Page 63 of Broken Things

Summer, Brynn, and Mia made a pact that they would never tell anyone else about Lovelorn. It would be their secret. Secrets are like glue. They bind.

—FromReturn to Lovelornby Summer Marks, Brynn McNally, and Mia Ferguson

Brynn

Now

After the smash-heat of outside, Owen’s house feels overbright and empty, like a museum. Abby has moved to an ottoman. Mia and Owen sit on opposite ends of the leather couch, leaving a whole cushion between them. She has her hands pressed to her thighs, like she’s trying to convince them not to run her straight out of there. I’ve chosen a chair across the room, stiff-backed and uncomfortable, and possibly only meant for show.

Only Wade looks comfortable. His long legs are stretched out in front of him and he’s taken off his shoes, revealing mismatched socks, one of them red with Christmas penguins. Every so often he slurps loudly from his coffee.

“When we first started talking about who killed Summer, Brynn suggested we call him the Shadow.” Abby’s voice rebounds off every empty wall. “From the beginning, it seemed like the right symbol of her killer. Why?” She starts ticking items off on her fingers. “One. Summer was obsessed with the Shadow. Two.She began to think she was actually in danger from him. That was the point of that day in the woods, right? She wanted to make a sacrifice to him?” She glances at Mia for confirmation.

“Right,” I say instead, trying to force her to look at me. She does, but only for a second. Her face hitches—a look of embarrassment—like she’s accidentally looked at someone peeing.

She turns to Wade. “In the originalLovelorn, the Shadow is mentionedhowmany times?”

“Fifty-two,” Wade says. Then, as if it isn’t obvious: “I’ve counted.”

“InReturn to Lovelorn, the Shadow gets overone hundredmentions in a single chapter.” She pauses to let that sink in. “So let’s assume we were right all along. The Shadow is the murderer. The Shadow wrote himself into the story, just like you guys wrote yourselves into it.” She looks around, as if expecting us to contradict her. “There should be clues. Details about who he was in real life. The way the Giantess Marzipan—your math teacher—has a wart above her right eyebrow. That was real, right?”

“It used to turn red when she was mad.” I’m thinking that’ll at least get a laugh, but instead she frowns and looks down at her notepad.

“There’s the dwarf Hinckel, who smells like sour cheese. There’s a pixie named Laureli with a voice so shrill she can’t be near glassware.”

Mia hugs her knees to her chest. “I don’t remember writing any of that.”

“Summer, or whoever was helping her write, must have addedit in without telling us,” I say quietly. Then something occurs to me. “Laura Donovan. Had to be. Remember her laugh?”

“Like a fire alarm.” Mia cracks a small smile.

“There’s a psychotic dwarf named Joshua,” Abby goes on, “who gets flattened by a wagon wheel and dies horribly—”

Finally, something I remember. “That was my character,” I say. “Josh Duhelm. Four foot seven of straight crazy. He used to put chewed-up gum on my seat.”

“But the Shadow is never described,” Mia puts in. “We took it from the first book. It’s just... a shadow.”

“Wrong.” This is it: Abby’s big reveal. This is what she’s been waiting to tell us. For a second I hold my breath, and Mia holds her breath, and even the lampshades look tense. “InReturn to Lovelorn, Summer visits the Shadow seven times, mostly on her own. Wade helped me look for statements that don’t show up anywhere in the first book. Backstory. Made-up information about where the Shadow came from and where it lives now and how it spends its days. But what if it wasn’t made up?” She pauses again and then nudges Wade with a toe. “Maestro?”

He flips open a laptop and reads. “Okay, here’s the list we made.”

“Will you sing again?” the Shadow asked. “I’ve always loved music. I used to teach music, before.”

“Who made you this way?” Summer asked.

“Everyone and no one,” the Shadow said. “In my city, there’s agiant door in the shape of an arch, and I went through one side a regular person and came out this way.”

“Sometimes I spend whole days going in circles,” the Shadow said. “Street to street. Following the same old route. Just hoping something new happens. But nothing ever does. That’s the trouble with being a shadow. No one notices. No one cares.”

“I once lived in the desert,” the Shadow told her. “There was a kind of cactus there that can survive without any water. If only people could survive like that—totally alone. But they can’t. Not even shadows can.”

Summer knew the Shadow’s biggest secret: the Shadow was lonely, horribly lonely, and just liked having someone to talk to and be with. But she also knew she couldn’t tell anyone, because no one would understand. The Shadow was completely different than people thought—no one would ever know the truth.

Wade finishes reading, and there’s a beat of silence. My brain keeps stalling and turning over, like an engine in the cold. Abby sits there watching us expectantly. Correction: watching Owen and Mia expectantly. I’m a no-fly zone.

Stupid. Why did I kiss her? And why did I have to screw it up afterward?

“Okay, so what are we saying?” Sometimes I think the wholepoint of talking out loud is to shut the inside voices down. “The Shadow—the killer—likes music and maybe even taught it. That’s point number one. He comes from a city. Point number two.”

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