The Brokenhearted (23 page)

“How long were you watching?”

“Long enough to see how amazing you are.” He shakes his head, a half-smile lingering on his face. “Your dancing, I mean,” he corrects himself, and I think I see him blush a little.

“Thanks.” My face suddenly feels like it’s on fire too, like he’s caught me doing something wrong. Which, in a way, he has. It
is
wrong—physically impossible. I walk over to the barre and grab a towel, though there’s no sweat on my brow to wipe off. I go through the motions anyway.

“Looks like the transplant gave you a little more than just the ability to run fast and kick my ass in the ring,” Ford says gently, joining me near the barre.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” My eyes meet his in the mirror before I look away. “That’s the first time I realized I could . . . do that.”

“I think the word for that is
flying
,” Ford says, throwing his leg over the bar and mimicking a ballet dancer stretching, awkwardly bending toward his leg and putting his hand over his head and bending until he almost falls over. “It’s amazing, Green. Embrace it.”

“Whatever,” I whisper. “Just one more talent for the freakshow.”

“You know, they used to say he could fly.”

“Who?”

“The Hope.” Ford looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Don’t tell me you never heard the crazy stories about him.”

“Not really,” I admit. What is it with South Side boys and The Hope? “But I definitely can’t fly. And I’m nothing like The Hope. More like hope
less
.”

“You know, you sell yourself short, Green,” Ford says, switching legs. “I don’t know anything about ballet, but it looks like you’re pretty good at that, too.”

My eyes prickle with tears for a second. “I used to be really serious about it,” I say. “My whole life was kind of geared toward becoming a professional ballet dancer.”

“Well, it shows.”

“But now . . . it all seems so unimportant.” I look down at my feet, at the calluses and bunions and broken toenails from years of ballet. “I mean, I’d trade any talent I have in a second if it meant Gavin was still alive.”

“Don’t say that.” Ford finally takes his leg off the barre and moves closer to me. “Don’t give up everything you’ve worked for. Don’t be so willing to trade it away.” He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “Take it from me, giving up on something that big isn’t . . . it’s not a fun road to walk down.”

I study his face, unsure if I should push him to tell me more. “You mean you gave up on boxing?”

“Something like that,” he says. “But that’s a story for another time. Listen, Green. About Gavin . . . Maybe it’s time to think about a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Finding them.” Ford looks at me in the mirror, his eyes serious. “Isn’t that why you’ve been working so hard in the ring? So you can bring them to justice?”

Justice.
I blanch at the word. “I don’t even know if I believe in justice.”

“Well, I didn’t believe people could fly until tonight.” Ford smiles. “Silly me.”

I grimace. “I can’t
fly
, Ford.”

“Really? It kind of looked like you could.” He raises one thick eyebrow. “Want to try again, just to find out? Five bucks says you can stay in the air for thirty seconds.”

“Fine,” I mutter. I don’t want to admit how curious I am to see if I can do it again. “But I want it on record that this is stupid.”

“Totally stupid. Making a note of it for the record.” Ford pantomimes writing it down on his hand. Then he looks at me expectantly. I make a sound of annoyance in the back of my throat, but he just waits placidly for me to get to it.

“Okay, okay.” I square my shoulders and move into fifth position, lifting my arms above my head. Then I begin the sequence.

I repeat the same sequence of steps, the same pirouettes. I use him as a spotter, my eyes landing on his face with every twirl. As I move, I feel my body rising. My toes stop pushing off the floor and instead push off the air.

I’m up. Launched. Spinning in the air.
Flying.

Ford pushes a button on his phone and looks up at me, pumps his fist in the air, silently mouthing what looks like
wooohooo.

And just like last time, the minute the fact of what I’m doing fully hits my conscious mind, I get scared and crash to the floor, this time landing flat on my back. “Ow!”

“Oh my god,” he says, his eyes shining. “Green! That was twenty-two seconds!” I sit up, leaning over to stretch out my calves, my chest thrumming like a jet engine.

“Think you can do it without spinning?” Ford asks. He circles me, bending down twice to squeeze my arm muscles. I wrap my arms around myself, feeling embarrassed, then mad at myself for being embarrassed. It’s just Ford.

