Page 12 of Broken Things

Part of me wishes I hadn’t climbed out of the car. I should have laid into her instead, for getting it all wrong, for always getting it wrong. For being the tagalong, the scared one, the one who told the cops all about Lovelorn.

But another part of me—the small, vicious, dark piece, the little monster squatting somewhere in my brain—knows that she isn’t wrong, at least not about this.

Was I in love with Summer?

Was she the first one?

The onlyrealone?

There have been others since. I’m a lesbian. Or alez,dyke,rug-muncher, andbox-bumper, according to the graffiti that covered my locker in the years after Summer died. Vermont is mostly a liberal state—the principal of Twin Lakes Collective, Mr. Steiger, brings his husband to graduation every year—but that’s only so long as the queers stay invisible. Harmless. Nothing to worry about here, all hands accounted for, vaginas and children safe.

I don’t know when I knew I was gay, exactly, except that I didn’t evernotknow, either. And in case you’re into the idea that sex is like cauliflower and I’ll never know for sure unless I’ve tried it, Ihavetried it. I’ve been with exactly three girls—like,reallybeen with them—and hooked up with a half-dozen others. There’s not a whole lot else to do in rehab.

There was Margot, a skinny French-Nigerian girl with a dozen piercings in her face, who’d grown up in Ohio. Her nose ring fell out whenever we kissed. Sasha: Russian, from Brighton Beach, New York, with an accent that always made it sound like she was purring. Ellie, who I stayed with for a few months: she covered her mouth when she laughed and had hair that reminded me of a porcupine’s spikes.

But Summer was different. Special. Pure, in a way. Maybe because I couldn’t have her—maybe because, back then, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to.

Maybe just because I loved her so bad.

Maybe because she broke my heart.

I remember getting caught in a sudden downpour with her on our way back from Lovelorn, alone, in the fall of seventh grade. Summer hadn’t wanted to tell Mia, and I was guilty and thrilled all at once. And then back at her house we crowded into her little shower in our underwear and T-shirts, so close together we had no choice but to touch, and her blond hair was all in a tangle and mascara smudged her cheeks and her breath smelled like strawberries and we couldn’t stop laughing, taking turns shouldering each other out of the way to get under the water, and every time she touched me it was like someone had turned lights on beneath my skin. And then there was the time she said she was running away from home, and she spent three nights in the clubhouse, and one night she begged me to stay with her, so I did, wrapped in the same sleeping bag, our knees touching, the smell of her sweat filling the whole room and making me feel dizzy. She was a princess. I was going to be her knight.

I was going to protect her.

There was the Kiss. There was what came afterward, the rumors at school, the way people hissed at me when I passed, how none of the girls would change in front of me for gym. How Summer refused to look at me, how seeing her from down the hall made me feel like the witch at the end ofThe Wizard of Oz, like I was dissolving, melting into a sizzling puddle.

But as always, my mind redirects when I get too close to that memory, veering sharply past it, my own little mental detour. Danger ahead.

I backtrack to Main Street, keeping my head down, prayingno one notices me, wishing I had a hat. Luckily, the people who are out are too busy checking for damage or picking up debris. It seems like all this mess should come with a lot of noise—flashing lights, sirens wailing, the growl of equipment—but the emergency has passed and it’s weirdly quiet.

Turn left on County Route 15A and a few miles out of town you’ll hit Twin Lakes Collective: the elementary and middle schools and, across the street, the high school I never attended because the harassment was too bad. Instead, I turn right. This way leads to cheap subdivisions like the one my mom lives in now—home, I guess, although I’ve done my best to stay away—all of them carved out of old farm property that got cut up and mixed around like a chicken getting butchered for the fryer. Keep going, and the space between the houses grows, until it’s all browns and greens, forests and farms, and little blobs of civilization like the mistakes someone made while painting. Eventually County Route 15A peters out into a one-lane dirt road and winds past roads with names like Apple Orchard Hill and Dandelion Circle, and my old street, Boar Lane. Summer’s house was one lane over on Skunk Hill Road. Beyond that: Brickhouse Lane, named for the tumbledown house at the end of the lane scrawled over with graffiti tags and Sharpie initials, a rusted Dodge still raised on cinder blocks out front.

Perkins Road is blocked off by a fire truck. A big pine tree has taken out a power line, and now various workers are milling around, looking bored, like people waiting at the post office.Across the street, I notice Marcy Davies’s front door open. Even though it’s too dark to see inside, I’d bet anything she’s sitting in a lawn chair in front of the AC, watching the road show. Marcy, the not-so-mysterious “source” quoted in four dozen newspapers who claimed to have known about my psychopathic tendencies since I was a little kid. For years, she told people, I’d tortured frogs for fun and stolen other kids’ bicycles; I’d always had a thing for knives and had played war instead of Barbies—despite the fact that we only moved to Perkins a few monthsafterSummer died, after Billy Watson, our old neighbor on Boar Lane, said he was acting on a command from God and tried to burn our house down—when I was inside of it. I don’t even think Marcy was getting paid for her interviews. She just liked making shit up.

I swing my duffel bag onto my shoulder, like it’s a body I’m rescuing from a collapsing building, hoping it will completely conceal my face, and step up onto her lawn to get around the truck.

Right away, a firefighter stops me.

“Hang on.” He has acne around his jaw that makes him look twelve. He isn’t even wearing his whole uniform—only the overall pants over a thin white T-shirt. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home,” I say. Sweat is running freely down my back.

“Road’s closed,” he says. “You’re going to have to come back later.”

I can feel something hard—my cell phone—digging into my neck through the thin cotton duffel. “I can’t come back later. I livehere.” Another firefighter briefly turns to stare. “Look,” I say. “I can see my house. See that little gray house over there?” I point because all the houses on Perkins are gray, since they were all built in two years out of the same sad collection of cheap shingles and plywood. “I’ll hurry. I won’t even go close to the lines.”

“Road’s closed,” the guy repeats. He doesn’t even look over his shoulder to see where I’m pointing. “Fire department’s orders.”

Finally, I lose it. “Are you even old enough to be giving orders?” I say. I know it’s stupid to argue, but my mouth and my mind have never exactly been in perfect sync. “Don’t you have to ask your daddy or something?”

“Very funny,” he says. “If I were you—” He breaks off. Something changes in his face—it’s a subtle shift, but instantly, my stomach drops. He knows. “Hey,” he says. “I know who you are.”

I turn away quickly, forgetting momentarily about Marcy, and in that second I see her, exactly where I thought she would be, revealed by a bit of sunlight slanting into the hallway: her legs, feet encased in grubby sandals; her hands gripping the arms of her chair, and a cigarette smoking between two fingers. She shrieks.

“David!” Her voice carries all the way across the lawn. “David, you’ll never guess who’s home!”

I start to run, not even caring how ridiculous I look, not caring about the weight of my duffel or the fact that my heart’s going club-beat-style in my chest. I don’t stop until I’ve rounded the corner and turned onto Waldmann Lane, where I’m concealed bythe thick growth on either side of the road. I drop my duffel, cursing, rolling the pain out of my shoulder. There’s a chalky taste in my mouth. Goddamn Marcy. Goddamn prepubescent fireman. Goddamn Twin Lakes.

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