Page 49 of Broken Things

I said, “No, I’m not mad.”

#46. Lies that feel like suffocation.

Here’s the real truth. She didn’t just steal Owen. She tookdancing too—just evaporated it, like cupping a mouth over a window to fog it and then leaning back to watch it disappear. She took both of the things I loved most in the world.

It was my fault she died. I wanted it. I wished for it.

And then it happened, and I never got the chance to say I was sorry.

Only once did Audrey try to sneak to Lovelorn on her own. Ava was sick, and Ashleigh was grounded, after losing both Christmas mittens (since she couldn’t very well explain that they were safe and sound sitting next to Gregor’s teapot). Audrey thought she’d pop round and see how Gregor was doing, enjoy an escape from the brittle cold, and retrieve the mittens.

She was therefore stunned when she wandered fruitlessly for hours but couldn’t find the entrance to Lovelorn. It had never occurred to her, you see, that all three friends had to be together—that in fact, the magic lived only in their friendship.

—FromThe Way into Lovelornby Georgia C. Wells

Brynn

Now

Now that Owen has finally confessed, it’s like his mouth is in turbo gear. He won’t stop talking. He tells us that Summer came to him that final morning, looking like she’d been up all night. That she’d packed upReturn to Lovelorncarefully, in plastic and an old metal lockbox he figured she’d stolen from her foster parents. That he’d taken cash from his dad’s wallet while his dad was PTFO (passed the fuck out, in rehab terminology) and hoofed it up to town to take a cab from Twin Lakes to Middlebury, and from there hopped a bus.

And the crazy thing is, I believe him.

From Middlebury it’s two hundred miles to Portland, Maine, and that’s if you’re doing a straight shot between them. But taking the bus means you go south all the way to Boston before transferring and backtracking north along the coast to Maine, a trip of six and a half hours one way—longer, for Owen, because at one ofthe rest stops an off-duty firefighter spotted him, thinking it was weird for a thirteen-year-old to be traveling on his own, and held Owen up so long with questions he missed the bus and had to wait for another.

“Thank God for that guy, though,” Owen says. “My lawyer tracked him down just before the case went to trial. It was one of the things that saved me.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Mia asks. “You let the policearrestyou. You went to Woodside. Why didn’t you just tell the truth?”

Outside the window, houses blur by. A big smear of whitegreenwhitegreen. Wade must be going sixty, seventy miles an hour, screeching around the turns, not even paying attention to his speed. But it was all supposed to be a joke—the Monsters of Brickhouse Lane on the hunt for the truth, putting our demons to rest. A few days of make-believe just so I could get back to Four Corners.

Except that it doesn’t feel funny, or like make-believe.

“I did, finally,” Owen says. “Most of the truth, anyway. I told the cops I’d had a fight with my dad and was out riding the buses. But they didn’t believe me. Not at first.”

“Why not?” Abby says. She’s been leaning back, eyes closed, and I assumed she was sleeping. Abby, I’ve decided, reminds me of a cat. A kind of obnoxious, maybe a little full-of-herself cat. Cute, though, in a way. Summer would have hated her. I’m not sure why I think about this, but I do.Chubby chasing, Brynn?shewould say.You like some jelly rolls with your doughnut hole?

“Because we’d lied.” Owen’s voice sounds all cracked up and dusty, like he’s swallowed old asphalt. “The first time the cops came around asking where I’d been, we told him I hadn’t gone anywhere. That I’d been home. We didn’t know... I mean, I’d heard someone had been found in the woods, but I thought it was a hunter or something. Not Summer. Never Summer.” He sucks in a breath. “My mom’s sister was already making noise about taking me from my dad. We thought that’s why the cops showed up—to make sure my dad was okay. That I was okay. He’d had an accident in the winter, you know, just passed out at the wheel, went straight into a tree....”

“I didn’t know that,” Mia says.

Owen shrugs.

“Anyway, my aunt was threatening to sue for custody if my dad didn’t sober up. She said he wasn’t fit to be a parent. He wasn’t, back then. But I didn’t want to leave. Icouldn’t. I thought if I did...” He trails off. When I look back at him, he’s just sitting there, staring at his hands, half his face like an eggplant you forgot was in your fridge. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.

“What?” I say.

He looks up, startled, as if he’s forgotten we’re all there. “I thought he’d die,” he says simply.

And I think of my mom and the way she sits in front of the TV eating green beans from the can, fishing them out with her fingers because she kicked potato chips twenty years ago, and how shealways scours the dollar stores for every single Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and Thanksgiving decoration she can find and decks out the house for every holiday—I’m talking fake snow and twinkly lights or giant bunny wall decals or cobwebs on all the bushes outside—and I suddenly feel like the world’s biggest nobody. I wonder if she thinks of me at all, if she misses me, or if she and Erin have made a pact never to mention my name, if they’re happier with me gone.

How can I go back? How can Ievergo back?

Owen clears his throat. “Dad thought if the cops knew he’d been passed-out drunk and his thirteen-year-old son had taken the bus all the way to Maine, they’d take me away for sure.”

Outside, all the trees have their hands up, waving.Don’t shoot.

“They came by looking for me around six o’clock,” Owen continues. “Must have been right after they found out—after they foundher. My dad was a wreck. Already drinking again, cops at the door, son missing. He told them I was sick. Bronchitis. Couldn’t talk to anyone. They said they’d be back. So when I got home, we agreed on a cover story. He wasn’t evenmad.” Owen laughs like he’s choking. “I didn’t get back until two, three in the morning. I’d stolen sixty bucks and spent it all. And he wasn’t angry. He was panicked.”

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