The Brokenhearted (17 page)

“I’ll do it!” I scream, shutting my eyes and getting ready to squeeze the trigger, bracing for the impact of the gun . . . but I just stand there, frozen. I picture his skull exploding, the blood spattering everywhere, the ending of his life, however sorry a life he has led, and I can’t make myself do it. My arms begin to shake and falter. My only hope is that Miss Roach is bluffing, too.

“I thought so.” Her gravelly voice floats toward me. When I open my eyes, her gun is aimed at Gavin’s chest. He’s not struggling. Not begging for his life. Just staring into her eyes and waiting. “I think it’s time we ended this game. It’s getting boring.”

“No!” I scream. “I’ll put down my gun.” But she just smiles in a carnivorous way. I hear her take a breath.

And then time folds in on itself. There is the deafening pop of the gun going off, and through the ringing air I watch Gavin fall to the floor, a circle of blood blooming on his gray T-shirt, the stain widening and widening until his entire torso is black with it. My throat burns with an endless scream of NONONO and I’m shaking all over and in the space of that unreal instant, they are on me. Smitty’s hands cover my mouth and the other one pries my gun from my fingers and dumps the bullets out. They bounce like spilled jellybeans across the carpet.

I rip myself away from them and run to Gavin, thinking I can drag him out of here, take him to the hospital, take him to the clinic downstairs even, thinking someone somewhere can fix him, but his face is gray and his eyes—thank God for this one small mercy—are closed. His chest leaks blood left of center, exactly where the heart is located in the human body. If there is one anatomical fact I am certain of, it is this.

I cradle his face in my hands, frantically smoothing his hair, all the while someone is still screaming NO NO NO in a shrill and painful and earsplitting way, and it’s only when Rosie slaps me in the face that the screaming stops.

“Shut up!” she says, her short body above me now, standing, the pearl-handled snub again in her hands. “It’s over. So go away, princess. Just get out of here, and don’t come back. I’d rather not have to kill you too. Hard enough burying one corpse without a string of cops up my ass.”

The barrel of the gun weaves back and forth in front of my eyes as she talks. My mouth fills with saliva. I spit a wad of it at her, daring her to shoot.

“Get her the hell away from me, gentlemen,” she says softly, wiping my spit from her forehead. “Backup, puhleeze!” she calls out.

They grab me under my armpits, one of them on each side, and drag me across the carpet. The last thing I see is Gavin sprawled out on the ground, his whole shirt soaked through all the way to the sleeves, blackened with blood, and Rosie turning away from me, kneeling down to inspect the damage she’s caused.

I’m strong now. Impossibly strong. I should be able to throw them off me. I flail and kick and Smitty goes flying, but then a door in back of the bookstore opens up and there are three more of them. Two boys who might be twins—small, wiry, olive-skinned—come charging at me, along with a six-foot-tall woman with a long purple hair. I remember them from Dimitri’s. The second string of Rosie’s team.

They pile onto me, each one of them in charge of one of my limbs. It’s too much for me. Too many people holding me down. I struggle, my body straining to shake them off, but I get nowhere.

Then Smitty gets back on his feet again. The last thing I see is his fat hand encircling the neck of a Blackout Vodka bottle and bringing it toward my head.

And then everything goes as black as Gavin’s blood.

I’m dead to this world and all the horrors it has delivered.

I wake up on the tiled main floor of Hades, Serge’s gun stuffed under my coat and sticking me in the ribs, Rufus kneeling over me, his small hands shaking my shoulders. “Come
on
,” he cries. “Before they see you.” There’s a jamboree of some sort in the lobby of the mall, drums and tubas and accordions and people singing a fast song in mournful key of a funeral dirge.

For Gavin,
I think senselessly.
They know Gavin is dead.
But of course they don’t. Rosie would make it her business to cover it up.

Rufus is pinching my ears and cheeks. “Get
up
, dummy.”

I look at him, his skin soft and brown, his baby-pink cheeks, his hearing aids glowing in the dim light.

