The Brokenhearted (35 page)

I sit for a while and stare out at the city that’s ruined me. The city we all keep on ruining every day. Before, when I thought Gavin was dead, I was stricken, miserable. But now that I know the truth about how he manipulated me, I’m just . . . empty. And inside the emptiness is a desperate prayer: Let Ford live.

The wind howls in the gray evening, and suddenly I’m thinking about Gavin and how stupid I am for being played like that, and how wrong it is that I’m untouched and Ford is in a coma. My eyes mist with emotion, but I squeeze them shut. I refuse to cry any more tears over Gavin. He doesn’t deserve them.

Pathetic
, I tell myself. All of it. The stakeouts. The risks. Nearly getting killed at the bookshop, at the bridge, at the school. Training with Ford. Taking out Rosie. All of it for nothing. Everything I’ve done in the name of saving or avenging Gavin is filthy with his lies.

And yet my heart keeps pointlessly whirring, a turbocharged muscle that doesn’t know good from bad or left from right. I am so strong physically—my arms are sculpted, my stomach taut, my ability to run and leap and barely touch the ground is astonishing, even to me—but I’ve never had less mental clarity than I do right now. I look out over the city, the lake an empty purple disk that killed my sister, the rest of it a heaving mass of suffering and lies.

This city is only fit for dead souls and lost ones.

At last I swallow hard and stand up, bracing for the jump. The building next to Fleet Tower is a corporate hotel called Regal Apartments. Fleet is 87 stories tall, the Regal only 60 or so. It’s a long way to their roof.

I swing my arms back and forth, bending and unbending my knees as the icy air whips strands of hair across my face.

I take a few steps back, take a big breath, and without pausing to think, I run. In a moment, I’m leaping off the edge of Fleet Tower, into the oblivion of the blue-gray sky. My heart revving with adrenaline, I spin through the dusky air, my hood flying up around my head, the flat glass roof of the Regal conservatory racing up to meet my body.

In that moment in the air, my mind veers crazily between total terror and utter confidence. My head beats out a rhythmic
death death death
, but my beating heart assures me I’ll live.

I land more lightly than I could have possibly imagined. On two feet, toes pointed outward in first position. But the glass is much more slanted than I realized. I fall forward, pressing my whole body flat against to the slippery pane of glass to try to get a hold of it, but the angle is too steep. In a moment I start to slide down it, toward a section of the roof that flattens out.

In the conservatory underneath me, four men in suits and an older woman in a cocktail dress hold champagne flutes and look out at the view. The woman spots me first. I see her pointing, covering her mouth with her hand as I slide down the glass. I press a palm to the window and mouth
Sorry
.

I’ll keep jumping from rooftop to rooftop until I’m off my block, out of the range of surveillance. Then I’ll run, not slowing down until I get to Ford. And he’ll be awake. He has to be.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 43

It’s 5:24
A.M.
when I arrive. I slow my run to a walk, breathing hard as my feet hit the sidewalk again.

Jax has given me the code to the door, a complicated series of numbers that correlates with her favorite molecular theorem. I pass by the wall of cages, no longer repulsed by the bunnies, the rats, or Mildred, who is passed out in a pile of shredded
Dilemma,
a dried-out carrot in her leathery paw.
I’m one of you
, I think as I run my finger along the cage bars. Experimental. Caged inside invisible bars. I take a deep breath and head down the hall to Ford.

The small room presses in on me as I slide Jax’s wheeled stool toward him. Under the now-familiar
bleep
ing of the heart monitor, I listen to Ford’s breath. His lungs are clear now, his breathing slow and regular. I put my hand on his soft black hair and examine him. His cheeks are drawn; the bones above the dark hollows alarmingly sharp. His skin has taken on a greenish cast under the fluorescent glare of Jax’s tiny back room. I dig a pot of lip balm from my pocket and remove the oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth to dab some of it on his cracked lips.

“You are the kind of boy,” I say to him as his lower lip moves under my finger, revealing a few of his teeth, “who would never touch lip balm. I know it.”

