The Brokenhearted (11 page)

I’m crying so hard I’m beyond language, beyond rational thought. All I see when I close my eyes is a film reel on repeat: the barrel of a gun pressed to Gavin’s temple, a hand squeezing the trigger, Gavin collapsing like a rag doll.

Finally, after two loops of
Giselle
, my throat and eyes feel like pounded meat. As the tears subside, a single coherent thought swims to the surface of my mind:
I can’t let him die.

I pull my headphones off and listen to the thudding silence of my room. I look at my alarm clock—9:23
A.M
. I force myself to stand and peel off the clothes Ford gave me, replacing them with a gray cami and a crumpled pair of jeans I find draped over the ballet barre bolted to my bedroom wall.

Standing next to the barre, my bare feet at just the spot where I’ve practiced pliés, pirouettes, and chassés for hundreds of hours, my eye is caught by a glittery twinkle on the top of my dresser. Two hair combs adorned with cheap crystals—part of the snowflake costume for last year’s
Nutcracker
recital. I reach for them, turning them over in my palm, a plan already forming.

Slowly, silently, I open my bedroom door and cock my head to listen. Lily’s in the kitchen, humming the chorus of an old rock ballad. Under her humming, I hear the tapping of eggs against the corner of the counter, the sound of the yolks plopping into a ceramic bowl. From my father’s office, located on the lower floor beneath the kitchen—much too far away to be able to hear anything—I hear an avalanche of keystrokes as he types. I concentrate and listen, the keystrokes growing louder the more I focus on them. Like he’s typing on a keyboard attached to my ears. I lean my forehead against the doorframe and close my eyes, still listening, trying to understand how. I shouldn’t be able to hear any of this. It’s like my ears are supercharged.

What has Jax done to me?
I cover my ears up with my hands, and the sound goes away. I uncover my ears, and it’s back. I shake my head in wonder. As long as I can hear my parents, I know exactly where they are.

My heart revving, I round the corner of the master bedroom and push open the door. My mother lies sprawled across my parents’ enormous bed, a thin line of drool snaking from the corner of her mouth and pooling onto the brocade bedspread. She’s breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling slowly. I think of the commercials for Dreamadine:
Dream it, live it, Dreamadine. Just one pill, eight full hours.
She insisted on giving me a few pills after I finished eating, and they now sit untouched on the base of my ballet-slipper lamp.

I dart through the master suite, my heart roaring in my chest. My mother doesn’t stir, but my father could walk in at any moment.

I race to the vanity and reach under it to find the little button. The mirror slides up the wall, and I face the keypad in a blind panic. I don’t know the code.
Think
.

My fingers travel over the glowing keys. If I get the code wrong, an alarm will go off that will wake my mother. I’ve spent enough time with her here to know the code is six digits. Our zip code? My parents’ anniversary? No, I realize. It’s simple. There’s only one set of numbers Helene Fleet would choose.

I punch Regina’s birthday into the keypad with shaking fingers, for once grateful for all the September twenty-sixths I’ve spent at the cemetery. The low beep and the faint sound of the steel unlocking tells me I’m in. Just then I hear a door open down the hall.

There are seven drawers to choose from, but I don’t have time to browse. I think back to the Orphans’ Ball, to my mother’s $50,000 valentine. I have no idea if her other jewelry is worth more than that, or less. The ruby necklace will have to do.

I open the bottom drawer and pull the necklace off the black velvet it sits on, stuffing it into my back pocket. I shut the drawer and push the button, rearming the security on the jewel safe. I race past my mother again, who has turned toward the wall in her sleep.

A moment later, I’m in my room, conscious of my father speaking to Lily in the kitchen. With shaking hands I bring the largest ruby to my lips, kissing the cold, bloodred stone the way the nuns in school kiss their rosaries.

After stashing the necklace in a box under my bed, I consider the cloud-shaped blue pills my mother gave me. “
Dream it, live it
,” I whisper, putting them both on my tongue and heading to my bathroom for a swig of water to wash them down. If I’m going to try to hand the necklace over in exchange for Gavin’s life tomorrow night, I’ll need to get some sleep.

