The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C Read online

  I was dating this guy this past summer, and I was debating ending things. He was supposed to help me move into my new apartment and didn’t. When he called that night, he said he wanted to end things. I said “oh okay sounds good” and he said “that’s it?” and I responded with “oh, wait, do you want me to cry or something? I can cry if that makes you feel better about yourself.” It was Halloween and I just went out drinking on a drunk trolley with my friends dressed as the ever-so-fabulous Audrey Hepburn.

  ~Taylor Mandel, Ohio State ‘13

  Amy

  It had been thirteen days since he’d broken up with her. Thirteen days since he’d turned her upside down and inside out; since every one of her emotions, spoiled hopes, and dashed dreams hung around her neck like a gaudy necklace, weighing down the real her and visible to everyone.

  Hopes and dreams didn’t even cover it. Adam had been her everything. In those first few moments when she had tried to process what he was actually saying, she was devastated. She loved him, and he tore a gaping hole in her heart that threatened to bleed out every time she thought his name.

  But as Arielle had pulled out the notebook, and started preaching about the Broken Hearts’ Society, those tears and anguish had quickly turned to something black, intangible, and scary—her life without Adam. He had been the defining factor in her past, present, and future, and when she imagined her life without him, it was nothing. No plans, no ambitions, no dreams that didn’t hinge on being with him.

  What had really surprised her was how she felt when she realized that. There was no sadness now. The more she thought about it, she wasn’t angry that he had destroyed her future, but that he had ever been her entire future in the first place.

  That she had allowed him to be her future.

  So when she’d promised the Society that she wouldn’t ever again be with someone who encompassed her life, her plans, her identity so completely, she’d meant it. This pain, this blackness, this embarrassment and shame, that she was eighteen years old and had absolutely no life-plans independent of him—this was not okay. This could not happen again. She’d felt strong in that moment, being angry about the blackness, the pain that half of her had ripped itself away and left the other half bleeding. But anger took a lot of energy, and the blackness by itself was stubborn. Amy sighed, letting the blackness know she saw it, and she felt it, and she didn’t really know what to do right now.

  Her eyes wandered to the stack of brightly-colored pamphlets she’d picked up at the Student Activities Fair, featuring crosses, ichthus fishes, and catchy phrases using puns on “The Word” and “His ways.” The idea of sitting in church hurt. Amy and Adam had sat together week after week, singing praise songs beside each other, praying together. They’d even recommended sermon podcasts, blogs, and books to each other.

  Amy knew two things: The blackness of losing Adam covered church just as much as it covered eating, sleeping, and walking through campus, and that, just like those things, she couldn’t give church up. Church had been part of their relationship, yes, but her connection with God was all her own.

  At the same time, she couldn’t go to the same type of church she always had, with the passionate sermons warning against sin and the testimonies from people who wouldn’t even imagine doing the horrible things she’d done. Even when she did have a chance to make the three-hour drive south to Tripp Creek, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to go back to the pews where she’d held pinkies with Adam under a hymnal, or the building where they’d snuck their first kiss during a lock in.

  That didn’t change the fact that she’d need to do a lot of praying to get through this statistics class. She leaned over the textbook, digging into the tiny-print pages with her elbows. Maybe she thought that if she leaned on it, the formulas would somehow migrate to her fingertips and make her at least work the problems correctly, even if she couldn’t understand them.

  High school had been so easy. Maybe it was the post-breakup blackness or maybe it was just because her school had been easier than other Indiana high schools, but here at Northern, she was actually going to have to work for her grades. Which would be okay with her, if she even knew how to study. She already felt hopelessly behind with all the labs, assignments, and readings she had between her five classes, and it was only the second week of school.

  At least she could count on the Broken Hearts’ Society to keep her love life in check. As if she’d ever date again—as if any guy had ever been interested in her besides Adam. Maybe her roommates swore too much, and maybe her parents would have a heart attack if they found out one was a lesbian and the other had tattoos and a mother in prison. But they were kind, and they’d rubbed her back when she’d cried her heart out. She even felt like, eventually, she might tell them about the rest of the story with Adam, the one that started at prom and ended in the cold, white walls of a clinic an hour and a half from home.

  Her parents were back home, and she was here. In the real world.

  Amy was learning more and more that “back home” and “the real world” were more different than she’d ever imagined.

  Like pretty much every evening, Amy’s brooding while staring out the Library’s top floor window carried her hours after dinner. But tonight, just as real dark was settling over campus, the alarm on Amy’s phone started chirping. Amy jumped and flipped her phone over. Rion’s shift at The Studio was ending in—oh, geez—ten minutes, and Amy had promised she’d meet her there and walk her back to Harrison. “If they see someone waiting for me, they won’t ask me to hang out. I uh…I really have to study,” Rion had said.

  Amy knew it was about more than that, but she didn’t push. In their founding Society meeting, Rion had been the most reserved, probably because she was the only one who wasn’t a red, snotty mess of tears at that moment, and Amy had no interest in alienating the girl she had to share a couch with for the next eight months. Besides, Rion seemed to be freakishly talented, academically—Amy had seen her scrolling through quiz and assignment grades on her phone, and they were all 90 and above. Whenever Amy saw her in the Suite, she was bobbing her head and moving her lips slightly to something piping through her giant headphones.

