Page 72 of Broken Things

Look at the human heart. Think about the difference between alive and not. One second that little fist is going and going, squeezing out more time. And then it just quits. One beat to the next. Second to second.

One. Sound and noise and motion. Two. Another thump. Three.

Nothing.

Fifteen minutes later, Brynn is sitting in the front seat of the cop car, looking like a prisoner. Heath Moore, apparently too afraid to confront one of the Monsters of Brickhouse Lane himself, sent his cousin to do the dirty work. Officer Moore went directly to Brynn’s house, where he informed Brynn’s very confused mother that her daughter had stolen a phone during an altercation at Summer Marks’s memorial.

Brynn’s mother insisted she was at Four Corners. Four Corners insisted that Brynn had been signed out several days ago by an Audrey Augello. Officer Moore, no doubt thrilled that his missing-phone case had turned into a missing-girl case and sensing the opportunity to do something other than throw teenageboys in the drunk tank for the night, tracked Brynn down to my house after learning we’d been seen together.

And now Brynn is going home.

I’m still standing on the front lawn. The sun is high above us, like a ball lobbed up in the blue, and I feel just like I used to during curtain call, with all the stage lights bright and blinding and the applause already waning—an urge to laugh, or scream, or keep dancing, anything to keep the silence from coming.

When Officer Moore starts his engine, Brynn finally looks at me. For a second her face is blank, closed up like a fist. Then she brings a hand up and I think she’s going to try and say something. Instead she presses her palm flat on the glass. I bring my hand up too, just hold it there, even as the squad car pulls away and Brynn drops her hand, leaving a ghost imprint on the glass, even after they’re gone and the noise of the engine has faded.

Across the street, the curtains twitch. Someone is definitely watching. Just because, I take a bow.

“Show’s over,” I say out loud, even though no one’s around to hear me.

Inside, I stand in the dimness of the front hall, squinting at the Piles, trying to imagine them as something beautiful and natural, stone formations or ancient gods. But it doesn’t work this time. I see only trash, rot, mold webbing through the whole house. Maybe I’ll never even go to college. Maybe I’ll stay here forever, slowly yellowing like one of the old newspapers my mom refusesto throw away, or turning gray as the walls are now.

Owen’s voice is still echoing in my head.I did. I did. I did.

Strangely, the urge to cry has vanished. The urge to clean, too. It’s too late anyway. There’s no point. There was never any point.

“Sorry, Summer,” I say into the empty hall. Something rustles in another room. A mouse, probably. I close my eyes and imagine I can hear the amplified chewing of termites in the wood.

I must have been crazy to think that Owen would ever want me now. Grown-up Owen with his cute little accent and his Boy Scout look, off to NYU and girls with pixie-cut hair and J.Crew smiles, girls with vacation homes in Cape Cod and the Hamptons, girls who aren’t all jumbled up and split apart. Maybe my mom hasn’t been collecting all this time butreflecting. Mirroring our chaos. The chaos inside.

There’s a sudden pounding on the front door. Brynn. Maybe she left something. Maybe she catapulted out of the cop car and came running back. For a second, I even hope she did.

Instead my dad is on the front porch, waxy-faced, sweating.

“Mia.” He says my name as if it’s an explosion. “Mia. Oh my God.”

“Dad.” Then I remember that the door is open—just a crack, not enough for him to enter, not enough for him to see—and I try to slip outside. But he has his hand on the door, and he stops me.

“Where have you been?” He looks like he hasn’t slept. His hair is sticking straight up, as if a giant has grabbed him by the roots and tried to lift him off his feet. “I was this close to calling thepolice—tried you at least twenty times—phone went straight to voice mail—”

“My phone was dead. That’s all,” I say.

But he just keeps talking, leapfrogging over half his words so I can hardly piece together what he’s saying.

“—came by last night—house was dark—been calling for two days—phone off—”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I—I wasn’t feeling good. But I’m fine now,” I quickly add. I’m worried he’s about to have a heart attack: a vein is standing out in his forehead, throbbing as if it, too, is very upset.

Finally my dad runs out of anger—or out of air—and stands there panting, the vein still beating a little rhythm in his forehead. “Well, Jesus, Mia. Open the door. I’ve been terrified—your mother and I both—”

“You called Mom?” All this time I’ve been talking to my dad through a narrow gap in the door and angling my body so he can’t see inside. Now I slip onto the porch, closing the door firmly behind me. No way am I letting Dad inside. Dad’s never been inside, not since he left.

“Of course I called your mother. She’s on her way home from Jess’s house now.” Dad frowns, and looks a little more like my dad, the stern podiatrist—I’m pretty sure that even as a kid he liked to dress up in suits and diagnose people with acute tendonitis. His eyes go from me to the door and back again. “Come on,” he says, in a normal tone. “Let’s go inside. I could use a glass of water.”

“No!” I cry as he reaches for the door handle. Instinctively, I flatten myself against the door, keeping it shut.

My dad’s fingers are wrapped around the door handle. “Mia,” he says, in a low voice—someone who didn’t know him might think he was being casual—“what are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything.” But suddenly the tears are back. Traitors. They always come at the worst moment. “Please,” I say. “Please.”

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