Broken Things

by Lauren Oliver

  We do. Of course we do. Summer was twice as alive as other people.

  I fumble for a way to find out what I want to know—an explanation for all those red marks on the page, for the fact that Summer seemingly couldn’t write. “What do you mean by difficult? You mean she was having trouble?”

  Ms. Gray tilts her head to one side, giving her the look of a bird that has just spotted a crumb. “Can I ask why you want to know?”

  I glance over at Brynn. We should have agreed on a story in advance. Now I can’t think of a single excuse.

  Luckily, Abby comes to the rescue. “We want to celebrate the real Summer. The Summer nobody knew. That’s the point of the memory book.”

  “Were you a friend of hers too?” Ms. Gray asks. Abby nods, and I pray Ms. Gray won’t know the difference. Apparently she doesn’t, because she goes on, “I think I remember more than I would have otherwise, given . . .” She gestures helplessly. “She was very enthusiastic about the things that came easily to her. She loved to talk about the reading we did. And she was a great reader. A very slow reader, but she truly loved it. But with other aspects of the class, she struggled.”

  “Writing,” I say, remembering her marked-up quiz and feeling a tickling pressure all along my spine.

  Ms. Gray nods, but I can tell we’re losing her attention. The marching band is breaking formation again. She keeps casting worried glances over one shoulder. “She was badly dyslexic,” she says. “It slowed her reading and made it hard for her to write. She was very, very frustrated. I think she was embarrassed, too. I understand she’d bounced around quite a bit.” Ms. Gray shrugs. “Other than that, I never got much of a sense of her. I tried to help her, you know. I gave her extra time on the homework and on our quizzes. I suggested she go speak to her guidance counselor or get help from the Tutoring Center. She refused. She said she wasn’t stupid.” Ms. Gray spreads her hands. “Well, of course that wasn’t what I’d been implying. But afterward she wouldn’t listen to me, no matter what I suggested.” This time her smile is anemic and barely reaches her eyes. “She was a sweet girl. She tried hard—too hard, in certain ways. She was prone to . . . exaggerating. Not lying, exactly, but making things up. Colin, get back in line.” This to a little kid carrying a tuba practically as big as he is.

  “What’s the difference?” Abby asks, genuinely curious.

  Ms. Gray turns back to us, squinting. “I always think of lying as a desire to hide the truth. But with Summer . . . I had the feeling she wanted to remake the truth. Just invent a whole new one.”

  There’s a beat of silence. Even though Brynn doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at me, I know we must be thinking the same thing. We understand. We remember. I have the sudden, stupid urge to reach out and grab Brynn’s hand, but of course I don’t.

  Ms. Gray shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing you were looking for.”

  “That’s okay,” I say quickly. “Every little bit helps. Thanks, Ms. Gray.”

  She makes a face as several flute players begin to compete over who can blow the loudest, shrillest, most obnoxious sound. “Sorry. I should get these monsters up the hill. The parade will be starting any second.”

  But even as we’re turning away, she calls us back.

  “You know, Summer did get help eventually,” she says slowly, as if she’s not really sure she should be speaking and so she’s just letting the words fall out on their own. “She found a boy to tutor her. I might not even have remembered except . . . well. I think the idea is that they became close. Very close.”

  The sun blinks out. I hold my breath. I know what she’s going to say. Of course I do.

  But Brynn still makes her say it.

  “Who?” Brynn asks.

  “Owen,” she says, almost apologetically. “Owen Waldmann.”

  Wishes really did come true in Lovelorn. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who was doing the wishing.

  —From Return to Lovelorn by Summer Marks, Brynn McNally, and Mia Ferguson

  Mia

  Now

  Back in the car, Brynn puts her feet up on the center console and leans back, crossing her arms. “Owen,” she mutters. “Always Owen.”

  “Don’t,” I say.

  Abby’s tufting her hair using the rearview mirror. “Who’s Owen?”

  “Owen,” Brynn says, “was Summer’s boyfriend.”

  “They were never together,” I say quickly.

