Broken Things

by Lauren Oliver

  He barely glances up to look at us. “Help you?” is what he says. I might even think he doesn’t know who we are. But that’s impossible.

  Everyone knows who we are—or who they think we are, at least.

  Mia takes up Abby’s spiel about the spring cleaning and the mouthpiece. I have to hand it to her. She used to be a shit liar. But she’s doing a passable job.

  Hank just keeps on working. His fingers—stumpy with age and arthritis—move with surprising grace. I try to imagine those fingers holding on to a rock, bashing Summer’s head with it. But all I see—all I’ve ever seen—is a shadow, clinging to her back like some kind of horrible cloak, pouring itself down her throat when she tries to scream.

  “Might’ve come off one of my horns,” he says at last. “Doesn’t matter now, though, does it? Ain’t missed it in five years. You can go on and trash it.” He straightens up at last, wiping his hands on his jeans. But he stays seated. “We don’t keep nothing she had her hands on around here, anyway. Barbara doesn’t like it. Might as well toss it like all the rest. Besides.” His eyes are mud brown, nested under enormous eyebrows like insects burrowing for cover. “Can’t believe you came all the way out here because of some old junk like that.”

  And suddenly I remember that moment in the bathroom when I had my pants around my ankles. I remember a creak outside the door and seeing the wink of an eye at the keyhole. Blue.

  “Did you ever hear Summer mention a Lillian Harding?” I ask. Strangely, the fact that it wasn’t him all those years ago—that it must have been Summer, doing it as a joke or to freak me out, or both—makes me want to pin the murder on Mr. Ball even more, not less. I watch closely for his reaction, but he doesn’t even blink.

  “Never had any girls coming round here for Summer except for you,” he says. “Had to run off some of those football boys a few times, though. Summer had gone and turned those boys’ heads. They were at each other’s throats, fighting over her like she was a trophy. Lost more than a game or two because of it, I bet.” He shook his head. “I told her she shouldn’t be hanging with older boys like that. What’d she think they wanted from her, anyway? I told her she would get into damn trouble. And look. Look what happened.‎” He speaks with sudden viciousness, and Mia goes tense beside me. I have an old urge to take her hand, to tell her it’ll be okay. But Mia’s not my responsibility anymore. “She went and got herself killed.”

  “You’re acting like it was her fault,” I say. “Like you think she deserved it.”

  He stands up then. He plants both hands on his workbench and heaves up to his feet. For a second, I’m half-afraid he’ll come at me.

  But he just limps slowly out into the sunshine. His left foot drags slightly when he walks. Mr. Ball, like his wife, seems to have aged two decades in the past five years.

  “Nah, she didn’t deserve it,” he says, in a softer voice. “It wasn’t her fault, neither. She’d had it rough. Her mama pretty much booted her curbside when money ran tight for drugs. And she’d been bounced around some bad places. Some real bad places, with some real bad people.”

  A memory overwhelms me: Summer, looking up at me calmly, while her cheek reddened with the impact of my fist. It was the first and only time I’d ever hit her. It was the first and only time I’d ever hit anyone.

  “But she didn’t make it easier on herself, that’s for sure,” he continues. “Her lying and stealing. Running around with those boys. Jake and Heath and that boy Owen they looked at and God knows who else. Still. We thought if we gave her a stable home . . .”

  “Sure,” I say, crossing my arms. The cat is still slinking around the shadows, and I don’t like the look of it. It reminds me a lot of their old cat, Bandit; Summer hated that cat with a passion. “And spied on her, and looked through her email, and kept her basically on lockdown . . .”

  Mia shoots me a look and mutters, “Brynn.” But I don’t care. Someone killed Summer. Someone dragged her into a stone circle and made her into a sacrifice. And I’m sick of seeing the killer’s face only in my dreams, a gaping hole that turns to fog as soon as I wake up.

  “She needed rules. She needed structure. She’d been running wild her whole life. Never had anyone give a shit about where she was or who she talked to. You think that’s what caring for people is all about? Letting them do whatever they want?”‎ He tilts his head back to look down at me, and I think of how Summer used to do the same thing, even though I was two inches taller. And isn’t that, after all, what we did with Summer? Didn’t we let her do whatever she wanted—to us, to everyone? “You can think what you want. But we cared for that girl. We would have kept her. We tried to.”

