Broken Read online

  Alex is a rebound.

  Even while logic wants to grab that thought, expand on it and absorb every bit of sense it makes, my heart recoils.

  Of course it would. Why would I want to believe I’m feeling displaced affection for Alex?

  A hot pinch behind my ribs spreads until I feel queasy all over, frustrated and suddenly sick and tired of thinking about Alex Franks. Knowing Mom will check all of my social pages on the Internet, I close down the web browser without updating any statuses or sending Bree any emails. No need to add fuel to the Emma’s-in-trouble fire. Then I open up my media player, bring up a sufficiently creepy playlist and place the laptop back on my desk.

  Renfield slinks across the top of my faery quilt, putting all his unnerving feline grace into action, and curls in my lap. Stroking his ears, I fight my mind’s instinct to bring all the pretty bits of Alex out to daydream on. Reaching for the nightstand, I grab my library book and spend the evening immersed in a Gothic novel, and dreaming about a romance that isn’t, and won’t ever be.

  Monday morning is the kind of hollow I don’t want to see again. It feels like the dark I’d slipped into after Daniel died. Life twists into a frigid, otherwordly version of itself. The cold air grows fangs, biting and sharp. Buttery sunlight lays bare every naked skeleton tree and rotting jack-o’-lantern as I walk the neighborhood to school.

  Every long shadow, or pulled-up hood sparks the hope that Alex is shirking his suspension to see me.

  Despite the hunger gnarling my stomach from sneaking out the front door to avoid Mom, and drowsiness pulling on every vein, I bypass Mugz-n-Chugz. Without Alex helping me, I’m going to need every extra second to open my stubborn locker.

  Bree meets me at our normal bench. For a moment I pause and watch the knots of people unfurl and tie, or break away in clots drifting toward the doors.

  “So…?” says Bree, her bright voice at odds with her moody gray and black outfit.

  My shoulders sink. I can’t play this game today. “You were right.”

  A smile spreads, slow pretty poison across her face. “Right about what exactly?”

  “Alex and I being connected.” A heavy sigh drags my shoulders further. “But I don’t want it.”

  “Don’t want it?” She repeats, her voice scaling up, making my confession sound crazy. By her shocked expression, I have to think that was Bree’s intention. “How can you not want it? He’s smart, he’s good-looking, and totally into you. Plus, he got into a fight. For you.”

  “I know.” I start toward the side door, dreading the surging halls and cutting glares. “It’s just…” How can I tell Bree about his similarities to Daniel? She’ll think I’m crazy, creating excuses or something. I finish lamely, “It’s all happening so fast.”

  “What’s happening? Him driving you to the clinic for a new brace? ‘Cause that’s just crazy to do when a guy hardly knows a girl. You two dancing? ‘Cause you didn’t look like you were complaining…” She steps in front of me. “Help me out here, Em. You guys seemed totally into each other on Saturday, and now you’re all ‘I don’t know’ about him?”

  “I do know about him,” I huff, and edge past her. My heart knows, and it scares me. “I know I like him. A lot. And I know I don’t want to.”

  Warm air blasts my face when I jerk the door open. Inside, the hallway constricts, narrowing as I watch like something out of a horror movie. Or does knowing Alex won’t be here drain the life from my Monday?

  Bree’s going on about how I need to wake up and let go of the dream I had and see what’s right in front of me and…and… But I’m not hearing her. For once, I zone out when she starts to compare my life to dramatic plot lines, rather than buck her attempts at making me a character in one of her productions. A commotion in front of my locker accompanies a metallic smell and screech, and wrenches my attention completely from her.

  “See you at lunch, B,” I mutter and walk away.

  “Damn right you will,” she says, no vehemence in her tone.

  A few students cluster in a loose ring around my locker, an arc of whispers and bent heads. The slightly battered slab of a metal door leans against Alex’s locker, the heart Daniel had scratched into the inside reflecting the harsh lights. The internal mechanism hangs exposed like entrails of a locker disembowelment. In its place stands a pristine, brand new door. No chipped paint. No heart.

