The Heartbreak Messenger

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  For Jessica, who said she would be the least-complicated person in my life.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  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

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  I didn’t choose to be the Heartbreak Messenger. Not really. I was just trying to make a few honest bucks and help a guy out. I definitely didn’t choose the name. I don’t know who did. It just started floating around and eventually stuck. Me? I would’ve gone for something more professional and less … girly.

  Speaking of girls, I should probably tell you something about myself right off the bat—and it’s embarrassing, so you can pretty much count on it being true. I’m not exactly what you would call a “ladies’ man.” Anyone who knows me can tell you I don’t talk to girls if I can help it. I mean, besides my friend Abby and the occasional cashier at the grocery store. I’m only saying this so you’ll believe me when I tell you that I didn’t get involved in all this as a way to meet girls. And, for the record, I don’t enjoy making people cry, either.

  But, believe it or not, there are guys out there that have even more trouble with girls than I do. The crazy part is that some of those guys have girlfriends.

  And that’s where I come in.

  It all started with Rob McFallen’s older brother, who was a junior in high school. We were sitting in Rob’s kitchen one afternoon eating ice cream. That was the great thing about Rob’s house—both of his parents worked, and their freezer was always stocked with ice cream. As long as the rest of the house was in one piece when they came home, his parents didn’t really care if half a carton of rocky road was missing.

  Rob’s brother, Marcus, came in and pulled out the mint fudge brownie. He had on his red delivery uniform, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get to work. He sat down and dug in with a serving spoon.

  Rob looked up from making patterns in his ice cream with his fork prongs. “Dude, Marcus, use a bowl.”

  Rob had been my friend since the second grade when he’d dared me to kiss a particular girl on the playground. I didn’t have the guts, so I started a fight with him instead. He finished it by throwing sand in my face. Sitting in the principal’s office afterward, me blind and him busted, had bonded us for life in a prisoner-of-war kind of way. I guess you could say he was my best friend. One of two.

  Marcus scowled at his brother. “Don’t bug me. I’m thinking.”

  “First time for everything,” Rob said.

  Marcus didn’t respond. He just sat there, staring at the spotted green ice cream on his spoon.

  “Man … you really are thinking,” Rob said.

  I was kind of amazed, too.

  Marcus dropped his spoon back into the carton without taking a bite. He pushed the ice cream away. “I’ve got problems.”

  I licked the dripping ice cream from my spoon. “What kind of problems?”

  Rob answered for him. “Girl problems. With Marcus, it’s always girl problems.”

  “But I thought you already have a girlfriend,” I said.

  “Sure, man. But that’s when the real problems start.” Marcus looked at me with troubled eyes.

  Rob had already lost interest and was digging the marshmallows out of his ice cream. But I was curious. “Like what?”

  “Like, on Monday when I picked her up for school. I wore my cross-trainers, but she made me go back home and change into my dress shoes. She said they went better with my shirt.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or Tuesday, I was gonna hang out with the guys, but she needed me to come decorate some preschool for their fall party. She wanted me to stay for the party, too! I barely escaped. Told her I wasn’t feeling well.”

  Now I was losing interest.

  “Or today, in English, when she saw me passing notes back and forth with Cammie Bollinger. It didn’t mean nothing, but Melissa spends the rest of the day giving me the silent treatment.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Man, I just don’t feel free anymore. I can’t do what I wanna do. I’m trapped. I think … I think I need to break up with her.”

  Rob suddenly surfaced from his bowl of ice cream. “Break up with Melissa? But I thought you liked her.”

  Marcus reached across the table and swatted Rob on the side of the head. “You’re so dense.Haven’t you been listening? I’m miserable. I want my freedom.”

  “So break up with her,” I said between spoonfuls.

  “I … I’m not sure how. I’ve never done it before.”

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “Girls usually dump him.” He ducked just in time to miss another swat from Marcus’s hand.

  “Why don’t you just send her an e-mail?” I suggested. “Or a text.”

  “Not a chance,” Marcus said. “Tony Seong sent this sappy text to break up with his girl last year, and you know what happened? She forwarded it to everyone on her contact list, and then posted it on her blog. You can Google Tony’s name right now and his breakup text pops right to the top.”

  “Don’t be a wuss,” Rob said. “Just talk to her.”

  Marcus glared at him. “If it’s so easy, then you do it.” He paused for a moment, and I saw the wheels in his head start moving again. “Hey, that’s it. Why don’t you break up with her for me?”

  Rob almost snorted an almond. “What? You’re crazy. Besides, Mom and Dad grounded my cell phone after I downloaded all those games, remember?”

  “No, no, I mean talk with her in person. I’m serious. Go and let her know that it just isn’t working out between us. That I think we should go our separate ways.”

  “Not a chance,” Rob said. “That’s so totally not going to happen.”

  “Please?” begged Marcus. “I’ll give you twenty bucks if you do it.”

