The Anatomy of a Broken Heart //Completed//

15. Santana

My grandmother taught me that crying was no good. Crying isn't going to bring anything back. Crying never helps. "Crying won't bring mommy back. Stop crying, Santana," she'd say in her thick Mexican accent. "Stop crying now." So I did. I watched mommy get into her old Buick with a single suitcase in her hand and drive away. I sniffed my last sniffle and wiped away the last fat tear that clung to m eyelashes and watched mommy drive away and never come back.

Except she did come back, eventually. Just not in the way I'd hoped.

When I first met Caleb, he was crying. He'd tripped and fallen right in front of me, and I didn't know how to handle it, so I told him his shoes were dusty, to distract him from the pain, but this only made his sobs turn into shrieks and all I wanted him to do was to shut up. I told him to stop it, stop crying but he didn't stop. He just held tightly onto his scraped knee, and I could still hear his cries long after he had stopped, echoing in my head.

He cried for everything; scraped knees, bad grades, dead dogs. It was infuriating. But he always looked better after he cried. He didn't have to soak up the tears that he was holding back, he just let them run down his chubby cheeks and dry up. He would get back up off the floor, wipe his snotty nose on his shirt sleeve and carry on as if nothing happened.

But my grandmother had taught me that crying was no good. And when she died, I didn't shed a single tear. When dad got sick, my face was dry, makeup intact. When mom slapped me for not getting her the money in time, I never faltered. Because crying won't do any good.

So when I cried for Jasper- wedged between a vending machine and a wall- that was the only time I allowed myself to do so. I was determined to just let time dictate where the pieces would ultimately fall, and not mess with anything.

Until Caleb presented me with his ridiculous plan. After I left him and his big stupid gray puppy eyes, his idea burrowed deep into my brain. Round and round it went dizzying me, each time making just a little bit more sense. Jasper hated these losers. It wasn't just intolerance for their vapidity and conceit. They were repellant to him, as if he were a magnet and the entire bourgeoisie were another, same sided magnet. If he found out I was dating one of them, it just might get his attention. That, or he wouldn't notice at all, and I was intolerably wrong about this like I'd been wrong about everything that had to do with Jasper.

Stop it, I chastised myself. I needed a smoke. I tried sneaking out but Maria cornered me before I could slip out the door.

"You swore you'd help." She was glaring at me but it was hard to take her seriously in her velvet flower dress costume. She had been cast as Maria, (because, why wouldn't she be?) in the play.

"Haven't you learned swearing is like a sin or something?" I countered.

"Santana!" Her little foot stomped on the tile and I rolled my eyes turning right back around and walking to the craft table which was now fortunately devoid of Caleb. Unfortunately, I spotted him talking to his cousin on the other side of the room as they helped carry boxes of supplies into the other room.

His pink polo shirt and loafers offended me. What was I thinking even contemplating his idea! My eyes practically rolled right out of my sockets and I had to look away before I overdosed on prep by just looking at him. I would never be able to tolerate one of them and Jasper would see right through the whole charade. Better to leave that idea as just that, I thought as I pulled out the scissors again and began hacking away at the green butcher paper.

"What was that?" Marlow sat across from me in the same chair Caleb had just left. Her eyes were glowing as she looked at me with one of her vacant smiles.