  On instinct, I reach for the pale broken heart under my brace. Another aspect of Daniel unceremoniously ripped from my life. I hardly notice the man in the grease-stained coveralls standing by my locker.

  “You Emma Gentry?” he asks, voice sounding like a two-pack-a-day habit.

  “Yes?” I’m not questioning my identity, more why he’s asking about it.

  He thrusts a piece of paper at me, full of barcodes and price info.

  “Hold up.” I raise my immobilized right hand. “I can’t pay for that. I didn’t order it.”

  “No charge. He already took care of it,” he rasps. “This here is the work order, with your new combination on it.”

  “Oh,” is all I manage as I pluck the sheet from his fingers. “Who ordered this? Shouldn’t the office get these papers?”

  “Private job.” He grabs the paper back, finds what he’s looking for and turns it around, one dirty digit indicating the billing info. “Name’s Alexander Franks.”

  Alex did this? Damn my heart for flip-flopping in my chest. My cheeks burn, the heat rising and pulling a stupid smile with it. The man gives me a curt nod, then heads to the main office, three locker doors and a few feet of plaster wall down from where I stand.

  I scan the information again. His full name, home address and phone number, and the last four digits of a credit card are in the billing box. Then handwriting in the Notes section grabs my attention.

  Emma,

  I can’t be there to open the old door for you, so I got you a new one.

  See you after school.

  Alex

  The warmth in my cheeks flushes through me, dribbling into the shrinking hollow inside.

  It remains sloshing inside, keeping me company. The Ugly Room’s nasty chatter hardly touches my good mood. Which, I notice, Ally Rhodes’ voice is entirely absent from. Jealousy still pinches her face into something less Cheerleader Barbie and closer to Cheerleader Harpy, but her shellacked mouth twists a little when I catch her eyes. The soft heat resurges at lunch when the Thespian Crowd recounts Alex’s valor of Saturday night. Jason Weller blowing up the tale till Alex sounds like a hero laying his life down for me than the villain he was dressed as, or the gossip made him out to be.

  “It’s a shame he got kicked out,” says Amber Miller. Her bother adds, “Someone shoulda given him a medal.”

  Despite Asia Folley’s return Fifth hour, Dune Eco lays limp and wounded in Mr. LaRue’s room, nearly gutted by the absence of Josh and Alex shooting daggered glares back and forth. Discussions of upcoming projects bounce around, grazing the inside of my skull. The only thing sticking is the blood on my thumb—a purposeful cut from the blade of dune grass—and the fact the lab partnerships will remain till semester’s end.

  My last two classes pass in a blur. The pressure of anticipation builds like the pain of a heart attack in my chest. The clock hands drag, lethargic and mocking me. Taking notes fills my notebook with information that bypasses my brain. Then finally the End-of-Day bell rings.

  I dive into the rush of bodies, fighting the surge to get to the stairs and down to my locker. The stairwell pumps in a squared spiral to the first floor, closest to the main office. It’s also the least used. My footsteps ricochet in the relative silence until I hit the second floor, close to the doors to the catwalk between this building and the gym complex. I cast a glance at the doors, a ghost of Daniel fleeting like a beautiful lie over my heart.

  Shaking it off, I launch down the last section of steps and surrender to the main hall flow. A few jostling steps and I pull free of the tide, and find my locker.

 
; A bright white piece of paper flutters from the vents, and smells like leather when I pull it free.

  Waiting on the Bree Bench. Want a breve for the walk home?

  The new combination is ridiculously easy. And with each number I click in, I snip a thread connecting me to the memory of Daniel opening the old locker.

  In minutes, I burst from the side door, and into the weak light of a gray afternoon. Heavy fall haze thickens the air. People move in dark ghostlike blurs. My gaze lasers to the Bree Bench, as Alex called it, where Bree usually waits for me in the mornings. The painful anticipation uncoils in flash of sweet release, and I can’t beat back the smile. Rebound or not, Alex Franks affects me. His profile is paler than the vibrant, healthy color of Saturday, his hood is up, his shoulders curled against the cold.

  Wonder and joy flash across his face, brief and still very there.

  “Hey,” Alex says, voice husky as he stands.

