Broken Things

by Lauren Oliver

  It’s the psalm that was attached to the last arrangement, too. Could it be from the same person? Purple carnations were Summer’s favorite flowers. Whoever placed them here must have known her—must have known her well.

  I stand up, and the ground seesaws a little. The bad feeling is back, not a minor note but a full-on chorus, coupled now with the sense that I’m missing or forgetting something.

  Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .

  Through the valley of the Shadow . . .

  The Shadow.

  Even though I haven’t moved, I feel breathless. Someone was wearing a carnation at Summer’s memorial—I noticed it then but didn’t make the connection I should have. Who was it?

  I close my eyes, trying to call up my memories of that day, but all I see is the crack of Jake’s fist against Owen’s face, and Brynn shouting, the way the crowd started flowing down toward us like a multicolored tide. People pressing us from all sides, whispers building, and then through the crowd, our savior, one hand outstretched, eyes huge behind her glasses—

  A twig cracks in the woods behind me. A footstep.

  I spin around, swallowing a scream.

  Ms. Gray doesn’t look surprised to see me. She just looks tired. “Hello,” she says.

  Mia

  Then

  Brynn said to run and so I ran—hurtling through the trees, my heart trying to scream out of my throat, going so loud it overwhelmed the distant sounds of shouting and that scream, that one long terrible scream (praying for it to be Summer, and not Brynn). When I finally stopped it was because I was back on the road, back on the safety of the road, and a car was bearing down on me, driver leaning on his horn—a driver who later told the police about the girl who’d hurtled out from Brickhouse Lane in front of his car, a girl wild-eyed and crying, less than a quarter mile from where Summer would later be found by an off-duty firefighter who’d been fishing all afternoon in a nearby creek, her neck crusty with blood, her blue eyes reflecting the slow drift of the clouds.

  “It’s over, isn’t it?” Audrey said, panting, staring at the place where the Shadow had curled and shriveled into nothing, leaving a patch of bare dirt instead. “It’s really and truly over.”

  Ashleigh put an arm around her. “Let’s hope so,” she said.

  —From The Way into Lovelorn by Georgia C. Wells

  Brynn

  Now

  Heath Moore’s house is disappointingly normal, considering it contains a lizard-disguised-as-a-human. Maybe I was expecting it to be molting. At least a Beware the Sub-Intelligent, Over-Testosteroned Teenage Boy sign or two. But it’s just a house, just a normal street, basketball hoop in the driveway and no signs of the subspecies lurking inside.

  Heath answers the door, thank God. Not surprising, given that it’s a Tuesday, his parents probably work, and he is a slug who does nothing but suction the life and goodness out of the world, but still. A good sign.

  For a second he just stands there gaping at me, so I can see his fat tongue.

  “I’m here to talk about Summer,” I say, which makes him shut his mouth real quick. I don’t wait for him to invite me in—I’d be waiting awhile—and push past him into the house. Weird that such a nice house could birth such a nasty little toad sprocket. In the living room, a dog that looks like an oversize fur ball is yapping in a dog bed next to a coffee table cluttered with family photos.

  He watches me sullenly, keeping a good eight feet between us, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Not so brave now that he doesn’t have the two Frankenstein twins as backup. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” He lifts his chin. “And I had an alibi, you know.”

  “No, you didn’t. Jake told me you guys were just covering for each other. Relax,” I add when he starts to protest. “I don’t think you did it. Pulling off a murder requires more than one active brain cell.”

  He wets his lower lip with that obese tongue. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  I take a deep breath. “I want to know what she told you and Jake,” I say, and since he keeps staring at me with that dumb expression on his face, I say, “About me. About . . . liking girls.”

  What I really want to know is whether she told them about what happened between us the night she came in through my window: that final, sacred thing, the way she jerked backward after we kissed, the terrible way she smiled at me. All I know is that days afterward the story that I was a massive lesbian—like you could be a miniature one—was everywhere, and some of the girls wouldn’t change near me in the locker room, and Summer was treating me like I had a contagious disease, one of the ones that makes blood come out through your pores.