  The Balls’ new cat slinks out into a patch of sunshine and rolls down into the dirt. Watching me. Tail lashing.

  “I was up in Burlington the day she died, filling out paperwork for her adoption.” This he says so quietly I nearly miss it. “We were going to tell her that night.”

  No wonder the police never looked at Mr. Ball. I feel like an idiot. Worse. I feel like a zero. I can tell Mia does, too. Her skin is the color of old cheese. Even Abby looks sheepish.

  “Sorry for wasting your time.” Mia can hardly speak above a whisper. She won’t look at me.

  “That’s all right.” Mr. Ball squints at us. Then he says, “You know, I always felt kind of sorry for you two. For what it’s worth, I always knew you didn’t do it. Not a chance.”

  My whole body goes airless, like the words have knocked away my breath.

  “She really had you wrapped around her finger, didn’t she?” He means both of us, I’m sure, but he’s looking straight at me when he says it. “Well. That’s just how she was.”

  For a long, long second, we just stare at each other. Then, finally, he shifts his eyes to Mia.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you. But you know what they say about the sleeping dogs.” He smiles sadly. “Best to let them lie.”

  Gregor was the best tour guide Ava, Ashleigh, and Audrey could have asked for. He was extraordinarily proud of Lovelorn and knew its history dating back to the time of the Original Twin Fairies, who had so fought over the world they’d torn it in two and created earth and sky.

  “What do those flowers mean?” Audrey pointed to a cottage, in front of which was growing a single white lily. It was the fourth time she had seen such a flower.

  “The lily is a mark of respect,” he said. “It means that family has produced a Savior—a child, you know, for the Shadow.”

  —From The Way into Lovelorn by Georgia C. Wells

  Brynn

  Now

  “Whoa.” That’s the first, and only, thing I can say when Mia opens her front door.

  Two pink spots appear in her cheeks. “I told you it was messy,” she says, righting a brass candlestick that has coasted, surfer-style, over a wave of loose papers on the foyer table and landed on its side.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t tell me it was”—seeing Mia’s face, I stop myself at the last second from saying crazy—“this messy,” I finish.

  When we were younger, I liked Mia’s house. Loved it, even. The bookshelves had actual books on them, as well as funny wooden statues of chickens wearing clothing and playing guitars. Napkins—real cloth napkins—poked out of drawers. There were little collections of rose quartz just sitting around glowing on windowsills. Half the stuff Mia’s family owned I didn’t even have a name for—it all sounded like stuff that could have come from an old sci-fi movie. Decanter! Abacus! Trivet! Molecular transporter! And Mia’s mom was always shopping for new things. But this is collecting on crack. This looks like every single item they used to have had seven babies.

  “Think of the house as a work in progress,” Abby says as we head to the stairs, squeezing down a ribbon of empty space lined on either side by accumulated junk. “By next week, this place is going to look like a Zen temple.”

  Somehow I doubt it. Even the stairs are piled with crap, although in some places I see evidence that Mia has, in fac
t, been cleaning, in the form of discolored portions of carpet.

  “And it’s temporary.” Mia is still stiff-backed, obviously offended. She won’t look at me. “Just for the night, right?”

  “Right,” I say quickly. That’s what I told her: that tomorrow, if my mom isn’t out of the hospital, my sister will come for me. That I’ll be out of her hair.

  The biggest problem with lies? They breed. Mia’s room, in contrast to the rest of the house, could double as an airport waiting lounge. The carpet is beige and smells like stain remover. Her desk is spotless except for an iPad and a mason jar she’s using to hold pens. Her bedspread is pale pink. Her headboard is blocky. There isn’t a single shoe, coin, or stray sock on the floor.

  But certain things—certain tiny things—haven’t changed, like the lace curtains that cut the sunshine into patterns and the parade of scented candles on the bookshelf above Mia’s bed. The mug on her bedside table, which says Reading Is Sexy, where she keeps her glasses. A lamp in the shape of a ballet dancer.