  “Hi.” At this angle the watery sun halos him, his mismatched hazel eyes framed in the dark hood. His grin tugs at the hair-thin scar at the corner of his eye. Words crowd my mouth and die. He tugs on the zipper of my jacket, pulling it down a couple teeth and loosening my voice a lot. “Thanks for the new locker door.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do, seeing as I got myself suspended for a week.”

  “You’re not,” I stress, “required to open my locker for me, y’know.”

  He pauses, cold light hitting the planes of his face. “You’re right. I’m not. But I feel like I should be.”

  “Helping a damsel in distress?” I tease.

  “Don’t talk like that!” His smile turns devilish, and he winks. “It makes me think about your dress and…” he leans whisper-close and says in a husky voice, “villainous things.”

  Heat floods up my throat and cheeks. A tingle sparks along my nerves. Any smart remark I might have burns off and turns to ash on my tongue. I snap my mouth shut on the soot of my emotions: embarrassment and excitement.

  “Speechless?”

  I smack him with my left hand and mutter, “Shut up, Alex.”

  “Shutting up.” Of course, the promised silence doesn’t last long. Alex points across the street. “Want that coffee for the walk home?”

  I cast a look across the quad towards Student Parking. “What about your car?”

  “Cars,” he shrugs, “they’re so hasty.”

  “True… And if I came home too early my Mom would get suspicious.” We step off the curb and cross the street. Instead of queuing in the Walk-Up line at Tiny’s window, we walk inside, where there’s only two other people in line. “Heck,” I add, “if I show up later than she thinks I should I’ll get texted to death, too.”

  “What’s up with your mom? She over-protective?”

  “Only all the time.”

  Conversation dies as we step to the counter. Before I can answer the new girl’s question, “What can I get ya?” Alex orders for us.

  “Two breves with caramel, and two vanilla biscotti.”

  How did he know how I take my coffee? Or that I only like the vanilla biscotti?

  Alex must sense—because he doesn’t see—me grab for my backpack to get money. He reaches behind him, catches my elbow with his fingers sending a little tingle through to my skin and says, “I offered, Em, I’m buying.”

  Daniel said that so many times hearing it again is like a punch in the chest. I huff a breath and stare wide-eyed at the back of his hood. He pays for our order, hands me the wax-paper wrapped cookies and leads my away from the counter. Instinct screams to say something, to not stand in front of Alex and stare like a goober, but my brain feels like it’s swimming in toxic waste. Any thought big enough to grab, stings.

  “You okay?” He asks, eyebrows sinking toward the bend in his nose. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Heard one’s more like it. “I’m fine,” I lie.

  “So,” Alex says, and pushes the doors open. “Where’s home?”

  Oh, a couple blocks past the Memorial Gardens Cemetery where I used to lean against the fence and wish someone was buried there.

  “On Seventh Street.”

  “Oh, yeah?” His voice takes an odd, hesitant tone. “I know the neighborhood.”

  “Really?”

  The scraped-raw expression returns to his face. Even his lips twitch and turn down. “My mom’s buried in Memorial Gardens. I visit there every now and then.”

  Oh God. With my black luck, his mother is interred in the mausoleum where Daniel and I used to loiter, cracking jokes and drinking filched whiskey. A chill slides through me.

  “My condolences,” I say.

  “Thanks.” He elbows through the main door and out into the late afternoon shadows. “She’s been gone since I was little. I hardly knew her.”

  He’s quiet for a few blocks, sipping his coffee and sneaking peeks at me. I catch him looking and smile. The hush stalks between us and I don’t prod it with any personal questions. I know I’m lucky to have my both my parents, still together after twenty years. I won’t ask him about his mother, but I can ask him other questions.

  “So…what brought you to Shelley High? I know it isn’t the high level of education you’re used to.”

  “It wasn’t the school…” He holds my eyes, a long searching glance that seems to dig into him and me with equal bite. “When I woke up, I just knew I couldn’t go to Sadony anymore. After fighting with my dad, threatening to grow my hair, quit school and join the hippy commune up in Bliss, he let me win.”

  “Quite persuasive of you.”

  “Dad can be a jerk sometimes, but I know how to manipulate him.”

