What's Broken Between Us Read online

  Since it’s Jonathan and his return on probation that’s got me upset, Graham’s new solution is to put it out of my thoughts. Don’t think of him, because he doesn’t deserve it.

  “I’ll try,” I tell Graham, and he pulls me into a hug so huge and all-encompassing that I truly do feel safe in his arms, like I could dissolve here. I lean into him and pretend that I haven’t just lied.

  All I can think about is how the material on his soccer jersey would be perfect for catching tears. Graham knows I’m a mess, but he only knows the shallowest layers of the debris.

  The truth is ugly, so I keep it from Graham, from everyone. Except Dawn.

  The truth is: I’m glad my brother is coming home tomorrow. I’m grateful Jonathan’s sentence was the minimum, one year in prison with ten years of probation. I understand that this is lenient, unfair, and not at all fitting to the crime. But the sentence makes me happy. Relieved, too. And it’s not only because Jonathan has one of those faces that make people say, He’s too pretty for jail. Or because I don’t think he deserves to be there longer.

  My brother was a shell of his former self after the accident. He didn’t come out of his room. He barely got out of bed. His breath always stank of whiskey. He didn’t speak.

  So sometimes I can’t bring myself to care that our team of the-best-of-the-best lawyers took full advantage of Grace’s parents’ refusal to press charges against my brother and milked the sign missing from the road and the haphazard weather conditions for all they were worth.

  Jonathan killed one of his best friends. Nearly paralyzed his girlfriend. If that’s not a life sentence, I don’t know what is.

  I miss being in my brother’s shadow. It was warm there. But still, I’m afraid to see him.

  I pull away from Graham and let him kiss me.

  “What would I do without you?” I whisper. This compliment always brings out a candid, bashful smile in him, as though he can tell that I am actually being very genuine.

  Graham gives my hand another squeeze before he leaves, walking in the opposite direction down the hall, and I make my way to my last class of the day, thanks to my open seventh period. It’s such a relief. I stare at the floor as I enter the room, when a thought shadows over me. Dark and weighty and paralyzing. None of this really matters. Not my secrets or the ways I try to apologize for Jonathan or even Jonathan getting out of jail tomorrow, because despite anything else that happens to me or Jonathan or the rest of us, Grace is still gone. So it’s all useless anyway.

  I’m standing in the doorway of my sixth-period Consumer Economics classroom, with no memory of walking there. I let my eyes travel to the other side of the room, where Henry Crane is sitting. He looks nothing like his sister, Sutton, otherwise you might say Jonathan and I had similar taste. But Henry is tan where Sutton is pale. His hair is a filthy blond, while hers is close to platinum. Henry’s features are sharp; Sutton’s are full. With Jonathan and Sutton, it had been love at first sight. It took Henry and me years to grow on each other. And we never got around to finding out if it was love. Henry is the person I try the hardest not to notice. I always fail. This time, he’s actually looking back, staring at me like he can see the truth.

  TEXTS TO DAWN, SENT THURSDAY, 1:45 P.M.

  I told you how we never talked about it, it just worked itself out—Henry takes the left side and I take the right. I get the window side of the classroom, and he gets to be closer to the door. But today he sat in the middle, just a desk away. So that’s why I noticed he had a knee brace on, and then Bryan asked him if he’d be out this season and he said yes, for most of it, even though he was introduced with the rest of the soccer team at the assembly today. Then Bryan asked him how things were—in the broad sense—and Henry said, smashing. And you know how whenever he plays on his accent he’s being sarcastic, but Bryan was like, okay, good to hear it, man. Because that was probably the first time Bryan and Henry had spoken all year, and then of course Bryan turned to look at me because here he was, in between Amanda Tart and Henry Crane, asking Henry if he was okay in the broader sense, which was basically the same as asking how he’s doing with the fact that my brother will be out of jail tomorrow, and all that.

  And then Henry had Bryan pass me a note at the end of class, which made Bryan turn red and frowny. I might not open it, because is there anything he could say to me that I’d want to hear anyway?

  Damn, I didn’t mean for this to be so long. Or to say “which” so many times. Which means you should call me the second you get out of Econ 101.

  That’s right. I have your schedule memorized.

  Which means I miss you like crazy.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  “That’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 it’s 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 to him 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, 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 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.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  There 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 another boy 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.