  “What is it now?” When Mia speaks, I realize I’ve been standing there in the doorway, unmoving, for at least five seconds.

  “Nothing.” Feeling choked up, I dump my duffel bag on the floor and bend over, pretending to examine the few photos neatly framed and mounted on her wall. Almost every picture is of Mia and Abby, most of them in the same room—which, from the explosive zebra wallpaper, hot-pink curtains, and steampunk posters, I assume is Abby’s. Abby and Mia dressed up in feather boas and top hats. Abby and Mia lying together on a bed. Abby and Mia dressed in identical T-shirts. I feel a stab of jealousy—I haven’t been that close to anyone in a long time. I haven’t even been that close to my girlfriends.

  In the last picture, taken in front of Mount Independence, a woman with wispy brown hair is sandwiched between them.

  “Who’s that?” I ask, pointing.

  “Oh.” Mia looks embarrassed. “That’s Ms. Pinner, our tutor.” She sits down on the bed. Everything Mia does, every move Mia makes, looks graceful and deliberate. This is not a girl who flops, slouches, slinks, or sprawls. This is a girl who sits, minces, prances, and pivots. I swear, I’ve never even heard her burp. “Mom tried busing me to St. Mary’s, thinking it would help to get away. It didn’t. Everyone called me a witch and put old tuna sandwiches in my locker and stuff. I begged her to homeschool me and finally she said yes. Abby and I take classes together, when she’s not on the road.”

  Mia never had to go back to Twin Lakes Collective. Just like Owen, she split. She never had to sit in the same classrooms we’d sat in with Summer, or eat alone in the cafeteria, at the table we’d once sat at together. There was only one good thing about being a supposed killer: people pretty much stayed out of my way. Of course, that meant I had no friends, either. I wonder what Mia would say if she knew I’m not even sure what grade I’m in.

  “What’s your excuse?” I say, turning to Abby.

  She wrestles out a packet of Twizzlers from her bag. “Too famous,” she says casually. She tears open the package with her teeth. “The cons really mess with a regular school schedule. Plus I’m always booking photo shoots and stuff.”

  I stare at her. “I thought models were thin,” I say.

  “Oh, no. We come in all different sizes, shapes, and colors.” She raises her eyebrows. Her hair is dyed in stripes of platinum blond and purple, but her eyebrows are dark brown and perfectly shaped, like little crescent moons. “Just like murderers, I guess.”

  I tense up. “I’m not a murderer.”

  “If you say so.” Abby shrugs.

  I look to Mia for help, but she is on her hands and knees, rooting for something underneath the bed.

  Luckily, at that moment, Mia emerges, holding a thick, dust-covered photo album. I recognize it immediately. It’s her Nerd Notebook. Mia has been saving every single aced quiz, glowing progress report, successful art project, or A-plus essay since she was in kindergarten. Everything goes in her Nerd Notebook.

  Or everything used to. From the dusty look of the cover, it seems she stopped keeping track of all her accomplishments. For some reason, that makes me sad.

  “I’m telling you, the answer’s in the book,” Mia says. “In the book, and in all the stuff we wrote in Return to Lovelorn.”

  “You guys wrote a sequel?” Abby actually sounds impressed. I wonder how much she knows about the original story. Weirdly, I feel another quick twinge of jealousy—Mia’s been sharing things with Abby. Mia has someone to share things with.

  “It was fan fic. Summer was mostly writing it,” Mia says, and then immediately corrects herself. “Or—we thought she was. But now I think she had help.”

  “Right. From the same person who put up that wallpaper. The same person who wanted Lovelorn to be real.” Abby frowns, pulling at her bangs, which are straight, curtain-like, fifties-dominatrix style. “From the Shadow.”

  “The Shadow . . . ,” Mia repeats, chewing on her lip, like she does. She twists around in her seat to face me. “You know, you might be onto something. Think about it. Summer was obsessed with the Shadow. That’s the whole reason she wanted to write the sequel. To tell the Shadow’s story.”

  “And to fix the ending of Book One,” I point out.

  “And to fix the ending of Book One,” Mia admits.

  “Why?” Abby asks. “What’s wrong with the ending?”

