What's Broken Between Us (3 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“
T
hat’s all it said? ‘Meet me after school’?” Just Dawn’s voice over the phone grounds me. I no longer feel so lost.

I’m sitting in my car in the school parking lot, about to take off, except Dawn’s class let out fifteen minutes before mine did and I couldn’t wait another second to talk to her. I opened Henry’s note as soon as I was alone in my car. Self-control failed and curiosity won, and there was a small voice in my head telling me that maybe, on some level, I owed it to Henry to open his note. And I definitely owed it to Sutton Crane, in case the contents of the note pertained to her.

“He didn’t specify
where
?” Dawn asks.

He didn’t, because he didn’t have to. We had a place, as
cheesy as that sounds. I never told Dawn about it.

“The point is,” I say, “I have an open seventh period. I’m not going to wait around after school, when I don’t need to be here, just so he can—”

But I’m cut off by a knocking on the passenger window. It’s him, of course, standing there in his jacket, leaning over and motioning for me to press the button to lower the window.

“I have to go,” I whisper to Dawn, hanging up on her mid “Wha—?”

Henry stands upright as the window descends, and once the window is all the way down, he reaches into the car, unlocks it, and climbs into the passenger seat. His gesturing from before might’ve been asking me to unlock the door. Our miscommunication is no surprise.

It’s been over a year since we’ve spoken, so I wait for him to start. The last thing we said to each other,
Let’s just forget it
, was the same as agreeing never to talk again. In theory, it was easy to keep this agreement, since our mutual friends are nearly nonexistent now that Grace is gone and his sister and my brother have been separated by miles and metal bars.

“I didn’t think you’d meet me,” he says quietly. His eyes drop on my keys, resting firmly in the ignition. His subtle way of saying,
And I was right
.

“I—I have an open seventh,” I explain.

He takes up a lot of room in the car, like maybe he’s taller. Up close he looks the same. His hair is a little shorter, like he just got it cut. It’s still sort of wavy, still falls uneven over his forehead.
I remember touching it, and wish I didn’t.

“Can I ask you something, Amanda?” he says.

Sometimes when he says my name it comes out
Amander
. It stuns me for a second, hearing him say my name. His family moved from England when he was twelve and Sutton was fourteen, though I think Henry works hard to keep his accent strong because girls like it. I used to be the exception, but then, for a moment in time, I was worse than all of them. At least for me, it was more of an acquired taste.

“A favor,” he says, staring straight ahead. “I need a favor.”

“What’s the favor?” I ask, but this feels all wrong.

I should be asking Henry how his sister is doing, that’s what I should be saying to him after not speaking for a year, but I can’t bring myself to mention her. It’s bad enough that my brother’s the reason Sutton spent the first year after her graduation, when she was supposed to be attending the Art Institute of Chicago, in and out of physical therapists’ offices. Last I heard she was walking again but could only do it with crutches attached to her forearms. I’d like to know if she’s doing better, if she’s in the city studying fashion like she always wanted, even though my brother wasn’t around to go to school in the city with her the way they’d planned it. But I know better than to ask. Because the answer could be no.

“He gets out tomorrow?” Henry says, even though my brother’s release is probably a big point of discussion in the Crane household, and Henry most likely has had that date burned into his memory from the moment the trial was over.

“It is what it is, I guess,” I say, immediately regretting the words, but I felt like I had to say something. I never was good at offering condolences, and my apology-smile won’t work on Henry.

Henry looks at me, finally. I hadn’t realized how intently I’d been waiting for him to meet my eyes, but now that he has, I feel a mixture of sorrow and relief.

Henry covers his mouth, then quickly moves his hand away. “You sound just like him,” he says.

It’s . . . it is what it is. . . . In here, or out of here—it doesn’t change what I’ve done.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I know, I know. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I thought it was okay to rouse you about talking like him.”

