The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder

cup of tea against her chest. She’s always cold—even on sunny eighty-degree September mornings. “When you go to the Fall Festival today, can you make sure to bring the bag by the door? It has theafghan I knit for the silent auction. Did you see it? It turned out nice.”
    â€œThat afghan could go for at least eight hundred dollars, Jane,” my dad suggested, totally unrealistically, right as I declared, “I’m not going.”
    â€œWhy aren’t you going?” Mom asked.
    My teaspoon clinked against the edge of my glass as I stirred the chocolate powder about two minutes longer than needed.
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    â€œAren’t Eph and Audrey going to be disappointed?” she asked.
    â€œThey’ve got other plans,” I said, feeling sour again.
    â€œAhh,” she said, as if that explained everything, which okay, it totally did, but I wasn’t in the mood to throw her a bone. In fact, I wasn’t in the mood to throw anyone any bones—possibly ever again. I imagined myself as a ninety-five-year-old spinster, living in a decrepit old rest home with puke-yellow walls, whiskery and wrinkled and ornery, hollering at anyone who deigned to talk to me: No bones for you! That seemed about right.
    â€œCan’t you drop it off?” I asked.
    â€œYour dad and I are going bird-watching in Long Island.”
    The meanness in me yawned and stretched, waking up.
    I bet Eph’s parents weren’t going boring old bird-watching. I bet they were going gallery hopping in Chelsea or checking out the new costume exhibit at the Met.
    â€œThere’s no reason you can’t go on your own. I’m sure you’ll see people you know.”
    I heard both helpfulness and hopefulness mingling in her voice. My mom loved me more than anyone on earth, probably even more than my dad, but at that moment her concern made me feelpathetic, which made me feel angry, which let the ugly full-on out, growling and tearing off faces as it went.
    â€œI said I don’t want to go!”
    Mom flinched. Dad dropped the paper.
    â€œI don’t want to . . .” I trailed off. Both my parents were staring at me like I was four years old again, which granted was probably the last time I had raised my voice at either of them.
    The monster disappeared and shame settled, all patronizing and prim in its place.
    â€œThe bag’s at the door?” I asked quietly.
    â€œYes,” Mom replied curtly. “Thank you for dropping it off.”
    I stomped upstairs to shower, in an attempt to make myself somewhat presentable.
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    Four hours later I dropped off the bag from my mom in the school lobby. (The PTA president: “We can start this bidding at at least seventy-five dollars!”) I walked outside, hearing the traces of the carnival carry through the fall breeze.
    At the wafting scent of funnel cake that came along with it, my heart did a giddy little hop, awakened by the possibility of fried dough and powdered sugar.
    Maybe I’d go in for a quick spin around the length of the festival—it only ran across one block—and then I’d go to Central Park and read for a little bit. I was still feeling guilty for yelling at my mom, and this seemed like a bearable penance. I could tell her I went and had a nice time.
    As I entered, two little girls with matching red gym shoes tore past me, their moms simultaneously telling them to slow down.Another boy ran around me, the edges of his mouth pink with cotton-candy sugar. A dad pushed a stroller in one hand and held an oversize stuffed lion in the other. The kid in the stroller was sound asleep, head sprawled back, mouth open, face streaked with tears.
    I wandered past a ring-toss booth offering goldfish as a prize, and a booth selling an excess of USA-labeled socks. I thought about the year when we were nine and Eph barfed after riding the Scrambler (two pre-ride hot