The Brokenhearted

by Amelia Kahaney

  I rip myself away from them and run to Gavin, thinking I can drag him out of here, take him to the hospital, take him to the clinic downstairs even, thinking someone somewhere can fix him, but his face is gray and his eyes—thank God for this one small mercy—are closed. His chest leaks blood left of center, exactly where the heart is located in the human body. If there is one anatomical fact I am certain of, it is this.

  I cradle his face in my hands, frantically smoothing his hair, all the while someone is still screaming NONONO in a shrill and painful and earsplitting way, and it’s only when Rosie slaps me in the face that the screaming stops.

  “Shut up!” she says, her short body above me now, standing, the pearl-handled snub again in her hands. “It’s over. So go away, princess. Just get out of here, and don’t come back. I’d rather not have to kill you, too. Hard enough burying one corpse without a string of cops up my ass.”

  The barrel of the gun weaves back and forth in front of my eyes as she talks. My mouth fills with saliva. I spit a wad of it at her, daring her to shoot.

  “Get her the hell away from me, gentlemen,” she says softly, wiping my spit from her forehead. “Backup, puhleeze!” she calls out.

  They grab me under my armpits, one of them on each side, and drag me across the carpet. The last thing I see is Gavin sprawled out on the ground, his whole shirt soaked through all the way to the sleeves, blackened with blood, and Rosie turning away from me, kneeling down to inspect the damage she’s caused.

  I’m strong now. Impossibly strong. I should be able to throw them off me. I flail and kick and Smitty goes flying, but then a door in back of the bookstore opens up and there are three more of them. Two boys who might be twins—small, wiry, olive-skinned—come charging at me, along with a six-foot-tall woman with long purple hair. I remember them from Dimitri’s. The second string of Rosie’s team.

  They pile on to me, each one of them in charge of one of my limbs. It’s too much for me. Too many people holding me down. I struggle, my body straining to shake them off, but I get nowhere.

  Then Smitty gets back on his feet again. The last thing I see is his fat hand encircling the neck of a Blackout Vodka bottle and bringing it toward my head.

  And then everything goes as black as Gavin’s blood.

  I’m dead to this world and all the horrors it has delivered.

  I wake up on the tiled main floor of Hades, Serge’s gun stuffed under my coat and sticking me in the ribs, Rufus kneeling over me, his small hands shaking my shoulders. “Come on,” he cries. “Before they see you.” There’s a jamboree of some sort in the lobby of the mall, drums and tubas and accordions and people singing a fast song in the mournful key of a funeral dirge.

  For Gavin, I think senselessly. They know Gavin is dead. But of course they don’t. Rosie would make it her business to cover it up.

  Rufus is pinching my ears and cheeks. “Get up, dummy.”

  I look at him, his skin soft and brown, his baby-pink cheeks, his hearing aids glowing in the dim light.

  “Okay,” I say, feeling nothing, seeing nothing. I would like to rush into the crowd and wave Serge’s gun around until someone sees fit to kill me. I would gladly die here and enter the next world with Gavin. But out of respect for Rufus and what little chance he has of growing up into a sane adult someday, I don’t. I let him pull me away from the drum circle and toward the back staircase. For him, I walk, one foot and then the other, through the gluey swamp of my devastation, and make my way out of here.

  “What you need is candy,” Rufus says as he escorts me through the back stairs and out a side door, unwrapping a cinnamon disk from cellophane and placing it in my hand as if it is a priceless jewel. “Candy always helps.”

  There is no help for me anymore, I think. No hope. Not here, not anywhere. But I put the disk in my mouth and let it melt on my tongue.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “Do me a favor, Rufus?”

  “Favors aren’t free,” he says, and I think of Ford eyeing my necklace on the Bridge of Sighs what seems like a million years ago now. Nothing is free, I think sadly as my fingers travel to the heart around my neck. Everything in life costs too much.

  But Rufus shouldn’t know that yet. He’s just a kid. A kid with a tough beginning, but still. I wish he’d get far away from here, take a train or a bus to anywhere else, but I know he won’t. Hades is all he’s got.