“Guess I may as well try,” I say. I stand up and move to the corner of the room, the thumping of my heart returning almost back to normal, in that I can only hear it if I really concentrate. When I reach the corner, I turn around, take a big breath in, and start to run. After six or seven strides, I’m in the center of the studio, and I push my arms back hard as I leap upward and out, pushing my right leg out behind me as I jump into the air.

And then I’m airborne, my heart chopping like the blades of a propeller.

I can see in the mirror that I’m much higher up than I should be—closer to the ceiling than the floor—and I stay there longer than I should, moving slowly forward and down. I’m in the air maybe three or four times as long as gravity should allow.

Instead of looking in the mirror at myself, I look at Ford, in front of me in the room.
Don’t think about it,
I tell myself. If I think too hard about what I’m doing, I’ll fall again.

When I land this time, it’s graceful and quiet and clean. I hit the floor gently, bouncing forward once before I’m steady on my toes. My heart is quiet now, humming nicely, like I’m doing exactly what it wants. I put my hand over it, for the first time feeling not just scared of what I can do, but instead sort of . . . proud.

I grin at Ford. “That was pretty cool, right?”

“Mega.” Ford shakes his head. “Just . . . yeah. Incredible.” He turns away, seeming nervous all of a sudden. Which makes me nervous. Suddenly I’m acutely aware that it’s just the two of us, alone together. Standing close. Both of us not sure what to say next.

To my relief, Ford breaks the silence.

“Now tell me, do you think I have a future as a ballet dancer?” He executes a few sloppy twirls, his arms splayed crazily out at his side, the hood of his sweatshirt flying out behind him.

“Anything’s possible.” I grin, relieved by his silliness. “If you promise to work really hard, I can maybe teach you how to do a plié. Here, grab onto the barre.”

“This is gonna come in so handy,” Ford jokes, “when dudes get up in my face in the Lowlands.”

“You have no idea.” I smile. “Ballet can be very intimidating, if used correctly. Now, straighten up.” I put one hand on his lower back and the other on his collarbone, attempting to undo his slouched posture.

“Yes ma’am.”

When I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, my eyes are a deeper green again, the same bright emerald shade they turned those first few days after Jax implanted the heart inside me.
Ford is right,
I think. It’s time to figure out how to find Rosie.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

CHAPTER 28

“You’re here!” Jax cries when she finds me and Ford on her doorstep later that night, just after 1
A.M
. She claps her chapped hands together in front of her like a kid about to open a pile of birthday presents, then engulfs me in a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re all right. I knew you would be. Your speed was
so
impressive, the day you ran away. You reminded me of Rat-tat-tat, one of my fastest transplant patients.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I mumble, extracting myself from her embrace and ignoring the comparison she’s just made between me and a rat. “I’m pretty fast, I guess.”

“And you’ve been careful to keep moving, to keep eating?”

“I’ve woken up with blue fingers and lips a couple of times, but yeah, eating seems to keep it at bay.”

“Good good good,” Jax murmurs as she swipes a clipboard from her desk and pulls a pair of bent reading glasses from the pocket of her T-shirt—silkscreened with the periodic table and the words
SCIENTISTS DO IT PERIODICALLY—
and puts them on. “Patient suffers occasional mechanical slowdown, mitigated by . . . what kind of food?”

“Sugar,” I confess. “I never used to eat sweets. But now—”

“You can’t get enough of them. A natural side effect. Hummingbirds love nectar, after all,” Jax says, trailing off as she finishes her notes on the clipboard, her handwriting a crazy, hieroglyphic scrawl. At last, she shoves her pen into the mass of silver curls piled atop her head. “Anyway, what brings you back to the lab?” She fastens a blood pressure meter onto my arm and pumps the ball until it cuts off my circulation. “Don’t mind me, just gathering data. You understand, of course.”

“Of course,” I say, looking to Ford for help, mouthing
Let’s focus
and hoping he can read my lips.

“Speaking of data,” Ford says, taking my cue, “I was telling Anthem about the time you hacked into the police datacluster.”

