Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend Read Online Free Page A

come from. I followed his gaze to his Prius.
    Which was when I noticed that it wasn’t empty. There was some-
    one sitting in the passenger seat, someone with their head turned
    away from me, but someone wearing a tank top, hair up in a long
    ponytail.
    My stomach clenched, and it had nothing to do with the one
    bite of pizza I’d eaten. There was a girl in the car.
    It clicked into place that Teddy was holding two sodas, one of
    which was ginger ale, which he never drank. He was bringing a
    soda to a girl with a ponytail. He was dating someone else already?
    I was suddenly very aware that I hadn’t put on any makeup,
    that my hair had been tossed into a messy ponytail, and that the
    shirt I was wearing was covered in fl our and featured the word
    “spawning.”
    I looked down hard at the parking- lot asphalt, wondering if I
    could somehow get it to open up and swallow me whole.
    “Anyway,” Teddy said. He turned back to me, and the more
    vulnerable look that had been on his face only a few moments
    ago was gone. His expression now was closed off, all business. “I
    should go. But take care, okay, Gem?” He reached out like maybe
    he was going to touch my shoulder, but then must have changed
    his mind, because he pulled back his hand and gave me a thumbs-
    up instead.
    I watched him walk away as long as I could before my vision
    got blurry. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Sophie hurrying up
    to stand next to me. “Gem?” she asked. “What happened?”
    I just watched the car drive away, catching one more glimpse
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    of the girl in the passenger seat, and a fl ash of what looked like a
    tattoo on the back of her neck. Then the car disappeared from
    view, and Teddy was gone— probably forever.
    “Gemma?” Sophie was saying, sounding worried. “Are you
    okay?”
    I did know the answer to that, and shook my head. The love of
    my life had broken up with me. He’d just rejected me in a park-
    ing lot. He was already seeing some girl with a neck tattoo.
    My whole summer was wrecked. And it was only the begin-
    ning of June.
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CHAPTER 3
    I really thought that things couldn’t get worse.
    They did.
    In fact, it seems that thinking “things can’t get worse” is an
    invitation for things to get much, much worse.
    Immediately after returning from Putnam Pizza, I had got-
    ten into bed and hadn’t really gotten out again. I’d left a sobbing
    message on my dad’s phone, trying to tell him about the deposits,
    but I guess not getting my point across, because when he called
    back he clearly thought that I had either fallen down and hit my
    head, or totaled the car. I surrounded myself with my laptop,
    boxes of tissues, and pictures of me and Teddy.
    In retrospect, it seemed totally understandable that Teddy
    would have broken up with me. He was older, smarter, and a bet-
    ter person than I was. And it was clear to me, as well as to the
    editors at the Putnam Post, that he was destined for great things,
    whereas I would just be the foolish high school girl who let this
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    brilliant guy slip away. I could practically see the tiny mention I
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    would have in his future biography: Gemma Tucker— not good
    enough for the future Nobel Prize winner. She has never since done
    anything of note.
    So I spent my days in my room, crying, mostly curled into a
    little ball. And whenever I took a break to catch my breath, or
    drink some Gatorade (my mom had been leaving it outside my
    door, because she was worried I was going to get dehydrated), I
    realized that there was a piece of me that had been expecting
    this to happen from the beginning. I had been waiting for the
    moment that Teddy would fi nd me