Why We Broke Up Read online

  I bought this but didn’t use it. Al and Lauren kidnapped me to make wild-mushroom lasagna and cry at the table instead of hiding in the nonreserved seats to watch you play, like I told them I wanted to.

  “Have some dignity,” Lauren said to me, and Al nodded in agreement over the cheese grater. “You don’t want to be that sad ex-girlfriend in the stands.”

  “I am that sad ex-girlfriend in the stands,” I said.

  “No, you’re here with us,” Al said firmly.

  “That’s all I am,” I said, “or having dinner with my mother all sullen, or crying on my bed, or staring at the phone—”

  “Oh, Min.”

  “—or listening to Hawk Davies and throwing him away and fishing him out of the trash and listening to him more and going through the box again. There’s nothing else. I’m—”

  “The box?” Al said. “What’s the box?”

  I bit my lip. Lauren gasped. “I know,” I said. “I know, I know, I should have broken up with him on Halloween.”

  “What’s the box?” Al said again.

  Lauren leaned down to look me in the eye. “You do not,” Lauren said, “tell me you don’t have a box of stuff, of Ed Slaterton treasures you’ve been pawing through. God in heaven, no. Did I not tell you, Al? Didn’t I say we should have searched her room with a fine-tooth comb and torched every Slaterton thing we could find? From the moment we learned about his scummy, scummy behavior we should have gone and rented some of those radiation suits and paratrooped into her room—”

  But she stopped because I was crying, and Al took off his apron and came over to hug me. At least, I thought, I’m not crying as hard as the last time. “It’s stupid, I know,” I said. “It’s desperate stupid. I’m desperate stupid. I’m a desperado for keeping all of it.”

  “When it’s a girl,” Al said, handing me a napkin, “I believe the term is desperada.”

  “La Desperada,” Lauren said, in a flamenco pose. “She tracks through the desert destroying boxes of treasure given to her by scummy, scummy men.”

  “I’m not ready to destroy it.”

  “Well, leave it on Ed’s doorstep at least. We can do it tonight.”

  “I’m not ready for that either.”

  “Min.”

  “Leave her alone,” Al said. “She’s not ready.”

  “Well, at least tell us the most embarrassing thing in there.”

  “Lauren.”

  “Come on.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll sing,” she threatened.

  I gave her a small sigh. Al picked up the grater again. The condom wrappers, I couldn’t say. Goofballs III. I can’t stop thinking about you. “OK, um, earrings.”

  “Earrings?”

  “Earrings he gave me.”

  Al frowned. “There’s nothing embarrassing about that.”

  “Yes there is, if you saw them.”

  Lauren grabbed the pad Al’s mom keeps by the phone. “Draw them.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll be therapy. Draw the earrings.”

  “I can’t draw, you know that.”

  “I know, that’s why it’ll be therapy for you and hilarious for us.”

  “Lauren, no.”

  “OK, act them out.”

  “What?”

  “Act out the earrings, you know, like a pantomime. Or interpretative dance, yes!”

  “Lauren, this isn’t helping.”

  “Al, help me out.”

  Al looked at me sitting at the kitchen table. He could see I was teetering. He took a long, long sip of his lemon mint drink and then said, “I do think it would have therapeutic value.”

  “Al. Et tu?”

  But Al was moving a chair out of the way to give me room. “Do you need music?” Lauren said.

  “But of course,” Al said. “Something dramatic. There, those Vengari concertos my dad likes. Track six.”

  Lauren turned it up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “put your hands together for the free-dance stylings of… La Desperada!”

  I slouched up and then, with my friends, I took my place. So you take my ticket, Ed. While the world and its crowd were cheering you, co-captain, winner of state finals, I got some applause myself.

  Give this back to your sister. I’m done.

  OK, one last thing. Totally forgot it was in here. I bought it sometime, when we were talking about Thanksgiving foods a million years ago. You said that stuffing was something that had to be made the same old way, with a jar of, absolutely had to be, this weird brand they hardly make, chestnuts. You are wrong, of course. Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth. I bought this to make for you on Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving’s gone now. Al and I saw all seven Griscemi films that weekend at the Carnelian, sneaking in leftover turkey sandwiches and the mashed-mint-and-lemon drinks sloshing in plastic canteens. We didn’t kiss but wiped mustard off each other’s mouths, is how I remember. And he just saw this. “What’s that doing there?” is what he said. I told him what I’d been willing to do for you, and he wrinkled up his nose.

  “Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth,” he said.

  “Ew. And—?”

  “Oh yeah. And in my opinion, bluebirds are pretty.”

  We have a thing now, that every time he gives an opinion he has to give an extra one to make up for all his not-having-an-opinions. My end of the deal I’m holding up finally, now that I’m ready, getting rid of this stuff. “I think I read,” Al is saying now, “about an appetizer thing with chestnuts, though. You wrap them up in prosciutto I think, brush them with grappa, and roast them and put a little parsley on top.”

  “Or maybe blue cheese,” I said.

  “That’d be good.”

