Why We Broke Up Read Online Free PDF Page A

street from Mayakovsky’s Dream, right across directly like a Ping-Pong bounce, we hid in A-Post Novelties peeking through the racks of whatnot, waiting and waiting for Lottie Carson to finish her glamorous stop-over and leave so we could follow her home. We couldn’t loiter on the street, I guess, or who knows why we were in A-Post Novelties with the forever grumpy twin hags who run it, and all the nonsense, expensive and bright, people buy for other people for the other people’s birthdays when they don’t know each other well enough to know and find and buy what they really want. This camera is at least theonly thing you got me from A-Post Novelties, Ed, I’ll grant you that. I moved amongst windup animals and dirty greeting cards while you ducked under the mobiles they have until you finally said what it was that was on your mind.
    “I don’t know any girls like you,” you said.
    “What?”
    “I said I don’t know any—”
    “Like me how?”
    You sighed and then smiled and then shrugged and then smiled. The mobile was silver stars and comets glittering in circles around your head like I’d knocked you silly in a cartoon. “Arty?” you guessed.
    I stood right in front of you. “I’m not arty,” I said. “Jean Sabinger is arty. Colleen Pale is arty.”
    “They’re freaks,” you said. “Wait, are they friends of yours?”
    “Because then they’re not freaks?”
    “Then I’m sorry I said it is all,” you said. “Maybe smart is what I mean. Like, the other night you didn’t even know we’d lost the game. Usually, I thought everybody knows.”
    “I didn’t even know there was a game.”
    “And a movie like that.” You shook your head and made a weird breath. “If Trev knew I saw that, he’d think, I don’t know what he’d think. Those movies are gay, no offense about your friend Al.”
    “Al’s not gay,” I said.
    “The dude made a cake.”
    “
I
made that.”
    “You? No offense but it was awful.”
    “The whole point,” I said, “is that it was supposed to be
bitter
, awful like a Bitter Sixteen party, instead of sweet.”
    “Nobody ate it, no offense.”
    “Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.”
    You tilted your head at me, Ed, like a dim puppy wondering why the newspaper’s on the floor. At the time it was cute. “Are you mad at me?” you asked.
    “No, not mad,” I said.
    “You see, that’s another thing. I can’t tell. You’re a different girl than usual, no offense Min, oops, sorry.”
    “What are the other girls like,” I said, “when they get mad?”
    You sighed and handled your hair like it was a baseball cap you wanted to turn around. “Well, they don’t kiss me like we were. I mean, they don’t anyway, but then they stop when they’re mad and won’t talk and fold their arms, like a pouty thing, stand with their friends.”
    “And what do you do?”
    “Get them flowers.”
    “That’s expensive.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s another thing. They wouldn’t have bought the tickets like you did, for the movie. I pay foreverything, or else we have a fight and I get them flowers again.”
    I liked, I admit, that we didn’t pretend there hadn’t been other girls. There was always a girl on you in the halls at school, like they came free with a backpack. “Where do you buy them?”
    “Willows, over by school, or Garden of Earthly Delights if the Willows stuff isn’t fresh.”
    “Fresh flowers, you’re talking about, and you think Al is gay.”
    You blushed, a dashing red on both cheeks like I’d slapped you around. “This is what I mean,” you said. “You’re smart, you talk smart.”
    “You don’t like the way I talk?”
    “I’ve just never heard it before,” you said. “It’s like a new—like for instance a spicy food or something. Like, let’s try food from Whatever-stan.”
    “I see.”
    “And then you like it,” you said. “Usually. When you try it, you don’t want