Page 77 of Broken Things

Even though I haven’t moved, I feel breathless. Someone was wearing a carnation at Summer’s memorial—I noticed it then but didn’t make the connection I should have. Who was it?

I close my eyes, trying to call up my memories of that day, but all I see is the crack of Jake’s fist against Owen’s face, and Brynnshouting, the way the crowd started flowing down toward us like a multicolored tide. People pressing us from all sides, whispers building, and then through the crowd, our savior, one hand outstretched, eyes huge behind her glasses—

A twig cracks in the woods behind me. A footstep.

I spin around, swallowing a scream.

Ms. Gray doesn’t look surprised to see me. She just looks tired. “Hello,” she says.

Mia

Then

Brynn said to run and so I ran—hurtling through the trees, my heart trying to scream out of my throat, going so loud it overwhelmed the distant sounds of shouting and that scream, that one long terrible scream (praying for it to be Summer, and not Brynn). When I finally stopped it was because I was back on the road, back on the safety of the road, and a car was bearing down on me, driver leaning on his horn—a driver who later told the police about the girl who’d hurtled out from Brickhouse Lane in front of his car, a girl wild-eyed and crying, less than a quarter mile from where Summer would later be found by an off-duty firefighter who’d been fishing all afternoon in a nearby creek, her neck crusty with blood, her blue eyes reflecting the slow drift of the clouds.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” Audrey said, panting, staring at the place where the Shadow had curled and shriveled into nothing, leaving a patch of bare dirt instead. “It’s really and truly over.”

Ashleigh put an arm around her. “Let’s hope so,” she said.

—FromThe Way into Lovelornby Georgia C. Wells

Brynn

Now

Heath Moore’s house is disappointingly normal, considering it contains a lizard-disguised-as-a-human. Maybe I was expecting it to be molting. At least aBeware the Sub-Intelligent, Over-TestosteronedTeenage Boysign or two. But it’s just a house, just a normal street, basketball hoop in the driveway and no signs of the subspecies lurking inside.

Heath answers the door, thank God. Not surprising, given that it’s a Tuesday, his parents probably work, and he is a slug who does nothing but suction the life and goodness out of the world, but still. A good sign.

For a second he just stands there gaping at me, so I can see his fat tongue.

“I’m here to talk about Summer,” I say, which makes him shut his mouth real quick. I don’t wait for him to invite me in—I’d be waiting awhile—and push past him into the house. Weird thatsuch a nice house could birth such a nasty little toad sprocket. In the living room, a dog that looks like an oversize fur ball is yapping in a dog bed next to a coffee table cluttered with family photos.

He watches me sullenly, keeping a good eight feet between us, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Not so brave now that he doesn’t have the two Frankenstein twins as backup. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” He lifts his chin. “And I had an alibi, you know.”

“No, you didn’t. Jake told me you guys were just covering for each other. Relax,” I add when he starts to protest. “I don’t think youdidit. Pulling off a murder requires more than one active brain cell.”

He wets his lower lip with that obese tongue. “So what do you want to talk about?”

I take a deep breath. “I want to know what she told you and Jake,” I say, and since he keeps staring at me with that dumb expression on his face, I say, “Aboutme. About... liking girls.”

What I really want to know is whether she told them about what happened between us the night she came in through my window: that final, sacred thing, the way she jerked backward after we kissed, the terrible way she smiled at me. All I know is that days afterward the story that I was amassive lesbian—like you could be a miniature one—was everywhere, and some of the girls wouldn’t change near me in the locker room, and Summer was treating me like I had a contagious disease, one of the ones that makes blood come out through your pores.

Jake and Summer broke up, and now I know that afterward she started hanging out with Heath. Back then, Summer wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t even look at me. I remember trying to get close to her in the lunch line and she just spun around, furious, as if I’d hit her.Stop drooling, McNally. I’m not into girls, okay?The weirdest thing about it was how angry she was—practically hysterical—as ifI’dhurther. As if I’d been the one to give up her secret.

Everyone laughed. I remember how it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and just plain knocked out my stomach, swung my insides up to the ceiling, made a path out of the cafeteria with my lungs. And yet all this time, I’ve been holding on to the idea that despite everything, Summer loved me. That she cared. That it mattered if I kept her secrets, kept her safe, kept everyone from knowing what happened that day in the woods.

Here’s the thing: Summer was the one who made me into a monster. And she’s the one who has to change me back.

When Heath thinks, smoke might as well come out of his ears. You can actually see his brain sizzling. “Seems kinda late to be worrying about your reputation. Everyone already knows you’re a dyke, McNally.”

“Sure. Just like everyone knows you’re a virgin,” I say, which makes him scowl. Shot in the dark, but looks like I was right. Good. The little scuzzbucket should just marry his right hand and be done with it. “What did she tell you?”

“She didn’ttellme anything,” he grumbles. “It wasn’t some big secret. Even the teachers knew.”

My stomach seizes. “What are you talking about?”

He shrugs. “That’s how I heard in the first place,” he said. “My teacher said she was proud of me. For beingopen-minded. You know... for hanging out so much with a girl who...” He trails off. For a split second, he looks embarrassed.

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