Broken (2 page)

No one’s there. Not even Daniel.

Someone shifts through the cedars behind me, and crosses the street yards away. A shudder ripples down my spine before I can pull myself together.
So weird
, I think. Blinking, and wishing I had sunglasses, I trade cash for coffee, avoiding the lingering gaze of the guy three years older than me in the window. Tiny takes a shaky inhale, holds it, and then says, “So…um…I was thinking if you weren’t busy, maybe we could—”

“Gotta go, Tiny. Don’t want to be late for class.” I cut him off before he tries to ask me anything awkward.

People clutter the campus, busses pulling up to the drop-off corner, knots of girls, clumps of guys, all jostling closer to the doors. Right across from me stands nearly half the Shelley High Raven’s baseball team, tossing a freshman’s luch back and forth.

Catching sight of Bree, all in blues and pinks, I hustle to cross the street. Breaks squeal, and Josh Mason lays on the horn when his crappy Z-28 nearly sideswipes me. He shoves his head out the window and yells something less than nice about me being in my “proper spot on the curb.” People freeze up and down the block, and all eyes turn toward me. With a half-smirk, I rail him about the vehicular compensation for his lacking manhood. Slinging insults is better than wasting my coffee on his windshield.

Josh takes it well. We’ve been playing the insult game since Daniel beat him to the ‘Dating Emma Gentry’ punch. Feet from the curb, I shoulder between Josh’s baseball teammates and hear, “Good comeback, Gentry.”

“It’s a finely honed skill,” I say, flicking a glance up at the team’s spare pitcher.

Slamming Josh has been an almost daily occurence since Daniel fell.
No.
T
hat’
s
not right
,
I think,
I
t was more than just dating
. I’d dated other guys. Hand-holding, a few kisses, a feel or two, but none of them affected me the way Daniel did. With Daniel, it was so much more. He wasn’t just in my heart, he
was
my heart.

“Hellooo?” Bree’s face is suddenly inches from mine, her ice blue eyeshadow glinting in the sunlight. “Earth to Emma.”

“Sorry,” I mutter, and sip my coffee, “Guess I was spacing out.”

“Guess? There’s no guess about it.”

“Okay, okay.” I drop to my knees, coffee cup raised, other hand wrapped around it like I’m praying. From this position, I’m suddenly aware how short her skirt is and what an awkward position I put myself in. “Forgive me, oh Bree, for I have sinned!”

“Ha!” she snorts, cheeks blushing scarlet when she hooks her hand in my elbow and hoists me to my feet. “Get up before the new guy sees you down there and gets the wrong impression.”

“New guy?” A shard of the reflection I’d seen earlier flares behind my eyes.

“New to our school, anyway.” She wraps her hand in mine and drags me toward the wheelchair ramp leading to the side door. Once in the fractured shade of the maple tree, she points along the sidewalk, halfway down the gym complex. “Mr. You Don’t See Me with his hood up.” She leans around me, does a little wiggle meant to hike her skirt higher hands-free. “And I wanna see what he’s hiding under there.”

I follow where she’s pointing. Coming toward us walks the 3-D version of the reflection I’d seen. His entire look seems crafted to both draw, and shun attention. His clothes are definitely designer, but with the hood up and shoulders hunched he appears to not want the attention the girls at Shelley High are going to give him. His head tips up just enough for me to catch a glint of his eyes. The world narrows, everything falls away, cleaved from existence the moment he meets my eyes.

Then his gaze falls and life crashes back.

Rumors whisk in front of him, brittle as fall leaves, darker than crows in a murder.

“He’s been in juvie,” says the baseball player a few feet away.

“No way,” the third basemen says. “He was in jail.”

“I heard he killed someone with his bare hands,” one girl says. Her friend argues, “Not with his hands. With a knife!”

“Back from the dead,” another Ravens baseball player murmurs behind me.

“Weird day to start school,” mutters Bree.

“Yeah,” I agree. “In the middle of the semester, too.”

Then Sam Ashton, last semester’s Sadony Academy transfer says, “Hi, Alex.”

He nods his head in a very guy-like gesture, gives them a short wave, and the flock of biting words die at his feet. Guys appear to shrug off his arrival, but still pin Alex with sneaky, kill-the-interloper glares. Girls, despite still whispering, slather on predatory smiles, thrust up their boobs and tip their hips in curvy poses. Alex’s appearance may have shook up the quad, but it settles back to a more normal morning routine quickly.

“Alex?” Bree whispers to me, her brown eyes wide. “As in Alex Franks?”

