn toward evening, splinters of pink shooting through blue.

Devon and Tim looked stricken. "Um," Devon said, rubbing his hand across his belly. "Will we miss dinner?"

"No concern," Francesca said, clicking her phone shut. "Another bus. It is twenty-five kilometers. No more."

"Is that a lot?" Tim unwrapped a candy bar, ate the whole thing in two bites.

"It's like fifteen miles, Einstein." Dylan Thomas peeled the wrapper from a stick of gum.

Jessa saw Mr. Campbell's face shift, redden slightly. He was getting the angry eyebrow he would get in cla.s.s sometimes when someone said something inappropriate or mean. But she didn't think he was mad at Dylan Thomas.

"They left." She heard him say. Then he leaned and whispered something to Ms. Jackson, who just shook her head over and over as if she just couldn't believe what he was saying, didn't want to believe it. Quiet Guy joined them, showing them something on his BlackBerry. Mr. Campbell's face fell.

What had happened suddenly seemed to dawn on the rest of the group at same time. "No way!" Natalie's face turned an alarming shade of purple, and she let out a string of names for Jamal.

"Natalie!" Ms. Jackson's voice sounded more shocked than angry. Jessa was pretty sure all their ears would now need a good washing out with some Italian soap.

"How could he leave with them? You didn't leave with them!" She pointed an accusing, manicured finger at Dylan Thomas who simply raised his eyebrows at her. "I'll kill him!" Natalie flipped open her phone and began to type furiously. She waited. The group waited, watching her. A few seconds later, her face melted, returning to is normal color. "They're in Sorrento. At the hotel. He didn't mean to go without me." She smiled as if the world had suddenly whisked itself out of a storm tunnel and righted itself on a flowering meadow.