The Brokenhearted (31 page)

I approach her front door slowly, pushing my stocking cap back on my forehead a little. It’s early April now, but spring shows no signs of coming. Winter is getting longer every year. I take a second to check behind me, to scan the block from one side to the other, making sure nobody has followed me. I keep waiting for retaliation, for The Boss or some other syndicate thug to come after me, or to figure out that Ford was involved and come after him. But nothing happens. Nothing has happened for a week. Just ordinary calm, the regularity of my routine.

I put my hand up to knock but instead, on a hunch, I try the door. It swings open. “Zahra?” I call out, the ticking of the grandfather clock in her tasteful living room the only sound I hear. I breathe in the familiar smell of Z’s home: pistachios and furniture polish and bread and flowers from the garden.

A door creaks open upstairs, and Zahra appears on the landing, one hand resting tentatively on the banister.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” I smile as she hesitates on the landing, seemingly deciding if I’m worth coming downstairs for. “I’ve been looking for you for days.”

“Huh.” Z shrugs, turning to fuss with her growing-out pixie cut, almost a bob now, the orange ends now pink, studying herself in her grandmother’s antique mirror. It’s the same one we used to play Bloody Mary in as little girls. “Guess I’ve been busy.”

I take a tentative step toward the stairs, putting one boot tip on the carpeted bottom step. The second step has always squeaked. We both knew to skip it when we snuck upstairs at night after popcorn-fueled movie marathons, or later, when we were older, after coming home late from a school dance or a party. “I miss you,” I say simply, my voice breaking. “It’s over with Will. I wanted you to know. Not that you should care in the slightest.”

“Of course I care,” Zahra snaps. “I care about everything. It’s you who doesn’t have time to care about
me
.”

The accusation stings, but she’s right. I shake my head. “I’ve been a terrible friend. I hate what’s happened with us. I want to know everything, Z. Everything about what’s going on with you. I always did, and I always do.”

“Whatever,” she says. “You tell me one thing and do another.” But I detect the trace of a smile pulling at her lips. “I have to admit, I was impressed when I heard you got Will shipped off to Weepee Valley,” she adds slyly.

“Yeah,” I say, climbing a few more stairs, careful to skip the squeaky one though nobody’s here but us. “I thought you might like that.”

“What a psycho.” Z shakes her head. “He was always bad news, Anthem. Even before the pills. I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t see it. It was like he cast a spell on you . . .”

“I was an idiot.”

I breathe a huge involuntary sigh. Things are finally starting to feel okay again. The people who can hurt me are gone. Will is locked away in Weepee Valley for at least another six weeks. I have his flash drive under my bed. Rosie is gone, and though her death makes me a killer, I’m starting to convince myself the world might be better off without her. Only one of us was going to walk out of that warehouse alive. I’m glad it was me.

“You seem good now,” Zahra says, studying my face, her head tilted to one side. “Are you good?”

“I think so,” I muse. “For the first time in a long time, I’m pretty good. Especially now that I’m here and you haven’t thrown a shoe at me.”

“I would never throw a shoe at you,” Zahra insists. “A magazine, maybe.”

“I deserve it.”

“Yeah. You kind of do. But I’m tired of hating you. It’s giving me zits.”

It feels so great to hear her say this that I’m actually dizzy with relief. I grab onto the banister to steady myself, my heart thwacking with joy against my ribs. All this time, I’ve had a million rationalizations for not telling Z the truth about what I’m doing and what I’ve become, but being my old self with her feels like such a relief right now that I finally understand my real motivation for hiding what’s happened from her:

I need this too badly.

Being the old me—the Anthem who Zahra has always known—means not having to think about the person I’ve become at night. It’s a reprieve from the violence, the pain, the horror of everything that’s happened on the South Side. If the girl I am during the day fuses together with the girl I am at night, I won’t know who I am anymore.

And for right now, all I want to be is Zahra’s friend again.

“You should have seen the look on his face when they carted him away.” I fake-sigh, hamming it up as if it’s a painful memory. “He was so shocked.”