So wake up and tell me to knock it off
, I say silently. His eyes move rapidly under his closed lids, an automatic physical response to dreams, Jax says.

I put the oxygen mask back on, taking care to make sure it’s not too tight. His hair is so soft under my palm. I sit in silence, my hand moving through his hair.

“They’re still looking for him.” I hear the door swing open, the sound of Jax’s slippers shuffling in behind me. “Gavin, I mean. I hacked into the police radio and heard them talking about a possible lead.”

“They’ll never find him,” I say, turning to look at Jax. Her glasses are stuck crookedly into her silver pile of hair, and her eyes are bloodshot and puffy with sleep. She wears a Bedlam U sweatshirt and blue scrubs. “Sorry I woke you.”

“I like the company, honestly.” Jax smiles. “You going to go after him yourself?”

I shake my head and shrug. I don’t want any part of it. My nights of chasing bad guys are over. All I feel when I think of Gavin is emptiness, deeper and more complete than guilt or grief ever was. The girl who fell in love with a fictional boyfriend died that night in the river. The girl sitting here with Ford is someone else entirely.

“I’m sure he’ll do whatever it takes to keep them off his back. He’s smart,” I concede. He may be a monster, but it’s not everyone who can fake his own kidnapping thirteen times, who can fake his own death.

“You’re smart too,” Jax says gently.

“Not smart enough to save him.” I sigh, watching Ford’s chest rise and fall. “How long do we wait, Jax? I mean, how long until we give up hope?”

“Anthem.” Jax gives me a hard look. “You know the answer. We never give up hope.”

I nod. Ford’s eyelids are still now. His dream, whatever it was, must be changing course.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

CHAPTER 44

At 11:30 the next night, I’m bent over my physics homework, the numbers swimming on the page as I drift into what I’ve come to call the Bad Place—an anxious stew of thoughts where Ford never wakes up, and where Gavin finds me and finishes what he started—when someone pushes my bedroom door open. My whole body clenches in anticipation of one of my parents attempting another of their anxious “heart-to-hearts.” About graduation, ballet, my future. If only they knew how meaningless it all sounds to me.

It’s exhausting pretending to be okay, performing the role of the girl they think they know. But this time, it’s not my parents at the door.

“Hello, Anthem. May I have a word?” Serge says.

I nod, blinking away my surprise and straightening up at my desk chair. Even after all we’ve been through together he’s never sought me out in my room before.

“Of course, come in,” I say. I stand up, not sure if I should offer him my chair. Serge is a formal man. Even at this hour, his tie is knotted tightly at his enormous neck, his black suit jacket perfectly smooth across his broad shoulders.

Serge walks in, surprising me by closing the door silently, carefully behind him. “I saw your light on. You’re not sleeping much these days,” he says, the corners of his mouth turning down.

I shrug. “I don’t need as much sleep as I used to.”

Serge’s thick brows knit together, and he gives me a sharp look as if to say
Let’s not pretend we don’t know what’s really going on here
. I wonder absently if he’s been following me, if he knows about my nightly visits to Ford’s bedside. Of course, I decide. Serge knows everything.

He walks to my windowed wall and stares out at the city, all searchlights and helicopters at this hour, a few dim fires flickering in the distance. I move to stand next to him, drawn to the man who’s been my friend and protector since I can remember. His quiet presence—so different from my parents, with all their questions and demands—is a comfort. I can feel the muscles in my neck and back relax slightly.

“It must be hard for you to imagine,” he says, speaking so softly that I have to lean in a bit closer to him to hear, even with my enhanced hearing. “But there was a time when Bedlam was an even darker place than it is today.”

I nod. “When the first tube attacks happened, that must have been the worst of it. Because before then, the city must have been so whole. I can’t imagine watching the South Side go from a regular place to . . . to this.” I wave my hand at the window to include the pitch-black decaying neighborhoods, the city of squatters.