“Okay,” I say, feeling nothing, seeing nothing. I would like to rush into the crowd and wave Serge’s gun around until someone sees fit to kill me. I would gladly die here and enter the next world with Gavin. But out of respect for Rufus and what little chance he has of growing up into a sane adult someday, I don’t. I let him pull me away from the drum circle and toward the back staircase. For him, I walk, one foot and then the other, through the gluey swamp of my devastation, and make my way out of here.

“What you need is candy,” Rufus says as he escorts me through the back stairs and out a side door, unwrapping a cinnamon disc from cellophane and placing it in my hand as if it is a priceless jewel. “Candy always helps.”

There is no help for me anymore,
I think. No hope. Not here, not anywhere. But I put the disk in my mouth and let it melt on my tongue.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Do me a favor, Rufus?”

“Favors aren’t free,” he says, and I think of Ford saying the same thing when he tried to take my necklace on the Bridge of Unity what seems like a million years ago now.
Nothing is free
, I think sadly as my fingers travel to the heart around my neck. Everything in life costs too much.

But Rufus shouldn’t know that yet. He’s just a kid. A kid with a tough beginning, but still. I wish he’d get far away from here, take a train or a bus to anywhere else, but I know he won’t. Hades is all he’s got.

I put twenty dollars in his hand, then run my fingers over his soft, kinky hair. “Don’t go to the third floor anymore. It’s not a place for kids.”

Rufus nods reluctantly. “I guess.”

Later, after a numb good-bye and a fit of private, gulping sobs against the stucco back wall of Hades, I shut down, drained of everything. Somehow I put on one foot in front of the other, not daring to look back at the hulking mall where Gavin’s body is hardening to stone.

I walk home under a fingernail moon, a shining sliver of light in a world that doesn’t deserve it.

When I get back to the Seraph to return the gun to the glove compartment, Serge is there waiting for me. I must look terrible, because he jumps out of the car and comes around, his arms open wide. I fall against him, my whole body shaking.

“Tell me,” he says, one of his hands around the top of my head. “You’re bleeding.”

I remember the bottle smashing over my head, but all the pain I feel is in my midsection. My head feels fine.

“Gavin is dead. They killed him in front of me,” I say, my voice flat and hollow, like it belongs to someone else.

He doesn’t say anything, but I hear him exhale.

I pull away from him and take the gun out from the waistband of my jeans. “Sorry for taking this. I didn’t use it.”

Serge takes the gun from me and puts it inside his suit jacket. “I’m the one who should say I’m sorry. I should have been with you.”

“I had to go alone,” I say. “I couldn’t risk anyone else getting . . .” My teeth are chattering so badly that it’s hard to finish my sentence.

“Anthem. You are in shock. Let’s sit in the car a while.”

Serge starts the car and turns the heat on high, but even when the internal thermostat reads 83 degrees, I’m still cold. He goes to the trunk and finds an old school sweater of mine, and I put it on in the car. Time passes where we just sit together quietly, and eventually I stop shaking and my teeth stop chattering.

“I am so sorry you lost this boy, Anthem. But you are well,” he says. “Your parents need not ever find out.”

I press my still-icy fingers to the car vents. “I’m never going to be well,” I whisper. “Never.”

“One day at a time,” Serge says. “One day at a time.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

CHAPTER 20

When I get upstairs, the clock in the foyer tells me it’s a reasonable time of night to arrive home—only 10:15. I can’t understand how so little time has gone by and yet I feel decades older than I did this morning. I hear polite voices and the scraping of bone china cups against saucers in the living room. My parents have company. I pinch my cheeks and quickly knot my hair into a bun that hides the blood on the crown of my head, preparing to paste on a tired, just-coming-from-the-library expression on top of the half-crazy, dead-inside face I glimpse in the hall mirror.

I fell asleep in the library,
I rehearse silently.
I’m beat. Heading off to bed.
But when I reach the archway of the living room, the person drinking tea with my parents is Will. I freeze, not knowing what I’m supposed to do, unable to process his presence. I open my mouth, but all I can muster is a cough.

Will jumps up from his spot between my parents and runs to me, kissing me wetly on the cheek before moving his head next to mine, his mouth beside my ear. It takes every ounce of my will not to step away from him.