  Jake and Summer broke up, and now I know that afterward she started hanging out with Heath. Back then, Summer wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t even look at me. I remember trying to get close to her in the lunch line and she just spun around, furious, as if I’d hit her. Stop drooling, McNally. I’m not into girls, okay? The weirdest thing about it was how angry she was—practically hysterical—as if I’d hurt her. As if I’d been the one to give up her secret.

  Everyone laughed. I remember how it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and just plain knocked out my stomach, swung my insides up to the ceiling, made a path out of the cafeteria with my lungs. And yet all this time, I’ve been holding on to the idea that despite everything, Summer loved me. That she cared. That it mattered if I kept her secrets, kept her safe, kept everyone from knowing what happened that day in the woods.

  Here’s the thing: Summer was the one who made me into a monster. And she’s the one who has to change me back.

  When Heath thinks, smoke might as well come out of his ears. You can actually see his brain sizzling. “Seems kinda late to be worrying about your reputation. Everyone already knows you’re a dyke, McNally.”

  “Sure. Just like everyone knows you’re a virgin,” I say, which makes him scowl. Shot in the dark, but looks like I was right. Good. The little scuzzbucket should just marry his right hand and be done with it. “What did she tell you?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” he grumbles. “It wasn’t some big secret. Even the teachers knew.”

  My stomach seizes. “What are you talking about?”

  He shrugs. “That’s how I heard in the first place,” he said. “My teacher said she was proud of me. For being open-minded. You know . . . for hanging out so much with a girl who . . .” He trails off. For a split second, he looks embarrassed.

  “A girl who what?” Now my brain is the one that feels like it’s grinding along, struggling to make sense of everything.

  He rolls his eyes. “A girl who liked other girls,” he says. “And then I started thinking it was weird, how much time you guys used to spend together. And Summer got pissy when I made fun of her about it.” He crosses his arms, all wounded and defensive. As if the fact that I’m gay is a direct strike to his ego, like I’m just trying to embarrass him. “That’s why I’m saying I kind of already suspected. And when Ms. Gray pulled me aside—”

  “Ms. Gray?” Suddenly I feel like I’ve been hit with a Taser. There’s a buzzy pain in my head.

  “Yeah, my English teacher.” Heath gives me a weird look, probably because I practically shouted her name.

  “Your . . . ?” My voice dies somewhere in the back of my throat. I shake my head. “Ms. Gray taught Life Skills.”

  Heath shrugs. “Our English teacher was out on maternity leave, and Ms. Gray subbed in,” he said. “She’d taught English before.” He squints at me. “What? What is it?”

  Obviously it has never occurred to him how weird it is—how completely and totally screwy—for a teacher to say that kind of thing. At Four Corners the counselors aren’t even allowed to hug you anymore, unless there are two additional witnesses there to swear you gave permission.

  Besides, how did Ms. Gray even know?

  I turn away, feeling sick. My mind is hopscotching through memories, GIF-style. Ms. Gray in the cro
wd at Summer’s memorial, a carnation pinned to her shitty black dress. Eyes raw like she’d been crying. Ms. Gray directing us back to Owen. Ms. Gray volunteering to help out with all those little kids at the parade, the band kids . . .

  I used to teach music, before.

  “Oh my God,” I say out loud. It’s so obvious. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.

  Ms. Gray is the Shadow. All along, she’s been living here, floating along, drifting through normal life. But she did it. She took a rock to the back of Summer’s head. She dragged her across the field and arranged her in the circle of rocks. She stabbed her seven times, so the dirt was sticky with her blood and cops arriving on the scene had to be counseled afterward, said it looked like a massacre.

  All along, it was her.

  “Are you okay?” Heath asks me, and I realize I’ve just been standing there, frozen, freezing.

  “No,” I say. I burst out of the door. I’m running without knowing where.