  I put twenty dollars in his hand, then run my fingers over his soft, kinky hair. “Don’t go to the third floor anymore. It’s not a place for kids.”

  Rufus nods reluctantly. “I guess.”

  Later, after a numb good-bye and a fit of private, gulping sobs against the stucco back wall of Hades, I shut down, drained of everything. Somehow I walk, not daring to look back at the hulking mall where Gavin’s body is hardening to stone.

  I walk home under a fingernail moon, a shining sliver of light in a world that doesn’t deserve it.

  When I get back to the Seraph to return the gun to the glove compartment, Serge is there waiting for me. I must look terrible, because he jumps out of the car and comes around, his arms open wide. I fall against him, my whole body shaking.

  “Tell me,” he says, one of his hands around the top of my head. “You’re bleeding.”

  I remember the bottle smashing over my head, but all the pain I feel is in my midsection. My head feels fine.

  “Gavin is dead. They killed him in front of me,” I say, my voice flat and hollow, like it belongs to someone else.

  He doesn’t say anything, but I hear him exhale.

  I pull away from him and take the gun out from the waistband of my jeans. “Sorry for taking this. I didn’t use it.”

  Serge takes the gun from me and puts it inside his suit jacket. “I’m the one who should say I’m sorry. I should have been with you.”

  “I had to go alone,” I say. “I couldn’t risk anyone else getting . . .” My teeth are chattering so badly that it’s hard to finish my sentence.

  “Anthem. You are in shock. Let’s sit in the car awhile.”

  Serge starts the car and turns the heat on high, but even when the internal thermostat reads 83 degrees, I’m still cold. He goes to the trunk and finds an old school sweater of mine, and I put it on in the car. Time passes where we just sit together quietly, and eventually I stop shaking and my teeth stop chattering.

  “I am so sorry you lost this boy, Anthem. But you are well,” he says. “Your parents need not ever find out.”

  I press my still-icy fingers to the car vents. “I’m never going to be well,” I whisper. “Never.”

  “One day at a time,” Serge says. “One day at a time.”

  CHAPTER 20

  When I get upstairs, the clock in the foyer tells me it’s a reasonable time of night to arrive home—only ten fifteen. I can’t understand how so little time has gone by and yet I feel decades older than I did this morning. I hear polite voices and the scraping of bone china cups against saucers in the living room. My parents have company. I pinch my cheeks and quickly knot my hair into a bun that hides the blood on the crown of my head, preparing to paste on a tired, just-coming-from-the-library expression on top of the half-crazy, dead-inside face I glimpse in the hall mirror.

  I fell asleep in the library, I rehearse silently. I’m beat. Heading off to bed. But when I reach the archway of the living room, the person drinking tea with my parents is Will. I freeze, not knowing what I’m supposed to do, unable to process his presence. I open my mouth, but all I can muster is a cough.

  Will jumps up from his spot between my parents and runs to me, kissing me wetly on the cheek before moving his head next to mine, his mouth beside my ear. It takes every ounce of my will not to step away from him.

  “Relax and smile,” he whispers. “I told them you forgot your physics book at the library and had to go back. They bought it.”

  I nod imperceptibly to tell him I understand he’s covered for me, smiling through gritted teeth as Will leads me into the sitt
ing room toward my parents, his sweaty fingers cuffed around my wrist. Panic kicks in my chest as I wait for someone to tell me what’s going on.

  “Hi,” I say cautiously.

  They’re all smiles. I haven’t seen them this pleased with me since before my disappearance.

  “I was just telling your parents how happy I am that we’re back together,” Will says, a joyless grin plastered on his face.

  I turn to him, matching his fake smile with a horrified one of my own.

  “I had a feeling you two would find your way back together one of these days,” my father says, winking at me. “When it’s right, it’s right. Am I right?”

  The room fills up with our nervous laughter, and the sound is so loud and false it makes me wince.

  “Best news we’ve heard in ages,” my mother says, her s’s and g’s softened and fuzzy from too much wine. “I was so sad when you two had . . . your bump in the road. . . .” Her eyes glisten with emotion as she swirls the last sip of chardonnay around in her goblet.

