Beautiful Broken Girls

by Kim Savage

  “I hit something!” yelled Ben. He went into overdrive, dropping to his knees and digging around the small box with a hand spade. Kyle dropped his file and kneeled beside Ben, using his hands to dig. When they cleared enough dirt to lift it out of the ground, they stood, swaying like drunks, taking in the unearthed treasure. Ben would have liked to stand like that for a while, honoring whichever sister it was. But Kyle brought him back.

  “Time, dude,” Kyle said softly.

  Ben rubbed his chin, squinting at the urn.

  “Dude?” Kyle said, louder. “They deserve to rest in peace. This is not peace.”

  Ben held his mouth, unsure.

  “Ben: it’s time.”

  Ben kicked the ground like a horse. “Yeah. I know. They deserve to rest in peace,” Ben relented, repeating the words he and Kyle had told each other over and over that summer.

  They worked together, digging up the second plot, and soon the box revealed itself. When they set them both in the flatbed and slipped into the safe carriage of the truck, reality set in, and Ben was relieved to get away from the girls. Kyle seemed spooked, too, gunning it so fast out of the long cemetery road that Ben was mashed up against the door. Ben tried not to think about the urns knocking around inside the boxes: it was unconscionable for the urns to be left loose inside these things not unlike plaster beer coolers, with nothing to protect them.

  The boys fell quiet. Ben’s wet shirt stiffened, and the dirt on his arms and legs dried to a floury paste. They hadn’t made a plan for getting clean, but Ben couldn’t think that far ahead when they still had so far to go. He blinked and rubbed grit from his eyes until the headlights of oncoming cars bled together. Cars roared past and the truck rattled, but the noise did nothing to mask the klunk! in the flatbed.

  Ben shivered uncontrollably.

  Kyle looked over at him. “You all right?”

  A sedan with pink LED lighting on its undercarriage cut Kyle off. He slammed the brakes.

  Klunk! and a rattle.

  “I’ve got a confession to make,” Ben yelled. “I used to hate driving with you.”

  Kyle grinned, teeth gleaming in his grimy face. “Oh really?”

  “You were the worst driver. I deliberately wouldn’t talk the whole time so you wouldn’t take your eyes off the road to watch my lips, or give me your good ear, or whatever it was you used to do. But somehow, I think you’ve actually gotten worse.”

  Kyle laughed. “And here I thought you were always quiet because my driving made you carsick.”

  “Still does.”

  Ben noticed Kyle’s right hand resting on the seat next to him. The hand looked wrong, bent at a strange angle and twitching, like its nerves were frayed and accepting the wrong signals.

  “Your hand any better?”

  For three hours, while Ben had dug, Kyle had worked the file like a demon, sparking as he grated the rough edge against the granite. By the time they’d finished, they had both used up every part of their bodies, and they were starting to become unglued. Ben’s shoulders screamed, lactic acid already seeping inside the tears in his muscles. But Kyle had it worse, performing the same motion on the bench for hours, filing the girls into anonymity.

  Kyle regarded his hand and whistled through his teeth. “When am I ever whole?”

  Ben laughed. “You’re right about that.” Maybe she can fix it, Ben wanted to say.

  Ben knew their plan involved an element of hypocrisy. Using Francesca’s gift could be considered an exploitation along the same lines as that of the freak-seekers who made pilgrimages to the Cillo gravesite. The activity had gotten heavier in the last few months, and Ben had started to think of their plan less as righting a wrong and more like a rescue mission. Vandals were getting braver, most recently spray-painting other graves with arrows pointing to the Cillos’ bench, which Ben and Kyle realized early on was too heavy to move.

  Off the exit, Kyle took the corner around Johnny’s Foodmaster too fast, and the truck lifted on two wheels. Ben leaned toward Kyle, sure they would tip. The truck righted with a bounce—Klunk!—and flew past the rusted rack where the kids left their bikes before they entered the quarry. Ben hadn’t considered that his and Kyle’s escape out of Bismuth might be accelerated by dying. Though that would be right in line with Bismuth’s new rap. Consider People’s article on what was being called the “Deadly Quarry Mystery.” The article was less about the girls and more about Bismuth as a place where young people disappear (“Famed ‘Town of No Old Men’ Now Losing Its Youth,” December 2016). Ben had memorized the first line: Some call it a karmic correction, others see it as the inevitable result of the town’s youth’s unrestricted access to the dangerous Bismuth quarry. Regardless, a spike in suicides and accidental deaths among the town’s young people is a reversal for this rough “town of no old men” nine miles outside of Boston, where for decades, silicosis meant death for many by middle age. A trio of reporters had done some creative demographic addition that showed the number of deaths of citizens ages eighteen to thirty was triple the number of most towns in the Commonwealth. Ben noted that eighteen to thirty didn’t include the ages of the Cillo girls, or Connie, for that matter. A special insert box explained the nature of the poisonous quarry, that had “given so much and taken so much away.” Ben, who had taken to collecting clippings about the Deadly Quarry Mystery, would have known about the story anyway, since “local epidemiologist” Carla Lattanzi was a primary source.