  Mia. Somewhere in the trees the birds are screaming. I have to find Mia.

  Brynn

  Then

  “Put the knife down, Summer.”

  But Summer was still staring after Mia, watching her run, shaking her head. “I wasn’t going to hurt her,” she said. For a moment she looked irritated, as if I’d bought her Diet Coke instead of regular from the vending machine. But then she kneeled down by the cat and looked up at me. “Are you going to help?”

  Panic was like a physical force, like a hand around my throat. “What are you going to do?”

  “The Shadow needs blood,” Summer said impatiently. “Come on. Help me. We have to do it together.”

  The smell of gasoline and cat puke was turning my insides. That poor mangled creature was still alive, still breathing. It would be a mercy to kill it now—but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Summer stood up again. She was a few inches shorter than I was, but in that moment she seemed huge, godlike, blazing with fury. “You said you loved me,” she said.

  “I do,” I said. “I did.”

  “Prove it.” She took a step forward. She was only an inch away from me, as close as she had been that night in my room, the magic night of skin and fingertips and her bones small and sharp digging into mine as if sending me a secret message. “Prove it.” Now she was shouting. “Prove it.”

  She drew her arm back, her hand still fisted up around the knife, and maybe I felt rooted, cemented to the ground by fear, by the certainty that she was going to kill me, and I grabbed her wrist and was still holding on to her as she twisted down to her knees and drove the knife down straight through the cat’s neck.

  It screamed as it was dying. It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard, a sound that has no parallels, no comparison on earth. Like the sound of hell opening. All the birds poured out of the trees as if they couldn’t be witness to it. And Summer just sat there, shaking, eyes closed, her hands around the knife handle. I stumbled backward, sick, wanting to scream too. But the scream was trapped there, and as it passed through me, it hollowed me out.

  “The Shadow hears,” she whispered.

  “It’s just a story,” I said. I was surprised to hear that now I was the one shouting. “We made it up.”

  “Shhh,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “The Shadow’s coming.”

  “You’re on your own,” I said: the last words I ever said to her. When I left to throw up in the woods she was still sitting there, head bowed, as if she was praying. And for a moment I felt something pass—something dark and lonely and cold, something that made my breath hurt in my chest—and in that second, I believed too, believed that the Shadow was real, believed that it was coming for its blood.

  Summer was actually kinda pissed the Shadow was turning out to be not so evil. She’d had a whole plan to drive the Shadow off and be a hero so that her friends would love her again.

  They had to love her again. Everyone loves a hero, right?

  —Return to Lovelorn by Summer Marks

  Mia

  Now

  Ms. Gray says, “You come here too, then?”

  She moves out of the shadow of the woods. I barely have time to slip the note into my pocket. She’s sweating. Her hair is loose and there’s a burr clinging to one shoulder of her tank top.

  My arms and legs feel bloated and useless, and I remember once in fifth grade, at rehearsal for Swan Lake, being seized by a sudden dizziness in the studio, a sense that my whole body was floating apart. Madame Laroche caught me just before I fell out of a double pirouette. It turned out later that I had a fever—I was in bed for two weeks with pneumonia.

  That’s exactly how I feel now: like my body is betraying me. I want to run but I can’t. I want to scream but I can’t.

  I tighten my grip on the shovel as she comes toward me. If anything happens, I’ll swing right into her head, and I’ll run. But even as I think it I know I can’t, that I’d never be able to.

  Ms. Gray stops next to me and looks down at the bouquet of flowers, now displaced, at the cross and the churned-up earth. My breath catches in my throat—if she sees that the note is gone, she’ll know I took it, she’ll know I know—but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t ask me about the shovel, either. She seems hardly to be seeing at all. Her face is strangely closed, like a painted-over door. For a long time, she says nothing.

  Then she looks up at me. “I come here, you know, to pay my respects. I was very fond of Summer.”

  That horrible coiled feeling in my stomach unwinds just a little. For a minute I even think I must be wrong—Ms. Gray couldn’t possibly have killed Summer. Why would she?