“Relax and smile,” he whispers. “I told them you forgot your physics book at the library and had to go back. They bought it.”

I nod imperceptibly to tell him I understand he’s covered for me, smiling through gritted teeth as Will leads me into the sitting room toward my parents, his sweaty fingers cuffed around my wrist. Panic kicks in my chest as I wait for someone to tell me what’s going on.

“Hi,” I say cautiously.

They’re all smiles. I haven’t seen them this pleased with me since before my disappearance.

“I was just telling your parents how happy I am that we’re back together,” Will says, a joyless grin plastered on his face.

I turn to him, matching his fake smile with a horrified one of my own.

“I had a feeling you two would find your way back together one of these days,” my father says, winking at me. “When it’s right, it’s right. Am I right?”

The room fills up with our nervous laughter, and the sound is so loud and false it makes me wince.

“Best news we’ve heard in ages,” my mother says, her
s
’s and
g
’s softened and fuzzy from too much wine. “I was so sad when you two had . . . your bump in the road . . .” Her eyes glisten with emotion as she swirls the last sip of chardonnay around in her goblet.

“Well, we’re so young . . .” I start, backpedaling as hard as I dare, trying to steer my parents away from the assumption that we’re together again. But my words dissolve when Will’s fingers tighten around my wrist.

“Would you guys excuse us?” He beams the patented Hansen smile—top and bottom teeth exposed, photo-ready—at my parents. “I’m gonna steal Anthem for a minute.” He winks at my dad.

“Of course, William.” My father smiles, returning the wink. “Steal away. You kids go chat in Anthem’s room. It’s great to have you back, Will.”

“Oh, likewise, sir,” Will says, but when he turns away from my parents, his smile lingers, his eyes glittering with a creepy sort of intensity. “See you both very soon, I hope,” he calls over his shoulder. “Let’s go,
sweetie
,” he says to me, pulling me forcefully down the hall.

“Let go of me,” I whisper, twisting my wrist free when we’re out of earshot of my parents. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“All will be revealed in your bedroom, dear,” he snorts. “And I do mean all. Ha ha.”

My skin prickles with heat as I shut the door. I walk a few feet away from him and turn to face him, hands on my hips. “What is this?” I ask, my nostrils flared and my jaw clenched. “Why are you here and lying to my parents?”

“Oh, sweetie!” Will cries, flopping onto my bed and opening his arms. “Let’s just cuddle a little and then I’ll explain.”

“Will.”

“It was a joke, Anthem. As usual, you have no sense of irony. I get that you find me less than appealing these days. I’m not stupid.”

“Then why are you here?”

“
Well
,” Will says, stretching the word out, “did you know you broke one of my teeth with your little burst of aggression the other day? This one’s a temporary. They’re making me an implant. All very time-consuming. Very expensive,” he says, tapping a finger on one of his canines and then plucking it clean out of his mouth, holding the tooth up in front of his eyes to examine it. “And in the dentist’s chair when they were pulling the broken one out of me and scraping out the dead nerve, I started thinking, how did Anthem get strong enough to land a kick like that? I mean, she’s a ninety-eight-pound little
shrimp
. No offense, but you are.” He turns his glittering blue eyes to me to see how I’m reacting, pausing to gulp some air, since he’s been talking so fast.

“Get off my bed,” I manage.

“Soon,
sweetheart
. But no, I don’t want to get off your bed. Not at all, actually. It’s just so . . . cozy!” He squeals with laughter. Something is very wrong with him, and it’s not just the gap where a tooth should be.

“Anyway,” Will says, stretching out on his back and putting his arms behind his head in a manner of the utmost repose, “something didn’t add up. So I decided to solve the mystery.”

“And what did you come up with?” I ask in a whisper, though I can tell I don’t want to know.

“It made you prettier, your little experiment,” Will yawns. “I mean, you used to be maybe a seven, but now . . . you could compete with tens.”

“Funny, the more you talk, the uglier you get,” I say, my voice choked with rage.

“I just hope that
scar
heals,” he goes on, giggling crazily. “A scar can be hot, but that one’s a doozy.”

I freeze, my heart punching through my chest so forcefully it makes me dizzy. Does he
know
?