Page 33 of Broken Things

Abby suddenly speaks up. “What if you don’t ever figure out what happened to Summer? What if you never know?”

“What do you mean?” We’re driving past Waldmann Lane, and I get the sudden urge to spin the wheel to the right, to gun it straight to Owen’s front door, to drive straight back into the past. “I’ll just go on like I’ve been going on. Things will be the same as they always were.”

Which is, of course, the whole problem.

After I drop Abby off, I wind up at the bottom of Conifer where it dead-ends at the state park before I realize I must have made a wrong turn on Dell. I’ve been circling aimlessly, while my thoughts wind me back into the past. I keep thinking of Owen, of him so close, less than a mile away, as if there’s a giant elastic stretched between us, threatening to pull me back. But what would I say to him?

WhatwillI say to him, if I see him?

What if I do see him?

What if I don’t?

I don’t notice the unfamiliar car parked in front of my house until I’m nearly on top of it. I get out, already half-annoyed and ready to yell at whatever Chinese food delivery service is trying to tuck flyers under my door, when I see a tall, light-haired boy standing on my porch with his back to me, holding a package under one arm. With his right hand he’s shielding his eyes from the glare, trying to peep into my front hallway.

Flooded instantly with anger and shame, I start running across the lawn. “Hey!” I shout. “Hey! What are you—?”

He turns around, obviously startled. Time freezes.

It’s him.

Taller—so much taller—and still thin, but muscular now. Broad shoulders, like the kind you’d want to hang on. Shorts low on his hips and a faded navy-blue T-shirt that brings out the color of his eyes. His freckles have faded and his red hair has lightened. Now it’s flame shot through with sunshine.

“Oh,” he says, and sets down the box he’s been carrying. “Oh.” Then: “Oh.” Like he didn’t expect to see me, even though he’s standing in front of my house.

“What are you doing here?” I manage to say. My voice sounds like it’s coming from the far end of a tunnel.

He’s smiling at me, all teeth, so big it looks like a wince.

“Brynn didn’t tell you?” he asks. I stay quiet and he goes on, “Tree came down straight through the sunroom. The house is supposed to be going on the market, but now—”

“No. I mean what are you doing here?Here, here.” My heart is beating so hard in my throat it feels like I’ve swallowed a moth that’s trying to get out. He’s different—he’s so different. And at the same time he’s the same. He still cocks his head all the way to one side when he thinks, as if he’s trying to peer under a fence. And though his hair is lighter, it’s still cowlicked in the back, and he still reaches up a hand to smooth it down when he’s nervous.

But he’s muscular and tall and hot. More than that: he looks so normal. You’d never in a million years think of calling this boy Casper, or Nosebleed. You’d never imagine him hiding in a treehouse or wearing a long coat he’d found in a rummage sale or talking about the historical probability of alien invasion. It’s like someone pressed the old Owen through the same cookie cutter that fires out cheerleaders and football players and people who ride in prom limos.

“I didn’t have your cell phone number,” he says. Even his voice sounds different—his vowels seem to take forever to pour out of his mouth. “I figured you changed it.”

“I did,” I say. That was the first thing to go. After we were arrested, someone from school posted my number online. My cell went morning and night, texts and phone calls, some of them from halfway across the country.U kno u’ll burn in hell forever for what you did, right?The funny thing is we’d been Catholic before the murder—my mom’s family is Italian—but afterward, after so many people had told us I’d burn in hell and the devil had taken my soul and even that my mother should try an exorcism, she threw out the Bible she’d had since she was a kid. That was thelastthing she threw out.

“How have you been?” Owen asks gently. A hot rush of shame floods my cheeks. I get it now. He’s here to check up on me. To do his friendly, neighborly duty to the screwed-up girl he left behind.

“Fine,” I say firmly, for what must be the tenth time in the past two days. I make for the door and deliberately jangle my keys so he’ll get the hint and take off. He doesn’t. “Everything’s fine.” Big mistake: now that I’m on the porch, he’s close enough that I can smell him—a clean boy smell that makes my stomach nose-diveto my toes. “Don’t you live in England or something?”

“Scotland, actually.”Scotland, actually.Like it’s no big deal. Like Scotland is the next town over. At least that explains the new accent. “I was in school there. Finished in May and now I’m back for the summer. I’m starting at NYU this fall.”

I can barely get my fingers to work. I fumble the keys and drop them. “NYU, wow. Congratulations. That’s... that’s...” NYU was my school. My plan. My dream. I was going to go to NYU and study dance with a minor in English literature, and on weekends take ballet classes at Steps, where generations of dancers have spent Saturday mornings softening their pointe shoes on the floors.

How is it that Owen—Owen, who hated every class except science, who spent half his time in school with his earbuds in, staring out the window, who sometimes put his head down on the desk and slept through tests—is going to NYU? It’s like what happened to Summer barely registered. Like the year he spent at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, waiting for his trial to start, penned up with crazies and criminals and sixteen-year-old drug dealers, didn’t affect him at all.

Or actually, it did affect him. It made him better. Shiny and new, like an expensive Christmas present. Brynn and I ended up broken, pieced together in fragments.

And Owen, who was so broken back then, became whole.

And now the boy I used to love is heading off tomydream school.

Thankfully, I manage to get the door open, but Owen puts ahand on my wrist before I can slip inside, and his touch startles me into silence.

“Mia...” He’s watching me intensely, the same way he used to: as if the rest of the world has disappeared.

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