  “Could we use chestnuts from a jar?”

  “Sure. Wrapping something in prosciutto cancels out from a jar. Wrapping in prosciutto cancels out anything.”

  “Yes,” I said, and so Ed, this is the thing I’m keeping. This is the thing you’re not getting back. You wouldn’t even know about it if I weren’t telling you, its heavy heft, its goofy label, this part of us that I’m not letting out of my grasp. It makes me smile, Ed, I’m smiling.

  We could try it for New Year’s, Al is going to say, I know he will. We are planning an elegant supper. It’s in honor, we decided after a lot of caffeinated talk talk talk about it, of nobody. So far most of the dishes are poached from The Deep Feast of Starlings, which we rented again and kept pausing to bicker over what it is Inge Carbonel adds, hunched over the stone oven while her blinded son plays that racing angry piece on the cello over and over, what she bastes the tiny birds with that sits bubbling on her windowsill for days and days during her brother’s wake. What kind of wine it is, like we’d be able to find Greek wine even if we knew, the camera diving deep into the bottle and following it out to the wide thirsty glass. Licorice tarts, also. A soft-boiled egg with anchovy inside. Goat cheese melted on beets or maybe these chestnuts, wrapped in prosciutto, canceling out everything. Candles, real napkins. I might get him another tie. It’s a plan, some of it won’t work. (Sorry to hear about Annette, by the way.) But it beats bad lousy stuffing like jocks eat, Ed. Our sketches are messy, but Al and I can read it, can picture it moving forward. The New Year will make me feel, I don’t know, like those huddled happys at the large wooden table, not my favorite movie but one that’s got something, according to me. You wouldn’t like it. Why we broke up is that you’ll never see it, never a picture like that. The tremble of the soup pots, that crazy bird that pecks at the seeds in the saucer, the way the love interest sneaks up on you, several scenes before you even know for sure he’s in the story. Shutting the box with a wooden shuffle, exhaling like a truck pulling to a stop, thunking it to you with a Desperada gesture. I’ll feel that way soon, any sec now, friends or loved or content or whatnot. I can see it. I can see it smiling. I’m tel
ling you, Ed, I’m telling Al now, I have a feeling.

  Daniel Handler has written novels for grown-ups under his own name, including The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Adverbs, and several books for younger readers under the name Lemony Snicket, such as those in A Series of Unfortunate Events and 13 Words. He was dumped at least three times in high school.

  Maira Kalman has written and illustrated books for grown-ups, including And the Pursuit of Happiness and The Principles of Uncertainty, as well as many for children, including 13 Words and Fireboat. Her heart was broken in high school first by a boy who looked like Bob Dylan and shortly thereafter by one who looked like Leonard Cohen.

  “When my heart was broken and I was fifteen, I listened to Lou Reed’s Berlin over and over and walked around a lot in the rain while my friends followed me looking worried and imploring me not to do anything stupid. Well, stupider than walking around in the rain, anyway.”

  —NEIL GAIMAN, author of The Graveyard Book

  “I was heartbroken when my boyfriend announced he was moving to Chicago without me. But, oh yeah, I could keep his guitar amp. Thanks.”

  —SARA SHEPARD, author of the Pretty Little Liars series

  “I knew I had to break up with Ann Rosenberg after she chose a teal dress for the prom. I had never heard of teal. Also, I was gay.”

  —BRIAN SELZNICK, author and illustrator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret

  “He broke my heart. Then I broke his. I laughed at his pain.”

  —JUDY BLUNDELL, author of What I Saw and How I Lied

  “The first boy I fell in love with didn’t know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.”

  —HOLLY BLACK, author of White Cat

  “When Patti Fox broke up with me, I typed her name over a thousand times on my manual Olivetti until the entire page was beaten into a stiff sheet of black ink.”

  —JACK GANTOS, author of Hole in My Life

  “My heart was sort of broken when my freshman-year boyfriend ended it on Valentine’s Day. But mostly it was broken because I had to return his records.”

  —SARA ZARR, author of Sweethearts

  “The boy I loved didn’t know I existed. Then again, he was obsessed with Camus, so he didn’t know if any of us existed.”

  —DAVID LEVITHAN, coauthor of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Will Grayson, Will Grayson

  “Of course I had my heart broken as a teen. I was desperately in love with myself. Then I found out that I was completely shallow. I haven’t spoken to myself since.”

  —M. T. ANDERSON, author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

  “My heart was broken the spring of my senior year in high school. We broke up in a park outside of town, and as I drove him home, he read me what he’d written in my yearbook. The line that really made me sob? ‘You will always be my Princess Bride.’ Sniff.”

  —CAROLYN MACKLER, author of Tangled and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

  Join the Project at www.whywebrokeupproject.com

  Contents

  Front Cover Image

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  About the Creators

  More Heartbreak

  Copyright

  Copyright

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Daniel Handler / Art copyright © 2011 by Maira Kalman

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group / 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  www.hachettebookgroup.com

  First e-book edition: December 2011

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-19458-7

  Cover design by Gail Doobinin.