“There were riots. Endless riots in the streets. People were so angry. So many dead each night from the criminal element, so much senseless violence, you cannot imagine it,” Serge says. “But then The Hope appeared, and people believed again. People who had given up on Bedlam entirely began to think the city could be rebuilt. That all the scars would one day heal.”

“But then he died,” I say tightly, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.
Scars don’t heal
, I want to say. Maybe on the outside, but inside, they’re indelible.

“And yet now, seventeen years later, people are starting to believe again.” Serge’s eyes light up and bore into mine.

I frown. Seventeen. The same number of years I’ve been alive.

I open my mouth to reply, but Serge puts a finger to my lips for a second, then turns and walks to the door and puts his hand on the knob. “It would be a shame to fall back into darkness,” he says, “before you finish what you’ve started.”

Before I can respond, he’s gone. I’m alone in my room again, standing open-mouthed, a hundred questions forming, my throat plugged with the weight of what Serge has intimated.

I didn’t start any of this
, I want to say. Gavin did it all. He took everything from me: my virginity, my love, my mother’s necklace, my human heart.

The only thing he hasn’t taken from me is my life. Suddenly I feel certain that it’s only a matter of time before Gavin surprises me somewhere, that there’s a target on my back. And even if he doesn’t, how many more girls will he take advantage of in some new city? How many more lives will he wreck? I think of the anonymous soul who snuck backstage to point me toward The Boss. Someone who believed I could topple a major Syndicate player, stop him from destroying what’s left of our city.

Then I think of Ford lying in the hospital bed.

Maybe Serge is right. Maybe the only thing to do is to fight.

My stomach churns as I stare at the spot Serge just vacated. It’s hard to argue with a man of so few words.

“You’re right,” I say as I slide into the front seat of the Seraph the next day. Serge is driving me to school, and we’re lucky enough not to have my parents with us this morning. I slam the door shut and Serge starts the car, pulling it out of the circular, hedge-lined drive of Fleet Tower without saying a word or even acknowledging my presence. “I want to finish what I started.”

Serge nods. “Very well.”

“So? What do we do now? How will we find him?”

Serge turns onto Church Row from Foxglove Court, and I spot Olive Ann and Clementine walking to school, their plaid skirts shorter than ever and fluttering as they hoof it down the sidewalk. “I have friends who keep tabs on these things.”

I sit back in the seat and shake my head. “Serge, how come you’re letting me do all this?”

“Because I know what you are capable of. I know you are ready to do what cannot be done by anyone else.”

“What’s that?” I joke. “Be a freak of nature?”

“Make the city whole again,” Serge says simply.

I nod, staring straight ahead of us at the crosswalk, where a group of ragged protesters are marching with signs that say
SOUTH SIDE PRIDE
and
SCHOOLS NOT STADIUMS
. A teenaged girl—my age, or maybe younger—wears a pair of homemade wings on her back and moves silently through the crosswalk, holding a heart-shaped sign that says
RISE
. A shiver runs through me when I realize they’re probably headed to my parents’ office, where the police will surely fire water cannons or gas them until they give up.

“What do you think about the stadium?” I ask Serge.

But then we pull up to the school and Serge reaches over to open my door. “I’ll be in touch,” he says. “Be careful.”

And then he grabs my hand and squeezes, and for a while after that, I feel less alone.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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CHAPTER 45

My footsteps crunch on the long gravel driveway leading up to one of the houses in Morass Bluffs, a luxury housing development on the cliffs above the lake that my father’s company has been working on forever. The project has been stalled for a while, the houses half-constructed while my father raises more money. He’s been complaining about it for two years straight.

The driveway is steep, and I skirt the edge of it, moving alongside a scrim of birch trees. I make sure to put my phone away for fear that the screen might be bright enough to spot from above.

This is where Serge says Gavin is hiding out. This silent hillside hitting up against Lake Morass. It’s a great place to hide. Very private. So private, I realize with a shiver, that if Gavin sees me coming, nobody will hear the gunshot.