  “Mia was in love with him,” Brynn continues, as though I haven’t even spoken, with infuriating matter-of-factness, as if she’s explaining to a child that the sky is blue. “That’s why she never wanted to believe he was guilty.”

  “And Brynn was in love with Summer,” I say. My voice is shrill. “That’s why Brynn always wanted to believe he was.” I don’t have to turn around to feel Brynn glaring at me. “And in case you’ve forgotten, the cops looked at him. He was suspect one.” I grip the steering wheel tightly, feeling small starburst explosions of pain and color behind my eyelids—a sure sign of a developing migraine. I breathe deep through my nose, willing away memories of Owen—his lopsided smile and poky elbows and hair the color of new flame and the way he used to call me Macaroni. All the other kids made fun of him, but he didn’t even care. He moved through the halls as if he was on a boat, tethered to something bigger and better, a future away from here. “He was arrested and released. They never even charged him.”

  “Because his dad’s rich and the cops screwed up,” Brynn says. “They took his blood off Summer’s clothing.”

  “That was never proven,” I say quickly.

  “I’m telling you, he’s hiding something. He’s been hiding something for years.” Now she leans forward. “He has no alibi for the day she was killed. He said he was home sick, but he wasn’t. Someone remembered seeing him in town.” She shakes her head, making a noise of disgust.

  “He wasn’t in the woods,” I say, this time quieter. My throat goes unexpectedly tight. “I would have seen. I would have—” I stop myself from saying I would have known. Of course, that sounds ridiculous, and it’s obviously untrue. Except that for years I did have an Owen Waldmann sixth sense, a weird ability to know where he would turn up and when. I could decipher his moods even when he didn’t say a word to me. We could reach each other’s thoughts just by exchanging a single look.

  Owen and I had been friends since second grade, when he was so pale people called him Casper, or Nosebleed because of all the times he had to run out of class with his nose plugged up with tissues, and I was so shy no one called me anything at all. It sounds crazy, but I sometimes wished I had a nickname, even an obnoxious one, because it would mean that I existed, that someone had noticed me.

  Owen and I sat next to each other in art class. One day, Mr. Hinckel was teaching us about found art by making us glue random bits of everyday items—Q-tips and cotton balls; crumpled receipts and rubber bands; paper clips and pen caps—to stiff construction paper, and then dye it and decorate it how we wanted. I made a portrait out of dried macaroni. The whole damn class, I sat there gluing macaroni in place, hardly looking up, hardly breathing. I must have looked psychotic. But when the bell rang, I saw Owen was looking at me, smiling. He had a great smile. It was crooked: the right side of his mouth always floated up an extra inch or two.

  “Hey, Macaroni,” he said. “That’s pretty good.”

  That was it: that’s how it started. The next day, when he saw me in the lunchroom, he waved. “Hey, Macaroni. How ya doing?”

  Maybe he was being mean. Maybe not. But I loved it. Macaroni gave me something to look forward to. Macaroni meant inside joke, and inside joke meant friend.

  And we did become friends—slowly, by increments, so that it felt just as easy as standing still. On the weekends or after school I’d look out the window and see him straddling his bike, peering up from the street toward my window, his face like a pale, upturned moon, and I’d go fl
ying out of the house to meet him. We filmed funny videos and posted them to a private YouTube channel. We played kickball on his front lawn and sprawled out in his father’s garden, head to head, picking shapes out of the clouds.

  In fifth grade, we found a tree house in the woods behind his house. Owen was having a bad year—he was always fighting with his dad, even then, and at school people started to spread rumors that he carried knives, that he cut up small animals, that he would someday come to class with a bomb in his bag. We outfitted the tree house with flashlights and a sleeping bag, junk food and even a battery-operated fan, so Owen could go there whenever he didn’t feel like being at home. One time, we got caught together during a rainstorm. We huddled together in the sleeping bag, practically touching noses.

