The Brokenhearted (30 page)

“This is yours?” I say as we walk toward it, our footsteps crunching under cinderblock shards.

“Sort of.” He grins. “Why do you ask?”

“I just . . .”
You can’t afford a car.
“You never mentioned having a car.”

“Oh, I have tons of cars,” Ford says, opening the passenger side door for me. A waft of rose perfume spills out, engulfing us both, and I slide inside. He closes the door behind me, jogs around the front of the car, and hops into the driver’s seat. An embroidered picture frame hangs from the rearview, two toddlers beaming in its center. “I just don’t have them for very long.”

He flips open a section of the dash under the steering column and does something with one hand, hardly looking at it, just feeling with his fingers and humming an aimless tune under his breath. A few blue sparks fly out, and he pulls his hand away. I yelp in surprise as the ancient engine roars to life. Then I roll my eyes at my stupidity. Why
wouldn’t
Ford be a car thief?

I lean my head against the ancient, stiffened doily on the seatback and settle in for the drive, pulling up a map of the city on my phone so I can direct Ford which way to go.

Ford shifts into drive and we are on our way, zooming away from Floyd Sherman Field, our headlights the only moving thing in the still landscape, careening down the hill toward the dark sprawl that will connect us to the highway.

We’re back on the city grid, in the industrial corridor of the southwest, where Oleander begins. It’s a long street, and we’re still far from where Gavin lived. I text Serge again, hoping for a quick answer.

A minute later, I get one.

Just parked at a warehouse on Oleander and Nightshade Ave.

We crawl the two blocks with the headlights off. The last thing I want is for them to see us coming.

“Turn right,” I say, and he does. A hundred feet in front of us, the yellow LandPusher is parked at a haphazard angle outside a warehouse with the words
RID-EX
on a faded awning, its back windows covered entirely by orange police impound stickers, big black numbers, and
BEDLAM POLICE DEPT.
in thick letters.

“Pull up to the curb,” I whisper. My fingers begin to pulse with adrenaline, and as Ford struggles to achieve a semblance of parallel parking, I wish we hadn’t used up all the ammunition on target practice.

We get out of the car, closing the doors as quietly as possible, and walk slowly through the cold silent air toward the RID-EX building. Ford bends to move the gun from his boot to the back of his jeans. Then he thinks better of it and offers it to me.

“You keep it,” I say. “You can use it to bluff, if nothing else.”

He nods, and I see in his eyes that he’s nervous. “Anthem.” His hand on my wrist. His Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “Don’t feel like you need to watch out for me, okay? You just worry about you. If anything happens to me, just . . .  just make sure you’re safe.”

I nod, suppressing a flicker of irritation. I shouldn’t have let Ford come. “You too,” I mutter. “Don’t play the hero.” But I know he will. If given half a chance, I suddenly realize, Ford will save my life a third time. Or die trying.

We agree, silently, through a few motions of my head, to enter around the back of the warehouse. But both sets of back doors are locked. Ford puts his finger to his lips and pulls out a set of keys, and after wiggling an oddly thick key from his key ring around in the lock for a moment, he succeeds in unlocking the door.

I go first, peering into the dim space to make sure there isn’t anyone in back we need to worry about. The place resembles the MegaMart. There are metal shelves every six feet, lined floor-to-ceiling with huge containers. Only instead of cooking oil or drums of tuna fish, all of these containers are marked with a skull and crossbones and the words
POISON, DO NOT PUNCTURE, TOXIC
.

Following the hum of voices coming from the other side of the room, I motion to Ford, and he follows me down a long drum-lined aisle marked RATS to the front of the warehouse.

When we get closer, I stop to peer between two metal drums, goose bumps rising on my forearms. At a small reception area, an older man counts out money, a lamp casting a concentrated light onto his shabby desk, illuminating two stacks of bills, his hand methodically setting down a third stack.

“Three twenty, three forty, three sixty, three eighty,” he drones. And next to him, her back to me, standing between two red drums marked with an outline of a cartoon rat with
X’
s for eyes, I can see the familiar blond hair with the roots growing in. I’m close enough to smell her bubble gum.