  My ears perked up. Twenty dollars just for delivering a message?

  Rob shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”

  I cleared my throat. “I’ll do it.”

  I was kind of surprised to hear myself say that. This was probably a family thing, and I shouldn’t have butted in. But I’m not one to turn down easy money. Like one year in elementary school we had a fundraiser where we had to get people to buy things from a Christmas catalog—picture frames and little angel statues and smelly decorations. The kid that sold the most would win fifty bucks. Most of the kids went door-to-door, hitting up the parents of the other kids that were selling. I figured out a better strategy. My mom knew a lady in charge of an old folk’s home that let me bring my catalog there. Yeah, in one afternoon I easily claimed that fifty dollars and made a whole building full of grandmas
happy at the same time.

  Marcus looked at me with a hopeful half smile. “You serious?”

  “Sure, if you want me to.” I shrugged. “For the twenty, of course. In advance.”

  Marcus grabbed the ice cream carton and dug in. “Quentin, you’re a lifesaver.”

  Chapter 2

  “Seriously, Quentin, what do you know about breaking up with high school girls?” Rob asked me later that afternoon as we walked down to Mick’s. “You’re in seventh grade.”

  “Age matters not,” I said in my best Yoda voice. “No … no.”

  “Yoda didn’t say that. He said, ‘Size matters not.’”

  “No way. It was when he was talking about being nine hundred years old or something.”

  “‘Size matters not.’ It was when Luke was trying to carry Yoda on his shoulders.”

  Rob and I passed the glass doors that opened into the front of Mickelson’s Quality Service Garage. It’s the only auto garage in the county that’s open until midnight. Plus they give you a complimentary pine-scented air freshener with each oil change. The poster in the window says WHILE SUPPLIES LAST, but Mick got a smoking good deal on half a warehouse of those air fresheners on eBay. I’ve seen the boxes in the storeroom and, believe me, supplies will last a good long while.

  We turned the corner of the building and walked around back where the four garage bays opened up into a cement parking lot. Next to the office door in the first bay stood a chubby man in green coveralls and a red Cardinals baseball cap. As always, he chewed on half a cigar. Unlit, of course, because only an idiot would light up in a garage. Besides, he’d quit smoking years ago.

  “Hey, Mick,” I said as we walked past.

  He looked up from his clipboard. “Quentin, my man, how’s it going?” He glanced behind me at Rob. “And … Richard. Always welcome at Mickelson’s Garage.”

  Rob scowled and followed me past Mick to bay four. There was an old Chevy Malibu up on the lift. Looked like an inline fuel filter job. The woman underneath it was also dressed in green coveralls. Her plain brown hair was pulled up in a ponytail and threaded through the back of a white baseball cap that didn’t have a logo on it. Just grease. She looked both young and old—thirty-two to be exact—and she handled the wrench in her hand like a pro.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  She stopped cranking the wrench just long enough to look over and give me a piece of a smile. “Hey, Quentin. Hi, Rob. How was school?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Guess what Quentin’s going to do for my brother?” Rob blurted out.

  I jabbed my elbow in his ribs before Mom looked over at us again.

  “What’s that?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing. Just help him with some school stuff.”

  Mom turned back to the underside of the car and I pulled Rob across the parking lot to an old picnic table resting in the shade of a grove of poplars. The trees went out for at least a hundred yards on town land. A dirt path cut through the trees, crossing a wooden bridge on its way.

  Rob rubbed his chest. “I think you cracked a rib.”

  “That’s not something my mom needs to hear about,” I said, pulling notebooks from my backpack.

  “Sorry. It’s not like you’re doing something illegal.”

  “What are you doing that’s not illegal?” said a familiar voice.

  Abby stepped out from the poplar path and joined us at the picnic table. Her soft blond hair fell past her shoulders and a single dimple stuck in her cheek as if a thumbtack held it there.

  Back in the second grade, when Rob and I got in that scuffle over daring me to kiss a girl, well, Abby was the girl. Somehow that had endeared us to her, and we’d been friends ever since. She was also my best friend, the other one of two.

  “Hi, Abby. Quentin’s going to…” Rob stopped short and looked over at me, his eyes begging me to let him go on.

  I stepped in before Rob could stick his foot in his mouth. “Nothing. Not really. I’m just helping Marcus with something. Something he wants to do for … or actually with … um, Melissa.”

  Abby’s eyes suddenly became a brighter shade of blue. “Oh, that’s so sweet of him. Like a surprise date? Or a birthday party?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I can’t really talk about it. It’s kinda hush-hush.”

  “Quentin, come on, just give me a hint.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Don’t make me ask you three questions.”

  “Don’t you mean twenty questions?” I corrected.

  “No. Just three. I saw this courtroom show the other night where the lawyer was explaining how you could get to the bottom of any case with just three questions … if you know the right questions to ask.” Everyone knows that Abby’s life plan includes a successful career as a district attorney. “So are you going to tell me, or are you going to make me ask the questions?”

