Page 26 of Broken Things

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe this was a bad idea. We could come back tomorrow.”

“It’s a great idea,” Abby says. “No one will even notice us. We’ll blend in.”

Doubtful. Brynn and I are two of the most hated girls in Twin Lakes.

Up near the cafeteria, dozens of preteen girls wearing identical uniforms twirl batons and practice cartwheels. From somewhere in the distance comes the clamor of instruments tuning up. On a stretch of grass that divides the dumpy Life Skills class trailer from the admin office, a woman is trying to wrestle her screaming son into a costume. I’m not exactly sure what he’s supposed to be, but multiple arms give him the look of a patriotic bug.

“So your mom’s a teacher here, huh?” Brynn leans forward, resting her elbows on the front seats. She smells like my shampoo. She insisted on showering and changing before we left the house, although she put on the same ratty skinny jeans. At least she changed her shirt. This one is black and saysGodzilla Is Comingin ominous silver letters. As always, she looks not just effortless, but as if the idea of effort was invented for people far less cool. People like me.

“Uh-huh. Music,” Abby says. She’s been typing on her phoneand now she looks up. “No luck on Lillian Harding, by the way.”

“Who?” Brynn says.

“Lillian Harding. Remember the mouthpiece we found in the shed? I googled Lillian Harding in Twin Lakes, Vermont, and related to the murder. Nothing. It was a long shot, anyway. Stop here.”

A forty-person marching band, ages eight to eighty, mills around on the grass in front of the football stadium, near the picnic benches, all of them tuning and tootling and drumming to individual rhythms. Brynn covers her ears when we get out of the car.

We start across the grass toward the stadium entrance, avoiding the crowd. Instinctively, I put my head down, like I always do in public, and I notice Brynn tugs her hood up. Only Abby looks unselfconscious, swishing along in her skirt, humming a little, as if the noise the instruments are sending up is actually music. I can’t find any rhythm in it. I picture the dancers in my head twitching, having a seizure.

We pass into the stadium, where the noise is, at least, muffled. The grass is brilliant green and neatly clipped. Purple-and-yellow banners, many of them sporting an image of an angry wasp, the TLC mascot, hang, listless, along the stands, or have been driven down by hard winds into the mud.

“Okay.” Brynn takes off her sunglasses. “Remind me what we’re supposed to be looking for?”

I ignore her. “Purple and yellow,” I say, pointing. “In the book,Gregor’s tournament colors are purple and yellow.”

“So Summer was writing about the stadium,” Brynn says. “We alreadyknewthat. We wrote about a lot of real places.”

We move past rows of empty bleachers. I try to imagine what Summer might have seen here, what might have stuck with her. High school boys, padded and painted, moving in formation. Cheerleaders chanting and stamping, backflipping on the grass. Fans roaring in the bleachers. Does any of it matter? Does any of it relate to what came afterward?

After twenty minutes, Brynn loses patience. “This is stupid,” she says. “What are we supposed to be doing, communing with the spirits of cheerleaders past?”

Even Abby has to admit she’s right. There is nothing here, no old voices whispering secrets to us. Nothing but the continued squeaks and honks of the woodwinds and a distant shouting as the parade-goers assemble, all those hundreds of people so beautifully fixed in the present, in this day, under the bright sunshine.

“Drums over here. No, on the other side of the picnic bench. Danny, are you listening?”

A woman is trying to herd the marching band into formation and not having very much luck. One of the younger boys is running around with a flute between his legs, laughing maniacally.

“Danny,stopthat.” As the woman turns around to yell, sweeping her frizzy blond hair away from her eyes, I stop. It’s our old Life Skills teacher, and—I nearly laugh out loud—she’sstillwearing that awful purple cardigan.

Brynn recognizes her at the same time I do. “Holy shit,” she says. “That’s Ms. Gray.”

Miraculously, she hears her name over the clamor. Or maybe her eyes just land on us. For a fraction of a second she looks shocked. But almost immediately, she comes toward us, with both arms outstretched, although she stops several feet away from us and doesn’t move to close the distance.

“I don’t believe it,” she says. She drops her hands against her thighs with a clapping sound. “I don’t believe it. You two.”

“You remember us,” I say. Stupid, since she obviously does. For some reason I feel shy in front of her. Embarrassed. She actually looks happy to see us.

“Of course I remember you,” she says in her gentle voice. Brynn and Summer always used to lose it when she said words likesyphilisordiaphragmin that singsong. “Mia and Brynn...” She shakes her head. “What are you doing here?”

I can’t think of an excuse. Luckily, Abby jumps in. “We just came to check out the start of the parade.” Then: “Um, I think that kid’s trying to stick his headinsidethe trombone.”

Ms. Gray spins around. “Tyler,please,” she barks, and then turns around to face us again. “The town was looking for volunteers. I can’t think why I said yes.” Her eyes are enormous, bug-size behind her glasses. “But tell me—how are you? I’ve thought about you a lot. I’ve wondered...”

She trails off, leaving the question unspoken.

I’ve wondered what happened to you.

I’ve wondered if you survived. And how.

---