Page 3 of The Breakup Artists

I laugh. “I never cry. Their transformations just hit hard sometimes and I get a little misty.”

She stares at me for a long second. “Right, because crying was the most objectionable part of what I said.”

“Shearing sheep nuts is honest work.”

“First of all, no. Just no.” Tiny’s smile is big and warm, the kind that’s contagious, the kind I imitate when I do these jobs but can’t seem to find in my everyday life. While I’m definitely better at pretending to be other people than I am at being August, Tiny’s the opposite. She’s been absolutely herself since always.

Tiny flips open her notebook. “And second of all, I’m quizzing you, so get ready.” She tilts the page away from me, not that I’d be able to read her massively terrible handwriting. “Start with the basics—full name, birthday, etc.”

I lean back, resting my palms against the wood of the dock, easing into our familiar routine. “Ella Becker. Born August eighteenthin a small town near Boston not unlike this one, where she’s lived her entire life—”

“Correction: no place is as small as this town.” A town that Tiny’s been planning on leaving since she found out planes existed. “Now, back to Ella.”

I shoot her a smile—because on this we agree: the farther we can get from here the better. “Her favorite movie isRomeo and Juliet, the version with Leonardo DiCaprio. She spends most afternoons at the coffee shop with friends.” I picture Ella’s parents, who we interviewed in a café twenty miles from here to avoid running into anyone we knew.

“She’s always been independent, fiercely strong willed,” Ella’s mother explained as she took small sips of her mint tea. “But this past year everything shifted.”

Tiny flipped through the folder of background information we requested from them. I could already tell she liked the case by the way she was rereading some of the details.

Ella’s father pressed his lips together and straightened his broad shoulders. He had a precise haircut that you might expect from someone in the military, but he was really just a finance guy with an affinity for order. “It all started with her dating this boy, this absolute cocky—” he said, and Ella’s mom touched his arm. He paused. “Anyway, it all started withhim. Not two weeks after she began dating him, she gave up her position on the school newspaper to join cheerleading becausehe’sa football player. Then she started applying to schools she never cared about because that’s where her friends want to go.” He leaned forward. “We’ve been working on her college list since she was a freshman: she desperately wanted to go to Europe; she’s passionate about travel journalism. Now, even though she got into her dream school in London, she’s accepted a godforsaken college in Massachusetts—” Another touch from Ella’s mom as his volume increased.

Tiny and I exchanged a knowing glance.

Ella’s mom sighed. “We’ve held off on rejecting the London school, figuring she’d change her mind, but the final deadline is just four weeks away and she still says she’s not going. We don’t know what else to do. We’re desperate for help.”

I nodded and Tiny flipped to the “Information” page in her notebook. But before she could tell them about our process—how we research and execute our plan—Ella’s father interrupted her.

“Whatever you’re thinking of asking for this job, triple it,” her father said. “I’ll pay anything to get him away from her before that acceptance deadline.”

“Boyfriend?” Tiny asks, looking at her notebook.

“Justin,” I reply. “Friends with her friends and a central part of her social group. Popular. Football player. The kind of bro who does donuts on the front lawn of the school in his dad’s Porsche and then doesn’t get in trouble because his parents claim the car was stolen instead of making him own up to it. Obsessed with himself—”

“And his hair,” Tiny interjects. “The time spent on that coif is a lot, and the time spent documenting that coif in selfies is even more.” She looks at me with a mischievous smirk. “But alas, not everyone is blessed with a side-part, natural hair flip like you.”

I shoot her a warning look that only makes her smile grow. When we were twelve, I made the mistake of telling her I thought my best feature was my hair and she’s never let me forget it.

“Ella’s interests?” she asks before I can dredge up an embarrassing memory of hers to counter with.

“Travel—wants to be a journalist.”

Tiny waits a beat, but when I don’t continue, she says, “Right. But you forgot to mention that she has a super popular horoscope blog that she’s low-key obsessed with.”

I cringe. “I didn’t forget.”

Tiny rolls her eyes. “August Mariani, you can’t ignore an important part of her life just because you think it’s ridiculous.”

I open my mouth to argue, but I know she’s right.

“Social status?” she continues.

I scratch my eyebrow. I’ve never liked this section of the assessment. I know it’s important, key really, to getting someone out of a crappy relationship, but that’s the part that bothers me. “Was a bit of a nerd growing up. And now she’d be cast in a lead role inMean Girls.”

“Big-time popular,” Tiny agrees.

Before I can respond, a screen door snaps shut on the small house next to Tiny’s and out comes a shirtless muscled dude in khaki shorts and penny loafers. Bentley Cavendish—the prep to end all preps, with a name that could make aristocrats feel common. He’s also the only other person our age who lives in this inlet.

“Yo, Valentine!” he says with a grin, clunking down a cooler on his part of the dock. “Party at my house, nine o’clock.” He doesn’t bother to include me in the invitation. He’s been mastering the art of ignoring me since ninth grade, when he asked Tiny out and she said no. He refused to believe it had anything to do with him and instead decided that I was the problem.