Free Instructions for a Broken Heart by Kim Culbertson

Jackson relayed each incident like blocks rising into the air, a Cruella-complaint tower. Francesca’s curls started to wilt with each block added to the stack. Finally, Ms. Jackson stopped adding them.
    Francesca sighed through her nose, pinching her lips together. “I am so sorry. This is hard sometimes on trips with two schools. There is nothing to be done.” She looked sadly at them, her eyes large pools. She shrugged. “I could talk to her. Might make things worse. She is not…agreeable. I’ve seen this before. No good comes from making it worse.”
    She waited. The frog waited. Williams Peak Drama Academy waited.
    “Um…” Mr. Campbell’s mouth pulled at the edges, like he was trying to form words for the first time. “Isn’t there…someone to call?”
    Ms. Jackson placed a hand on his arm. “Maybe we should talk to her. Maybe have the adults meet to discuss this.” She spoke quietly, the way she might talk to a student who’d come to her desk to ask a question during a test.
    He nodded, and Francesca brightened. “Yes. Very good, then. We go? Dinner now.” She kissed the tips of her fingers, then turned on one pointy black-heeled boot and escorted the frog back to the bus.
    One by one, with shoulders at varying degrees of defeat, Jessa and her classmates followed the frog onto the bus.
    As Jessa passed Cruella, their eyes met briefly, and Jessa’s heart sagged.
    The woman’s eyes were filled with tears.
    ***
    The restaurant walls were too close, pressing in at Jessa at odd, fragmented angles. The tables all seemed a bit too snug, the chairs too small, and Jessa felt suddenly like Alice, fumbling her way through Wonderland. She was crammed at a table with Dylan Thomas, Tyler, Erika, and Blake in the middle of the small room. Erika, in between bites of caprese salad, argued with Blake about vampires in the 1800s, something about how women vampires had more power then than now, because apparently, vampire rights were going through a rocky phase or something. Bad time to be a girl vampire in Erika’s opinion. Blake didn’t agree.
    Jessa tugged her jacket off and hung it on the back of her chair. The room sweltered; sweat beaded on her upper lip. She nibbled at her salad, but it tasted like paste. At the next table, Sean laughed at something Natalie leaned in to say, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. She fed him tiny balls of mozzarella with her fingers.
    Tyler watched them too. Jessa could see his eyes dart back to them every once in awhile when Erika started repeating herself. He pointed his fork at Jessa. “You want to switch places with Erika?” Erika looked momentarily surprised to hear her name, then dove back into Blake’s argument like it was the hazelnut gelato Jessa had devoured after the Uffizi.
    Jessa shook her head, tried to focus on Blake’s words, but she couldn’t quite get them to stay in one place. They’d spill from his mouth and then dissipate before she could put them in her ears, form an opinion about them.
    Dylan Thomas lost interest in the vampires. He studied Jessa, drank his soda, studied her some more. His coal-black eyes took on heat, bore into her skull.
    “What?” She finally asked him, wanting to hose his face down to extinguish those eyes.
    “What’s with the PDA at the next table?”
    Jessa stabbed at a tomato on her plate.
    “Former amore? The garbage boy?”
    “Garbage boy?” Tyler looked confused. Jessa shrugged and ate the tomato out of her salad.
    Tyler cleared his throat, leaned in a bit. “A week ago, he was with Jessa.” Erika and Blake stopped talking instantly. Even vampires were no match for Jessa’s mangled heart. Tyler filled him in.
    “What a wanker!” Dylan Thomas said a little more loudly than Jessa would have liked. Of course, the wanker in question was too involved feeding buxom Barbie to notice.
    “Total wanker,” Tyler agreed, sipping his Coke.
    “Are we even allowed to say ‘wanker’ if we’re not British? You guys sound