There was a time when Henry and I were sparring cronies. Nemeses. It started in junior high. Then Jonathan and Sutton fell in love and I was irksome and Henry was disgruntled, and our game was to pretend our siblings weren’t exchanging saliva and calling each other
baby
. At the height of our gaming, though, the verbal scrapping started to feel a lot like flirting. And soon it was impossible to deny that we were dancing around our feelings for each other, and so we stopped and decided to just fess up to them.

“Maybe it’s your defense mechanism,” I say. Henry started it. I can’t help myself. It’s what we do—what we
used
to do. Or maybe I’m the worst, plain and simple, and it’s no wonder I don’t have any friends my senior year.

Henry raises his eyebrows. A look of challenge, of surprise.
But not offense. He never did get offended.

“So what’s the favor?” I ask again. I’m sure it’s evident by my expression: whatever it is, I’ll do it. If it will absolve me in any way, for everything before, for what Jonathan’s done, and said, and for this conversation right now, sign me up.

“If you happen to notice that he’s back in touch with Sutton, I need you to tell me. Will you?” Henry chews his bottom lip, waiting for my answer.

“Sure.” He does nothing to hide that he’s scrutinizing me.

“
What?
” I ask.

“You tell me.”

I let my mouth hang open, but he’s right. I do have a
what
.

“On
Lifeline
he said they weren’t speaking.” I realize what a huge mistake it was to mention
Lifeline
, and usually I don’t, but the thing is, I haven’t spoken to my brother—not a word—since he was incarcerated, per his wishes. The reminder makes me want to start crying. It takes me back to that foggy Thanksgiving Day last year, when I thought we’d make the drive and visit him, since it was a holiday. But my parents ignored my request. I was drowned out by football on the television, and my mother’s bedroom door, slamming closed. I had to realize by myself that when Jonathan said he wasn’t going to list us as visitors, he meant it.

“On
Lifeline
. . .” Henry twists to look at me. His face is a giant question mark, and I almost ask
him
, “What?” but he’s shaking his head, leaning back in the seat, staring out the windshield instead of into my eyes. “If you believe anything he said on
Lifeline
, well . . . I don’t know what to say to you.”

The lawyers told us, “People aren’t themselves in front of a camera,” after the interview aired and my parents and I were in shock about my brother’s performance. But Jonathan was exactly himself in that interview; the boy he was before the accident. Cheerful. Smug. Inappropriate. Flirtatious. Relaxed, like he didn’t have a care in the world. My parents and I cling to the words
defense mechanism
tighter than we’ve held on to anything in our entire lives.

Lifeline
is all I have to go on; it’s all anyone has. That’s the problem. It never occurred to me—until now—that Jonathan never went to see Sutton in the hospital once during those months before his incarceration, and therefore what he said on
Lifeline
is what she gets instead of a real breakup. It’s all we have of my brother, and Henry thinks it’s a lie.

“How do you know he was lying?”

“Because it’s what he does!” Henry explodes. There’s fire in his eyes, and in his voice. “Televised or not. In front of a jury or not. He said he’s not speaking to Sutton, so naturally I assume they must be talking every day.” Henry swallows down the flames, and his stare turns to ice. “Or they will be, after tomorrow.”

I’m about to ask Henry why he doesn’t just question Sutton about whether she’s in contact with Jonathan. But I already know the answer. Sutton doesn’t tell the truth either.

“Okay, fine,” I say. I hope this will get him to leave. I prefer undeserved glances across a classroom, silence for the rest of our
lives, if it means never having to be around him when he’s mad like this. This is the kind of fighting we never wanted to do—it’s the reason we had to forget everything that was happening between us. And really, I’m mad, too. But my fury is defenseless. I don’t get to tell anyone they’re wrong about Jonathan, especially not Sutton’s younger brother. “I’ll tell you if I hear anything.”

“Thank you,” Henry says in a callous voice. He stays perfectly still.

“She probably doesn’t want to talk to him anyway,” I say, a moment later, as an afterthought. But even I can think of a million things Sutton undoubtedly wants to say to Jonathan.

