Page 66 of Broken Things

“Dad.” Owen is frozen in the living room doorway, trying to block the mess from view.

“Jesus.” Mr. Waldmann takes in Owen’s black eye. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Owen says quickly. “Just a stupid fight.”

“You look terrible,” Mr. Waldmann says, and then looks atBrynn and me, squinting a confused smile in our direction. “Hello.”

Brynn looks like someone trying to swallow a live eel. I try to say hello, but all that comes out is the final syllable. “Oh.”

“You weren’t supposed to be home until Friday,” Owen says.

“Business closed early. I wanted to surprise you. Hopped a red-eye from LA.” Mr. Waldmann looks increasingly confused as he turns back to us. “And you are... ?”

Owen shoves his hands in his pockets and kicks at nothing, making a scuffing noise on the floor. “Dad, Mia and Brynn. You remember Mia.” He won’t look at me, and it occurs to me that he’s embarrassed. Blood beats a hard rhythm in my head.One two three four one two three four.

“Mia. Of course. Mia. And Brynn.” But this time when Mr. Waldmann tries to smile, he only winces. “Wow. How wonderful. I had no idea you were all still in touch.” He turns to Owen, leaving the question unspoken:Why?

“It’s been kind of like our reunion tour,” Brynn blurts out. “But we’re just wrapping up.”

Mr. Waldmann’s attention moves to the living room—the mess of papers, coffee-ringed Styrofoam cups, empty chip bowls. “What happened here?” he says. “There another storm I didn’t hear about?”

I shove past Owen and start snatching up pages, one by one—some of them brittle, like old leaves, some of them damp as though imprinted by sweaty palms. I shuffle them carelessly into a pile,ignoring the echoes of an old fear: they’ll be out of order now, we’ll never be able to sort them, Summer will be so angry.

“Homework,” is the first thing I can think of to say, which is why I’m always so careful, why I weigh words in my mouth before I speak them. The first thing that comes out is often so wrong.

“Homework?” Mr. Waldmann sounds almost amused. Almost. But the strain is obvious in his expression. “In July?”

“Summer school.” More lies, more words I haven’t chosen, as though they’re just staging a riot. For a second I catch Owen watching me with the strangest look on his face—as if I’m someone he’s never seen before. “Owen agreed to help out, because of NYU and everything.”

That doesn’t even make sense, but Mr. Waldmann nods. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” Then: “Owen, can I see you for a second? Alone?”

This is it: the end of the line.Get them out, Mr. Waldmann will say, and Owen will be nice about it, give us an excuse, and shut the door in our faces. We dragged him into this. He didn’t want any of it.

All he did was kiss her in front of half the school and break my heart.

“I was just about to drive Brynn and Mia home,” Owen says, already going for the door. Goodbye, thanks for coming, please don’t crowd the exits.

“Nice to see you, girls,” Mr. Waldmann says, but it’s not hard to figure out what he really means:Nice to see youleaving.

Owen’s car is stifling hot. The AC does nothing but flood hot air at us. I roll down the window, worried I’m going to be sick. I’ll lose my chance to talk to Owen unless I do it now. But I won’t do it. Of course I won’t. Not here at ten forty-five a.m. in a sweat-sticky car, not anywhere, never.

“I’m not going home,” Brynn says as Owen reverses onto the lawn to turn around. “I’m going with Mia.” She hasn’t asked me, of course, but I’m too tired to argue.

“Neither of you is going home,” Owen says. For a second he looks just like the old Owen: stubborn, explosive, unpredictable. The boy who lived half the time out of his tree house and wore a bulky flea-market trench coat everyone said he would someday conceal a gun inside and spent half of class gazing out the window, doodling shapes in his notebook. Brilliant and strange and mine. “Not yet, anyway. We owe Mr. Haggard a visit, remember?”

Brynn

Then

“Nice skirt, Mia,” Summer said, bumping Mia on the shoulder with a hip before she slumped into the seat next to me, even though for more than a month she’d been avoiding us entirely, turning down different hallways when she spotted me from a distance, refusing to answer any of my texts. In the cafeteria she’d practically shoved me when I put an arm on her shoulder. Stop drooling, McNally. I’m not into girls, okay?Furious, practically spitting, as ifIwere the one who ruined everything, who’d told about what had happened between us the night she climbed into my bed. It was April—a raw day, when the rain couldn’t decide whether to come down or not and so just hovered in the air, making trouble. “Trying to give Mr. Haggard a view of your prime real estate?”

“Shut up,” Mia hissed. “He’ll hear you.”

“So what if he does? Hey, Haggard. My friend Mia wants to know if you think she’s pretty—?”

“I said shut up,” Mia said.

We were stopped at a light. Haggard twisted around in his seat, bracing himself with one arm on the steering wheel.

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