“Details,” Z demands, her violet eyes widening, her hands reaching for mine, braceleting my wrists with her fingers. She pulls me into her room, where she’ll smoke a rollie out the window and I’ll regale her with the debate trophy, Lydia with her tiara, the Weepee orderlies, Will’s hissy fit before they took him away. Finally, something I can be totally honest with Zahra about.

It’s a start.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

CHAPTER 38

My hair is shellacked in a tight bun, metal combs with glittery white feathers firmly affixed to either side of my head. My stage makeup is freshly sealed with a giant puff of powder. I’m wearing an ivory leotard and a stiff tutu the color of cinnamon toast, my toe shoes newly cracked and sewn onto my feet like a second skin.

I am number six in the line of dancers waiting for our first entrance. I roll my shoulders back, raise my arms above my head, take a deep breath, and fold over one final time, my head almost touching my beribboned ankles, as the violins swell with the first notes of the
Giselle
score. I straighten up and lift onto my toes, peeking out at the audience when the heavy red curtains begin to rise. Through the scrim of the wings, I can see a sliver of endless seats that seem to go on forever, all filled. All eyes are trained on the stage, and under violins I can almost hear the collective anticipatory hush of the packed house.

It’s opening night at last, and I am pure ballet—my mind focused, my muscles taut and ready to perform, every step committed to memory, not in my head but in my body. After eight counts, the first dancer flits onto the stage. I am last in the long line of level sixers, just behind Belinda Bullett. As the line moves forward and I approach the stage, I spot Mayor Marks in the front row next to his pinch-faced wife, her hair styled like a cinnamon bun atop her head. Just behind them are Zahra and her parents, Asher and Melinda Turk. My heart does a cartwheel, and I lift a hand up to wave, forgetting for a second that they can’t see me in the wings.

Next to the Turks are my parents. My father is leaning over to whisper something in my mother’s ear, and I see her fuchsia lips curl into a hard smile. They’ve been waiting for this moment a long time. Their daughter, premiering as Giselle. I think of all my years of practice, my dogged, desperate clinging to the routines of a dancer. And I press down on my chest, my scar so faint that all it takes to cover it now is a bit of foundation and some powder.

I turn to the stage, watch the level sixers fan out into a blooming rose of balletic precision. In a few more beats, it’s my turn. I rise onto my toes, and the nervous butterflies that filled my stomach backstage are gone now, replaced by muscle memory, by the absence of thought. Through the hot glare of the stage lights, I make out the vague outlines of the full house, the seats packed to the very rear of the rafters at the Bedlam Opera House. The audience is a silent mass, a breathing wall of energy just outside my vision.

And then all I see are my fellow level sixers, whose steps I have made every effort to match—
not too high, not too fast
has been my mantra in rehearsals.

My heart whirring and whirring like an eager dog pulling at a leash, begging me to speed up, I become the dance. Onstage, I become Giselle, an innocent and sickly maiden who falls passionately in love. I leap and chasse, I pirouette and fouette
en pointe,
the music moving through me and with me. The energy from the audience radiates into my limbs, which bend like rubber bands at my command.

Everything else falls away—Gavin’s murder, Rosie’s gruesome end, Ford, the guns, the fighting, the chemical smell of RID-EX that hangs on me even now, a week after her demise—and I feel more present in this moment than I’ve felt in a long time.

Before I know it, the first act is done and I’m pirouetting offstage. Before the curtain lowers, the lights dim, and for a few seconds I have a clear view of the audience. Movement in one of the upper balconies catches my eye, and I crane my neck to see over Candace’s head. Someone is standing, leaning against the wall behind the six balcony seats that jut out from the wall above and to the right of the orchestra seats. The only person in the audience who is standing.

Someone snuck in,
I think. Someone who wants me dead. But then a head moves forward, and I see familiar brown eyes twinkling in the darkness. My stomach tightens, and for a second it’s like my body lifts up and out of itself, flying toward him. He gives me the thumbs-up and puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly.