I shrug. Doesn’t sound familiar to me. I’m too busy trying to figure out what happened when he looked at me to worry about his last name. Something tingled deep in my chest, a sparking wire with a faulty connection. Bree’s saying something about recognizing him from elementary school, thinking out loud that she pulled his hair in a sandbox. The only coherent thoughts I can formulate are:
What’s he doing here now?
And,
Why is he coming this way?

Alex whoever-he-is walks closer, and the tingle in my chest becomes a steady electric current. Slowly every gaze on the high school campus zeroes in on us. A hot blush abrades my cheeks. With everyone looking in our direction, I feel like one of those bugs on display, skewered through to a corkboard in the biology lab. Only a livewire buzzes in me instead of a stick pin. The sharp elbow nudge Bree gives me registers in the same way movement registers in peripheral vision.

A couple of steps away, Alex stops.

Cold sunlight reaches inside his hood, washing his features. A nervous twitch at the corners of his full lips could be a smile. Then he looks at me, I mean, really
looks
at me, like he’s counting every freckle the DNA faery rudely splattered across my nose. An expression of wonder, disbelief maybe, lights his face. My head’s a mess, my chest’s tingling, and all I can think is that he feels like an echo ringing through the hollow left inside me, undeniable and utterly dwarfed by Daniel’s memory.

I want to speak. I should. A muscle twitches on his jaw like he does, too.

Bree, of course, beats us both to it.

“Hey, Alex. Remember me? We went to kindergarten together. I think I pulled your hair…” she says, sliding close to me and edging closer to Alex at the same time.

“Bree, right?” The corner of his eyes crinkle. “Yes, you did.”

“Sorry about that.” Red floods her cheeks. “Do you and Emma know each other?”

“No,” comes out in stereo, his a velvet tenor and mine a thin soprano.

I drop my gaze, pretending interest in his over-priced shoes. His jacket creaks like new leather, and I look up when Alex lifts his arm and shoves off his hood. Longish brown hair shot through with natural coppery highlights tumbles loose, dusting his collar, brushing his cheekbones. He shoves a long, thin hand through his hair.

The electrical current shorts out, and I’m hollow again.

“So,” he says, then points at the coffee cup in my hand, twitching slightly, “Mugz-n-Chugz has the best breves, right?”

Realization slams into my gut. The shudder I felt before slides down my spine. Alex watched me buy my coffee. He’d had to have, otherwise, how would he know I was holding a breve?
Why was he watching me?
Before I can formulate the question, Alex gives me a short wave, identical to the one he gave the guy who called his name. He buries his face in the shadows of his hood, then leaves. The scent of leather lingers in my nose, and unconsciously I draw another deep breath of it after the side door slams shut behind him.

“What was that all about?” Bree’s eyes are wide pools of confusion.

“You tell me.” I hike my backpack and chug down the rest of my coffee in the hope of burning the smell of leather and taste of embarrassment from the back of my throat. “Remember I moved here in sixth grade? I’ve never seen the guy.”

“Well, he certainly acts like he’s seen you before.” Then a Cheshire grin spreads over her glossed lips. “Are you hiding secrets? Bet you are! You know him. You had a hot summer fling never expecting to see him again, and now he shows up here…”

“Shut up, Bree.” I chuck my cup into the trash can. A satisfying hollow
bang
rings from it. “That’s the plot to
Grease.
I know your group did the show last year, but all life doesn’t fit one musical.”

“Maybe you two are star-crossed lovers, and he’s finally found you on his soul’s ageless search…”

“Maybe,” I hit her with a narrow look when we reach the door, “or maybe he has a girlfiend…”

“Not the way he was looking at you.” Utter conviction n her voice.

“Fine.” I’m not winning this one. Arguing with Bree when she’s entrenched is a lot like arguing with a brick wall. “Then how about you get your own boyfriend and quit dumping your fantasy relationships on me?”

“That’s always a goal of mine.”

“Mine, too.”

Inside, Shelley High is hell on the eyes. Bright lights, chipped flooring, battered lockers and neon flyers litter the walls. And people everywhere, milling in the halls like cattle in slaughter pens. The popular crowd I’ll never be a part of and never want to, Bree’s theater nerd Thespians, and half a dozen other cliques jostle and shout, close to half of it in abbreviated text lingo.