  “Me too” is all I say, and she smiles. It’s the saddest smile ever.

  “She was a very special girl.” Ms. Gray turns to stare out over the field. There’s another long moment of quiet. “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it? I’ve always liked it.” Then: “I can understand why it happened here.”

  “Why what happened here?” The wind hisses through the grass. I take a breath and decide to risk it. “Lovelorn?”

  She doesn’t react to hearing the name. She doesn’t say What’s Lovelorn? or look confused. And when she turns back to face me, I get a feeling like diving deep in winter water, getting the breath punched out of your chest by the cold, a feeling of drowning. Her eyes are like two long holes, like pits filled with nothing but air.

  And suddenly I remember turning around that day and seeing Summer holding a long knife, watching me with the strangest look on her face. As if she wanted to tell me something she knew I wouldn’t like.

  Run, Mia. I hear Brynn’s voice in my head now, but I can’t move.

  “The murder,” Ms. Gray says.

  I try to say It was you and Why? and How could you? But as usual, when I need it the most my throat curls up on itself like a fern, leaving the words trapped in the darkness.

  And then, for the second time in my life, Brynn saves me: my phone starts ringing. The noise hauls me back into the present—the tinny ringtone climbing over the sound of the wind and the birds. Ms. Gray blinks and takes a step backward, as if a spell has been broken, and all of a sudden she looks normal again. Good old Ms. Gray. The woman who showed us how to do CPR using a waxen-faced dummy.

  “My friend.” I press silence on the ringer, but almost immediately Brynn calls again. “She’s waiting for me in the car.”

  “Oh” is all Ms. Gray says. For a split second she looks so sad I almost feel sorry for her. But then I remember what she’s done.

  “I should go,” I say. My phone lights up for the third time. I start walking, fighting the urge to sprint, acutely aware of the fact that she’s still watching me, feeling as if she has one long finger pressed to the base of my spine, making me feel stiff-backed and clumsy. Before I reach the trees I have the sudden impression of silent footsteps—I picture an arm outstretched, a hand raised to strike—and I whip around, swallowing a shout.

  But Ms. Gray has
n’t moved. She’s still standing next to the little wooden cross, still watching me from a distance, face twisted up as if she’s trying to puzzle out the answer to a riddle.

  This time I don’t care about how it looks. When I turn around again, I run.

  I barely have time to say hello before Brynn is talking in a rush.

  “It was Ms. Gray,” she says. “Ms. Gray killed Summer. She must have been—I don’t know—obsessed with her or something. It makes sense she was helping her write Lovelorn. She was the one who said Summer needed a tutor, it would have been easy enough for her to volunteer. . . .”

  “I know,” I say, and Brynn inhales sharply. Abby’s driving like a maniac, bumping down Brickhouse Lane, raising galloping shapes of dust, as if we’re in a high-speed chase. Only when we’re back on Hillsborough Road, heading up to town, does she slow down. “I just saw her.”

  “You saw Ms. Gray?” Brynn sounds like she’s speaking with a whistle stuck in her throat.

  “Yeah. I went back to bury Lovelorn.”

  “You—what?”

  “Look, we need to talk. In person.” The enormity of it hits me: Ms. Gray, a murderer. Will anyone believe us? What happens now? More police stations, more interviews, more cops looking at us in disbelief. More whispers and gossip. Even the idea of it is exhausting. “Where are you?”

  “On my way back from Heath Moore’s house,” she says. “I hoofed it.”

  Now it’s my turn to squeak. “You—what?”

  “Like you said, we need to talk.” She makes a noise of disgust. “Can’t be at my house, though. My mom’s off work today.”

  “Can’t be at mine,” I say. “My house is under siege.”

  “Owen,” Brynn says firmly. And still the name makes little sparks light up in my chest. I stamp them down just as quickly. “Owen has to know too. It’s only right. We need to tell him.”