  “Well, we’re so young . . .” I start, backpedaling as hard as I dare, trying to steer my parents away from the assumption that we’re together again. But my words dissolve when Will’s fingers tighten around my wrist.

  “Would you guys excuse us?” He beams the patented Hansen smile—top and bottom teeth exposed, photo-ready—at my parents. “I’m gonna steal Anthem for a minute.” He winks at my dad.

  “Of course, William.” My father smiles, returning the wink. “Steal away. You kids go chat in Anthem’s room. It’s great to have you back, Will.”

  “Oh, likewise, sir,” Will says, but when he turns away from my parents, his smile lingers, his eyes glittering with a creepy sort of intensity. “See you both very soon, I hope,” he calls over his shoulder. “Let’s go, sweetie,” he says to me, pulling me forcefully down the hall.

  “Let go of me,” I whisper, twisting my wrist free when we’re out of earshot of my parents. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “All will be revealed in your bedroom, dear,” he snorts. “And I do mean all. Ha-ha.”

  My skin prickles with heat as I shut the door. I walk a few feet away from him and turn to face him, hands on my hips. “What is this?” I ask, my nostrils flared and my jaw clenched. “Why are you here and lying to my parents?”

  “Oh, sweetie!” Will cries, flopping onto my bed and opening his arms. “Let’s just cuddle a little and then I’ll explain.”

  “Will.”

  “It was a joke, Anthem. As usual, you have no sense of irony. I get that you find me less than appealing these days. I’m not stupid.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Well,” Will says, stretching the word out, “did you know you broke one of my teeth with your little burst of aggression the other day? This one’s a temporary. They’re making me an implant. All very time-consuming. Very expensive,” he says, tapping a finger on one of his canines and then plucking it clean out of his mouth, holding the tooth up in front of his eyes to examine it. “And in the dentist’s chair when they were pulling the broken one out of me and scraping out the dead nerve, I started thinking, how did Anthem get strong enough to land a kick like that? I mean, she’s a ninety-eight-pound little shrimp. No offense, but you are.” He turns his glittering blue eyes to me to see how I’m reacting, pausing to gulp some air, since he’s been talking so fast.

  “Get off my bed,” I manage.

  “Soon, sweetheart. But no, I don’t want to get off your bed. Not at all, actually. It’s just so . . . cozy!” He squeals with laughter. Something is very wrong with him, and it’s not just the gap where a tooth should be.

  “Anyway,” Will says, stretching out on his back and putting his arms behind his head in a manner of the utmost repose, “something didn’t add up. So I decided to solve the mystery.”

  “And what did you come up with?” I ask in a whisper, though I can tell I don’t want to know.

  “It made you prettier, your little experiment.” Will yawns. “I mean, you used to be maybe a seven, but now . . . you could compete with tens.”

  “Funny, the more you talk, the uglier you get,” I say, my voice choked with rage.

  “I just hope that scar heals,” he goes on, giggling crazily. “A scar can be hot, but that one’s a doozy.”

  I freeze, my heart punching through my chest so forcefully it makes me dizzy. Does he know?

  “What are you talking about?” I grab him by the collar of his oxford shirt, pulling him up off my bed until his face is an inch from mine, close enough so that I can smell a trace of the almond cookies my parents gave him. Did my shirt slip when I kicked him? Has he been watching me somehow?

  “I know everything, freak show. I know what you can do. And I have it all in my computer. Now, let go of me.”

  “What did you do?” I whisper. I throw him down onto my sheepskin rug, where we once made out for hours.

  I race over to lock the door, then return and stand over him. My body hums with the urge to fight and destroy.

  But I don’t. I can’t. Certainly not here.

  “I don’t think you want to mess with me too much right now.” Will grimaces. He crosses his legs and straightens up, hands on his knees, looking as if he’s about to do yoga. His sky-blue eyes twinkle with pride at whatever sick thing he’s dangling in front of me. “Considering the footage I have on you.”

  “How dare you,” I whisper, suddenly exhausted. I sit on the carpet a few feet away from him, my shoulders sagging, deflated. Gavin is gone. Why does anything else even matter?