I wait for Henry to yell at me for this, too, but he shakes his head. “It’s not always that easy.” He happens to glance at me at the exact same time I glance at him, and then he’s opening the door and walking away, and as I’m watching him go, I stupidly wish that he would come back.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

T
here are a handful of people who seemingly have nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon than sit outside the federal prison in rusty folding lawn chairs, holding signs. Mostly, the signs say things like,
NO JUSTICE FOR GRACE MARLAMOUNT!
and
RETRIAL!
That’s the gist of what they’re chanting.

I didn’t have to go with my parents to pick Jonathan up from prison. I’m missing a calculus test, but if I’m going to be ratting Jonathan out for speaking to his ex-girlfriend, being here when he’s released so he doesn’t have to sit there by himself with our parents the entire five-hour drive back is the least I can do.

The windows of my parents’ SUV are slightly tinted, but I still find myself slouching in my seat. No one from Garfield
High is protesting, from what I can tell. No one representing a religious sect, either. It’s just a few middle-aged people—
Lifeline
demographic, aka people who like to spend their Friday nights on the couch tuning into the grandest, most elaborate dramatization of news stories. One sign misspells Jonathan’s name:
JOHNATHAN
. You’d think if they cared enough, they’d get it right. One of the cars has an Arkansas license plate, and I wonder if that drive through Missouri was really worth it to stand here on the side of the road in the cold, shouting at strangers.

The lawyers warned us that Jonathan’s interview might “complicate things for him at the time of his release.” I wonder if this is the worst of it.

“This is
unbelievable
,” my mother mutters from the front seat. She’s got on her large black sunglasses with a red silk scarf hooded around her head. She’s clutching her purse on her lap like she thinks someone is going to reach out and grab it. Her mouth—the only part of her face I can really see—goes slack. I lean forward and touch her shoulder, giving her a weak smile. Under normal circumstances, I don’t touch her and she doesn’t touch me, but my mother is at a federal prison picking up her only son, whom she hasn’t seen or spoken to in a year. She breathes out and pats my hand. “I just want to get this over with.” Her voice is high and muffled from crying.

“It’ll be all right,” my father says. It’s the only thing he ever says regarding this entire situation. “Just ignore them. They have their own problems, I’m sure.”

My father is full of empty advice. This kind of encouragement
might work on his patients prior to dental surgery, but has never worked on us. My mother sighs.

We follow the road down a little ways and park beside a white Pinto in a small, nearly empty lot.

My mother leans forward, focusing on the dusty blue doors of the cement building in front of us.

“What are we supposed to do now? Do we just sit here and wait? Do we need to go in and—” A buzzing noise cuts her off, and one of the hefty doors slides open. A guard dressed in tan holds it as my brother and a boy with dark hair walk out.

“Here he comes,” my father announces. My mother gasps. Like me, she’s now holding her breath.

Jonathan stares at his feet while he walks. He’s missing his usual saunter. His dark hair seems thicker, but I think it’s because I’ve never seen it so short before. Usually it covers his entire forehead and wings out at his ears. He’s in jeans and a sweatshirt—the clothes he was wearing when we brought him. They’re baggy on him now, and when he finally does look up, all his features are sharper. He’s only nineteen, but he seems older. In some ways he’s the same as when we brought him here a year ago—broken, sad, guilty. Those things are now etched into his creased forehead, looming behind his eyes.

He veers to the left as he’s walking, and at first I think it’s an accident, he’s done it to prevent himself from tripping. But he falls in step with the other boy, who was let out of the door right before Jonathan. Talking with his head down, Jonathan makes this boy laugh. And then we see it, a real live smile from my
brother. It’s small, but it’s there, it’s genuine. It’s him.

The two of them exchange a half handshake, half hug before the boy climbs into the white car that is there for him, and suddenly all I can see is my brother. Not a prisoner. Not a sociopath. Not a murderer.

