The Heartbreakers by Pamela Wells

Brittany.
    â€œYeah. She’s this girl Will’s been seeing.”
    A long pause. Kelly began to wonder if Mrs. Daniels had hung up. But then she took in a breath and said, “What’s this Brittany like?”
    â€œWell…she’s…” Super-skinny, cultured, smart, classy. All the things Mrs. Daniels wanted in Will’s girlfriend, which Kelly knew because he’d told her. Well, maybe not the skinny part.
    There was one thing that Kelly could use against Brittany. “I think she’s a smoker.”
    â€œEwww,” Mrs. Daniels said.
    Score!
    â€œAnd Will is, like, two-timing us,” Kelly blurted. “He’s seeing me and Brittany at the same time.”
    Samuel started screaming again. Chopin, their Maltese dog, barked as the doorbell rang. “Michelle, will you get that?” Mrs. Daniels said, then pulled her attention back to Kelly. “You knew Will was never exclusive, Kelly. For now it’s best if he focuses on school.”
    Kelly winced. That was not what she wanted to hear. Kelly had thought the “focus on school” stuff had come from Mr. Daniels, but apparently Mrs. Daniels was in on it, too.
    Why had Kelly said anything in the first place? What had she been thinking?
    Well, she’d been looking for a sympathetic ear, obviously hoping Mrs. Daniels would say she’d talk some sense into Will.
    Ha! Yeah, right. Kelly should have known better.
    As a matter of fact, wasn’t that one of the rules? That she wasn’t supposed to talk to The Ex’s parents about the breakup? Or whatever it was that was going on between her and Will?
    Great. Just great. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours and already she’d broken a rule.
    Way to go, Kel.
    â€œI have to go,” Mrs. Daniels said. “Michelle!” she yelled away from the phone. “Grab Samuel, please, before he makes a mess.”
    The line went silent.
    Kelly pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it. Mrs. Daniels had just hung up on her!
    Wonderful. Her day was going from bad to worse and there was only one thing that would take the crap quota up a few notches.
    Chocolate cake.
    But chocolate cake was like six hundred calories or something.
    I don’t care, she thought. It sounds so good.
    God, what was she going to do when Valentine’s Day came around next month? All the stores would overflow with chocolate candy hearts painfully reminding her that she was single. And what better way to deal with the pain of a broken heart than to eat those stupid chocolate hearts?
    Ugh!
    Kelly headed out of her bedroom but froze in the hallway when she heard a chorus of male voices coming from the kitchen.
    She’d forgotten tonight was Todd’s night to host the Saturday poker game.
    She looked down to survey her appearance. She was still in her frog-print pajama pants and a stained white tank top. She just hadn’t had the energy to shower yet, and she couldn’t let all of Todd’s friends see her like this!
    She hurried back to her room and rifled through her closet. She threw on her gray American Eagle slub hoodie and a pink skirt. She checked her reflection in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door.
    There, now. Her outfit was better than pajamas, but still inconspicuous enough to look like she’d been lounging in it all day and hadn’t thrown it on just to impress. She ran her hand over her messy ponytail. Thankfully, it wasn’t greasy yet and the pony would do.
    She made her way to the kitchen and found Todd at the counter pouring a bag of Cheetos into a plastic bowl. Matt and Kenny sat at the table discussing a car they’d seen on TVrecently. Drew popped up behind the open refrigerator door with a two-liter bottle of cola in his hand.
    â€œHey, Kel,” he said.
    â€œHi.” She went over to the counter and pulled herself onto it. She grabbed a handful of Cheetos from the plastic dish. Todd tried smacking her