Page 13 of Broken Lines

I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“So, you don’t actually know what happened to Jackson Havoc.”

She shrugs. “I mean, I can guess.”

But I don’t need guesses. I need the truth.

“Any idea where he could be?”

“Why would I know that?”

“Because you screwed him? Or was that part made up too?”

She waves her hand again. “Oh, who can even remember these things, Melody.”

Gross.

“But no, I don’t know where he is.”

This was a waste of my time. Why did I even come here? What the hell else besides more Judy bullshit was I possibly expecting to find?

With a groan, I turn to leave.

“I mean, I know where he’snot.”

I pause, glancing back

“What do you mean?”

Judy gets up and swaying a little before she slinks over to “the wall”

I cringe.

It’s her “conquests” wall—a whole big wall of pull-out drawers slightly bigger than the ones you’d find in a library card catalog. And each one is stuffed with memorabilia and little “things” from the famous men she’s slept with.

I groan inside, remembering a particularly traumatizing incident when I was in fifth grade. I’d managed to invite some girls over from school who hadn’t yet been barred by their parents from hanging out with me—definitely only because said parents hadn’t met Judy yet.

Mom was, shockingly, gone when Ashley and Jess came over. I told them there was cool rock and roll stuff in these shelves, and randomly picked one to pull out.

Except this one—marked as the drawer for Chris Hammerstein, the drummer from Dream Vice that mom was seeing for a month or so—slipped off its runner and crashed to the floor. And out spilled a pair of snapped drumsticks, three backstage passes from the Dream Vice “Vicious World” tour, a bag of old weed, and large plaster cast.

…of Chris Hammerstein’s erect penis.

After that, Ashley and Jess quickly moved to the “don’t hang out with Melody” list, and I learned to nevertouchthese drawers again.

Judy pulls out one of the larger ones—the one marked “Will Cates”. She rummages around, frowning, before suddenly her brows shoot up.

“Here it is.”

She turns around, triumphantly holding a creased, faded postcard with a cartoony Statue of Liberty on it.

I frown.

“What is that?”

“Well, Will was going through this poetic Hemingway phase. It was after Guillotine broke up and after Jackson pulled that disappearing stunt. Will was hand typing things and writing people postcards. You remember, don’t you?”

“I was like ten, Judy.”

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