I’m grinning so big my cheeks shake. Any second my eyes are going to spill huge tears of happiness. I had no idea it would be like this.

“Don’t get out of the car, Amanda,” my mother says, but it’s too late. I open the door and watch as my brother’s eyes widen when he sees me. I think he’s going to cry, but he surprises me for the millionth time. When I reach him, he throws his arms around me and I bury my face in his shirt.

He’s slow to pull away, and when I look up at him, I see that he’s staring straight ahead through the windshield at my mother. Her French-tipped nails disappear under her sunglasses as she tries to wipe her eyes. Jonathan walks calmly to the other side of the SUV and opens the door. He leans toward her, taking her sunglasses off and hanging them on the collar of his T-shirt. She cries and he watches. When he hugs her, he bends over her, so she doesn’t have to move or even take off her seat belt. With her purse still between them on her lap, she sobs on Jonathon’s shoulder. He puts a hand over the scarf around her head and whispers something in her ear that makes her cry harder. I think that she might be crying now because she’s happy. Maybe she doesn’t know what else to do.

With my mother’s sunglasses still dangling from Jonathan’s
shirt, Jonathan slides into the backseat, and we pull out of the prison parking lot. Jonathan lowers the window to wave once more at the boy who climbed into the white car.

“Who was that?” my mother asks, turning her head a bit so she can see Jonathan. Judging by the tone of her voice, you’d never know that seconds ago she was a blubbering mess. “What did he do to get in there?”

Not once have I heard my mother say the words
jail
or
prison
. It’s always
that place
or
there
.

“Mike, drug dealer,” Jonathan says. “I mean, Mike,
reformed
drug dealer.”

If my brother didn’t look like he needed ten cheeseburgers and ten hours of sleep, I might’ve teased him about making new friends. It used to be that Jonathan would get in trouble and we’d laugh about it. The desire to make him smile right now is so strong I don’t trust myself with words at all.

My father takes this moment to acknowledge Jonathan. “So, how are you, son?”

“As well as can be expected.” Jonathan stares out the window. “I’m here with you all, so I’m much, much better now.”

“What’s wrong?” my mother asks, her voice panicked as if he didn’t just tell her he was doing
better
.

Jonathan glances her way, then very quickly looks out the window again. But I saw his expression for that brief moment. It’s a face from before Grace died. It said,
You’re joking, right?

“You think prison had an effect on your . . . on Mike?” my dad says, peeking at Jonathan in the rearview mirror.

My mother sighs, annoyed and showboating it, the way she does whenever my father says something she doesn’t approve of.

“Sure,” Jonathan says, shrugging.

As we approach the prison parking lot exit, my mother says, “Just ignore them. They’re a bunch of assholes with nothing else to do.” My mother doesn’t look like the type to curse; she comes off too proper, too uptight. But she does it a lot as long as she’s not in public. Wiggling her fingers, she reaches back toward Jonathan. He gets her signal and gives her back her sunglasses.

“Celebrity has its price.” Jonathan’s voice is dry and humorless and aching. But he leans forward toward the center console, so he can get a full view of the protesters through the front windshield.

They seem more aggressive now that we’re leaving the prison; like they’re very aware it’s possible that one of the exiting cars could contain Jonathan.

I let my hand hover over the button in my door, fantasizing about what it would be like to lower my window and tell them they make everything worse. But I feel Jonathan’s hand brush past my wrist, like he can’t decide between tapping my palm or grabbing my hand.

“It’s fine,” he whispers to me.

I shake my head,
it’s not
, but he’s turned around, watching as the protesters fade behind us. Jonathan choosing to stare at the protesters reminds me of when he used to sit too close to the television, even though he’d get yelled at for it. The second our mother left the room, he’d scoot his gaming chair right up to the
TV and press his feet into the bottom drawer of the TV stand. His eyes would be wide and bleary and watering. But he didn’t care. He didn’t want to do what was good for him, no matter how simple it was.