The Broken World

by Lindsey Klingele

  She remembered the day Joe came to pick her up from Chuck and Marty’s place, a cozy bungalow in West Hollywood with a yellow front door. It was right after Christmas, and Chuck and Marty still had small, bright lights strung around the single palm tree in their front yard. When Liv passed it, she turned to wave good-bye to her now-former foster parents, who both cried as they watched her climb into the passenger seat of Joe’s Jeep.

  “We’re going back to the big white building?” Liv had asked, thinking of the child services department located near the La Brea Tar Pits. She’d already been through this twice before, once after her parents had died and again after Joe had taken her away from the Hannigans. She remembered driving past the small black pond with its statues of trapped and sinking animals as she waited to be delivered to another strange home.

  Joe had grimaced, his hands on the wheel. “Not yet,” he said.

  “Then where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  When Joe pulled up to Arclight Hollywood minutes later, Liv’s stomach gave a happy flip-flop.

  “We’re going to the movies?” she asked, scared that Joe might realize his mistake, say no, and drive her straight to child services.

  But Joe just grinned. “You like popcorn, right?”

  And not only did he let Liv get popcorn, he’d let her pick the movie, too. Without hesitation, Liv pointed up to the lobby’s giant screen listing movie times—the one that looked like it belonged in a grand train station rather than a movie theater—and pointed at Pan’s Labyrinth.

  Joe furrowed his eyebrows. “That’s rated R. Might be a bit . . . much.”

  “I want to see that one.”

  “What about the one with the talking pig? That’s still playing.”

  But Liv just shook her head, again pointing to Pan’s Labyrinth. She’d read about it in one of Chuck and Marty’s movie magazines, a dark and twisted fairy tale from a famous director. She knew the movie was violent, and she doubted Joe would let her see it. Even Chuck and Marty had been a little hesitant to show her The Godfather trilogy a few months before.

  Joe looked over for a poster of the movie, showing the silhouette of a little girl walking into a terrifying forest. He looked back at Liv, then nodded.

  “Okay then.”

  The movie had scared the crap out of Liv. Its haunting visuals crawled inside her brain, seeming so real that she’d constantly had to look around the theater to make sure the monsters of Pan’s Labyrinth weren’t lying in wait at that moment, all around her . . . but as the images on the screen became more and more terrifying, Liv knew Joe was still by her side. His presence reminded her that the monsters on the screen weren’t real. That she was safe.

  Liv couldn’t stop thinking of that movie now, as she lay in the backseat of Shannon’s van, staring straight forward but not really seeing what was in front of her. Her ears were still ringing, and the smell of smoke lingered in her nose. She remembered in bits and pieces getting out of the soundstage, though most of them made no sense. The castle catching on fire, the fire spreading to the rest of the building. Cedric carrying her out. Kat and Rafe showing up out of nowhere to cut her hands free. She remembered asking what they were even doing there, though she didn’t remember if they’d answered her. She remembered Shannon pulling her into a giant hug, and Peter looking at her with worry in his eyes when they reached the van.

  They were all in the van now, silent as they drove through morning with its skies turning slowly from rust-brown to lighter rust-orange. Liv was alone in the far backseat, the movement of the van gently rocking her back and forth. She wished it could lull her to sleep, the way it used to when she was a child. But she couldn’t even shut her eyes.

  Now that Liv’s hands were free and she was relatively safe, the reality of the night began to sink in in sharp, jagged pieces. But her memories of the last few hours kept getting tangled up with older memories. She saw the black, soulless eyes set inexplicably in the middle of Joe’s—her Joe’s—face. She saw the creature from Pan’s Labyrinth, its own eyes facing out from the middle of its black-tipped hands. She saw her own small hands covering her face as she sank lower into the movie theater seat (or was she now sinking down for real in the van seat?) She saw an orange sky passing by the window near her head. She saw Joe sitting next to her in a blue bucket seat as he leaned down and whispered, “Don’t worry—it’s not real.”

  His long-ago voice rang in her head along with the echoes of fireworks set off in a closed space. The movie had been fake, but it had felt real. What happened to Joe had really happened, but it felt unreal, like a dream. Movies and memories got tangled up inside Liv’s head, and she couldn’t pull herself out. She didn’t want to pull herself out. Because there was that dread, at the bottom of her stomach, that seemed to know the truth.

  Joe was now a monster who wanted to hurt her. Just like the monsters in the movie. But now there was no one sitting beside her to remind her that it was all fake, that even if it felt real, even if she was terrified for real—she was safe. She forced her eyes shut, trying to hear Joe’s voice telling her she was okay, pulling her out of this nightmare world like he’d pulled her up from her belief in the movie monsters. . . .

  Her strong, unwavering belief . . .

  Liv shot straight up in a flash, the top of her head nearly colliding with the roof of the van. In front of her, both Rafe and Merek jumped. Merek put his hand over his heart as he scowled at Liv.

  “Hell alive, Liv, I thought you were asleep back there.”

  “What is it?” Cedric asked, catching sight of Liv’s white face in the rearview mirror. “What’s wrong?”