A huge smile stretches my cheeks as I toe-walk offstage. I shake my head slightly and try to shake the sweetness of Ford sneaking into the Bedlam Opera House out of my head as the curtain falls and intermission begins. Because I remember this feeling all too well, and where it leads is straight toward trouble. Toward caring so much about someone that when you lose them, you lose everything.

The moment I felt this way about Gavin, he was taken away from me. I can’t ever let that happen again. I’m not strong enough to survive it.

He’s just a good friend, I tell myself. And that’s all he can ever be.

At the curtain call, I’m breathing hard and revving with adrenaline. We take our final bows, then race offstage, all of us grinning and congratulating each other on getting through it. Everyone’s gossiping about seeing scouts in the audience. Sadie Lockwood whispers to me, “You were great. You’re getting a spot at the Bedlam Ballet Corps for sure.”

“I’m just happy I didn’t screw up,” I say with a shrug, but part of me hopes she’s right. I let myself imagine a future filled with dance, with sore muscles and Epsom salt baths, with aching feet and a constant flow of beautiful music and temperamental choreographers. Everything I always thought I wanted.

I could want it again, maybe. In the ballet corps, I could almost forget about this horrible year, my souvenir heart allowing me to excel as a dancer instead of a killer.

I’m replaying the performance in my head when I open the tiny closet of a dressing room marked
ANTHEM FLEET
. On the tiny slab of the vanity pushed up against the wall, there’s a huge bouquet of blood-red roses wrapped in cellophane. Two dozen at least. It takes up the whole vanity. I pick it up and breathe in the smell, twirling a little. I pluck a tiny black envelope from the blooms.

To our prima.

We love you!

Mom and Dad

I sit down and start unlacing my toe shoes, thoughts of the reception in the lobby with Zahra and both our sets of parents swirling in my mind along with Ford’s unexpected appearance in the audience. I hope I can see him before they whisk me away . . .

But then I look in the mirror.

In the very center of it, someone has taped a card. The invitation is on heavy card stock with fancy engraved lettering.

The Boss invites you to a
SYN new recruits party!
2212 Sumac Street
Please dress for success.

An arrow drawn in lipstick on the mirror points to the invite. Above it, three words.

We will rise.

I stick my head out the door and check the hallway, but nobody’s there except Constance, who is unwinding the ribbons on her toe shoes. I jump back inside and close the door, moving toward the mirror to rip the invitation off and study it, my hands suddenly shaking.

Someone knows who I am and what I’ve been up to. But who? I stand there blinking.
We will rise.

My mouth feels like it’s full of sand. The Boss. The ringleader. The unseen hand who told Rosie what to do.

I close my eyes and fight a wave of dizziness, the scent of the roses my parents left suddenly cloying as I try to decide what I should do. Sumac Street isn’t far from Will’s house. It’s in the north, in a nice neighborhood. Why would the Syndicate have a party there?

I blink at the mirror, my face made up to look like Giselle’s ghost, my eyes lined heavily in black that fades to silver. I tilt my head to the right, and Ghost-Anthem tilts hers back at me, green eyes ablaze.

Unless I want to spend my life looking over my shoulder, I need to make sure The Boss is locked away.

Go on
, a voice inside me says.
Go on and do it. It would be so easy. You know just where to find him.

Slowly, I untie the ribbons around my toe shoes, then use a pair of nail scissors to cut the stiff fabric off my tired feet. I unclasp my ragged silver-gray ghost-skirt. I shove my feet into a pair of black boots and put on the simple black dress I’ve brought with me for the reception in the lobby of the Opera House.

By the time my parents come to get me in my dressing room, the invitation is folded into a small square next to my heart, slipped into my bra.

“To the prima!” Harris booms in the lobby of the Opera House, smiling down at me. “And to the entire corps!”

Everyone raises their glass and yells “Hear hear!”

There must be a hundred people at the reception, and the room buzzes with conversation. There are tray-passed hors d’oeuvres, miniature crepes, puff pastry filled with duck and quince, mini toasts with caviar. “Come, Anthem,” my mother is saying in my ear. “Let’s say hello to Mayor Marks.” I let her lead me over to the crowd clustered around the mayor, waving to Martha Marks as my mother pulls me closer.