Page 50 of Broken Things

I remember when the tires crunched up the driveway and my mom twitched open the curtain and saw the cops, I thought they must have found out I’d stolen some nail polish and a few packs of gum from a local CVS the week before. Even after what hadhappened in the woods, even after Summer and the cat and the carving knife, I was worried about that stupid black nail polish. “You still didn’t know about Summer?” I ask him.

“Not then. My dad hadn’t left the house in two, three days. Wasn’t picking up his phone, either. And my phone had died before I even got to Maine. My dad thought his sister-in-law—my aunt, the one who kept threatening to take me to Madison—must have been the one to call the cops. That she wasconspiringwith me. I remember that’s the word he used. ‘She’sconspiringto take you away.’ He thought that’s why I’d been out of the house—because I wanted to get him in trouble. I thought he was going to go after me, hit me or something, but he was too drunk to do more than shout.”

Mia lets out a little squeak, like a balloon getting squeezed.

“We agreed on a cover story. I’d been sick, twenty-four-hour virus, hadn’t left my room at all. The cops came back the next morning. They were the ones who told me about Summer. Otherwise, I guess I would have found out online. I’m glad the cops told me, actually. Before I could read about it.”

In the days after Summer’s body was discovered, everyone posted to her Facebook and Instagram profiles—prayers and videos and pictures and poems—even people who’d hated her when she was alive, who said she was a witch or a slut or made fun of her for being in foster care. Then someone found a way to log inasSummer. I was in the middle of the Walmart parking lot the first time I saw her name pop up in my feed.

Resting in peace right now. Thanks for all the love.

I stood there, my hands sweating so much I nearly dropped my phone, like I could press her right out of those words.

But over the days, the messages on her wall turned nastier.

Guess this is a lesson... all devils go to hell...

And:Maybe the good aren’t the only ones who die young...

Until finally someone had the account shut down.

“The cops were nice at first. Just asking questions about how I knew Summer. They’d heard some stuff, I guess, about how Summer and I...” He trails off. What happened between Owen and Summer is still a major Danger Zone, obviously, Restricted Access, Hard Hat Area Only. “By the time I knew how serious it was—by the time my dad knew—we’d already told our lie a dozen times. Stupid. Someone had seen me in town on my way to Middlebury. And a cabbie remembered taking me home at two in the morning. Not a lot of thirteen-year-old fares, I guess. Even after I told them the truth, they wouldn’t believe me about anything.”

“Did you ever find out how your blood ended up on Summer’s clothes?” Wade blurts out. I can tell he’s been dying to ask this whole time.

“No,” he says, looking down at his hands.

“It wasn’t,” Mia says. “It didn’t.” When she’s really angry, her voice actually gets quieter. Mia’s the only person I know who scream-whispers. “The cops screwed up. The sample was contaminated.”

“The sample wasinadmissible,” Wade corrects her. “Legally. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t his blood.”

“How many miles do we have left until we get to Maine?” Abby jumps in before Wade can say anything else. I turn around and see the look Mia gives her.Thank you, the look says.

And that bad feeling in my stomach worms a half inch deeper.

“One hundred sixty-seven,” Wade says cheerfully.

“How about the radio, then?” Mia reaches into the front seat to punch the radio on, and for a long time no one speaks again, even after the music buzzes into static.

Around mile 115 everyone starts to get cranky. It turns out Mia has a bladder the size of a thimble. After the third time she asks to stop, I tell her she should keep an empty Big Gulp between her legs, like truckers do, so we have some hope of making it to Maine.

I forgot Mia has no sense of humor.

We pull off I-89 and into the Old Country Store, which is nothing more than a 7-Eleven with a fancier sign and a gas pump around the back. Owen’s frozen-burrito ice pack has thawed—Wade proved he is an alien by actually eating it—and he goes in search of new frozen edibles to serve as an ice pack. Abby wants to re-up on iced tea. Wade claims he is starving. He is, in addition to being an alien, a gigantic garbage compactor that needs to be fed a constant diet of beef jerky and potato chips or it starts to wind down.

Wade, Mia, Owen, and Abby disappear into the Old Country Store together, and I quickly yank my phone out of my bag, relieved I have two bars of service. Out here, on these county roads, you never know. The trees absorb the radio signals, or maybe the crickets battle them midair and drown them out.

My sister’s cell phone rings two, three, four times. I’m about to hang up when she answers. There are a few fumbling moments before she speaks. The TV’s playing in the background. Something with a laugh track.

“It’s you,” she says, in a tone I can’t read. “What’s up?”

The Old Country Store is lit up against the long evening shadows. Window signs buzz the way toward cold Coors Light and night crawlers. “Nothing,” I say. “Just calling to check in.”

“They let you have your phone back, huh?”

Four Corners confiscates cell phones. Cell phones, computers, personal property other than clothing. And she doesn’t know I’ve left yet. This is one piece of good luck: the storm took out home phone service for two days. The usual aftercare follow-up call must not have gone through. “For good behavior,” I lie.

“You think they’ll spring you one of these days? How long you been in now? More than thirty days.”

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