Before the drug hits my bloodstream, I dig my cell phone out of the bottom of my backpack and send Zahra a quick text—
i’m ok. don’t worry. will call u tmrw, too tired now. xox.
Then I quickly turn it off, unable to cope with whatever communication is stored inside.

I spend the next eighteen hours obliterated on Dreamadine.

All day and most of the night, I slip in and out of an uneasy sleep. Sometimes in my dreams the Midland River is filled with boiling acid and when I fall in, my skin peels away in sheets. In other dreams, the kidnappers douse Gavin in kerosene and light a match, and I wake up sobbing.

In the last one, I’m standing at the observation window of a sleek hospital operating theater, powerless as Jax sews the head of an ostrich onto Gavin’s body. Its hideous black beak opens wide as it squeals and shrieks with pain.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

CHAPTER 14

I wake up scratching at my chest through my sweat-damp T-shirt at 4:06
A.M
. on Friday morning. For a few blank seconds, I’m disoriented enough not to remember what’s happened. But when I run my finger along the seam of my stitches, it all comes crashing back. This is almost the exact time Gavin was kidnapped three days ago. Thoughts of what has to happen tonight start to run through my mind, and soon I’m too wired and anxious to sink back into sleep again.

I flip on my bedside lamp and wait for the sun to come up, wishing there was some way I could stop myself from imagining the horrible things that are happening to Gavin, from wondering if he’s even still alive. I need to stay off the Internet and away from the news, since according to my parents, I’m all over it. They’ve already come up with a cover story at the urging of the Fleet Industries’ lawyer and PR consultant, Lyndie Nye.

“You were visiting your cousin in Exurbia and went for a walk in the woods by yourself, and you got lost. Your phone was dead. You found a cabin and waited for your cousins to find you,” my father muttered through my closed bedroom door last night. I opened the door and gave him a look that said I didn’t like how stupid the story made me sound, but he just turned his palms up like it was out of his hands. “It’s already out there. You’ll have to live with it.”

As the predawn sky moves from black to periwinkle, I pick up the copy of
Gatsby
Gavin loaned me on our fifth date and find the places he’s highlighted, looking for solace. My breath catches at a line he’s double-underlined in black ballpoint:

. . . and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

I read it twice, wondering if Gavin thinks of me the way Gatsby thought of Daisy. I hope not. If I was ever gleaming, if I was ever safe and proud, I’m not now. I want more than anything to be able to tell him that I don’t care about money. To tell him we’re not doomed the way Gatsby and Daisy were, because we can remake our lives somewhere else. But that might never be possible.

Everything depends on tonight.

By the time seven rolls around, I’ve decided the only way to stay halfway sane today is to go to school. At least the crowded hallways of Cathedral will distract me from the twisted images swirling through my mind like chunks of black ice in the Midland. And anything will be less stressful than the silent fury I feel in the presence of my father. I’ve just started buttoning my school uniform shirt, a white blouse with the
CDS
crest on the pocket, when I hear my mother’s delicate fingers tapping on my door.

“Just a minute,” I say, but she pushes it open anyway. I turn quickly so that I’m facing away from the door and hurry to button the shirt from the top down, my hands shaking.

“Hi, Mom.” I finish the final button with a numb smile on my face.

“School so soon? I thought this morning we could go to Doctor Sprogue’s office—”

“I told you, I’ll go to the doctor in a few days,” I say, roughly pulling on the brick-red knee socks that complete the Cathedral uniform. “I’m fine, really. The pills calmed me down a little. School will help me get my mind off everything.”

She nods slowly, her lips squeezed into a rosebud of resignation. She gives in more easily than I expected. “I guess the doctor can wait. Let me see the cut,” she says, lifting my curtain of hair off the right side of my face.

This morning when the sun rose, I unwrapped the bandage and discovered my wound completely healed, nothing more than a thin white scar along my hairline. “All better.” I shrug, hoping she’ll drop the subject. “It was just a scrape.”