  The alarm chirped again with a five-minute warning. “Darn it,” Amy muttered as she threw her phone and wallet into her bag and her hair into a ponytail. She’d sat around all day wearing sneakers, worn jeans, and a t-shirt from that past spring’s youth retreat. She’d absolutely loved the thing when she’d helped design it—the front said in all caps, BODY PIERCING SAVED MY LIFE, and the church’s slogan was printed on the back, very small, so that it was hidden by most girls’ hair. She remembered loving the small feeling of power when she helped present it to Adam’s dad, and he’d protested at first, but listened to her arguments about how kids were looking for subtle Christianity with enough humor to make them look cool. He’d approved it, and thanked Amy at the end of the meeting.

  That night, she’d had fleeting ideas of getting involved in church leadership in bigger ways than she’d ever imagined. When she mentioned something about it to Dad the next morning, he’d seemed to agree. She’d been so excited that Dad believed in her ability to lead, until he suggested Amy look into shadowing the Director of the church’s preschool program. Since obviously she’d want to work with little kids.

  Seven weeks and two days after that retreat, her whole world had turned upside down and inside out.

  When she’d promised Rion to meet her after work, she’d imagined changing into something that didn’t make her look like a bum first. But whatever. It wasn’t like she had anyone to impress.

  Of course she’d kept tabs on him—Facebook still existed, and he still posted updates and photos like nothing significant had changed in his life. There was nothing interesting about the photos, and Amy wavered between being really happy about that and really annoyed. Happy, because no matter how angry she was at Adam, those few sentences that said maybe, just maybe, they could still have a future together w
ouldn’t leave the back of her mind. Annoyed, because she so badly wanted tangible reasons to be angry with him. Maybe she’d judged him too harshly, imagining him kissing other girls, whispering the same promises to them as he had to her in the still dark of summer camp or tented under her covers that one game-changing night. Maybe she owed it to him to let him be for a little while.

  From the updates she saw on Facebook, and what little she could get out of friends back home who still talked to him, Adam was playing football and sitting at study tables outside of class, and that was pretty much it.

  Amy hurried out of the library lobby and into the early evening air. Here in Northern Indiana, summer seemed to cling on to its last days harder and harder as the end of September approached, holding the humidity in the air even after the heat had receded. Amy breathed the dampness into her lungs anyway, wanting to feel something different, something more real, than the doubt that had surrounded her for the last two weeks.

  Amy whipped out her phone and typed in “The Studio on High.” She and Arielle had the name memorized by now, since Rion had been ranting about it for days—how her last boyfriend had made it impossible for her to get a decent job, and how she had been hoping The Studio on High had been a music studio—something that would help her bounce back from her conviction and move on, live a normal life. Instead, she’d be surrounded by marijuana pipes all the time, surrounded by the exact same kind of people who’d practically ruined her life.

  But nothing came up on her phone’s map. Amy took a deep breath, and started walking in the direction of Francis Street: a long sloping street packed with neon signs, sportswear shops, bad Chinese and hamburger places, and the campus book store. Even if she couldn’t find the address, Indiana Northern made up most of this sleepy Midwestern town. If there was a tattoo and piercing shop, it really couldn’t be anywhere else.

  Amy’s strategy of following the road from her dorm to Francis failed when she ran into a dead end, up against a huge lecture hall. She hitched her purse over her shoulder and set out to go around it, but was then blocked by a courtyard edged by trees that didn’t allow much view of anything beyond. But Francis had to be just through there, didn’t it? As long as she kept walking in a straight line …

  Speedwalking toward the trees took a couple minutes—as much as she wanted to be there for Rion, there was no way she was going to run— but when she reached them and peered through, she saw only the back of a row of off-campus student housing. Two guys walked down the alley coming toward her. One carried an enormous pack of beer cans, and one of them whistled at her. “Hey baby, you free tonight?”

  Amy froze. The only person who had ever called her that had been Adam, and it was much less forceful than the question these guys were asking. “You sure, honey?” the other one asked. “We’ll take care of you.” Then he put his fingers up to his mouth in a “V” formation and stuck his tongue through them, wiggling it back and forth. Amy had no idea what that meant, but the way his eyes flashed as he did it made her skin crawl. She took a step backward, stammering syllables that made no sense. She wondered if she could run backward, and her heart started pounding when the guys took slow, purposeful steps toward her. They were laughing, telling her they’d get her someplace nice and warm, then laughing some more. For the first time in her entire life, a guy was making her feel exposed, and scared.

  “Come on, sweetie. You don’t have plans tonight. Not better than this.” His hand flashed down to below his belt, then up again, and Amy shuddered.

  “No, actually…I’m…uh…”

  “She’s with me.”

  Amy’s breath caught in her throat at the words, which flashed out hot and angry towards the guys and carried a tone she didn’t recognize. She whipped her head around and was met with warm brown eyes piercing into hers, and lips that whispered, “Play along,” so quickly she could have been dreaming them. Given what the two guys in the alley had just said to her, she should have been scared, but calm flooded her as the guy slid his arm around her. As his forearm curved around her waist, she could feel every muscle in his arm, strong and tense.