  Kyle looked over at Ben.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  Ben locked his fingers underneath his seat. “Now or never.”

  Kyle jammed the accelerator, and the truck’s wheels spun dirt as they climbed the steep incline. He weaved in and out of saplings and drove right over the smallest ones. Ben could barely see ahead of them, and he bounced on the seat next to Kyle, who screamed and hollered, “Yee-haw!” Ben answered with a lame whoop. Ben checked over his shoulder for their precious cargo, strapped tight but probably bouncing around inside, though Kyle would remind him that human ash is indestructible and he needed to chill. Besides, it was too late to tell Kyle to stop. If he did stop, they could tip or get stuck in the mud. A couple of times he was sure they would die. The hill to the quarry seemed much steeper than it did when he hiked it, and he came to thinking about Mira, and Francesca and Connie, and the day they took Connie’s last hike. It wasn’t hard for Ben to understand how Connie had overexerted herself; perhaps she’d even run. He knew no one ran without being chased, or without a goal to reach at the top, and he wondered which of these it had been. Or did they have to convince her? He saw Connie that day on the ledge, looking like a rejected puppy, gazing at Ben with those wide-spaced eyes—“I thought, I mean, if you did like me, too, we might…”—so unconvincing on her own.

  Who had held the EpiPen while she struggled to breathe?

  Kyle hit a rock and Ben slammed his head against the roof. For a second, he saw black, and an electronic hum dulled the crashing noises of the truck tearing up the hill.

  Teenagewasteland blogger Grim Reaper, a.k.a. thirteen-year-old Tyler Peavey of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, blogging from his parents’ house to more than one million subscribers, had instituted a Countdown Clock on his home page wherein he ticked off the deaths of teenagers and children in Bismuth, Massachusetts. Ben wondered if he would be another statistic to the Grim Reaper, or if he’d make his connection to the sisters at all. It would depend, he imagined, on whether or not Kyle got out alive and completed their mission. Surely it would be a big story if they were discovered here, splayed on the ground next to the toppled truck, with their stolen goods locked in the stowaway trunk. They’d say he and Kyle were fetishists, necrophiliacs, whacked on drugs. Who would tell their story?

  Kyle shook Ben’s sore shoulder.

  “Ouch,” Ben murmured, pulling his arm away.

  “You smacked your head again. You gonna make it?”

  Ben blinked and rubbed the top of his skull. “Yeah, I’m good.”
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  “Then get out of the truck. We’re here.”

  Ben had slunk far down in the seat, and he shimmied upward, dazed, until he could see over the windshield hinge. Kyle had parked in the tiny clearing before the ledge. Ben knew if he looked backward, he might crap his pants, because going down meant jamming it into reverse, at least until they had enough room to clear a three-point turn. Kyle jumped down and strode to the back, shaking out his dead hand. Ben’s legs felt heavy, like the magnitude of the act had lodged in them.

  He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He began looking for excuses. “They said last night on the news they might drain it.”

  Kyle came back around to the front of the truck. “Your mother said it’s too expensive and it’ll never happen.”

  “What if they find out what we did, and then this place becomes a theme park, the way the cemetery is now?” Ben asked.

  “We’ll cover our tracks by hand,” Kyle replied.

  “What if it backfires on us? What if, since there’s nothing for them to look at in the cemetery, they start coming here because it’s the scene of the crime?”

  “The papers said the electrical fence project starts next week.”

  “Fine. But that’s three days from now.”

  “Dude…”

  “The gawkers might still come to the cemetery to see Connie.”

  “It’s different for Connie. She wanted the attention. You know that. In a way—”

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “Right. I won’t. Because we don’t have time.” Kyle checked the skyline. A squiggly red line glowed at the horizon. “It’s almost daylight. We do it or we don’t do it. Unless you want to take these babies home and hide them in your bedroom closet, we need to execute.”

  Ben looked over the swirling quarry water to the Boston skyline. Black night brightened into gunmetal as the sun stirred somewhere below. He slid over the seat and circled the truck on spent legs, back to the flatbed. Kyle followed and stood on the opposite side.

  Kyle smiled. “How do you want to do this?”

  “You take one, I take one,” Ben replied.

  The urns were pearlized white and identical, except for names and dates, and pristine, having been inside their individual protective vaults. The boys stood, paralyzed and awkward, as though they were at a school dance and faced with deciding which of the girls to dance with. Kyle cleared his throat and took charge, like he would at a school dance, being oldest and knowing both probably wanted to dance with him. He lifted the first urn and squinted. Earlier, they’d weighed a ton, but now they seemed lighter. Ben was unfazed by the discrepancy. He’d expected the quarry’s sense-warping magic to be at work on this night. The screw top was silver, with imprinted flowerwork and the words Loving Daughter, Mira M. Cillo.

  Kyle looked to Ben, who nodded and accepted the urn in his arms, then rested it at his feet. The second one Kyle pulled up read: Loving Daughter, Francesca M. Cillo.

  “You ready?” Ben murmured. He had been thinking about blond waves and thighs, bone shards and dust. His eyes stayed dry, but he could feel the familiar sag that had come to his face this last year, a frown weighting his cheeks.