“It’s her,” I turn and mouth to Ford. I motion for him to stay hidden. Then I take a gulp of stale air and make my presence known, stepping into the dim circle of light cast by the desk lamp. “Hello, Rosie. Or whatever your name really is.”

“Well. Look who it is,” she says, turning around and stepping out of the shadows. Her hair is piled high on top of her head, her leather trench buttoned all the way to her throat, its oversized collar stiff and flared, framing her hard red mouth in its black folds.

“Stavros, take a long walk, wouldya?”

The guard, a stooped man beaten by life, his nose a mass of broken capillaries, looks at me with pity. I motion that it’s okay, and he nods, grabbing a bottle of brown alcohol from his desk drawer. “See you next week, then,” he says to her.

“Yeah, sure. Go take a nap somewhere. I’ll need an hour or so to speak with my . . .  friend.”

Stavros nods and shuffles out. All the cash he’d been counting remains on the desk, and Rosie goes to scoop it up, stacking it all into a big pile and stuffing it into a black leather handbag. She clicks it closed and smiles at me.

“Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?” she says. “Pretty sure I heard two sets of tiptoes scurrying in here.”

Ford steps into the circle of light, his face a hard mask of indifference, a boxer’s face before the bell. “So this is her?” he says to me, his eyes never leaving Rosie’s face.

“It’s big, bad me, in the flesh.” Miss Roach twirls, her hands fluttering at her sides. She’s wearing spectator heels. How very prim.

“It’s her,” I breathe, suddenly so full of rage that she’s alive and Gavin is dead that I feel dizzy, my head exploding with the memory of Gavin looking into my eyes before she shot him, shaking his head, pretending he wasn’t scared but his beautiful eyes giving him away as he pleaded with me to go . . . and then her tight smile as she aimed right for his heart . . .

“Gavin’s killer.”

She snorts, her hands clasped out in front of her, index fingers out, making the shape of a gun. “You’ve got a real flair for drama, don’t you, sweet pea?” She looks at Ford appreciatively, her heavily lined eyes lingering on him before refocusing on me.

“You murdered him in cold blood, for no reason,” I say, my voice shaking. I wonder if I’ll be able to restrain myself, to keep myself from hurting her. “And now you need to pay.”

“So naïve,” she sighs. “I feel sorry for you, almost. Go home, okay, princess? Focus on this new boy of yours. He looks neglected. Like a lost little puppy.”

I launch myself at her, unable to hold back anymore, wanting to rip hunks of her blond hair from her head, to break her bones, to smash in her teeth. In a heartbeat I’m on top of her, knocking her to the floor. I bring my hand up, ready to smash it into her face. When she grins I feel something in my back, a burning sharpness that morphs into a tingling freeze. I’ve been stunned by a zapper.

I’m immobilized for a second, enough time for her to roll out from under me. Ford is at my side then, checking on me, yelling something that I can’t quite hear, his mouth moving as Rosie runs down one of the aisles of chemicals. A few seconds later, I can move and hear again, Ford’s hands in my hair. I push him away and jump to my feet again. “I’m going after her.”

Ford nods, pulling out his bulletless gun. I motion to him to take the left side of the room, and I take the right.

I run through the warehouse, blinking in the low light, not daring to breathe so that my sensitive ears can better pick up Rosie’s footsteps. Halfway down the aisle, shots ring out from the other side of the warehouse.

I sprint through a center aisle that runs horizontally through the maze of poison, careful to keep my footsteps silent in the dark room. Then there’s a hissing sound, and I start to panic, my heart thumping with fear. One of the canisters has been punctured and is spraying industrial poison into the air. We need to get out of here.
Now
.

Then there’s another gunshot. This time it’s closer.

I look up toward the ceiling and notice a hanging metal pallet, dozens of additional barrels of chemicals stacked on top of it. Then I hear breathing. I race toward it, my hands raised like all-too-penetrable shields in front of me.

It’s Ford, crouched behind a pile of tubing. He’s all right, uninjured. He points silently straight up to the ceiling at the hanging metal pallet filled with heavy drums of poison. He pantomimes it falling.

More gunshots ring out, echoing in the giant warehouse. My ears are ringing, and for a second I can’t tell where her voice is coming from.

“Come out, princess,” Rosie shouts. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To die for him? So let’s get on with it.”

