Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak Read online

  Has heartbreak broken her for good?

  Dumped by her boyfriend the summer after senior year, teen love and relationship columnist Lu Charles has hit a wall with her writing. The words just won’t come to her like they used to and if she doesn’t find a topic for her column, she’ll lose her gig at hip online magazine Misnomer, and the college scholarship that goes along with it.

  Her best friend, Pete, thinks she should write through her own pain, but when Lu overhears another couple planning a precollege breakup just like hers, she becomes convinced that they’re the answer to cracking her writer’s block. And when she meets them—super-practical Iris and cute, sweet Cal—and discovers they’re postponing their breakup until the end of the summer, she has to know more.

  Have Cal and Iris prolonged their own misery by staying together, knowing the end is in sight? Or does the secret to figuring out all this love business—and getting over it—lie with them? One thing is certain—if Lu can’t make a breakthrough before summer is over, she can kiss her future goodbye.

  From the acclaimed author of Let’s Get Lost and North of Happy comes a touching exploration of love, relationships and the pain of breaking up.

  Praise for North of Happy

  A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults nominee

  A Bank Street Best Children’s Book

  A Tayshas Reading List Book

  “An exceptional tale of grief, ambition, love, and maturity.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Alsaid strongly evokes the frenzied atmosphere of a restaurant kitchen and the equally turbulent emotions of a young man struggling to sort his priorities.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Praise for Never Always Sometimes

  A Kirkus Reviews Best Book

  “Alsaid cracks the teen-lit trope of friends becoming lovers wide open, exposing a beautiful truth inside.... A good romance is hard to come by. This is a great one.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “A refreshing novel about friendship and romance that defies cliche.”

  —Adam Silvera, New York Times bestselling author of They Both Die at the End

  Praise for Let’s Get Lost

  A YALSA Teens’ Top 10 nominee

  A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults nominee

  “An achingly beautiful story... Reminiscent of John Green’s Paper Towns.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Lost balances both the quirky fun and the harsh realities of adolescence.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  Also by Adi Alsaid

  Let’s Get Lost

  Never Always Sometimes

  North of Happy

  BRIEF

  CHRONICLE

  OF ANOTHER

  STUPID

  HEARTBREAK

  ADI ALSAID

  Adi Alsaid was born and raised in Mexico City, where he spilled hot sauce on things. He’s the author of the critically acclaimed Let’s Get Lost, Never Always Sometimes, and North of Happy.

  Visit Adi online at www.adialsaid.com or on Twitter, @adialsaid.

  For my teen readers who are wading through the murky swamp

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heart

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heart

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heart

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heart

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heart

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heart

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

  1

  TANGLED UP

  I would have called bullshit on the whole thing from the beginning if I didn’t see both Iris and Cal get the same look in their eyes. Constantly. When Iris hums to herself as they walk hand in hand, when Cal insists on doing the dishes at her parents’ house, when she underlines whole paragraphs in novels then simply has to voice her appreciation for what she’s just read, and how he’ll stop whatever he’s doing to listen, even if he clearly has no idea what she’s talking about.

  One eighteen-year-old gets that look, you start feeling sorry for them. Two of them give that look to each other and no matter what kind of cynic you are, you start thinking only teenagers really understand love. How insane it’s supposed to be.

  * * *

  Leo was running late again.

  My stupid, beautiful ex-boyfriend—who’d spent the entirety of our relationship arriving on time—had not even texted to give me a heads-up. I was waiting for him at Madison Square Park, and even out of the sun it was uncomfortably hot and made worse by the smell of garbage. Every person that entered my periphery was potentially Leo, so my heart quickened with excitement and then fell into disappointment as soon as I realized it wasn’t him. He wasn’t hurrying to come. He was happy he’d left me. He wasn’t going to give me a chance to talk him back into our love.

  I heard the snap of a soda can opening and turned to see my new bench mate.

  Skinny white boy, thick-framed hipster glasses, cute enough to make me forget about Leo and the long stretch of summer ahead without him. He took a sip from his Coke and then looked at me. Right away, I knew he wouldn’t be just one more face in the nameless masses you see every day in a big city. He had a face that I knew would stay with me, that would pop into my mind months later and for no apparent reason other than the persistent question of what might have been. He smiled at me, and I forgot about what time it was and the fact that Leo was probably blowing me off for the second time this week.

  Okay, maybe I didn’t entirely forget. It was in the back of my mind, like it had been for the three weeks since summer had started and Leo had thrown away what we had. You can’t have love in your life for nearly a year, tangled up in a single person, then transition into its absence without feeling the loss. An attractive face helps, but cures nothing.

