Page 85 of Broken Things

Mia and Owen have been walking close together, heads bowed, like people on their way back from a funeral. They both turn around together.

“What?” Mia says. Her eyes are scrubby from crying.

“Lovelorn,” I say. Not just words—a message. A secret code. “It’s a quote fromLovelorn. It’s what the sacrifices say, just before the Shadow takes them.”

Mia shakes her head. “What do you mean?”

But I’m already sprinting back, the pavement walloping the soles of my shoes, knees ringing, because even though she deserves itand a part of me wishes for it, I am not a broken thing after all, and not a monster, and so my instinct is to run—and I’m almost there, I almost reach the door, and my heart is beating so hard that when the gun goes off I almost, almost don’t hear it.

Audrey, Ava, and Ashleigh were much older by the time they found Lovelorn again, and by then they’d been dreaming of returning for a long time.

They walked into the woods, hands interlinked, though it had been years and years since they’d seen each other, waiting for the magic feeling, the spine-tingly anticipation, waiting for the world to shimmer and change. But after a while they had to admit there was nothing left in the woods but the woods.

“What happened?” Audrey asked. “Where did Lovelorn go?”

Ava checked the time. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m having dinner with my family.”

Ashleigh agreed. “We can come back and look again tomorrow.”

But tomorrow came and they didn’t come back, and the tomorrow after that, too. They never did go back in those woods and look again, partly because they knew they’d be disappointed, but also because they were busy now, with lives and friends and families of their own, and it just didn’t seem so important anymore. Gregor the Dwarf had told them once before that there was magic in all different kinds of things, and maybe that’s what he meant.

—From the final chapter ofEnd of Lovelornby Brynn McNally and Mia Ferguson

Mia

Now

When people talk about New York City, they usually talk about the size of it: the height of the buildings and the endless rivers of people flowing in narrow channels between them, the way I used to have to squeeze through the Piles before the Piles were vanquished. But what really strikes me is thesound—a constant hum of traffic and footsteps and phones ringing and kids squealing and someone, always, cursing at someone else. Even here, standing in the middle of Washington Square Park, there’s the rattle of skateboards on pavement and a college boy playing guitar with his friends and protesters chanting about inequality.

Since I arrived in New York yesterday, it’s like my voice is in a rush to join all the other voices, all the other sounds: I haven’t talked so freely or so much in my whole life. Somehow, it feels so much easier to speak when everyone else is fighting to be heard, too.

I love it.

“So?” Dad looks like he stepped out of an ad for Urban Tourism. He has a camera looped around his neck and a fanny pack—an actual fanny pack—around his waist. Every time we’ve gone on the subway he keeps a hand around his wallet. Never know in these big cities, he keeps saying, as if he’s hoping he can subtly persuade me to go to college in southern Vermont. “What do you think?”

“I like it,” I say carefully. And then: “You know what, actually? I love it.”

To his credit, Dad manages to avoid looking totally freaked out. He pats my shoulder awkwardly. “I’m glad, honey.” Then: “And I’m sure if I just sell my house, car, and business—”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

“And you take a job at the Seaport slinging tuna—”

“Dad.You’re thinking of Seattle.”

“We might have enough money for the first semester of tuition.” But he’s smiling, and a second later he draws me into a hug. “I’m proud of you, honey,” he says, into the top of my head, which for him is a major, huge confession of love.

“I know, Dad.” As I pull away, my heart stops: he’s here. Even though we’ve been texting or talking or messaging almost every day, seeing him is different: Owen, coming toward us, beaming, his hair longer and wilder than ever and his cowlick straight in the air like an exclamation point. The strangest and most beautiful boy in the city. Maybe in the world.

“Mr. Ferguson,” he says, out of breath, as if he’s been running.He barely looks at my dad when they shake hands. He’s just staring at me, grinning. “Mia.”

“Owen.” Since August, when I last saw him, he’s grown another inch. He’s wearing a navy-blue scarf and a jacket with leather patches at the elbows and he looks older, somehow, like he’s filling space differently, like he belongs.

This is something I understand now. This is the miracle—of other people, of the whole world, of the mystery of it. That things change. That people grow. That stories can be rewritten over and over, demons recast as heroes, and tragedies as grace. That Owen can never be mine, not really, and that is a good thing, because it means I can truly love him. That love often looks a lot like letting go.

The real crime is always in the endings. Georgia Wells knew that.

If Summer had lived, she might have learned that too.

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