Page 71 of Broken Things

I make it out of the car without crying. Without saying goodbye, either, even though that’s what I mean.

Mia

Then

I was walking with Owen in the fall of sixth grade, arguing about whether or not AI would eventually spell the destruction of the human race (him: yes, thankfully; me: no, never) and dodging caterpillars plopping out of the trees onto the road like gigantic furry acorns—there were hundreds and hundreds of caterpillars that year, something about the reduction of the native population of bats—when all of a sudden Owen broke off midsentence.

“Uh-oh,” he said.

I didn’t even have time to saywhat?By the time I looked at him he was standing calmly, head tilted back, cupping a hand to his nose while blood flowed through his fingers, so bright red it looked like paint.

“It’s okay,” he said thickly, while I squealed. “It happens all the time.”

But I was already shaking off my sweatshirt—not caring thatit was my favorite, not caring that my mother would kill me, not thinking of anything but Owen and all that blood, hisinsides, flowing out in front of me—and pressing it balled up to his face, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” even though I was the one who was afraid, standing there until my sweatshirt was damp with butterfly patterns of blood.

Audrey, Ava, and Ashleigh stood, shivering in the sudden wind, and watched Gregoria disappearing with the Shadow into the woods. At a certain point, it looked as if the Shadow bent to whisper something to her. Then they were simply gone.

—FromThe Way into Lovelornby Georgia C. Wells

Mia

Now

“You okay?” Brynn asks. I’m going to have to dig up my old list of all the ways that words can turn to lies, make some amendments to it. I don’t bother answering.

Inside, the smell of mold and wet and rotting cardboard is worse than ever. Or maybe it’s just thateverything’sworse. I grab an armful of stuff from the side table, including a framed picture of me dressed as Odette in my dance school production ofSwan Lake, grinning at the camera, dressed in tulle and pointe shoes and a frosty tiara, and turn right back around, stalk across the driveway, and heave it all up into the Dumpster.Goodbye.Another armful—mail and a carved figurine of a rooster and a dozen loose keys in a basket and an orchid in its clay pot, miraculously blooming despite the chaos—and outside I throw it in a long arc, like a longshoreman tossing catches of fish. Not until I grab the side table itself does Brynn say something.

“Are you sure... ?” she starts, but trails off when I give her a look. Brynn and I should never have stopped being friends. We must be the two most screwed-up people in Twin Lakes. Maybe in all of Vermont.

When the side table goes into the Dumpster, it splinters. Two crooked legs stick up over the lip, like an iron cockroach trying to claw its way to safety. The Dumpster’s nearly full already. And suddenly it hits me how hopeless it all is: the house is still swollen with trash. Like a dead body bloated with gases. Even from outside I can see the Piles shouldering up against the downstairs windows, the curtains going black with slime. I haven’t made a dent. The tears come, all at once, like a stampede, and I stand there crying in front of the stupid Dumpster with my house coming down behind me.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there when I notice a cop car: swimming slowly, sharklike, down the street. It stops just next to the driveway. I turn away, swiping at my eyes and cheeks. But when the cop climbs out, long-legged and narrow-faced, like a praying mantis, he heads straight for me.

“Hello,” he says, all toothy smile, pretending not to notice I’ve just been sobbing alone on my front lawn. “You must be Mia Ferguson.”

“Can I help you?” I say, crossing my arms. He looks familiar, but I can’t figure out why.

“I’m looking for Brynn McNally,” he says. “Seen her recently?”

What’s she done now?I almost ask. Luckily, my throat choosesthe right time to close up.

But a second later Brynn bursts out of the door—like she does, like even air is a major barrier—maybe just because she’s sick of being inside with the smell, and the cop says, “Ah,” like he’s just solved a math problem.

Brynn freezes. “What is this?” she says. “Who are you?”

“Afternoon,” he says. I imagine the swish-swish of curtains opening across the street, neighbors peering out, wondering what we’ve done now, whether we’re finally going to get it. “Was hoping we could have a little chat. Name’s Officer Moore.” He pauses, like the name should mean something.

And then it does: Moore. As in Heath Moore. Brynn must make the connection at the same time. She looks furious.

“You’re Heath’s older brother,” she says.

“Cousin,” he corrects. His cheeks are round like a baby’s, and swallow his eyes when he smiles. “Sorry to bother you ladies,” he says, hitching his belt higher, like we’re in a cowboy movie. “I’m here about a missing phone?”

In sixth-grade history we studied the fall of Rome. We charted all the factors that led to the collapse of one of the most powerful empires of all time. Corruption. Religious tension. Gluttony. Bad leadership. Little arms pinwheeling out from the central fact: over a hundred years, from superpower to sad little collection of city-states.

But no one ever tells you that sometimes disasters can’t bepredicted. They don’t throw shadows of warning over you. They don’t roll like snowballs. They come like avalanches all at once to bury you.

Look at Pompeii, a city singed to ash in a single day. Or the way a first frost slices the heads off everything but the sturdiest flowers.

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