Broken (17 page)

Using
her silence
to make my getaway,
I slam the car door, open and slam the garage door
,
too.
Scooping up Renfield, I ignore his indignant cat glare and cradle him to my chest as I storm through the house toward the stairs. Dad stands in the basement doorway, a chunk of wood in one hand, a file in the other
and a mask of confusion over his face
.

“What in the hell is going on, Emma Jane?”

“Ask her!” I growl, and jerk my head in the direction of the garage door.

Clutching the cat, I weasel past Dad and pound up the stairs to my bedroom.
With the door slammed and locked behind me, I collapse to the bed. Renfield launches from my arms, and scurries under the bed like he usually does when there’s a storm outside.

This time, the storm is inside.

Putting distance between us should help. It doesn’t. I’m mad, sad and everything in between. All I want is to rewind time to the moment in Alex’s arms.

Heated voices
saw
th
rough the floorboards
. Mom’s voice sharp, Dad’s loud
enough
to match hers. The tension and sound match my thoughts. Not so much thoughts, either, it’s boiled down to images, and feelings. Alex and that warm, familiarity we shouldn’t have. Mom and her stupid, jumped
-
to opinion. She never gives anyone a chance, just automatically doesn’t like someone she thinks isn’t good enough. She shouts loudly below me.
Good
, I think,
you can be angry
,
too.

My cell phone buzzes, sounding like bees and chicken bones as it rattles against the pencils in the front pocket of my backpack.

Rolling to my stomach
,
I drag my backpack close and dig out my cell phone with my right hand because I want to feel the pain. It’s hot and cutting and
mine, something Mom can’t control or keep from me.

Alex Franks,
the display screen reads.

I catch my breath, not wanting to feel the hope that blossoms.

It doesn’t beat for me
, he said.

Maybe he’ll tell me now.
I slide the phone open and click through to his text message.

I still have so much to say.
I
t’ll have to wait.
The principal
suspended
me
for a week
for fighting
.
I’d do it again…
(1/2)

My dad is pissed.
I’m grounded th
e rest of the weekend
, no phone after this text.
Can I
walk you home on Mo
n
day
?
(2/2)

He has to ask?

I type back,
How can I say no?
My fingers hover over the keys, the truth pressing against all of my nerves. Then I finish,
Bree thinks
we have some kind of connection
. I can’t say no to her, either.

Closing my eyes, I click SEND.

#

I know I’m dreaming, and I can’t wrench myself out of it.

Moonlight splashe
s in white
puddles
over the cem
etery.
The
gown
from the Halloween Ball floats around me as I trail after a tall, hooded guy.
Alex,
my heart pounds.
Alex
!
Like before, I can’t catch him.
Crumbling headstones snag and tear
my
skirts. Bony
hands claw my legs
un
til they bleed
.

Then suddenly,
he
turns around.

I skid to a stop, chest seizing in shock.

He’s Alex and Daniel. Curly hair and straight hair war in a wild shock on his head, one hazel eye isn’t just similar to Daniel’s
,
it
is
Daniel’s.
His
eyes are fixed on me, wonder in Alex’s, knowing in Daniel’s.
His
clothes are a mix of the villain costume and the clothes that Daniel wore the day he
fell to his death
. The
black and red
patchwork shirt hangs open, exposing his
pale
chest.
Seeping incisions line his skin an
d
a
red hole gap
e
s beneath his breast bone.

He extends a gloved hand
.
His
heart thump
s
on his palm,
b
lood drips b
etween his fingers
and stains my dress
.

Both voices come from one mouth.
“It doesn’t beat for me, Emma.”

I jerk awake, Renfield crouch
ing
at the end of my bed watching me
with wide eyes
.
A gutted, hollowed feeling burns in me.
I place my hand on my pounding chest. I can’t tell which hurts worse, the
air
rasping
up and down
my throat or my slamming heart.

Groa
ning, I collapse on my pillows and cast a look at my clock.
2:03 AM
Moonlight pours through my curtains, soft and white, not chopped and poisonous like in my dream.

Renfield creeps across the bed, a cautious shifting of weight from one end to the other.
His paws touch my arm first, the h
e crawls
atop me
, eyes luminous while he watches me, probably questioning his safety and my sanity. I stroke his ears, head and neck until his purrs
and my heart rate calms
.

“These boys are gonna be the death of me, Renfield.”

He sneezes. A perfect response.

Chapter Fifteen

Mo
m’s answer to my “outburst” is
grounding
me
—for Sunday
.
She bangs on my door at a rudely early hour, demands my cell pho
ne and informs me I’m going “no
where.”

My answer? Rolling over, pulling the pillow over my head. She pads into my room,
mumbling the entire time. “I swear, Emma Jane Gentry, if you were awake…” She
unplugs my cell phone then stands by my bed.
“That boy is going to bring you nothing but trouble…”
I clench, my fingers curling to fists in my faery print quilt, but don’t acknowledge her.
“Mark my words, young lady. I knew boys like that at your age, and they were…”

Hypocrite
, I think.

Mom wants to punish me for doing nothing wrong? Fine. I’ll punish her right back.

I refuse to speak to her the rest of the day. If I’m lucky, I can avoid her Monday morning, too. Hours into the morning, and three-fourths done with my Gothic novel reading, Dad mutters something about sulking from his side of my door. He can call it what he wants. It’s effective—Mom hates it.
Dad’s always in the basement tinkering with something.
It will be
just Mom
, her soap operas and her romance novels all day.

After the back door slams
and the car
roars to life
, I
creep downstairs
, grab food and a couple
of
w
ater battles.
The scent of sawed wood and smoke drift under the basement door, the ghost-colored air curling around my toes when I sneak past, a
rms loaded with munchies
.
I
retreat
up
the step
s and
leave
the cat
behind
on the way to
my room.
He follows, grumbling at me, then leaps onto the bed and eyes me from his spot on the end.

B
leak November sky greets me when I pull open my curtains
. I can’t help thinking it’s
one less barrier between me and Alex. Dressed in his hoodie
,
my
flannel pj pants and cushy socks
, I prop t
he door open a crack for Renfield
, then take my laptop to the bed
.

My
thoughts drift to Alex
and the emotions I wonder if he only shows me.

Sunday afternoon swills down the drain of
researching Alex
Franks on the internet
.
A little
stalkerish, sure, but things
about him
aren’t adding up to anything normal.
The odd
tingle in his touch
, Daniel’s eye looking out of his face, all of his scars… Beyond the physical, and way more disturbing,
the way he feels so familiar to me.
How can I feel like I’ve known him for years? How can he open that damn locker just like Daniel?

What answers
I find apply to
few of my questions. He’s eighteen, a senior, was on the martial arts team and long distance track team at Sadony Academy
before a horrendous accident
. According to an article in
The
Visionary
, Sadony Academy’s school paper, Alex’s grades had him on the fast track to any Ivy League college of his choice
, where his potential was limitless, though most expected him
to study medicine and become a doctor like his father.

So what’s he really doing at Shelley High, a public school with nothing more special than AP courses? And why does he seem so caught up in me?

Hell, why am I so caught up in him?

I don’t know him, even if
my heart insists
I always have.

It doesn’t beat for me.

Sitting back, I can see how last night’s nightmare makes a sick kind of sense
.
I’ve been missing Daniel so badly, for so long, that when someone came along the least bit like him
I squashed Daniel and Alex into one person.

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 sp
end 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 fang
s
, 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
.
W
ithout 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.