  Kyle set Francesca’s urn aside and took a deep breath. He looked into Ben’s eyes, unflinching, the way no one had in a long time. “We’re doing the right thing, Ben.”

  “What if we’re not?”

  Kyle hefted Francesca’s urn to his chest, his arms wrapped around it. “She wanted someone to believe in her gift. We’re those people.” He turned the urn over and shined his flashlight on the bottom and a round, threaded plug. “And there she is.”

  Ben handed him the screwdriver and looked away. “I’m not sure I can watch. What if it breaks?”

  “It’s not”—Kyle grunted—“gonna”—he grunted again—“break.” The seal popped off with a suction noise.

  Ben reached around his neck and pulled from his shirt a small leather bag on a cord. At the same time, Kyle stuck his hand inside the urn and lifted out a plastic bag of ash. Ben held the leather pouch away from his chest and Kyle poured some of Francesca’s ashes inside. Ben closed it quickly and tucked the bag into his shirt. The pouch hung next to his heart. Ben supposed he had imagined it, but he felt the bag pulse.

  “What about you?” Ben asked, looking down, chin to chest.

  “I’m not greedy. She helped me already: I can’t ask for more,” Kyle said. “I hope she helps you get over what that bastard did. You deserve it, man.” Kyle replaced the bag and fitted the plug into the urn. “The sun’s coming up, and we gotta hit the road. We wanna be on the highway by five thirty if we’re gonna get to New York by noon. It’s time to say goodbye.”

  “They deserve to rest in peace,” Ben said stiffly, fighting tears.

  Kyle sniffed hard. “It’s what they would have wanted.” He carried Francesca to the fingertip of the ledge. When Ben didn’t move, Kyle lifted Mira. When Ben finally raised his eyes, he saw the urns standing side by side on the edge, glowing amphorae from another age.

  “Are you ready?” Kyle said.

  Ben looked at Kyle’s hand, dangling at his side. “This might be your last chance at fixing your hand.”

  Kyle considered his crooked hand in the moonlight. “Nah. I told you, dude. This isn’t about me.”

  Ben nodded. In that moment, he knew that even if he was like the others, Kyle was not.

  Kyle moved forward and lifted Francesca’s urn. He crouched, brushing his lips lightly over the silver tracings, and murmured thanks. He stood and held her aloft for a moment before letting go.

  Ben waited for the splash. He lifted Mira’s urn and held it high, and did not trace the words with his fingertips, or press it to his cheek, or kiss its smooth face. He did none of these things: he only let it go. A whoosh of air, and the urn became small until it was enveloped by the platinum mist that hung above the water, then a fast, neat plop.

  Kyle stepped back and rested his hands on his hips. “Now there’s nothing to look at.”

  The sun broke over the horizon. Kyle gazed toward the city, and farther, then up at the sky, his throat bare to the heavens, where two glittering emerald birds circled, one following the other, swirling up and out of the quarry.

  Ben checked the still water below. Not a ripple, no evidence of a break. The quarry had absorbed the girls, delivering them to a place where they would remain untouched by hands, and unbroken by hearts.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My novels begin with my own moments of sudden discovery. Beautiful Broken Girls is inspired by the work of Virginia Woolf, who gave my teenage self the words, finally, to describe the male gaze.

  Speaking of the teenage self, thanks are owed to Gary, for everything, but especially for his younger years, which I mined shamelessly for this novel. Also, I used the boys I have known who are now men, and will never recognize themselves here. Thanks also to the members of The Circle of Silence, in particular, Chrissy Byrnes Conley, who would say, “This is going in your novel someday.” It all did.

  Thanks to Sal Caraviello, Saint Mary’s spiritual director and all-round marvelous person, on whom Nick Falso is not based.

  I am grateful to my agent, Sara Crowe, for her early guidance. You can, in fact, have too many sisters. This is largely a novel about a town, and it is better for the excellent eye and sharp mind of Larisa Dodge, who owns the strongest sense of place of any writer I know.

  Thanks to my personal saints at Macmillan, Morgan Dubin and Kallam McKay, who champion my work early and often. And to Candace Gatti, who wields her PR wizardry and local connections on my behalf, unasked, every single time.

  Thanks to Elizabeth H. Clark for her breathtaking cover design. I didn’t think you could top After the Woods. I was wrong.

  Thanks to Janine O’Malley. You are, as Eddie would say, “one of the good ones.” Your editing of this unusual novel was so respectful and smart. I would not have entrusted it to anyone else’s hands.

  Finally, Dad, thank
you for a lifetime of changing my casino chips into cash. I am rich for being your daughter.

  ALSO BY KIM SAVAGE

  After the Woods

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kim Savage was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and received her degree in English from Stonehill College. She lives with her husband and three children north of Boston, Massachusetts. After the Woods is her debut novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  PART 1 • Palm

  PART 2 • Hair

  PART 3 • Chest

  PART 4 • Cheek

  PART 5 • Lips

  PART 6 • Throat

  PART 7 • Heart

  PART 8 • Ash

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALSO BY KIM SAVAGE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010