Page 23 of Broken Things

Or everything used to. From the dusty look of the cover, it seems she stopped keeping track of all her accomplishments. For some reason, that makes me sad.

“I’m telling you, the answer’s in the book,” Mia says. “In the book, and in all the stuff we wrote inReturn to Lovelorn.”

“You guys wrote a sequel?” Abby actually sounds impressed. I wonder how much she knows about the original story. Weirdly, I feel another quick twinge of jealousy—Mia’s been sharing things with Abby. Mia has someone to share thingswith.

“It was fan fic. Summer was mostly writing it,” Mia says, and then immediately corrects herself. “Or—we thought she was. But now I think she had help.”

“Right. From the same person who put up that wallpaper. The same person who wanted Lovelorn to be real.” Abby frowns, pulling at her bangs, which are straight, curtain-like, fifties-dominatrix style. “From the Shadow.”

“The Shadow... ,” Mia repeats, chewing on her lip, like she does. She twists around in her seat to face me. “You know, you might be onto something. Think about it. Summer was obsessed with the Shadow. That’s the whole reason she wanted to write the sequel. To tell the Shadow’s story.”

“And to fix the ending of Book One,” I point out.

“And to fix the ending of Book One,” Mia admits.

“Why?” Abby asks. “What’s wrong with the ending?”

“What’s wrong with the ending is that itdoesn’tend,” I say.“The book cuts off in the middle of a sentence. It’s crazy. It’s like Wells was writing and someone came and decapitated her.”

Mia gives me a look, like,let’s not start that now. “My point is Summer was afraid of the Shadow. That’s why she wanted to do the sacrifice. To give him something that would keep him happy,” she explains, turning to Abby. “A kind of gift. She thought it would keep the Shadow away.”

When Mia looks at me, the memory of that day rises up suddenly between us: of coming up over the hill into the long field, of seeing Summer clutching what we thought was a rag to her chest, her dress nipping around her knees.

“If someone was frightening her in real life, and she didn’t know how else to express it... ,” Abby trails off.

I’m struggling to think through it all. My brain keeps punt-kicking back the obvious conclusion. Maybe it’s all the time I’ve spent around addicts: I’ve gotten supergood at denial.The first step is admitting you have a problem.“You think her killer was helping her write the story,” I finally force out, not a question but a statement. “You think they left... clues.”

“It’s possible.” Abby thumbs her glasses up her nose. “Authors unconsciously write themselves into their books. They transform familiar places into fictional landscapes. It’s the same way when we picture aliens, we imagine they’ll look like us. Psychologists call it ‘transference.’”

“Thanks, Wikipedia,” I say.

“It’s not just possible. It’sprobable,” Mia says. “Think about it.We took inspiration from real people all the time. That’s how we came up with the Ogre, isn’t it? You wanted to write in Mr. Dudley after he busted you for cheating.”

“Iwasn’t cheating,” I say. “I was telling Kyle Hanning to stop mouth-breathing down my neck.”

“Whatever.” Mia rolls her eyes. “Someone put that wallpaper up. Someone made the clubhouse. And someone tore it down overnight. We didn’t make it up. It was real.” She knots her fingers in her lap, and I realize then that she needs it to be true. She needs not just to be innocent, but to know who’s guilty, to prove it.

Maybe I need it, too. To move on. To be free.

Here’s another little thing they tell you in recovery:Let go or be dragged.

“Okay,” I say, and Mia exhales, as if she’s been holding her breath. “Okay,” I repeat. “But if there are clues in the fan fic, what good does that do? You heard what Mr. Ball said. He trashed everything the cops didn’t take. It’s all gone.”

Mia shakes her head. Her eyes flicker. For a second, I think she’s going to smile. “Not all of it,” she says. She sits cross-legged on the floor, heaves the binder into her lap, and begins to page through it. “Summer never let us keepReturn to Lovelorn,” she explains to Abby. “She always had to be in charge. There was a single copy, a notebook stuffed with a million loose pages, some of them typed up, some of them written out by hand.”

“Wow.” Abby wrinkles her nose as Mia keeps flipping through warped pages plastered with old pop quizzes and papers markedwith lots of stickers. “That’s so pre-technology of you.”

“The firstLovelornwas written by hand in the 1960s,” Mia says. “Summer thought it was more authentic. Besides, she had to share a computer with her foster family, and they were always spying on her.”

“She even thought they’d trained their cat to read,” I say, and then wish I hadn’t, because Mia flinches.

She says, more quietly, “She wanted to keep Lovelorn private. She wanted to keep it for us.”

“We thought she did, anyway,” I correct her.ButOwen knew, I almost add.Mia told him everything. He knew we liked to play.But I don’t have to say the words out loud. His name hovers there between us, like a bad smell, like the aftermath of a rude remark. His name isalwaysthere, threaded into the mystery of what happened, of all the things we still don’t know.

Mia shifts away from me. “Anyway, the point is, Summer kept the notebook at all times. If either of us wrote something, we had to give it to Summer for her approval. If she liked it, she’d add it to the notebook.”

I take a seat on Mia’s bed, ignoring the way Mia frowns at me, like I might contaminate her bedspread. I probably will. I stink. “Summer was obsessive. She thought we might even be able to have it published. It seems stupid now.” Mia’s comforter is pale pink and patterned with loops and curlicues. Some of the stitching is coming undone, and I pluck at a thread with my fingers, wishing the past was like that—that you could just pull and pull untilit unraveled and you could start over.

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