I tuck my arms in, and weave through the throng. My locker is close to the main office. Usually it smells like coffee at this end of the hall. Not today. A lingering wisp of leather hangs close. I bend my head to my locker door, spin the combination, and tug. It’s no use. Damn thing’s stuck, again. It’s only October and I’ve already had to get help from the janitor five times to force it open.

Josh Mason breaks free of the surge behind me. He leans his frame against the locker beside mine. I shoot him an exasperated look, then spin my combination again.

“That was a nice insult,” he says.

He’s trying to be sexy, I can tell, with his casual slouch and plaid, button-down shirt open to show a little skin at his neck. For me, a 6’ ginger with curling hair and freckles is
so
not sexy. Cute, annoying, but never attractive like Josh wants to be to me.

“Yeah?” I slam my palm on my still-locked locker. “Well, you make it so easy.”

He snorts, and has the decency to look like he’s struggling for a nasty response when Alex Franks glides from the rabble and push of bodies and says, “You’re on my locker.”

No preamble, nothing polite. I think I could learn to like this guy.

“Sorry man,” Josh raises both hands and steps back. “Just making small talk.”

Alex tips his head slightly, then turns from the curly red-head. Josh puffs his chest, and and clenches his jaw. A vein stands out on his forehead. The building tension must be obvious to Alex, too. He slowly faces back to the redhead and asks, “What?” in that knowing, try-and-push-me tone.

“Nothing,” Josh almost spits, then adds, “See you later Emma,” before walking away.

Alex watches him until he disappears around the hall corner, then turns back to his locker. He exudes mystery where he stands, drawing female gazes like an electromagnet. Brown hair obscures his face while he bends over his lock.

He opens his locker, shuffles stuff, deposits paperwork on the top shelf, and then shuts it while I still struggle to liberate my door from the steel grip of the locking mechanism.

“Want help?” he asks, a spark of amusement in his voice.

“Sure.” I flick him a grateful glance, then look at my hands and rattle off my combination. Simple hope morphs to shock as he spins the numbers, pushing in with each one, then nudges the door with his hip.

The locker pops open.

My jaw drops.

In the two years I’ve had the same locker, only Daniel worked that damn lock as easily as Alex.

A tickle thrums across my skin when he swings the door open, his arm inches from mine, like he’s a Tesla coil. Then with a slight nod and slighter smile, Alex pulls his hood back up and plunges into the churning masses. He cuts a path, heading towards the Performing Arts hall. Funny, he’s getting along just fine, but since he arrived this morning I feel like I’m the one being trampled, suffocating.

Chapter Three

Halfway through first hour, my butt’s numb from the hard plastic seat and I’m afraid the numbness is leeching up my spine and affecting my brain. I heave a sigh, chew my pencil and try to pay attention while Mrs. Johnson writes Trig problems on the dry erase board. Between the marker squeaks stabbing my eardrums, and thoughts of Alex and how he stared at me like I’m not supposed to be real, focusing on classwork is impossible

My cell phone vibrates in my backpack, a chaotic buzz and clatter, like bees and chicken bones. Half the class is texting or talking, taking advantage of Mrs. Johnson’s stubborn refusal to treat her hearing loss with hearing aids. I certainly wouldn’t be the first to whip it out in class.

Casting a glance at her shoulders working like dull butcher blades under her sweater, I slide my phone free of the inner pocket, clicking a few pencils together. I stow the pink thing on my thigh, behind my desk. When someone’s at a desk, looking down with both hands in their lap, you know what they’re doing. I join the ranks of the obvious.

Bree Ransom
, the display screen reads
.

What does she want? We just parted ways about ten minutes earlier. Sighing, I slide the phone open.

Alex’s in my 1
^st
hour! He’s H.O.T. & single!

Well. That answers the girlfriend question I posed earlier. It also makes him extremely eligible in Bree’s mind. A girlfriend would be a speed bump in her acquisitions pursuit, but she is one of the most determined people I know. I’m sure Bree’s wondering if he’s going to the dance this weekend, and if she can get him in a costume. I steal another peek at our hearing impaired teacher before replying to the text.

His locker’s next to mine.

Her response must have burned wires somewhere with its speed:
LUCKY!

I silence my phone, slide it shut and slip it back into the little pocket. At the head of the class, Mrs. Johnson waves a marker at the string of gobbledygook numbers and symbols that I’d understand if I had paid attention earlier. I try to force my brain into logic mode—it’s not happening. Ducking my head, I pray to not get called on to solve the equations. Images of Alex stab into the static noise in my head: standing next to my locker, spinning the combination like he’s done it dozens of times before.

Luck has nothing to do with it.