  A French couple stopped in front of our bench, looking over a map of Manhattan. They were speaking loudly and gesturing wildly, their words a blur of vowels and those throat-tickling soft French r’s. I looked to my right again and my eyes met his. He raised his eyebrows and smiled at me, gesturing at the couple, whose argument was getting more heated. I tried to smile back, but couldn’t guarantee that what I did qualified. It was an awkward facial muscle contortion at best.

  “Do you understand what they’re saying?” he asked, in a stage whisper.

  “What?” I said, because conversations with strangers are hard.

  He gestured at the French couple. “Do you understand any of that?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “I wonder what they’re arguing about.” He looked at th
em wistfully, and I wished I could get a glimpse inside his head.

  “I imagine they’re lost,” I said, eyes more on him than on the couple.

  “Where do you think they’re going? All the tourist spots are on that map. The city’s a grid, and it’s pretty easy to get around.”

  “Maybe they’re arguing about which way the map should be held. I hear in France they hold their maps diagonally.” The boy laughed; a laugh like rising bread, warm and doughy. “I don’t know what that means. Sorry,” I said, assuming he’d laughed out of politeness. “Maybe they’re looking for something super specific that’s not on the map.”

  “Don’t apologize. That was funny,” he said calmly, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees, looking at me intently. He took another baby sip from his Coke. “I’m irrationally intrigued by them. What could they possibly be looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Treasure? The spot where John Lennon once picked his nose in a photograph? Tourists are weird.”

  The boy laughed, then leaned back into the bench. He turned and took in the sights of the park, which gave me a little time to admire his face for a bit. Take that, Leo, I thought. I’m staring at a cute boy and I don’t feel guilty about it.

  I scanned the morning crowd at the park, still hoping to catch sight of Leo despite my previous thought. The sun shone through the leaves, casting dancing shadows at Bench Boy’s feet. As usual, I kept my ear out for some eavesdropping opportunities, which I’d been trying to use as writing inspiration. Nothing else had worked since Leo left me. I could only hear the French couple trying to make sense of their map.

  “There is a legitimate chance that they’re using this lost tourist act as a cover so that they can talk about us,” Bench Boy said.

  “Define legitimate.”

  “You don’t think that it’s possible?” We turned to look at each other at the same moment. How is it that mere eye contact with an attractive stranger can do all sorts of things to your insides?

  I looked ahead so as to not give myself away. “I mean it’s possible, but what would they be saying about us?”

  Immediately, the boy put on a thick, completely unconvincing French accent. “Oh my God, Celine! Ze people here are unbelievably attractive! Just look at zat boy on ze bench. Mon dieu, he’s so attractive I want to stab my eyeballs out and serve zem at a restaurant like escargot!”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, unable to contain a chuckle and only slightly worried that I was sitting next to one of those creepy people that can hide their grossness just long enough to get close to you. “I didn’t know it was possible to offend French people so quickly, but I think you just did.”

  He leaned toward me, not smiling, though his eyes betrayed a twinkle of amusement. “No, you have to be her. What’s she saying?”

  I’m not sure what it was that kept me on that bench. Maybe it was a hope that Leo would still show, or maybe it was nice to have this moment without him. I looked away from the boy and studied the woman in the couple. She was holding the map with one hand, her perfectly manicured fingernails painted royal blue. Her blond hair spilled over her shoulders as she scrunched her mouth to one side of her face and continued studying the map.

  “I swear to God, François,” I said, in my own terrible French accent, causing the boy to smile adorably. “You make zat threat everywhere we go. One of zees days I’m going to really pluck out your eyeballs myself and feed zem to ze locals.”

  “Zey should be so lucky,” the boy replied with a laugh.

  We watched the couple for a second, and in the silence Leo slipped into my thoughts again. I started thinking about how it had felt to see him for the first time every day. The instant swell of joy that his mere presence provided. How I couldn’t resist smiling. I thought about how that was just the beginning of the delights Leo brought to my days: his thoughtfulness, his sense of humor, the way his lips on the back of my neck made it seem as if I had a pleasure button which only he knew about and was willing to press repeatedly. I hadn’t had that in three weeks, nor, it seemed, would I have it again.

  “Should we go up to them and pretend to be French too?” Bench Boy asked, leaning in slightly.

  “Absolutely. Just give me a second to transform into an entirely different person with acting skills and the confidence to make a fool out of myself in front of others.”

  “Is there a way for me to compliment you on the confidence you had to already pretend to be French with me, without implying that you made a fool out of yourself?”

  “Well, not when you put it that way, man.”

  The boy laughed and raised the Coke can to his lips, but before he could take a sip he chuckled again and put the can down.