  “What’s wrong with the ending is that it doesn’t end,” I say. “The book cuts off in the middle of a sentence. It’s crazy. It’s like Wells was writing and someone came and decapitated her.”

  Mia gives me a look, like, let’s not start that now. “My point is Summer was afraid of the Shadow. That’s why she wanted to do the sacrifice. To give him something that would keep him happy,” she explains, turning to Abby. “A kind of gift. She thought it would keep the Shadow away.”

  When Mia looks at me, the memory of that day rises up suddenly between us: of coming up over the hill into the long field, of seeing Summer clutching what we thought was a rag to her chest, her dress nipping around her knees.

  “If someone was frightening her in real life, and she didn’t know how else to express it . . . ,” Abby trails off.

  I’m struggling to think through it all. My brain keeps punt-kicking back the obvious conclusion. Maybe it’s all the time I’ve spent around addicts: I’ve gotten supergood at denial. The first step is admitting you have a problem. “You think her killer was helping her write the story,” I finally force out, not a question but a statement. “You think they left . . . clues.”

  “It’s possible.” Abby thumbs her glasses up her nose. “Authors unconsciously write themselves into their books. They transform familiar places into fictional landscapes. It’s the same way when we picture aliens, we imagine they’ll look like us. Psychologists call it ‘transference.’”

  “Thanks, Wikipedia,” I say.

  “It’s not just possible. It’s probable,” Mia says. “Think about it. We took inspiration from real people all the time. That’s how we came up with the Ogre, isn’t it? You wanted to write in Mr. Dudley after he busted you for cheating.”

  “I wasn’t cheating,” I say. “I was telling Kyle Hanning to stop mouth-breathing down my neck.”

  “Whatever.” Mia rolls her eyes. “Someone put that wallpaper up. Someone made the clubhouse. And someone tore it down overnight. We didn’t make it up. It was real.” She knots her fingers in her lap, and I realize then that she needs it to be true. She needs not just to be innocent, but to know who’s guilty, to prove it.

  Maybe I need it, too. To move on. To be free.

  Here’s another little thing they tell you in recovery: Let go or be dragged.

  “Okay,” I say, and Mia exhales, as if she’s been holding her breath. “Okay,” I repeat. “But if there are clues in the fan fic, what good does that do? You heard what Mr. Ball said. He trashed everything the cops didn’t take. It’s all gone.”

  Mia shakes her head. Her eyes flicker. For
a second, I think she’s going to smile. “Not all of it,” she says. She sits cross-legged on the floor, heaves the binder into her lap, and begins to page through it. “Summer never let us keep Return to Lovelorn,” she explains to Abby. “She always had to be in charge. There was a single copy, a notebook stuffed with a million loose pages, some of them typed up, some of them written out by hand.”

  “Wow.” Abby wrinkles her nose as Mia keeps flipping through warped pages plastered with old pop quizzes and papers marked with lots of stickers. “That’s so pre-technology of you.”

  “The first Lovelorn was written by hand in the 1960s,” Mia says. “Summer thought it was more authentic. Besides, she had to share a computer with her foster family, and they were always spying on her.”

  “She even thought they’d trained their cat to read,” I say, and then wish I hadn’t, because Mia flinches.

  She says, more quietly, “She wanted to keep Lovelorn private. She wanted to keep it for us.”

  “We thought she did, anyway,” I correct her. But Owen knew, I almost add. Mia told him everything. He knew we liked to play. But I don’t have to say the words out loud. His name hovers there between us, like a bad smell, like the aftermath of a rude remark. His name is always there, threaded into the mystery of what happened, of all the things we still don’t know.

  Mia shifts away from me. “Anyway, the point is, Summer kept the notebook at all times. If either of us wrote something, we had to give it to Summer for her approval. If she liked it, she’d add it to the notebook.”

  I take a seat on Mia’s bed, ignoring the way Mia frowns at me, like I might contaminate her bedspread. I probably will. I stink. “Summer was obsessive. She thought we might even be able to have it published. It seems stupid now.” Mia’s comforter is pale pink and patterned with loops and curlicues. Some of the stitching is coming undone, and I pluck at a thread with my fingers, wishing the past was like that—that you could just pull and pull until it unraveled and you could start over.