Page 82 of Broken Things

“Hey.” She barely touches me, but already I feel a thousand times better. And I don’t care about the fact that everyone’s staringat us, watching as I lean into her and put my head on her shoulder and inhale. “Hey. It’s going to be okay.”

I swipe my nose with my forearm. “I know,” I say. Because I know she’s forgiven me, and so it will be.

“We’ll all go,” Wade announces, nearly toppling one of the kitchen stools as he moves for the door. “We’ll all talk to her.”

“No,” Mia says again, and for the second time we all stare.

She looks at me and then Owen, then back to me again. Her eyes are very dark.

“She was ours to start with,” she says. I know she means Summer. “This is ours to finish.”

“Think about it,” the Shadow told Summer. “The world you know is evil. People kill one another. They grow old and die. Love turns to hate and friendships to poison.

“But here, with me, you’ll be safe forever.”

—FromReturn to Lovelornby Summer Marks

Mia

Now

“It seems so obvious now,” Brynn says. We’re parked halfway down the street from Ms. Gray’s house: a small shingled cabin on Briar Lane, not even a half mile from the woods where Summer was killed. Parked in the driveway is a maroon, rust-eaten Honda. Something about the house seems sad and remote and sympathetic, like a girl standing at a party too afraid to venture away from the corner, even though the lawn is well cared for and there are even flower boxes in the window—carnations, I see, and feel another twist of nausea. Then I realize it’s the curtains, which are all drawn, as if she doesn’t want any interaction with the outside world. “Why didn’t we suspect Ms. Gray? Why didn’t thepolicesuspect?”

“Because...” I fumble for words to explain it. I remember Ms. Gray plowing through a lecture on contraception while Todd Manger made a jerk-off motion behind her, Ms. Gray talkingabout organic versus engineered produce, Ms. Gray teaching us the signs of cardiac arrest and how to clear food from a blocked air passage. So helpful, so kind, soconvincing. Of course I see now how easy it would have been for her to persuade Summer to accept extracurricular help, to earn her trust, to make Summer feel special. “She isn’t someone we thought much about, is she? She was justthere. Like wallpaper. Besides, we were thinking the Shadow had to be a guy,” I say. “Even though Summer never said it was. And Georgia Wells doesn’t either.”

“Heteronormative,” Abby says, with one of her eyebrow quirks. “I told you.” But I can tell she’s nervous, and so can Brynn, I guess, because she reaches out to squeeze Abby’s knee.

Abby and Wade have insisted on driving with us, although they’ve agreed to stay in the car while Brynn, Owen, and I talk to Ms. Gray.

“I guess it’s now or never, right?” Brynn says, looking as though she wishes it would be never. But she climbs out of the car.

Abby grabs me before I can follow her. “Anything happens,” she says, “I’m calling the cops.” It’s rare to see Abby so worried, and it almost makes me smile.

Almost.

“Nothing will happen,” I say, half to convince myself, and then I step out onto the street and slam the door. The knot in my chest makes it hard to breathe.

This is It. The Grand Finale. Except I haven’t practiced, don’t know the moves, have to fumble through it.

The leaves are starting to crisp in the August heat. The sky is like the white of an eyeball: like something that should be paying attention but isn’t.

There is nothing at all remarkable about Ms. Gray’s house, nothing that says psychotic murderer or manipulative crazy person. There is nothing about the house that says anything, and this, I realize, is the secondary reason it seems so sad: it is a house that anyone in anyplace could live in, a house that has remained featureless and indistinct.

We go up the flagstone path in a line: Brynn first, then Owen, head down, as if moving against a strong wind. Then me. Even though nothing moves, no curtain so much as twitches, as we get closer I have the distinct sense that someone in the house is waiting for us, watching us approach.

Just before we get to the front porch, Owen wheels around to face me.

“Listen,” he says, in a low, urgent voice. And I do not love him anymore, because he does not love me, but my heart throws itself into the sky. “Listen,” he repeats. His upper lip is beaded with sweat and even this looks right on him, like his skin is just crystallizing. “I want you to understand something. I’m leaving, okay? I’m leaving Twin Lakes. I’m not coming back. I hate it here. This place—” He breaks off and looks away.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask. I do not love him because he does not love me, and people don’t have the right to break your heart over and over and over.

Brynn has reached the front porch now.

“Just listen, okay?” He grabs my shoulders before I can move past him, and I know, Iknowthat something huge is happening, the kind of thing that takes worlds apart and remakes them. Hurricanes and tornadoes and boys with blue eyes. “I applied to NYU—I wanted to go there—partly because...”

“Because why?” I manage to say.

“I thought you might come too,” he says, in barely a whisper. “I thought if you did, it would be a sign. That we were meant to start over. That we were meant.”

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