Page 36 of Broken Things

“How’s your mom?” Her eyes are big and dark. I swear Mia’s eyes are heart-shaped. Or maybe it’s just that you can always see her heart through them. “Did you see her yesterday?”

Instantly I get a bad, squirmy feeling in my stomach, like I’ve just housed a bunch of really bad Chinese food. Is it possible I am destined to become a terrible person? “She’s not doing too well,” I say, avoiding her eyes. “Look, I hate to ask, but my sister’s crazy busy at the hospital and doesn’t want me home alone....”

I trail off. Mia stares at me.

“You want to stay here?” she asks, as if the idea astonishes her.

I cross my arms tightly, try to press the bad feeling down. I don’t know why it’s so much harder to lie to Mia than it ever was to lie to counselors and hospital admin. “I don’t exactly have a lot of options.”

That’s the understatement of the century. Last night I spent the night camped out behind the bus terminal just so I’d be close to a bathroom and a vending machine, trying to sleep while fireworks thundered across the sky in bright bursts of color. I’m sure Wade would have invited me to crash at his house, but then his momwould have started asking questions, and she would have calledmymom, and then I might as well say adios to my plans to get the hell out of Twin Lakes. So this morning, I charged my phone at a local coffee shop and promised Wade the scoop of a lifetime. How could he turn down the chance to do what he has always wanted to do—to catch the real Monster of Brickhouse Lane? To play a real-life hero?

Mia recovers quickly. “Of course,” she says. A little color has returned to her face. She was always good in a crisis. Good at taking care of other people, smoothing over the fights between Summer and me, making me feel better whenever I’d flunked another test or gotten booted out of gym class for maybe-not-so-accidentally chucking a dodgeball directly at Emma Caraway’s head. Mommy Mia, we used to call her. Or Mamma Mia, because she danced. She reaches out and squeezes my arm. “I’m really sorry, Brynn.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I say, pushing past her. In Mia’s room, Abby is sprawled out on the bed, half supporting herself on her elbows. The copy ofThe Way into Lovelornis lying next to her on the bed, facedown to keep her place.

“Who’s the creep?” she asks me directly, jerking her chin in Wade’s direction.

I shoot Wade a look, likesee?But he’s just circling the room, taking in all the details, like an archaeologist admitted for the first time into King Tut’s tomb.

“He’s not a real creep,” I say. “He just plays one on TV.” Thatmakes Abby snort a laugh. “Besides,” I say, directing the words to Mia, who’s reentered her room and is now watching Wade suspiciously. “He knows everything there is to know about the case. He’s been studying it for the past five years. If anyone can help us, he can.”

Wade bends down to look at a framed photograph on Mia’s desk. Big surprise, Abby’s in this one too, mooning at the camera, wearing fake lashes coated with sparkly glitter. “Brynn told me you guys think the answers are in Lovelorn,” he says, without straightening up or turning around. “I’m with you. The murder was more than ritualistic. It was narrative. It told a story. And of course the sacrifice wasn’t out of line with what we learn in the original book, about the Shadow and how he picks his victims.”

“It was almost word for word like what we wrote in our fan fic,” I say. That was my big mistake, all those years ago—admitting to the cops that wehadplanned the murder, in a way. We’d written about it. I never thought they’d use that as evidence that I was involved. What kind of idiot writes about a murder she plans on committing and then admits it afterward?

Wade is still turning over items on Mia’s desk, rearranging a pile of paper clips, straightening her MacBook and aligning it with the edge of the desk. “Someone either wanted to frame you, or was lost in the same fantasy.”

“How do you know all of this?” Mia asks, narrowing her eyes.

“Oh, I know everything there is to know. Timelines, suspects,press and media coverage, autopsy results.” Wade puffs out his chest, rooster-style. “I even set up a website to help prove Brynn’s innocence when I was fourteen. Comprehensive, detailed, and impartial. That’s my motto.” He rattles this off like it’s printed on a business card. Knowing Wade, it probably is. “Since I started, I’ve gotten four hundred thousand discrete visitors, and my page impressions number in the—”

“Hold on a second.” Mia looks like her eyeballs are about to explode. “Hold onone second.” She puts a hand to her head, squeezing. “Wade Turner. You’reWade Turner, from FindtheTruth.com?”

“That’s me.” Wade beams at her. “Brynn’s cousin.”

“Secondcousin,” I quickly add.

For a second, Mia just stares at him speechlessly. Then she turns to me.

“Brynn,” she says, in a voice that sounds like she’s piping it through her teeth. “May I see you for a second?Outside?”

As soon as we’re out in the hall, she practically pounces. Gotta hand it to Mia—for a girl with the build of a ballerina, she’s got quite a grip. Suddenly I’m immobilized between a teetering card table and a metal clothes rack hung with winter coats.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she whispers. “Why would you bring that—that—”

“Creep?” I offer helpfully.

“Yes. Thatcreepinto my house?”

I step around her so she doesn’t have me pinned against the wall.

“I told you. Wade’s cool.” This is about 15 percent accurate. “He’s my cousin—”

“Secondcousin,” she says through her teeth.

“And he can help us.” This is more than 15 percent accurate, but of course I can’t tell her that he’ll really be helpingme. Good old cousin Wade is the Travelocity to my one-way ticket out of here. “Look, Wade wasn’t kidding. He knows everything. He’s been on a mission to clear my name—to clear our names—for the past five years. Did you know the cops looked at another kid on the football team? Some freshman named Heath Moore. He was all over Summer, too.”

“The football players had an alibi,” Mia says.

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