Page 45 of Broken Things

“Owen,” she says. The word is so quiet I almost miss it.

Owen’s still on the ground, holding his eye where Twin #2 must have punched him, a thin dark trickle of blood working out of his left nostril. The rest of the crowd is pressing closer, murmuring, and the whole world feels like a guitar string about to snap, tense and humming—they’re going to recognize us, they’re going to take us apart leg by leg, slurp up our skin and pick their teeth with our bones—when Ms. Gray gets a hand around Owen’s elbow and hauls him to his feet.

“Come on,” she says to him. Then she turns to me and grabs my wrist, squeezing so tightly that when I pull away, I see that she’s left marks. “Comeon.”

Mia looks like she’s about to pass out. I link arms with her and we follow Ms. Gray as she plunges into the crowd, one arm extended to keep people back, one arm around Owen, bodyguard-style. The crowd falls away, allowing us to pass, even Mr. Ball, dressed in a bright yellow polo shirt like it’s a goddamn golf outing. I don’t know how Ms. Gray does it, but maybe that’s one of herlife skills. Like she’s a motorboat and we’re just bumping along in her wake, no problem, don’t mind us. Then we’re at the car and, thank God, Wade is there too, pacing next to the car, chewing on a thumbnail.

“What the—?” He does an actual double take when he sees us. “Whathappened?”

“Is he with you?” Ms. Gray still has an arm around Owen.

Wade’s eyes go to me.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, he’s with us.”

Ms. Gray opens the back door and helps Owen inside. He’s still holding on to his right eye, and he stumbles a little trying to get into the car. Mia hurtles into the backseat after him. Ms. Gray turns back to me. Her eyes go to the crowd behind us—I don’t have to turn around to know that they’re still watching, still murmuring. A swarm of hornets sharpening their stingers.Buzz buzz buzz. Was that Owen Waldmann?Buzz buzz buzz.And the Ferguson girl, together?

“Go,” Ms. Gray says. She looks exhausted. Her eyes are bloodshot and her hair has started to come loose from its bun. She has a carnation pinned to her blazer. “Get out of here.”

I want to thank her and apologize all at once, but the words stick in my throat. This must be how Mia feels. “I’m sorry... ,” I start to say.

“Go,” she repeats, almost angrily. Then she turns and dodges the sawhorses, plunging back into the crowd and disappearing.

“God.” In the car now, everyone quiet and tense, Mia still wheezing out the occasional words like she’s forgotten how to speak, Owen letting out the occasional moan when the truck hits a rut, Wade just dying to ask questions and chewing his lip to keep them down, Abby finally breaks the silence. “Seriously, guys. We can’t take youanywhere.”

Brynn

Then

“What do you think?” Summer’s breath was warm and smelled like raspberries. She rolled onto one elbow, and I felt the weight of her breast on my inner arm and drew quickly away, my heart scrabbling spiderlike into my throat. Was it deliberate? Her lips were candy-red and sticky. And in my head they were doing terrible things... terrible, beautiful things....

But she was the one who’d flopped onto the bed beside me, who interlinked our feet and suggested, giggling, that we just go out with each other since all the guys at TLC were so lame.

Was that flirting? Was she flirting with me? Would I know?

“Hello? What do you think?” Summer wiggled her phone in front of my face and I forced myself to focus. On the screen: a blurry picture of a guy wearing a slouchy hoodie, skinny jeans, not one but two studded belts, holding a Solo cup and squinting through cigarette smoke.Zap. Zap. Zap.I pictured my heartgetting buzzed by an electric zapper.

“Who is that?” I said, and Summer was already snatching the phone back.

“No one you know,” she said. “He’s a freshman.”

“A freshman?” I repeated.Zap zap zap.Until my brain was jelly.

“He’s cute, right?” She tilted the phone, left and right, considering.

“He looks,” I said, “like a complete assfart.”

Summer laughed and tossed her phone aside. She rolled over again onto her elbow. Her hair tickled my underarm. Her skin was warm, so warm it made me burn where it touched.

“Know what I think?” she said.

“What?”

My heart was frying like an egg, twitching to death under the beam of two bright eyes.

She leaned closer, so her sticky red lips bumped my ear. “I think you’re jealous.”

Afterward Firth would always tell the story of making off with the princess’s heart in his vest pocket, and how he was miles away before its rhythm began to affect him and lull him into a kind of sleepy melancholy. He kept thinking of the princess’s face, of her beautiful long hair, of the way the sky was reflected in her tears.

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