Page 25 of Broken Things

For a minute, I can do nothing but stare at her.

“The football stadium... ,” Mia says slowly, and smiles again. “You’re a genius, Abby.”

“Nothing to it, my dear Watson,” Abby says with a little flourish.

“Jake Ginsky was on the football team,” I say. “He was, like, outfielder or something.”

“Outfielder’s a baseball term,” Mia says.

Leave it to Mia to be nerdy about even non-nerdy things. “Whatever. He was tight ass or rear end or whatever they call it.”

“Who’s Jake Ginsky?” Abby asks. She’s still sitting uncomfortably close to me, so close I can see the sticky wet look of her lips, and I scoot backward, leaning against Mia’s bed.

“Jake Ginsky,” Mia says. “He went out with Summer for a few months. Supposedly.”

“Definitely,” I say firmly, remembering that time with Summer in the car, how her eyes swept over me as if I was a stranger.

Mia sighs. “But they broke up in January. Besides, the copslooked at him. He had an alibi. He was hanging out with some other freshmen on the team.”

Something tickles the back of my mind. Somethingwrong.

Abby hauls herself to her feet. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Mia blinks up at her.

“The amphitheater,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “We can sneak around the locker rooms and look beneath the bleachers.”

“What do you think we’re going to find—bloody handprints?” I say. “We’re talking about something that happened five years ago.”

“Well, we have to start somewhere, don’t we?” Abby crosses her arms. “These are the only pages you have left, right? If Summer left clues about her killer inReturn to Lovelorn, the amphitheater seems like a place to start. Maybe you’ll remember something important. Maybe you’ll see something. That’s how it works in mysteries, anyway.”

“This isn’t a mystery,” I say. “This is real life.”

But Abby’s already moving toward the door. “Whatever you say, Nancy Drew.”

Ava gaped at him. “Do you mean to say the Shadow steals children?”

“Oh no,” Gregor said, obviously horrified. “Never that. The Saviors go willingly. It’s a great honor. The Shadow, you see, protects us. The Shadow keeps our harvests plentiful and makes sure our rains are not too heavy or too light. The Shadow keeps us safe from war and starvation. The Shadow has chased away the Reapers so that no one has to grow old. The Shadow has great magic.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Ava said, wrinkling her nose.

Gregor blinked at her. “It’s an exchange,” he said, as though it were obvious. “One child per harvest.”

—FromThe Way into Lovelornby Georgia C. Wells

Mia

Now

The high school at Twin Lakes Collective is separated from the middle school and elementary school cluster by a long stretch of well-tended soccer and lacrosse fields, a looping ruddy-colored track, and the football stadium, standing like an alien spaceship in the middle of all that rolling green.

When we pull into the parking lot, I’m surprised to find it almost full: I’d forgotten all about the Fourth of July parade.

“Christ,” Brynn mutters. “Glitter and glee clubs. Just what we need.”

Every year, hundreds of kids aged five to eighteen march next to homemade floats and mascots from various local businesses, from the school all the way down to the gazebo in the park at the corner of Spruce and Main. I’m surprised they didn’t cancel it this year. They’ll be skirting downed tree branches and sloshing through gutters bloated with rainwater. Then again, what betterway to celebrate America’s independence? Land of the free, the brave, the stubborn, the stupid.

“Pull around the gym,” Abby says. “There are usually extra spaces behind the weight room.”

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