  Liv flinched, gutted by the question. Everything was wrong. Everything.

  But she focused on Cedric’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She steadied her voice.

  “I know how to do it. I know how to fix the world.”

  Six heads swiveled back to face her, six sets of eyes looking at her as if she’d just grown an extra arm out of her neck. But Liv ignored their incredulity.

  “We’re going to make a movie.”

  A NEW HOPE

  “Wait . . . what?” Shannon asked.

  Liv had just finished laying out the basics of her plan, and now everyone in the Malibu house was staring at her blankly. Shannon, of course, was the first to speak what was on everyone else’s mind.

  “I mean . . . what?”

  “It’s our only option,” Liv said. “Or at least, the only one I can think of. It’s basically this or run and hide and wait for the world to slowly fall apart for good.”

  She looked around at everyone in the room—Cedric, with his eyebrows raised; Kat, skeptical with her arms crossed; Merek and Rafe, who were both covered in ash like they’d just stepped out of a forest fire; and Peter . . . poor Peter, who’d been quiet and withdrawn since Liv first explained, in a halting, breaking voice, why Joe wouldn’t be coming back with them.

  “Liv,” Shannon continued. “Maybe we should just take a moment to recover from . . . what happened.” Shannon’s voice was gentle, filled with pity and something else . . . fear? Yes, Liv thought, looking into her best friend’s eyes—Shannon was definitely afraid. But of what? Her?

  Liv glanced over at the mirror on the wall. She barely recognized the girl looking back at her. Soot covered her from head to toe, staining her pajamas a gray-brown. Tear tracks ran down the ash that covered her face, and her hair stuck out from her head at all angles. There were red marks on her wrists and ankles from where she’d struggled against the ropes. And her eyes looked . . . drained.

  She looked shell-shocked. Crazy. Definitely not like someone anyone should be taking direction from.

  Liv took a deep breath and looked back at her friends.

  “We don’t have time to recover. Malquin is building his army up more every day. Every minute we waste is another potential person he might turn into . . .” Her voice faltered, and she closed her eyes to compose herself.

  “He
will need some time to regroup,” Cedric said. Liv opened her eyes to see him shaking his head. “The fire burned down his base, and the wraths scattered—”

  “We have no idea how much the fire set Malquin back,” Liv said, standing up straight and once again trying to gather a strength she didn’t feel. “But we can’t assume he’s down for the count. Remember months ago, Cedric, when you said Malquin was one step ahead of us? That hasn’t changed. He’s looking to tear the wall between the worlds down even more. He wants magic to come here, wants the Earth to keep fighting it. He wants the destruction. He’s building an army and using innocent people to do it.”

  “I thought you said he was only using Knights,” Merek put in.

  “Okay . . . mostly innocent. But what do you think will happen when he runs out of Knights and their families to turn? Do you think he’s just gonna stop? We have to do something now.”

  Shannon cleared her throat. “If we do this—plan—will it bring Joe back? Will it make him . . . Joe again?”

  Liv’s breath caught in her throat. Once again she saw Not-Joe coming toward her, his eyes dark, bent on hurting her without a second thought. She wanted so badly to believe he could come back, but . . .

  “I don’t know,” Liv said truthfully. “Even if the plan works, even if we restore magical balance to our worlds, Joe might be . . . gone.”

  Shannon cleared her throat. “About that . . . plan. Maybe you can run us through it one more time?”

  “Yes, because not a single part of it makes even a bit of sense,” Kat added.

  Liv took another deep breath, looking around the room. It suddenly seemed like a huge feat to get everyone on board with her idea. Her plan had two key elements: moviemaking and magic. Half the people in the room had never even heard of movies before a few months ago, and the other half had never seen real magic outside of movies.

  Liv took a deep breath, ready to plead her case.

  “Henry Martin told us it’s impossible to get rid of magic now that it’s back on Earth. The only way to save our world—worlds—is to restore balance. To get our world to stop fighting this magic surge, right?”

  “He said it was a theory,” Cedric responded carefully.

  “Well, let’s just assume, because we have no better option, that his theory is true. That there’s a way to allow magic to flow between our worlds for good in a way that doesn’t burn up the whole sky or drain Caelum to nothing. To do that, we’d need power. The kind of power that hundreds of Knights had all those years ago when they opened the very first portal.”

  “Yeah, but—” Shannon started.

  “But we don’t have access to Knights anymore, I know. Even if Malquin wasn’t killing and turning them, it would take us forever to track them all down. But remember, Mathilde told Cedric that the Knights weren’t just important because they knew about magic, but because they believed in it. That’s why their spell worked.”

  Liv moved her hands wildly as she talked, anxious to make them see. “That part’s not just a theory. I saw it with my own eyes. Malquin needed a spell to turn humans into wraths, so he got his other wraths to do it. Not Knights, wraths. Believers. It didn’t even matter what the words of the spell were—they just had to focus on what they wanted to happen. They just had to believe.”

  Cedric nodded. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say, Liv. But it took hundreds of Knights to open that first portal. To get the whole world to stop fighting magic? It would take so many more of these . . . believers.”