  “Is that what happened with your ex-girlfriend, too?”

  “Not quite.” He shrugs deeper into his coat. “Hailey’s really tenacious, and took more convincing.”

  “Is tenacious?” I ask. Jealousy is ugly, but I flirt with it anyway. “That’s present tense. I thought you said she was an ex, as in past tense.”

  “She is.” His hard tone says he doesn’t want to discuss her anymore. And neither do I. Thinking about Alex with any other girl abrades new, tender nerves. I’ve drgged my past around, nursing my loss and mourning Daniel, and that hasn’t turned out so well.

  I take another sip of my coffee, lose track of what my feet are doing and nearly trip over the fire hydrant on the corner of Seventh and Sycamore. Alex catches my elbow before the ground can catch my face.

  “Careful,” he cautions before releasing me.

  I heave a sigh and smooth my hair. “Mom says I’m clumsy. Dad says I have decreased situational awareness.”

  “Neither sound very nice.”

  “The truth isn’t always pretty,” I say. He snorts a short laugh, and nods. Lifting my immobilized right hand, I point at our gray two-story with black trim, missing the jack-o’-lanterns but with the same white, slinky cat body stretched in the front window. “There’s home.”

  “Nice house,” he says. “Think we can sit on the porch and dunk the biscotti? This walk got over awfully fast.”

  “Dunking biscotti with Alex Franks on my front steps,” I say. “Sounds kinda naughty.”

  I’m as shocked I said it as Alex seems to be. He chokes on his breve. Funny, I’ve only known him a week and I can recognize the angle of his jaw in a smile. Color seeps into his pale cheeks. A cough unsettles the fluid in his throat, then he swallows noisily.

  Touché, I think. Touch my zipper and I’ll make you choke on your coffee.

  We sit side by side on the bottom step, where no one will see us from inside unless they actively look. Knowing Mom, the active looking will come soon enough. Alex pries the lids off our coffees, then we dunk and munch in companionable silence for a while. He leans back against the second step, nods his head back and says, “Cat lover, huh?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think Renfield and I have a love/hate relationship.”

  “Renfield?” His eyebrows arch, and his full lips pucker like h
e’s trying not to laugh.

  “Yeah.” I give him an eye roll. “I love Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

  “Me, too. We should do a movie night.”

  Did he just suggest a date? Like a ‘him and me and no one else’ kind of date?

  “Sounds good,” I say. “I meant the book, though. I can’t stand Keanu Reeves as John Harker.”

  “It’s a date,” he pronounces.

  I’m about to tease him, ask him if it’s a reading party date, or a movie date, when my cell phone comes to life in my backpack, the annoying buzz-buzz-buzz I have set to Mom’s cell phone number.

  “Mom,” I groan quietly. Alex puts down the empty cup and unzips the front pocket for me. I fish the pink thing out and the display screen confirms my suspicion. I tilt toward Alex. “See?”

  “Better answer it then,” he advises and slouches as low against the stairs as possible. I don’t want to tell him that the angle would give anyone looking out the window a perfect view of his long legs and the fly of his jeans. I wrench my eyes away from what I don’t want my Mom to see outside her door, and slide open the phone.

  Where are you? Standard Mom message when she has expectations I’m not meeting.

  Close to home. I type back.

  Alex nods and mouths, “Very close.”

  Her reply is my last sip of breve away. You’re late, Emma Jane.

  Great. She’s slinging my middle name. She’s mad.

  I know, I type. I got caught up talking. I’ll be there in a minute.

  Alex and I both count while we wait for her response. “One…two…three…four…”

  Buzz-buzz-buzz!

  If you’re going to be talking with someone, I’d prefer you just do it here.

  Alex lets out a snort. I’m sure Mom has no idea we’re on the front steps. If she had even a ghost of that thought she’d be out here with a broom to bat Alex away. However, I can almost hear the tone she typed it in, and it isn’t pretty.

  “I have to go in,” I say, ceding defeat. “You want to meet my mom?”

  “Test of manhood,” he says.

  “It might be more than that.” I stand and stack our coffee cups. “Last chance. You want to run, I won’t blame you.”