The girls and I had agreed to meet at Candle Café for breakfast before school on Friday. Originally, the plan had been to go over the final details before the red-eye flight that night. But since my whole world had come crashing down on me twelve hours ago, things were looking slightly different. When my Betty Boop alarm clock went off at six-thirty, I groaned, rolled over, and buried my face in my pillow. The sound was so unwelcome, I wanted to throw Betty against the wall.
Noodles, the world’s greatest Pomeranian, chose that moment to pounce on my neck and start attacking me with kisses. He could always sense when I need a little extra love. This morning, I was so utterly devastated—I needed a whole lot of extra love.
It wasn’t going to be easy to break the news to my friends. For starters, breaking the news meant I was going to have to relive every excruciating detail—starting with Kennedy’s sneer at Saks and ending with the sight of Alex, walking away down Perry Street without even looking back. Then I was going to have to tell them that my eyes were already too red from crying to take the red-eye. I had to tell them I was going be a GPA no-show.
All of this was made even worse by the fact that everyone was depending on me to be the ringleader. Just thinking about all my friends right now—innocently blow-drying their hair at home (Harper), accidentally oversleeping (Camille), illegally downloading one more song for our trip’s mix CDs (Morgan), and making a last-minute decision to throw both pairs of hot pink jeans in her suitcase (Amory)—made me panic. None of them had a clue that I was about to drop the biggest bomb, possibly in the history of spring break.
We’d decided to meet at Candle Café because a) it was super healthy and super delicious (one last cleansing day before we consumed half the butter in Paris) and b) because it was our last day to dine somewhere that was so Manhattan. As Camille pointed out, there was little chance we’d be eating macrobiotic quinoa in Paris.
But there was just one problem: the vegan chefs at Candle swore by that very special (read: imposter!) food product called carob. The dessert list was all carob puddings and carob chip soy ice cream, etc. And everybody knows that there are times in life when a girl needs the real thing.
Today was a chocolate day if I’d ever seen one.
To help arm myself for the difficult conversation I knew I had ahead of me, I swung by the nearby Crumbs en route to Candle Café. I’d always wondered why a cupcake shop needed to open at seven in the morning—but today I understood. When I saw the shaven-headed, nose-ringed, white-aproned baker slide a tray of luscious-looking cupcakes into the glass case before me, I knew she was going to be my savior.
“Can I have that double chocolate cupcake—no, to the left … the big one?” I pointed to the case and waited for the biggest, swirliest, chocolatiest cupcake in all of Crumbs to be delivered to me in a little paper bag.
“There’s nothing these cupcakes can’t fix, is there?” she asked, ringing me up.
I was afraid that if I opened my mouth to disagree, I would start to cry. Either that or delve into way too much personal information. So I just nodded, tried to smile, and dashed out the door with my cupcake. I was already five minutes late for breakfast, and I could feel the GPA binder burning in my Jamin Puech patched leather Sheriffa bag.
Candle Café was already packed with power-breakfasting Upper East Siders, but I quickly spotted my friends huddled together at the back of the restaurant. I sidled past the hissing espresso machine and sank into the one remaining empty chair, thumping my cupcake on the table.
Camille eyed the paper bag, saw the big Crumbs logo, and raised her eyebrows at me. “You do know that they serve food here, too?” she joked. Her eyes widened when she watched me pull the massive cupcake out of the bag and take a gigantic bite.
“Oh my God,” Morgan said. “That looks so freaking good. I wonder if I can cancel my oatmeal—wait, Flan, why are you eating half a pound of chocolate before eight a.m.?”
“Let’s just say it’s one of those days,” I said, keeping my mouth full so I wouldn’t have to talk much more. I could already feel the tears welling up, and I knew the girls would be onto me instantly.
Amory put her hand on my arm. “Uh-oh. What’s going on, babe?” she asked. “Talk to us.”
I wanted to start at the beginning, to try to make sense out of what was still so baffling to me, but when I opened my mouth, what came out was a small mournful wail, a few crumbs of cupcake, and “Icaaaaan’tgotoPaaaaaris.”
“What?” all five of them said at once.
“What happened?”
“Don’t even joke about that!”
“Are you crazy?”
I hiccuped and blew my nose on my napkin.
“It’s Alex,” I sniffed, shaking my head. “It’s too awful to tell.”
“Worse than when Xander accidentally shaved off his eyebrows?” Camille joked. But when she saw the dire expression on my face, her smile disappeared.
“Alex cheated on me,” I said, looking down at the remains of my cupcake.
A collective gasp that was heard around the restaurant escaped my friends’ lips. Before I knew it, all four of their hands were holding mine and the whole story came pouring out, along with more than a few tears.
“The nerve,” Harper huffed, showing a rare burst of temper.
“And you had to hear about it from Kennedy,” Amory said, making all five of us shudder. “What’s worse?”
“What’s worse is Flan saying she’s not coming to Paris,” Camille said. She started tugging on her hair, hard, like she did when she was really nervous.
“Well, we’ll stay in the city with you,” Morgan said decidedly. “We’ll have another boy boycott.”
“No,” I said. “No way. No more boy boycotts. You have to go to Paris. Someone should enjoy it.”
My friends nodded halfheartedly, but I could see them looking nervously back and forth at each other. It was kind of like we were mourning the death of the GPA—and I really didn’t want that to happen. Still, I couldn’t exactly hold the position of trip advisor remotely. If I didn’t go to Paris, what would happen to all our plans?
“Does, uh, does anyone else speak French?” Amory said.
Her question was met by blank stares across the table.
“Maybe one of the boys does?” Morgan offered. “Sometimes Bennett does this really cute French accent when we go to cafés….” She trailed off.
“We don’t even know where we’re staying,” Harper realized.
“Or how to take the Métro,” Amory added.
“Or the address of Jade Moodswing’s atelier,” Camille agreed.
The girls were getting totally freaked out. There was only one thing to do.
For the very last time, I pulled the GPA binder out of my bag and laid it on the table. “I’m officially turning this over to you guys now. Everything you need to know is in here. Restaurant reservations, shopping routes, Jade’s cell phone,” I said gravely. “Treat it well.”
The girls looked at the binder in the middle of the table like it was some sort of oracle. Finally, Camille reached for it and placed it on her lap.
“It’s in good hands,” she said, stroking its glossy top cover. “But I still hate the thought of you not being with us.”
“You understand though, right?” I asked.
The girls nodded. “What are you going to do about Alex?” Camille asked.
“Honestly,” I said, “I have no idea. How am I supposed to get over this?”
I looked at my friends, who looked at each other. We’d all definitely had our share of boy drama, but no one had really had boy trauma of this caliber yet. Full-fledged cheating was uncharted territory among our clique.
“You’re really brave, Flan,” Amory said, sipping the last of her double espresso.
“And if Alex doesn’t see that …” Harper agreed, popping a strawberry in her mouth.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” Morgan finished, signaling the waiter for the check.
“You’ll call us every day?” Camille said. “Three times a day at least?”
“And vice versa,” I said, trying to sound brave. But when I tried to imagine answering the phone to hear about what the girls had gotten from Jade’s atelier, or how they liked the Eiffel Tower, all I could see was my sad self lying at home on the couch with bad takeout food, a box of tissues, Noodles, and a slew of Netflix DVDs. Your basic recipe for disaster. I had to come up with a better plan.
What was I going to do over spring break?