Page 78 of Broken Things

“A girl who what?” Now my brain is the one that feels like it’s grinding along, struggling to make sense of everything.

He rolls his eyes. “A girl wholiked other girls,” he says. “And then I started thinking it was weird, how much time you guys used to spend together. And Summer got pissy when I made fun of her about it.” He crosses his arms, all wounded and defensive. As if the fact that I’m gay is a direct strike to his ego, like I’m just trying to embarrass him. “That’s why I’m saying I kind of already suspected. And when Ms. Gray pulled me aside—”

“Ms. Gray?” Suddenly I feel like I’ve been hit with a Taser. There’s a buzzy pain in my head.

“Yeah, my English teacher.” Heath gives me a weird look, probably because I practically shouted her name.

“Your... ?” My voice dies somewhere in the back of my throat. I shake my head. “Ms. Gray taught Life Skills.”

Heath shrugs. “Our English teacher was out on maternity leave, and Ms. Gray subbed in,” he said. “She’d taught English before.” He squints at me. “What? What is it?”

Obviously it has never occurred to him how weird it is—how completely and totally screwy—for a teacher to say that kind of thing. At Four Corners the counselors aren’t even allowed to hugyou anymore, unless there are two additional witnesses there to swear you gave permission.

Besides, how did Ms. Gray even know?

I turn away, feeling sick. My mind is hopscotching through memories, GIF-style. Ms. Gray in the crowd at Summer’s memorial, a carnation pinned to her shitty black dress. Eyes raw like she’d been crying. Ms. Gray directing us back to Owen. Ms. Gray volunteering to help out with all those little kids at the parade, thebandkids...

I used to teach music, before.

“Oh my God,” I say out loud. It’s so obvious. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.

Ms. Gray is the Shadow. All along, she’s been living here, floating along, drifting through normal life. But she did it. She took a rock to the back of Summer’s head. She dragged her across the field and arranged her in the circle of rocks. She stabbed her seven times, so the dirt was sticky with her blood and cops arriving on the scene had to be counseled afterward, said it looked like a massacre.

All along, it was her.

“Are you okay?” Heath asks me, and I realize I’ve just been standing there, frozen, freezing.

“No,” I say. I burst out of the door. I’m running without knowing where.

Mia. Somewhere in the trees the birds are screaming. I have to find Mia.

Brynn

Then

“Put the knife down, Summer.”

But Summer was still staring after Mia, watching her run, shaking her head. “I wasn’t going to hurt her,” she said. For a moment she looked irritated, as if I’d bought her Diet Coke instead of regular from the vending machine. But then she kneeled down by the cat and looked up at me. “Are you going to help?”

Panic was like a physical force, like a hand around my throat. “What are you going to do?”

“The Shadow needs blood,” Summer said impatiently. “Come on. Help me. We have to do it together.”

The smell of gasoline and cat puke was turning my insides. That poor mangled creature was still alive, still breathing. It would be a mercy to kill it now—but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

“No,” I whispered.

Summer stood up again. She was a few inches shorter than Iwas, but in that moment she seemed huge, godlike, blazing with fury. “You said you loved me,” she said.

“I do,” I said. “I did.”

“Prove it.” She took a step forward. She was only an inch away from me, as close as she had been that night in my room, the magic night of skin and fingertips and her bones small and sharp digging into mine as if sending me a secret message. “Prove it.” Now she was shouting. “Prove it.”

She drew her arm back, her hand still fisted up around the knife, and maybe I felt rooted, cemented to the ground by fear, by the certainty that she was going to kill me, and I grabbed her wrist and was still holding on to her as she twisted down to her knees and drove the knife down straight through the cat’s neck.

It screamed as it was dying. It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard, a sound that has no parallels, no comparison on earth. Like the sound of hell opening. All the birds poured out of the trees as if they couldn’t be witness to it. And Summer just sat there, shaking, eyes closed, her hands around the knife handle. I stumbled backward, sick, wanting to scream too. But the scream was trapped there, and as it passed through me, it hollowed me out.

“The Shadow hears,” she whispered.

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