  “I hope I haven’t discouraged you from any future fake accent work in public. It would be a great loss to the world if you never said ‘feed zem to ze locals’ again.”

  “Hell no. That’s my catchphrase, and I’m not going to let a stranger ruin it for me.”

  “Oh good,” the boy said. “Just wondering here, in what other situations does your catchphrase come in handy?”

  “If you criticize my catchphrase one more time,” I said, going back into the terrible French accent and raising my voice, “I will feed you to ze locals!”

  The boy laughed again, a deep-bellied, full-bodied laugh that made me want to actually adopt a catchphrase and see how often I could slip it into conversations throughout my day.

  He looked like he was about to say something, but then the French couple had another burst of arguing, both of them pointing furiously at the map.

  Bench Boy stood up and walked over to them. There he goes, I thought, never to be seen again. He offered a quiet French “pardon” followed by “Can I help you?” while pointing at the map. He stood with them for a couple of minutes, using mostly hand gestures and mumbling as the couple continued to argue in rapid French. They departed with softly muttered thank-yous and smiles, then, amazingly, fatefully, he sat back down next to me.

  “That was nice of you,” I said.

  “God, that was surprisingly easy,” he said, beaming. “Invigorating.” He brought the can of soda up to his lips but stopped, as if a thought had occurred to him that shouldn’t be interrupted by mere thirst. “I think I’m going to start doing that more often.”

  “Help tourists find treasure? Practice that terrible French accent?”

  He chuckled, which was nice of him, because that was another stupid joke. “No. Just...helping people. That felt good.” I had no idea what to say to that, so I kept quiet and felt the acute strangeness of myself for a little bit. “I get that urge to help more often than I act on it. I feel like everyone does. But I’ve just decided, right now, sitting here on this bench with you, I’m going to act on it more often. Help people.”

  “Um, okay,” I said, kind of desperate to turn to my phone and write down what he was saying word for word into my notes app.

  “Sorry if that’s weird. I’m in a weird mood. It’s been a weird hour.”

  “I dunno, we just pretended to be a French couple serving your eyeballs as if they were snails,” I said. “Nothing weird about that.”

  He smiled and took a sip of his Coke. “Imagine you’ve spent the last two years on an undefeated two-person paintball team. The excitement of win after win, of kicking so much ass that it basically feels like you’ve been beating life itself. Every day you experience that thrill. Until now. I think we’re going to lose.”

  I bit my lip, stealing another glance at his face.

  “Weird.”

  “Très weird,” he replied with another wry smile. I thought maybe we’d go back into our repartee, which had eased some of the sorrow I’d felt sitting on my own, but he looked away, lost in his thoughts.

  I looked at the time on my phone. Leo was never going to come. I wouldn’t get that shot of joy from seeing
him. I was keenly aware of the boy sitting there next to me, but I was also aware of the chatter of the park, the constant din of traffic, a basketball bouncing nearby. On the grass to my left, a squirrel was hanging around the base of a tree. I was most aware, however, of the pain that still sat squarely in my gut. Of how I wanted to leave it behind and at the same time drown in it. Of how I hated Leo and missed him dearly in tiny moments of the day, and how the two feelings did not exist separately, but were intertwined, tangled up like sweat-soaked bedsheets.

  The boy leaned back and groaned, turning his head up to the beautifully blue, stupidly hot sky, keeping his eyes closed to it, as if refusing to take note of the weather. “It’s such a bizarre thing we do,” he said, not looking at me.

  “What is? Help French tourists?”

  “Love,” he said, just like that, as if strangers went around talking about these things all the time.

  A few moments passed by. The boy opened his eyes, took another sip of his Coke before getting up to chuck it in a nearby trash bin. The clunk the can made as it went in told me it was almost full, as if he hadn’t been able to stomach any of the soda. He came back, wiped his glasses on the hem of his shirt, squinting at me because the sun was in his face. Then he said sorry, and thanks, and left me on the bench. Alone.

  * * *

  Later, I met my friend Pete at our favorite bookstore, The Strand, before our shift at a nearby chain movie theater. “You should probably stop trying to meet up with him,” Pete said, thumbing through a graphic novel. Pete doesn’t say much, but when he does you can pretty much always count on honesty, rarely on tact. I guess I appreciate honesty more than tact, because almost as soon as Pete and I met at the theater two summers ago, I latched on to him and haven’t let go since.

  “I wish he came while that boy and I were talking,” I said. “I wanted to make him jealous. It’s crazy, I know. But the heart and its wants and all that.” I picked up a hardcover, read the first line, put it back down. “I can’t believe he didn’t show.”