  “Oh, Anthem. You cannot imagine how easy it was. I came over one Saturday while you were out at ballet or wherever it is you go. I brought your mother some flowers. Told her my plan to get you back, to win your heart, blah, blah, blah. Made her promise to keep my love for you a secret. Your parents want us to be together—I’m sure you know that already. Then I zipped in here and planted an itsy-bitsy camera when she thought I was in the bathroom.” He shrugs. “I guess I’m just the kind of guy who likes to know what people are up to.” He dangles his keys in front of me, a small red flash drive glinting on the ring.

  “Where is it?” I whisper, blood roaring in my ears. My hands are shaking with fury.

  “Oh, I’m not sharing the information. It’s all for me. The footage of you jumping around your room like a crazy-assed grasshopper? I’m keeping it all to myself. You just have to do one thing for me.”

  “Where is the camera?” I hiss, lunging at him. He rolls away from me, flinching a little as he rights himself at the foot of my bed.

  “You threaten me again like that, and the footage goes straight to a website. I was thinking AnthemFleetIsaFreakofNature.com. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you want?” I whisper, sitting back on my heels with a thud. I look out the window at the thin slice of moon hovering uselessly in the black night and swallow a sob.

  “People at school think you dumped me. Did you know that?” Will’s mouth twists into a grimace, his face flushed with the memory of this humiliation.

  “No. What does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t . . . now,” Will says softly, plucking hairs out of the rug and balling them up between his fingers. His eyes avoid mine. “Because we got back together, just like I told your parents.”

  “But we didn’t—”

  “But babe, we did. See, that’s how this whole blackmail thing works. You’re going to be my girlfriend again. You stand quietly like a good little ballerina by my side again. You hold my hand when we’re in front of people. You kiss me like you mean it before we go to class.”

  “But why?” I cry. “Why would you want that? You hate me,” I remind him. But that’s the point, I realize, the force of what Will is after rocking through me. Control. Dominance.

  “Why? Because nobody breaks up with Will Hansen. And nobody kicks Will Hansen in the teeth. And mostly, Anthem? Because I can.”

  “And if I say
no?” I ask. But I already know the answer.

  “If you say no, I post the footage when I get home. I’m pretty sure someone would be interested in the illegal activities of whatever back-alley nutjob did this to you. I’m quite certain you’d spend the rest of your days being studied by the medical community. And there goes your life.” Will smiles and sits back against the wall, grinning crazily.

  “Get the camera,” I squeak. “And get out.”

  “Tell me we have a deal first.”

  A long beat of silence. We lock eyes, and there’s nothing but hatred between us. I look away first, all the fight suddenly gone out of me.

  “We have a deal.”

  “Great,” he says, and walks toward a framed picture I have on the wall above my bed, a black-and-white shot of two dancers midleap, their bodies flexed and straining, hands entwined in the air. He plucks a tiny piece of white plastic from the top of the white frame. “I’ll miss seeing you undress,” he smirks. As he brushes past me, he eyes my unmade bed. “But maybe I won’t have to wait too long before getting another look.”

  He pauses, his hand on the door. “We have unfinished business there, don’t we?” His eyes travel to the bed and back to me, traveling slowly up my body.

  “Get out,” I whisper.

  I push him out the door and shut it hard, sliding down the back of it. As I do, my hair falls out of its bun. I move to touch the cut on my head, but aside from the dried blood in my hair, my head is healed. I can’t even locate a scab.

  Hugging my arms around my knees, I wait for the tears to come. But they never do. There’s just a yawning emptiness, an icy cold inside me that never thaws.

  CHAPTER 21

  I stay in my room for days, barely sleeping, barely eating.

  Sleep delivers no rest, only blood-soaked nightmares, so I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, a faint crack in the plaster traveling from the light fixture in the center of the room to the crown moldings, watching the glowing red numerals on my clock move from morning to midday to night and back again. I eat a few bites of the food Lily brings me three times a day and push the rest away, my stomach recoiling. It all tastes like dirt and blood to me. I eat just enough to keep my lips and fingertips from turning blue, to keep away torpor, but no more.