Page 58 of Broken Things

Mia

Then

The second time the police asked for us, they made sure that Brynn and I didn’t see each other. This time, they sat me in an airless office between my mom and dad, who were fighting. They’d been fighting for days.

#45. Words too hurtful to repeat.

I told you that girl was bad news.

Maybe if you were ever home...

Maybe if you didn’t make home so intolerable...

Your daughter...

Your fault... .

And at the same time my voice had evaporated. Every word felt like a physical effort, like having to stick an arm down my throat and draw something up that had already been digested.

Answer him, Mia.

Answer the questions, Mia.

Outside the police station, through the thin walls, I could hear the voices of the people who’d gathered. Dozens of people, crowding the entrance, some of them weeping, although I couldn’t understand why. They didn’t know Summer, hadn’t loved her. So what was their loss? Why the signs and the anger, a hiss that followed me the moment I got out of the car?

Monster. Monster. Monster.

#30. Words that burrow likeinsects in the ear, that nest and wait to eat you from the inside out.

My dad put an arm around me in the parking lot, just like he kept an arm around me here, in the little room with a fan rustling stacks of paper and a table ringed with old stains. Squeezing my shoulders, hard, as if he could squeeze my voice out of me.

For God’s sake, Mia, just answer the goddamn question. Tell him. Tell him that you had nothing to do with it.

Outside: a heavy mist, alive with voices.Monster. Monster.

Ask Brynn, was all I could say. My throat was a long deep hole and it was collapsing, and soon everything, all the words I had ever said, would be buried. How could I explain? My voice was drying up.Ask Brynn.

The problem with fairy tales isn’t that they don’t exist. It’s that they do exist, but only for some people.

—FromReturn to Lovelornby Summer Marks

Mia

Now

If there’s a good time to sayI love you, I have always loved you, let’s start over, it isn’t between aisles two and three of the local 7-Eleven, bleached by the high fluorescents, with legions of squat cans of instant Hormel chili serving as witnesses. Or in front of the night clerk with so much metal in her face she looks as if she got accidentally mauled by barbed wire. Or in the car with Wade Turner, who insists on rolling down all the windows “to keep us awake,” despite the fact that we’ve just bought jumbo coffees and chocolate-chip cookie dough for extra sugar highs, flooding the car with darkness and the roar of wind.

Three minutes. That’s all I need. Maybe less. And yet Owen and I haven’t had a single minute alone. He hasn’ttriedfor a single minute alone with me.

Was he lying when he said he always loved me? Or did he mean past tense, loved but now no longer love?

#12. Words that mean multiple and different things.Alwaysloved, meaningstill do; alwaysloved, meaningused to.

Owen’s house looks strange with just the living room light burning, like a bit of dark matter anchored by a single star. Wade hops out of the car first, but Owen takes a second to fumble with his seat belt. Wade is halfway to the porch by the time Owen starts after him.

Now, I think. Now that I know he didn’t do it. Now that even Brynn knows. This shouldn’t matter, but it does: on some level, deep down, I realize I’ve been waiting for Owen’s side of the story, for this final proof.

Now. Quickly. In the time it takes to do fourgrands jetés, to take four giant leaps into the air across the studio floor.

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