The Museum of Heartbreak Read Online Free Page A

next to me, propping an elbow up. “Besides, it’s a good way to meet cool people.”
    Like Cherisse, I thought with an inner grimace.
    â€œLike Cherisse!” Audrey said brightly.
    â€œI don’t need to meet new people. I have you and Eph,” I reminded her.
    She started to say something, thought better of it, and started again. “It can’t be the three of us forever, Pen.”
    â€œSure it can!” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me we’re breaking up?” I folded my arms in a mock huff.
    â€œNo, I’m trying to say—” she began earnestly.
    â€œIt’s been great getting to know me, but you want to spend time with other people?”
    She ignored me. “That expanding our social circle is really important, and I—”
    â€œOur social triangle isn’t fulfilling all your needs?”
    â€œI love you and Eph, but sometimes—”
    â€œIt’s you, not us?”
    â€œShut up!” she yelled, scooping up Barnaby, my favorite stuffed animal of indeterminate species origin (Dog? Bear? Unknown) and winging him right at my head.
    â€œOw,” I said. “I would have thought by now you’d have learned firsthand the dangers of toys around heads, young lady.”
    She grimaced. “Tom and George ran that Tonka truck up in my hair. They didn’t throw it at me. Besides, if they’d never done that, you and Eph might not have been my friends,” she said.
    She was right. When Audrey joined our class in third grade, she was immediately known for four things: her sparkly silver shoes, her crazy-good double-Dutch jump-rope skills, the fact that she owned four American Girl dolls, and her beautiful, long, shining hair. None of which interested Eph or me very much. That is, until week two, when two boys in our class ran the spinning wheels of a battery-powered Tonka truck into her hair. Her sobbing was what brought Eph and me over to the crowd of gathering students. But it was the fact that she seemed so lonely, standing there in the center of the circle, that made me go over and say hi and, with Eph’s help, lead her to the school nurse (who made short work of Audrey’s long locks, hacking out the truck with blunt scissors).
    Even though Eph and I thought dinosaurs trumped dolls, Audrey fit with us somehow, or maybe it was more that she stuck with us, and had ever since.
    â€œOkay, I know you don’t speak French. But listen for a second, okay?”
    I nodded, resting my head in my hands in mock excitement. She ignored me.
    â€œIt’s just that at French Club . . .” Her voice lowered. “There are guys there too, Pen. Hot, dateable guys.”
    Oh.
    Oh.
    â€œYeah?” I tried to tiptoe casually around the elephant suddenly sitting in the middle of my heart. “Is Cherisse’s friend, that new guy, in French Club too?”
    Audrey wrinkled up her pert little nose, a gesture I, owner of a “nose with character,” was desperately envious of.
    â€œWait, who? Keats? No. But there are other guys. . . . Come on, say you’ll at least try it.”
    I folded my arms against my chest. “You know peer pressure doesn’t work on me, mi amiga . Besides, do you remember what I’m like with new people in general? I’m socially inept.”
    â€œPen.”
    â€œI’m like the personality equivalent of . . .” I racked my brain. “Of crusted Norwegian scabies.”
    Audrey groaned, hiding her head in her hands. “We should have never looked at my dad’s issues of Journal of Dermatology .”
    â€œWorst. Dare. Ever.”
    â€œWorst. Dare. Everest.”
    I reached over to hook pinkies with her.
    â€œSeriously, though, Pen. You are not crusted Norwegian scabies, not even close. It’s never as bad as you make it out to be.”
    â€œIt’s always as bad as I make it out to be,” I