  The kids at school spread new rumors. Owen was a sex maniac. I was a slut. Everyone who saw us together made kissy noises or gross hand gestures, the way kids who are starting to outgrow being kids always do. When are you going to hit that, Owen? Hey, Mia. Have you and Owen done it yet? I always pretended to be embarrassed—I was embarrassed—but a teeny, tiny part of me was glad. I wasn’t invisible anymore. I wasn’t alone. I had Owen. Casper, Nosebleed, serial killer in the making. Still: mine. The boy with the big ideas and the crooked smile, the boy I could talk to about everything.

  Still, I pretended I never thought about him that way. Owen? You think I like Owen? Ew. Never in a million years. And Owen never said anything at all, just smiled his lopsided smile and shook his head. We didn’t have to say it. We both knew.

  Of course we were meant for each other. Of course we would be together someday. Of course he would be my first kiss and I would be his. We were just waiting, letting it unfold, luxuriating in it, like staying in bed on a Sunday knowing there’s absolutely no place you have to be.

  Then Summer came.

  “If you’re so convinced Romeo had nothing to do with it,” Brynn says, “why don’t you go ask him why he acted like such a nutcase afterward?”

  “Sure. I’ll just head off to London and go around knocking on doors,” I snap back. “Can’t be that hard in a city of eight million.”

  I catch Brynn’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She’s making the funniest expression, as if she’s just taken a sip of spoiled milk and is too polite to spit it out.

  “What?” I say. “What is it?”

  “He’s back,” she says, after a beat. “I saw him.”

  “Owen’s back,” I repeat. As if saying the words aloud will help me understand. Brynn nods. “And you saw him.” She nods again. I throw the car into reverse, filled with a desperate urge to move, to go, to drive. Otherwise I’ll lose it. “When were you planning to tell me?”

  “I just did,” she points out.

  “After I brought it up,” I say. I’ve thought about Owen a thousand times—I’ve had to try hard not to think about him—but never expected to see him again, or even have the chance. Last I heard he was in boarding school in England. For years, there have been rumors that the Waldmann house is for sale.

  Brynn snorts, tossing her bangs out of her eyes, like a horse. “I only saw him yesterday,” she says. “Besides, you can’t tell me you really want to see him after everything that happened. You’re not still in love with him, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I say quickly, pressing hard on the accelerator so the car leaps forward, and Abby slams back against her seat and shoots me an injured look.

  “See?” Brynn says, shrugging, as if it’s no big deal and she’s been doing me a favor. “I was just protecting you.”

  I’m so angry that for a second I can’t speak. The worst thing about it is that Brynn did used to protect me. When I spaced out in the locker room once and Lily Jones accused me of staring at her tits, Brynn piped up, “What tits?” and suddenly everyone was laughing at Lily, not me. When I was sad about my parents’ divorce, she’d do funny impressions of anyone she could think of to get me to laugh.

  When Summer died, all of that died with her.

  Brynn stuck up for me to the cops, sure—she knew I had nothing to do with it—but it was as if she blamed me anyway.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” I say, “I’m doing fine. I’ve been doing fine without you for the past five years.”

  Brynn mutters just loud enough for me to hear, “Doesn’t seem like it.”

  “Excuse me,” I say, stepping harder on the gas and barely missing a boy on a skateboard who gives me the finger. “I don’t think you’re one to judge.”

  “Hey, Brynn,” Abby jumps in before the fight can escalate. “Do you want us to swing by the hospital or something? So you can say hi to your mom?”

  Instantly, I feel terrible: I’d completely forgotten about Brynn’s mom and her accident. I take a deep breath, imagining my anger as a shadow, imagining it driven away by a spotlight. “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll drop you anywhere you need to go.”

  But Brynn only looks furious. “I can’t believe you,” she says finally, her voice tight as a wire. “I can’t believe you would use my mom against me. You would use her to get rid of me.”

  “I’m not trying to get rid of anyone,” I say. “I thought—”

  “Well, don’t think,” Brynn snaps. “Don’t think about my mom, or about me. I can take care of myself,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

  “She was just trying to help,” Abby says.

  Brynn’s silent for a second, fiddling with her phone. When she looks up again, her face has gone blank. Not angry, but just completely devoid of expression, as if someone has shuttered her eyes. “You know what, actually?” Her voice, too, is toneless. “Drop me off at Toast. I’ll meet my sister there. We’re going to visit my mom together.”

