Instructions for a Broken Heart by Kim Culbertson

Author:Kim Culbertson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-09-03T22:00:00+00:00

Carissa’s birthday last November. They told Dylan Thomas about the night Les Mis came to dinner. They had reserved the back room at Village Pizza, where they could get Carissa her favorite pepperoni and pineapple pizza and they had decided to do a dinner theater for her, a reenactment of Les Misérables. Only they didn’t have a Javert. Sean wouldn’t play Javert because he wanted to play Jean Valjean, which was totally Sean, because he always had to be the hero.

“The hero is the only character big enough for his ego,” Tyler said, winding pasta around his fork.

“He was a good Valjean,” Jessa mumbled.

Tyler snorted. Jessa was pretty sure, somewhere, an ocean away, that Carissa would be rolling her eyes.

“Who did you play?” Dylan Thomas asked Jessa.

“Éponine.”

“Of course.” Dylan Thomas reached over and stabbed the mushrooms she had pushed aside on her plate.

“This is why the other group doesn’t like you.” Jessa pulled her plate toward her, not that she would have eaten those mushrooms in a million years, even if they were the last food on the earth and someone had coated them in dark chocolate.

“Why didn’t you play Javert?” Dylan Thomas asked Tyler.

“Because I played, like, every other guy character in the whole play.” He leaned back to let the waiter set a bowl of steaming soup in front of him.

“What does this have to do with anything anyway?” Dylan Thomas motioned toward the envelope. “Why is she bringing it up? Sounds to me like these envelopes are becoming a little more about Carissa than they’re supposed to be.”

Something snagged in Jessa’s chest. Had she been feeling that too, staring down at Carissa’s insistent handwriting? “It’s not a reason.”

“It is a reason.” Tyler swirled his soup with his spoon. “Carissa is addressing the very relevant fact that Sean is a self-absorbed jackass.” He glanced at Dylan Thomas. “Judge’s ruling?”

Elbow on the table, Dylan Thomas propped his chin on his hand. “I’ll allow it.”

“Good man!” His eyes were back on Jessa, who was rolling hers at Dylan Thomas. Tyler continued, “The guy who ended up playing Javert got the chicken pox the night before the birthday party.”

“Does anyone even still get the chicken pox?” Dylan Thomas interrupted.

“Not the point.” Tyler jabbed his spoon in the air. The point was, he told him, that Jessa stepped in at the last minute and played both parts, that she sang “Stars” in the back room of Village Pizza and other diners came in from other rooms to hear her. She made people cry, it was so beautiful. She made everyone cry.

“It’s a really beautiful song,” Jessa whispered.

“I always thought it was kind of judgmental,” Dylan Thomas said, wiping some stray soup from his face with a napkin. “With all its ‘you’re wrong and I’m right and I have God on my side blah blah blah and when I find you you’ll be sorry…’”

“Point is,” Tyler said, interrupting, holding up the envelope. “She wants you to sing it somewhere where Sean can hear it.

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