Page 24 of Broken Things

“It doesn’t seem stupid,” Abby says. “Lovelorn was all you had.”

She’s nailed it, of course. Lovelornwasall we had. Of the three of us, Mia was the smartest and Summer the prettiest. I was the most outgoing. But we were loners, when it came down to it. The other girls hated Summer, called her a whore, wrote dirty shit on her locker and stole her gym clothes and threw them in the trash, or smeared them with ketchup so it would look like period blood. Mia became so afraid of speaking in public that for years she said not a single word, even when the teacher called on her, and she kept getting sent to the principal for disciplinary problems. She’d been at the same school her whole life and still hardly anyone knew who Mia Ferguson was. Owen Waldmann, resident developing psychopath, was the only person who was ever nice to her, theonlyperson who could get her to talk—until Summer came along. She told me once that’s why she took up dance in the first place. She didn’t know how to speak out loud. It was the only way she could communicate.

And I’d been getting into trouble since the first time I put my fist into Will Harmon’s face after he called me backcountry trailer trash, which didn’t even make sense because we lived in a house, not a trailer. But he knew we were hard up, and he’d seen my mom on night shifts at the gas station, a job she took before she found a job in admin at the same hospital where my sister is doing her residency now.

In elementary school I was involved in fights almost every year. It’s like I couldn’t keep my anger from coming out of my fists. And once the boys got too big to scrap with, the anger just took up a permanent squat in my vocal cords, so half the time the shit coming out of my mouth wasn’t even stuff I meant to say out loud.

I couldn’t help it. When I get angry, it’s like someone lights my whole body on fire. Snap, crackle, pop. And then the entire world is burning.

But together, in Lovelorn, we made sense. Summer was the princess, beautiful and misunderstood. Mia was the good one, the sweet sister, the voice of reason and understanding. And I was the swordsman, the knight, proud defender of their honor.

“The February before Summer died, I took some pages.” Mia looks away, biting her lip, as if worried I’m going to start lecturing her. “We were fighting about this one scene—”

“What scene?” I can’t help but ask.

“The tournament scene,” she says. “We were arguing about whether or not Gregor should win in his bout with the giantess. Summer thought the Shadow should be responsible for killing the giantess and saving Gregor’s life. But I... well, it sounds stupid, but I just wanted to give Gregor a little bit of respect, you know?”

As she speaks, I tumble down a hole, landing all the way back in seventh grade, when we used to sit together in this very room and debate what “Georgia” did and failed to do in Book One, about why she’d screwed up the whole book by ending it the way shedid or bynotending it, about how to make Book Two even better than the original.

“I guess I was just getting annoyed that Summer always got to decide. Besides, Gregor’s one of the best characters,” Mia says, turning now to Abby. She looks at me for support.

“True,” I say. “Although Firth was always my personal favorite. A centaur,” I say, when Abby shoots me a questioning look. “He rides around rallying the whole country to banish the Shadow at the end of Book One.”

For the first time all day, Mia smiles at me. Mia has a great smile. It turns her whole face into an invitaion “Firth’s great too,” she agrees. “Anyway, like I said, I took a few pages. I just wanted to make some edits, and then I was going to return them.”

“But you didn’t,” Abby says.

Mia’s smile fades. “I never had a chance. Two days later, Summer told us she didn’t want to play anymore. She never went back to Lovelorn again, not with us. Not until that day—”

“What did happen that day?” Abby says, adjusting her glasses again. “I mean, whatreallyhappened?”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Don’t tell me you haven’t looked it up.”

“I haven’t,” she says, in a tone so sincere I immediately feel guilty. “Besides, I’m not talking about what shows up online. Haven’t you ever heard you can’t trust everything you read on the internet?”

“Not today, okay, Abby?” Mia wraps her arms around her knees. She looks suddenly exhausted. “We’ll explain some other time.”

Abby raises both hands, like,just trying to help.

“All right, Mia.” I scoot off the bed and join her on the floor. “Let’s see what you got.”

There are three pages, neatly covered with Summer’s handwriting. Instantly, I see exactly what Mia meant about someone else helping Summer. There isn’t a single error, not a word crossed out or even changed. It’s as if she copied the text from somewhere else. Why did I never see it before?

Abby leans in next to me, and I’m surprised by her sudden closeness, and the fact that she smells like lavender.

“All right, explain,” Abby says. “What am I reading? What’s all this about an amphitheater?”

“The amphitheater was Summer’s idea,” I say. “In the first book, we never know where the Shadow comes from. She wanted to explain it. An origin story, kind of. So we made up the amphitheater, where bloody battles take place.”

“Summer liked to weave in real people and places,” Mia adds. “They were like our inside jokes. So the giantess was really supposed to be Mrs. Marston, our math teacher. We named the giantess Marzipan and gave her a wart and tufts of wiry red hair. Things like that.”

“So if the amphitheater is where the Shadow first shows up, and the Shadow is supposed to be Summer’s killer, then it’s important.” Abby reads in silence over my shoulder for a while. “What’s up with the sprites?”

This makes me smile. “That’s another thing Summer made up,”I say. “They’re this really annoying, dumb race descended from the fairies, and their voices are high-pitched and squeaky.”

“When they get excited, they can shatter glass,” Mia says. “And they go around cheering on the competitors during tournaments.”

Abby looks from Mia to me and back. “Bloody competitions and a group of mindless, squeaky cheerleaders? Sounds like the TLC football stadium to me.”

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