  I try to catch her eye in the rearview mirror, but she won’t look at me. “How is your sister?” I ask, instead of all the questions I really want to ask, like When did you talk to your sister? Why are you pretending to text when your phone is off?

  “Fine,” she says, staring out the window. A muscle flexes in her jaw like a heartbeat. “It’s like you said. We’re all doing just fine.”

  Brynn

  Now

  After Mia drops me off, I track exactly five minutes across the face of an enormous clock behind the juice machine, then duck out of Toast again, before the barista side-eyeing me can harass me about placing an order. For half a second, I feel guilty about ditching out on an imaginary date with my sister to visit my mom in her imaginary hospital room.

  That’s the problem with lies. They aren’t solid. They melt, and seep, and leak into the truth. And sooner or later, everything’s just a muddle.

  It isn’t hard to track down Jake Ginsky’s address. That’s the promise of a place like Twin Lakes. No one’s ever really a stranger. Which means: there’s no place to hide.

  Ginsky’s mom ran an acupuncture and massage therapy business out of a converted room above their garage; I remember because once Summer and I had a fight about it. It was December of seventh grade, and surprisingly warm: I remember we strung Christmas lights on the house in T-shirts that year.

  Summer told me Jake had told her he’d give her a massage one day after school, and when I made a joke about whether she’d end up handcuffed to a radiator in the basement, she scowled.

  “Jake’s not like that,” she insisted. “He told me he wants me to be his girlfriend.”

  “That’s what all guys say,” I responded.

  And she tilted her head back to narrow her eyes at me, just like Hank Ball did. “How would you know?” she said. Then she sighed and stepped closer to me, staring up at me through her lashes now. “I’ll make you a deal. I won’t go to Jake’s. But then you have to give me a massage.” And, just to bug me, she made a show of touching her shoulders, rolling her neck, running her fingers along the sharp promise of her clavicle.‎ ‎

  “What are you doing?” I wanted to look away. I knew she was just messing with me. But I couldn’t. Her T-shirt was old, washed practically transpar
ent, and I could see the dark edge of her bra beneath it.

  “Come on,” she said, and laughed when I tried to pull away from her. “It’s not hard. All you have to do is touch me. . . .”

  Katharine Ginsky Massage still operates out of Jake Ginsky’s house, and the address is listed right on the website. But it doesn’t occur to me until I spot the Volvo with the University of Vermont sticker that Jake Ginsky must have graduated by now. Somehow, in my head, everyone’s simply stuck, turning like a car wheel through a slurp of mud.

  But I ring the doorbell anyway. It’s summertime. And I’m here. Might as well keep pedaling the gas.

  Someone’s home—I can hear a baseball game going inside. Soon enough I hear footsteps cross to the door, and at the last second I get the urge to bolt.

  But it’s too late. The door is opening already.

  I remember Jake Ginsky as a skinny kid with teeth just a little too long for his mouth and the skulking look of a raccoon you surprise going through your garbage. Five years later, he’s practically unrecognizable. It looks like someone’s taken an air hose to his mouth and inflated him: six foot four, biceps the size of my thighs, a jaw that looks like a shovel. Even his beard is overgrown.

  He freezes. For a second he looks like he’s thinking about slamming the door shut. “I heard you were in rehab,” he says. Then: “What are you doing here?”

  His voice is flat. Not hostile, exactly, but definitely not friendly.

  “Part of my twelve-step program. I’m on number nine. Make amends to all those you’ve wronged. Heard of it?”

  Jake squints like my resolution is all fuzzy. “You’re here to apologize to me?”

  I shake my head. “Hell no. I’m here so you can apologize to me.”

  He lets out a sharp bark of laughter. Maybe he thinks I’m kidding. But after a second, the smile swirls right off his face, bottoming out in a look of disbelief. “Wait—you’re serious?”

  I let a beat of silence pass so that he knows I am. Then I say, “Did you kill Summer?” No point in dancing around the dead elephant in the room.