  “I really can’t, Abby. Because…” I hesitated. I never kept anything from her or Rob. But somehow this seemed like a good exception. I wasn’t sure what she’d think about my little job for Marcus. “Because we have that grammar test on Friday that’s going to kick your trash if we don’t get busy.”

  Abby groaned and plopped down at the picnic table. “That’s a hopeless cause. Why bother?”

  Because it just saved me from spilling the beans, that’s why. “Come on, open up,” I said.

  Abby and Rob dug out their books. The three of us were in several classes together, which made homework a lot easier. Abby was really good with the math and science stuff. I had English and history in the bag. And Rob … well, he was there for moral support.

  “You want to start with number one, Abby?” I asked.

  “Okay.” She studied the page in her notebook. “Number one. Determine the adverb in this sentence. ‘Abby was dying to know what Quentin was secretly doing for Marcus and Melissa.’”

  “Abby!”

  “No,” she replied with a straight face. “In this case ‘Abby’ is a noun.”

  Rob snickered.

  “Okay, Rob,” I said without looking up, “why don’t you take the first one for us?”

  “Please,” Abby said before Rob could respond. “Just tell me, is it romantic sweet, or fun sweet, or a help-you-out-because-I-love-you sweet?”

  I snapped my notebook shut. “I’m not going to tell you. It’s between me and Marcus. Just drop it, all right?”

  Abby folded her arms. “Guys have no sense of romance. Fine, keep your secret. You know I’ll just get Rob to tell me later.”

  I eyed Rob fiercely. “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “I wouldn’t?” he said.

  I shook my head more confidently than I felt. “You wouldn’t because I know a few things about you I’m sure you don’t want shared.”

  Rob’s eyes widened and I knew my secret was safe with him.

  “Embarrassing secrets will keep you from getting elected to public office, you know,” Abby said. “That’s why you should never do anything you might be ashamed of later. Your past has got to be clean.”

  “Like you?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she said in a dignified voice.

  I couldn’t help myself. I jumped onto the table and cupped my hands to my mouth. “Hey, everybody! Abigail Patch sleeps with a Hello Kitty doll!”

  Abby scrambled up onto the table and clamped her hand around my mouth. “That’s not the secret I was talking about,” she hissed. Her lips were tight but her eyes were laughing.

  “Humppffht,” I said through her hand.

  “What?”

  “Humppffht.”

  “If I take my hand off your face will you behave yourself?”

  I nodded.

  She slowly removed her hand. I grinned. We both stepped off the table and sat on the benches.

  “Do you really sleep with a Hello Kitty doll?” Rob asked.

  Abby stuck her tongue out at him.

  I threw back my head and shouted, “And she has a pin
k unicorn night-light!”

  Abby slapped the side of my arm. “You promised to behave yourself.”

  “I’m behaving just like myself,” I laughed.

  Abby gathered her books. “Then I hope you behave like someone with better manners at the show tomorrow night. You guys are coming, right?”

  “Yep,” Rob said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I added.

  Abby swung herself out from the table. “Okay. Good. I think I’m going to head early to art club. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I watched her as she passed the garages and headed for the street.

  She had said I might be ashamed of my secrets later. But there was nothing to be ashamed of in helping Marcus. No one would ever find out about it anyway.

  “So when you gonna do the deed?” Rob asked, as if reading my mind.

  I touched the twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. “Tomorrow. After school.”

  Chapter 3

  I stood in the parking lot of the Burger Joint for a few minutes, surveying the situation. There weren’t any cars pulled up to the drive-in spots. The picnic tables were also empty. There was only one customer inside. And the air was fat with the mouthwatering scent of burger grease. It was like the place was waiting for me.

  You can find the usual fast-food stops in our town: McDonald’s and Taco Bell and whatnot. Rob’s brother delivered Chinese food for the Golden Wok, which is good. But for a real treat you go down to Fifth and Main to the Burger Joint. The Burger Joint has a sit-down restaurant on the inside, white picnic tables with large orange umbrellas on the outside, and a row of parking spaces with intercom boxes you can order from. They serve the French fries in big wedges with plenty of salt, and they stick an oversized toothpick through the middle of your burger. They even used to have the waitresses sailing around on roller skates like back in the good old days, but after one of the new waitresses lost control and took out a grandma with a walker, they did away with the skates. Which is a shame.

  I’d eat at the Burger Joint every day if I could, but Mom works as a mechanic and my dad’s been out of the picture since pretty much forever, so it’s not like we’re rolling in money. We don’t go there very often. Mom calls it a “splurge” and saves it for special occasions, like birthdays or the end of the school year or stuff. But the day after I made the deal with Marcus, I headed down there right when school let out. Melissa was a waitress and I wanted to get the job over with before the afternoon customers started coming in.