We crouch down and hold our breath as the poison fills the air and Rosie’s spectator heels
clack clack clack
on the cement floor, getting closer.

My eyes move to the wall, where there’s a red lever connected to a chain wound again and again around a spool. The chain is holding up the pallet dangling above us. I race toward the red lever, taking care to be as silent as I can.

She’s only two rows away from us now. I spot the metal of her gun glinting between the skull-stamped drums.

I look back at Ford, who’s still crouched on the floor.
Run
, I mouth.
Go now
. I point to the lever and motion to the ceiling where the pallet sways.

He nods curtly, wavers for a moment, then darts toward the front doors.

I see a sliver of Rosie’s body through the shelves of poison. She’s less than twenty feet away now. I focus on her and realize I can hear her breathing, labored and gasping in the poisoned air. “Come
on
already,” she groans. “Let’s end this.”

Yes, let’s
, I think, my heart revving in my chest.
You don’t deserve to breathe, ever again
.

“Here I am,” I say calmly, pressing my body as close to the wall as I can. As she turns, gun raised, and begins to walk through the aisle toward my voice, I pull the red lever, using all my weight to lean on it until the metal chain starts to unspool. “Good-bye, Rosie.”

Above Rosie, the pallet starts to sway. I hold my breath, my mouth filled with the taste of aerosol poison. Just as she steps in front of me, the pallet slams down on the towering shelves She looks up and realizes what’s about to happen, her face frozen in shock. Then in a half-second, the shelves of poison cave inward, sending hundreds of metal canisters raining down on Rosie, burying her underneath.

The avalanche is massive. She doesn’t stand a chance.

As the drums and canisters continue to pile on top of her, I push off the wall and sprint around the edge of the room, holding my breath amid the slish and hiss of pinkish rat poison spraying out in all directions.

When I’m nearly out, I hear a pop.

I get outside and just as I’m about to slam the door shut there’s the pop of another drum exploding. I turn to see industrial poison blooming into a huge red aerosol cloud. Through the cloud I spot Rosie’s high-heeled boot, her ankle twisted oddly, her body crushed under the weight of the drums of BUG-OFF. Bile rises into my stomach as the bright red cloud engulfs her. I hesitate for a half-second before I slam the door.

I run thirty feet away, then lean over and retch, bile coming up, sour on my tongue, and I’m vomiting on asphalt, just a few feet away from the yellow LandPusher, my vision streaked with tears, my whole body shaking.

When my body has expelled everything it can, I let Ford guide me to the car, my throat raw, my eyes burning. He gently puts my arm over his shoulder, not saying a word. He opens the passenger door, and I collapse into the seat.

When he’s in the driver’s seat, we just sit for a minute, not looking at each other. Outside, eddies of crushed cigarette packs, plastic bags, and the
Daily Dilemma
swirl past. In the distance, neon red and yellow chemicals spray the two front windows of the RID-EX warehouse. My body is violently shaking, watching it. Rosie doused in poison, crushed to death. A gruesome, inhuman death that even she didn’t deserve.

“This wasn’t what I’d planned,” I whisper, tears falling into my mouth. “Not at all.”

“I know.” Ford grabs my shaking hands in his. “Just breathe. She’s gone now. That’s all that matters. She’s gone, and it’s over.”

Then I hear the distant wail of a police siren. “Let’s go,” I say, swallowing hard and shaking my hands free of his. “We can’t be here when the police come.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

CHAPTER 37

The day before opening night of
Giselle
, I go to Zahra’s house on Lakeview Drive, duck my head under the weeping willow in her front yard. I think about all the summers I’ve spent here, in this yard, the blue stone dappled with sun, building fairy houses out of sticks, Zahra sprinkling them with daisy petals. I wish I could go back to that time, when we were all the other needed or wanted, when we were as alike as twins, when whatever Zahra liked, I liked. Whatever Zahra wore, I wore. Whatever Zahra laughed at, I laughed at. Z’s dad used to joke that we shared a brain.

But that’s all over now. I bite a ragged cuticle on my thumb and wince at the treatment I’ve subjected Zahra to lately. The girl who knows me better than anyone, and all I’ve given her are lies.