“Ah.” Jax blushes. “Anthem, I hope you don’t think I’m a horrible person. I just like to peek at my file every few weeks, to make sure the trail is still cold.”

I shake my head. Hacking into my chest is a thousand times more horrible than a little database exploration, but I keep that thought to myself. “We’re looking for someone—”

“Ford’s filled me in about the kidnappers, actually,” Jax says, undoing the blood pressure cuff and sliding it off my arm. “Sounds like trouble.”

“Probably, yeah,” I say, staring at the dirty floor. Does this mean she won’t help me?

“Don’t look so glum, Anthem. Of course I’ll help. You’re my greatest achievement—how could I say no to you?” Jax grins, then heads toward a wall of file cabinets.

“What is she doing?” I ask Ford. Jax’s monkey has begun to screech in his cage, beating his paws against his white tuft of chest hair, baring his sharp little teeth.

“Shut your piehole, Mildred,” Ford calls to the monkey, shrugging at my question.

“Mildred?”
I snort. “That beast is called Mildred?”

“Named her after my aunt,” Jax calls, slamming a file drawer shut and opening two more. The back of her lab coat says
BEDLAM GENERAL
on it, and I wonder again what she must have done to end up here, with tape on her glasses, leaky pipes, terrible heat, and a rabid monkey. “A real nut job. My aunt, not the monkey, ha ha.” Her nervous laughter echoes in the big room. The monkey howls.

“She’s a little paranoid about being traced,” Ford whispers. “Gotta be ten different computers and a thousand wires in those drawers.”

Soon the three of us are crowded around Jax’s laptop, looking at yellow letters on a black screen, full descriptions of perps, in many cases with photographs, either taken by surveillance cameras or mug shots, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Jax has hacked into the police database, for what I’m guessing is not the first time.

“Okay, let’s narrow it to Syndicate,” Jax mutters. “Of course, that’s nearly everyone these days . . .”

Indeed: 4,263 results. I sit back on the rolling stool Jax gave me. “This isn’t going to help us,” I say to Ford.

“Female, Jax. Narrow the search by gender,” Ford suggests.

“Aha.” Jax’s silver curls bob up and down as she bounces on her chair. “Only three hundred fourteen!”

“Can you search by age? She’s in her early twenties,” I say. “And blond.”

Almost instantly, a blurry picture captured by surveillance camera appears, the date from a year and a half ago in one corner, someone who could be Rosie with shorter, spikier blond hair. A half-smile visible in the blurred pixels that make up her deceptively sweet mouth. Standing next to a taller figure, brunette, face obscured because of the angle of his head. I get chills when I notice what’s in the corner of the frame. On the linoleum floor, a kid, lying face down, hands over his head. My heart breaks when I see he’s young enough to have mittens clipped to his jacket. They dangle from his cuffs, shielding his face. A milk carton is on its side next to him in a puddle of milk.

And there she is,
smiling.

ROSE THORNE
: FEMALE, BLONDE, 5’4”, 120 lbs., tattoo on right shoulder

CHARGES
: Assault, petty theft, grand larceny, grand theft, conspiracy, drug trafficking, accessory to murder. APPREHENDED SPEEDING FROM CRIME SCENE (TEDDY’S ONE STOP SHOPPING, Loc. SOUTHEAST EXURBIA) IN YELLOW LANDPUSHER, LIC. SHOO4512

ARRESTS
: 1

CONVICTIONS
: 0

PLEA BARGAIN
: Plaintiff currently active in the field as Police Informant #5611.

I point to this last section of the screen and elbow Ford. “Does this mean she’s working with the police?”

Ford shrugs. “Guess so. Wonder how they’d feel to know their informant killed someone.”

I shudder involuntarily, then turn back to the screen. If I deliver an informant to the police, would they just let her go?

ACCOMPLICES AND ASSOCIATES
:

Smith Macoumb—WANTED
: grand theft, conspiracy, assault

Karl Small—WANTED
: assault w/deadly weapon, drug trafficking

Emmett Cask—WANTED
: conspiracy, larceny, assault w/deadly weapon