  The guys in the alley stopped in their tracks and started shaking their heads. “Whoa, sorry bro. We thought she was alone. We didn’t mean anything against you.”

  “No,” the voice who had just rescued her, the one that was holding her up on now-shaking legs, replied. “But you did mean something against her. Here’s an update on how to be a good guy. You see a girl alone, you ask if she’s okay and if you can help her.”

  The beer guy’s mouth dropped open. “But that’s what …”

  “And you fucking mean it,” the guy said, growling. Amy’s cheeks went hot at the curse word—she’d always hated it when people swore. It could have been the curse word, or it could have been that they were just giving up, but the guys started to mutter to the ground and get back on their way.

  The guy’s hand remained tight on her waist as they shuffled away, finally starting to joke loudly again when they were almost out of sight. And that’s when he moved his hands to each of her shoulders and turned her slightly, looking her face over carefully, tilting his head and checking her eyes. His brows knit together. “You okay?”

  That was when she realized–she’d seen these eyes, up close, before. Sienna brown mottled with olive green and specks of yellow. Now it was Amy’s turn to gasp. “Oh my…wow. Hi. Again.” The guy smiled in return, dropping his hands, suddenly seeming to struggle with finding a comfortable way hold his body while he looked at her.

  “Hi,” he replied, his face finally relaxing.

  “Did you…I mean…how did you know it was me?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Amy flushed. Of course he didn’t.

  “I mean, I’m glad to see you again. But, ah…I heard them hassling you, and I saw that you looked like you had no idea where you were going, and there’s nobody else out here, so…yeah.”

  “Well” Amy said, acutely aware that her legs still felt like Jello and that her hands would probably tremble if she raised them, “Thank you. I would say I would have been fine, but I probably wouldn’t have been.”

  “A freshman girl versus two huge drunk fraternity guys? I’m sorry, but no matter how strong you are, you’d have had nothing on them. And what makes it even worse is that this school totally sucks at dealing with sexual harassment and violence.” His gaze darted up to hers. “If the administration admits it happens, they have to deal with it, and taking steps to prevent it would be admitting it happens…I’m so sorry.”

  “What for? In case you missed it, you pretty much just rescued me.” Because she was a damsel in distress—a thought that disappointed her more than she would have expected

  “For…you know. Crude language.”

  “Oh. Oh. I…hardly thought about it.” It was a lie—words like ‘suck’ and ‘blow’ and ‘hell’ always made her a little squirmy, but she’d grown used to hearing them, hanging out with the football team so much during high school. Those guys tried to be polite around their girlfriends, but everyone knew that they saved the crudeness for the locker room, and sometimes it slipped out after a game, especially if it had been a good one. More serious profanity, however, made her feel on-edge, like someone’s feelings had been so nasty that they’d had no choice but to spill over into their words. That kind of harshness had never been part of her world, and she never wanted it to be.

  “So…where were you headed?”

  “Just to meet my roommate after work?”

  “Because it’s not safe for her to walk alone?”

  Amy laughed. “If that was the case, would I have been going to meet her on my own?”

  Now it was his turn to flush. “Guess not.”

  “Just…I think…my legs are kind of shaky.”

  “Oh, geez. Of course they are. Come on,” he said, raising his hand as though he was about to touch her back again, then letting it fall at the last minute. Instead, he lightly put a hand on her shoulder and
steered her toward a group of benches in the little courtyard framed by trees. Each of them was big enough for about two and a half people, and Amy settled herself to the far side of one of them while he chattered on about how this courtyard was beautiful for studying, or doing anything where you needed to get a little quiet in the middle of a crazy school day, but in the middle of the night it became a great place for guys looking to mess with a girl.

  “It’s just far enough away from the buildings that security cameras aren’t practical. Stupid,” he said, shaking his head. He settled himself on the opposite side on the bench, leaving a little less than six inches between them. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows at her.

  Amy stared out at the line of trees, trying to calm herself using the horizon trick Daddy had taught her that one summer on the boat. Her world started to calm, her legs to feel more solid. Amy swallowed, nodding slowly. “I am. Thank you, really. So much. You can go.”

  The guy sat up a little straighter. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No, but…I don’t know. You were obviously on your way somewhere too.”

  He laughed, shaking his head a little bit. “No. I mean, yeah. But it’s really not a big deal.”

  “Well, in that case, maybe stay with me a little bit longer?” The words slipped out before Amy even could think about how they sounded. She’d known this guy for a total of 20 minutes, but being with him felt like cuddling under an electric blanket in the dead of winter—like moving into a safe haven. She knew she sounded like a pathetic little girl, scared of her own shadow. Frustration flashed through her. “I mean …”

  “Of course,” he replied, like she’d asked him if he brushed his teeth at night. He, leaned back into the seat and tipped his head to the sky. “I’m Matt, by the way. I know we’ve known each other for a week, and now that I’ve defended your virtue, it feels kind of silly that you don’t know my name.”