  “Thousands, likely,” Liv agreed. “Maybe more.”

  Everyone in the room looked crestfallen at this, but Liv felt like she was finally getting somewhere. “And what’s the best way to reach thousands of people? Like, if you had a message you wanted to deliver?”

  “The internet,” Peter responded.

  “Right!” Liv said. She actually clapped in response. The idea was so clear in her, if only she could make the others see . . .

  Without even realizing it, she started talking faster. “But what if you didn’t just want to deliver a message? What if you wanted people to really believe what you were saying? You wouldn’t just tell them. You’d show them. You’d give them a story.”

  A collective pause fell over the room, just like it had the first time Liv had quickly explained her plan. But this time, instead of shaking her head, Shannon cocked it slightly—she was listening, thinking.

  “That’s how we can reach thousands of people. That’s how we can get them to believe. Think about it, Shannon. When you watch a good movie, what does it feel like? What’s it like when things are happening on screen and you get so caught up in them that you practically forget you even exist? Even if a part of your brain knows nothing you’re seeing is real, you turn that part of your brain off. You imagine what you’re watching is real because it feels real. You believe, even just for a moment, because you want to.”

  Shannon’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open into a small O of understanding.

  One, thought Liv. I’ve got one of them. She turned to her brother.

  “Peter, remember when you were a kid, and your favorite movie was Star Wars?”

  “Yeah, but what—”

  “The whole movie is based on this completely imaginary concept, with intergalactic wars and light sabers and all these fantastic, non-real things. But when you’re watching it, your emotions are real. You care when the characters get hurt, you feel tense when they’re about to fight, and relieved when they live. You believe in them, and you believe in something like the Force, even if just for a little while.”

  Peter pursed his lips, thinking. “But that’s not real believing. It wears off as soon as the movie’s over.”

  “But what does ‘real’ believing even mean? Whether you believe in God, or your family, or yourself, or in a story . . . doesn’t it all work the same? Belief is there for you when you need it, no matter how long it lasts, no matter what kind it is. If we can get enough people to believe in the magic in our story—even for just a few seconds—how is that any different from what some ancient knights believed in? Peter, isn’t what you feel when you watch Star Wars sometimes just as strong as what you feel in real life?”

  “Sometimes,” Peter said, his voice soft. “Sometimes it seems even stronger.”

  Liv smiled, triumphant. “Exactly. So?” She looked anxiously around the room. She noticed both her hands were shaking, maybe from anxiety, from lack of sleep, from trauma. Or from just hoping, so hard, that the plan she’d come up with wasn’t just a delusion from her smoke-addled mind.

  “But how would it work, exactly?” Shannon asked.

  “We tell a story with the spell inside,” Liv responded. “It doesn’t even matter what the spell is, we can make that part up. That’s what Malquin did with the wraths. They chanted some random word, but as long as they believed what they were saying, it worked. In seconds, like . . . like magic.”

  “But to get that many people to really believe, it would have to be one hell of a movie,” Peter said.

  Liv grinned. “I know.”

  Kat looked incredulously between Cedric, Merek, and Rafe. “Does any of this make any sense to you?”

  Cedric’s expression was careful, watchful. “A bit.”

  Rafe shook his head. “Liar. That was all basically gibberish, and you know it.”

  “No, I think I understand, too,” Merek said, looking directly at his brother. “Shannon exposed me to some of these movies—”

  “The best of my collection,” Shannon interrupted.

  “And I understand what Liv is saying, how watching movies can make you feel . . . amused, sad, scared. I did not understand half of what I was seeing, but—”

  “But you still cried during Up.”

  Merek’s face went white. “I did not!”

  “You did, I totally saw you. Don’t worry, no one here is judging.”

  “I am, a little,” Peter said, grinning. But he stopped smiling when he saw
the furious look on Merek’s face. “Let’s get started, then.”

  Liv nodded enthusiastically. She turned to Cedric again, and for a moment was confused to see him through what seemed like a strange, liquid veil in front of her eyes. Tears. She’d wanted so badly for them to understand her idea, and now they were on the verge of it, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something close to hope.

  Cedric smiled. “What do you need us to do?”

  Liv exhaled, feeling twenty pounds lighter. As if the hard part were done, and not still in front of them.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Kat nodded in Liv’s direction. “I do not understand any of this, but it is not as though I have a better plan. I will help.”

  Kat looked to Merek, who nodded. “Me too.”

  Liv clapped her hands together, a director ready to start work. She looked around at her friends in the dim room, her mind already calculating what to do first. Standing across the room, Rafe raised his hand.

  “Question. What exactly is a movie?”

  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

  The first hurdle was finding electricity. They only needed enough to power their phones and a laptop. Shannon and Peter went about connecting the electronics to the house’s small generator, which they’d agreed only to use when absolutely necessary.

  Having little to do until the cameras started rolling, Kat, Merek, Cedric, and Rafe went through their combined selection of silver weapons and sparred on the hot sand below the house. Liv sat down in the living room to start writing her script, her hand flowing over the notebook in her lap.

  “Hey, Liv?” Shannon asked from her position on the floor, where she was examining her own dead phone.