“Thank goodness for that. Have you done something different with your makeup?” she asks, her gray eyes puzzled.

I shake my head. What makeup? Apart from glancing at my healed forehead, I haven’t had the guts to face the mirror.

“Your whole face looks . . . different, somehow.” She smiles. “You look beautiful.”

I shrug and turn away to rummage through my backpack, not wanting her to examine me too closely.

“Never mind,” she says, leaning over and grabbing me in a tight hug. “I’m just so glad you’re back.”

I breathe in her sugared-lemon smell, pretending for a moment that I’m still six years old, still her little doll. Our hug is cut short by an embarrassingly loud growl from my stomach. “Is Lily here yet? I’m dying for some pancakes.”

When my mother pads back down the hall to find Lily, I turn to the mirror and look at my reflection. She wasn’t exaggerating. My eyes are a vibrant, richer green. My lips are pink. My normally pasty skin is flushed with color. But the biggest change is my hair. The usual carrot orange has morphed into a shiny, wine-soaked red, glowing bright as fire. My heart whirs with alarm, and I lean so close to the glass that my forehead almost touches the mirror.

A half hour later, I’m in the backseat of the Seraph, being driven to school by Serge. I lay my head back against the white leather seatback. Up above us, through the sunroof, the glass-and-steel skyscrapers of North Bedlam whizz by.

I put my hand in the pocket of my plaid pleated skirt and finger the ruby necklace, my fingers traveling over one jewel at a time.

“So.” I clear my throat and address Serge. “Some week, huh?”

“Quite a week, yes. I’m pleased to see you are looking . . . remarkably well,” Serge says evenly as he turns the Seraph onto Thorn Street and begins to pick up speed.

“Did my parents . . . brief you?” I have my fake story for the press, but I can tell by the silence hanging in the car that Serge knows about Gavin.

He nods. “I understand they have chosen not to negotiate.”

“Yes,” I manage to say.

“Sometimes fortune surprises us, Miss Fleet.” Serge’s eyes look at mine a little too carefully in the rearview mirror. I sense a question in his gaze, but he doesn’t ask it.

He pulls the Seraph up to the curb in front of Cathedral, and I gather my books, tugging at my collar as I exit the car. As I walk up the ancient stone steps of the school, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I suddenly have the distinct impression Serge knows more than he’s letting on.

I arrive at school eight minutes after the morning bells. I keep my head down and walk as quickly as I can to take my seat in homeroom with Mr. Brick, a former soldier turned social studies teacher. The room smells soothingly of camphor, from the cream he applies to his knee between classes.

When I slide into my desk in the front row, the class erupts in loud chatter. I hear my name over and over and immediately flush bright red.

I stare helplessly at Mr. Brick.

“Quiet down, people!” he barks. The class does as it’s told, but they only stare at me harder.

I shift my eyes down to the desk. My fist clenches the tangle of rubies in my pocket.

“We thought you were dead, Miss Fleet,” Mr. Brick says in a stage whisper, his eyes widening ominously. “I was writing a
speech
.”

I understand that
speech
is code for
eulogy
, and a shiver passes through me. Then I think of Zahra, and my stomach twists with guilt. She must have been terrified—and now she’s probably livid that she can’t reach me. My cell is somewhere in my backpack; I haven’t turned it back on since sending Z the text last night.

“I’m fine,” I squeak out. My heart does its new electronic revving, so loud I’m sure Ginger McGeorge next to me can hear it, as I recite Lyndie Nye’s fabricated story word for word. I shoot a look at Ginger and see curiosity and concern in her eyes, nothing more. I try to focus on her soft brown ringlets, still damp from a shower, as I finish my little speech.

“Anyway,” I continue, hoping I sound traumatized instead of coached, “it was really dumb of me, and I was lucky to make it out okay. I’d rather not talk about it too much right now, if that’s all right.”

“Of course, Miss Fleet. We respect your privacy and your bravery, and I speak for the entire school when I say we’re glad you’re back, safe and sound,” Mr. Brick allows. I slump down in my seat during roll call and whisper
Here
at my name, still feeling all eyes focused on me.