Page 43 of Broken Things

Brynn makes another noise of disgust. When we were kids, Brynn always seemed so much braver than everyone. She was a thousand times braver than I was. I threw up in the bathroom in sixth grade when we had to dissect a worm. She barely blinked. When Hooper Watts called me Mute Mia and told everyone I was too stupid to know how to talk, I proved his point and said absolutely nothing. When he told everyone Brynn had been caught stealing girls’ underwear from the gym lockers, she told everyone he’d been paying her to do it so he could add to his collection.

And maybe she is braver. But she’s afraid now.

I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

Brynn gapes at me. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Maybe,” I say, feeling strangely relieved, and strangely free, too. She keeps staring at me, shocked, as if she’s never seen me before, and I can’t help it: in my head I do a little jump, arms up to the sky,victory.

Why did Lovelorn appear to Audrey, Ashleigh, and Ava, when countless other children had wandered the woods and found nothing but toadstools and rotting tree trunks and finches twittering nervously in their roosts?

Maybe because Lovelorn needed them.

Or maybe, maybe, because they needed Lovelorn.

—FromThe Way into Lovelornby Georgia C. Wells

Brynn

Now

We can’t get any closer to the ceremony than the corner of Carol and Spruce, a full two blocks away from the main action. The cops have set up sawhorses to block off the streets, which are packed anyway with moms and kids in strollers and old men dressed up in starched white shirts and blazers. It would look like Memorial Day, or maybe a block party, except there are no balloons and nobody’s smiling. The world’sworstblock party, then.

“I’ll be back,” Wade says as soon as we park. He hops out of the car and scoots between two sawhorses, pushing his way into the crowd. For a while, I track him moving between people, and then I lose him. Even with the windows down, it’s hot. Quiet, too. There’s scratchy interference from a speaker up ahead. Someone must be speaking into a microphone, but the sound quality is bad, and I can’t make out a single word.

Mia leans forward, resting her elbows on both seat backs. “Hecould have left the air conditioner on,” she says.

“Tell me about it.” Abby has pulled her hair away from her neck and makes a show of fanning herself.

I scan the crowd again and find myself half expecting to see Summer. One of her games used to be to pretend she was dead. She’d lie in bed, stiff-backed, eyes open, or float on her stomach in the public pool, hair waving seaweed-style in the water, try to scare the shit out of us. Then she’d suddenly stand, spitting out a mouthful of water.Gotcha, she’d say, and put her arms around me, rest the point of her chin on my shoulder.Would you be sad?she’d say.Would you be sad if I died?

Yeah. I’d be sad.

How sad?

It would be like cutting out my heart with a spoon.

Silly. You’d need a knife for that.

I shake my head, like memories are just flies that keep buzzing around my ear.

“Hey.” Mia straightens up. You ever seen a meerkat? That’s what Mia looks like when she pays attention. All huge eyes and twitchy nose. “Isn’t that Mr. Haggard?”

“Mr. Who?”

“Mr. Haggard,” she says impatiently. “Our old bus driver.” Then: “Itishim. Look. Over there, in front of Tweed’s. Wearing the funny shoes.”

She’s right. Mr. Haggard, our weirdo bus driver, who used to get the kids to quiet down by singing as loudly as he could ina voice that sounded like piping a foghorn through a funnel, is standing at the edge of the crowd, wearing a badly fitting suit jacket and old waders. His face is shiny with sweat, and every so often he swipes at his forehead with a balled-up tissue.

Summer was horrible to him. She used to call him Mr. Faggard. She used to make her voice all sweet around her insults, shouting, “Doesn’t it hurt to sit on your fat ass all day?” or “You ever gonna move out of your mom’s basement, Mr. Faggard?” and expecting Mia and me to snicker on cue. Mia would always turn her face to the window, pretending not to have heard, even though Summer would make fun of her for it later.What’s the matter, Mamma Mia? You got an itch in your panties for Mr. H?

But I laughed. I always laughed.

“I’ll be damned,” I say. “He looks the same.”

As I’m watching him, wondering whether it would be weird to go up and apologize, wondering whether I evencould, there’s a ripple in the crowd. Like someone’s just hurled a stone into the mob and everyone’s reacting. Suddenly Owen Waldmann gets spat out and goes stumbling down Carol Street. One guy—two guys—three—sprint after him.

“What the hell?” I say. “Did you see—?” But Mia’s out of the car before I can finish. “Mia!”

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